Deep Secret (23 page)

Nick realised all this too, a second later. “Where are we?”

“In the soup,” I said. “Run. Keep him in sight.”

Rupert Venables was still ahead, calmly walking along there in the dim distance. I was fairly sure that if we lost him we were lost for good. If I looked over my shoulder – and I did, about six times, in increasing panic – there was, well, not the hotel. A sort of fuzzy strangeness. Nick looked once too. Then he seized my wrist and we ran. And that was another thing about this strange experience. Rupert Venables just walked, a bit jauntily, swinging along as if he knew where he was going, but not walking fast. We fair pelted. But he was always the same distance away.

I was going to type, ‘It was hard not to panic,’ but the fact is we
did
panic. Running and running and not making any difference is like your worst dreams. Hot and horrified and nightmarish, we ran. And shortly it was
exactly
like my worst dreams, because there, just to one side, was the bush with my thornlady in it – or that she was part of, or whatever. She said to me, sneeringly, “What good do you think
this
is doing you?”

“Oh shut up!” I told her.

I don’t think Nick heard her or knew she was there. He went trampling and crunching through one side of her bush, bellowing, “
Rupert the Mage!
WAIT!” with his voice roaring and cracking with panic. The bush whipped about with indignation. She was
furious
. But I had no attention for that, because Nick was dragging me away at my wrist and Rupert Venables just walked on and didn’t seem to hear us yelling.

We seemed to be mostly out in the open air by then, on a hillside of steep slanting banks, going downwards ahead of us. But there were regular dreadful places where it was all fuzzy sliding instead, where what was
almost
hillside, but not quite, moved giddily this way and that. There was hillside sliding overhead in those places, and we had to duck under, with our stomachs squirming with vertigo, and then jump over the fuzzy slidings underfoot, because we neither of us dared touch those bits. And the relief of getting to grassy slope again would have been inexpressible, except that Rupert was always just that bit ahead and we had to go hurtling, shouting, ducking and jumping down after him again. In the grassy bits, the sky kept changing, from cloudy to blue, to near-dark, to sunset, and back to blue with white clouds. It made me feel sick.

The nightmare ended in a lovely Spring afternoon. Rupert jumped down ahead of us, and we jumped down after him, from what seemed to be the bank of a hedge, into a dirt road. He walked slantwise across the road to a shabby white gate in the hedge opposite. We scuttled over after him for dear life.

“Stop! Wait!” Nick croaked.

“Help!” I added.

He had his hand on the gate latch, but he spun round and stared at us. I have never seen him look so utterly outraged and angry, not even when he interrupted the Witchy Dance. “What the
hell
are you two doing here?” he said. His voice had the sort of cold clank to it of someone chipping stones.

Nick quailed. “I – er… I wanted to speak to you,” he quavered.

“We sort of followed you by mistake,” I apologised. “We did shout, but you didn’t seem to hear. And we didn’t dare lose you.”

Rupert said nothing. He simply did that thing of taking hold of his left lens and pinning us with it, like vile germs on a gold-rimmed slide. I began to get angry myself at that. I remember thinking it was
ridiculous
, us all humble and him glaring at us for something we couldn’t help, in a spot like that. There were violets and primroses growing on the banks by the gate, and a clump of tiny daffodils to one side. I could hear distant, gentle country noises, sheep bleating and hens clucking and so on, and it seemed quite out of place and stupid for him to stand glaring and blaming us for being there.

Nick was completely crushed by the lens treatment. That surprises me whenever I think of it. Until then I’ve never known Master Nick crushed by anything. He said “Sorry!” and looked like a dog with its tail between its legs.

That made me even angrier. “I’m sorry too,” I said, “but it was an
accident
. Nick wanted to talk to you about computer games, so we ran after you. There’s no call to fry us on your lens for it!”

Rupert breathed in. I could see he was going to say something that would blast me. But the gate opened out of his hand before he could speak and a tall, untidy, farmerish man in green wellies looked out at us all. “Hello, Rupe!” he said. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh – hello, Will,” Rupert said, rather let down and wind-out-of-sails. “You seem to have some uninvited guests, is what’s going on. Nick and Maree followed me here somehow.”

The man Will grinned sweetly. I could tell he knew Rupert was furious. “
You
weren’t invited either,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see you.”

“It’s not the
same
!” Rupert said. He didn’t exactly stamp his foot or even yell particularly, but the way he said it was doing both those things, and I somehow understood from it that Will was his elder brother and had had
years
of experience in winding Rupert up.

“Is your name Venables too?” I asked Will, testing my theory.

“That’s right.” He grinned even more sweetly. “Do you know my brother well?”

“NO,” Nick, Rupert and I all said in chorus.

“Shame,” said Will. “He quite often improves on acquaintance. Why don’t you all come in?” He held the gate open invitingly and we all three trooped in past him.

Beyond it was a low white house against a hill of ploughed fields. I could see the roofs of quite a large village at the top of those fields. But I didn’t pay much attention to the view, because the space beyond the gate, which was a garden of sorts, was just such a mass of creatures. The majority were pale fluffy chicks, all running about and cheeping. They sounded like a chorus of mobile phones. They must have been several different kinds of chick, because the adult birds goose-stepping about amongst them were some strange sort of hen and peculiar ducks and a number of tall grey birds with long pink legs. But there was a peacock too, which flew up into a bare tree with a shriek and a whacking of wings that made Nick jump and clutch hold of me. A large silky dog appeared then, out of nowhere, pushing her nose lovingly into Rupert’s hand – and then doing the same quickly to Will, in case he was offended – and she was followed by four cats and a whole gang of kittens. Meanwhile a flock of white creatures – I couldn’t tell if they were odd sheep or unusual goats – was coming galloping from mid-distance, baying with interest. Since they had fairly sizeable horns, Nick was not happy to see them and got behind me quickly.

But that was as nothing to Nick’s dismay when the door of the house burst open and a string of little girls – six of them, I gathered later – came rushing out screaming. “Rupert! Rupert’s here!” and flung themselves in a mass upon their uncle. The smallest had come out in such a hurry that she was only wearing her vest. Two of the kids had heads of hair even bushier than mine. I could see they got it from Will. He had bushy hair that wriggled. He was standing there grinning broadly at our reaction to his livestock, and he more or less laughed when the inrush of little girls caused Nick to yelp, “Oh help!” and retreat towards the gate.

I would have expected Rupert to behave the same way, but he surprised me by greeting his nieces as enthusiastically as they greeted him. He let himself be grabbed and dangled from and then dragged off to see the new swing and slide, looking as if he loved every minute. Before he had been dragged many yards, though, a fantastically good-looking woman in jodhpurs and pink bedroom slippers appeared at the house door waving a small pair of red leggings.

“Vendela’s trousers!” she shouted. “Put them on her, Rupert.”

She threw them and Rupert caught them, laughing. Then he was dragged away, scattering chicks and kittens and halting the charge of the sheep-goats, who stopped dead when Rupert and the children all rushed past their noses. The woman came up the path towards us, smiling, to find out who we were.

“My wife, Carina,” Will said. It was like someone saying, “And here are the Crown Jewels.”

“We’re Nick and Maree Mallory,” I explained, “and we’re here by mistake, I’m afraid.”

“I’m just in the middle of getting a meal,” Carina said. “You’ll stay and have something with us, won’t you?”

“Rupert won’t like it,” I said. “But—”

“Rupert can lump it,” said Will. “Have we got enough food, Carey?”

“Eggs to burn,” Carina called, on her way back to the house. “Sponduley and Cash both started laying today, as well as all the quacks.”

“That’s all right then,” said Will. “I hope you both like eggs.”

“Yes, and we didn’t have any lunch,” Nick said.

“Then that’s settled then,” said Will. Then, in the most natural, casual way, he took us on a tour of the livestock while he got out of us what had happened and then gave us an explanation (which we certainly wouldn’t have got out of Rupert). I had been dying to take a look at the strange hens,, not to speak of the birds with the long pink legs. Will trudged casually in among the little running, cheeping birds in his great boots, picking up one here, and another there, and upending them for me. “A quack chick,” he said. “Female, look. Most of these are Buktaru quacks. Good layers. Nice feathers too. See, this one’s getting her blue tailfeathers already. She’ll be different blues all over when she’s fledged. We sell a lot of these, but we make pets of the sollyhens. Here. This one’s a sollyhen – unless it’s a cock. They’re hard to sex at this age. What do you think?”

I peered at the upside-down rear end of the placid yellow handful he was holding out to me and mustered all my despised vet-learning. “It’s a cock,” I said.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” he agreed.

I could tell I had gone up in his estimation, so I risked saying, “But I never heard of a sollyhen. Are they the ones that look like herons?”

“No, those are butes,” he told me. “You don’t have those in your world, or sollies either. Butes are a bit like guineafowl to eat, but they’re much quieter to keep. They only shout if there’s a fox near. When they shout, we turn Petra out.” He patted the head of the silky dog. “Petra eats foxes for breakfast, don’t you, lady? Sollies, now, they’re a bit like bantams, but they have lots of these little spotted feathers. And their combs are orange. Come and see the goats.”

He trudged away into an orchard-like section of the garden, followed by Petra, followed by me, followed by several butes, followed by Nick, looking bored and traumatised. The white, horned flock did not please Nick, although he pleased them. They bustled and butted around us, then concentrated on Nick and left drool on his jeans.

“They’re very intelligent,” Will observed, “and perverse as hell. They’re teasing you, Nick. Look pleased to see them and they’ll leave you alone.”

I was fascinated by the creatures, so of course they avoided me. They were so like sheep, except for the mad goats’ eyes. Will told me they kept them for milk and for wool. We caught one and ran our hands through the silky, curly pelt, which he said made the most wonderful sweaters. Beautiful. I felt myself relaxing, in a way I hadn’t for years. I remembered all over again why I had decided to become a vet. The air of this place had something to do with it. It was wonderful – even laden with goat-smell – fresh, mild and light. Being in the hotel all those hours had given me a headache I hadn’t noticed until then, when the air melted it away. I think it was having the same effect on Nick – unless it was the distant sound of Rupert being mobbed on the other side of the orchard. That seemed to please Nick, and it certainly pleased me.

Anyway, as we went on into the vegetable plot, where wire runs held about a hundred rabbits, I told Will how I hoped to be a vet and he told me that he had almost trained as one too. He said they lived off the land here as far as possible. Then Nick and I both told him about the nightmare way we had followed Rupert here.

“I thought you both looked pretty upset,” Will said. “Transit from world to world can be unsettling, even if you know what you’re doing. And Rupert wouldn’t have been able to hear you shouting – or see you, unless he was deliberately looking. He was a universe ahead of you the whole time, you see.”

“You mean,” Nick said challengingly, “that there really are other worlds?”

“Infinite numbers,” Will said cheerfully. “This may look like England here, but it isn’t. It’s a country called Albion, on a world – well, they call it The World, the people who live here, but we Magids call it Thule.”

“What,” I said, “are Magids?”

“So Rupert hasn’t mentioned it to you?” Will asked, unhitching a gate to a hillside paddock. “I’m surprised. Or perhaps not. Earth is far enough Naywards that you have to be fairly cautious who you tell. The ones who don’t believe you try to lock you up, and the ones who
do
try to exploit you financially. But I should have thought he could have told you two. My brother’s a bit of a stickler sometimes.”

The paddock contained a family of donkeys and several horses. We held the rest of the conversation walking in among big grey and brown bodies, pulling stiff ears, smacking necks or stroking large pulpy noses, and pausing from time to time to comfort Petra, who was convinced she was far more interesting than a mere horse. At least, I did all this. Nick found the horses too big and the donkeys highly unpredictable and contented himself with petting Petra.

“Right, Magids,” said Will. “I am a Magid, Rupert is a Magid and so is our brother Simon. It’s actually fairly unusual, having in three in the same family like this, but we all had the correct abilities and Stan, our sponsor, said he wasn’t going to let it worry him when three vacancies came up, one after the other. There are always a fixed number of Magids, you see.”

“How many?” Nick wanted to know.

“Good question,” Will said, digging in the pockets of his old green coat for sugar. “Old beliefs put the number at thirty-six or thirty-eight, but that was before it was confirmed that the number of worlds really is infinite. We think there may be as many Magids as there are worlds. But I only know forty or so. But then Rupert probably knows a slightly different forty. Simon will know another very different forty. That’s because he’s in a world a good long way off from here.”