The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle (9 page)

The mall cop with the strange, too-bright eyes was walking towards them now. He must think they were already in the bag. And in a couple of seconds they would be.

“Mara, let's go!”

“Firebird will fight for us.” Mara crooked her finger. The espresso machine rocked from side to side. Heads turned. Amelia stood staring until Mara seized her hand and dragged her towards the glass doors that led to the street.

This time she had no chance to look back. Behind them, somebody shrieked, and somebody else yelled
Oh my god
, and a cup smashed on tile. And then a horrible yowl, like the cry of a gigantic cat, drowned them out.

Mara burst into laughter as she bounded out into the crowded street.

“What happened?” Amelia gasped. “Who got hurt?”

“Him! Ha, first blood goes to me! Now he will chase with a whole heart!”

“And that's good?”

“Yes! Now we run for true!”

§

“How many?” Simon echoed.

“Thousands of them,” said the pet store owner. He waved a hand at the corridor outside his store. “Just like that one in the tank. That's the only one I could catch.”

“Leopard geckos,” Ike scribbled in his pocket notebook.

Simon looked around. “So, where are they all?”

“No idea. But they were here.” The man flapped wildly at the floor and walls and ceiling. “They were!”

Ike slipped his notebook back into his pocket. “Dad'll have to print this. Thousands of lizards! Out of nowhere!”

It got worse. In the food court, the talk was all about two girls who ran through five minutes ago, one of them tall and dressed in glittering red. And what she called out, and what happened next.

Ike took a picture of the espresso machine with the brass eagle on top. He tried to get the store manager, Danny Chaves, to stand beside the machine, but Danny refused. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near it, he said.

“Looks safe enough to me.” Simon went up close to the machine and examined the eagle. It looked exactly the same as he remembered. There was no sign it had ever broken away from its perch.

“It flew,” Danny insisted. “It attacked a security guard.”

“Him?” Simon pointed at a big man in a burgundy jacket who was talking on a cell phone.

“No, the other one. The one who ran out after the girls.”

“That's funny. I didn't think....” He walked over to the guard and waited until he lowered the cell phone. “Excuse me. Where's the other guard?”

“What other guard?”

“That's what I thought.” Simon headed for the doors.

“What d'you think?” Ike was at his elbow. “Did everybody go crazy at once? Did Mara hypnotize them? What?”

“Maybe.”

“Something's going on and you know about it, don't you? What's the big secret?”

Simon stopped just short of the doors and faced him. “I ... I can't say.” Not until Mara let him out of that promise. He wished he'd kept his mouth shut, that time.

Ike had that freckles-standing-out-all-over look. “I'm not playing now. And I know you're not. That girl, Mara — it's about her, isn't it?” He held up his camera case. “You saw.”

Simon nodded. Ike had taken three pictures of him, Ammy, and Mara standing side by side with cups of cider in their hands. He and Ammy and everything else were in perfect focus, but Mara beside them was just a blur.

“And now this.” Ike waved at the mall. “Why can't you tell me?”

“Because right now there's no time!”

“Okay. If that's the way you want it.” Ike turned his back and stalked away.

Simon started to call after him, then decided to save his breath. Straightening things out with Ike would have to wait. He pushed through the glass door into the street.

Stick together and keep an eye on Ammy, Celeste had said. And now Ammy was out with Mara, which was a worry all by itself, and some guy was chasing them who looked like a mall cop but wasn't.

He had to find them before something awful happened. But... He looked back and forth and through the laughing crowd. Which way?

Amelia had never run before as she ran now, hand in hand with Mara. The street whizzed under her feet. People's faces were blurred ovals with black gaps in them. The shouts came a second later.

In two thudding heartbeats they were past the street party barriers and bounding straight up the centre of King Street. Car horns blared around them, pickups veered aside. Like magic, Amelia thought. Like everything had to obey the wave of Mara's hand.

They hardly touched down, just skimmed the surface — so Amelia's boot soles told her. (The new boots that had weighed like lead when she bought them and now weighed like feathers.
Anti-gravity boots
, she thought dizzily.) When potholes gaped beneath her feet she leaped, and then, for moments that stretched out long and dreamlike, she was flying, she'd swear it.

Without warning Mara swerved right and cut along an alley between houses. Amelia veered with her like a bird in a flock of two. The built-up spaces between the streets didn't even slow them down. They sprang from a low roof onto snow, burst into and out of a thicket of trees...

And there it ended. Ahead of them lay a plain of silver stretching towards the sky. Beyond the field was nothing but stars.
We can't go any farther
, Amelia thought.
We've run to the edge of the world
.

She stumbled and stopped. While she was bent over, hands on knees, panting, the magic drained away. A bent black feather fell from her headband and stuck point-down in the snow.

She straightened up. They stood on an ice-rutted sidewalk lined with trees. Streetlights glimmered through bare branches. Behind them stood a row of small houses, mostly dark. Seemed like everybody really was downtown.

The silver plain across the street was just a park, white snow rising to a long, low hilltop. They'd run to the edge of Dunstone, not the world.

“Mara, what” — Amelia gulped for air — “what hap-happened back there? In the mall? Was that something you did?”

Mara didn't answer. Amelia looked where she was looking, along the street to their right. Someone was
walking towards them. The figure appeared in a pool of streetlight, crossed it, and faded into the dark.

“Go home.” Mara took her by the shoulders and pushed her away.

“It's him, isn't it? The Assassin. Right, let's go!”

“You go. I stay.”

Amelia spun around. The walker was passing through another pool of light, closer. The light reflected off eyes like broken ice. Two more steps, and he was invisible in the dark.

“Mara, you can't stay! Come on!” She grabbed Mara's arm and pulled. It was like pulling a tree: there was some give, but it got you nowhere.

For half a moment Amelia thought,
I should get away. She's crazy. She's dangerous.
Then:
No! She's in danger. I can't leave her.

“Mara! There's still time if we run!”

“Did you think I ran for fear? I ran to bring him here, away from people.”

“But he'll kill you!”

“We will see.” Mara folded her arms and smiled, showing teeth. She had lost her shawl somewhere and her red lizard coat glittered in the streetlight. “Maybe I can make him talk to me instead. He knows things I must know.”

“But you can't do this by yourself! I can help. I — I can fight!” Amelia looked around for a branch, a broken
piece of fence, anything. Ten seconds and he'd be here —

Amelia
. The name echoed back and forth through her mind.
Brave Amelia. This fight is not for you.

Her mind was full of glare. She shut her eyes.

When she opened them again the street was deserted, except for herself. Her right hand was in her pocket, closed tight around the ruby ring. Its warmth beat like a heart against her fingers.

§

Simon found Ammy on Hill Street on the north edge of town, staring across the street at Founders Park. She whirled and backed away as he trudged near, then let out a huge sigh of relief.

“How did you find me?”

“Celeste's shawl, to start.” He held up the wad of silk. “The chestnut man picked it up and hung it on his cart. He told me which way you guys went. After that I just kept asking people if they'd seen two crazy girls run by.” He looked past her, then around. “Where's Mara?”

“I don't know. I'm afraid she's going to get killed.”

“That guy who was chasing you —”

“That was the Assassin.”

“The what?”

She explained. Long before she finished he was shaking his head.

“This is Dunstone. We don't get hit men here.”

“We got Mara.”

“That's true.” He thought of the geckos and the espresso eagle. “And nothing's been really normal ever since.”

“She's in trouble. I can't wait here.” She started across the street.

“Wait a minute! Where you going?”

“To find her.” She headed into the park. Simon hurried after her. Their boots broke through the snow crust at each step.

“But we don't even know which way she's gone! Where are her tracks?”

Ammy tramped on, hands in the pockets of her plastic jacket. “You don't have to come.”

“D'you know what Celeste will do to me if I come home without you?”

They climbed the hill, floundered down the other side into deep snow at the bottom, then struggled up the farther slope. They were still climbing when a reddish light flushed the sky.

“Fireworks?” Simon wondered aloud. It looked like sheet lightning, only it was the wrong colour. And the wrong season. “Fire?”

When they reached the top of the hill there was
nothing to see but miles of tree-fuzzed darkness streaked with ghostly white. No fire. And no smell, sight, or sound of fireworks.

“What makes you so sure she's out there?” Simon asked.

“She came here to get him away from people, she said. That's where she'd go — out there, where there's nothing but snow and trees. Nobody to be hurt.”

Red light flared in the distance behind a fold of the hills.

“What
is
that?” Simon muttered. “Flares? Flame-throwers?”

“Whatever it is, I'm afraid for Mara.”

“I bet she can take care of herself.”

They stood and watched the dark land below them. After a few minutes Ammy said, “She called me ‘Brave Amelia.' Me!”

“Why not you?”

“Because I was shaking like jelly, that's how brave I was!”

“So you were scared. Who wouldn't be? I mean, a hit man!”

“Mara wasn't scared. I wish I was more like her.”

“I'm glad you're not! She said she was mixed up in politics, remember? If this is politics where she comes from — assassins and flame-throwers and hypnotizing people — I hope she doesn't come back.”

Ammy turned her back on him. “Fine. You go home. I'll wait.”

“I can't go home without you.”

They stood a couple of metres apart, stamping their feet to keep warm, with Ammy pretending he wasn't there. After about five minutes she walked over and stood beside him and said in a small voice that got smaller as she spoke, “I'm afraid for her because he — the Assassin — I'm afraid he's ... not ... human.”

Simon went colder still, but he tried to sound sure of himself. “You mean, the footprints.”

“And other things. Like how he changed. In the street he was thin and grey and in the mall he looked just like a mall cop, big and wide, only ... the eyes were the same. Like, like knife edges. And Mara said, ‘The eyes are the last thing to change.'”

“So, where she comes from there are people who can change their shape. That must be pretty, um, rare.”

They stood in silence, except for the squeak of feet in snow, for another few minutes. Then he said, “And Mara can do strange things to people's minds. I don't think that brass eagle actually flew. I think she made them think it flew.”

“Mm. Yeah,” Ammy said, and shifted from foot to foot, and watched the hills.

“Being able to do things like that must be pretty rare, too.”

“Yeah.” After another long pause Ammy said, “Mara didn't even know about money. Everybody knows about money. And she...”

“She what?”

“Oh, nothing, just ... I didn't even see her leave. She was just gone.”

“I wouldn't have thought anybody could really do stuff like that. I mean” — Simon blew his breath out in a long plume — “not anybody on Earth.”

They waited and watched until they couldn't feel their feet. No more fire, or fireworks, lit up the hills. Mara didn't come back.

After they got home, Amelia opened her laptop. Still no message from her parents. She fired off an email.

Dear Mom and Dad, where are you? Are you all right? Did you get my first email? Please write AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS!!! Love, Amelia.

There was a message from Silken, though. Amelia hadn't even thought of Silken all day, and she felt guilty.

Hi Silken. I have had an incredible day. This girl

She stopped. No, can't write about Mara. That would be the same as telling. She deleted
This girl
and began again.
I went rock climbing with Simon and his friend Ike. It's more interesting than you'd think. I explored a cave and

And what? What was that light in the cave?
later we went out to this First Night party in the street. It was kind of fun.