Farouk had a daughter! In a matter of seconds, the news had travelled to every floor, spread across the gardens, and taken over the airwaves. It took even less time for all the assembled nobles to besiege the sanitarium, despite the desperate protesting of the nurses. Each wanted to be the first to present their congratulations to the father and send their compliments to the mother—the most eager were those who, an hour earlier, were already burying Berenilde.
Berenilde? Buried? Sitting beside the cradle, her hair neat, her face radiant, and with a smile on her lips, she was already prepared to receive her visitors. That, at any rate, was the brief vision Ophelia got when the midwives opened the door to her room. The courtiers then arrived so quickly, and in such great numbers, that she was pushed to the other end of the corridor before even managing to glimpse the baby. Squashed between crinoline dresses and fur coats, and coughing from the camera smoke, Ophelia would have ended up asphyxiated had Thorn not come to extricate her.
“Let’s go,” he growled. “My aunt is now capable of defending herself on her own, and we’re expected elsewhere.”
Walking against the current of a crowd, and in a narrow corridor at that, demanded great perseverance. But Ophelia and Thorn did finally reach the waiting room, which was swarming with people, and where nobles were queuing right up to the family spirit’s sofa—his daughter had only just been born and engagement proposals were already flooding in, with one man highlighting his personal wealth, another praising his sons’ valor. Staring blankly around him, Farouk clearly didn’t understand what all these fathers wanted from him.
Ophelia followed Thorn down the stairs. There they came across policemen from the squad and the old artisans from the factory, swept along against their will by the momentum of the crowd. Gail had hoisted herself up onto the guardrail, like a sailor on the bowsprit of a ship; above human concerns, she was puffing away on a cigarette right beside the sign that said: “SMOKING STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.”
It took Thorn and Ophelia several more scrambles to get out of the establishment. Baron Melchior, whose portliness had prevented him from entering it, immediately came over to them, tapping the face of his pretty watch. “Not wishing to panic you, but it’s midday. We only have twelve . . .”
“Your sister telephoned,” Thorn cut in. “She has arranged a meeting with Madam Hildegarde. Don’t ask me how,” he added, as Baron Melchior dropped his watch in surprise. “Where is our pilot?”
Apart from a few servants tidying the buffet tables, there was no one left in the garden. The festive illusions were starting to fade as rain started to fall.
“I will be your chauffeur!” It was Gail who had made them this offer—more of an order—raising the peak of her cap with a finger. She had followed them and listened to them unnoticed. Without waiting for assent, she stubbed out her cigarette, climbed the airship’s gangway, and gestured at them to join her on board. “The boss has given you an appointment, don’t make her wait.”
A few minutes later, the airship was leaving the sanitarium, propellers humming. Ophelia had a last look at its grand facade, and at the twelfth window of the first floor of the east wing, where a new life had begun, for which she already felt responsible. “I still haven’t even chosen a name for her,” she muttered.
The rain drumming on the fuselage stopped as soon as the airship flew over Opal Sands. Above it, hovering much higher in the sky, the Citaceleste served as a giant umbrella for the entire resort. The shadow cast over roofs, salt marshes, and rocks was so heavy, it felt like winter, right in the middle of summer. Gail maneuvered the tiller to avoid the steam from the thermal baths and the cable-car system, and then began the descent towards the lighthouse. Glued to the window, Ophelia wondered where she would land the airship, given that there was neither plain nor park at Opal Sands. Gail chose the largest rocky beach, about a hundred yards from the Great Jetty, and let down the gangway. Instantly, the wind, full of salt and sea spray, surged into the cockpit.
“Off you go, I’ll moor the machine.”
“Let’s hope it’s not a trap,” Baron Melchior said, anxiously, clutching his hat as he made his way down. “Are you absolutely sure that it really was my sister’s voice on the telephone?”
Ophelia pushed away the hair catching on her glasses, and looked out beyond the shore, to the very end of the jetty, at the foot of the white tower of the lighthouse, where the sea swirled its foam. An outlandish figure was watching them.
“It’s definitely her,” said Thorn, striding off.
All around them, the sea rumbled like a liquid thunderstorm. The further they went along the jetty, the rounder and more eccentric the figure waiting for them at the foot of the lighthouse became. Cunegond was wearing what Ophelia supposed was a holiday outfit. With her feathered turban, cascade of necklaces, black veil, and gold-brocade dress, she would have looked more at home in a tropical setting.
“I knew I could count on your unerring punctuality, Mr. Treasurer!” Cunegond cooed as soon as they were within earshot. “Time, you see, is not something that dear Hildegarde has an endless supply of.” As she said this, the Mirage pulled out, from under her veil, an impressive bunch of black sandglasses.
“But really, Cunegond, would you mind explaining to me what all this is about?” Baron Melchior demanded, his splendid moustache demolished by the wind. “Since when have you been consorting with Madam Hilde . . . So it was you!” he suddenly exclaimed, eyes popping out. “The anonymous illusionist of the sandbeds, that was you!”
Cunegond’s smile extended her large red lips. “My Imaginoirs are failing, little brother; I offered my services to someone who really appreciates them. Hildegarde is not only my competitor, she’s also an excellent businesswoman. Of course, I knew this collaboration would be disapproved of, and that’s why I remained discreet, but anyway,” she sighed, “I daresay that, now, it no longer really matters. Sandglasses are already a thing of the past.”
“I savored your delights so many times without realizing it!” Baron Melchior said, revolted, as though speaking of some incestuous act.
“So I’m evidently not the failed artist you thought I was.”
“Where is Hildegarde?” Thorn cut in, sharply. Cunegond unhooked three black sandglasses from her bunch and gave one to each of them. Hindered by her arm in the scarf, Ophelia grabbed hers awkwardly.
“Is this a joke?” Baron Melchior asked, indignantly, holding up his black sandglass with the tips of his fingers. “Do you seriously think we’re going to pull the pin on such dubious objects in the current climate?”
“We will not touch these sandglasses until we have an explanation,” said Thorn. “You can start now by telling us about your personal involvement in the case of the abductions.”
With feathers frolicking atop her turban and countless necklaces clattering, Cunegond draped herself in a parody of dignity as she solemnly laid her hand on her ample bosom. “I am not involved in any respe . . . ”
Ophelia never heard the end of the sentence. Cunegond, Thorn, Baron Melchior, the lighthouse, the wind, the sky had all disappeared and the entire sea had fallen silent.
Ophelia found herself plunged into a shadowy room. Her dazed eyes made out the cracks in the floorboards at her feet, looked up at the beams of the ceiling, and squinted at the black sandglass she was still clutching. Despite the weak lighting, she saw that the grains of sand had started to run. When Ophelia found the pin hooked on a stitch of her scarf, she understood that she had triggered the mechanism without even meaning to. And of course, that had happened when no one was paying attention to her . . . How long would it take for Thorn to notice that she’d disappeared?
It took Ophelia a few blinks to get used to the half-light and work out the contours of the room. It was built entirely with beams and smelt strongly of damp pine, like some old, abandoned chalet. A chalet without a door or windows, as far as Ophelia could tell. Right at the back of the room, hunched behind a desk, weakly backlit by a lamp, was a motionless shadow.
The floorboard creaked hideously as soon as she ventured a step. The shadow moved behind the desk, as if roused from its slumbers.
“You can come closer, niña,” muttered the guttural voice of Mother Hildegarde. “You can come closer, but don’t cross the line.”
Ophelia put the sandglass in a pocket. She made the floorboards creak until she reached a security cordon, which kept her at a respectable distance from the desk. Mother Hildegarde ceased to be a shadow. She now possessed two little black eyes, sunk into an old, blemished skin, that were looking at her with sustained attention. Elbows on desk and fingers linked, she was wearing a ghastly dress with wide pockets and chunky buttons. There was a sealed envelope lying in front of her, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
“Welcome to my non-place. You’re alone, niña?”
“Not for very long,” Ophelia replied, hoping to goodness she was right.
“You’re nervous,” Mother Hildegarde observed, with satisfaction. “Don’t think about breaking your sandglass to shorten this meeting. It’s unbreakable glass from Leadgold, you’ll remain here until all the sand has run through.”
Ophelia decided not to beat around the bush. “Do you know where those who disappeared are?”
“No, but I know why they disappeared.”
Mother Hildegarde’s reply, spoken with her very particular accent, profoundly disappointed Ophelia.
“Well, that doesn’t get us much further. We also know . . . ”
“No,” Mother Hildegarde interrupted her. “You, you know how. Me, I know why.”
All the wood in the room creaked furiously, and a panel on the wall split just behind the architect. Ophelia was too absorbed in their conversation to worry about the caprices of the non-place.
“Why, then, according to you?”
Mother Hildegarde unlinked her fingers to shake them around like puppets. “With the right hand, one rids the court of its greatest agitators. With the left, one makes Mommy Hildegarde carry the can—or, I should say, the sandglass.”
“So it’s a frame job?” Ophelia asked, cautiously.
“Yup. One might even say a coup d’état.”
There was a great crashing noise in the room. For a moment, Ophelia thought Thorn was at last joining her, but it was nothing more than a shelf that had just fallen off the wall.
“You know space like the back of your hand,” she remarked, returning to Mother Hildegarde. “Couldn’t you at least help us to find Archibald and the Mirages? It would be the best way to exonerate yourself.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing with my time, niña? I’ve looked everywhere for him, your Augustine. Alas, I did my job as architect a bit too well, Citaceleste is a real warren. Might as well hunt for a needle in a haystack.”
“I’ve heard that the route to LandmArk has been blocked.”
“Yup. I heard that, too.”
“So it wasn’t your doing?” Ophelia asked, amazed. “Your own family has abandoned you here?”
Barely moved, Mother Hildegarde shrugged her shoulders. “That’s the rule. At the slightest danger, the border controls close the Compass Rose. I promised them that Clairdelune was the safest place in the Pole. I was betrayed by my own sandglasses. That, I must say, I didn’t see coming.”
“But the missing,” insisted Ophelia. “What if someone moved them to LandmArk before the route was closed? If they are all over there, at the end of the world, while we’re looking for them here?”
“That would be hard luck.”
Ophelia almost went over the security cordon. The floorboards had started to buckle under her feet and all the panels in the room roared in unison. The jolting stopped as quickly as it had started. The non-place seemed subject to an exterior pressure that was trying to crush it like a nut.
“You were saying that it was a put-up job against you,” she muttered, massaging her arm in her scarf. “I can’t see which clan would benefit from such a twisted plot. And who would hate you to that extent?”
“Don’t go seeing it as an affair of feelings, niña. Love and hatred have no place in this story.” Mother Hildegarde cut off the end of a cigar, then lit it with a match that highlighted every wrinkle on her face. “It’s more a game of hide-and-seek. A game I’m going to lose, as I haven’t seen the mug of the other player. I’m getting on. You just have to look at this place,” she said, blowing a cloud of smoke around herself. “It’s my very latest creation, and it’s visibly shrinking. I’ve broken too many laws of nature. I won’t be able to hide here much longer. With all these policemen and all these security checks, I’ll get myself arrested the very moment I set foot outside. I’m trapped, kid. It’s now only a matter of hours. The other player will end up finding me, and will want to deliver me to the only master he serves.”
“Which master are you talking about?” Ophelia whispered, gripped.
With her cigar, Mother Hildegarde indicated the security cordon between them. “The one who’s dying to cross this line.”
“The God of the letters?”
“That fellow, my dear, best to avoid crossing his path,” Mother Hildegarde sniggered, by way of a reply. “And yet, that’s what ends up happening to those whose interest in the Books gets a little too keen.”
“The Books?” repeated Ophelia. “Because you, too . . . ”
Mother Hildegarde’s little black eyes lit up like coals and her smile spread waves of wrinkles right across her face. “No, me, I have nothing to do with all that Book malarkey. I’m wanted for a totally different reason, but I can’t tell you about it. Let’s say it’s an affair of the familia. If you want to live a quiet little life, let me give you some good advice: don’t ask questions and nose around as little as possible. Look what happened to Augustine. Look at what will soon happen to Mr. Thorn.”
An icy shiver ran through Ophelia. She looked at Mother Hildegarde, and then at the envelope on the desk, increasingly disturbed. “Why did you make this appointment with us?”
“I told you, niña. I’m old and tired.”
There was an extraordinary creaking of floorboards. This time it really was Thorn who had just appeared in the middle of the room, sandglass in hand. His towering figure knocked into a ceiling beam, and his eyes, squinting due to the change in lighting, searched in all directions before finding Ophelia.
“How long have you been here? Couldn’t you have waited for me?” Baron Melchior, in turn, burst out of nowhere and twirled around like a disorientated spinning top. His whole body jumped when the floor split under his lovely white shoes. “Where are we? Ah, Madam Hildegarde!” he sighed, noticing her behind her desk. “Here you are at last!”
Without moving from her chair, Mother Hildegarde stubbed her cigar out in the ashtray and immediately lit a new one. “Do not go over the line, gentlemen, por favor.”
“Madame Hildegarde has told me some very troubling things,” Ophelia said to them. “You should let her speak.”
“The niña is right, let’s not waste any more time. This,” Mother Hildegarde declared, tapping the sealed envelope on the desk, “is my written confession. I admit absolutely all of my crimes. I used my factory to abduct Mirages, and I ran away as soon as it went wrong.”
“What?” stammered Ophelia. “But . . . ”
“I acted alone from start to finish,” she specified, throwing the envelope to Thorn as if it were a discus. “It’s all written down in there. So I thank you in advance for freeing my foreman, leaving my artisans in peace, and not making trouble for Cunegond.”
Ophelia felt as if she had missed a step. She knew that Mother Hildegarde was capable of playacting to protect her own, but she hadn’t seen that coup de théâtre coming.
“Well, that sorts that out,” Baron Melchior said, drumming his fingers on his belly and looking pleasantly surprised. “Perhaps, madam, you would further oblige us by telling us where the prisoners are?”
Mother Hildegarde took a long drag on her cigar. “They’re fine where they are. Let them stay there.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Ophelia said, gripping Thorn’s arm. It’s not at all what we spoke about.”
Thorn didn’t reply to her. Under the black sleeve of the coat, Ophelia could feel that all his muscles had become tense as springs. He was staring intently at the security cordon separating him from Mother Hildegarde’s desk. In fact, from the moment he had set eyes on it, he had not looked away, as if this cordon were the most fascinating thing in the world. He didn’t even seem to notice that the non-place was shrinking around them, minute by minute, inch by inch, with an appalling rumble of breaking wood.
Thorn finally put the sealed envelope into an inside pocket of his coat. “Madam, you are under arrest. Given the gravity of the deeds and your propensity to run away, you will be placed in a maximum-security prison cell. I will personally see to it that you receive no visitors for as long as the investigation requires.”
Ophelia was dismayed at Thorn’s decision. Mother Hildegarde, on the contrary, seemed highly amused.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so, sonny. And don’t you dare cross that line,” she warned, as Thorn grabbed the security cordon. “You will just hasten the inevitable.” She savored a last drag of cigar before stubbing it out in the ashtray. This time, she didn’t light another one. “I’d like to say a word about all the space I’ve distorted here, these past hundred-and-fifty years. The duplications, the shortenings, the enlargements, and the secure locations will all remain operational. I did some good work, it’s solid stuff. On the other hand, you can kiss goodbye to the interfamilial Compass Rose. The route to LandmArk will never be reopened.”
Baron Melchior’s moustache collapsed. “What? Farewell spices, citrus fruit, coffee, and cocoa?”
Ophelia didn’t like the way this conversation was going, but Madam Hildegarde continued, unperturbed: “The Citaceleste shouldn’t fall from the sky for centuries. Back in the day, I signed a contract with some chaps from Cyclops. They can supply you with one or two bursts of weightlessness, if necessary. As for this non-place,” she said, looking around it with her little black eyes, “it will disappear of its own accord, in a few hours from now. Your sandglasses will make you leave the place much before that.” Mother Hildegarde sniggered, briefly. “I’ve never made anything so shoddy, it was about time I retired.”
All the tendons in Thorn’s hand tightened around the security cordon, as if he were struggling not to go through it. It was with an electrically charged voice that he insisted: “Madam, I ask you to be reasonable and to follow me.”
Mother Hildegarde got up from her chair with difficulty, her joints protesting as loudly as the non-place’s floorboards. “I’m starting to see through your game, sonny. You’re tall, but, believe me, you don’t have the caliber. As for you, niña,” she added, turning her smile on Ophelia, “tell my Gailita that she’s going to have to learn to peel her own oranges.”
With these words, Mother Hildegarde plunged a hand into one of her pockets. This action would have remained banal had her whole arm not followed, as though sucked into a vacuum. Mother Hildegarde’s wrist, elbow, shoulder, entire torso twisted under her dress with a horrifying cracking of bones. The spine snapped in two the moment the head finally entered the pocket, and then the rest of the body contorted, shriveled, dislocated until it was entirely swallowed into the vacuum with a grotesque sucking noise.
All that was left of Mother Hildegarde was a chunky button from her dress, bouncing on the floorboards.
The scene had unfolded with such speed, Ophelia hadn’t even had the reflex to scream. When she realized what she had just witnessed, the room started spinning around her, and this time it wasn’t due to a shrinking of space. Ophelia held on to a chair. A spasm shook her stomach. Never, in all her life, had she been gripped by such a feeling of horror.
Baron Melchior pushed the security cordon with his cane, picked up the dress button, and then looked at Thorn with eyes full of reproach.
“You hounded that lady with your ways, Mr. Treasurer.”
Thorn didn’t respond. With his hand still clutching the security cordon, frozen to the spot, he was staring at where Mother Hildegarde had been standing, a moment earlier.
Ophelia was incapable of saying a word to him, for the simple and good reason that her sandglass had just run out. The half-light of the non-place shattered and a squall of salty wind engulfed her mouth, her hair, and her dress. She found herself back where she’d started. Alone. Cunegond had left and neither Thorn nor Baron Melchior would be able to break their sandglasses before they had run their course.
It was all over. Mother Hildegarde alone possessed the power to locate the missing before midnight, and she’d just turned it against herself. So who on earth was this God, for her to choose this hideous death over him?
Ophelia turned to the airship, floating above some rocks on the beach. Curiosity had drawn a few people around the gangway. Among them, despite the distance, she recognized the fiery head of Fox, who was leaning over Gail. Gail . . . would Ophelia have the heart to pass Mother Hildegarde’s last words on to her?
She didn’t get the chance to consider the matter for long. An invisible force threw her against the wall of the lighthouse, and then dropped her flat on her face. Her elbow sent a shock wave right through her body, but that pain was nothing compared with the panic that gripped her when she stopped breathing.
“This time, your number’s up,” panted a familiar voice against the nape of her neck.