As they stopped at the door to the potting shed, Zach looked at Em.
‘If I know you’ve been sneaking out, your mum probably does too,’ he signed.
‘She’s afraid I’ll snap under the strain.’ Em lowered her hands. Telepathy was easier in the darkness. But I won’t. I’m stronger than that.
She pulled the key for the shed from her pocket and unlocked the door. Before she opened it enough for them to slip inside, she put her hand on Zach’s chest.
I need you to swear on your powers as a Guardian that this will be our secret. Otherwise there’s no way you’re seeing what’s in here.
With her purple-streaked hair, her pale skin and her fierce determination, in that moment Em looked years older than thirteen. Zach nodded.
I swear.
Inside, the shed smelled of manure, motor oil and cut grass. The ride-on mower was parked to one side, and behind it stood a wall of rickety wooden shelves loaded with clay flowerpots, bags of seeds and a sundry assortment of gardening tools. A pitchfork, spade and two rakes stood in the corner.
On the other side of the shed was a worn armchair and a stack of books. A small window covered in dirt and cobwebs was in the middle of the back wall, the hazy moon visible above the silhouette of Era Mina.
You’re in here secretly reading?
Zach was about to walk further into the shed when Em grabbed his arm.
Stop! There are things I need to switch off.
Zach watched as Em followed the extension cord plugged in behind a large clay pot and running along behind sacks of mulch, leading up to a projector and Em’s iPad on a shelf.
You’re throwing a hologram against the wall? Zach glanced around, clearly trying to work out which items in the shed weren’t real. Why not just animate something?
Em rolled her eyes. Because everyone in the Abbey who might follow me would recognize an animation immediately.
Lifting down the iPad, she closed the program. One by one, the comfy chair, the stack of books and then the entire back wall of the shed shimmered and pixelated. Each image faded to black, leaving a makeshift green screen standing between them and the real back half of the shed.
Carefully, Em pulled down the screen. Zach laughed in amazement.
Bunches of herbs, turnips and leafy plants hung from a clothesline strung across the back of the hut, each bunch in varying degrees of dehydration, along with the dried-out carcass of a squirrel. Apart from a blue plastic tarpaulin covering a canvas the size of a flat-screen TV that was leaning against the wall, all the tableau needed was a blazing hearth, a pot of porridge and a skinned rabbit or two hanging from the rafters to complete the picture of an old crofter’s cottage in the eighteenth century.
Zach looked up at the squirrel and recoiled. ‘Gross!’
‘I didn’t kill it, in case you’re wondering,’ Em signed back. ‘It was road kill.’
‘Oh, good. That makes me feel much better!’
‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’ Em gazed around, thinking about this from Zach’s perspective. ‘OK. It looks bad.’
Jeannie’s pestle and mortar and Simon’s missing clay bowls were spread on a table next to the blue-tarped canvas, along with what looked like a chunk of the Auchinmurn hillside. Zach poked his finger in a plastic bag caked inside with a dark sticky substance, and rubbed his fingertips together.
Is this blood?
Em nodded, holding up the palm of her left hand with a plaster on it. I mixed the squirrel’s blood with some of my own.
Zach pulled a face. Jeez, Em. What are you doing in here?
Em could feel his concern heavy on her shoulders. With great care, she pulled the tarp from the canvas underneath.
It was the missing medieval triptych from the Abbey.
Em had painted over the picture of Daniel in the lion’s den that had been there before. Now the whole painting leaped from the canvas at multiple points the way a 3D film might, an intense heat pulsing from each of the three panels.
The central panel showed a number of strange, skeletal-looking knights surrounding Era Mina’s finished pencil tower, wearing armour embossed with wings on their shoulder plates and silver helixes on their breastplates. Each had only half a face. A tall, leader-like figure stood among them, his head tilted back, his long hair painted in broad, expressionist strokes like Cezanne or Monet might have used. A rough-hewn slobbering mud creature dominated the background.
The panel on the right showed a cave opening in the cliff, which Em had rendered in a maelstrom of greys, yellows and blacks. The cave mouth seemed to be pursing, as if in a kiss. The left panel was unfinished.
‘I think the tall one in the middle panel’s my dad,’ Em said. She could hardly bring herself to look at the image, even now.
‘It’s stunning, Em,’ Zach signed. ‘The best thing you’ve ever painted.’
‘You think?’
‘But what is it? Why have you painted it?’
‘I have an idea and it has to do with Albion.’
Zach frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’