The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle (16 page)

Mara wasn't in the tower.

Simon pulled his hat down over his ears and his mitts up over his wrists and started down the hill, picking his way between the crusted, icy ridges and the
deep, snow-filled pits. “You still haven't told me what Mara
is
. Guess that means you don't trust me.”

“I do trust you. She asked me not to tell anybody.” Ammy crunched and slithered beside him. “She's sure people will hate her and try to kill her if they know what she is.”

“Well, that sure makes me feel better! Why aren't you scared?”

“Because she's...” Ammy balanced on the edge of a long, icy patch and took a deep breath. “She's amazing. I wish I could be like her.”

“Anyway,
I
wouldn't hate her.”

“It's not up to me. Whoo!” She slid down the icy patch on her feet, spreading her arms for balance.

Simon detoured around. “So, it's all over today at noon. Things are already starting to feel normal again.”

“For you, maybe.”

“You know what I mean. And without Mara's book, there'll be no way to prove there's more than this.” He waved at the snowy roofs ablaze with sunshine below them, the hard blue sky, the cold, real world. “Maybe one day I'll wake up and think all that stuff with Mara never really happened.”

“I won't. I'll never forget Mara. Never!” She dug her chin into her scarf. “I wish I was going with her.”

“What?” Simon grabbed her by the arm before
she could slide on down the hill. “You don't really mean that!”

“Why not? It wouldn't be forever. Just a visit.” She yanked her arm away.

“But you can't!”

“What's the matter with you?” She shaded her eyes at him. “You should be begging to come with us! I mean, yesterday we missed the chance to see a new world. Didn't that just kill you?”

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Yesterday we almost got killed! By something that came out of Mara's world! That wanted us for dinner!”

“Stop yelling!”

“I'm not! Who knows what else we'd find there?”

“But that's the whole point!” She hacked at the air with her hands. “Nobody knows!
Think
, Simon!”

“No,
you
think.”

“A whole new world, and we'd be the first human beings to set foot on it! How could you turn that down? Besides....” She lowered her voice to normal and smiled. “We'd be with Mara. We'd be safe with her.”

He made a fist and thumped his forehead. “You are so... What do we know about Mara? What do we know about this world of hers — what did she call it, Merthin? Methrin?”

“Mythrin!”

“Okay. She was chased out of there, remember? She's in some kind of war with her brother. And after she looked in that book she said, ‘My people are dying.' Ammy, use your head! If you think this would be like a trip to Peru with your parents, you're nuts!”

“Huh, some scientist you are,” she sneered. “I bet your Carl Whatsisname would've jumped at the chance.”

“He would not. That's not how scientists work. They don't jump. They
observe
.”

“Yeah, well, observe this!” Ammy stuck out a boot and swiped his feet out from under him and down the hill he went. He grabbed her ankle as he fell and they both rolled over and over down the steep slope, flailing and kicking, spraying snow.

At the bottom Simon lay flat on his back a minute with all the breath squashed out of him. Then he sat up and scooped snow out of his collar. “What was that for?”

Ammy was laughing. “That was for going all stuffy on me.” Her eyes shone and her cheeks were apple red. She looked wholesome and happy and even festive, with snow sparkling in her flame-coloured hair. He almost told her so, but knew she would have hated it.

He scrambled up. “Want to go over to Ike's place? We could play video games.”

“Video games? Puh-leeze!”

“Shame to waste a nice morning like this doing nothing. Five more days till school starts.”

Ammy shuddered. “You had to remind me!”

All the way home Simon tried to tell Ammy about Dunstone Public School. “You'll like it,” he told her. She didn't look convinced.

“You, um, weren't serious back there, were you? When you said you'd like to go with Mara?”

“Darn right I was serious.” She laughed. “Oh, don't look like that! She'd never say yes.”

§

Back in the apartment, Amelia went to her room and opened her laptop. There was a new message from her parents. It sounded as if her mother had written it, and her father had gone over it afterwards and put in a few funny bits. Summed up, it said that Amelia was to act her age and not fly off the handle over every little upset, and she was to write out in careful detail exactly what was bothering her and then they would go over it with her and work out how to deal with it.
And don't forget your grandmother is there and she's a wonderful listener.

Amelia read over the message she'd sent them last night, and her face reddened.

Dear Mom and Dad, she typed, forget that last email. Things aren't so bad here. In fact, some things are
pretty good. I have a new friend. Maybe I can tell you all about her soon.
She wondered if she would really be able to tell them all about Mara, ever. All the same...
I think I might be okay here, she typed.

§

Simon went and threw himself down on his bed. There was too much to think about. Mara, and the Book of Lands, and the Assassin, and the blue door, and the library — or was it a museum? — and the smell of fresh air from another world, and the whatever-it-was that stole the book last night and then just flew off with it, apparently, and now Ammy...

He sat bolt upright. “Ammy!” That's right, that came first. He wouldn't put it past her to try to run away with Mara, just to get out of that first day of school. And he wouldn't put it past Mara to say yes. So the big thing was to figure out how to save Ammy from herself,
then
think about how the entire history of the human race had changed. He flopped back on the bed.

But save Ammy how? What could he say?

Celeste would know what to do. “If only I could tell her everything!” He'd promised not to. But that didn't count any more, did it? Mara was in no danger now, at least not in the kind of danger they'd thought
at first. And they'd told Ike. Telling Celeste couldn't hurt Mara and it might help Ammy.

When the door opened and Celeste came in, he made up his mind. She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed back his hair from his forehead, like she used to when he was small. He told her the whole story, starting from the minute the three of them started up Riverside Drive that first evening. His eyes were half closed and Celeste was a comforting shape against the light, a shape that made encouraging noises and didn't interrupt. She stroked his forehead. His thoughts whirled slower and slower and finally spun to a stop.

§

“Hey there, Rip Van Winkle! Planning to sleep all day?” Celeste grinned at him past the open door.

Simon sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”

“It's half past eleven! How's your appetite? I bought roast beef sandwiches at the deli. I've been working like a fiend all morning and I'm starving!” She vanished from the doorway.

Simon shook his head. Something funny there. She was too ... well, too normal. Like he hadn't just told her all that amazing stuff. “Celeste!” He got up and lurched down the hall to the kitchen. “You were up
here a while ago.” She looked at him blankly. “Weren't you? We talked, right?”

“You must've been dreaming, my lad.”

But he knew that hadn't been a dream. He went back to his room and looked at the dent in the quilt where somebody had sat beside him and smoothed his hair. Somebody. Not Celeste. Then who?

Ammy was gone, too. A yellow sticky note stuck askew on her door.
Mara phoned,
said the note in a scrawly handwriting.
She wants the ring now. I'm taking it to her in the tower. Amelia.

Simon ran back to the kitchen. “When did Ammy leave?”

“Haven't seen her. Why?”

He dashed to the front door and out, grabbing coat and boots in passing. Celeste called after him, but by then he was halfway down the stairs, hauling on his boots in mid-step, clutching the banister to keep from pitching down.

He ran straight into Ike, who was just stepping out of the
Independent
office. Simon grabbed his arm and urged him around the corner and northward. As they thudded along Wallace Street and up Hill Street, Simon
gasped out the story. They turned right at the entrance to Founders Park and headed straight up the hill towards the tower. The slope and deep snow and breaking crust slowed them to a trudge.

“That had to be the Assassin, disguised as Celeste,” Simon said between puffs. “He knows Ammy has the ring. He wants the ring. And he found out Mara's planning to leave at noon.”

“So the phone call Ammy got was him?”

“Had to be. He's used the phone before. Mara never did.”

Simon had no idea what he expected to see in the tower. There hadn't been time to think. He had a vague picture in his mind of Ammy backed against the parapet at the top of the tower, clutching the ring and daring the Assassin to try to take it off her. He looked up as they reached the crest of the hill, but nothing showed between the arches under the conical roof.

He was two strides away from the bottom of the tower when Ammy stepped out. He stopped short. Ike piled into him.

“Ammy! You okay?”

“'Course I'm okay. Why not?” She laughed at them over layers of red scarf. “You can have the book back, if that's what's got you worried. It's up there.” She waved a hand upward.

“You found the book? But how?”

She didn't answer, just walked past them and started down the hill.

Ike dodged around Simon and charged into the doorway and up the stairs. Simon looked after Ammy. She seemed all right.

Somebody screamed at the top of the tower. Then, “Simon! Simon!” By then Simon was halfway up.

When he reached the top he had to push past Ike to find Ammy. She was lying on her back, hands crossed over her stomach, eyes closed. He fell to his knees and reached out a trembling hand to push the scarf back from her face. Her cheek was warm.

“Is ... is she...” Ike stammered.

“She's alive. Ammy!” Simon shook her. Her head wobbled back and forth like a doll's.

“What's the matter with her?”

“I don't know! It's like she's asleep, but...”

“And,” Ike squeaked, “and who was that down there that — that looked like her?”

“Who do you think?”
Wake up, Ammy!
“We already know he can change how he looks.”

“Then that must have been him last night, up on the school roof. The one who took
this
off us.” Ike pushed at something with his foot. It was the Book of Lands. It lay open against the base of the parapet, a foot or so from Ammy's head. A charred square hole ran all
the way through the pages from front to back. All the coloured squares had been destroyed.

Simon remembered when Ammy read the book — how her mind had seemed lost in the squares. Suddenly, what was happening dawned on him, and his face paled.

“She's in there.” Simon whispered. “Her mind. He took the ring, and then he put her in one of those squares, and then he fixed it so her mind can never get out.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Call an ambulance. ... No, that won't help.” Simon scrambled to his feet and looked out over the parapet. He had to search for a moment in the blaze of sunlit snow, but then he found it: a small figure marching briskly across the park. It stepped onto Hill Street and turned left.

Time? His watch said 11:48. At twelve, Mara would be gone. Or maybe dead, if the Assassin got to her first. “Mara. She might help. She has to help!” Simon tore off his parka and draped it over Ammy's body, with its jeans and useless little leather jacket.

Ike crouched beside her. Tears dripped off his chin. “Try and keep her warm!” Simon said. “If I'm not back by...” Time. Time ran differently there. Time might save Ammy. “By half an hour, get her to a hospital.”

He nearly fell on the stairs. At the top of the hill he flung himself down and rolled. It was the fastest
way down. At the bottom he leaped up and ran. The wind whistled through his sweater, but soon he was warm enough not to feel it. His boots weighed like lead on his feet. At the bottom of Hill Street he kicked them off and raced on in his good, thick, water-repellant wool socks. Shouts followed him. He ran a red light where McNairn met Queen Street, dodged a turning tractor-trailer, raced on to a chorus of blaring horns.

On the Queen Street bridge he hung on the parapet, gasping. Eastward, a dark figure walked along the brink of the gorge. It started to pick its way downward.

Simon dared a glance at his watch: 11:56.

He sprinted. Slipped in the slush at the end of the bridge, went down flat on his back in the middle of the road. Staggered up, sprinted on along the cliffside trail. Reaching the path that angled down the side of the gorge, he went down it in leaps, grabbing at the elastic cedars and throwing himself from branch to branch. At the bottom he had to slow down and watch where he was going or risk breaking an ankle, and then where would Ammy be?

In sight of the cave mouth now. Somebody was climbing over the lip of the ledge.

11:59.

Later, he remembered almost nothing of the next minute.

The rocks in the cave mouth were blue with reflected light when he pulled himself onto the ledge. He flung himself down and wormed his way into the inner cave. No Mara. No Assassin. A tunnel of blue light bored into the solid rock. He jumped for it.