The Night of the Solstice (23 page)

“For my part, I'd like to thank you for taking care of the children,” said Mr. Hodges-Bradley to
Morgana. “Under the circumstances you've told us about, which—which were certainly very—” He broke off, looking doubtful. “Under those circumstances, I should say—”

“We'd better bring the car up from the bottom of the drive,” interrupted Dr. Hodges-Bradley. “Claudia shouldn't walk so far in the cold.” The door shut behind them, and Morgana settled back.

“Honesty is occasionally the best policy,” she said, yawning. And then she added, “By the Black Staff of Beldar, I am tired. If I can find a usable bed in what's left of my house I intend to collapse on it. And Elwyn, if you disturb me before dawn,
I promise
, I will turn you into a train of thought, and lose you.”

And, without another word, she went up the stairs.

“Well!” said Alys.

“Good-night,” said Elwyn.

It was astonishing how tired they were suddenly. All night they had been whipped to a fever pitch of excitement, and now, with the police gone, and Morgana gone, and nothing more to face, reaction
set in. Alys all at once felt incredibly numb and stupid.

“Bed,” she muttered dimly as they stumbled mechanically down the drive. And then:

“Oh, blast!” she groaned, and stopped. “Wait a minute,” she mumbled. “I've got to go back. I was looking for that red gem of Cadal Forge's—”

Janie caught her by the arm. “Don't bother.”

“Eh?”

“It's long gone.”

As they all looked at her in surprise she pulled something out of her jacket pocket. “I found this by the conservatory door. Outside the house.”

In her hand was a scrap of midnight blue and silver.

Alys started. “Thia Pendriel! You mean she's
out
? She's loose? And you didn't tell Morgana?”

“Morgana,” said Janie flatly, “is half-dead already. I think any more of this really would kill her. And, besides,
she
will be miles away by now, with the Gem. She isn't stupid.”

“Well …” Alys hesitated, her weary brain trying to get hold of this. “Tomorrow morning you come
straight back here and tell her. Do you hear me?”

Headlights appeared around a corner and swung toward them, and Janie shielded her purple eyes.

“I'm way ahead of you—as usual,” she said.

The next morning everyone but Janie slept late. The others woke to find she had been gone for hours. When they went outside the vixen was seated on the porch.

“You want us to come with you, don't you?” said Claudia happily. The vixen gave them a patient look and trotted off.

At Morgana's house Janie was seated with the little sorceress in the kitchen. Morgana wore a clean fawn-colored robe and she seemed once more in perfect health. Elwyn, her silver hair bound up in a red scarf, was holding a feather duster. She was dusting Morgana.

“Janie,” said Alys, “did you tell—”

“She has told me everything,” said Morgana. “And
it made for grim hearing. I blame myself for not watching the Gem more carefully. However, for the moment there's little to do about Thia Pendriel; and I think, all told, last night came off pretty well. Certainly better than I could have expected, as I sat in the nursery watching the solstice moon rise.”

“Oh! That reminds me,” said Alys. “There are some things I've been wondering about.”

“Such as?”

“Well, first of all, how did Janie figure out you were in the nursery—”

“—and second,” interrupted Charles, “
where
did Elwyn get those serpents?”

“Oh, I went to Weerien,” said Elwyn carelessly. “I really don't know why, I was so very angry with you. Oh, I was exceedingly wroth! You hurt my head, if you remember. And you said you were going to keep me forever, and for a moment I almost believed you. Why, you
frightened
me. It was a wicked thing to do.” Her jewel-like blue eyes opened wide.

Alys thought that being frightened for once was perhaps the best thing that had ever happened to
Elwyn. But she also thought it would be rude to say this, so she held her tongue.

“So I went back to my wood and resolved to think no more about it,” Elwyn continued. “But somehow I couldn't stop thinking. It's a sore puzzle to me why not. I pondered and pondered it, trying to decide what to do, and at last, just when my head was about to burst asunder, I had an idea. I thought to myself, Why, this is high politics. It isn't your business at all, and I really don't know what the boy—”

“Charles,” said Charles.

“—what the Charles boy expects you to do about it. And then I had a wonderful inspiration, which was to take the problem to the Weerul Council and let it fret them instead.”

“But that's exactly what we
begged
you to—”

“And so I hied me as fast as I could to Weerien, to get it off my mind,” said Elwyn, speaking right through Alys's remark. “And would you believe it, when I got there, the Council wouldn't listen! They thought I was playing a prank! Imagine that! Oh, it was vexing!

“Finally, just when I was about to give up—I'd been thrown out of the Council chambers, you see, and I was wrother than ever—I felt a little brush of wings on my shoulder. I looked and saw a Feathered Serpent, a babe yet, still blue.”

“Oh!” said Alys eagerly.

“Yes. It had been sadly injured by Cadal Forge, and then put into a pool of marvelous healing or something. The very moment it was healed it wriggled out of the pool and flew straight to Weerien. And that was that, you see. Because one of us the Council could disbelieve, but not both. And, oh! Weren't they upset! They sent a hundred of the guardians back with us to deal with Cadal Forge, and we all flew back to the castle. Serpents fly fast. I like them, don't you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Alys.

“But I do
not
like the Council. They were extremely cross and annoyed with me for moving the mirror once Morgana was in the Wildworld, and the language they used was not at all nice.”

“So it
was
you who moved the mirror,” said Janie. “I thought it must have been.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Alys. “Elwyn moved the nursery mirror?”

“Of course,” said Janie. “She was the only one who could have done it, because it had to be done from this side.”

“How do you know?”

“What I don't understand is how I
didn't
know for so long. It was obvious.”

“All right, Sherlock, it was obvious,” said Charles. “So explain to us morons. I want to hear how you figured out where Morgana was in the first place.”

“From the mirrors. That's where we should have started. No, not going through them, Charles, but analyzing them. Let's put it this way: The mirrors in this house are here to travel through, like doors. So, logically, there should be one mirror for each room. Any less would be inconvenient and any more would be redundant. But the nursery didn't have any mirror, and in Morgana's bedroom there were
two.
And on the nursery wall was a bare nail, showing that something had once hung there. Remember, Alys? You caught your hair on it when we fought with Elwyn. Clearly
someone had moved a mirror from one room to another. But the vixen said Morgana hadn't touched the mirrors since she gave up practicing magic. When you look at the facts it becomes pathetically obvious.”

“You mean when Elwyn moved the nursery mirror to the bedroom it closed off the Wildworld nursery from this one?”

“Right. Like locking a door.”

“But why didn't she just break the mirror? Or throw it out the window?”

“Only Morgana can break the mirrors—right?” Janie looked at the sorceress, who nodded confirmation. “And we tried to take a mirror out of the house that night we made the amulet, remember? We couldn't.”

“The mirrors in this house,” said Morgana, “are not ordinary objects, but Passages, or potential Passages, to the Wildworld. Furthermore, the mirrors on this side control the mirrors on the other side. If you take a mirror off the nursery wall in this world the Wildworld mirror disappears because the Passage is closed. If you then carry that nursery mirror into
the bedroom and hang it on the wall you punch a new Passage through to the Wildworld and a mirror appears on the other side. So when my irresponsible sister did this idiotic thing I suddenly found myself trapped in my own nursery with no mirror, no staff, and no hope of escape.”

“That's right,” said Elwyn, seemingly not bothered at all by her sister's strictures. “I just let Morgana go through the mirror first, and when she did I took the mirror off the wall as Cadal told me to. He told me to break it, too, but I couldn't, so I just carried it into another room. It was easy.”

Charles was intrigued. “So a Passage forms wherever you put a mirror,” he said. “What if you put a mirror on the floor and went through?”

“Then you should emerge standing on your head and look extremely ridiculous,” said Morgana tartly.

“Anyway,” said Alys in the silence which fell after this remark, “I think Morgana is right. We did pretty well, considering. The Society is scattered, Cadal Forge is trapped in the mirror, and Aric's undoubtedly been eaten by now.”

“And, seeing that everyone is happy,” said Elwyn, “I will take my leave. I am very curious about this Southerncalifornia of yours. I want to visit Holly's Wood.”

Charles's mouth drooped a little. “You mean—you're going away?”

“Yes.” Elwyn pulled off the scarf and shook out her starlike hair, apparently all the preparation she was going to make. “Good-bye, all of you. Good-bye, boy. You may kiss me, if you like, as a token of my forgiveness.”

Charles blushed. “Good-bye,” he mumbled, leaning forward to peck the air beside Elwyn's cheek. “Good-bye, and … and I forgive you, too.”

Elwyn dimpled merrily. “I daresay we'll meet again.”

And then she was gone, and the house was a little darker and a little colder for her absence.

“But won't she get hurt?” Charles turned to Morgana in dismay. “I mean, she doesn't know anything about the modern world. Won't she—well, cross against a light and get run over by a Greyhound bus or something?”

Morgana laughed. “More likely, within the hour she'll be playing cruel tricks on some poor unsuspecting human. Never you worry about a Quislai, my lad.

“And now,” she added, “to the reason I summoned you this morning. In the past weeks you have worked very hard, and suffered no little, and received nothing in return.”

“We saved the world,” said Charles softly.

“You saved this world from Cadal Forge. There are many other dangers—equally great—that humans have created for themselves. The story is not all told yet.

“But in any case, I would like to give you a small token of my appreciation.

“You first,” she said to Alys. “Come with me.” Alys and the others followed her out to the back drive. And there, capering about the garden on dainty hooves, was a milk white colt. It was fine and slender and spirited, with large curious eyes and legs much too long for its body. It took one look at them, tossed its white mane, and with a flip of its tail was galloping off in the opposite direction.

“Wild,” said Morgana, shrugging. “Like his mother. Never been touched by human hands. But you ought to be able to catch him eventually if you bring some rope. Every hero should have a horse.”

Charles snorted. “But Alys isn't a hero.”

“And the colt isn't a horse—yet,” said Morgana.

Alys was staring after the rapidly disappearing speck of white, electrified. “Are you serious? I can have him? For me? For my own? Oh, but this is the most
wonderful
—” She stopped, hearing in her mind an echo of Claudia's tremulous voice, “What do you think is the most wonderfulest, specialest, excitingest thing in the world?”

“Oh … thank you,” she breathed.

“For you,” Morgana was saying to Claudia, ignoring Alys's raptures as they returned to the house, “the vixen will visit you at her convenience, and you have my permission to enter this house and visit her until such time as you annoy me beyond the limits of toleration.”

“Or prove yourself unworthy of so great an honor,” amended the vixen coolly, but she did not move away from Claudia's stroking hand.

“For you,” said Morgana to Charles, “this.” Into his open hand she pressed a little glass box that held a lump of whitish rock.

“Gee, thanks. Uh … what is it?”

“Oh, don't you remember?” broke in Alys, repressing a fit of giggles. “What you told Claudia was the most wonderful, special, exciting thing in the world? When she asked us that night we went to see the vixen? Charles, it's—”

“Kryptonite,” said Morgana. “Or, to be precise, it is the element krypton; there is no such thing as the other. I advise you not to open the box as krypton is a gas at this temperature.”

“Kryptonite.” Charles turned the box over. “Well . . . what do you know? How nice.”

Alys choked back a laugh. She was still terribly exhilarated. “But what about Janie?” she said. She was rather expecting Morgana to produce the Hope Diamond.

“Oh,” said Janie, as everyone looked at her. “Well, actually, as it happens, Morgana is going back into the magic business. Because of Thia Pendriel being
loose, and because—well, because she doesn't like being so out of practice. And the fact is she needs an apprentice.”

“An … apprentice?” said Alys.

“Yes, and I'm it.” Unable to help herself, Janie grinned outright. “She says I've got a talent for magic—a sort of flair, you know. The vixen first noticed it when we were mixing up the incendiary powder.”