Someone knocked on the door, and Lorenz left the room. Maximilian looked out of the window and saw, beyond the courtyard garden and the canal bridge, a large palace with green domes and stained-glass windows. Lights flickered inside, and Maximilian saw the outlines of men and women holding champagne glasses. When Lorenz came back, he handed Maximilian a small but heavy package. Maximilian unwrapped the rose-coloured tissue paper and found a gold athame with a gold chain attached to its handle. Lorenz fastened this to Maximilian’s belt.
‘Is my uncle a mage?’ Maximilian asked Lorenz.
Lorenz laughed. ‘You don’t know? He’s not just any mage, he’s a great one. Perhaps the greatest. You will learn much from him. Now, we must go.’
Dear Luminiferous Ether,
I hope you are very well and have enjoyed the passing of Martinmas. I am writing to you on behalf of a dear friend, whose life I believe to be in great danger. But I shouldn’t put that, in case it makes it happen. I am writing to you because I am choosing to bring safety and courage to my friend Euphemia Truelove. I believe you will help me by granting my wish that Euphemia be kept safe and well for the foreseeable future.
Yours, as ever, in the spirit of Love and of Life,
Raven Wilde (Miss)
The Luminiferous Ether always enjoyed the letters it received from Raven Wilde. As ever it was touched to have been chosen as the Otherworld recipient of her witch’s prayer.
But this new request was going to be very difficult to grant. The Luminiferous Ether looked at all the spells flowing through it and – yes – oh dear – there it was. The future event that would bring death upon one of Raven Wilde’s friends before the week was out. It had been willed by one much more powerful than Raven. What could be done about it? Not much. Not much at all. And of course there was the other thing. The prophecy. And the small matter of the universe being saved. The Luminiferous Ether tried to shuffle things around a little and . . . Well, that was interesting. So it all would rest on one particular decision. That was better than nothing. And the decision was due to be made any time now.
6
‘Creative writing,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide.
She said the words in exactly the way one might say ‘seeping wound’ or ‘headless mouse’, or perhaps whisper news of a terrible accident. Almost as if she couldn’t believe she had uttered something so distasteful, she repeated the words one more time.
‘CREATIVE WRITING.’
No one in the class, the top set for English in the first form of the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange, said anything. What could they say? Everyone knew that creative writing was a great treat. But the way Mrs Beathag Hide had said it made it sound like a terrible punishment. So they waited, silently, to see what would happen next.
There were two empty seats in the room. Effie and Maximilian were both absent. Wolf, Raven and Lexy had already all looked at one another and shrugged. None of them knew where their friends had gone. Raven hoped Effie was all right. She gulped again when she thought of what she’d heard through the Cosmic Web. Of course, the only good thing about knowing that someone is going to die on Friday is that you know they are pretty much invincible until then. Unless you have tried to change it, of course. Could Raven’s spell have gone so wrong that it had actually hastened things? She shuddered. This was the problem, of course, with dabbling.
‘I have been informed,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide, ‘that this class wishes to begin creative writing.’
The class froze. Of course. After the annual inspection a couple of weeks earlier they’d had to talk to a man in a beige suit about what they liked and didn’t like in Mrs Beathag Hide’s classes. Obviously they’d all said everything was fine, that they had no complaints and Mrs Beathag Hide was very kind to them. They weren’t stupid. But the man had pressed them each to name something that they would like to do more of. And then he had fed back the results to Mrs Beathag Hide.
To Mrs Beathag Hide’s immense disappointment, no one had said they wanted to spend more time rendering Greek tragedy in papier-mâché. No one mentioned wanting to read more Shakespeare or Chaucer. One person – not naming any names, of course – asked if the class could read Ulysses, which was an extremely difficult book by James Joyce. Every single other child in the class, when asked what they would like to do more of, chose creative writing.
Way back in the mists of time, before Mrs Beathag Hide had taken over the class, their old teacher Miss Dora Wright had given the children their first task of the school year. They’d had to write a story about their summer holiday that was not true, but that they wished had been true. Most of the children, inspired, no doubt, by Laurel Wilde books, wrote about being kidnapped by gypsies or smugglers and travelling to dark caves in rowing boats and finding piles of treasure. It was the most fun thing they had ever done at school. For some poor children, it was the most fun thing they had ever done in their lives.
Mrs Beathag Hide rarely got the children to do anything that involved their imaginations, which she felt enjoyed quite enough expression anyway. The class sighed inwardly as it remembered Miss Dora Wright’s soft, round face and her gentle, kind encouragement.
‘I expect you all think it’s extremely EASY,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘After all, everyone knows how to tell a story or write a poem, don’t they? DON’T THEY?’
The class didn’t know whether it was supposed to reply and so, as usual, remained silent.
‘Well, soon we will find out,’ Mrs Beathag Hide said mysteriously, ‘exactly how easy it is. Take out your pencils and your rough-work books.’
A thin shiver of excitement streaked briefly through the chilly classroom. The children did as they were told.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘What are you waiting for? Write!’
The children all looked down at their rough-work books. The recycled paper was made from pulped novels, magazines, newspapers and packaging. All this paper had once been covered with words. Now it was blank, and certainly seemed to want to remain that way. What on earth did Mrs Beathag Hide want them to write? If Maximilian had been here, perhaps he would have been able to help. He would have asked Mrs Beathag Hide for more precise instructions, and then probably been put in the corner as usual with the dunce’s cap on. The one that smelled of mould and dead mice.
‘DIFFICULT, isn’t it?’ boomed Mrs Beathag Hide, after mass writers’ block had settled on the room and made everyone wish they were dead, or at least somewhere else. ‘Well, luck has shone on you, for some unknown reason. Perhaps all the good, talented, deserving children were already inundated with luck. Or maybe they were just busy. Who knows? Prepare yourselves, children. Tomorrow afternoon we will be having an AUTHOR VISIT. Terrence Deer-Hart will be coming to tell us all about how he gets his ideas and . . .’
From the usually silent class had broken out an excited murmur. Terrence Deer-Hart? Really? But he was a millionaire! A celebrity! He was Laurel Wilde’s main rival on the bestseller lists every month. His novels were far more distressing, complex and violent than Laurel Wilde’s, though, and one of his books for older children had over a hundred swear-words in it. His last novel had been banned from schools in at least four countries. Most children were not allowed to read his books at all.
‘SILENCE!’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘We have been asked to prepare for the AUTHOR VISIT with some CREATIVE WRITING. For some reason, luck has shone on your pathetic unimportant lives twice in one week. You have been asked to . . .’ Here she glanced down at her notes. ‘To write a story about “travelling to other worlds”. How dull.