“Chimera!” Aunt Isa said in a very loud voice. “How much is that book worth to you?”
A pause followed. I don’t think Chimera had intended for The Nothing to act as a communications channel, merely a link in the chain of command. She would speak, we would obey. That was more what she’d had in mind.
“We don’t know which book you’re talking about,” Aunt Isa then said and picked a random volume from the bookcase. “Could it be this one?”
Chimera still made no reply, but The Nothing sat up with a jerk, possibly so that Chimera could borrow her eyes just like the Raven Mothers would borrow those of the ravens. Aunt Isa flicked indifferently through the book.
“Hmmm,” she said. “It doesn’t look all that interesting. I guess it’s not the one.” She tossed it into the flames in the fireplace, which flattened at first from the air pressure and then shot up again, taller than before. She took another book.
“So what about this one? Yes? No? Don’t know?” She did the same thing again – leafing through it before tossing it onto the flames – and then reached for a third book.
“Wait!” The Nothing croaked in Chimera’s voice. “Wait…”
“What does it look like?” Aunt Isa said. “Is it green – like this one?” She chucked yet another book onto the flames.
I just watched with my mouth hanging open. What was my aunt doing? Didn’t she realize that the only person who could get us out of this trap was Chimera? Did she really think it was a smart move to make her even angrier than she already was?
“Or red?”
“Brown,” The Nothing said, and this time she sounded more like herself. “It’s brown with a kind of wheel on the spine and on the cover…” She pointed with her wing. “It’s somewhere on that bookcase.”
Oscar jumped up and immediately began pulling all the brown books off the shelves to see if one featured a wheel. If it didn’t, it ended up on the floor with a crash. Within fifteen to twenty seconds, there was almost the same number of discarded books at his feet, but he carried on until there were no more brown books left in the bookcase.
“It’s not here,” he said at length. “There are books about birds and mushrooms and fairy tales and stars, but not one of them has a wheel on its spine or on its cover.”
“Let the witch child look,” Chimera’s voice said irritably. “If she can’t find it, you’re all as useless as that ball of feathers.”
“Why is that book so important to you?” Aunt Isa asked, more quietly now that Chimera had started listening and responding.
“That’s none of your business, Isa. It’s important because you can save your lives by finding it and reading it to me. That’s why.”
I had squatted down next to the messy pile of books on the floor. Oscar was right. Books about birds, mushrooms…
No. Wait. Wasn’t that…
Yes. A brown book with something which, with a bit of goodwill, could be a wheel or at least a circle with a kind of cross inside it.
“Is this it?” I asked, holding it up.
“What does it say inside?” Chimera asked.
I opened it and was just about to start reading, but Aunt Isa stopped me.
“Wait,” she said. “I’m not at all sure that we should tell Chimera what it says.”
“Would you rather die, Isa? Would you rather see your three little apprentices die? It would take less than half an hour before there would be nothing but a few scraps of flesh left on their bones. Would you like to see the bones of the witch child? I can tell the sisters to save you for last, so you don’t miss anything.”
It was mind-boggling to hear such threats come out of the mouth of a clumsy, sneezing little feather duster like The Nothing. In contrast to her sisters out on the landing it was quite hard to be scared of her. It should have followed that anything she said would be equally unfrightening, but it wasn’t. On the contrary. I could feel the hairs stand up at the back of my neck. And just about everywhere else, to be honest.
I was still holding the book. It wasn’t a big, heavy book like a bible or an encyclopedia, more a kind of notebook, bound in cracked time-worn leather. Old. Proper old. Somehow I could feel it.
“If you don’t want me to read it…” I began, but Aunt Isa stopped me with a gesture.
“Why should we trust you?” she challenged Chimera. “You’re an outlaw. You have no honour. And you’ve tricked us before. How do we know that you’ll keep your word this time? If I’m going to die anyway, I would rather feed the book to the fire and know that at least I thwarted your plan.”
“You’re such a goody two shoes, Isa,” Chimera said. “Always so prim and proper, always so righteous. Don’t you ever yearn for more? Are you really happy living in a crumbling shack in the middle of nowhere, spending all your time treating lice-infested hedgehogs and crook-winged sparrows?”
“Yes,” said Aunt Isa simply. “I live just the way I want to.”
“Is that all you want?” Chimera snarled. “Is that really all you want? Still, if it makes you happy, it’s no skin off my nose. You may go back to your insignificant little life. And take your hangers-on with you.”
“Do you swear?” Aunt Isa said. “Do you swear by blood and by life, by cunning and by caprice, by strength and by seed? Do you swear by everything you are, everything you have been, and everything you will be? Do you swear?”
There was a touch of wildsong in those words, and I suddenly understood that Aunt Isa was demanding more than a promise. It was a pledge. A pledge in which the spoken words bound the speaker’s will so that she really couldn’t break her promise, even if she tried.
“You think you’re oh-so clever, eh?” said The Nothing in Chimera’s voice. Aunt Isa made no reply. She merely took the book from my hands and held it over the flames.
“Very well,” Chimera said. “If it means so much to you. When you have fulfilled your part of the deal and everything has been revealed, I swear that everyone in this room is free to leave and that nothing here will harm you. This I swear, by blood and by life, by cunning and by caprice, by strength and by seed, by everything I am, everything I have been, and everything I will be. Make it so!”
As the last word sounded, it was as if the air thickened for a moment and it grew harder to breathe. The flames flickered, and The Nothing collapsed, close to fainting for a second time.
“Help,” she said in a very small voice, now entirely her own. “I think… I think my head is going to crack open.”
Aunt Isa listened for a while. Long enough for Oscar to start twitching nervously.
“Was that it?” he then said. “I’m not saying it didn’t sound cool, but…”
“She can’t go back on that promise,” Aunt Isa declared. “Not if she wants to go on living.” She turned away from the fireplace and opened the book.
“What does it say?” Oscar asked.
Aunt Isa furrowed her brow. “Nothing special,” she said. “Shanaia, is this your Aunt Abbie’s handwriting?”
“Yes. That’s her notebook, or one of them, at any rate. She would always write down when the swallows arrived, where to find chanterelles or how much sugar to add to her blueberry jam. Stuff like that… A lot of the old books on the shelves are blank, either because the ink has faded away, or because nothing was ever written inside them… This must be one of them.”
“How odd,” Aunt Isa said. “I find it hard to believe that Chimera would set all this in motion simply to get your aunt’s recipe for blueberry jam…”
“Please may I see it?” I asked.
She handed me the book.
“For one kilo of blueberries you will need one kilo of sugar,” it said in a slanted and somewhat straggling hand which had to be Aunt Abbie’s. “You may want to add a little redcurrant juice and a pinch of black pepper, it gives bite and depth to the taste…”
But that wasn’t all of it.
“It says something else,” I said. “Behind it. Underneath it… Look!”
“Where?” Aunt Isa said.
“There.” There was another hand, fainter, but the more I looked at it, the clearer it became. I couldn’t understand how Aunt Isa hadn’t spotted what I had seen immediately.
“I can see nothing but blueberry jam,” she said. “Shanaia? Can you?”
Shanaia hobbled towards us – her shoulder would not appear to be her only injury. She glanced over my shoulder, at her aunt’s directions. And only at them.
“I can’t see anything,” she said. “Nothing except Aunt Abbie’s handwriting.”
“But it’s right there,” I insisted, double-checking to be sure. I turned the page to see if it continued. It did – more clearly. It was difficult to read because the letters were a little different from the ones I was used to, but they spelled out something.
“Read it aloud,” Aunt Isa said. “If you can…”
I held the book so that the glow from the fire fell on the page. And, as soon as I saw the first three desperate words, it was as if the room around me became unreal, and only the words on the page mattered. I read…