Arthur shut his eyes for a moment and shook his head, trying to cast away the feelings of self-pity that were rising inside him.
‘I don’t ... I don’t care,’ he said softly to his reflection. ‘I have a job to do. It doesn’t matter what I have become. It doesn’t matter what I look like.’
He pushed open the door and softly trod downstairs.
I hope no one is home, he couldn’t help thinking. I hope they’re safe somewhere else. And that they don’t have to see me this way. The house was very quiet. Arthur slipped quietly down the stairs, pausing to listen every four or five steps. He had learned to be cautious. He was also wondering what he should do. He couldn’t stay – that was for sure. He had to get back to the House as soon as he could. But before he did that, he might need to stop time again. Or perhaps try to clean up whatever had happened ...
At the landing just before the living room, Arthur stopped and took a deep, unfettered breath. He still found it amazing that he could take such a breath, one that went to the very bottom of his lungs, and that he could breathe out again without wheezing or difficulty. His asthma, like his old body and even his old face, was apparently gone forever.
After taking that breath, Arthur walked into the living room – and stopped as if he’d hit a wall. There was his mother, who was sitting on the sofa and reading a medical journal, as if she had never disappeared, as if the world outside was normal, as if all the things that had happened to Arthur, his family, and the city had never occurred.
Arthur took a step forward, ready to hurl himself upon her and hug her as tightly as he could, to recapture that sense of safety that he had always felt in her embrace.
But after that first step, Arthur hesitated. He had changed so much, he was so different to look at, Emily might not even recognise him. Or she might be afraid of what he had become.
Either situation was too awful to contemplate. Arthur’s hesitation turned into a terrible fear, and he began to back away. As he did so, Emily put the journal down and turned her head, so that she was looking directly at him. Arthur’s eyes met Emily’s, but he saw neither recognition nor fear in her gaze. In fact, she looked right through him.
‘Mum,’ Arthur said, his voice weak and uncertain.
Emily didn’t respond. She yawned, looked away from Arthur, and picked up the journal again, touching the screen to bring up a different article.
‘Mum?’ Arthur walked right up to her and stood behind her chair. ‘Mum!’
Emily didn’t respond. Arthur reached out to touch her shoulder, but stopped an inch away. He could feel a strange electric tingle in his fingers, and his knuckles pulsed with the ache of sorcery. Slowly he pulled his hand back. He didn’t want to accidentally set off a spell that might hurt – or even kill – her. Instead he held his hand out to cover the screen of her journal. But she kept reading, as if his hand was simply not there.
The article was about the Sleepy Plague, Arthur saw. It was titled ‘First Analysis and Exploration of Somnovirus F/201/Z, “Sleepy Plague”, and was written by Dr Emily Penhaligon. The Sleepy Plague had been the first of the viruses that had been spawned by the presence of the First Key and other intrusions from the House. Though it had been swept away by the Nightsweeper that Arthur had brought back from the Lower House, other viruses had been created by powers of the House that should not have been on Earth. Emily was a pre-eminent medical researcher, but even she could have had no idea of the real reason the new viruses had suddenly appeared.
Arthur took his hand away and went to sit on the other chair in the room. He had felt so relieved to see his mother, because he’d thought she had somehow returned safely to their home. Now that relief was gone. He couldn’t be sure it even was Emily sitting opposite him, or that this was, in fact, his home.
‘I’d better have a look around,’ said Arthur. He spoke loudly, but Emily didn’t react. He watched her for a few seconds more, then got up and went downstairs to the kitchen.
The screen on the refrigerator, which Arthur had hoped would be active so he could check the time, date, and any news, was blank.
Arthur turned away to head over to his father’s studio and the computer there, but first he noticed something unusual through the kitchen window. He should have been able to see the dawn light coming through, but it was blocked by something green that was pressed right up against the glass.
Arthur went closer. There was a bushy tree or perhaps a hedge growing right next to the window, its foliage so thick that he couldn’t see through it. But there hadn’t been a tree there before, and in fact there should have been nothing but bare earth outside the kitchen, because Bob hadn’t got around to doing the landscaping yet.
Arthur went to the kitchen door and opened it. The door opened inward, which was just as well, because there was a solid expanse of spiky green hedge outside. It was so thick Arthur couldn’t see through any part of it, or get any idea of how far it extended.
One thing was clear. The area around his home had been transformed, and it added to Arthur’s growing suspicion that this wasn’t really his house at all.
He sat down at the kitchen table and took out The Compleat Atlas of the House. It looked like the real thing, and Dame Primus had told him it would probably reappear somewhere near him, that he should check out bookshelves. There was only one way to find out, and to check exactly where he was and what was going on.
Arthur laid the Atlas on the table and said, ‘I need to know where I am.’
He was about to reach for his Keys to use their power to activate the Atlas, but he didn’t need them. His touch was sorcerous enough. The Atlas flipped open and grew until it was the size of a glossy magazine.
The double-page spread it had opened to was blank at first, then writing began to appear on the left-hand page, much slower than when Arthur had looked at it before. It was as if the invisible hand was being opposed, or held back in some way, for the letters were not only slow to appear, they were in an almost illegible scrawl rather than the beautiful copperplate writing the Atlas usually used.
Arthur guessed what the Atlas was going to say before the first word was complete.
Incompa ...
‘But how can this be the Incomparable Gardens?’ asked Arthur as soon as the words were finished, a long minute later. ‘And why are my house and my mother in it?’
Can’t answer ... opposed by the Seventh Key ... came the ever-so-slow reply. The last word was almost unreadable, the final letter not much more than a blob of ink with a downstroke.
‘Is that really Emily upstairs?’ Arthur asked. He focused his mind more strongly upon the Atlas, and slipped his hands into his pouch to hold and draw on the power of both the Fifth and Sixth Keys, the mirror in his left hand and the pen in his right. He could feel something fighting back, some power opposing his attempt to use the Atlas. It was like an unseen presence pressing on his face, trying to push him back from the table and the open book.
Arthur fought against it, though he remembered Dame Primus saying the Seventh Key was paramount, the most powerful of all, and like all the Keys, it was even stronger in its own demesne. But surely, he thought, having two Keys would enable him to have some chance against it?
The Atlas slowly wrote a single, misshapen letter. Arthur couldn’t quite figure it out for a moment, till he turned his head slightly and saw it was a Y that was partly rotated, followed very slowly by two more letters.
‘Yes,’ read Arthur aloud.