Jinx On The Divide (7 page)

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"Shut the lid, Felix," said Betony.

"Oh, I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry," said the box. "I've been eavesdropping, you see, and I know whom you're looking for. A human child called Rhino. And I know where he is."

"Really?" said Felix. "Where?"

"Sit down, both of you," said the box silkily, "and watch the show."

Felix looked at Betony. Betony shook her head.

"It can't hurt," said Felix obstinately, and he sat down. Betony pursed her lips in annoyance, but after a moment or two she sat down as well.

One side of the box darkened, and Felix realized that he was looking at the interior of -- well, a bathroom. Shelves full of potion bottles lined one wall, and another was taken up by a big window through which he could see a mountain, like a two-pronged version of Mount Fuji. Someone was looking out the window, with his back to them.

"It's a japegrin," said Betony. "Look, he's got bright-red hair."

"So does Rhino," said Felix.

"Really?" said Betony. "How odd."

It looked as though the figure could hear them, because it turned around to face them immediately. It was definitely Rhino. The box seemed to be acting as a window.

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"Oh," said Rhino, zipping up his trousers. "It's you. Is there no privacy anywhere? What do you want?"

"We don't belong in this world, Rhino," said Felix. "Speak for yourself."

"I've come to take you back."

"No way, José. I'm an important dude here. I'm telling those japegrin-pixie-whatsits how to make gunpowder. They think I'm the bee's knees."

Felix blanched. "You're doing
what?"

Rhino smiled. "Yeah, how about that?
I'm
the professor now."

"But what you're doing is
wrong,
can't you see that? I've seen magic at work in our world, and it was a nightmare. Science doesn't
belong
in this world. If it got into the wrong hands ... Actually, I'm surprised you even know how to
make
gunpowder."

"It probably won't come to anything," said Rhino innocently. "I may know the ingredients, but that doesn't mean they'll be able to get hold of them."

"Oh, come on," said Felix. "Charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur aren't that difficult to find."

"The charcoal's no problem, sure, but sulfur? No school laboratories to steal it from out here."

"Is that what you used to do?"

"Used to take all sorts of stuff and sell it. Didn't get pocket money like
some
people. Mind you, you wouldn't

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know where to get sulfur, either. Just because your parents are loaded doesn't mean you know everything."

Felix could feel a tightness in his throat. He realized he was clenching his fists.
"Volcanoes,
you idiot," he said, between clenched teeth. "You get sulfur from
volcanoes.
The mountain we arrived on was a volcano, but I wouldn't expect
you
to know that. Gunpowder's only ten percent sulfur, anyway."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" shouted Felix. How dare Rhino question his scientific knowledge?

"So what percentage is the saltpeter, then?"

Felix told him. Then he said, "Hang on. I thought you knew ..."

"Thanks," said Rhino.

Thanks?
Felix stared at Rhino, aghast, realizing what he'd done.

"Like I said, I'm an important dude here," said Rhino, still smirking. "Hey, is that a tangle-girl with you?"

"Yes."

Rhino laughed. "You want to watch who you mix with, Felix. Tangle-folk are trash."

Felix dug his nails into the palm of his hand. He knew Rhino was deliberately winding him up for his own amusement, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He didn't even know where Rhino was. He needed to figure that one out, and fast. "Where are you, exactly?" he asked.

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Rhino laughed. "That would be telling. Listen, wimp, I'm not going back to England, do you copy? I'm staying here."

Betony elbowed Felix out of the way and took over the conversation. "Your world is full of bombs and battles," she said evenly. "You must think it's better here, or you wouldn't want to stay. But if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll turn my world into yours."

"Good," said Rhino. "You could use a few hamburger joints. I think you should run on back home, Felix. Your parents will be worried sick --
so
awful for them after all the worrying they did in the past, when you were at death's door...."

This was the last straw. Forgetting that Rhino was just a magical image on the side of a jinx box, Felix lunged at him. Instantly, the picture vanished. He thumped his fist on the box in a rage, jolting the lid shut and pinching his finger.

"I have an idea," said Betony, suddenly looking pleased with herself. "We'll use my first two wishes to get us out of the lamp. Then, when we're back in the Pink Harpoon, we'll use the third wish to get Rhino. The brandee has to cooperate, once he's granted the first wish of the trio."

"It's too risky," said Felix, sucking his injured finger.

"We're not achieving anything by staying here," Betony pointed out.

"OK. But this time, we're taking the jinx box with us. If your idea doesn't work, we'll try to get it to tell us where Rhino is."

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"That's stealing."

"It's probably stolen property already. Remember what the brandee said about
picking things up
on his travels?"

Betony's expression wavered slightly.

Felix looked at his finger. A blood blister had started to appear. "It could have important historical information in it as well," he said. He felt that the brandee had caused him quite enough trouble, and the jinx box was a small price for him to pay. Besides, the box was something new, a magical object he'd never encountered before. He was intrigued. "Thornbeak would be fascinated," he added craftily.
"She'd
open it safely."

"True," said Betony.

Felix picked up the jinx box. To his astonishment, it was now small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. He put it in his backpack. His finger was throbbing badly, and he made a face.

"Oh, come here," said Betony, picking a leaf from a nearby plant and crushing it between her fingers. Then she recited the standard healing incantation, and the blood blister shrank to a tiny dot, then disappeared.

They left the greenhouse and went back to the lamp's main room. The brandee was oblivious to their presence -- he had bottled himself, and his vapor was swirling gently behind some blue glass as he spent his day as a gas.

"I'm going to get Ironclaw's pen," said Felix, "while I've got the chance. Keep a lookout."

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"OK," said Betony, stationing herself at the door of the study.

Felix slipped back inside and picked up the pen. He was about to put it in his backpack when he had an idea -- he wrote
Jinx Box
on one of the brandee's creamy sheets of paper. After a moment, his hand started to move -- and however hard he concentrated, he couldn't figure out whether
he
was operating the pen or it was some outside agency. It directed him to an encyclopedia of magic, so he took it from the shelf and looked up the definition. After a straightforward description, similar to the one in the K'Faddle advertisement, he read:

Jinx boxes cannot be trusted to store information without corrupting it. In the past, it was assumed they were totally accurate. This was why a jinx box was used to store the Common language, which was collected several centuries ago from another world by a sorcerer
--
although, at the time, everyone assumed he had traveled into the future. Nowadays, of course, we know that time travel is impossible.

The crossover from one world to another had some odd effects. Words that, in the other world, were merely pretend magic turned into powerwords with the capacity to do both great good and enormous harm. Fortunately, the jinx box would be able to remember these words only if a suitably scientific event reminded it of their existence -- an unlikely occurrence in this world.

The jinx boxes of old could be extremely malicious, and deliberately tampered with anything stored inside them. They also tricked people into saying and doing things they would later regret. These days, however, the malice has been removed, and jinx boxes are used simply for entertainment.

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For a moment, Felix wondered if taking the jinx box was such a good idea. It was very possible that it
was
the sole survivor of the malicious boxes of old -- forgotten about because it had been stored inside a magic lamp. He did feel uneasy every time he looked at it or touched it by accident -- but it also had a kind of magnetism, which he couldn't explain. He closed the encyclopedia and slid it back onto the shelf. Then he put the quill in his backpack, slipping it between the pages of his notebook to keep it from getting damaged, and started to wonder what deprivations might lie ahead. He forgot all about the jinx box and led Betony back to the greenhouse to pocket a few more fertle fruits.

"It hasn't been much of a vacation for you, has it?" he said. "Back in your world again, chasing Rhino all over the place."

Betony didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry," said Felix, feeling really guilty. "I'm always dumping my problems on you. We never get the chance to just chill out and talk about stuff; there's always some crisis going on. Your world's much more exciting than mine, you see."

"Only when
you're
around," said Betony, giving him a playful push.

The tickling match that followed lasted until neither of them had sufficient breath left to continue it.

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***

5

***

Rhino had stopped being dumbstruck by the extraordinary things that had happened to him. There wasn't much point -- they kept on happening, so he might as well go with the flow. He couldn't begin to explain any of it, so why waste time and effort trying?

Once he'd realized that the brandee had turned back into a gas and left the lamp via the spout, he started to feel scared. Life wasn't playing by the rules anymore, and now he was on his own. Being held hostage by a nutcase was bad enough; but at least the weirdo had been company. Then Rhino had remembered the X303/D49 Battle-Monger box, so he went back into the greenhouse.

"Hello there," said the box. "What can I do for you?"

"I need to get out of here," said Rhino.

"So do I," said the box. "Places to go, plans to blow, you know how it is."

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"Tell me how to get out, then, and I'll take you with me. And don't bother suggesting that magic stuff again. The brandee nearly throttled me last time. I'm not risking it. He's got a
dagger."

The box paused. "If you were touching the brandee's cloak when he was summoned, you would turn to a gas and leave as well," it said finally.

"Too late. He's gone."

"But he's got a spare cloak."

"Really?" said Rhino. "Where?"

"Say
abracadabra
and I'll remember," the jinx box replied in a dulcet tone.

But Rhino remembered the feel of the brandee's hands around his throat and the point of his dagger in his back only too well. "Maybe I'll just go and look for it," he said.

"Oh, all right. In the bottom drawer of his desk. You can put me in your pocket now; I'll shrink myself to fit."

Rhino smiled broadly and shut the lid of the box, thereby silencing it, and left it in the greenhouse. Keeping a promise to a lump of cardboard wasn't one of his priorities. Then he went back to the brandee's study and retrieved the cloak. It was as black as night, and surprisingly warm for something that seemed so thin. He put it on.

He was in luck, too. No sooner had he returned to the main room than it turned upside down. The cushions seemed to inflate like airbags, breaking his fall, and the room turned over and over. The moment it came to rest, he felt himself

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start to fizz and then, before he knew it, he was outside and had returned to his normal self. The lamp lay beside him in the snow, and a little furry squirrel-like thing was chattering at him.

Rhino found himself compelled to bow from the waist and say "Greetings" in the most subservient way imaginable -- followed by: "I am your brandee. I assume you want either wealth beyond your wildest dreams, or the most beautiful doe in the world?"

The creature's reply had been inconclusive, but nuts might have been involved. After a lot of chattering, the thing ran off, and Rhino realized he was his own boss once more.

Coming out of the lamp was like surfacing after swimming underwater -- the real world came as something of a shock. Rhino had arrived in Vattan ("Fish Emporium of the North"), but at that stage, he had no idea that he'd crossed over into another dimension.

It was bitterly cold, but the cloak was equal to it. He trudged along the road for a while, heading out of town. As to where he was, he had no idea. Scotland was a possibility. The little furry thing could have been a red squirrel; the lamp must have bumped against it and the friction had been enough to summon his magically cloaked self. It was as if the creature had rubbed the lamp with the palm of its little pink paw. He wondered whether it would have been in his power to grant it a sackful of hazelnuts. He tried clapping his hands the way the brandee had done, but, sadly, nothing happened.