Horten's Incredible Illusions (15 page)
He was in the back of a truck 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 center was the socket for the star.
“You okay?” 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.
April 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.
The windows were high and narrow, and she could see nothing out of them except treetops and darting birds.
The walls were gold and hung with tapestries, their colors brilliant and fresh: stags leaping through green woodlands and white castles standing in meadows jeweled with flowers.
The floor had a carpet so soft that her feet sank gently with every step. April 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 wondered aloud. “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 a 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 around 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 toward 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 scepter (like a golden rolling pin) was in her right hand, an orb (like a baseball 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 jawbreakers, amethysts like blobs of blackberry 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 and the cold glitter of silver.
A treasure room.
A treasure room that looked as if someone had turned it 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 jewelry, and in the center of the room, a tall gold candleholder in the shape of the sun was festooned with crowns and bracelets, as if it were a hatstand. There were open chests crammed with treasure, chairs draped with it, and 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 bricks. The cheese was the sort that her father adored—crumbly, streaked with blue mold, 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 stepstool, 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 Time-Out 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 behavior
,” her mom 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 scepter, and 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 toward 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 treasure room. “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 try 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 a tiny bit 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 scepters, and umpteen diamond rings, twinkling amid the golden chaos.
She took a deep breath. “Okay,” 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 nonstop 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 scepters, and four fur-trimmed cloaks, all of which seemed to have attracted 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.”
She picked up the least moth-eaten of the four cloaks and draped it around her shoulders; it was miles too long for her. Then she slipped on one of the rings, picked up an orb and scepter, and grabbed the top crown on the stack and placed it on her head. Feeling as if she were a contestant in a dress-up competition, she next shuffled across to the throne, cloak dragging behind her, and sat down.
Her own face, pink with exertion, looked back at her from the portrait.
Nothing happened.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s try another lot.”
She took off the jewelry and the cloak and dumped it all to one side, went over to start dressing herself in a whole new set—and then suddenly had a thought. An awful, chilling thought.
What if she’d been wearing the right crown but all the other items had been wrong? Or what if it had been the right cloak but the wrong crown, ring, orb, and scepter? Or the right orb, the right crown, the right cloak, and the right ring but the wrong scepter? It was no good, she realized, just randomly going through the piles—she would have to try on
every possible combination
.
“And there must be hundreds,” she said out loud. “Maybe thousands! It’ll take hours and hours and hours, and Stuart’s going to be upside-down in the museum the entire time.” She could feel herself beginning to panic, and her insides felt cold and hollow.
“I must be doing it
wrong
,” she exclaimed, her voice a pathetic squeak. “I’ve missed something—I
must
have.”
She ran back to the treasure room and looked around desperately. The dog was still nosing about. Its stumpy tail wagged when it saw her. April scooped it up and gave it a quick cuddle. And then, since she definitely needed to do some proper thinking (and not just closing her eyes and waiting for inspiration, the way she normally did), she picked her way between the piles of treasure, sat down on the little stepstool right in the corner of the room, and put her chin in her hand.
