Big Change for Stuart (16 page)

‘What?'

‘Go to the loo before you strap yourself in there.'

Five minutes later, Stuart climbed onto the throne of the Reappearing Rose Bower and handed the Magic Star to April. ‘Look after the dog, would you?' he asked. He could see it pottering around the room, its stump of a tail wagging briskly.

‘Of course,' said April.

‘And good luck.'

‘Thanks. See you soon.'

She was grinning as he pulled the lever; the silver stems of the rose bower closed in a tangled thicket around him, and the metal strap snapped across his middle. He pulled the lever again, and managed not to yell as he spun upside down into utter darkness.

‘You OK?' shouted April, sounding very far away.

‘Mmmm,' was all Stuart could manage by way of an answer.

‘I'll be off then.'

There was a little pause, an odd scuffling noise, and then a metallic clink directly above him. For a second the seat shook like the top of a washing machine on spin cycle, and then all was quiet again.

‘April?' he called. There was no reply. She was in whatever world the Magic Star had flung her into. So now all he had to do was wait.

It was massively uncomfortable, the safety strap
digging
into his stomach, the blood rushing to his head. He braced his arms and legs against the sides to take the weight off the strap, and wondered how long he'd have to stay there. He started counting, and got to 2,000 before losing track of the numbers.

Time passed. It was quite warm in the interior of the Reappearing Rose Bower, and despite his awkward position, he began to feel sleepy. He tapped out a couple of tunes on the metal walls, and then searched his pockets to see whether he had anything interesting in them. It took a bit of wriggling, but he discovered a fluffy boiled sweet, a paper clip and a peach stone. He dropped them, one by one, into the darkness. He wondered what the dog was doing. He wondered what his mum was doing. He tried to think of what the dog's name might be – Great-Uncle Tony's message had said it began with Ch: Chance. Chocco. Charlie. Charlie was a good name. Stuart yawned.

He was woken by his head banging against the side. The whole illusion was lurching, tipping, swaying, moving. It was being
carried
. He could
hear
muffled voices and the rattling of a metal roller door.

The Reappearing Rose Bower was set down with a crash, and Stuart banged his head again. The roller rattled down, a door slammed violently, an engine started with a deep growling note, and the rose bower jerked forward. Stuart banged his head for the third time, but he was panicking too much to think about the pain. He was panicking because it was clear that he was no longer in the museum but in the back of a lorry.

He was in the back of a lorry and he was being driven away.

AS APRIL WATCHED
Stuart climb onto the throne of the Reappearing Rose Bower, pull the lever and disappear from sight, she clutched the Magic Star in her hand, and tried to keep her breathing steady.

One of the disadvantages of being a triplet was that she hardly ever did anything on her own – there was always at least one sister tagging along. Now she had the prospect of a whole magical world which she could explore without interference, and she felt almost dizzy with excitement. It took her a moment or two to realize that, mingled with the excitement, there was a good dollop of nervousness. It was always easier to be brave when you were with someone else.

She could hear Stuart pulling the lever again. The mechanism clicked and ratcheted, and the silver stems eased apart to reveal the empty throne. At its centre was the socket for the star.

‘You OK?' she called to Stuart, and heard a vague noise by way of an answer.

She stepped forward, and at the same moment the dog skittered across from where it had been lurking and bounded onto the seat. It looked at her keenly.

‘Do you want to come too?' asked April. The prospect of not being
quite
on her own was rather nice. ‘I'll be off then,' she shouted, laying one hand on the dog's head and, with the other, placing the three-pointed star in its socket.

And, like a page turning, the view changed.

She was in the most splendid room she had ever seen. The bronze throne was still directly in front of her, but now it stood on a velvet dais, and red and purple silk banners swayed gently from the ceiling above.

The windows were high and narrow, and she
could
see nothing out of them except treetops and wheeling swifts.

The walls were gold, and hung with tapestries, their colours brilliant and fresh: stags leaping through green woodlands, white castles standing in meadows jewelled with flowers.

The floor had a carpet so soft that her feet sank gently with every step; she reached down and stroked it, and it was like brushing the gossamer coat of a puppy.

Which reminded her of the little dog. She looked around and saw it had jumped off the throne and was sniffing around the edge of the room.

‘What am I supposed to do?' she asked it. ‘What's the puzzle?'

It was really odd not having anyone to talk to. She had the sudden wild thought that Stuart might have come with her to this magical palace, and she knocked on the throne and shouted, ‘Stuart, are you there?' but there was no answer. He must still be in the museum, and she thought of him hanging upside down, getting cramp in his legs and nausea in his stomach,
and
she knew that she had to hurry up with her task.

As she turned away from the throne, she thought she saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she spun round there was no one there – or at least, no one
real
. There was a painting, though, that she hadn't taken note of before – a full-length portrait of a queen in royal robes, sitting on a throne.

She walked towards it, and again seemed to see someone moving, and her heart started thudding painfully. It wasn't until she was near enough to touch it that she identified the source of the movement. Instead of a painted face, the portrait had a small oval mirror set into the canvas.

Standing below it, April could only see a reflection of one of the windows, but a thought occurred to her, and she walked back to the platform on which the Reappearing Rose Bower stood. She climbed the steps, sat down on the bronze throne and looked straight ahead at the portrait.

And now it was herself – her own face, fitting perfectly into the oval mirror, above a painted body
adorned
with finery. A blue fur-trimmed cloak was draped over her shoulders, an enormous diamond ring glinted on one finger, a sceptre (like a golden rolling pin) was gripped in her right hand, an orb (like a cricket ball carved out of a giant ruby) in her left. On her head was a crown, the stones a brilliant green.

April grinned at herself, but the grin didn't really match the regal sternness of the pose. She tried a frown instead and it looked much better.

‘Right,' she said, ‘and
now
what?'

There were no obvious doors out of the room, but she remembered Stuart's description of the gallery he'd gone into, where every painting was a door, and she went back to the portrait and gave the right-hand side of the frame a sharp tug. It opened so quickly and smoothly that she almost fell over. She looked into the room beyond, and almost fell over again.

It was all flash and dazzle – a million facets catching the light, a blue blaze of sapphires, pearls like creamy gobstoppers, amethysts like blobs of blackcurrant jam, tigers' eyes, opals and rubies,
emeralds
the moist green of new leaves, diamonds like chips of shattered ice, and everywhere the warm gleam of gold, the cold glitter of silver.

A treasury.

A treasury that looked as if someone had turned the room upside down and given it a good shake, or else taken the roof off and stirred it with a giant stick.

‘What a mess,' said April, out loud. ‘What a complete and utter
mess
.'

She climbed over the parapet into the room. Priceless necklaces and rings with stones the size of grapes lay in tangled piles across the floor, rows of shelves around the walls bore stacks of random jewellery, and in the centre of the room, a tall gold candleholder in the shape of the sun was festooned with crowns and bracelets, as if it were a hat-stand. There were open chests crammed with treasure, chairs draped with it, a cabinet whose every drawer was stuffed with objects. There was even a small table off to one side where somebody had left a half-eaten slice of bread and cheese balanced on top of an absolute
pillar
of crowns, stacked up
like
a kid's building game. The cheese was the sort that her father adored – crumbly, streaked with blue mould and hideously smelly. And someone – probably the same person – had drunk some red wine as well, leaving the empty goblet on its side beneath the table.

The only object that wasn't completely covered with priceless items was a small footstool, standing on its own in one corner.

Something about it made April feel weirdly uncomfortable. She stared at it, fishing around in her memory, and realized after a moment or two that it reminded her of the Thoughtful Stool that April (or May, or June – but usually April) had had to sit on as a small child when she'd been naughty.
Stay there for five minutes and have a good think about what you need to change about your behaviour
, her mum had always said. Ever since, April had preferred to do her thinking at speed, and standing up.

She did it now, closing her eyes tightly, and – as usual – the solution popped almost instantly into her brain.

‘The picture,' she said, with absolute certainty. ‘I have to find the objects that are in the picture, and put them on. A crown with emeralds, a cloak with fur, a diamond ring, a gold sceptre, a ruby orb.'

Quickly she started to scan the room, and saw a diamond ring poking out of the coils of a pearl necklace on the floor nearby. She bent down to disentangle it, and then did a sort of screaming hop as a mouse shot out from underneath and zigzagged towards a corner of the room.

From the door in the wall came an answering yap, and the dog stuck its nose over the parapet.

‘Thanks,' said April, scooping it up and setting it down in the treasury. ‘Just keep the mouse away, would you? Not that I'm afraid of mice, of course – I just wasn't expecting it.'

Cautiously she had another go at untangling the ring, and realized that the pearl necklace was also wrapped around a crown – a crown with green stones.

‘Two down,' she said, hooking the heavy crown over one arm and looking around for the next object, ‘three to go. Easy peasy.'

It was at the exact moment she said the word
peasy
that she noticed another crown with green stones lying on the floor next to the candleholder. It looked exactly the same as the first.

‘Right,' she said to herself, a bit less certainly. She moved her head fractionally and saw yet another one, right at the top of the tower of crowns on the cheese table. And a fourth on one of the shelves that ran around the wall. And she could see what looked like a fifth
and
a sixth hanging on a chair arm – and she couldn't help spotting at least six ruby orbs, several sceptres and umpteen diamond rings, twinkling amidst the golden chaos.

She took a deep breath. ‘OK,' she announced to the room in a decisive voice. ‘What this place needs is some organization. Fast.'

SHE TIMED HERSELF
on her watch. Thirty-five minutes of non-stop action later, she had collected a total of fifteen emerald crowns and had stacked them in the throne room beside the Reappearing Rose Bower. Next to the crowns she'd assembled four other piles, consisting of nine diamond rings, ten orbs, thirteen sceptres and four fur-trimmed cloaks, all of which seemed to have moths. April stopped to catch her breath; it had never occurred to her that gold was so incredibly heavy.

‘So now,' she said, ‘I just have to find which ones are the right ones.'