Enchanted Glass (18 page)

“That’s one of them,” the boy said from behind Andrew, as if the pressure had forced him to speak. “Those lot stood by the wall and laughed.”

“So you were fighting in the Arkwrights’ garden, were
you?” Andrew said. The pressure did seem to force you to say
something.

The creature stood up to its full, tall height. “Not I,” it echoed out scornfully. “I do not fight such as those. I am a King’s man.”

“What King would that be?” Andrew asked.

“Oberon of course,” the creature answered haughtily.

Weirder and weirder, Andrew thought.
Stunningly
weird. An alien being stood in a London street and calmly announced itself a follower of the Fairy King. “This is mad,” he said. “Why would that make you want to kill — uh — Adrian?”

“For being the only living son of my King,” the creature answered, as if this was the most natural of reasons. “The King will not abide to be forced from his throne.”

Andrew could think of nothing to say but, “Well, we live and learn. Are you
sure?
”

“So tell,” the creature repeated, leaning forward again. The pressure seemed to squeeze at Andrew’s skull.

“We
can’t!
” the Chinese boy shrilled from behind Andrew. “Aidan didn’t
say
. He said if he didn’t tell us, we couldn’t tell.”

“So go away and stop frightening us!” shouted one of the girls.

“Yes, do go,” Andrew said. He could feel the children
shaking. It made him angry. What business had this creature to try to terrorise three children who had only happened to be where Aidan was? In a powerful surge of rage, he waved his glasses towards it and thundered out, “Go
away!
Get
gone!
” A look of astonishment came over the creature’s narrow face. Andrew was irresistibly reminded of Mr Stock, the time Andrew had told him to mulch the roses. It made him realise that he was in the right here too. “I mean it!” he yelled. “
GO!
”

To his surprise, the creature went. It seemed to compress into itself from both silvery misted sides, so that it became a gold and silver streak that squeezed away into empty air. The pressure to speak, and the feeling of being watched that had hung heavily in the street all along, went too, quite suddenly.

“And don’t come back!” Andrew added to the empty pavement.

“That was
good
, Mister!” the boy said admiringly.

One of the girls said, “I knew he was good.”

The other said, “Let’s get back in, or they’ll notice.”

The three of them went racing away, back to the space war.

Andrew walked on, to what proved to be a dreadful journey home: almost no taxis, trains delayed, trains cancelled and the train that Andrew did eventually catch
breaking down three stations away from Melton. It was almost as if that creature had ill-wished him. Yet Andrew hardly noticed. He spent the entire journey thinking, I don’t believe this! I do not
believe
this!

The trouble was, he
did
believe it. He felt he could hardly blame the Arkwrights for inventing their own version of things.

W
hen Aidan came yawning down to the kitchen that morning, with Rolf eagerly following, he found Andrew’s note on the table. It never occurred to him that Andrew’s journey to London had anything to do with him. He wondered whether to leave the note for Mrs Stock. He knew it was the kind of thing that would make Mrs Stock say, “World of his own!” and start making cauliflower cheese, but he thought she ought to know where Andrew had gone. So he decided to leave it, but make sure he was not in the house when she found it. Meanwhile, he was rather glad that Andrew was not here to see how much cereal he and Rolf were eating between them.

Then, as Mrs Stock had still not arrived, Aidan took his glasses off and examined the old, old coloured glass in the kitchen door. This was something he had been itching to
do, but not in front of Mrs Stock or even Andrew. It struck him as very ancient and secret.

At first, all he could tell was that the glass was quite powerfully magic. He had a feeling that you could use it for something, either pane by pane, or in various combinations — red with blue, blue with green, and so on — or you could use all the colours together, rather powerfully. But he still had not the least idea what you might use it
for.

Rolf, seeing Aidan so interested, put his paws on the lower half of the door and reared up to look at the glass too. Aidan could see Rolf’s reflection, dimly, in the yellow pane in the middle at the bottom. The glass was so old and foggy that things reflected in it only faintly, as if you were not really seeing them at all.

“Have you any idea what this window
does?
” Aidan asked Rolf.

Rolf’s paws slipped. He landed on the floor with a grunt and had to scrabble his way up the wooden half of the door to look at the panes again. This time he landed in front of the blue glass on the left. He whined gently.

Aidan thought at first that this was simply doggish clumsiness. Then he realised that he could still see Rolf’s reflection, faint but clear, with its ears pricked, in the yellow glass. The beautiful hyacinth blue that Rolf was now staring into contained a different face.

“Clever!” Aidan said. Rolf’s tail whirled so hard that he unbalanced himself and slid down to the floor again. Rolf was making serious scratches down the door, Aidan saw rather guiltily, as he bent down to look in the blue glass. The face in it, smoky and far away, seemed to be Shaun’s. Unless it was Groil’s. It could have been either of them.

Odd, Aidan thought, and crouched along to look into the red pane, lower right. The shape in this one, like someone silhouetted against a fierce sunset, had a battered hat on. Aidan knew the shape of that hat so well by now that he sprang up and opened the door, like Andrew always did, before Mr Stock could barge it open.

And, sure enough, Mr Stock loomed in the doorway, carrying a box.

Rolf gave a deep bark of pleasure and galloped outside past Mr Stock, where he raised his leg against the water butt and then trotted busily about, sniffing and occasionally raising his leg again to squirt on clumps of weeds.

Mr Stock came in and dumped his box beside Aidan’s cereal bowl. It contained a heap of foot-long broad beans with lumps all the way along them, like snakes that had swallowed several nests of mice. Groil’s going to be happy tonight! Aidan thought. He did not care for broad beans and he very much hoped Andrew didn’t like them either.

“Where’s the professor?” Mr Stock asked. “His car’s not here.”

“Gone to London,” Aidan said. “He left a note.”

“It’s to be hoped he knows what he’s doing then,” Mr Stock said, and departed.

Aidan closed the door carefully behind him and then stood on tiptoe to peer into the top three panes. The orange glass, top left, had waves in it that made it hard to see that there just could be a face in it too. But a face was there, like someone dissolving in fruit juice. Aidan could pick out the hairstyle, the slightly bulging eyes and the thin, sucked-in cheeks. It really did look like Mrs Stock. He opened the door again, in case Mrs Stock was outside now, but the only person who came in was Rolf, all sprightly from his run round the garden.

“So it doesn’t work to summon people,” Aidan said. “How
does
it work then?” He turned his attention to the green pane, top right.

There was no mistake here. It was Stashe. She smiled merrily at Aidan out of a fog of spring green, almost as if she was about to speak, make a joke, tell Aidan he had to help her with the papers today, or else. There was a line of green bubbles across her, like spring sunshine.

“And she doesn’t come today,” Aidan remembered. “So it’s not summoning.”

He went on to the purple pane, in the middle. He expected, if he saw anyone, to see Andrew there. The purple pane had struck him all along as the important one. Instead he looked into a space full of lilac twilight, not a peaceful space. There was a storm, or a high wind, in there, tossing trees against rushing clouds and occasional small zigzags of lightning. Among the glittering and shifting purples and greys, Aidan thought he could pick out a face. But he could not see it clearly enough to say whose it was.

While he was trying to see it more clearly, Aidan was almost knocked backwards by Mrs Stock coming in, followed by Shaun. He put his glasses back on quickly and the windowpanes were empty again, nothing but glowing colours and accidental streaks, lumps and bubbles.

In the time it took Aidan to hook his glasses behind his ears, Mrs Stock had read Andrew’s note, snorted out, “Men!”, sent Shaun off to work and looked disgustedly at the broad beans. “What does that man expect me to do with
these?
” she said. “They’ll be like wood wrapped in leather. Can’t he
ever
bear to pick veg when they’re tender?” She picked up the empty cereal packet and shook it. Then it was Aidan’s turn. “Look at this! You and that great greedy dog have eaten the lot between you! Go and get some more, this instant. And get some dog food while you’re at it. The shop sells that too.”

Before Aidan had collected his wits enough to turn from magical thoughts to everyday ones, he and Rolf were outside with a large pink shopping bag.

“Well, it’ll make a walk for you,” Aidan told Rolf. The two of them set off up the village.

The shop, labelled simply THE SHOP, PROPRIETOR R. STOCK was beyond the church and next door to TRIXIE HAIR STYLIST. Rosie Stock, who kept the shop, looked at Aidan with gossipy interest. She plainly knew just who he was. “Is that dog yours?” she said. “Make him sit outside. He’s not hygienic. I thought he was a stray really. I’ve seen him around for years. I’ve only got chocolate cereal left today, or would you like the set of little packets? And does the dog eat the dry food or the meat in tins?”

Aidan chose both kinds of both. As Rosie packed them all into the pink bag for him, it dawned on him that he had no money to pay for them. Rosie Stock seemed the firm kind of lady who would never let a person promise to pay later. Aidan doubted if she would agree to let
Andrew
pay later. There was only one thing to do in that case. A bit nervously, he fetched out the old battered wallet, took his glasses off and opened it.

For a moment, it seemed to Aidan that someone in the distance said, “
Ah!
” But this was mixed up with the fizz of magic from the wallet and Aidan’s own delight when he
looked inside it and found a twenty pound note. There was so much change left when he had paid for the cereals and the dog food that Aidan bought Rolf a gluey-looking pretend bone and a chocolate coconut bar for himself. He still jingled with coins when he came out of the shop.

Using the wallet had made him miserable. It brought back the time Gran had given it to him — with the sarcastic look she always had when she talked of Aidan’s father — and the way Gran had not looked at all well that day. Gran must have known she was going to die, but Aidan hadn’t even properly noticed she was unwell. And Gran must have had some kind of strong protection around him that Aidan had never noticed either, because the moment she died, the Stalkers had crowded into the yard.

Aidan didn’t want to think of these things. To take his mind off them, he walked on up the village with Rolf, until he came to the football ground, hoping that someone was playing football there.

They were. All his new friends were there. They were having to play on a shorter pitch than before because the near end of the field now had two large dusty vans in it, labelled in curly letters,
Rowan’s Travelling Fair.
“They always come for the Fete,” Gloria Appleby explained. “There’ll be more of them coming next week. Glad to see you again. We lost yesterday.”

Everyone was glad to see Aidan. Some of them said, “Where were you yesterday?” And others said, just like Rosie Stock in the shop, “Is that dog
yours?
I thought he was a stray.”

Rolf shortly became a problem. Aidan sat Rolf down near the goal, beside the pink bag, and told him to look after it. But the moment the game got going, Rolf dashed off to join in. Aidan laughed at first. The sight of Rolf, ears flying, tail whirling, trying to tackle Gloria or, barking excitedly, dribbling the ball with his nose and front feet, was truly silly. And it got sillier when Rolf dribbled the ball to the end of the field and got stuck in the hedge.

No one else was pleased. “He’s spoiling the game!” they objected.

Aidan hauled Rolf and the football out of the hedge and made him sit by the pink bag again. “
Sit
there,” he said, “or I’ll turn you out to be a stray again!”

This sobered Rolf for a while. He sat obediently beside the pink bag. But soon, whenever the ball came near, Aidan could see Rolf half rise to his feet with his ears pricked, yearning to join in. Aidan expected him to turn into his boy form in his excitement, but that never happened. Perhaps Rolf knew that this would cause even more trouble. Just to be on the safe side, Aidan tapped him on the nose and warned him to be good. Rolf sat and whined.

When Aidan next looked, Rolf was not there. There was only the pink bag.

“Where did he go?” Aidan asked the others. “Did anyone see?”

Before anyone could reply, the answer came in huge yelps and snarls from behind the Travelling Fair vans. Aidan dashed over there to find Rolf in the most vigorous fight with the Fair’s guard dog. Both dogs seemed to be enjoying it wonderfully, but the woman who rushed out of one of the vans was not pleased at all. Aidan helped her haul the dogs apart, after which she handed him a piece of rope.

“Tie it up,” she said, and stalked back into her van.

So Aidan dragged Rolf over to the gate and tied him to a gatepost. Rolf was laughing, dog fashion, with his tongue hanging out, and quite unrepentant. “Yes, I know you were winning,” Aidan said to him, “but that’s because you’re not really a dog. You were being unfair. You’re cleverer that it is. Now
behave!
” He gave Rolf the gluey fake bone to keep him quiet.

Rolf ate the bone in two minutes, but he gave no more trouble. There was peaceful football until Jimmy Stock looked at his watch and said he had to be getting home for lunch. Everyone else looked at watches then and said the same. Aidan untied Rolf and gave Gloria the rope to give
back to the woman, and they all left, some up the road to the new houses and some the same way that Aidan was going. Rolf trotted demurely in the middle of the cheerful group like a dog that had never misbehaved in its life.