Jinx On The Divide (33 page)

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"You'd better be quick, then!" shrieked Fuzzy, her spiky head feathers flattened against her skull. "Go and stand across it, before it splits too far! I'll look after Rhino!"

"Come on!" Felix grabbed Betony by the hand and dragged her over to the fissure.

"No, Felix!" screamed Betony. "It's too dangerous!"

"What?" yelled Felix.

"It's too dangerous!"

"It's too dangerous!" boomed a voice from the depths of the chasm that had opened up.

Felix and Betony looked at each other, hand in hand, aghast. Although the voice seemed to bounce off the rock itself, like an echo, there was something horribly familiar about it. Something smarmy. The wind dropped a bit, and they could hear each other more easily.

"It can't be," said Felix.

"It can't be ..." came the reply.

"It's the jinx box," said Betony.

"It's the jinx box ..." echoed the voice.

The wind abated even further, but the sky stayed eclipse-dark and the snow continued to fall. The fissure remained just a couple of feet wide, but there were ominous creaks and groans from the rock below. Out of the corner of his eye, Felix saw Fuzzy help Rhino stand up, then pluck a feather from her breast and give it to him.

"You don't get rid of me as easily as all that," said the voice from the chasm. "Neither fire nor ice can annihilate me."

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"I thought you said you'd destroyed the box, Felix!" shouted Nimby.

"I thought I had!" Felix called back.

"Aren't you wondering why the powerword had such a dramatic effect?" asked the box.

Felix didn't reply. The feeling of doom had receded a little; he felt more on top of the situation. The word had been spoken -- not by him, true, but they had all survived it.

"Look at Rhino," said the box.

Felix turned and stared. Rhino was standing there, looking very shaken -- minus his trousers. Felix blinked, and looked again. No, he hadn't been mistaken, despite the veil of snowflakes. Rhino bent down, picked up his cloak, and wrapped it around himself.

The ground shuddered, and the chasm widened a little more.

"Guess what Rhino had in his pocket, Felix," said the jinx box.

Felix glanced across. Rhino's eyes stared whitely at him from a soot-blackened face.

"Another firecracker," said Nimby faintly.

"And that equals ... disaster!" crowed the jinx box. "The Divide will split wide open, Felix -- and then it will close forever. No more traffic between your world and this. No more jolly little visits. Severance, Felix. Complete severance."

"This isn't the only Divide," said Felix stoutly.

"It will close
every
Divide, the same way the first powerword

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released every brandee, and the second one released every prisoner of stone. You've got to choose, Felix. This world or the other? And so do Betony and Rhino."

"I've chosen," said Rhino. "I'm staying here." He sounded a little better. Felix suddenly realized why Fuzzy had given him one of her feathers -- to heal his burns.

The mountain groaned again, and the chasm opened a little more.

"Act quickly, Felix, while you can still straddle it, for shortly it will open too far, and then it will slam shut for good." The jinx box was sounding more and more manic -- in its excitement, it seemed to have forgotten that when the rocks crashed together again, it really would be destroyed. Withstanding extremes of temperature was one thing -- the crushing force of a mountain was something else.

Felix looked at Betony. "Your world or mine? Which is it to be?"

Betony stood there, the tears streaming down her face, exactly the way she had appeared to Felix on the laptop screen. Felix felt as though he'd been kicked in the stomach. Was everything else true, then? Would the library burn to the ground and the Ziggurat Gardens turn to dust? Would this world become just like the other?

"I can't, Felix," said Betony. "I want to see my parents."

And I can't stay, either,
thought Felix,
much as I'd like to. I can't disappear again. I can't do it to
my
parents. It would destroy them.

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The chasm creaked open a little farther.

"The box is a liar, Betony," said Felix, desperately wanting to believe it. "Come
on."
He dragged her across the snow, and pushed her so hard that she had to straddle the crevasse or fall into it. He held her in place with one arm and pulled the notebook from his pocket. More by luck than judgment, he opened it at the right page and read out the spell.

Just before he lost consciousness, the ground jerked beneath him with a force that made his teeth shake. A bloodcurdling scream rose from the depths of the chasm, cut short as the two rock faces slammed shut.

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***

19

***

When Felix came to, he knew immediately that he must be on the Pennine Divide, for he could feel something cold and wet landing on his face. The snow had gone, replaced by English winter drizzle; he'd have known it anywhere. He opened his eyes. Betony was lying there next to him, looking strangely human with her magically rounded ears, and Nimby was spread-eagled by her side.
Good,
thought Felix, sitting up,
I'm glad she didn't let go of him. We've got our transport back to Wimbledon. Everything's OK. I knew it. The jinx box was just a nasty, spiteful troublemaker.

He stood up and stretched. Changing dimensions always made him feel a bit odd, as though he'd just gotten over the flu. He went over to Nimby. It wasn't good for a magic carpet to be lying fiat out like that in the rain. "Hey, Nimby," he said. "I'd get up if I were you."

There was no response.

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I suppose I'd better roll him up,
thought Felix,
pile side in, until he's back with us.
He lifted the carpet's fringed end and tucked it under. It felt surprisingly limp. How odd. When they'd crossed over before, Nimby had been up and hovering around before he and Betony had even gotten to their feet.

Felix peered at the leaden sky, but the cloud cover was too heavy for him to guess the time of day. He'd left his watch on the other side of the Divide, along with his compass. He still had his backpack, of course -- that had been strapped to his back. Betony stirred slightly, so he went over to her. She sat up and glared at him.

"What?" he said, taken aback by her expression.

"You've got a short memory. You dragged me over to a spitfire crevasse, forced me to straddle it, and held me prisoner while you read out the Divide spell. What gave you the right to make that decision for me?"

"We're all right, though, aren't we?"

Betony looked at him as though he'd just crawled out from under a particularly unsavory stone. "Where's Nimby?" she asked.

"There," said Felix, pointing to him.

Betony walked over to the carpet and unrolled him. There was a slackness to him that hadn't been there before. She stroked his pile with the palm of her hand and called his name. Still no response. She shook him gently. Nothing. She shook him much harder.

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"He's taking a long time to come around, isn't he?" said Felix.

Betony looked up. There were new tears glistening in her eyes. "He's not coming around," she said. "He's dead."

"
What?"

"He's not magic anymore," said Betony. "He's just a carpet. That's dead, isn't it? When you've been aware of everything, and able to communicate, and to reason things out, and then you can't. I'd call that dead."

"How can you be sure? Maybe it's just taking him a long time to recover."

"Aren't you going to say something like,
'Oh, dear,
how are we going to get back to Wombledon
now?'"

"Wimbledon," said Felix automatically.

Betony's look of scorn could have scorched a hole through asbestos.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said. "Look, let's cross back over again. Maybe there's somewhere we can take him. K'Faddle and Offspring -- they do magical repairs."

"Weren't you listening? We can't
get
back. The Divide has closed for good."

"No, it hasn't. I don't believe it, I
won't
believe it. The jinx box was a liar." Felix opened his notebook and started to flick through it, looking for the Divide spell. Instead of a lot of blank pages and a few vocabulary notes, the book was now filled with writing -- not his own writing, either. It was far

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too neat, and it was in violet ink, not black ballpoint. His flicking became more and more feverish. "What's all this stuff?" he said, his voice getting shrill and agitated. "I don't remember all this ..."

"We'd better start walking," said Betony coldly, rolling Nimby up again and tucking him under her arm.

"No, hang on, I've got it."

Betony sighed heavily, but she straddled the Divide and waited as Felix read out the spell. Nothing happened.

"I told you," said Betony. She took a candle stub from her pocket, waved her hand over it, and recited the ignition spell. Nothing. "Magic doesn't work over here anymore, Felix."

"I must have left something out," said Felix. "I'll try again."

He tried again. Still nothing.

"It's no use," said Betony, but Felix wouldn't listen. He made her stand there while he tried again and again.

After the thirteenth time, Betony lost her temper, and he finally gave up. They started to walk, taking turns carrying the carpet, which got heavier and heavier the wetter it became. By the time they reached the village, they, too, were soaked through, and utterly dejected.

"At least Nimby knew he'd won the Magical Objects Bravery Award," said Felix, in an attempt to cheer Betony up.

"Crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate," said Betony. "He saw himself accepting the award, didn't he? How likely is that now?"

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"Don't you see, it doesn't matter," said Felix. "The important thing was the pleasure Nimby gained from having
thought
he'd won it. Whether it's true or not is neither here nor there."

Betony shrugged.

Felix knew he didn't have enough money to get both himself and Betony back to Wimbledon. He would have to phone home, but he didn't have the right change, either, so he went into the first shop he came to. He could have called collect, of course, but it didn't seem like the most diplomatic way to start this particular conversation. The shop was a general store, which brought back vivid memories of the one between Vattan and Yergud, with its magical feel-good cloaks hanging on a rack. He could have used one of those to lift his mood. Betony would never forgive him for stranding her over here. He knew only too well what being trapped in another dimension felt like.

To his surprise, the shop was about to close. He looked at the clock on the wall -- it was only two-thirty. Without thinking he said, "Closing early? Got here just in time, didn't I?"

"What do you expect on Christmas Eve?" said the shopkeeper.

Christmas Eve? Felix was shocked -- he'd forgotten all about Christmas. Then he realized he must have looked it, which would appear very odd. "We're tree worshippers at home," he said. "We don't celebrate Christmas."

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"My oh my," said the shopkeeper. "Some parents really have no idea how to bring up kids. Here, have a chocolate bar. And one for your sister outside. You look as though you could use them. Do you want some plastic to protect your carpet?"

"Thanks," said Felix. It was a timely reminder that there were nice people in his own world. He accepted a black trash bag, and went back out to Betony. "It's Christmas Eve," he said, wrapping Nimby up in the plastic. It felt like putting him in a body bag. "My father will be back. He'll know we did an illusion spell on Mom and he'll be furious, because he'll guess where we went."

"That's your problem," said Betony.

"It's yours as well," said Felix. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. If we
really
can't ever get back to your dimension, we're going to have to get my dad to help us. People don't just come from nowhere in my world. They have birth certificates and passports and medical records and ..."

A white van drove past and splashed dirty water all over them.

"Was this the thing you wanted above all else?" asked Betony suddenly. "Did you wish for a way of staying with me forever?"

"Yes," said Felix, his voice barely audible. "I'm sorry."

There was a long silence, when all he could hear was the rain.

"I suppose it was a compliment, really," said Betony eventually. She managed a faint smile. "I'll miss Thornbeak more than my parents, to be honest about it. I feel sorry for them,