The Book of Beasts (4 page)

Suddenly Em felt an overwhelming desire to sketch.

She turned to a clean page on her pad and began to draw the apparition, smudging the charcoal with the heel of her hand, darkening the helix shape on her picture, trying to ignore the rancid smell of him. The more she focused on the drawing, the clearer the figure became, as if her rendering him on paper was giving him more strength. When she finished capturing him, she drew the landscape behind him as quickly and skilfully as she could. As she worked, the glow around him became stronger while the room was getting darker. Em lined and looped and shaded frantically across the paper.

‘Can you hear me?' she asked, looking up from her drawing for a beat. ‘Who are you?'

Em dropped her charcoal. A dark hole had burst open on the rock face behind the figure in a swirling storm of yellows, blacks and greys. For a fleeting moment, she felt that she had seen all this before.

Now he was inside her head, projecting a deep resolve for something. A task? A quest? No: a warning!

His thoughts were coming to her not as words but as lines of colour, strings of yellows, reds and cobalt blue floating behind her eyes. Em tried desperately to grasp them, to give them shape, but she couldn't. She felt light-headed, her eyes gritty as though they were full of sand.

Then the figure lifted his sceptre towards Em. Without hesitation, she touched it.

She was plunged into a sink-hole that had opened at the side of her bed. The force of it pulled Em knee-deep before she had enough sense to grab the leg of her bed and hang on for dear life. A stack of books, an empty cereal bowl, a tennis racket and a wet towel smacked against her as they disappeared into the swirling vortex. The figure stood over her, the end of the sceptre spinning above her head.

As the bed lurched towards the hole, Em had a sudden flash of the Abbey itself being sucked into the widening gyre and disappearing forever, leaving nothing but the footprint of its foundations. She tried to scream, but the sound came out a choking cough.

Her easel lifted off its stilts and flew at her. Instinctively, she lifted her hand to cover her head, and lost her grip on the leg of the bed.

Flapping her arms did nothing to halt Em's momentum. She plummeted into the abyss. The deeper she fell, the faster she appeared to drop. Yet when Em looked up, she could still see the edge of her bed, the purple duvet, her sketchpad open on the pillow, the moonlight streaming in through her curtains.

Her ears began to pop; her body felt like someone or something was pressing down on her. Instead of darkness now, Em could see Matt lying on the ground, his eyes open, pleading with her to help him. Pink bubbles floated past her eyes. She thought at first that her nose was bleeding, but as she looked at her brother again, she knew the blood was his.

Oh, Matt!

And then, just as quickly, she was back on her bed, her chin pressed to her chest, drooling on her pyjamas.

And the figure was gone.

Em! Em! Are you OK?

Zach charged into Em's room, his blond hair wild, his cricket bat poised above his head.

My hero, Em said to herself, rolling her eyes. She felt weak. The man's presence had taken a lot out of her. ‘You're too late, he's gone.'

Zach looked around in confusion. Em showed him the picture she had drawn. She had caught the man's intense, pleading expression, the colours exploding behind him. He resembled Matt so strongly that it pained her to look at him.

Zach stared at the picture.
A dream?

It wasn't a dream, Zach. Someone is trying to send me a message.

Zach set the bat next to the bedroom door.
Who?

Em sat down shakily on the bed. ‘I don't know,' she signed, ‘yet.'

Auchinmurn Isle
The Middle Ages

Water began to drop in slices, as if the wave was a loaf of bread on the Abbey's kitchen table. Matt realized Jeannie was doing her best to break the wave up, limit its power, before the wall of water collapsed in its fatal entirety.

Draw something.

Digging frantically in his pocket for paper, his eyes stinging from the salt, Matt cursed. His pencil was stuck in the lining and he couldn't grasp it. His fingers were frozen and felt like thumbs. He finally managed to get a grip on the pencil and began to draw – a rubber raft, the kind that he'd seen helicopters dropping into a stormy ocean to rescue stranded tourists or fishermen in trouble.

As soon as he'd drawn the basic outline of the dinghy, Matt felt himself rising off the sand. In an explosion of yellow and orange light, he dropped snugly into the centre of a raft.

It wasn't enough. He kept drawing, shading, sketching, until an inflated dome settled over the raft, sealing itself round the edges with a soft hiss.

Matt was completely cocooned inside his own animation.

He licked the tip of his finger and erased a section of the shaded area on the side of the dome. As he worked, a porthole cut into the real dome and sealed itself with a fizzing zipper of light.

Outside, Matt heard an unearthly roar. The wave was falling.

He drew handles and gripped them tightly. The surging water lifted the dinghy, tossing it far from the beach to land on the hillside. It bounced, tumbling back on itself, out over the lip of the shore to slam into the sea.

Matt's stomach was somersaulting. Scrambling towards the little porthole as the water tipped beneath his feet, pressing his hands to the clear plastic, he hunted frantically for Jeannie.

She was still on the hillside, slumped against a pine tree, tied to the trunk by the strings of her safety vest. She looked to be unconscious and battered, and when he checked through Duncan Fox's opera glasses, still breathing.

Matt fell back on the yellow rubber and closed his eyes. Minutes passed as he steadied his breathing.
You're still alive. Jeannie too.
His relief was acute.

He was beginning to feel a bit seasick when rocks and pebbles began slapping the side of the raft with increasing fury. Wiping the condensation from the small porthole, Matt spotted Carik crouched on the battered shoreline, pulling an arrow from her quiver and taking aim at the raft. Solon was with her, pointing straight at the porthole.

‘Aim for its eye, Carik!' Matt heard him shout.

Carik's arrow sliced through the porthole, just missing Matt's shoulder. He shifted as far from the tiny window as he could, rummaging in his pocket for his drawing.

‘No!' he yelled. ‘Stop!'

Matt's flailing caused the raft to bounce and roll on the water like a struggling mammal. He had a nasty feeling that his yells sounded like an animal's muffled growls.

‘Don't shoot! It's me!'

The drawing must have fallen out when he was being tossed around by the wave, but he needed to destroy it, show Solon and Carik that he was no sea monster. Matt scrambled on to his knees, frantically searching. There it was, caught in the seal between the raft and the dome.

Swoosh
. Another arrow flew through the hole, this time tearing Matt's jeans and grazing his thigh.

‘OW! Stop!'

Matt lunged flat on the bottom of the raft – and dropped the drawing again.

Outside, Matt could see Solon wading into the water, his eyes fierce and flashing; his sword ready to stab the strange yellow beast through its heart. Matt knew he wouldn't be able to avoid Solon's sword. He rolled until the raft flipped over.

Surprised by the sudden movement, Solon jumped back. Carik ducked behind an outcropping of rocks. As Solon reared back to plunge his sword with all his might into the middle of the raft, it burst before his eyes in a blaze of yellow light.

Matt lay gasping on his back on the shoreline, shards of yellow and clumps of sand raining down on him.

Looking stricken, Solon raced over to help him up. Carik slung her quiver over her shoulder and splashed out into the water as well. She seized Matt's arm and shook him.

‘Did the beast swallow you when the wave fell?' she demanded, looking suspiciously out to sea.

Matt felt an odd mix of pleasure and discomfort from Carik's touch.

‘Yes,' he replied, laughing for the first time in ages. ‘I was its lunch.'

London
Present Day

One of the world's most powerful Guardians, second only to Matt and Em's grandfather Renard, Henrietta de Court was an elegant woman with an extensive knowledge of poisons and a passion for exquisite hats. On this particular morning she was wearing a flouncy feathery one that draped over her high forehead.

She had in her possession a polished wooden cane with a carved peryton at its hilt and an explosive secret. She was running late for a meeting with Sir Charles in the Council of Guardian chambers – a confrontation, if she were to be honest, that she'd been putting off for years.

The Council of Guardians had been in existence ever since the formation of the Royal Academy in the 1760s had given English Animare such as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough a legitimate means of support for their imaginative capabilities. The Guardians had constructed their original Council Chamber beneath the Foundling's Hospital in Bloomsbury, where the Academy had held its first show of work by its members. Up until then, Guardians and Animare in England had been only loosely bound to each other, left to live very much on their own wits, and only formally gathering for two important, timeless rituals: the binding of an Animare whose powers had either grown too strong or were out of control, and the lifelong union of an Animare to his or her Guardian. More than two hundred and fifty years later, the Guardians had Councils all over the world. The protection of Animare and their valuable talents had remained strong in all that time.

Until now.

Henrietta tutted. Not only was she late, she needed to make a detour to the rare-book library on the third floor before the meeting. Marching towards the entrance to the Royal Academy at Burlington House, she saw the queue waiting to clear security and made a quick decision. Dangerous times called for dangerous actions. Rules be damned.

A middle-aged couple looking at a map of the London Underground stood in front of her. Henrietta put her hand on the man's shoulder, sensing instantly that he was hungry and annoyed about waiting in yet another queue. She gently pushed a series of images into his mind – scones topped with jam and clotted cream, steaming cups of tea. His wife blinked a couple of times as Henrietta filled her mind with a fog of confusion.

‘The tea shop across the way has such delicious treats,' Henrietta murmured.

The man's expression cleared. ‘I think a cuppa is in order,' he said, pulling his wife towards the door. Henrietta smiled as they hurried quickly out of the courtyard to the street.

Henrietta worked through the rest of the people more quickly, tickling minds with compassion for the woman in the flouncy hat and an overwhelming desire to let her into the building as quickly as possible. One by one, the queue parted and Henrietta glided to the front.

She avoided the busy lift and marched up the wide stairs to the second floor, the tip of her cane tapping the marble steps like a claw. Ignoring the tourists and one or two artists at work in front of paintings, she carried on through the main hall to a smaller gallery and the entrance to the rare-book library. Turning left at the end of the gallery, Henrietta walked into a narrow anteroom where she stopped at the security desk.

A girl with short blond hair sat behind the desk. She stood, quickly skimming the names on her list of scholars expected to use the private reading room that day.

‘We're not open yet, Professor de Court,' she said apologetically, ‘and I don't believe I have your name on our list.'

‘Really, Lucy,' said Henrietta in her most irritable voice, ‘is this necessary?'

Turning a little pink, the receptionist turned to pick up her phone. ‘Let me double-check with Sir Charles,' she said.