بخش 01

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The boy was small, and new to the orphanage, which meant he had the worst bed in the dormitory, the most uneven, the saggiest, the strangest-smelling; it was little more than a cot, jammed into an alcove at the back of the room. And when the scream came—a scream unlike any the boy had ever heard, the way it seemed to reach into his chest and crush his heart—he was the last of the frightened, shrieking children out the door.

At the bottom of the stairs, the mob of children encountered a dense fog and turned right, stampeding down the hall. The boy was about to follow when two figures emerged from the mist, close on the heels of the children. They were black-garbed, with burning yellow eyes, and held long, jagged swords and stank of rot.

The boy waited till they passed, then fled in the other direction.

He ran blindly, with fear thick in his throat, knowing only that he had to get away, to hide. Then, somehow, he was in the director’s office, and there were voices in the hall. He dove beneath a desk, tucking his legs up close.

The door of the office banged open; a light snapped on. A pair of green slippers backed into view, and he heard the orphanage director, a dull bully of a man, begging:

“Please—please, don’t hurt me—”

A second man spoke, his voice strangely cold and lilting. “Now, why would I do a thing like that? It’s three children I came for.”

“So take them! Take three! Take ten! Just don’t hurt me!”

The other man stepped closer, the floor groaning under his weight.

“Well, that is generous. Only it’s three very special children I’m after. A brother and two sisters. They go by the lovely names of Kate, Michael, and Emma.”

“But they’re not … they’re not here anymore. We sent them away! More than a year ago—”

There was a strangled gurgle, and the boy watched as the slippered feet rose, thrashing, into the air. The other man’s voice was calm, without a hint of strain.

“And where did you send them? Where do I find them?”

The boy pressed his hands to his ears, but he could still hear the choking, still hear the man’s lilting, murderous voice. “Where are the children …?”

CHAPTER ONE

THE LETTER IN THE TREE

Kate finished writing the letter, sealed it in an envelope, then walked over and dropped it into the hollow of an old tree.

He’ll come, she told herself.

She’d written to him about her dream, the one that had yanked her out of sleep every night that week. Again and again, she’d lain there in the dark, covered in cold sweat and waiting for her heart to slow, relieved that Emma, lying beside her, hadn’t woken, relieved that it had only been a dream.

Except it wasn’t a dream; she knew that.

He’ll come, Kate repeated. When he reads it, he’ll come.

The day was hot and humid, and Kate wore a lightweight summer dress and a pair of patched leather sandals. Her hair was pulled back and cinched with a rubber band, though a few loose strands stuck to her face and neck. She was fifteen and taller than she’d been a year ago. In other respects, her appearance hadn’t changed. With her dark blond hair and hazel eyes, she still struck all who saw her as a remarkably pretty girl. But a person did not have to look closely to see the furrow of worry that was etched into her brow, or the tension that lived in her arms and shoulders, or the way her fingernails were bitten to the quick.

In that respect, truly, nothing had changed.

Kate had not moved from beside the tree, but stood there, absently fingering the gold locket that hung from her neck.

More than ten years earlier, Kate and her younger brother and sister had been sent away from their parents. They had grown up in a series of orphanages, a few that were nice and clean, run by kind men and women, but most of them not so nice, and the adults who ran them not so kind. The children had not been told why their parents had sent them away, or when they were coming back. But that their parents would eventually return, that they would all once more be a family, the children had never doubted.

It had been Kate’s duty to look after her brother and sister. She had made that promise the night her mother had come into her room that Christmas Eve so long ago. She could picture it still: her mother leaning over her, fastening the golden locket around her small neck, as Kate promised that she would protect Michael and Emma and keep them safe.

And year after year, in orphanage after orphanage, even when they had faced dangers and enemies they could never have imagined, Kate had been true to her word.

But if Dr. Pym didn’t come, how would she protect them now?

But he will come, she told herself. He hasn’t abandoned us.

If that’s so, said a voice in her head, why did he send you here?

And, unable to help herself, Kate turned and looked down the hill. There, visible through the trees, were the crumbling brick walls and turrets of the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans.

In her defense, it was only when Kate was frustrated or tired that she questioned Dr. Pym’s decision to send her and Michael and Emma back to Baltimore. She knew he hadn’t really abandoned them. But the fact remained: of all the orphanages the children had lived in over the years—one of which had been next to a sewage treatment plant; another had made groaning noises and seemed to be always catching on fire—the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans was the worst. The rooms were freezing in the winter, boiling in the summer; the water was brown and chunky; the floors squished and oozed; the ceilings leaked; it was home to warring gangs of feral cats.…

And as if that weren’t enough, there was Miss Crumley, the lumpy-bodied, Kate-and-her-brother-and-sister-hating orphanage director. Miss Crumley had thought she’d gotten rid of the children for good last Christmas, and she had been less than pleased to have them turn up on her doorstep a week later, bearing a note from Dr. Pym saying that the orphanage at Cambridge Falls had been closed due to “an infestation of turtles,” and would Miss Crumley mind watching the children till the problem was resolved.

Of course Miss Crumley had minded. But when she’d attempted to call Dr. Pym to inform him that under no circumstances could she accept the children and that she was returning them on the next train, she’d found that all the information Dr. Pym had previously given her (phone number for the orphanage, address and directions, testimonials from happy, well-fed children) had disappeared from her files. Nor did the phone company have any record of a number. In fact, no matter how much she dug, Miss Crumley was unable to find any evidence that the town of Cambridge Falls actually existed. In the end, she’d been forced to give in. But she let the children know that they were unwelcome, and she took every opportunity to corner them in the hallways or the cafeteria, firing questions while poking them with her pudgy finger.

“Where exactly is this Cambridge Falls?”—poke—“Why can’t I find it on any maps?”—poke—“Who is this Dr. Pym fellow?”—poke, poke—“Is he even a real doctor?”—poke, poke, poke—“What happened up there? I know something fishy’s going on! Answer me!”—poke, poke, poke, pinch, twist.

Frustrated at having had her hair pulled for the third time in one week, Emma had suggested that they tell Miss Crumley the truth: that Dr. Stanislaus Pym was a wizard, that the reason Miss Crumley couldn’t find Cambridge Falls on a map was that it was part of the magical world and therefore hidden from normal (or in her case, subnormal) humans, that as far as what had happened there, the three of them had discovered an old book bound in green leather that had carried them back through time, that they’d met dwarves and monsters, fought an evil witch, saved an entire town, and that pretty much any way you looked at it, they were heroes. Even Michael.

“Thanks,” Michael had said sarcastically.

“You’re welcome.”

“Anyway, we can’t say that. She’ll think we’re crazy.”

“So what?” Emma had replied. “I’d rather be in a loony bin than this place.”

But in the end, Kate had made them stick to their story. Cambridge Falls was an ordinary sort of place, Dr. Pym was an ordinary sort of man, and nothing the least bit out of the ordinary had happened. “We have to trust Dr. Pym.”

After all, Kate thought, what other choice did they have?

Faint strains of music were drifting up the hill, reminding Kate that today was the day of Miss Crumley’s party, and she looked down through the trees to the large yellow tent that had been erected on the orphanage lawn. For the past two weeks, every child in the orphanage had been working nonstop, weeding, mulching, cleaning windows, trimming hedges, hauling trash, collecting the carcasses of animals that had crawled into the orphanage to die, all for the sake of a party to which they were not even invited.

“And don’t let me catch you peering out the windows at my guests!” Miss Crumley had warned the assembled children at breakfast. “Mr. Hartwell Weeks has no desire to see your grubby little faces pressed against the glass.”

Mr. Hartwell Weeks was the president of the Maryland Historical Society, in whose honor the party was being given. The society ran a weekly bus tour of “historically significant buildings” in the Baltimore area, and as the Home had been an armory in some long-ago war, Miss Crumley was determined to see it added to the list. She could then—Miss Crumley had this on good authority—charge groups of hapless tourists ten dollars a head for the privilege of stomping through the orphanage grounds.

“And if any of you mess this up”—she’d taken particular care to glare at Kate and her brother and sister as she said this—“well, I’m always getting calls from people who need children for dangerous scientific experiments, the sort of thing they don’t want to waste a good dog on; I could easily volunteer a few names!”

The guests were now beginning to arrive, and Kate watched as men in blue blazers and white pants, women in creams and pastels, appeared around the side of the orphanage and hurried toward the shade of the tent. In truth, she was only half watching. Once again, she was thinking of her dream. She could hear the screams, see the yellow-eyed creatures stalking through the fog, hear the man’s voice saying her and her brother’s and sister’s names. Had the events in her dream already happened, or were they about to? How much time did she and her siblings have?

She trusted Dr. Pym; she really did. But she was scared.

“Well, she’s done it again!”

Kate turned to see her brother, Michael, huffing up the slope. He was red-faced and sweating, and his glasses had slipped down to the end of his nose. A tattered canvas bag was slung across his chest, the pouch resting on his hip.

Kate forced a smile.

“Done what again?”

“Gotten in trouble,” Michael said with put-on exasperation. “Miss Crumley caught her trying to steal ice cream meant for the party. I thought she was going to have a heart attack. Miss Crumley, I mean, not Emma.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? You’re not angry?” Michael adjusted his glasses and frowned. “Kate, you know Dr. Pym sent us here to hide. How can we keep a low profile if Emma’s always getting into trouble?”

Kate sighed. She had heard all this before.

“She needs to learn to act more responsibly,” Michael continued. “To use her head. I can’t imagine I was so careless at her age.”

He said this as if he were referring to some distant era in the past.

“Fine,” Kate said. “I’ll talk to her.”

Michael nodded his approval. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve got the perfect quote. Maybe you can slip it in. Just a moment.…” He reached into his bag, and Kate knew without looking that he was taking out The Dwarf Omnibus. Just as she clung to her locket, Michael treasured the small leather-bound book. The night they’d been taken from their parents, their father had tucked it into his son’s blankets, and, over the years, Michael had read and reread the Omnibus dozens of times. Kate knew it was his way of staying close to a father he scarcely remembered. It had also had the effect of giving him a deep appreciation of all things dwarfish. This had come in handy in Cambridge Falls when they had helped a dwarfish king claim his throne. For that service, Michael had been given a silver badge by King Robbie McLaur, and named Royal Guardian of All Dwarfish Traditions and History. More than once, Kate and Emma had come upon him, silver badge pinned to his chest, staring at himself in the mirror and striking somewhat ridiculous poses. Kate had warned Emma not to tease him.

“Honestly,” Emma had said, “it would be too easy.”

“Now, where was it.…” The Omnibus was the size and shape of a church hymnal, its black leather cover worn and scarred. Michael flipped through pages. “Oh, here’s a story about two elf princes who started a war over which one had the shiniest hair. So typical. If I was an elf, I think I’d die from embarrassment.”

Michael had a very low opinion of elves.

“Here we go! It’s a quote from King Killin Killick—that’s his real name, K-I-L-L-I-N, not a nickname because he did a lot of killing, though he did that too. So he says, ‘A great leader lives not in his heart, but in his head.’ ” Michael snapped the book shut and smiled. “Head, not heart. That’s the key. That’s what she needs to learn. Yes, sir.”

His argument made, Michael settled his glasses once more upon his nose and waited for his sister to respond.

Michael was nearly a year older than Emma. Nearly, but not quite, which meant that for a few weeks every year, the two of them were technically the same age. And every year, it drove Michael a little crazy. Being the middle child, he clung to his sliver of superiority. It didn’t help matters that he and Emma were frequently mistaken for twins. They had the same chestnut hair, the same dark eyes; they were both small and scrawny-limbed. Kate knew that Michael lived in fear of Emma getting a growth spurt before he did. Indeed, for a while, she’d noticed Michael trying to hold himself as straight and rigid as possible, as if hoping to give at least the appearance of greater height. But Emma had kept asking if he had to go to the bathroom, and finally he’d stopped.

In five days, he would be thirteen. Kate knew he couldn’t wait. For that matter, neither could she.

“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

He nodded, satisfied. “So what were you writing to Dr. Pym? I saw you put the letter in the tree.”

This was how they communicated with the wizard. Letters placed in the hollow of the tree would reach him immediately. Or so the children had been given to believe. As they had not heard from the wizard since arriving in Baltimore, Kate sometimes wondered if all the notes she’d dropped in the tree were sitting there, unread.

Kate shrugged. “Just asking how much longer we’ll be here.”

“It’s been almost eight months.”

“I know.”

“Seven months and twenty-three days, to be precise.”

Seven months and twenty-three days, Kate thought. And suddenly she remembered waking up on Christmas morning, having just returned to the present, and being told that Dr. Pym and Gabriel had left in the night, that Cambridge Falls was no longer safe, that the three of them were being sent back to Baltimore.

On some level, Kate hadn’t been surprised. The night before, alone on the witch’s boat, she had learned enough to know that their adventure was far from over. She’d tried to explain the situation to Michael and Emma, gathering them in the mansion library, and reminding them how the Atlas, the emerald-green book that let them move through time, was only one of three legendary Books called the Books of Beginning.

“It turns out there’s a prophecy. Three children are supposed to find the Books and bring them together. Everyone thinks we’re the children. They’ll be looking for us.”

“Who will?” Emma had demanded, still upset that Gabriel, her friend, had left without telling her. “The stupid witch is dead! Her stupid boat went over the waterfall!”

That was when Kate had told them about the Countess escaping from the boat at the last moment, how she’d lain in wait for fifteen years and had attacked Kate when they’d returned to the present, how Kate had used the Atlas to take the witch deep into the past and abandon her.

“So I was right,” Emma had said. “She’s dead. Or as good as.”

“Yes. But it’s not her we have to worry about.”

And Kate had told them about the Countess’s master, the Dire Magnus. She’d described the violin that had heralded his arrival, how he’d taken over the Countess’s body, how even Dr. Pym had seemed in awe of his power. The Dire Magnus needed them, she’d explained, for only through the three of them could he find the Books.

Snow had been falling past the library windows, the world outside silent and white. Kate had had to force herself to go on.

“There’s one more thing. For the past ten years, all this time we’ve been going from orphanage to orphanage, the Dire Magnus has been holding Mom and Dad prisoner. It’s up to us to free them. But for that, we’ll need the Books.”

The next day, the children had packed up their few possessions, Kate stuffing the Atlas deep inside her bag, and returned to Baltimore.

Now, standing there on the hillside, with the late-summer air warm and heavy against her skin, Kate thought of the Atlas. By the end of their adventure in Cambridge Falls, she had learned to command its magic at will. She knew she could make it carry her and Michael and Emma through time and space.

If Dr. Pym doesn’t come, she told herself, I can still save them.

“Hey, I almost forgot. Did you hear what happened at St. Anselm’s?”

Kate whipped her head around. “What?”

“I heard some kids talking. Some sort of gang or something broke in last night. They’re saying Mr. Swattley—remember him?—they’re saying he was murdered. Hey—what’s wrong?”

Kate was trembling. St. Anselm’s was the orphanage the three of them had lived at before first coming to Baltimore. It was also the orphanage from her dream.

“Michael …” She tried to keep her voice steady. “… I can depend on you, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I weren’t here, I could depend on you to look after Emma. To be patient with her. To be a leader.”

“Kate—”

“Just promise me. Please.”

There was a long pause, then he said, “Of course.”

And she opened her mouth to tell him about her dream, about all her dreams, not just the one she’d been having that week, but she saw that Michael was looking past her, away through the trees. She followed his gaze.

All summer long, it had scarcely rained, day after cloudless day. But there, massed along the horizon, was a range of thick black clouds. They were moving; they rolled toward the children, growing larger and darker with each passing second. It seemed to Kate that a great dark curtain was being drawn across the sky.

She said, “We need to find Emma.” Michael and Kate came sprinting down out of the trees and onto the asphalt of the orphanage playground. To their left, beneath the yellow tent and a clear blue sky, Miss Crumley’s party continued undisturbed. To the children’s right, the black clouds were closing in fast.

Michael stopped.

“What’re you doing?” Kate demanded. “We have to—”

“Emma! She’s locked in Miss Crumley’s office! For stealing the ice cream! We need the keys!”

Kate stared at him, her mind working feverishly. Their enemies had found them. She had no doubt about that. Only the Atlas could save them now. But it was hidden—

“Can you get them? If I get the Atlas, can you get the keys?”

Michael seemed frozen, his assurance of moments before now gone.

“Michael!”

“Y-yes,” he stammered. “I can get them!”

“Then meet me at her office! Hurry!”

And Kate turned and ran for the orphanage.

When she crashed through the doors, Kate saw children clustered at the windows, oohing in amazement as the clouds rolled toward them. She didn’t bother telling them to get back. Once she and her brother and sister were gone, the other children would be safe. Kate raced along the hall to the basement stairs, leaping down the steps three at a time. On returning to the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans, the first thing Kate had done was to wrap the Atlas in two heavy-duty plastic bags and, with Michael and Emma standing lookout, sneak down to the basement. Using a spoon from the cafeteria, she had pried out three loose bricks from the wall behind the furnace and placed the Atlas inside.

The basement was empty, and Kate retrieved the scarred spoon from under the furnace and began to pry free the bricks. At first, Kate had come down regularly, in the middle of the night, to check that the Atlas hadn’t been disturbed. But she had not visited the basement in months. The truth was, no matter where she was, Kate could feel the presence of the Atlas. She was bound to the book; it was a part of her now. And as she dropped the last brick onto the floor and drew out the heavy, plastic-wrapped package, her hands trembled with excitement.

There were perhaps forty men and women gathered beneath the tent, the sun shining through the yellow canvas giving them a distinctly malarial hue. The men wore blue blazers with gold buttons and had identical red turtles sewn onto their breast pockets. The women favored long, shapeless sundresses and broad-brimmed hats, all of which were in various states of floral explosion. There was a table set with plates of gelatinous yellow cake and bowls of liquefied ice cream. Another table offered pitchers of iced tea and lemonade. A string quartet, sweating through their tuxedos, played languidly in the corner.

Michael immediately spotted Miss Crumley through the crowd. The orphanage director was wearing a dress the color of egg yolk and talking to a woman with the longest, thinnest neck Michael had ever seen—her head looked as if it were balanced atop a noodle—and a short, doughy sort of man. He had doughy hands, doughy cheeks; even the rolls of skin at the back of his neck had a white puffiness, as if he were only wanting another half hour in the oven and he would be cooked and ready to serve. The man was talking loudly and waving his fork, and from the way Miss Crumley hung on his every word, Michael guessed that this must be Mr. Hartwell Weeks, president of the historical society, in the doughy flesh.

“Reenactments!” he announced, twirling his fork. “Reenactments, my dear Miss Crummy—”

“Crumley,” the orphanage head corrected.

“—that’s how you sell history to the masses! You want to join the bus tour, you need a high-class reenactment!”

“Yes, quite,” cooed the noodle-necked woman as her head swayed this way and that.

“Re-what?” Miss Crumley leaned in. “I don’t understand.”

Michael came up behind the group, nervously gripping and regripping the strap of his bag. How was he supposed to get her to give him the keys to her office? Should he say there’d been a fire? Or a flood? He had to think of something fast.

“Reenactments! Pick a historical event and act it out! Put on a bit of a show! Now, your place here”—the man flicked his fork in the direction of the orphanage, accidentally tossing a bit of cake onto the hat of a nearby woman—“why is it historically significant? Hmm? What’s it got going?”

“Well, it was built in 1845—”

“Boring! I’m asleep already!”

“Then it served as an armory during the Civil War—”

“Better, better. Keep going, Crummy! This is the stuff!”

“And it was attacked by Confederate forces!”

“Ha! Jackpot!”

“Oh yes!” Michael could see Miss Crumley warming to her subject, a mustache of sweat glistening on her upper lip. “And can you believe it, those beasts shot cannonballs at the north tower! That’s where I keep my office! Why, just imagine if I had been there!”

She did not explain how this might have been possible.

Michael felt a cool breeze brush the back of his neck. The storm was coming. By now Kate would have the Atlas. He was running out of time.…

“Perfect!” Mr. Hartwell Weeks squatted down, his doughy palms held out before him. “I see it now! The battle for the orphanage! The heartless rebel forces! The roar of cannon fire! Boom! Boom! Dead orphans litter the ground like confetti! You stage it, Crummy—”

“Crumley, please. And it wasn’t an orphanage then—”

“Don’t let details ruin a good show! You stage the battle and we’ll put you on the tour! I’ve got the Confederate uniforms. I can get you a deal on the cannons. You’d only have to provide the dead orphans!”

“Yes, quite,” clucked Noodle Neck.

“Not real dead orphans, of course. We’re not savages.”

“Miss Crumley,” Michael said.

The orphanage director didn’t hear him. Her mind was lost amid visions of mock carnage and the busloads of dollars that would soon be arriving at her door.

“Mr. Weeks”—she rubbed her hands together greedily—“doesn’t ten dollars a visitor seem a bit cheap? Isn’t twelve more appropriate—”

“Twelve? Ha!” The doughy man prodded her stomach with his fork, forcing out a giggle. “You’re a hungry one, aren’t you? All right then—”

“Miss Crumley!”

Conversation around them stopped. Michael saw Miss Crumley stiffen. The spaghetti-necked woman peered down at him, the curve of her neck forming an upside-down U.

“Crummy,” drawled Mr. Hartwell Weeks, “I think you’ve got a dead-orphan volunteer.”

Miss Crumley turned slowly about. Her smile had remained frozen, but her eyes betrayed the fury that was coursing through her. She said, in an only moderately strangled voice, “Yes, my dear?”

“I need the keys to your office,” Michael said, nervously adjusting his glasses. “Something … very bad is about to happen.”

In the end, that was the best he could think of.

“Did you hear?” Mr. Weeks bellowed to the party. “Something very bad! Like what, boy? You think Johnny Reb is going to attack again? By gum, I wish he would! I’d show those rebel dogs a thing or two! Ha! Like that!” He jabbed his fork at an ancient man who was supporting himself on a pair of canes, shouting, “Go back to Dixie!” as the old man tried to hobble away.

Miss Crumley brought her face down to Michael’s, lowering her voice so that only he could hear.

“Listen to me, you little fiend, you turn around right this instant and go back inside. You hear me?”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“I said turn around!” She was hissing, showering Michael with spittle. “Unless you want the same treatment as your hoodlum of a sister—”

Suddenly, a woman’s hat blew off her head and cartwheeled across the lawn. Then a pile of napkins, stacked neatly on a table, blew away, first one by one, then in twos and threes, and, finally, in a great fluttering mass, like a flock of birds taking flight.

“I say, Crummy”—Mr. Hartwell Weeks was pointing with one doughy finger—“those are some nasty-looking clouds.”

And the entire party turned to look just as the tide of black clouds blotted out the sun. It was as if night had fallen in an instant. There was a collective gasp, and Michael’s heart sank as he saw the clouds swelling higher and higher, like the gathering of some great dark wave. Then he smelled the tang of ozone and looked to see a gray wall of rain sweeping toward them from across the playground, swallowing up everything in its path, and Mr. Hartwell Weeks, scourge of the Confederate army, shrieked, “Run for your lives!” and the party exploded into chaos. Rain pummeled the tent. Michael was knocked to the ground, and, as he struggled to rise, he could hear the orphanage director screaming, “It’s just a shower! It will blow over! I have gelato!” But the guests were running across a swampy lawn already littered with dozens of trampled sun hats, and no one paid her any mind.

Michael had just gotten to his feet when he was seized by the arm and wrenched around.

“This is all your fault!” Miss Crumley’s hair was a sodden wreck. Lines of green mascara streamed down her cheeks. Her guests were gone. Even the musicians had run away, clutching their instruments. “I don’t know how, but I know this is your fault!”

It occurred to Michael that for once the woman was absolutely correct. But before either could say another word, a gust of wind whipped across the lawn, and the tent, which had broken free of its anchors, rose into the air like a giant yellow sail. In a panic, Miss Crumley released Michael and grabbed at one of the loose ropes. She was lifted off her feet and carried along, with a hard bounce here and there, till she finally let go and dropped, face-first, into a puddle.

Michael immediately ran to her side.

“Help me up!” the woman commanded. She was covered in mud, she’d lost both shoes, and her dress was ripped. “Help me up, you villain!”

“I’m sorry about this,” Michael said. “Honestly.” And he reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys.

Miss Crumley’s cries of “Thief!” followed him to the door of the orphanage.

Inside, it was pandemonium. Children ran about in the darkness, shrieking with delight at the wildness of the weather.

“Michael!” Kate appeared out of the crowd, breathless, her eyes wide with alarm; she was holding the Atlas tight against her chest, not caring who saw it.

“Did you get—”

“Yes!”

And it was then, as Michael held up the ring of keys, that they heard the first scream. It came from outside, still some distance away; but it cut through the rain and the wind and froze every child in the hall. Michael looked at his sister; they both knew what had made the sound: a morum cadi—a Screecher—one of the reeking, half-alive monsters they had fought in Cambridge Falls. And now, as the cry tore through the orphanage, Michael felt the familiar suffocating panic.

It’s really happening, he thought. They’ve found us.

The scream died away. The children in the hall came back to life; but the fear was on them, and they clung to one another and cried. Kate snatched the keys from Michael’s hand and took off running down the hall, shouting for him to follow.

Miss Crumley’s office was in the north tower, atop a steep corkscrew of stairs. Michael and Kate raced upward in darkness. Soon, they could hear Emma above them, hammering at the office door, crying, “Let me out! Let me out! Someone help!”

“Emma!” Kate shouted. “It’s us! We’re here!”

She found the keyhole by touch, and a moment later, the door was open and Emma, the youngest of the family, their little sister, was in her arms.

“You’re okay?” Kate asked. “You’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine! But did you hear the scream?”

“I know.” And Kate stepped into the office, motioning for Michael to follow her and shut the door.

Miss Crumley’s office was a small, round room with four windows spread out evenly from the door. There was a desk, two chairs, a steel filing cabinet, and, propped against the wall, a chipped wooden wardrobe.

“Kate!”

Emma was at one of the windows; Michael and Kate rushed over as lightning shuddered across the sky. Far below them, three figures had emerged from the woods and were moving across the asphalt yard toward the orphanage. The children recognized the Screechers’ jerky gait. All three of the creatures held naked swords.

Kate quickly told them her plan. She would have the Atlas take them to Cambridge Falls. If they left, the other children at the orphanage would be safe.

“Hurry,” Kate said. “Take—”

Just then the window shattered, and a half-decayed gray-green hand reached in and seized Kate by the arm. Emma screamed and grabbed Kate’s other arm, the one that was holding the Atlas. Through the broken window, Michael could see the black shape of the Screecher as it clung to the wall of the tower.

“Michael!” Emma shouted. “Help me!”

Michael jumped forward, hugged Kate around the waist, and began pulling her away from the window. Gusts of rain blew into the office. For a moment, Michael thought they were gaining ground; then he looked and saw that the creature was still gripping Kate’s arm and had actually begun to crawl into the room.

“Stop!” Kate said. “You’re just pulling it in! Let me go!”

“What?” Michael’s face was still buried in her side. “No! You—”

“Let go! I know what I’m doing! Now! Do it!”

There was such command in her voice that Michael and Emma both released her. The Screecher had half its body inside the room, its fingers digging into the flesh of Kate’s forearm. A deep hiss gurgled from its throat. Michael saw his sister work several fingers between the pages of the Atlas, and he realized what she was going to do.

Kate looked at Michael and their eyes met.

“Remember,” she said, “whatever happens, take care of Emma.”

“But—”

“Remember your promise.”

And then she and the creature both vanished.

“Kate!” Emma cried. “Where’d she go?”

“She … she took it into the past,” Michael gasped. “Like she did with the Countess. She took it into the past to get rid of it.”

His heart was hammering in his chest. He placed a hand on the desk to steady himself.

“So why didn’t she come back?” Emma’s face was wet, whether from rain, or tears, or both, Michael didn’t know. “She should’ve come back right away!”

Emma was right. If the Atlas had worked as it should have, and Kate had left the Screecher in the past, then she should’ve returned to the exact moment she’d left. So where was she?

The cry of a Screecher echoed up the tower, and they heard boots pounding on the stairs, growing closer and louder. The children backed away from the door.

Michael heard Emma shout his name.

What was he supposed to do? What could he do?

Then the door flew open, revealing the dark, ragged form of a Screecher, and at that same moment, a pair of hands seized the children from behind.

“And here we are.”

They stepped out into a narrow alley. Crumbling stone walls bounded them on either side and ran down to an empty square. Behind them, the alley ended in a high stone wall, in the middle of which was the wooden door they’d come through. Raising his eyes above the wall, Michael could see a grove of olive trees climbing up the hill. The sky was a perfect deep blue, and the air was hot and dry and silent. Michael glanced at his sister; Emma was taking in their new surroundings and appeared unhurt. That, at least, was something.

Michael turned to the man beside them.

He was tall and thin, with unruly white hair, a rather shabby tweed suit, and a dark green tie that looked as if it had recently escaped a fire. The stem of an old pipe poked from the pocket of his jacket, and he wore a pair of bent and patched tortoiseshell glasses. He was exactly as Michael remembered.

Straightening his own glasses, Michael coughed and put out his hand.

“Thank you, sir. You saved our lives.”

Dr. Stanislaus Pym took the boy’s hand and shook it.

“Of course,” said the wizard. “You’re most welcome.”

As the Screecher had crashed through the door of Miss Crumley’s office, Michael had felt a hand on his shoulder and had whipped his head around, thinking that another of the morum cadi had snuck up behind them and the end had come. But the hand on his shoulder, like the hand on Emma’s shoulder, had not belonged to a Screecher. To his complete surprise, Michael had seen the wizard, Stanislaus Pym, leaning toward them out of the wardrobe, and before Michael could utter a word, he and his sister had been yanked inside and the door had slammed shut. Michael had found himself in darkness, crushed between the side of the wardrobe and the wizard’s elbow. His nostrils had been filled with the smell of Dr. Pym’s tobacco and the moist, cabbagey odor of Miss Crumley’s shoes. Out in the office, the Screecher was heard tossing aside chairs as it leapt toward them; then Dr. Pym had murmured, “One more turn,” there had been a sharp click, and just as Michael had been certain that a sword was going to come splintering through the wardrobe wall, Dr. Pym had pushed open the door and both the Screecher and Miss Crumley’s office had vanished, replaced by stone walls and blue sky and silence.

“Would you two stop shaking hands?!” Emma shouted. “What’s wrong with you?”

Michael released the wizard’s hand. “I was just being polite.”

“Dr. Pym!” Emma’s voice was high and desperate. “You have to go back! You have to find Kate! She—”

“Used the Atlas. I know. Tell me exactly what happened.”

As quickly as they could, Michael and Emma told him about the storm, about being trapped in the tower, how the Screecher had grabbed Kate, how Kate and the creature had both disappeared.…

“She must’ve tried to take it into the past,” Michael said, and he told the wizard—who, due to his abrupt departure from Cambridge Falls eight months earlier, was still in the dark regarding certain events—how the Countess had reappeared on Christmas Eve and how Kate had discovered that she could use the Atlas without a photograph, how she had taken the witch deep into the past and abandoned her.

“I’m sure she did the same thing with the Screecher,” Michael said. “Only she didn’t come back.”

“So you gotta find her!” Emma cried. “Hurry!”

“Yes, of course,” said the wizard. “Now, if you go straight ahead, on the other side of the square is a café. Wait for me there.”

“But, Dr. Pym,” Michael had to ask, “where are we?”

“Italy,” came the answer.

And with that, the wizard turned and stepped toward the wooden door through which they had come. Michael was confused. Where was Miss Crumley’s wardrobe? How were they suddenly in Italy? Where was Dr. Pym going? Then he saw the wizard take an ornate gold key from his pocket, slide it into the lock, step across to the other side of the wall, and shut the door behind him. There was the same distinct click as before. Curious, Michael walked over, listened for a moment, then opened the door.

A goat stared back at him.

“He’ll find her.” Emma hadn’t moved, but she was hugging herself as if she might fall apart at any moment. “Dr. Pym will find her.”

Michael said nothing.

Together, they walked silently down the alley. When they got to the square, Michael saw they were on the side of a hill and that the town was of no size whatsoever. A church loomed on their left. A white dog loped past. Across the square stood the café. It had a red awning and two empty tables out front.

A curtain of colored beads hung over the door, and the children passed through them into a well-lit, tile-floored room, with rough rock walls like the inside of a cave. The café was half filled with older men and women, and there was a woman with gray-black hair pulled into a bun who wore a faded green dress under a white apron. She was shorter than either Michael or Emma, and she moved about like a gnat, buzzing here and there, depositing bottles of wine and water, picking up dishes. Spotting the children, she herded them to a table, speaking in rapid Italian, and, without being asked, brought over two glasses and a bottle of fizzy lemonade.

“It’ll be okay,” Michael said. “It’s Kate, remember?”

Emma didn’t respond. Her face was tense with worry. But she reached out and took hold of Michael’s hand.

The children sat there for nearly an hour, their lemonade bubbling softly before them. Groups of men and women drifted into the café. The men were lean and hard-faced and wore ancient dark suits, white shirts, and old black hats; they looked like men who’d been outside their entire lives. The women were dark-haired and dark-eyed and had hands worn thick by work. The tiny woman in the apron bullied them all. Pushing them into chairs. Bringing them food and wine they hadn’t ordered. And Michael could see that the men and women loved it; the more the tiny woman bullied, the more laughter and conversation filled the restaurant.

The place was a good place, Michael thought. A refuge. And he understood why the wizard had sent them here.

Emma leapt to her feet, and Michael turned to see Dr. Pym stepping through the curtain of beads at the door.

Michael felt his heart twist upon itself. The wizard was alone.

Dr. Pym lowered himself into a chair.

“Well, you’ll be relieved to know that the morum cadi have quit the orphanage, and neither your Miss Crumley nor the other children were harmed.”

“And?” Emma cried. “Where’s Kate? You said you’d find her!”

Conversation around them stopped; the old men and women looked over.

The wizard sighed. “I did not find her. I am sorry.”

Michael gripped the wooden leg of the table and took several slow, deep breaths.

“So maybe you didn’t look hard enough!” Emma’s voice was now the only sound in the restaurant. “Maybe she’s not at the orphanage! You gotta keep looking! We’ll go with you! Come on!”

She began to pull the wizard out of his chair.

“Emma.” The old man’s voice was quiet and calm. “Katherine has not returned to the present. Not to Baltimore or anywhere else—”

“You don’t know that—”

“Yes, I do. Now please sit down. You’re attracting attention.”

Emma grudgingly released his arm and threw herself into her chair. The talk at the other tables resumed. The tiny woman buzzed over, set a glass of red wine before the wizard, and darted away.

“We must look at the situation logically.” Dr. Pym kept his voice low. “Let us say that Katherine did indeed use the Atlas to travel into the past and dispose of that foul creature. Why did she not return immediately? Perhaps something or someone prevented her—”

Emma struck the table with her fist. “So we’ve gotta help her! That’s what I’m saying! We’ve gotta do something!”

“She’s right,” Michael said. “We need to come up with a plan! We—”

“But the point you must both understand”—the wizard leaned forward—“is that if your sister is trapped in the past, then there is absolutely nothing that you or I or anyone else can do about it. She is beyond our reach. That is a fact, and you must accept it.”

Michael and Emma opened their mouths to argue, but nothing came out. The hard finality of the wizard’s statement, the cold, precise way it was delivered, had robbed them of speech.

“However,” and with this Dr. Pym reassumed his normal, grandfatherly air, “I do not think that is what happened. Your sister is one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever met—which, considering how long I have been alive, is saying quite a bit. No matter the obstacles, if there is a way for her to return to you, she will find it.”

“So …” Emma’s eyes were welling with tears, and she’d clasped her hands to keep them from shaking. “… Why didn’t she?”

The wizard smiled. “My dear, who’s to say she hasn’t?”

“You! You just said—”

“Aha!” Michael exclaimed.

Both Dr. Pym and Emma looked at him.

“You know what I’m going to say?” the wizard asked.

“Well … not exactly,” Michael admitted. “But it just felt like … Sorry.”

“Allow me to explain about the nature of time.” The old man dipped his finger into his wineglass and dabbed a string of watery red spots across the tabletop. “You must not imagine that time is a road unspooling before us. Rather, all time—past, present, and future—already exists. Say we are here.” He pointed to a dot in the middle of the line. “And your sister was here in the past; then she chose to skip over us and land here, in the future.” He brought his finger down further along the line. “In that case, we just have to go forward, and we will eventually meet her.”

“You mean,” Michael said, “tomorrow, she’ll just suddenly be there?”

“Tomorrow, the next day, the week after that—there’s no telling when.”

“But why would she do that?” Emma demanded. “Why wouldn’t she just come back right away?”

The old man shrugged. “Who knows? We will have to ask her when we see her. Till then, we must continue with our own work. It is what she would want.”

Michael saw Emma nodding. The wizard had held out a thread of hope, and she had grasped it with both hands. For his part, Michael tried hard to make himself believe that Kate was waiting somewhere in their future; he wanted to believe it, desperately. But what if Dr. Pym was wrong? What if they never saw Kate again? He saw life stretching ahead of them, a life without their sister, and the road was dark.

He took a sip of his lemonade, then set down the glass. The drink had gone flat.

Dr. Pym checked the time and suggested they order dinner. He spoke to the small woman—the signora, he called her—in Italian while Emma looked about the restaurant saying, “Get some a’ that! And what that bald guy’s got over there!”

It was amazing, Michael thought, the change that had come over her. Emma had embraced the wizard’s theory wholeheartedly. She’d decided that Kate had jumped into the future, and they had only to keep pressing forward and they would join her. Any other possibility had been dismissed from her mind.

Nice to be young, Michael thought, and gave a weary sigh.

As the food began to arrive—pasta with sausage and peas, a salad of red and yellow tomatoes covered with hunks of soft white cheese and green strips of basil, a pizza heavy with garlic and onions and tiny fish that Emma picked off and put on her brother’s plate—Michael did his best to make a show of eating, but each bite was an effort.

“Now,” the wizard said, rolling up his pizza like a taco, “I want to apologize that I was never able to answer your letters. Be assured, I did receive them. However, we are together now, and I want to hear every detail of your lives since Christmas, everything you didn’t tell me in your letters. I am all ears.”

The children protested that he should answer their questions first, but the wizard insisted, and they finally gave in, telling him about the awfulness of the Edgar Allan Poe Home, about the awfulness of Miss Crumley, about the feral cat population that had dwindled all summer and the mystery stew the cook kept serving, about the week in July when the showers had broken and how people a block away had complained about the smell; one story led to another, and when they were finished, Michael found that his neck and shoulders were less tense and that he’d eaten two helpings of pasta and that things did not seem quite so black as before and he realized that this had been the wizard’s plan all along.

“How perfectly terrible,” Dr. Pym said. “Now, I’m guessing you must have a few questions for me.”

“Yeah,” Emma said through a mouthful of sausage. “Where’ve you been all this time? Where’s Gabriel? Why’d you leave all of a sudden on Christmas? Who’s this stupid Dire Magnus guy? And where’s he keeping our parents?”

“And what’re we doing here?” Michael added.

“My goodness, what a deluge. But I will answer the last question first. Oh dear.” The wizard had been biting into a thickly ribbed pastry, and a large gob of cream had landed on his tie. He looked about for his napkin—it was right in front of him—and, not seeing it, wiped the cream off with his finger, and then plopped it in his mouth. “So, we are here, in the charming village of Castel del Monte, to see a man. As it happens, I was on my way here when I received a letter from your sister—”

“The one she sent today!” Michael said. “What did it say?”

“I will get to that later. But I immediately diverted my course to Baltimore and then, once I had you in hand, it just seemed easier to bring you along. As to Gabriel’s whereabouts, he is on a mission for me, the same mission, one might say, that drew the two of us away so abruptly last Christmas. I prefer not to go into more detail at the moment.”

“What a surprise,” Emma said. “Hey, can we get another of those cream donut things? ’Cause you kinda hogged that one.”

Before Dr. Pym could ask, the signora placed one in front of Emma.

“What about our parents?” Michael said. “Have you found out where they’re being held?”

“No,” the wizard said. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”

The mood once again became somber. None of them spoke. The silence was finally broken when a bell began tolling in the square. Dr. Pym clapped his hands.

“And that is our cue. Your other questions will have to keep.”

He summoned over the small signora and spoke to her in Italian. Michael took a moment to look through his bag. There was The Dwarf Omnibus, King Robbie’s medal proclaiming him Royal Guardian of All Dwarfish Traditions and History, his journal, pens and pencils, a pocketknife, a compass, a camera, and gum. He’d always made a point of keeping his bag fully packed for just such an emergency, and he felt a warm throb of satisfaction at seeing everything in its place.

Suddenly, there was a shattering crash, and Michael looked up and saw that the woman had dropped a large dish, spraying noodles and tomato sauce all over the tile floor. She gestured to Michael and Emma and let out a burst of Italian. She seemed to be imploring the wizard. Dr. Pym responded, and the woman crossed herself several times quickly. The entire restaurant had fallen silent.

“What’s going on?” Emma whispered.

Michael shook his head; he had no idea.

“Children,” Dr. Pym said, laying several bills upon the table, “we should leave.”

Every eye followed them out of the restaurant. In the square, they were alone, save for the white dog from before, and even it seemed to regard them warily. The setting sun cast the world in a soft amber glow. “This way,” Dr. Pym said, and he headed down the main street at a rapid pace. The village ended after only a hundred yards, and Dr. Pym turned up the hill, leading the children through a gate and into a grove of olive trees. The ground was dry and rocky and steep.

“Dr. Pym,” Emma huffed, “what happened back there? What’s going on?”

“I told you that we are here to see a man. What I did not say was that I have been searching for this individual for nearly a decade. Only recently did I finally track him to this village. You heard me asking the signora how to find his house.”

“That’s it? That’s what made her drop the plate?”

“Yes, it appears that he is regarded by the locals as something of a devil. Or perhaps the Devil. The signora was a bit flustered.”

“Is he dangerous?” Michael asked. Then he added, “Because I’m the oldest now, and I’m responsible for Emma’s safety.”

“Oh, please,” Emma groaned.

“I wouldn’t say he’s dangerous,” the wizard said. “At least, not very.”

They hiked on, following a narrow, twisting trail. They could hear goats bleating in the distance, the bells around their necks clanking dully in the still air. Stalks of dry grass scratched at the children’s ankles. The light was dying, and soon Michael could no longer see the town behind them. The trail ended at a badly maintained rock wall. Affixed to the wall was a piece of wood bearing a message scrawled in black paint.

“What’s it say?” Emma asked.

The wizard bent forward to translate. “It says, ‘Dear Moron’—oh my, what a beginning—‘you are about to enter private property. Trespassers will be shot, hanged, beaten with clubs, shot again; their eyeballs will be pecked out by crows, their livers roasted’—dear, this is disgusting, and it goes on for quite a while.…” He skipped to the bottom. “ ‘So turn around now, you blithering idiot. Sincerely, the Devil of Castel del Monte.’ ” Dr. Pym straightened up. “Not very inviting, is it? Well, come along.”

And he climbed over the wall.

Michael thought of asking whether it might not be wiser to call ahead, but Emma was already jumping down on the other side, and he hurried to follow. They had not gone ten yards past the wall when there was a crack, and something zipped through the branches above their heads. Michael and Emma fell to their stomachs.

“Do you know”—Dr. Pym had stopped walking, but was otherwise standing perfectly straight—“I think he just shot at us.”

“Really?” Emma said. She and Michael were flat on the ground. “You think?”

Another crack, and a chunk of bark flew off a nearby tree.

A voice shouted down something in Italian.

“Oh, honestly,” Dr. Pym said, “this is ridiculous.” He called up the hill, “Hugo! Will you please stop shooting at us? It is extremely irritating!”

There was a long moment of silence.

Then the voice demanded, this time in English, “Who is that?”

Keeping his head low, Michael peered up the slope. There was a small stone cottage just visible through the trees, but he couldn’t see where the man was hidden.

“It’s Stanislaus Pym, Hugo! I would like to speak with you!”

There was a harsh laugh. “Pym? You dunderhead! Couldn’t you read the sign? Trespassers will be shot! Now about-face and take your doddering carcass down the mountain before I do the world a favor and put a bullet through that oatmealy mishmash you call a brain! Ha!”

“Hugo!” The wizard spoke as if to an unruly child. “Do you really think I’ve traveled this far just to go away? I’m coming up!”

Michael thought he could hear the man muttering angrily.

“Hugo!”

There was a bellow of rage, and then, “So come up, why don’t you?! I always knew that respect for personal property was beyond your limited mental capacity!”

And there was what sounded like someone furiously kicking a tree.

Dr. Pym looked down at the children. “It’s safe now.”

“Are you sure?” Michael asked.

“Yeah,” Emma said. “Maybe you should go first.”

“It’s fine. Trust me.”

The children rose and brushed the dirt from their arms and legs. It was another fifty yards to the cottage, but the man didn’t appear till they were ten feet from the door, when he stepped from behind an overturned cart. His appearance was in every way striking. He had a short, wide body and a wide face. His clothes looked much worn and little washed. His hair and beard were wild and black and neither had been trimmed for some time. Thick brows obscured his eyes, but the message in them was clear: this man was ready to fight the world. He held a rifle in his left hand.

“Stanislaus Pym,” the man sneered. “Isn’t it my lucky day? Surprised it only took you ten years to find me. You must’ve had help.”

“You should not have disappeared, Hugo. It made things very difficult.”

“And you should try not being such a great pompous carbuncle! But the world is not a perfect place.”

Then he turned and pushed through the door of the cottage. Dr. Pym and Emma followed, Emma immediately pinching her nose against the smell. Michael came last, pausing just inside the door. Beside him was an old wood chest, and on the chest was a framed black-and-white photograph. In it were two men in long black robes standing before a stone building. The taller of the men was also the younger by a dozen years, and he held what looked like a rolled-up diploma. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and his hand rested on the shoulder of the second man, a short, heavyset man with wild black hair. The black-haired man was the Devil of Castel del Monte.

Just then the real Devil of Castel del Monte appeared and slapped down the photograph.

“No snooping,” he growled.

Michael stood there another few seconds, waiting for his heart to stop pounding in his chest. He had no idea why the wizard had brought them there, or who the black-haired man was. But one thing he did know: the tall young man in the photo was his father.

“Shut the door, my boy, if you would.”

Michael wondered if that was such a good idea. The man’s cottage smelled like a barn. And in fact, an entire half of it was covered in piles of dirty straw and appeared to have been ceded to the goats. Three of the animals idled near the back wall, eating their dinners and watching the visitors with dull expressions. The left side of the cottage seemed designated to the man’s use. Besides the chest, there was a lumpy-looking mattress. An old wooden table and two chairs. A battered gas lantern. A fireplace in which a few glowing logs lay smoking. A collection of unwashed pots, pans, cups, plates, bowls. And hundreds of books. Many of the books showed signs of having been chewed on or partially eaten, perhaps by mice or the man’s four-legged roommates or, Michael could almost imagine, the man himself in various fits of rage.

As Michael closed the door, the man was wrestling with a goat that was munching its way through a sheaf of papers.

“Let go, you scoundrel! I’m warning you, Stanislaus!”

It took Michael a moment to realize that the man was speaking to the goat.

“Hugo,” the wizard said, smiling, “did you name this little fellow after me? I’m touched.”

“Don’t be,” the man grunted, still engaged in a tug-of-war over the pages. “He’s the stupidest goat in Italy. I wanted his name to adequately reflect the depth of his ignorance! Yours was the obvious choice— Arrgh!”

The goat had jerked backward, and the man lost his grip and thudded onto his rear. With a bleat of triumph, the goat clattered out the open back door and across the hill, whipping the pages this way and that.

“Ten years I’ve been working on that book!” the man shouted, jumping up and shaking his fist at the departing goat. “Anytime I make the least progress, one of those idiots goes and eats it. Though they’re probably better judges of the material than the so-called experts.” He glanced at Dr. Pym. “Present company included, of course.”

“So is that what you’ve been up to all this time?” the wizard asked. “Writing a book? What is it about, if I may ask?”

“It’s called A History of Stupidity in the Magical World, and needless to say, you figure prominently. I even thought of including your photo, but I didn’t want to scare off potential readers. Ha!”

“I certainly have made my share of mistakes,” the wizard replied.

“Listen to him! Mr. I’m-So-Reasonable! If I were you, Pym, I doubt I’d ever stop punching myself in the face!” A small kettle hung on an arm above the fire, and the man poured himself a cup of the hottest, blackest coffee Michael had ever seen. It bubbled from the kettle’s mouth like boiling mud. The man said he would offer them some, but he was afraid that would give the impression he wanted them to stay. Then, without warning, he whirled about and fixed his fierce gaze on Michael.

“Do I know you?”

“No,” Michael said awkwardly. “We’ve … never met.”

“Hugo, these are my friends Michael and Emma. Children, this is Dr. Hugo Algernon.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the man said, crashing onto a chair. “Let’s just get this over with. What is it you want? Recruiting me for another of your boneheaded schemes? You may as well forget it. You hoodwinked me once, but never again!”

The wizard had pulled up the second chair, while the children had found seats on an upside-down washbasin, which, by all appearances, had never been used.

“I am here,” Dr. Pym said, “for two reasons. But I must say how exasperating it has been to have to track you down—”

“No one asked you to.”

The wizard sighed. “I am here to give you a warning. And to ask a question.”

“A warning? From you? Ha! Let’s have it!”

“Jean-Paul Letraud and Kenji Kitano are both dead.”

Michael could see that the news had an effect on the man, even though he tried to act as if it didn’t.

“Murdered?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Jean-Paul I found out about on Christmas Day. Kenji was a few weeks after.”

Michael looked at his sister and saw the same expression on her face that he imagined was on his. “Dr. Pym—”

“Yes, my boy, that was what called me away on Christmas. Jean-Paul and Kenji were both friends and fellow magicians. I would’ve told you earlier, but the signora’s café did not seem the appropriate place to go into detail.”

“Who was it?” Michael asked. “I mean, who killed them? Was it—”

“Who killed them?” the hairy man roared. “Who do you think killed them? The Dire Magnus! The Undying One! The—”

“Yes,” Dr. Pym said, cutting him off. “Or, more specifically, his followers.”

Hugo Algernon leapt up and began stalking back and forth, smashing his fists together and snarling. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, Stanislaus. Do you remember? I do! I remember! I remember when you brought us all together.” And he imitated, poorly, the wizard’s voice, “ ‘We must act now. We must end his power once and for all.’ ” He let out a harsh laugh. “That worked out well, wouldn’t you say? Ha!”

“It did work,” the wizard said calmly. “His power was greatly diminished.”

“Oh, diminished, yes, diminished. Tell that to Jean-Paul and Kenji. I’m sure they’ll agree with you. Diminished, ha!”

Dr. Pym sighed. “I did not come to argue, but merely to tell you to take precautions. He is tracking down all who once stood against him.”

“What’s he talking about?” Emma said. “What’re you talking about?”

“My dear—”

“Emma’s right.” Michael tried to sit up and look as older-sibling-esque as possible. “I’m sorry, but you’re always saying how now’s not the time to explain stuff, and then you take us someplace and we have no idea why we’re there and crazy people shoot at us—no offense, Dr. Algernon—but it’s not fair! Who’s the Dire Magnus? What’s he want? What’re you two talking about? We deserve to know what’s going on!”

This was one of the longer speeches Michael had ever made, and when he finished, he was out of breath. Emma was staring at him, wide-eyed with amazement.

“Ha!” Hugo Algernon smacked the table. “The boy’s got spirit! Go on and tell them, Pym! Tell them everything you’ve managed to learn about the Dire Magnus in thousands of years! It shouldn’t take more than ten seconds!”

The old wizard frowned, but finally nodded. “Hugo is trying to be cantankerous, but he makes a fair point. Our—my—knowledge of the Dire Magnus is sadly incomplete. I believe him to be a man. And a powerful sorcerer, certainly. Beyond that, he is a mystery. His origins. His true name. I cannot tell you. What I can say is that I have been upon this earth since the first cities rose in the desert and there has always been a Dire Magnus. His power waxes and wanes. He rises and is beaten back. And since the Books were created, it has been his one goal to possess them.”

“Not bad,” the man said. “Twenty seconds. You knew more than I thought.”

The wizard continued, “I have, over time, made attempts to confront him. The last was forty-odd years ago. I gathered together a group of magicians, wizards, witches, mages—Dr. Algernon here among them. We hunted him down. We fought him. Many of our friends fell. But we prevailed. He was destroyed.”

Hugo Algernon let out another dismissive “Ha!” and threw his empty mug over his shoulder, starting a small stampede of goats out the door.

“Or so we believed.” Dr. Pym rubbed at his eyes. “What we found was that death was not a prison for such as he. Even trapped in the land of the dead, his spirit continued to wield influence and power over his followers.”

“And now,” said Hugo Algernon, “he’s settling scores.”

“He is doing more than that, my friend. He is building an army.” The wizard looked at the children. “You asked about Gabriel. While I have been tracking down and warning those who once helped me fight the Dire Magnus, he has been monitoring the enemy’s movements. Since you last saw him, he has been in almost constant danger.” Dr. Pym turned back to the man. “The enemy’s strength is growing, Hugo. You can hide on this mountain and say the world is filled with fools. But a war is coming. And it will find even you.”

For a moment, the fierce, bearded man seemed checked. Then his mouth curled into a sneer.

“Warning received and already forgotten. Now, what’s your question? Be quick. I’ve got to find your namesake before he eats the rest of my book. I’ve come up with a new chapter while you’ve been talking. It’s called ‘Paranoid Old Fools’! Ha!”

“Very well,” the wizard said. “I would like to know about the last time you saw Richard and Clare Wibberly.”

Outside, the shadows had begun to lengthen, and Dr. Algernon turned on the lantern. Before setting it on the table, he held it to Emma’s and Michael’s faces. He stared at Michael for several long moments.

“I knew it. You’re the spitting image of your father.”

“Really?” Michael could feel himself grinning. “I mean … really?”

“I said so, didn’t I? Are you deaf?”

“No—”

“You look just like him. Don’t make me say it again.” He looked at Emma. “The two of you twins?”

“No!” Michael said, somewhat hotly. “I’m a year older.”

“Well, technically,” Emma said, “we’re both twelve. Technically.”

Michael was about to argue when the man spoke.

“Where’s the third one, Pym? There’s supposed to be a third.”

“Sadly, she was unable to join us tonight. But we expect to see her again soon.”

“Yeah,” Emma said. “Very, very soon.”

The man grunted and placed the lantern on the table.

“I don’t know what Pym’s told you. Not much, I wager. But most of us who trafficked as magicians ended up straddling two worlds, the magical and the mundane. We had actual jobs; some idiots had families. Besides my other, call them extracurricular activities, I taught folklore and mythology at Yale. Your father was a grad student. And unlike most of the students, he was not a total idiot. I could tell right away he knew that magic was real. You get that in folklore departments. People have figured out the truth, but they can’t come to college and study magic. So they study folklore and myth, sensing that those stories reflect how the world used to be. That was your dad.

“I was foolish back then, almost as foolish as Dr. Pudding Brain here. I thought that magic had a chance. That people like your dad could help. So I brought him along. Taught him everything I could. I remember he had an unusual affection for dwarves—”

“Dwarves?” Michael nearly jumped to his feet. “Really? I have a certain, call it interest in dwarves.”

“He means he’s in love with them,” Emma said.

“Was he fond of anything in particular?” Michael asked eagerly. “Granted, there’s so much to choose from. Where do you even start.…”

Hugo Algernon scratched at his beard. “Well, he was always quoting this one line from old Killin Killick. Something about a great leader—”

“Lives not in his heart, but in his head!” Michael finished. “I know that quote! I was just talking about it today! Unbelievable.” He clapped his hands together, smiling from ear to ear. Not only did he and his father both admire and esteem dwarves, they’d also each separately singled out the same quote. If that wasn’t a sign of, well, something, then Michael didn’t know what was. “Do you remember how he felt about elves? I imagine he thought they were pretty ridiculous—”

Dr. Pym coughed. “Perhaps we could stay on subject. Hugo, if you could continue?”

“Fine, fine. So in his second year, I told Richard about the Books of Beginning.” Hugo Algernon looked at Dr. Pym. “How much do they know about the Books?”

“I’m sure they would be interested in anything you have to say.”

“Here’s what you need to remember: the Books of Beginning are three incredibly old and powerful books of magic. If you believe the stories, they could literally remake the world. Most reports start with the Books in the Egyptian city of Rhakotis, guarded by a gaggle of what had to have been the most mossy-brained magicians of all time—granted, that’s just my opinion, though I’m no doubt correct. Everything’s fine till one day—this is about twenty-five hundred years ago—Alexander the Great shows up, burns the city to the ground, and the Books vanish.

“So, your dad hears all this and gets a bee in his bonnet. Why have the Books never been located? How amazing would it be if he found the Books? On and on. I told him to forget it. People had been looking for the Books for thousands of years, real magicians and wizards, and no one had ever found diddlysquat.

“Anyway, Richard took his degree, left, got married, decided the world wasn’t crowded enough, and had you sardines—I mean, children. Next thing I know, Pym here’s taken him up. Read some article your dad wrote. Thought he’d made this big discovery.” Again mimicking the wizard, he spoke into a pretend telephone, “ ‘Oh, cheerio, Hugo, I’ve found the most promising young man, tut-tut, I’m such a great galumphing booby.’ He was my student first, you—”

“Just finish the story, Hugo.”

The man scowled but went on. “So time passes, and one day, I’m in Buenos Aires. There was this old wizard who’d lived down there. Mad as a hatter, but an excellent archivist and a collector of rare manuscripts. He’d died, and I was going through his library. House was a wreck. Held together by dust and mouse droppings. Anyway, I’m there working when the library floor gives way. Almost broke my neck. But when I could finally look around, I saw I’d fallen into a kind of vault. Stacks of old books and documents. I spent a year going through and cataloging everything, and then … I find a letter. It was in an extinct Portuguese dialect. Thing was murder to translate. But I had a feeling about it. A man writing to his wife. Apparently, he was on some kind of eighteenth-century business trip. Buying pigs or llamas or something. And he writes how he’d gotten into town late and all the inns had been full and he’d had to share a room with a sick man. His roommate was feverish. All night, he raved how he and a few others had taken a magic book out of Egypt long ago and had hidden it away. He kept saying, ‘I must make the map.… I must draw the map.’ ”

“And then what happened?” the wizard asked.

Hugo Algernon shrugged. “Nothing. The rest of the letter was about a pig he’d bought and how plump it was and blah, blah, blah.”

“And where did this encounter take place?”

“In Malpesa.”

“Ah.”

“What’s Malpesa?” Michael asked.

“Malpesa,” the wizard replied, “is a city at the southern tip of South America, on the coast of Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire. It was first an Indian village, then became a colonial trading post, a stopover for ships going from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Then, when the magic world pulled away, Malpesa went with it.” The old man turned back to Hugo Algernon. “So when you read this letter and realized what it meant, why did you contact Richard and not me?”

“Because, you great ninny, you’re impossible to get ahold of! I thought Richard could find you! And”—he glanced at Michael and Emma and some of the energy and fury seemed to go out of him—“I knew about the children. Richard had told me who they were. That they were the children of the prophecy, the three who would finally bring the Books together and fulfill their destiny.”

Michael felt his spine tighten. In Cambridge Falls, the Countess had mentioned the prophecy to Kate. Only the witch hadn’t said what the Books’ destiny actually was, or what it meant for the three of them.

Hugo Algernon went on. “When I got back to the States, I called him. A week or so later, Richard showed up at my house in New Haven. Clare was with him. Must’ve been close to midnight. I knew something was wrong. But he insisted I tell him what I’d discovered. And I did.”

“When was this?”

“Christmas. Ten years ago. A day after his family had supposedly disappeared.” Hugo Algernon looked at Michael and Emma. “I imagine I was the last person to see your parents.”

The door behind the children had blown open, but no one moved to close it. Michael felt a cool wind against his neck. Emma was clenching his hand.

Michael reflected that he and Emma knew more about their parents’ fate than ever before. But there were still so many questions. Had their parents reached this city, Malpesa? Had they found the map? Who had this sick man and his comrades been? And then there was the mystery of the book itself. Dr. Pym had taken the Atlas out of Egypt—Michael remembered his story of keeping it safe for a thousand years before entrusting it to the dwarves—so of the two remaining books, which one was this? What were its powers? For the thousandth time, Michael wished that Kate were with them.

The wizard rose and shut the door, then returned to the table. He said, “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Hugo Algernon rubbed his dirty fingers through his beard and nodded.

“I didn’t find out that Richard and Clare’s family had gone missing till a few days later. I tried to get in touch with you. Obviously, that was pointless.”

“Tell us about it,” Emma muttered.

“I talked to some of the others. Jean-Paul, for one. I didn’t tell them anything. Just that I needed to talk to you about Richard and Clare. Maybe someone was listening. Maybe there was a traitor. I don’t know.” As the man spoke, he dug his fingernails into the wood of the table. “Must’ve been a week later. I get a knock at the door. I open it, not thinking anything; and there he is. Smiling.” Hugo Algernon raised his head and looked at the children. “You two ever see a man coming—huge, bald, not a hair on him—run. Run, and don’t ever stop running.”

“It was Rourke,” the wizard said.

“Yeah. It was Rourke.” The man went back to digging his nails into the table.

“What happened then?”

“What happened then? You want to know how much I fought before I betrayed my friends? Oh, I fought all right. But he was too strong. And I could feel him in my head. He was laughing the whole time. I heard myself telling him that Richard and Clare had gone to Malpesa. I woke up the next morning and realized that not only had I betrayed my friends, but Rourke had broken something in me. I’d never been a great magician, we both know that, but whatever I’d had was gone. I walked out of my house. Never called anyone. Just … disappeared.”

And Michael suddenly understood why this man had spent ten years in a lonely cottage on a mountain in Italy. He wasn’t hiding from the Dire Magnus. He was hiding from what he’d done, from himself. Michael felt a strange, powerful sympathy for him.

“Then why hasn’t Rourke found the book?” Dr. Pym asked. “He must have the information you gave Richard and Clare.”

Hugo Algernon shook his head. “I gave them a charm that would wipe all knowledge of the book from their memories. They must’ve used it before they were caught. I should’ve taken better precautions with myself. As it was, all Rourke got from me was the name Malpesa.”

“You didn’t tell him about the sick man? Or the map?”

“No. I betrayed my friends, but the secret of the book, I buried deep. Even he couldn’t find it.”

“You shouldn’t have told him anything!” Emma cried, pounding the table with her small fist. “You should’ve said nothing!”

The man nodded and said, “You’re right, child. That’s what I’ve been thinking about for the past ten years.”

Dr. Algernon got up and walked to the fireplace. He pulled out a loose stone, then reached in and removed a folded moleskin packet.

“These are my original notes. I keep them hidden so the goats don’t eat them. I always knew you’d find me sooner or later.” He handed the packet to the wizard. “There may be a war coming, Stanislaus. But I’m no good to you. The magic’s left me.” Then he turned to face Michael and Emma. “If you find your father, tell him I’m sorry. Tell him that Hugo Algernon’s just an old fool.”

Dr. Pym stepped to the door and fit his ornate gold key into the lock. He turned it four times to the right, seven to the left; there was a click, and he pushed the door open. Sunlight flooded the cottage. Michael and Emma found themselves looking out over a vast expanse of blue water, with the sun poised in the distance. But only the doorway was illuminated; the cottage’s windows remained dark.

“This way, children.”

Michael took one last look at the Devil of Castel del Monte. He sat at the table, petting a small goat that had come up to nuzzle his leg. “Dr. Algernon—” The wild-haired man lifted his head, and sunlight intended for some other place in the world revealed his eyes for the first time. They were dark brown and very sad. Michael said, “We’re going to find them.” And he was about to step across the threshold when the man said, quietly, “Hold a second.”

Hugo Algernon went to the framed photo Michael had seen earlier and removed the backing. “Here.” He pushed the photo into Michael’s hands.

Michael looked down at his father, young, smiling, filled with hope. He pulled out his Dwarf Omnibus and slipped the photo between the pages. “Thank you.”

The man nodded and turned away; Michael stepped through the door.

They were on top of a cliff. Dr. Algernon’s door, now closed behind them, had become the door of a whitewashed house with red shutters. Flowers spilled from window boxes, filling the salty air with a sweet aroma. Michael looked out over the water, to where the sun hung upon the horizon. Was it sunrise or sunset?

“Dr. Pym—”

“We are in Galicia, in northwest Spain.” The wizard slid the golden key into the pocket of his jacket. “This house belongs to a friend of mine. He’s away, but we’ll spend the night here and tomorrow head to Malpesa.”

“Will Kate be there?” Emma asked. Michael could tell she was trying not to sound too hopeful, but hoping desperately all the same.

“We’ll see, my dear.”

And Dr. Pym placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and led her into the house.

The children sat at the kitchen table while Dr. Pym prepared glasses of warm milk and distracted them with stories of the strange things he had seen in his travels, stories that at any other time Michael would’ve been furiously copying into his journal. At one point, Dr. Pym switched on the light above the table, and Michael glanced out the window and saw that night had fallen; and the exhaustion of a day that had begun in Baltimore with him and Kate running before a storm settled upon him. He felt as if his head were made of stone; his arms and legs weighed thousands of pounds. However, once they’d drunk their milk and the glasses stood drying in the rack, and Emma had hugged Dr. Pym and headed up to bed, Michael found himself lingering in the kitchen.

“Yes, my boy?” Dr. Pym was packing his pipe. “What’s troubling you?”

“Who was that man who hurt Dr. Algernon? Does he work for the Dire Magnus?”

“His name is Declan Rourke, and, yes, he is one of the Dire Magnus’s lieutenants; indeed, his chief lieutenant, and a very dangerous and, in my opinion, unbalanced individual.”

“And you think he’s the one who … took our parents?”

Dr. Pym had his pipe going, and the sweet, almondy smell filled the kitchen.

“I’m afraid so. I think they followed Dr. Algernon’s clues, and somewhere in their search, Rourke caught them.” He shook his head sadly. “Richard and Clare believed that finding the Books was the only way to keep you and your sisters safe, and everything else, including their own lives, was secondary.”

Michael nodded. He still made no move to go upstairs. He found he had been winding the strap of his bag around his finger and had somehow gotten it into a knot so that the tip of his finger was turning blue. He yanked it free, and the color slowly returned.

“Anything else, my boy?”

“What did that letter say? The one Kate sent you? That made you come to Baltimore?”

“She’d been having a dream. She saw an orphanage attacked by the Dire Magnus’s forces. She’d recognized it as somewhere the three of you had lived. She knew it was only a matter of time before he found you. Why do you ask?”

“I just … She made me promise to take care of Emma. It was like she knew she wasn’t going to be here. I just wondered if she’d said something.”

“As a matter of fact, she did.”

“What?!”

“Several months ago, she wrote to me about another dream she’d had. In it, you were holding a book she didn’t recognize. Emma was with you, and the two of you were surrounded by fire.”

“And Kate wasn’t there?”

The wizard shook his head. Michael still made no move to leave. He began fidgeting again with his strap.

“I know the real question you want to ask.”

Michael looked up.

“You want to ask about the prophecy Dr. Algernon mentioned, how it was foretold that three children will bring the Books together and fulfill their destiny. The truth is, I do not know what that destiny is.”

“You could guess, though, couldn’t you?”

“Perhaps. But I will not. This is what you must understand: the magic in the Books is without equal. It is the power to alter the very nature of existence, to reshape the world. Imagine that power in the hands of a being whose heart is filled only with hate and anger. With such power, the Dire Magnus would have dominion over every living creature. That is why our quest is so important. And why so much depends on you.”

Michael said nothing; he felt as if his chest was being squeezed by iron bands.

“But Katherine believed in you, and so do I. Now, I foresee a demanding day ahead of us, and you need your sleep.”

By the time Michael got upstairs, Emma was already in her bed and the light was off. Michael maneuvered by moonlight, doing his best to be quiet.

Emma spoke to him from the darkness.

“Michael?”

“Yes?”

“Do you really think Kate’s waiting for us in the future?”

Michael took a deep breath and wondered what Kate would want him to say.

“Yes,” he lied, “I do.”

“Me too.”

Michael kicked off his shoes and got into bed. He set his bag on the floor. The window was open, and he could hear the far-off sound of the sea hitting the rocks.

“Michael?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t leave me, okay?”

“I won’t.”

Soon afterward, Michael knew that his sister was asleep. But exhausted as he was, he lay there, long into the night, watching the moon move across the water, thinking about their parents and how they had disappeared, thinking about Kate lost somewhere in time, thinking, again and again, how it was now all up to him.

Kate, he thought, where are you? “Nah, look, she moved; she ain’t dead.”

“Poke her again.”

Kate felt something jab her in the ribs. She stirred and tried to push it away.

“See? Told you she ain’t dead!”

“Too bad. We’d a’ gotten five dollars for her if she was dead.”

“How five dollars?”

“Rafe says you can sell dead bodies to the doctor college. They give you five dollars each one.”

“What they want dead bodies for?”

“So’s they can cut ’em open and look at their guts and all.”

“Five dollars, huh?”

“Yeah. Poke her again.”

The voices belonged to children, boys. Kate thought it best to speak up before they got any ideas.

“I’m … not dead.”

She forced her eyes open and pushed herself into a sitting position. Her head, indeed her whole body, was throbbing. She felt as if she’d run a marathon, gotten in a fight, and then been systematically pounded on for several hours. Even her teeth ached. She took in her surroundings. She was lying on a wooden floor, and the room about her was cold and small and the only light was what filtered through a pair of filthy windows. Two boys were leaning over her. She guessed they were about ten. Their faces and hands were streaked with dirt. Their clothes had been patched, torn, and then patched again. They both wore cloth caps. One of them held a stick.

“I’m not dead,” Kate repeated.

“Nah,” said the one, not bothering to hide his disappointment, “I guess you ain’t.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re on the floor.”

“No, I mean, where is this?”

“What’re you talking about? You’re in the Bowery.”

The whites of the boy’s eyes stood out against the dirtiness of his face.

“The Bowery.” The name was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “Where is that?”

“She means what city,” said the boy with the stick.

“Come off it,” the other said, finally smiling, forgetting the five dollars he’d have gotten for Kate’s corpse. “You don’t know what city? You’re in New York.”

“New York? But how—” And then she remembered.

She remembered being with Michael and Emma in Miss Crumley’s office, and the storm outside, and the Screecher breaking through the tower window and seizing her arm, and she remembered how she had called upon the Atlas for the first time in months, and her terror as the magic had swept through her.

She remembered opening her eyes and finding herself on a beach under a blazing sun as three wooden ships with tall white sails approached across a sea of brilliant, shimmering blue. She remembered the pain in her arm telling her that the Screecher had not let go. And Kate remembered how, without thinking, she had called upon the magic a second time, and a second time it had flowed through her, and a moment later, she and the creature were struggling atop a stone wall. It had been night; there’d been fire and smoke and shouting, a city in flames, and still the creature had gripped her arm. And Kate remembered how frantic she’d been, knowing that her plan wasn’t working, knowing that she was getting weaker. And she’d called on the magic a third time, thinking, Please, help me, and suddenly she’d been standing in a muddy field under a sky of gray. There had been more screaming, and another sound, like insects whizzing past her face, and still the creature held on. And Kate remembered the explosion and the feeling of being lifted into the air.…

And then she remembered nothing.

And then she remembered waking up in the mud, and men with guns running past, their mouths open and screaming, though all she could hear was the ringing in her ears, and she remembered seeing the Screecher sprawled ten yards away and the Atlas between them, and how the creature had begun crawling toward the book, and she remembered knowing that her life depended on getting there first, and knowing also that the creature was closer. And she remembered the second explosion, the one that had knocked the monster away, and how, with one final effort, she had reached out and laid her hand upon the book.

Kate lurched to her feet.

“Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“My book! I had a book! A green book!”

The floor was covered with piles of dusty rags, dented cans, yellowed scraps of newspaper, rotted-out burlap sacks; Kate tore through it all, tossing things left and right so that the two boys were forced back against the door.

“What’ve you done with it? Where is it?”

“We didn’t take no book!” said the boy with the stick.

“Yeah, what’d we want a book for?” said the other, as if having or wanting a book was the silliest idea in the world.

An awful thought occurred to Kate.

“How … long have I been here?”

“Dunno.”

“When did you find me? It’s important!”

“Couple hours ago. You were just lying here. I went to get Jake.” He nodded at the boy with the stick. “Figured if you were dead, we could get the wheelbarrow, take you down to the doctor college. We coulda used five dollars.”

Kate couldn’t breathe. She pushed past the two boys and through the wooden door. Pale sunlight blinded her, and she threw up an arm. She looked about, blinking. She was on a rooftop; a maze of low buildings stretched out in all directions. The room she’d woken in was a kind of shed. The air was bitingly cold. She could see her breath before her. Ice and old snow crunched beneath her feet. Dressed for summer, Kate could only hug her arms tight to her body.

She stepped to the edge of the roof and looked down. The building was just six stories high, and she could make out huge snowdrifts funneling people along sidewalks. In the street, horses were pulling carts, undisturbed by the presence of cars and buses. Kate listened for engines, horns, the squeal of tires; but the only sounds were of people and carts and horseshoes. She scanned the horizon. There was not a tall building in sight.

Her heart began to beat faster, and a memory came to her. Michael had been trapped in the past, held prisoner by the Countess, and she and Emma had gone back to rescue him. They’d been in the past scarcely half an hour when the Atlas had faded and vanished before their eyes. Kate remembered the witch explaining how the Atlas belonging to that time had exerted its dominance, that two copies of the book could coexist for a brief period, but eventually, one would vanish.

The boy said that he’d found her two hours ago. The book was long gone.

A hand grabbed her arm and she whirled about, thinking the Screecher had somehow followed her. It was one of the boys.

“You gotta be careful. You’re gonna fall.”

Kate stepped back from the edge. “What’s the date?”

“December something.”

“I mean, what year is it?”

“You kidding?”

“Just tell me.”

“It’s 1899,” the other said. “How don’t you know that?”

Kate said nothing. She just looked out at the white rooftops of the city. She was cold, and alone, and she was trapped in the year 1899. How was she ever going to get home?

The boys—their names were Jake and Beetles (no explanation)—said that seeing as things hadn’t turned out as they’d hoped and she appeared to be more or less alive, she had to come and see Rafe. Kate told them that she didn’t know who Rafe was and she had no intention of going to see him. The only thing that mattered—she thought this, but didn’t say it—was finding a way back to her brother and sister.

“Where’re the stairs?”

“You can’t just go off,” Beetles said. “Anyway, you’ll freeze.”

The boy had a point. While he and his partner each had on two jackets, multiple shirts, and heavy-looking wool trousers (every article patched and raggedy, but no less warm for that), Kate wore just an old pair of sandals and a sleeveless summer dress. She was already shaking. She was also, she noticed, covered in dried mud.

“Fine. Where”—her teeth had begun to chatter—“where can I get a coat?”

“Over on Bowery.”

“I thought I was in the Bowery!”

“I mean the street. Come on!”

The boys led her to the fire escape, a rickety, rusting skeleton flimsily attached to the side of the building, which they raced down pell-mell, setting up a great rattling and shaking. Kate hurried after them, certain that at any moment the whole contraption was going to break free of its moorings and plunge into the alley. A ladder at the bottom stopped nine feet off the ground, and the boys dangled from the last rung and dropped, landing catlike on their hands and feet. Kate did her best to follow suit, but found herself hanging in midair, unwilling to let go.

“Come on!” the boys yelled. “It ain’t far! Come on!”

She grunted in pain as her feet struck the frozen stones and a shudder passed through her ankles. She stood, the heels of her hands stinging.

“Finally,” Jake said. “I thought you were gonna set up house there or something.”

“Maybe open a shop, huh?” said Beetles.

“Yeah. The Hanging-at-the-End-of-the-Ladder-Too-Scared-to-Let-Go Shop!”

“You’re hilarious,” Kate said. “Just show me where to get a coat.”

They led her down the alley and across the street that Kate had seen from the roof of the building. Her sandaled feet sank deep into the drifts, and hard crusts of snow scratched her bare legs. She tried not to notice the stares she got, a girl in a thin dress in the middle of winter, and she followed her two guides down another alley and out into a street that was wider than the first and lined end to end with stalls. Throngs of darkly clad men and women milled between the ramshackle booths as vendors stood about, extolling the qualities of their goods in one language after another.

“This here’s Bowery,” said Beetles. “You can get a coat here.”

“I don’t—I don’t have any money.”

Now that they’d stopped moving, Kate was trembling badly.

“You got anything you can trade?” Jake asked. “What about that locket?”

Kate’s hand went to her throat, her numb fingers fumbling at the gold locket. Her mother had given her the locket the night their family had been separated.

“I … I can’t.…”

“What else you got?”

But Kate had nothing else. Her mother’s locket was the only valuable thing she owned. And she was freezing, literally freezing to death. She could ask for help from the people walking past, but that would require explanations: who she was, how she had come to be here.…

“The chain’s gold. I can trade the chain. But I’m keeping the locket.”

The boys took her to a mute old man who examined the chain, nodded, and gave Kate a shabby, moth-eaten coat and a wool hat. She pulled them both on, grateful, and her shaking began to subside.

“All right,” Jake said. “We helped you. Now you gotta come see Rafe.”

Again, Kate refused.

“Rafe ain’t gonna like it,” Beetles said.

“I really don’t care what Rafe likes.”

And she turned away down the line of stalls. She was still shivering slightly, the cold being very cold and her new coat and hat very thin and ragged; but she had held on to her mother’s locket and she was not going to freeze to death. That was all that mattered. So what if she couldn’t feel her toes?

Your problem now, she told herself, is getting home.

Her copy of the Atlas had disappeared because another copy already existed in this time. Kate knew where that copy was—far to the north, in the mountains surrounding Cambridge Falls, it was locked in a vault beneath the old dwarf city—and her first thought, back on the roof when she’d realized her situation, had been to make her way north and retrieve the book. But she’d quickly abandoned that plan. The copy in the vault had to be there for her and Michael to discover in the future. It felt strange to be protecting events that were still a hundred years off, events that in her mind had already taken place; but such were the ironies of time travel. And truth be told, Kate was relieved that she wouldn’t be swimming through the long underground tunnel that led to the vault. The last time she’d done it, she’d watched a dwarf get pulled down by the creature that lived in the depths, and she was not at all eager to go back.

Her second idea was, on the surface, much simpler. Find Dr. Pym and have him send her home. The Countess had helped Kate travel through time without the Atlas; the witch had tapped into the magic inside her, the power of the Atlas that was, even now, coursing through her veins. Kate was certain that Dr. Pym could do the same. But how to go about finding him? Could the dwarves help? Michael had said that a dwarf might live for hundreds of years. Was it possible that Robbie McLaur was alive? Surely he would be able to contact the wizard. Once again, it seemed that Kate’s only hope lay in going to Cambridge Falls. But it was a daunting journey. She would need to take the train to Westport (provided that trains in this time ran to Westport). Find passage across Lake Champlain. Then there was the long road into the mountains. And she would need money to buy tickets and food and, as soon as possible, shoes and socks and a sweater and …

She willed herself not to panic. One step at a time. She could do this.

She sensed the boys coming up beside her, and glanced over to see them each juggling a blackened, smoking potato. They passed their prizes from hand to hand, blowing on them until they were cool enough to crack open, an act the pair performed with relish, inhaling as the released steam rose into their faces.

“You want some?” asked the boy named Jake.

Before she could answer, he’d ripped his in half and handed it over. The skin of the potato was black and flaky, but the inside was soft and smeared with a greasy, buttery fat, and as she ate it, Kate felt herself warmed, and she was grateful to the boy for sharing. She felt no ill will toward them for hoping to sell her corpse. They were clearly very poor, and in 1899, five dollars was no doubt a fortune.

As the trio threaded their way through the crowded market, Kate found herself wondering who the boys were. Did they have families? Unlikely. Their clothes were too hodgepodge, their faces too dirty. Perhaps they lived in an orphanage? Also unlikely. Kate knew what orphanage children looked like. Even the rebellious ones had an anxiousness that these boys lacked. So where did they live? Who protected them?

They reached an intersection. A bone-thin, dark-haired man stood in the midst of a small crowd, talking loudly in a language Kate didn’t understand. He had a long black beard, no shirt, and in his left hand, he held a flaming torch. With a cry, the man ran the torch over his pale, sunken chest, down his other arm, over his head, and suddenly the whole upper half of his body, including his long beard, was engulfed in flame.

Kate was about to scream, to call for water, when the small group of spectators began clapping their mittened hands. And she saw that the man’s skin was neither burning nor blackening; indeed, he appeared to be grinning. What was going on?

Then she heard:

“Dragon eggs! Real dragon eggs! Raise your own dragon!”

Coming toward her was a red-faced, frazzle-haired woman whose hands and forearms were marked with burn scars. The woman carried a basket lined with old hay in which were nestled three enormous eggs. The eggs were dark green and leathery, each one the size of a grapefruit, and they were all smoking ominously.

“Dragon eggs!” the woman called, continuing down the street. “Three weeks from hatching! Makes a wonderful companion!”

Kate turned to the boys, who were licking butter off their fingers and seemed totally unfazed.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” asked Jake.

“What do you mean, what? That man’s on fire! People are clapping! And that woman’s selling those … eggs!”

The boy shrugged. “That’s Yarkov. He’s always setting himself on fire.”

“And I bet those ain’t real dragon eggs,” Beetles said. “You’d probably end up with a chicken or something.”

Kate was so stunned by their reactions that she involuntarily took a step back and was jostled sharply.

“Oi! Watch it, you nit!”

She looked around and saw a stocky, bearded figure whom she immediately recognized as a dwarf. He had a dead goose draped over each shoulder, and the birds’ long necks hung limply down his back. Grumbling about tourists, the dwarf marched away, the goose heads bobbing at his heels.

Kate managed to say, “That’s a dwarf.”

“Course it’s a dwarf,” said Beetles, who was now cleaning his teeth with a match. “What else would it be?”

“But—” Kate stammered. “—But—”

And then she understood, remembering the day that she and Emma had sat with Abraham beside his fire in the mansion in Cambridge Falls and the old caretaker had told them how the magic world had once been a part of the normal world, but then the magic world had pulled away and hidden itself. According to Abraham, the division had happened on the last day of December in 1899. That meant—

“It’s all still here,” Kate said. “Magic is still here.”

“Not here.” Beetles jerked his head in the direction the dwarf had taken. “The magic quarter’s that way.”

“Show me.”

A minute later, Kate was standing at the end of a block of tenements. The muddy street was crammed with makeshift stalls, vendors were hawking products, shoppers were bundled up and hurrying against the cold. For being the magic quarter, Kate thought it all looked very normal. Then she noticed that one of the tenements, a reddish building with a wide front stoop, kept switching places with the building to its right, the result being that it was slowly making its way up the street. And she saw that another building shivered each time the wind blew, and that the windows of another—this made Kate very uneasy—kept winking at her.

And besides the average-looking men and women going about their shopping, Kate saw dwarves moving through the crowd, smoking their long pipes and attracting no notice whatsoever. And there were other creatures, smaller than dwarves and beardless, who wore furry caps and stood arguing in tight groups, poking one another with their tiny fingers. Kate watched them in amazement till a woman passed by carrying a basket and drew her attention. The woman was sweet-faced and grandmotherly, and Kate was about to smile at her when she saw that the woman’s basket was alive and squirming with snakes.

“Come on,” said Jake and Beetles, and they each took an arm and led her forward.

The first stall sold wigs of fairy hair in different colors: gold and silver, pure snowy white, a rather arresting pink. The next stall promised to remove curses. The one after that let you buy curses (boils, baldness, pursued by cats …). There were three or four stalls occupied by fortune-tellers, one of whom was a girl of Kate’s age who watched her closely as she went by. There was a stall that sold toads, tended by a man who looked like a toad himself and called out his wares in a deep, reverberating croak. There was a large tent where four shirtless and sweating dwarves hammered away at anvils with a rhythmic clinking and banging while another dwarf worked the bellows of a fire so hot that Kate actually unbuttoned her jacket. There was a tent devoted to eggs: not just dragon eggs, but also unicorn eggs, griffin eggs, manticore eggs, and eggs of animals that Kate had never heard of. There was a stall whose entrance was covered by a tarp, with a dense green smoke escaping from under the canvas, the tendrils crawling across the slush and cobblestones. Kate followed the boys’ lead and stepped carefully past. Another tent was stocked with thousands of stoppered glass bottles, and the boys informed her that this was where you bought glamours. A glamour, they told her, was a potion that let you change your appearance, and many of the more eye-stopping magical folk used them when they went among normal humans. As Kate and the boys passed by, a tall, thin man with green, scaly skin like a fish downed the contents of a clear glass vial and was instantly transformed into a short, pudgy man with brown hair. And there was a stall that was stacked high with wooden boxes and had a sign declaring THINGS THAT BITE. When they’d passed the stall for the third time without having doubled back, the boys told her that it was a trick some vendors used, making their stalls appear again and again. And there were tents where men and women in dark cloaks who had strange markings on their faces and hands were huddled and muttering over boiling black cauldrons that smelled of dead fish, burning hair, and sickness. Kate kept well clear of these.

As they’d walked, the street had veered and become even darker and narrower; Beetles now plucked at her sleeve.

“We should go back.”

“Why? There’s more—”

“Here on out is Imp territory. It ain’t safe.”

“Who’re the Imps?” Kate asked.

“The Imps is the Imps. The gang what controls this part a’ the Bowery. They only been here a few months, but they’re bad, real bad.”

“Real, real bad,” said Jake.

“We should go back and find Rafe.”

“Yeah, no foolin’ anymore; Rafe’s gonna want to talk to you.”

Kate didn’t respond. A plan had begun forming in her mind. Couldn’t any wizard or witch send her through time? Maybe she didn’t need Dr. Pym. Maybe she didn’t have to go all the way to Cambridge Falls. Her eyes fell on a woman in a dark green shawl who sat before a covered booth. She had brown hair that was streaked with gray, and there was a softness in her eyes that appealed to Kate. She pulled free of the boys and walked over.

“Excuse me?”

The woman looked up. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said haltingly. “… Are you … a witch?”

“I am. Do you need help?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Well, come in. Let me see what I can do.”

The woman stood and opened the canvas flap. Kate hesitated, wondering if she was being rash. But the thought was fleeting. Cambridge Falls was a long and difficult journey, and this woman was right here.

The woman smiled, as if guessing Kate’s thoughts.

“I promise, child, I don’t bite.”

Nodding, Kate stepped into the stall. She glanced back and saw Jake and Beetles gesturing for her to come away. Then the witch dropped the flap and shut them out.

“First things first, you want tea. You look half frozen. Have a seat; there’s a chair behind you.”

To Kate’s surprise, the inside of the booth was warm and cozy. Three or four overlapping rugs shielded them from the cobblestones. A squat black stove, its pipe snaking up through the roof, heated the stall nicely. There was another armchair opposite the one Kate occupied, and beside that, a wooden cabinet from which the woman was taking a small earthenware jar. She opened the jar, extracted a handful of green-black leaves, and stuffed them into a pot that was bubbling on the stove. The smell of peppermint filled the air.

“Lovely,” the woman said. “Always reminds me of Christmas.”

“I don’t have any money,” Kate said. “I don’t know how I’ll pay you—”

The woman gave a dismissive wave. “Worry about that later. What seems to be the problem? Is it a boy? I’m quite famous for my love potions.”

“No, it’s not a boy.”

“Trouble with your parents? You wish they’d be more understanding? Move your feet closer to the stove.”

Kate obeyed; her toes had begun to thaw, and they ached as the feeling returned.

“It’s … not my parents.”

“Perhaps a beauty charm. Though I don’t think you could be much prettier.” She handed Kate a steaming mug of tea. “Drink up now.”

“I need to go to the future.”

The woman stopped and looked at her, making no attempt to hide her surprise.

“That’s not a request I get every day. And why would you want that?”

“It’s … where I’m from. I came here by accident.”

The woman sat in the other armchair. The booth was small enough that she and Kate were knee to knee. Her eyes were deep blue and gentle.

“My dear, I think you’d better tell me what happened.”

Kate dropped her gaze to the untouched tea. “It’s complicated. I can’t … tell you everything. But the magic that brought me here, some of it’s still in me. You can use it to send me home. Someone did it before. She …”

“What’s wrong, child?”

The stall was becoming uncomfortably hot. Kate felt herself sweating.

“Nothing. I’m fine. Can you help me?”

“Well, I won’t pretend I’m the greatest witch in the world. But there’s certainly magic in you. I sensed it the moment you walked in.”

“So you’ll send me back?”

Kate hated how desperate she sounded. And the fact was, something was wrong. Her vision had begun to blur. The woman’s face swam before her.

“Are you sure you’re feeling well? Let me have that before you drop it.”

The mug was taken from her hand. Kate started to rise. She needed to get out. She needed cold air to clear her head.

“Where are you going, child?”

“I just … I need …”

And then she pitched forward into darkness.

When she woke, she heard voices and, for a moment, thought she was back in the rooftop shed and that the voices belonged to Jake and Beetles. But these weren’t boys’ voices. They were harsh and guttural, and spoke as if the very act of making words was foreign and unnatural. Then she heard the witch’s voice.

“You’re not cheating me out of this one. She’s special.”

Kate opened her eyes. She was lying on the ground, her cheek resting on one of the rugs. There was a cloud inside her head. The witch had drugged her. Something in the tea fumes. How long had she been unconscious? Past the iron legs of the stove, she made out two pairs of muddy boots.

“We never paid no hundred dollars. You know that.”

The voice sounded like a wild animal that had been taught to speak. Every word was a growl. Kate had to get away. Praying that no one was watching, she began to inch toward the door.

“I’m telling you,” the witch said, “this one has magic in her. Deep magic. More powerful than any I’ve ever seen. He’ll want her. Believe me; he’ll want her.”

“Seventy dollars.”

“A hundred. And if he thinks she’s not worth it, I’ll return the money.”

“People are saying crazy things now,” snapped the harsh voice. “Everyone’s trying to get what they can before the Separation.”

“This is nothing like that. A hundred dollars is fair.”

“Fine. But if he ain’t happy, we’ll be back.”

Kate knew she was out of time; she would have to make a dash. She tried to push herself up, but her arms gave way. She was too weak. Too weak to run, too weak to fight. Then leathery, sharp-nailed hands were grasping her under the shoulders and heaving her to her feet. Kate saw the witch counting a wad of money.

“Please …”

The witch smiled, her eyes as gentle as ever. “You should’ve just asked for a love potion, child.”

Kate was dragged out the back of the tent and onto a crowded sidewalk. To her dismay, the cold air did nothing to clear the fog in her head, and she struggled to catch the attention of the people walking by.

“Please … help me.…”

“Quiet,” growled one of her captors. “No one cares.”

And so it seemed. For as they yanked her stumbling along the sidewalk, passing eyes would glance up, see what was happening, and quickly turn away. Kate could hardly blame them. She’d now had a chance to see her kidnappers. In some respects, they looked like short, thick-bodied men, dressed in dark suits and overcoats, their round hats pulled low. But these were not men. Their skin was like the hide of an animal, rough and hard and dimpled. Their nails were thick and sharp. Stiff whiskers shot straight from their cheeks, while their lower jaws jutted up and out, displaying a pair of short yellow tusks. No, not men. So what were they? And what did they plan to do with her?

“Where’re you … taking me?”

“To the boss. Now shut it, or we’ll rip your tongue out.”

They jerked her down a narrow alley. It was dark and empty, and the sounds of the street soon faded away. Kate didn’t know when she’d started sobbing. She was just suddenly aware that she was shaking and that it had nothing to do with the cold. What was going to happen? To her? To Michael and Emma? To their parents? Why had she been so stupid! Why hadn’t she just gone to Cambridge Falls and found Dr. Pym! She’d doomed them all!

And to make matters even worse, the witch’s poison had returned. A deadness was spreading through Kate’s arms and legs. She stopped walking, but her captors simply dragged her on, her feet scraping over the cobblestones. She knew she could not stay conscious much longer. She had no strength left to fight.

Then came the sound of something moving through the air. There was a hard thunk, and the creature on Kate’s left grunted and fell. Released, Kate tumbled to the ground. She turned to see the other creature spinning, growling, a knife already in its hand. Too late, the creature sensed the cord that had looped around its neck, and as a figure leapt down from above, the cord snapped tight and the creature was yanked to its toes. The cord, Kate saw, had been strung through the bottom of the fire escape, and the figure now took his end and wrapped it around a pipe protruding from the building’s wall. Kate’s captor was left dancing on tiptoe, clawing at the noose about its neck.

The figure was a boy. He looked to be about Kate’s age, or perhaps a year older. He had unkempt black hair, pale skin, and a nose that had been broken at least once. He was dressed lightly for the cold, but was not shivering. Kate watched as he went to the fallen creature and wrenched a knife out of its back. He cleaned the blade on the creature’s coat and slipped it into a sheath at the back of his trousers. Then the boy gave the snarling creature at the end of the cord a kick that sent it dancing across the alley. Finally, he looked at Kate, who had not moved from where she lay on the ground. Stunned as she had been by his sudden appearance, the boy—judging from the way he stopped and stared—was even more stunned by her.

He said, “… It’s you.”

Kate didn’t know what to say. She had never seen this boy before.

He pulled her to her feet.

“We need to move. There’ll be more Imps coming. Can you walk?”

“Who … are you?”

“My name’s Rafe.”

The name echoed in the dark cloud of her mind.

“The boys …”

“Yeah. They got to me.”

“But … how do you … know me?”

They were hurrying down the street; Kate was leaning against him. She could feel herself slipping. And, as the darkness closed in, she heard:

“Doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t have come.…” “Get back!”

“Shouldn’t we run—”

“No.”

“But—”

“It will think you’re food.”

That was good enough for Michael, and he pressed himself into the alcove, wedging his shoulder tight against Emma’s. He could hear the slow thud … thud … thud of the creature’s footsteps coming down the alley, and at each impact, Michael saw dust shake loose from the stone columns of the archway. His confidence wavered.

“Are you sure—”

“Quiet,” Emma hissed.

“Indeed,” said the wizard.

Before they’d left the cliff-top house in Spain, Dr. Pym had warned the children about what to expect in Malpesa. “Remember,” he’d told them, “Malpesa is a city in which normal, nonmagical humans live side by side with dwarves, elves, merfolk, witches and wizards, partially housebroken trolls—”

“Trolls?” Michael had exclaimed, trying not to sound too panicked. “But don’t trolls … eat kids?”

“I suppose,” the wizard had said, “that trolls are somewhat partial to children. But really, the odds of our meeting a troll are so astronomically low, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Banish it from your thoughts!”

Astronomically low, Michael thought as the ground shook and the creature came into view. Right.

The troll was the size of an adult elephant, with the same saggy gray skin and shambling gait, but with none of an elephant’s innate intelligence. Indeed, Michael had never seen any creature that projected an air of such perfect stupidity. The troll was busy cleaning one of its enormous ears with a garden hoe, scraping out great boulders of earwax, crusts of greenish bread, a cracked teapot, a bewildered-looking seagull.…

“We’re lucky,” Dr. Pym said when the creature had lumbered past. “At least it was wearing clothes.”

Much to the children’s frustration, they had spent all day at the house on the coast of Spain. Dr. Pym had told them that Malpesa was infested with the Dire Magnus’s spies and they could not risk entering the city till nightfall. The children had argued that they didn’t care about the danger, they wanted to find Kate and rescue their parents. “Be that as it may,” the wizard had said, “I have other reasons for waiting till dark.” He had refused to explain further; and in the end, Michael and Emma had spent the day listlessly exploring the cliffs and nearby beach as the sun made its sluggish way across the sky.

The wizard had disappeared in the afternoon, returning after dark laden with heavy pants and shirts, sweaters, coats, wool socks, and boots that fit surprisingly well. “It’s still winter in South America,” he’d said. “We have to dress appropriately.”

Then, making use of his golden key once more—and after a final warning that the children must do exactly as he said while in Malpesa—Dr. Pym had led them through the kitchen door and into another land.

More or less immediately, they’d encountered the troll.

As the creature’s footsteps faded away, the wizard bid them follow and turned down a narrow alley.

Michael hesitated.…

The sun had gone down, but there was still enough light to see, and what he saw was an old colonial town of stone streets and three- and four-story houses with red tile roofs and wide ground-floor arcades. Half a dozen spires and towers rose above the nest of buildings. To Michael’s left, the street ran down to a harbor, where a score of fishing boats lay berthed. With their black nets strung up and drying, the ships looked both spooky and elegant, like a gathering of widows. Next to the boats was a pair of small floatplanes, bobbing on the tide. Beyond that stretched the blue-black table of the sea. Looking the other way, Michael saw that the town was walled in by mountains, snowy and massive, their peaks hidden among the clouds.

He was charmed: elegant old buildings, a perfect setting, and best of all, you could walk out your front door and be face to face with a wizard! Or a dwarf!

Michael had already forgotten his terror at the troll’s appearance.

I was born too late, he thought, and allowed himself a philosophical sigh.

“Michael!” Dr. Pym’s voice echoed down the alley. “Please don’t linger!”

The wizard led them along a series of twisting streets. There were patches of ice among the paving stones, and they passed restaurants and stores—grocery stores, clothing stores, a shuttered flower shop—that might’ve been found in any city in the world, and next door to those were taverns with signs announcing DWARFISH ALE ON TAP and shops that sold charms for seafarers: protections against drowning, fair-weather spells, a potion that let you speak to whales. They saw men and women, bundled up and going about their shopping, and they saw groups of dwarves, dressed in thick, dark coats and woolen hats with long tassels, marching past with clay pipes sticking from their bearded mouths.

They crossed many canals, or rather they crossed the bridges that spanned the canals, so many bridges and so many canals that the city seemed almost more water than land. Most of the canals were only a dozen feet wide, but at one point, the street opened up and the children found themselves at the edge of a wide canal lined with stately columned houses, many of which had seen better days. In the gathering dusk, lights reflected off the dark water, and men called to each other from their narrow, black-hulled boats, their voices echoing as they passed beneath the stone bridges.

“It’s like Venice,” the wizard said, “without the tourists.”

“But with trolls,” Emma grumbled.

“Well, given the choice, I’ll take the trolls.”

“Dr. Pym,” Michael said, “can’t you tell us where we’re going?”

“You’ll see soon enough, my boy.”

And he started off again with his quick, long-legged stride.

The children knew they were here to search for the map mentioned in Hugo Algernon’s letter, the same map their parents had gone searching for ten years before; and it was likewise apparent that Dr. Pym had a theory about where to look, but so far, the wizard had not been forthcoming with details.

“If I tell you where we’re going,” he’d said—this was still back at the house in Spain—“you’ll only start worrying.”

As if saying that, Michael reflected, wasn’t enough to make a person start worrying.

They pressed on through the maze-like streets, over bridge after bridge, and as they walked, Michael stole a glance at Emma. At breakfast that morning, he’d tried to get her to acknowledge his new authority as oldest sibling, wanting to be clear on the matter before, as he put it, they were “out in the field” and their survival depended on her following his orders “without question.”

“But we’re both twelve,” she’d said.

“Yes, technically. But only for a few more days. I’m basically thirteen.”

“So till then we’re equal.”

“But Kate put me in charge, remember? In Miss Crumley’s office, she said, ‘Look after Emma.’ ”

“That’s probably because she saw you first. If she’d seen me, she probably would’ve said, ‘Emma, look after Michael! He really needs it!’ ”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“Well, don’t worry.” And Emma had patted him on the arm. “I’ll look after you anyway.”

Then she’d gone to throw rocks into the sea, and that was that.

“Here we are,” said the wizard.

They had emerged from yet another alley and were standing on a stone embankment, looking out over a seemingly endless stretch of dark water. Michael felt as if they’d arrived at a kind of border: behind them was Malpesa, with its lights and noise; before them, this great emptiness, and no sound save the soft lapping of the sea against stone.

“We have a few minutes,” Dr. Pym said. “The bridge will not appear until night has well and truly fallen.”

“What bridge?” Michael asked.

“You’ll see, my boy. Now, as this may be our last quiet moment of the evening, there is something I need to give you.”

From an inside pocket, the wizard produced an object the size and shape of a marble and made of milky blue-gray glass. A thin wire looped about it and attached to a rawhide band, as if the marble was to be worn as a necklace.

“This arrived two weeks ago at the house in Cambridge Falls. There was no note, but the envelope was addressed to ‘The Eldest Wibberly.’ ”

“Who sent it?” Emma asked.

“That, my dear, is the question. Who knew that you three had been at Cambridge Falls? Of course, there’s the Dire Magnus and his followers. But such stratagems are not his style. Another possibility, and it is only a possibility, is—”

“Our parents,” Michael said. Due to the strange twists and turns of time travel, the children’s adventure in Cambridge Falls had taken place before they’d actually been born, and subsequently, Dr. Pym had told their parents about what was going to happen. “You really think it’s from them?”

“I do not know. That is part of what is troubling me.”

“What’s the other part?”

“That I don’t know what the blasted thing is! Still, I’ve been unable to detect any sort of curse or malignancy, and I believe the time has come to turn it over to you.”

Emma immediately reached out her hand, only to have the wizard stop her.

“My dear, it was addressed to the eldest Wibberly, and in the present circumstances, I think it should go to Michael.”

Emma huffed, but Michael was pleased.

Finally, he thought.

He took the orb by its rawhide strap. “What do I do with it?”

“We could smash it,” Emma suggested.

To Michael’s surprise, the wizard nodded. “You’d be surprised how many magical objects give up their secrets when bashed to bits. Unfortunately, that might also destroy it, and if it is from your parents, I would hate to lose the message. Either way, the decision is yours.”

Michael sensed them watching him. The glass marble felt light, almost hollow.

“Kate’s the real oldest,” he said finally. “I’ll keep it till she comes back.”

He knew it was strange that his first decision as oldest sibling was to pass the authority back to Kate; but saying that he believed his sister would return felt good, like an act of faith, and Michael smiled as he slipped the marble over his head.

“Excellent,” the wizard said. “Now I think it is dark enough.”

And, turning his back on the city, Dr. Pym took out a coin and threw it into the water. There was a shimmering in the air, and a bridge appeared, arcing away from the embankment. It was made of black granite and guarded by two forbidding stone sentries. The figures were roughly carved, armed with heavy swords, and swathed in long robes and hoods that obscured their faces and hands.

“Over this bridge,” the wizard said, “lies an island. For a thousand years, it is where the citizens of Malpesa, magical and nonmagical alike, have buried their dead. It is where I hope to find what we are searching for. Come. There is no time to waste.”

And he led them past the sentries and out upon the bridge.

It seemed to Michael that the air grew colder with each step, as if they were moving into some deeper current, and as they crossed the top of the bridge’s arc, Michael saw the silhouette of an island emerge from the darkness, and the salty tang of the sea became mixed with another smell, the odor of old soil and the cut-up ends of things, of death and decay. At the far side of the bridge, Michael and Emma followed the wizard past two more stone sentries and onto the island of the dead.

Dr. Pym raised his hand. “A moment to get my bearings …”

The children hovered behind him, hardly daring to breathe. Standing where he was, Michael had no sense of the island’s true size. The tombs and mausoleums—some of which were a dozen feet high and crowned with snowcapped stone figures—crowded in upon one another, leaving only narrow gaps through which to pass. Michael’s impression was of an ancient, overgrown forest, dark, and silently watching.

As they waited, Michael’s hand drifted to his bag, nervously checking the contents—journal, pens, pencils, pocketknife, compass, camera, King Robbie’s badge, Dwarf Omnibus, gum. Assured that everything was in place, he brought his hand to his chest, where he felt the hard nub of the glass marble hanging from his neck. Already it felt like a part of him.

A cloud moved, and the moon cast down a pale, unearthly light, which reflected off the patches of snow.

“This way,” the wizard said. “Stay close.” And he started off through the thicket of tombs.

It was all Michael and Emma could do to keep up. Dr. Pym moved at his usual brisk pace, following a zigzag path that only he could see. And as the group pushed forward, the tombs pressed in and the way became darker and narrower still. Michael worried that he or Emma would trip and the wizard wouldn’t even notice, but just continue on, leaving them lost and alone in the warren of gravestones.

“Dr. Pym,” he had to ask once more, “what’re we doing here?”

“And can’t you walk a little slower?” Emma said. “Your legs are, like, a hundred times longer than mine.”

“My apologies. And I suppose it is time to explain why I brought you to this ghoulish place. You remember, of course, the letter that Dr. Algernon found? The pig merchant’s story of coming to Malpesa and meeting the man with a fever, the one who ranted that he and others had taken a great, magical book out of Egypt long ago?”

“Yeah, and he wanted to make a map,” Michael said, hurrying past a tomb that was emitting a low, strangled gurgle. “The sick guy, I mean.”

“Exactly so, my boy. What we don’t know is what happened afterward. Did the sick man die? Did he succeed in making his map? The story requires us to use our imaginations.” He paused and read the inscription on a tombstone, then moved off in another direction. “Now, if the sick man recovered and left Malpesa, then he and his map are lost to us. There are a million directions he might’ve taken, a million fates he could’ve met. But let us suppose that the sick man was very sick indeed. Let us suppose he perished in Malpesa. If so, this island is where he would have been buried.”

“Wait, so you think the map got buried with him?” Emma said. “Also, you’re still walking too fast.”

“That is my theory. And I suspect it was your parents’ theory as well.”

“Okay,” Michael said, “but we still don’t know his name. We can’t just go around digging up graves till we find him!”

“Yeah,” Emma said. “That would take forever.”

“And it would be wrong,” Michael said.

“Yeah,” Emma said, with little conviction. “That too.”

Michael was peeved that Dr. Pym hadn’t run his plan past him earlier. Michael could’ve saved them a lot of time by pointing out the glaringly obvious flaws, like trying to find the grave of some nameless man who might or might not have died hundreds of years before! Certainly, as the oldest sibling, he had a right to approve all—

“I believe this is the grave,” said Dr. Pym.

“What?” Michael said.

“I believe this is the tomb we are searching for.”

The wizard was standing before a rectangular stone box. It was roughly seven feet long, three feet wide, rose four feet off the ground, and seemed to Michael no different from any of the scores of tombs they’d already passed.

“That was easy,” Emma said.

“But,” Michael said, “how do you know?”

“Different areas of this island were developed at different times. The pig merchant’s letter was dated in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. That would place our deceased sort of here-ish.” The wizard waved his arm in a half circle. “I thought we’d have to search a bit, but it appears we got lucky.”

“But how do you know this is his grave?” Michael demanded. “We still don’t know his name.”

“My boy,” the wizard said, “we don’t need to know his name. We have this.”

He gestured for them to approach the tomb. There, chiseled into the center of the stone lid, visible through a glaze of ice, were three interlocking circles. Michael later sketched the symbol into his journal—

“What is it?” Emma asked.

“It is a thing I have not seen for more than two thousand years,” replied the wizard. As he spoke, he reached out and traced the rings with a finger. “Long ago, before Alexander the Great attacked the city of Rhakotis and caused the Books of Beginning to be scattered and lost, the Books were kept beneath a tower in the center of that city. The magicians who had created the books established the Order of Guardians, fierce warriors who had pledged to protect them with their lives.”

“Wait, I remember!” Michael exclaimed. “The Countess told us about them!”

The wizard nodded. “And as you know, when the city was overrun, I myself fled with the Atlas, which I later entrusted to the dwarves of Cambridge Falls.”

Michael nodded, signaling his approval of the wizard’s choice.

“It has always been my suspicion that the Order escaped with at least one of the books. But though I have searched unceasingly all this time, I have found no sign of either the missing two books or the Order. That is, until now. This”—he laid his hand flat upon the tomb, almost obscuring the rings—“is their symbol.”

Michael’s heart was pounding with excitement. He’d decided he would excuse the wizard’s lapse in oldest-sibling protocol this one time.

“If Dr. Algernon’s letter is to be trusted,” Dr. Pym went on, “and this is the tomb of that same feverish man, then we may assume that the Order did indeed rescue one of the books. The questions now are: Did our fellow make a map? And if so, is the map still here, or did your parents take it? There is only one way to find out.”

“You mean,” Michael said, “we have to open the tomb?”

“I am afraid so.”

“That dead guy,” Emma said, “he’s not gonna be a zombie or anything, is he?”

“I think the chances are very low.”

“You said that about meeting a troll. And guess what, we—”

“My dear, he is not a zombie. I promise.”

The wizard told the children to go to one end of the tomb, while he positioned himself at the other.

“Remember, lift with your legs.”

“Dr. Pym,” Michael said, “this is solid stone. It must weigh a thousand pounds.”

“Michael’s kinda weak,” Emma said. “I’ll do most of the lifting.”

Michael was about to argue, but the wizard cut him off.

“I have a feeling it is not as heavy as it looks. Ready? One … two … three!”

To Michael’s surprise, the stone lid came off easily.

“That’s it,” the wizard said. “Watch your fingers and toes.”

They leaned it against the side of the tomb.

Emma looked at Michael. “Don’t bother thanking me or anything.”

“Oh please, Dr. Pym obviously—”

“Well, that is interesting.”

Dr. Pym was peering into the tomb. The children joined him.

“Ahhhh!” Emma shrieked, and fell back.

The entire bottom of the stone box was one dark, squirming mass. Michael could make no sense of what he was seeing; it was almost like—

“Rats!”

There were dozens of them. Perhaps hundreds. Wriggling and crawling all over each other. Long, naked tails whipping this way and that. Their gray-brown bodies writhing atop each other, their eyes glittering black and jewel-like.

“Those’re rats!” Michael said again.

“That they are.”

“Don’t just stand there!” Emma cried. “Do something! Zap them or something!”

“And why would I do that, my dear?”

“Why? What do you mean, why? They’re rats!”

Emma’s whole body was rigid, and there was a look of pure, undisguised panic on her face. It occurred to Michael that his sister was afraid. But that was ridiculous. He’d never known Emma to be afraid of anything, even things a person should be afraid of, like giant hairy spiders. Once, a wildlife expert had brought a bunch of snakes and lizards and spiders to their school for a demonstration. Halfway through, an enormous yellow-and-black tarantula had gotten free. There’d been a stampede of screaming children. But Emma, sitting in the front row, had calmly picked up the spider and plopped it back in its glass cage.

“Tell me,” the wizard said, “do you notice anything odd about these rats?”

“Uh …” Emma’s voice was not at all steady. “They’re still alive and you’re not doing anything about it?”

But Michael thought for a second, then said: “They’re quiet.”

“Exactly so,” the wizard replied. “This many rodents should be creating a terrible racket. There is more here than meets the eye.”

Emma muttered, “I’m gonna throw up.”

The wizard stepped to a scraggly tree that was growing between two mausoleums and broke off a long, dry limb. Michael watched as the wizard then poked the stick into the swirling gray mass. To Michael’s surprise, it went right through.

“An illusion. Designed to discourage intruders. There are no rats. Indeed, I seem to feel a sort of shaft.”

Emma took a half step closer. “So … they’re not real?”

“Not at all. Now, one of you should come below with me while the other stays here and watches the way back to Malpesa. Just in case we were seen.”

“You mean climb down into the rat hole?” Emma asked. “You—”

“I’ll do it,” Michael said quickly. “Emma can stay up here.”

“Very good,” the wizard said. Then he took the branch he was holding and broke it into thirds. He handed one of the sticks to Emma.

“Rub this on any surface, and it will burst into flame. But only do so if you’re coming below. Otherwise, you’ll make yourself too visible.” The wizard looked at Michael. “I’ll go first.”

He draped his long legs over the side of the stone coffin. Michael and Emma watched with horrified fascination as his foot went into the swarming tide. For a moment, the creatures seemed to swirl around it, then his foot disappeared, and then his legs, and his chest, and finally, his white head vanished into the nest of rats.

The children were alone. Michael turned to Emma.

“Are you warm enough?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t stand on top of a mausoleum. Silhouettes are really visible in the dark.”

“Okay.”

“And sound will carry a long way; so I’m afraid no singing or whistling to keep yourself company.”

“Got it.”

“Oh, and don’t stare too long at any one thing. Look at something, look away, then look back. It’s an old sentry’s trick.”

“Michael …”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be fine. You be careful too.” She gave him a hug. “I love you.”

She released him, and Michael stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

“Go ahead,” Emma said finally. “Dr. Pym’s waiting.”

Michael nodded, then climbed up the side of the tomb, took a deep breath, and lowered himself down.

“Take this.”

The wizard handed Michael a burning torch. They were in a large cavern directly below the grave. Michael had found it unnerving, submerging himself in the squirming pool of rats, and though he’d known it was an illusion, he’d shut his mouth and eyes tight as he’d gone under. But he hadn’t been bitten, and a moment later, he’d found himself in a shaft that burrowed downward from the tomb. An iron ladder was affixed to the rock wall. The wizard had called up to him, and Michael had seen the red glow of the wizard’s torch thirty yards below.

“So,” Dr. Pym said, “we must decide which way to go.”

The cavern was unlike the caves and tunnels that Michael and his sisters had explored near Cambridge Falls. Both the ceiling and the floor were studded with stalactites and stalagmites, so the effect was like being in the mouth of a great, many-fanged beast. And there was water everywhere, dripping from the ceiling in a constant thip … thip … thip, running in rivulets down the walls, collecting in pools upon the floor. And there was the air itself, which was so moist and thick with minerals that every breath tasted like a dose of medicine.

As to where they should go, Michael could see two choices, two tunnels that faced one another across the cavern.

“Now, I would wager that tunnel,” the wizard pointed to their left, “runs back to Malpesa. While this fellow,” he gestured to the right, “seems to continue on beneath the cemetery. What do you think?”

Michael had no idea. Part of his mind was still back in the graveyard. He hoped that Emma had listened to his advice. He hated leaving her alone.

He tried to make himself focus.

“Well—”

“Or we could go that way!”

Dr. Pym pointed to the far side of the cavern. At first, Michael saw only rocks and the play of shadows. But then, looking closer, he perceived that one of the shadows was in fact a narrow fissure, a sort of crack in the cavern wall.

The wizard smiled. “Lucky we’re both slim, eh?”

They had to scoot through the crease sideways, and the jagged edges of the rock wall ripped at Michael’s jacket and the legs of his pants; once, he banged his knee and had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out. Finally, the crevice widened, and Michael and Dr. Pym could walk normally. But the way was still dark, and the only sounds were their footsteps and the soft flutter of the torches. Michael hung close to the wizard’s heels and began to ask questions. Mostly, he wanted to hear the wizard’s voice.

“So, that letter Dr. Algernon found was from two hundred years ago?”

“Yes, give or take.”

“And the man with the fever, the one who was in the Order, said he and the others had taken the book out of Egypt; and that happened more than two thousand years ago.”

“That’s right. Oh, Michael, my boy—”

“Yes, sir?”

“Please don’t set fire to my suit. It’s my only one.”

“Sorry.” Michael slowed and put another few inches between his torch and Dr. Pym’s back. “So wouldn’t he, the sick guy, have had to be really, really old?”

Michael heard Dr. Pym chuckle; the sound seemed to bounce from wall to wall.

“Indeed he would. Which raises an even more interesting question. There are two remaining Books of Beginning. Each has unique powers. Tell me, have you given any thought as to what those powers might be?”

Michael had. He and Emma had debated the subject endlessly since their return to Baltimore—Kate had refused to join in, saying, “The Books’ll be what they’ll be; I don’t want to think about them till I have to.” But all of his and Emma’s theories about the Books’ possible powers—the power to fly, the power to become superstrong, the power to talk to insects (Michael had once seen a documentary that said there were more than a trillion insects on earth and how if they all worked together, they could take over the planet), the power of endless ice cream (one of Emma’s favorites, which Michael had maintained was not actually a power), the power to talk to people a long way off (another of Michael’s, though whenever he’d mentioned it, Emma had always said, “Yeah, that’s called a telephone”)—suddenly seemed either too small or just plain silly.

“Yeah, but nothing good.”

“Allow me to give you a hint,” the wizard said. “You correctly pointed out that the man in the pig merchant’s letter would have been thousands of years old. And yet, the members of the Order were men with normal life spans. How do you explain this fellow living as long as he did?”

“You mean … that was the book?”

“Just so. Now, what name would you give such a book? Remember, the Books deal with the very nature of existence, and the Atlas is the Book of Time. Think big, my boy.”

There was only one answer. “I guess … the Book of Life?”

“Exactly. Or as it’s also known, the Chronicle. And granting long life is only one of its powers. So this fellow in the letter, he and the other members of the Order, they hide the Chronicle in a secret place, and as long as they are close to it, they live on, century after century. Then this man comes to Malpesa, perhaps leaving the book with his comrades, and once separated from its power, he grows sick and dies. As to why he would embark on such a journey, well, that is another question.”

They walked on; but Michael had one more thing to ask.

“Dr. Pym …”

“Yes?”

“So the last book, the third one, is it … well …”

The wizard stopped and faced him.

“Yes,” the old man said, “the last is the Book of Death. But that is not a matter to concern us now.” He seemed to study the boy, the torchlight reflecting off the old man’s glasses and making it appear as if small flames danced in his eyes. “Hugo was right. You do look so like your father.”

And again, despite all that had happened, despite all that was still happening, Michael felt a warm glow spread out from his chest and down to the tips of his fingers. He did not even try to suppress it.

He said, very quietly, “… Cool.”

“Yes,” the wizard said. “It is cool.”

Ten yards further on, they found the inscription.

On a section of the tunnel wall that had been sanded smooth, someone had chiseled the same symbol—the three interlocking circles—that had been on the tomb. Below that, likewise carved deep into the stone, was what Michael took for writing, though the language was one he did not recognize. In some ways, it reminded him of Chinese or Japanese, in that the characters were ornate and heavily structured, but there were no breaks between them; everything seemed to flow together, and Michael couldn’t tell if you read it forward, backward, top to bottom, or bottom to top.

He thought it was very beautiful.

“Amazing.” Dr. Pym held his torch close to the rock wall and gripped Michael’s shoulder. “So many years I’ve been searching. We are close, we are very close.”

“What does it say?” Michael asked. “Can you read it?”

“I can. It is the ancient language in which the Books of Beginning are written. Here is the oath of the Order of Guardians.” He pointed to the script just below the symbol and read aloud, his voice reverberating off the walls, “ ‘Bear witness all that I, nameless, do pledge my breath, my strength, my very life, to this sacred task. None shall harm that which I have vowed to protect. So I swear till death frees me of my bond.’ ”

Michael decided that it was a very good oath. Granted, if a dwarf had written it, there would’ve been more mentions of bashing in an enemy’s helmet and of promises hardened in the forges of eternity, but Michael knew you couldn’t hold everyone to a dwarfish standard.

“And this part,” Dr. Pym continued, tapping his finger on the lower portion of text. “ ‘I have failed in my mission. What I leave, I leave in hopes the Keeper may one day arrive. Choose rightly, and you may never die. Choose wrongly, and you will join me.… And Three will become One.’ ”

“What does it mean?” Michael asked.

“Three becoming One is a reference to the Books of Beginning. According to legend, one day the Books will be brought together, three working as one to fulfill their destiny. But the part that interests me is where he writes ‘What I leave, I leave in hopes the Keeper may one day arrive.’ That implies that our mysterious friend has indeed left some sort of map to find the Chronicle. We may yet be in luck.”

“Wait, what’s that?” Michael pointed to a line of very small writing at the bottom of the inscription. He thought it looked like a different language.

The wizard leaned forward, and suddenly let out a loud, echoing laugh.

“What?” Michael demanded. “What does it say?”

“ ‘Tunnel and tomb constructed by Osborne and Sons, Dwarf Contractors, Malpesa.’ ” The wizard was still laughing. “I’d wondered how our sick fellow had burrowed down from that grave. He hired dwarves to do the digging for him.”

“And he would’ve trusted them to keep his secret?” Michael asked, and immediately felt guilty for having said it.

“Oh, I doubt he conveyed the true nature of his secret, but in essence, yes. He would have trusted them. Dwarf builders are known for their discretion. There’s not a safe or vault in the magical world that wasn’t built by a dwarf. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

“Well,” Michael said defensively, “you can’t expect one person to know everything about dwarves. There’s so much. You could learn everything about elves in a good twenty minutes. But dwarves—”

“Yes, yes. Come along.”

And they set off once more.

As they walked, Michael thought about the Keeper mentioned in the inscription, and his mind went back to what Dr. Pym had told him the night before, that Kate had dreamed of him holding a strange book. Could that book have been the Chronicle? But then if he got the Book of Life, did that mean Emma got the Book of Death?

She’s not going to be happy about that, Michael thought.

“Oh dear.”

Michael stopped beside the wizard. Before them, the tunnel came to an abrupt end where a sloping mound of dirt and rocks stretched to the ceiling.

“A cave-in,” Dr. Pym said. “It looks quite recent. This may take some time to deal with— My boy, what’re you doing?”

Michael was clambering up the rocky slope. He’d spotted a small hole or tunnel near the ceiling. Once level with the opening, he balanced himself between a large boulder and the wall and reached his torch into the tunnel’s mouth.

“It goes through,” he said, still breathless from his climb. “It’s only ten or twelve feet. I think I can fit.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Dr. Pym, the longer we’re down here, the longer Emma’s in the graveyard by herself. Just let me go take a look. Please.”

“Michael—”

“If Kate was here, you’d let her go. You know you would.”

The wizard sighed. “Very well. But you are only to look and report back, you understand?”

Michael said he did, and immediately stripped out of his thick coat. Then, with the torch held before him, he wriggled into the tunnel. It was smaller than he’d thought. He had to crawl on his belly, using his forearms and elbows to drag himself along. Soon, he had scrapes on his arms and elbows, on his shoulders, chin, legs, the top of his head. And then he got stuck. He twisted this way and that, but it was no good. He told himself not to panic, that he was nearly at the end. Gripping with his hands while bracing one foot against a rock, he heaved himself forward with all his strength. It was a ferocious effort, so much so that he pitched himself completely out of the tunnel and landed hard on a rocky floor.

He was up in an instant, scrambling about for his dropped torch. He could hear the wizard’s voice echoing through the tunnel:

“Michael, say something! What was that noise? Are you hurt?”

Michael opened his mouth but no words came. His torch was illuminating a small chamber. There was a wooden table, there was a chair, and there was the thing that sat in the chair, staring at him.

Emma had climbed onto the roof of a large mausoleum, and from her perch, she had views both down into the rat tomb (where she was very consciously not looking) and out over the uneven skyline of the graveyard. The bridge to Malpesa had vanished. Everything was silent and dark and still.

To pass the time, and as a way of not thinking about the squirming pool of rats—fake or not, she didn’t trust them—Emma had started imagining that Kate had come back from the past and was sitting beside her. She had only to turn her head and Kate would be there, smiling, ready to take Emma in her arms. The more she imagined it, the more real the vision became, till Emma started to think that Kate actually was there and only waiting for her younger sister to notice her presence.

Don’t look, she told herself. She’s not there; don’t look.

Emma looked. She was alone.

Turning back, she had to wipe her hand across her eyes, as the lights of Malpesa had begun to blur and shimmer in the distance. She wrapped her arms around her knees and began to rock back and forth.

I want Kate back, she thought. I want Kate back I want Kate back I want Kate back.…

The night was cold and dark, and nothing moved in the graveyard.

What were Michael and the wizard doing?

She glanced up. The lights in the distance were still blurry, and Emma rubbed at her eyes. She looked again, and the lights were moving. She started to stand, then remembered Michael’s warning and crouched low, peering through the darkness.

The bridge to Malpesa had reappeared, and a line of torches was marching across it, coming toward the cemetery.

Snatching up the stick the wizard had given her, Emma rushed to the edge of the roof. She had to warn Dr. Pym. But then, slipping to the ground, Emma heard a voice close by, echoing through the tombstones.

“They’re here! Spread out! Find them!”

With horror, Emma realized that there was another group already in the graveyard. She’d let them slip by while she’d been thinking about Kate! She cursed herself. Dr. Pym had trusted her to do one thing, and she’d let him down!

She could hear the stomping of boots, and the same voice spoke again; it had an accent she didn’t recognize.

“Find the children! You hear me? I want the children!”

Crouched beside the mausoleum, she could see torches flickering between the gravestones. She had to cross ten yards of open space to get to the tomb. She would be completely exposed, but there was no other way. Gathering herself, Emma bolted across, climbed up the side of the tomb, and froze—

Below her, the sea of rats roiled and squirmed. Panic seized hold of her.

She could hear the stamping of boots coming closer.…

Do it, she commanded. Now!

And she lowered herself down, praying she didn’t throw up.

The figure in the chair was a skeleton. It—or he (Michael was fairly sure it had been a man)—wore the rotted remains of an ancient tunic and sat behind the wooden table, positioned so as to face anyone who entered the chamber. The skeleton’s hands rested on the table, the right one curled about the hilt of a naked sword. Hanging from one of the joints of its left hand was a gold ring bearing the now-familiar symbol of three interlocking circles.

It seemed to Michael that the skeleton was watching him.

“Michael!” The wizard’s voice was insistent. “Answer me! Are you hurt? Are you in danger?”

“I’m … I’m fine! Just give me a second!”

Michael took a tentative step closer. The skeleton didn’t move.

Okay, Michael thought, let’s stay calm and see what we have here.

The table had clearly been prepared for visitors. There were three jars, arranged in a line, and an old metal goblet. The goblet was on Michael’s, not the skeleton’s, side of the table. Michael glanced again at the skeleton. It still hadn’t moved.

He recalled the message on the wall.

What I leave, I leave in hopes the Keeper may one day arrive. Choose rightly, and you may never die. Choose wrongly, and you will join me.…

It was a puzzle! You had to drink from one of the jars.

Michael rubbed his hands together. Things were looking up. He loved puzzles, riddles, anything you could work through logically.

“You sly fellow,” he said to the skeleton. He really was feeling much more comfortable. He turned to tell Dr. Pym what he’d found—

Then stopped.

No doubt the wizard could solve the puzzle in an instant. But perhaps this was an opportunity. He was the oldest now; he’d been given Kate’s role. Only Michael was aware that no one really saw him that way. This was his chance to prove himself. He imagined climbing out of the tunnel, and Dr. Pym saying, “What did you find out? What do I need to do?” and as he casually dusted himself off, Michael would reply, “Save your spells, Doctor. I solved the puzzle. Good old-fashioned logic.” Even Emma would be impressed.

“Michael, what’s going on in there?”

“Just one more minute!”

He would have to be quick.

Choose wrongly, and you will join me.…

That was pretty self-explanatory. Drink from the wrong jar, and you become a skeleton yourself.

Choose rightly, and you may never die.…

This man, when he’d been a man, had lived for thousands of years thanks to the Book of Life. Indeed, the whole thing was perfectly clear. Two jars were poison. One would guide him to the Chronicle. He only had to make the right choice.

He started with the jar on his left. It was a reddish-brown clay jug, bell-shaped and stoppered with a cork. Michael pulled out the cork and sniffed. He jerked back in revulsion. It was as if someone had filled the jug with sludge from the bottom of a swamp and mixed in kerosene, vinegar, and something that smelled like wet dog. Michael stuffed the cork back into the jug and stepped to the right.

The middle container was a slender, ruby-colored bottle half filled with dark liquid. Michael removed the cork, leaned forward, and—gingerly this time—sniffed. He sniffed again. He hadn’t imagined it. Whatever was in the bottle smelled like root beer.

He moved on to the last container.

It was a small metal flask the size of a bottle of perfume. The cap was held in place by a lever shaped like a tiny claw, and when Michael pressed a button, the cap popped up. He brought the flask to his nose. He smelled nothing. He held it closer and inhaled more deeply. Still nothing. He released the button and returned the flask to the table.

“Michael”—the wizard’s voice was now more annoyed than worried—“I insist you tell me what is going on.”

“There’s no map! There’s a table with three jars! Oh, and there’s a skeleton! But he’s just sitting there.”

Michael looked at the skeleton. He hadn’t moved, had he? Michael tried to remember if the skeleton’s head had been in that exact position.

“Michael, I forbid you to touch anything! In fact, come back right now! Do you hear me?”

“I’m just … tying my shoe.”

“Well, for goodness— Oh, hold on a second, my boy!”

Michael thought he could hear another voice, further off, his sister’s, and the wizard was calling to her. He wondered if something had happened in the graveyard. Michael sensed that his time was running out.

Choose rightly, and you may never die.…

Choose wrongly, and you will join me.…

The clay jar certainly smelled like poison, but maybe that was the point. When designing a puzzle, you always put the solution where it’s least expected. In which case, the swampy, wet-dog-smelling concoction was Michael’s best bet.

Or was that a little too obvious? Wouldn’t the skeleton man have assumed that Michael or whoever would automatically go for the most disgusting alternative? Wouldn’t it be far more clever to have the least poisonous-seeming option not actually be poison? In that case, Michael should choose the ruby-colored bottle and its promise of root beer.

Except … there was still the metal flask to consider. That smelled like nothing at all. How did that figure into the equation? And, come to think of it, was he making a mistake in not looking at the containers themselves: a clay jug, a glass bottle, a metal flask? Was there some meaning there? Or perhaps the clue was in their respective placements on the table?

What I really need, Michael thought, are lab rats. I could feed each of them one of the potions and see who survives.

Michael glanced about, but the chamber was depressingly rat-free.

Admit it, he thought, you have no idea which is the right potion.

Very quietly, he murmured, “Eenie … meenie … miney—”

He stopped, too embarrassed to continue.

Choose, Michael told himself. You just have to choose. Do it. Now.

He uncorked the clay jug and tilted it into the goblet. His hands shook and he had to steady the jug against his body. Slowly, almost reluctantly, a foul greenish-yellow sludge slithered into the bowl of the goblet. Michael stared. How was he supposed to drink this? He’d need a spoon. Or a fork.

As Michael raised the goblet to his lips, he had to pinch his nose to keep from gagging. He could actually see the goop crawling toward his mouth. He knew he was being stupid. If only he’d had more time, he could’ve worked it out. Perhaps found some rats in another cave. He was glad that Kate couldn’t see him, or Dr. Pym, or his dad, or even G. G. Greenleaf, author of The Dwarf Omnibus—

Michael abruptly lowered the cup, the goop a hairbreadth away from touching his lips.

Setting down the goblet, Michael pulled the Omnibus from his bag. He knew the chapter he was looking for and opened directly to it. He read: “ ‘Puzzles have long been a key part of every magical quest, and no surprise, dwarves have always excelled at them!’ ”

Michael felt relief washing over him. Good old G. G. Greenleaf!

The key to solving any puzzle is to place yourself in the mind of the puzzle maker. What were his intentions with the puzzle? Whom did he want to solve it? Whom to fail? Always go back to the directions; someone wrote them for a reason. Also, if nothing else works, try smashing the puzzle with your ax. It’s frequently effective.

Michael closed the Omnibus and looked at the skeleton. The man had been one of the last Guardians of the book; he’d wanted to protect it. Therefore, he’d wanted most people to fail the test. But if someone just randomly chose a potion, he had a one-in-three chance of succeeding. Michael thought that seemed too high. The Guardian would not want one in three to succeed, but the one. The Keeper.

Michael was suddenly sure that none of the potions was the right answer, and that if he’d drunk the foul-smelling sludge, he would now be dead.

“Michael!”

Emma’s voice yanked him to the tunnel. He could see the flickering of torchlight at the far end.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“You gotta get outta there!” She was desperate. “They’re coming! Lots of them!”

“Who? What’re you—”

“Screechers! I saw them! Hurry!”

“But we still don’t know where the next book is! I can—”

“Michael”—it was the wizard speaking—“we’ll find the book some other way! Come back now! That is an order!”

But Michael was already turning back to the table. He was certain that if he didn’t get the answer now, didn’t discover the location of the Chronicle, then they would never find the book. And everything depended on that. Which meant everything depended on him. He opened the Omnibus and read the passage again. One phrase caught his eye: “Always go back to the directions; someone wrote them for a reason.…”

The directions, Michael thought:

Choose rightly, and you may never die.…

Choose wrongly, and you will join me.…

And Three will become One.

Michael felt a shiver of excitement.

And Three will become One.…

Dr. Pym had said it referred to the three Books of Beginning, and perhaps it did. But perhaps it also referred to something else.

The green-yellow sludge was now half solid in the bottom of the goblet. Michael yanked the cork from the red bottle and splashed in the root-beer-smelling liquid; there was a hissing and bubbling, and the concoction turned black and, if possible, smelled even worse than before; but Michael was already upending the tiny flask, shaking out a few clear drops. The effect was immediate. The hissing and bubbling stopped, and the liquid in the goblet turned the color of pure silver.

“Michael, this is your last warn—”

“I’m drinking from all three jars!”

He wanted them to know what was happening. In case he was wrong.

Then, unable to resist the dramatic gesture, he raised the goblet toward the skeleton. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything suitably offhand and cavalier to say as a toast. Finally, he just muttered, “Well, here goes …,” and drank.

It was as if he’d poured ice water directly into his heart. The goblet clattered to the floor as Michael dropped to his knees. The cold was spreading through his body, and he could feel himself beginning to shake. Was it possible he’d been wrong? But he’d been so sure! He tried calling to his sister, but his voice failed him. He could feel his lungs freezing, ice forming in the chambers of his heart; his vision went dark; he bent forward, his forehead pressed against the rocky floor; a pounding shook his entire body. What a strange way to die, Michael thought. The pounding came again, and again. Then Michael’s vision cleared, and he realized that the pounding was the beating of his heart, and he felt life and warmth moving through him, and he took a deep, deep breath, and once again he could hear Emma calling his name, crying, begging him to please, please come back.…

“I’m coming!” he shouted, getting to his feet. “I’m okay!”

And he was better than okay, much better than okay, for he knew where the Chronicle was hidden.

What happened afterward was a blur.

He scrambled through the tunnel. Hands pulled at him. Emma hugged him, told him he was an idiot, and Dr. Pym shouted to come away, there was no time.…

And then running. Back through the crease, reaching the cavern underneath the tomb, hearing the Screechers so close above them, the wizard yelling for the children to follow him, plunging into the tunnel that led toward Malpesa …

And running again, as fast as they could.

They had to get to the port; there was something waiting for them; plans had already been made; something would take them away. “I had a feeling”—the wizard’s voice was coming in quick huffs—“that we might need to leave Malpesa in a hurry.”

And as they ran, the awful screams echoed down the tunnel, enveloping them, making everything inside the children small and cold and weak, and it was all they could do to run on, faster and faster.

Abruptly, the tunnel spilled out into a wide underground canal, through which a dark river flowed, and they splashed into the water, which was ice-cold and slimy and reached to their knees. As they struggled forward, the lights of their torches showed the mouth of another tunnel, paved in brick, on the far wall, and Michael knew they’d arrived at the sewers of Malpesa. Then the chilling cries erupted behind them, and he turned to see dark shapes leaping from the tunnel they’d just quit.

“Run!” the wizard cried. “Don’t stop! Run! Leave them to me!”

Michael took two steps and realized that Emma hadn’t moved. He seized her by the arm and dragged her forward, stumbling through the black water.

“It’s not real!” he shouted. “The screams can’t hurt you!”

“I—I know!” she shouted back. “Stop yelling in my ear!”

Glancing over his shoulder, Michael saw Dr. Pym standing to meet the Screechers; only the wizard wasn’t facing the monsters, he was looking up the canal, into the darkness. Michael and Emma reached the far side, and Michael pushed Emma up the embankment. Then he turned again and saw Dr. Pym wading toward him, a dozen Screechers in pursuit and more pouring like rats out of the other tunnel, and he became aware of a roaring, and then a great wall of water rushed down out of the darkness, filling the tunnel, and the wizard heaved him into the sewer as the wave struck the Screechers and carried them away in a tumble of dark water.

The next thing Michael knew, they’d reached a ladder; Emma went up first, and he followed hard on her heels. They climbed out of a well beside an old church, and the city was so quiet, so still, and then the wizard was climbing out and Emma was asking if Dr. Pym had caused that flood, but before the old man could speak, they heard a fast, stamping thud-thud-thud, the ground shook, and the lumbering shape of a troll rounded the corner, swinging an enormous, metal-studded club, and charged toward them.

It was like fleeing before an earthquake; the ground trembled so that it was hard to find footing. The wizard led them down a narrow alley where the troll could not follow, and Michael heard it bellowing in rage, bashing the walls with its club. And then they were running along a crooked, boat-lined canal, and they heard the cry of a Screecher, and then another, and another, closing in from all sides, and Dr. Pym seemed to be rearranging the map of the city as they ran, causing bridges to vanish behind them, forcing buildings to smash together and bar their enemies’ way; but at every turn, three or four morum cadi would appear, rushing toward them, swords drawn and shrieking.

“The port,” Dr. Pym kept saying, “we must reach the port.”

Then they rounded the corner to the main canal and found a dozen Screechers guarding the bridge, and there was a man standing before them. He was the largest man Michael had ever seen. He wore a long, dark overcoat and black leather gloves, and his bald head shone in the lamplight. The very sight of him filled Michael with fear, and he felt Emma grab at his arm.

“Doctor!” The man held his hands out wide as if in welcome. “We’ve been waiting for you! Now, enough of this running about. We’re going to wake the neighbors.”

“You can’t have them, Rourke!” The wizard had moved in front of the children. “Not while I’m alive.”

“Well, you see, Doctor.” And the man smiled. “I’m actually okay with that.”

The Screechers charged forward, but Dr. Pym blew on his torch and a wall of flame sprang up in the middle of the street. Then, as if conducting an orchestra, the wizard threw up his arms, and a ball of fire shot into the night sky, turning in a great circle above the city.

“Dr. Pym!” Emma cried. “What’re we going to do?”

“If we cannot reach the port”—the wizard’s face was grim, and he had to shout over the noise of the fire—“then the port must come to us. This way!”

They sprinted to a decrepit four-story building that clung to the edge of the canal, and Dr. Pym pushed through a rotted door into the dark, musty interior and herded them up a wide staircase.

“To the roof! Hurry!”

As they climbed upward, Michael heard the door being torn from its hinges. His legs were burning and trembling with fatigue. At the top floor, a ladder led up through the rotten rafters, and the wizard urged them up, up, up, and then they were all three standing on a slanting, half-ruined tile roof, looking out over the city and the dark water of the canal, and the wizard sent another ring of fire, like a flare, into the sky, so that it hung there, burning above them.

“Who …,” Michael panted, “… was that man?”

“Rourke,” the wizard said. “The right hand of our enemy. I have to gather myself. They will be on us in moments, and we need time. Time above all else.”

Bells had begun to clang across the city, and Michael could see lights going on in windows as voices called to one another in fear and alarm, and then the Screechers began to gain the roof. Some of them came up the ladder, but others scaled the outside of the building, clambering over the edge of the roof.

“Back!” the wizard commanded the children. “Get back!”

Michael and Emma retreated, but the tiles were loose and slippery, and one gave way under Michael’s feet, and he slipped and nearly slid off the edge.

There were Screechers everywhere now, and Dr. Pym sent a crescent of flame toward the creatures, the dry rags of their uniforms catching fire in an instant, and many of them fell flaming off the roof; and then the whole building shook, and Michael could hear enraged bellowing from below, and he peered over the side and saw a pair of trolls hammering at the building like lumberjacks attempting to fell an enormous tree. Meanwhile, Emma was hurling broken bits of tile as fast as she could snatch them up, and there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run.…

Then Dr. Pym was grabbing Michael’s arms and leaning close. The fire that was raging on the roof held the Screechers at bay.

“Michael, listen to me! You must find the Chronicle! It all depends on you! You saw where it is hidden? You can find it?”

“Y-yes.”

“The Dire Magnus must not have it! Promise me. Promise me!”

“I … promise.”

“You will be its Keeper! Katherine foresaw this! You understand? Do you understand?”

Michael nodded, but he felt panic grip him, and he suddenly knew that he wasn’t ready. Why had he pretended he was? He tried to say this, but his throat was dry and the words wouldn’t come.

Emma was shouting, pointing down the canal.

The wizard turned. “Thank goodness, he saw my signal.”

Michael could hear it now, an engine, growing louder. And he saw a floatplane skimming along the canal, its pontoons cutting large Vs in the still water. It was passing under a bridge and would be even with them in seconds.

“Once you land in the water—listen to me, Michael—once you land in the water, hold to your sister tightly. They will only have one chance to pick you up.”

“You—you’re coming too,” he managed.

“No. Someone must stay. Rourke knows about the grave. We cannot risk him learning the location of the Chronicle. I am the only one who can slow him down. I can buy you time you need.”

“But I—”

“I know what you’re afraid of. Trust Emma. Trust yourself. You have a good heart. Let it guide you.”

“But you can’t—”

“He is coming. Go now.”

And Michael could see the bald man stepping up onto the roof.

“Now you have to jump! Go!”

He pushed Michael toward Emma. Michael seized his sister’s hand.

“We have to jump!”

“What about Dr. Pym?”

“He’s not coming!”

Before she could argue, Michael clenched her hand tighter and—remembering to take off his glasses and slip them in his bag—took three running steps and Emma had no choice but to jump.

They fell and fell and fell. Hitting the water was like striking concrete. Emma’s hand was ripped from his as Michael plunged deep underwater. He struggled upward with all his might, and as he broke the surface, he saw the propeller of the plane bearing down. Emma was a few feet away, looking bewildered and scared, and he swam to her, wrapping his arms tightly around her, and, at the last moment, the plane swerved, the propeller missing them, and Michael felt himself seized by iron hands, and he and Emma were lifted from the water and into the plane. Emma cried out, and Michael, still sprawled on the floor and struggling to breathe, saw her hugging Gabriel, Gabriel, who had pulled them in and who was now shouting to the pilot, and the plane was rising into the air, clearing a bridge by inches, and they climbed higher and banked, and Michael scrambled to put on his glasses and, through the open door, he saw on the roof two distant shapes, facing one another and outlined against the flames. Then the building teetered and collapsed, crumbling into the canal, and the plane, still rising, banked again, and Malpesa vanished behind them, and there was no sound save the engine and the rushing of the wind, and nothing to see but the darkness of the night sky, and Emma was hugging Michael and crying, “Oh, Michael, Dr. Pym … he … oh, Michael …” “I say, Master Jake …”

“Yes, Master Beetles?”

“I do believe she’s finally waking up.”

Kate opened her eyes. She was once again lying on the floor, and, once again, two sets of eyes were fixed upon her. But the room she found herself in was a different one, and the two boys were not leaning over and inspecting her for signs of life; they regarded her from a pair of rickety wooden chairs, their feet propped up on crates and pushed close to a battered iron stove. Both boys were smoking pipes.

“How long have I been asleep?” Kate raised herself to a sitting position.

The one named Beetles removed his pipe and seemed to consider the question thoughtfully.

“How long would you say she’s been asleep, Master Jake? Five hours?”

“Oh, I’d venture six hours, Master Beetles.”

“Six? That many?”

“At the very least. I half suspected she was going to open a shop—”

“All right,” Kate said.

“Is that so?” Beetles grinned. “What sort of shop, Master Jake?”

“Why, one a’ those Sleepin’-on-the-Floor-All-Day-Gettin’-Nothing-Done sorts a’ shops, Master Beetles.”

Kate shook her head as the boys collapsed into laughter, Beetles making a great show of doffing his cap and bowing, evidently in deference to his friend’s wit. She took a moment to look around.

Pale winter light forced its way through a single dirt- and frost-scrummed window, illuminating a small, unremarkable room. There was little to behold apart from the stove, the overturned crates now serving as footstools, and the chairs the boys were sitting on. The room’s one notable aspect was that the walls and floor were constructed from large blocks of gray stone. Only the ceiling beams were wood.

Kate saw she had been laid on a folded blanket, and that another blanket had been placed over her bare feet. The gesture seemed oddly considerate. She was still wearing the wool overcoat she’d gotten in the Bowery, the one she’d acquired by trading the chain from her mother’s locket, and her hand now went into her pocket, seeking out and closing over the locket’s familiar egg-like shape. She would have to find a new chain soon. She missed the weight of the locket around her neck, being able to reach up at any time and know it was there. She thought about the magic bazaar, and the witch who’d drugged her, and the two creatures who’d tried to carry her off. She thought about how she’d been saved by that other boy, Rafe, and she saw him again, leaping down from above—he’d known her, recognized her. But how was that possible? Who was he?

She glanced at Jake and Beetles. They were having a smoke-ring competition, though every time one blew a ring, the other would conveniently cough or leap up crying that something had bitten his backside, and in the process destroy his friend’s ring, until Kate realized that disrupting the other person’s smoke ring was the game.

They were having such a good time she couldn’t help but smile.

“You do know,” she said finally, “that smoking’s bad for you?”

The boys found this frankly hilarious.

“Listen to her, smoking’s bad!” guffawed Beetles. “Everyone knows a pipe’s about the best thing you can do for your body.”

“Best medicine in the world!” Jake agreed, and blew another ring.

“Smoking ain’t good for you! Har-har!”

“And look who’s telling us what’s good,” Jake said. “Didn’t we tell her not to go to that witch?”

“We did,” Beetles replied. “We told her and she done it anyway.”

“Fine,” Kate said. “Next time I’ll listen to you.”

“Good,” said Beetles. “ ’Cause we ain’t always gonna find Rafe in time to save you, right?”

“So, Rafe—is he the one who brought me here?”

“Yeah,” Beetles said. “You were passed out. He had to carry you the whole way.”

Kate thought about the blanket placed over her feet and wondered if that same fierce boy from the alley had been the one to do that.

“Where is he?”

“Well, well, well, ain’t this a nice change, Master Jake?” Beetles grinned broadly. “Suddenly, someone wants to see ol’ Rafe.”

“Sure. She’s in love with him, ain’t she?”

Kate felt a rush of heat across her face and was glad for the gloom and smoke.

“I want to thank him for saving my life.”

And, she thought, ask him how he knows me.

“He’s a busy man, Rafe is,” Beetles said. “He told us to make sure you don’t go running off.”

“Though that ain’t likely now’s you want to marry him,” Jake said.

“Nope. Not likely at all.”

“You should open a shop. The I-Wanna-Marry-Rafe-and-Have-a-Hundred-Babies Shop.”

Kate could sense when she was being baited and let the remark pass.

“So where am I?”

“You’re in the hideout, course!”

“What hideout?”

“What hideout?” Jake repeated. “Ours! The hideout a’ the most ruthless, most best gang in New York!”

“Best gang anywhere!” Beetles said.

“Yeah, best gang anywhere, that’s us! The Savages!”

The hideout—Kate had been laid in a back room—turned out to be an old, abandoned church. It must have been, at one time, a magnificent structure, for, on stepping into the long main hall, Kate was struck by the scale of the thing. Stone columns rose eighty feet to a vaulted ceiling. Many of the stained-glass windows had been broken and covered with boards, but those that remained filtered in green and red and yellow and blue light, in complex and beautiful patterns. There were lines of cots up and down the stone floor, and sheets hung up to cordon off areas, and Kate’s impression was that it looked like the dormitory of a large orphanage.

She saw perhaps twenty children, girls and boys, most around the age of Jake and Beetles. And as she and her two guides walked between the lines of cots, it struck Kate that the other children, despite being neither especially clean nor well dressed, all looked fed and happy. In their lives of going from orphanage to orphanage, Kate and her brother and sister had learned to read the mood of a place almost instantly. Was it happy, sad, desperate? Were the children or adults vicious or generous?

She knew right away that this was a good place.

In the center of the church, a group of girls and boys stood at a large table sorting through a pile of objects—watches, silk handkerchiefs, rings, necklaces, earrings, small ornamental boxes, fur coats and wraps—while a boy with a ledger carefully wrote down what the other children called out.

“What is all that?” Kate asked.

“They’re doing the day’s take,” replied Beetles.

“What do you mean, the day’s take?”

“What was brought in by all the different teams. That’s a pretty good haul, that is.”

Kate realized what they were saying, what the huge pile of loot was—

“Wait, you’re—thieves!”

“That’s right,” Beetles said, proudly hooking his thumbs into his suspenders. “Best thieves in New York City.”

“Or Brooklyn,” Jake said.

“Or there,” Beetles said. “Though we never precisely been there.”

Kate knew that it was unreasonable of her to be angry with the children, but she couldn’t help herself. “So that’s your gang? You’re a gang of thieves?”

“Yep,” they said happily. “Everything we learned, Rafe taught us.”

“He’s the best, Rafe is,” Jake said.

“The very best,” Beetles affirmed.

“Great,” Kate said, biting her tongue, “that’s just great.”

After agreeing that it was indeed great, Jake and Beetles asked where to find Rafe and were told he was in the teaching room.

“What’s he teaching?” Kate asked. “How to pick pockets? How to break into houses?”

But the boys only laughed and led her away. The room was down a hallway at the back of the church, was well lit, and had a wood floor and a large fireplace. When Kate and her companions entered, the boy called Rafe, the one who’d saved her in the alley, was stoking up the fire so that it blazed and crackled furiously. A dozen children, all of them younger than Jake and Beetles, sat on the floor, facing him. A thin-shouldered, nervous-looking girl stood at Rafe’s elbow.

There was an unlit candle, Kate saw, positioned close to the fire.

“You ready?” Rafe asked the girl.

She nodded, though she was clearly scared. None of the other children spoke or moved.

“What’s going on?” Kate whispered.

Beetles shushed her. “Watch.”

Rafe placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Go on then.”

And the girl reached out her small, trembling hand into the fire—

“No!”

Kate ran forward and yanked the girl back. She’d been fast enough: the girl wasn’t burned, and Kate hugged the startled child to her, as if afraid the boy might try and steal her away.

“What’re you doing?” she cried.

Rafe looked at her without expression.

“Heya, Rafe!” said Beetles brightly. He and Jake stood at the door. “We watched her just like you said.”

“She didn’t run off ’cause she’s in love with you,” Jake said.

“Obviously,” Kate said, “that’s not true.”

“Yeah.” The dark-haired boy turned to the children. “We’ll finish later.” The children, including the small girl, who had squirmed out of Kate’s arms, hurried from the room. Rafe set the poker against the hearth. “The boss wants to talk to you.”

“Answer me—what were you doing to her?”

“Teaching her. Trying to.”

“What? How to get burned?”

The boy looked at her for a long second. Then he bent over and calmly placed his own hand directly into the fire. Kate gasped, but to her amazement, the boy’s hand didn’t burn. The skin remained unmarred. Then he reached out his other hand and touched the wick of the candle. It burst into flame.

The boy took his hand from the fire and touched Kate’s wrist. His skin was cool.

“I wouldn’t have let her get burned.”

He blew out the candle.

“Now come on, the boss is waiting.”

He led her to the bell tower, at the base of which a large iron bell lay on its side, its shell cracked open and the stone floor beneath it smashed to rubble. A wooden staircase curled upward along the wall.

Kate said, “Wait—”

The boy stopped on the second step.

“I don’t understand—are you … a wizard?”

The boy laughed. “Wizards read books. Know all sorts a’ spells. I’m no wizard.”

“But that thing you did—with the fire—”

“Just something I can do.”

“So the others, the children, are they—”

“Every kid here has magic. It’s why they’re here. We teach ’em to use it, is all.”

He started to turn, but Kate stopped him once more.

“I wanted … to thank you. For saving me in the alley. From those things.”

“The Imps.”

“Yes.”

“Jake and Beetles were gonna try and save you themselves. I only did what I did to stop them.”

He stood there, his hand resting on the wooden banister, and Kate searched his face for some sign of recognition, some sign that, in whatever way, he knew her.

But there was none.

Kate felt self-conscious and drew her coat more tightly around herself. She didn’t understand what was happening, who this boy was, who these children were, but she told herself that it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting to Cambridge Falls, locating Dr. Pym, and finding her way back to Michael and Emma.

“Look, I appreciate what you did—”

“You said that.”

“But I have someplace I need to go. It’s a long way, so the sooner I get started, the better.”

“Where is it?”

“Up north.”

“How’re you gonna get there?”

Kate shifted nervously. “I don’t know. I’ll take the train.”

“You got money for a ticket?”

“No, but—”

“You probably got no money for food either, huh?”

Kate said nothing.

“It’s gonna be dark soon and a lot colder. Even with that coat, you’re not dressed right. How’re you gonna stay warm?”

“I don’t know, but—”

“Seems to me you don’t know much. ’Cept how to go out and freeze to death as quick as possible.”

Kate opened her mouth to argue, but the boy said, “You need to come see the boss,” and started up the tower. A few moments later, an annoyed Kate followed.

The tower was tall, and neither spoke as they climbed. At different spots along the way, the stairs had been smashed, and boards hung splintered and loose and some were missing altogether. The gaps had to be leapt across, and when she jumped, Kate sensed both the gulf yawning below her and the boy above, watchful, ready to catch her if she slipped. She made sure not to. She had no intention of thanking him again.

The higher they went, the colder the air became, and the more the wind blew through cracks in the walls. Kate felt light-headed and hollow. She’d had nothing to eat since the potato she’d shared with Jake. And before that? What had been her last real meal?

At the top of the tower, dozens of pigeons were strung along the belfry ropes and cooing softly, their feathers ruffled against the cold. There was a large, uneven hole in the middle of the ceiling, and Kate could see a wedge of gray winter sky.

A ladder slanted up through a trapdoor.

“Wait—”

The boy turned, his foot on the first rung. “What now?”

He was looking at her, and Kate felt a sudden trembling in her chest. The feeling wasn’t new. She’d felt it in the room downstairs when she’d stood next to him and he’d placed his hand in the fire. But now, with the two of them alone in the tower and him looking directly at her, the feeling was stronger, and it confused her even more.

“In the alley. You acted like you knew me. How is that possible?”

The boy seemed to study her face. It was like being stared at by a wild animal; there was something so fierce in him. Kate willed herself to hold his gaze.

“I was wrong,” Rafe said. “You just look like someone I know.” He headed up the ladder, and Kate stood there, taking long, slow breaths, till the boy called down:

“You coming?”

She climbed up through the trapdoor and, a moment later, was standing in the open air. The top of the belfry was a large, rectangular space, crowned by a peaked dome that was supported by columns running around the edge of the tower. Standing there was like being in a house with a roof but no walls. Three enormous iron bells, identical to the one at the base of the tower, hung above her, and she saw the space for the missing bell, like a smile where a tooth has been knocked out.

It was bitterly cold, but Kate hugged herself and looked out to the right, up the long avenues, to the open expanse of the park, winter-dead and white in the distance. She looked the other way, taking in the maze of buildings and streets that made up downtown. Glancing behind her, she saw that the church was perched beside a wide gray river, and that there was ice creeping in at the edges of the water.

Then Kate turned and looked across the belfry.

Twenty yards away, a woman sat at a desk, writing. She was hard at work, and the desk was covered with stacks of weighted-down papers that fluttered in the wind like a fleet of tiny sails. She seemed completely untroubled by the cold or the wind, and remained focused on her task.

Kate supposed her to be in her early fifties. She had gray hair cropped short like a man’s, and she wore a high-necked, long-sleeved black dress and had a black shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her posture was stiff and unbending. Kate couldn’t see her right hand, but the woman’s left hand, the one holding the pen, displayed no rings or jewelry of any kind. Nor did she wear a necklace, a cameo, or earrings. Kate had the sense of a person of pure will, as if the woman’s own internal fire not only warmed her, up here in the cold and the wind, but had burned away everything about her that was not essential.

Kate felt a weight settle on her shoulders. The boy had placed a long, heavy coat over her own.

“That coat a’ yours ain’t worth much. This here is bear.”

The coat had thick black fur and was very warm and very heavy. The boy tugged it forward so that it hung on her like a cloak. He made a point, it seemed, of not meeting her eyes. Kate thought of the blanket that had been put over her feet while she’d slept, and she knew that that also had been him.

“Come on.”

He turned and headed across the belfry, skirting the hole in the center, and Kate followed, her bearskin coat trailing on the floor.

Rafe stopped her a foot from the desk, and they stood there, waiting for the woman to notice them. Finally, she set down her pen and looked up.

“So”—the woman’s voice was like someone striking flint—“you’re the girl who’s causing so much fuss.”

She stood and came around the desk. She was not tall, only an inch or two taller than Kate, but the way she held herself, as if she had iron fillings in her bones, made her seem much taller. She had sharp gray eyes, and the skin of her face was lined and weathered, suggesting she had spent much of her life outside. Kate could imagine her on the deck of a ship, or on the Great Plains of the West, as if the woman required those wide-open spaces to exercise the full extent of her will. The gray eyes studied Kate, and while the gaze was not unkind, there was no mercy or softness in it.

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Kate—Katherine.”

“I am Henrietta Burke.”

She held out her left hand, and it was then Kate saw that the woman’s right hand, which she’d thought was tucked inside the shawl, was missing. The arm stopped at the elbow, and the sleeve was sewn over the stump. Kate already had her own right hand extended, and she awkwardly switched to her left. The woman gave Kate’s hand a quick, hard clench. It was like shaking hands with an eagle.

“You observe I lost my right hand. Ten years ago, it was cut off by a pack of fools and degenerates in St. Louis. They accused me of doing witchcraft. Which, of course, I was. And they somehow thought that taking my right hand would stop me. They soon learned the error of their ways. It was tedious, learning to write and perform spells with my left hand, but one can do anything if one sets one’s mind to it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kate wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Forgive our meeting up here. But I find the cold sharpens my thoughts. Is it true you’re from the future?”

Kate was taken aback. “How—”

“I know because it is my business to discover what people are saying. And I would ask you to answer my questions quickly and to the point. I have little time and less patience. So I’ll ask again, do you come from the future?”

“Yes.”

“And you wish to go back there?”

“Yes.”

“But you need the help of a powerful witch or wizard. It was for this reason that you went to that witch in the bazaar who sold you to the Imps, is that correct?”

“Yes. Can you—”

“Send you back? No. Though I am an adequate witch in most respects, what you require is beyond me. Bring down Scruggs.”

This last was said to the boy, and Rafe went to the edge of the belfry, took hold of a rope, and quickly climbed up and out of sight. A moment later, Kate heard his footsteps moving over the rooftop.

“Scruggs,” Henrietta Burke poured herself a cup of coffee from a pot on the desk, “was once a formidable wizard. But he overreached and cast a spell that broke him in two. Still, he has power. He placed a concealment over this church. The police and the Imps could walk right past and never see us. Now he spends his days talking to birds.”

More footsteps above, and the boy reappeared, sliding down the rope. There was something fastened to his back. Kate saw that it was an old, bony-limbed, grizzle-haired man, wrapped in a tattered brown cloak. Once Rafe’s feet were safely on the floor, the old man unwrapped his legs from around the boy’s middle and his hands from Rafe’s neck and, taking no notice of Kate or Henrietta Burke, settled himself into a chair beside the desk and began to chew his nails.

“Scruggs,” the woman said, “this is the girl. Can you help her do what we talked about?”

Scruggs, Kate thought, looked like he needed help himself. The skin of his face was slack and gray. Both eyes were bloodshot. His hands were twisted and swollen. His long, scraggly hair was greasy and windblown. He needed help, she thought, or maybe a bath.

The old man stared at Kate and grunted, still gnawing on a fingernail.

“She has the power. She’s fighting it; but I can pull it out.”

“Thank you, Scruggs.” Henrietta Burke turned back to Kate. “Do you know what tomorrow night is, child?”

“The … Separation?” Kate managed to recall the word used by the creatures who had bought her from the witch.

“Yes. On New Year’s Eve, the magical world will go into hiding. It is an event that has been decades in the planning. Can you imagine the scale of such a thing?” As she spoke, the woman walked to the edge of the belfry and looked out over the city. “A spell had to be devised to alter the memories of every nonmagical human on the planet. Large swaths of land had to be made invisible. Agreement had to be obtained from each magical community that its members would abide by the Separation and not reveal themselves to those on the outside. Foolishly, there are some who yet oppose it, but even they have been brought to heel. The Separation is key to our survival.” She turned back to Kate. “I mention all that only to say that until the Separation is accomplished, I will require Scruggs’s full attention and powers. The next day or so are sure to be perilous. After that, he will send you home. Can you wait that long? If not, you are free to go.”

Kate was about to thank her and say no. She had no intention of entrusting herself to Scruggs, despite anything the woman might say about his abilities—the old man had just discovered a bowl of soup on the desk and was trying to eat it with his fingers—but she paused. What, then, was her plan? To reach Cambridge Falls and contact Dr. Pym, but how? The boy had been right. She had no money; she was still wearing her summer sandals. How was she going to pay for the train ticket, food, warmer clothes?

“And what do I have to do for you?”

The woman smiled, if it could be called a smile: the narrow line of her mouth became an eighth of an inch wider. “So you’ve learned that nothing in this world is free. Good. I’m glad that young girls of the future are not complete fools.”

“I won’t steal anything—”

The woman laughed; it was like a dry clap. “And yet you have the luxury of scruples! The truth is, I don’t know what the price will be. I will ask it when the time comes, and you can choose to pay it or not. Is that acceptable?”

Kate glanced over to where the boy, Rafe, still stood at the edge of the roof. She had not looked at him for several minutes. When she looked at him now, he quickly turned away. But in that moment, Kate saw in his face the recognition she’d been searching for. He’d lied; he did know her.

“I need an answer.”

Still looking at the boy, Kate said, “Yes.”

Mrs. Burke instructed Rafe to find Kate warmer, less noticeable clothes, and to get her something to eat and a place to sleep. Tomorrow, she said, they would talk more. When Kate and the boy reached the main hall of the church, Rafe called over a girl who was perhaps a year or two younger than Emma.

“She needs clothes,” he told the girl. “Boy’s clothes. The Imps’re looking for her. The more hidden she is, the better.” As the girl was leading Kate away, he called after them, “And a cap for her hair!”

“I know, I’m not stupid!” the girl yelled back. “He acts like I’m stupid.”

The girl brought Kate to a room piled high with well-worn clothes. She literally dove into the mound of clothes and began flinging out wool pants and shirts, socks and sweaters, all of which Kate had to catch as they flew toward her.

“Just try on stuff till something fits,” the girl said.

The girl was the same one whose hand Kate had pulled from the fire. Kate wondered if the girl remembered and thought about asking, but she had a feeling the girl would say of course she remembered, and then accuse Kate of thinking she was stupid.

And, for a moment, Kate was reminded so vividly of Emma, and how much she missed her sister, that her whole body clenched into one great sob of sadness.

“You all right?” The girl was holding up a pair of pants that Kate and four or five other people could’ve all fit into at once. “You look like you’re gonna cry. Don’t worry. We’ll find you stuff.”

Kate wiped at her eyes and tried to smile. “I know. Thanks.”

Eventually—after rejecting what was too big, too small, too holey, too smelly, and anything that had been home to an animal—Kate stood dressed in a pair of thick wool pants, a wool shirt over a softer cotton shirt, a short canvas jacket to go under the coat she’d bought in the Bowery and had become attached to, and a pair of heavy wool socks. The girl, who seemed never to stop moving, was kneeling at her feet and jamming on a succession of boots, tossing the unwanted pairs over her shoulder into a large, disorderly pile.

“Perfect!” the girl announced.

Kate saw that the boots didn’t match; but as they both fit and the heels were more or less the same height, she let it go.

“You just need a cap!”

The girl went back to digging in the pile.

“So that boy, Rafe. Who is he?” Kate asked.

“Rafe? He’s the best!”

“Yeah, I’ve heard. Besides that.”

“He’s the one brought me here.” Only the girl’s legs were visible as she plowed through the pile of clothes. “My parents both died from the consumption. Then I was working at this factory downtown. Awful place. There were a bunch a’ us girls. The owner kept us locked up, sewing day and night. Beat us. Fed us like dogs.”

“But”—Kate was shocked—“they can’t do that! There’re laws!”

“Laws? Ha! When you’re a kid and you got magic in you, the normal humans grab you quick and put you to work. No one cares. The stuff we make is special, see. The shoes or cabinets or whatever. They got magic in them. Like the clothes we sewed made folks look prettier or taller or not as fat. Then the owner’d sell ’em for lots a’ money. Give money to the cops. No one cares.”

“Why didn’t you escape?”

“Don’t be stupid,” the girl said in exactly the way Emma might’ve. “Just ’cause you can do some magic don’t mean you can shoot lightning outta your nose.” She returned with a handful of cloth hats. “Anyway, Rafe found us. He gave that man, a grown man, a terrible whipping. He told us, ‘You can go your own way, or you can come with me. You’ll have to work, but there’ll be no beatin’ and you can leave when you want.’ He done that to every kid here. Saved ’em. Same way Miss B saved him when he was a kid. You heard that story?”

Kate shook her head, and the girl lowered her voice ominously.

“Don’t say I told you, but Rafe killed a man. He was only six years old, and he stabbed this man right through the heart.” The girl, with a good degree of relish and an uuuugggghhh sound, pantomimed stabbing Kate in the heart. “Right, so then this mob a’ humans was hunting him down. Miss B got in front a’ them. They could see right away she was a witch, and she said she’d turn the first man who touched Rafe into a pig. Then she done it to one fella just to prove she could. That’s when the Savages got started. With Rafe. And he found the rest a’ us.”

The girl took one of the caps and tried to yank it over Kate’s head.

“I think it’s too small,” Kate said.

But even as she said it, the hat seemed to expand so that it became a perfect fit. The girl threw the others away.

“Great!”

Then Kate glanced down and saw that her boots, which a moment ago had looked nothing like each other, now matched. And her clothes, which had been sort of roughly her size, now looked as if they had been tailored for her. Was this how the children’s magic worked? It leaked into the things they touched or made?

“Let’s get supper.” The girl smiled brightly. “ ’Fore it’s all gone. Oh, my name’s Abigail. ’Case you were wondering.”

And she skipped out of the room.

Kate stood there, her mind spinning. Who were these children she had fallen among? And who was this boy? At six, he’d killed a man. Then he’d set about saving other children? None of it made sense.

And—this troubled Kate most of all—how did he know her?

At that moment, the boy was a dozen blocks to the south, hurrying down a street that would soon disappear from every map of New York. Night had fallen. Large white snowflakes drifted out of the darkness. The boy turned in at a shabby tenement, climbing down a set of stairs to knock three times at the basement apartment.

An old woman—a crone—shawl pulled tight over her bony shoulders, opened the door. Rafe passed a few coins into the mottled hand, and the woman stepped back to let him pass. The boy moved quickly through the dim rooms. The air smelled of boiled radishes, sweat, and tobacco. Men and women sat on the floor or against the wall and whispered in languages from lands far away.

He stopped at a door at the back of the apartment. Wavering candlelight shone under the sill. He raised his hand to knock, then a voice said:

“Come in.”

He stepped into a small room lit by a single candle. A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl no more than fourteen sat at a table, an empty chair opposite her. Besides the candle, the table held a shallow clay bowl, a knife, and several small jars.

The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of cloth. He opened it, displaying a single blond hair, and handed it to the girl.

He said, “I want to know who she is.”

The boy sat, watching as the girl filled the clay bowl with water, sprinkled in oil, then singed the hair on the flame and dropped it in the bowl. The liquid turned cloudy. She watched the surface for a few seconds. Finally, she looked up, and her eyes cleared.

“She has come from the future.”

“Why? What’s she doing here? What’s she want?”

“She wants to go home. But in coming here, she has changed things.”

“What do you mean?”

The girl stared at him for a long moment. “You’ve seen her before.”

It was not a question. The boy nodded. “I saw her in a dream.”

The girl held out a hand, and the boy reached up and pulled out one of his own hairs. She singed the hair and dropped it in the bowl. It was a long time before she looked up.

“You are being hunted.”

“By who? The Imps? I killed one of theirs today—”

“That is not why they are hunting you. You are the reason they are here. The reason they have come to this country. To find you.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“You have something they need. Something their master wants. Had it not been for her, they would have found you today. Your path would have crossed with the giant’s. But the girl’s coming changed the course of events.”

“Changed them how? Would I have been killed?”

“No, you would have joined them.”

The boy laughed. “Me, join the Imps? You’re crazy.”

He started to rise, but the girl said, “The giant would have offered you power. Power to protect your friends. Power to punish your enemies. He would have promised you the answers you crave. You could not have resisted.”

The boy sat back down. “So what happens now?”

“That is not clear. The girl is the key. Through her, you will understand your destiny. But you know that already. Your dream has told you.”

When the boy spoke again, his voice was strangely quiet. “And the rest of my dream, what about it? Will it come true?”

The girl nodded. “Yes. She will show you who you are. And then she will die.” As they pulled away from Malpesa, it was pandemonium inside the aircraft—Emma crying that they had to go back for Dr. Pym, clutching now at Gabriel, now at Michael, yelling at the pilot to turn the stupid plane around, both children soaking wet and starting to shiver from being plunged into the ice-cold water of the canal. In the midst of this, Gabriel quietly took charge: wrapping the children in blankets, giving them clothes to change into—the pilot had packed extra shirts and pants; luckily, he was a small man, though not so small that his clothes weren’t comically large on the children—and soon Michael and Emma were dry and dressed, their shaking had stopped, and Emma seemed to have accepted that the stupid plane was not going back for Dr. Pym; they were going on.

Gabriel checked them both for injuries, taking time to dress Michael’s various cuts and scrapes. With the man kneeling before him, Michael studied their friend. So much about him was the same: the old scar ridged along his cheek, the unreadable, granite-colored eyes. But Michael also noticed the streaks of gray in Gabriel’s black hair, and the lines on his face, and it occurred to him that unlike Dr. Pym, Gabriel was just a man, and it had been fifteen years since their adventure in Cambridge Falls. He still looked almost impossibly strong and powerful. But—and perhaps it was just the lines around his eyes or the gray in his hair—Michael sensed a new slowness, not in movement but in manner.

“How are you?”

Michael shrugged. There was no way to answer the question. Too much had happened. Also, he felt silly in the enormous clothes.

Gabriel said, “You will see the wizard again.”

“And Kate?”

“Her too.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know them.”

Michael had told Gabriel what had happened on the rooftop, how the wizard had stayed behind to prevent Rourke from following them, or at least to slow the man down, and how he, Michael, was charged with finding the Chronicle. Not surprisingly, he’d mentioned nothing about how he’d nearly broken down and pleaded with the wizard that he wasn’t ready for the task being given him. Ashamed, Michael was already burying the memory in a deep, dark place where he’d never have to look at it again.

The plane didn’t have seats, just benches that folded down, and the children were sitting side by side, wrapped in blankets, with their backs to the wall. Emma had taken one of Gabriel’s hands and was holding it in her lap, half for comfort and half, it seemed, to ensure that her friend did not disappear.

“Tell me,” Gabriel said, “what did you learn about the book?”

Taking a deep breath, Michael told them—for Emma had not yet heard the story—about crawling into the chamber with the skeleton, how he’d realized the inscription in the tunnel was a riddle, how he’d drunk from all three jars and had suddenly known where the Chronicle was hidden—

“That’s what you were doing in there?” Emma punched him in the arm. “That was so—stupid! Don’t ever do anything like that ever again, you hear me? Ever!”

“Okay.”

“You’d better not.” And she hit him again for good measure.

Michael rubbed his arm and, despite himself, smiled.

“What do you mean, you know where the book is hidden?” Gabriel asked. “You had a vision?”

“Not exactly. It was like I remembered where it was. Like I’d been the one to hide it. That probably sounds crazy.”

“Yes,” Emma said.

“No,” Gabriel said. “Such a thing is common in the magical world. The dead man somehow placed his memories into those potions, and they were transferred to you.”

“But I see it all in pieces,” Michael said. “And I can’t point to anything on a map.”

“Be that as it may, the pilot needs a heading. Where should I tell him to go?”

Without thinking, Michael said, “South. Tell him to go south.”

“There is nothing south of Malpesa.”

“Yes, there is,” Michael said. “There’s one thing.”

And Gabriel looked at him, nodded, and crept forward to tell the pilot.

Michael burrowed down inside his blanket, letting himself feel the buffeting and rocking of the plane. Gabriel returned and said that they had enough gas to reach an outpost on the Ronne Ice Shelf on the coast of Antarctica. Once there, they could refuel, get clothes for the children, and plot the rest of their course. The journey to the outpost would take most of the night.

“Your sister is right to sleep.”

And Michael glanced over and saw that Emma’s head was on his shoulder and her eyes were closed. When Michael turned back, Gabriel was studying his face, and he knew that the man was gauging his strength for what lay ahead.

“I’ll be okay,” Michael said. “I’m just tired.”

But his voice sounded so feeble that even he didn’t believe it.

Gabriel put his hand on Michael’s arm. It was a strangely gentle and eloquent gesture. Then Gabriel went forward to the cockpit, and Michael rested his head against the humming wall of the airplane as Emma shifted about. He glanced out the window, but all was dark. They were headed south, to the bottom of the world. He closed his eyes. It was a long time before he drifted off to sleep.

Michael dreamed of snow. He dreamed of fields and valleys, plains and mountains, all covered in snow and stretching to the horizon. He was flying over it, floating. He was alone, but not afraid.…

A pair of giants crouched in the distance. He flew between them, passing through the teeth of a dragon.…

Then he was in a long tunnel. A red glow throbbed all about him. The heat was incredible. His skin crackled like dry paper. Each breath burned his lungs. Suddenly, he was standing beside a bubbling lake, and the heat was much, much worse. He stared at the fiery surface—

“Michael! Michael! Wake up!”

Emma was shaking him. He opened his eyes and had no idea where he was. Then he recognized the interior of the plane, saw Gabriel moving about, getting their things together, and he remembered.

“Are you all right?” Emma asked. “You were making noise.”

“What did I say?”

“Not so much words. More like m?m?m?r?r?r?r?a?a?a?a?g?g?g?h?h?h?h?h.”

“Oh.”

“Get ready. Gabriel says we’re landing soon. And Michael …”

“What?”

“He says we might see penguins!”

Michael rubbed his eyes and looked out the window. In the dim predawn, ghostly white cliffs rose up before them. Michael watched as an enormous ice shelf cleaved off the cliff and collapsed, almost gently, into the sea. Then the plane passed over the wall of ice, and there was nothing but whiteness below them and before them.

I brought us here, Michael thought. Whatever happens is my fault.

He set about pulling on his boots.

“There! Look! Don’t scare him!”

The penguin waddled toward them, flat wings held out wide to balance its wobbly, bowling-pin body. The penguin came to just past their knees, and its webbed feet went thop-thop-thop … thop-thop-thop on the hard-packed ice and snow. Michael and Emma stood perfectly still as the bird maneuvered by them and disappeared around a building.

“That’s the best thing I ever saw,” Emma said. “Ever.”

It was nine in the morning, and the sun had yet to rise. The temperature was only ten degrees below freezing, which was apparently quite warm. The plane, whose pontoons doubled as skis, had landed on a runway of compacted snow beside the outpost. The outpost itself seemed like something you might find on the moon: nine or ten low metal buildings, domed roofs studded with antennas, half-buried tunnels snaking here and there.

It looked like a space station, Michael thought, or a giant hamster run.

Gabriel had made the children wait in the plane till he returned with new cold-weather gear and their own clothes, which he’d run through the dryer at the outpost laundry. It was fortunate that Dr. Pym had given them warm clothes before going to Malpesa since the outpost store did not cater to children. Gabriel had simply bought the smallest sizes he could find, and Michael and Emma both got long underwear, heavy parkas with fur-lined hoods, insulated snow pants to go over their normal pants, thickly padded mittens, liners to go inside the mittens, face masks, hats, goggles, and shell-like boots that fit over their old boots. “Like boots for our boots,” Emma said. “Cool.” Michael’s parka and pants just about fit him, but Gabriel had to cut some length off the sleeves of Emma’s parka and the bottoms of her pants, the edges of which he then sealed with heavy tape. When both children were finally dressed, Michael felt as if he were embarking on an undersea expedition or a journey into deep space. Emma looked at him and giggled.

“You look like Mr. Sausage.”

“So? You’re dressed the same.”

Then she tried to punch him, lost her balance, and fell over.

Even dressed as they were, when they stepped out of the plane, Michael’s breath was ripped away by the cold. It was a kind of cold that the children had never experienced, and they stood there, taking short breaths, getting used to the cramped feeling in their lungs. It was then they saw the penguin, whom Emma immediately named Derek, and this put them in a good mood as they headed to the outpost café to join Gabriel for breakfast.

The windows of the metal hut were steamed with heat, and the floor was a steel grating through which the snow that people tramped inside could melt away. There were a dozen tables, perhaps half of them full. Gabriel and the small pilot sat in the corner. Gabriel got the children trays and plates and let them place their orders—scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon, toast, hash browns—with the man at the grill. As Michael pressed the button to fill his hot chocolate, he noticed the stares he and Emma were getting. Gabriel had told them that the outpost was a way station for scientists, oil workers, explorers, and traders from all over Antarctica, but that children here were rare.

“We’ll leave as soon as we’ve eaten and the plane is refueled. The fewer questions asked, the better.”

At the table, Gabriel and the pilot had laid out a large map of Antarctica.

“Now,” Gabriel said to Michael, “as long as the weather holds, Gustavo will fly us wherever we want. But you must tell us where to go.”

“It’s not easy,” Michael said. “It’s all in pieces in my mind. But the next thing we’re looking for should be a pair of mountains. They’re really tall and thin. There’re other mountains around them, but they’re the biggest. And they’re right next to each other. Does that make sense?”

As Gabriel spoke to the pilot in Spanish, Michael saw that Emma had already eaten both of her pancakes and was half finished with her eggs. He knew he’d better hurry or she’d start in on his breakfast. The pilot was saying something to Gabriel and pointing to a spot on the map. Michael could see a shaded area, which he knew indicated mountains.

“He says,” Gabriel interpreted, “you mean the Horns. A pair of mountains at the head of the Victoria Range. It is perhaps two hours’ flying from here. What do we do when we get there?”

“There should be a cave between the two mountains,” Michael said as he chewed through three pieces of bacon. “And there’re these rock formations in front of the cave that make it look like a mouth with huge teeth. The dead man called it the Dragon’s Mouth. He must’ve called it that in his own language, but somehow I know that’s the name.”

Gabriel spoke to the pilot, and the pilot replied and shook his head.

“He knows of no such cave, but that means nothing. What then?”

“Then,” Michael said, fending off Emma’s fork, which was stabbing at one of his pancakes, “there’s, like, a gap in the memory. I told you it was all in pieces. But on the other side of the cave, we should find a volcano. That’s where the Chronicle is hidden.”

Again, Gabriel spoke to the man. Again, the man said something and shook his head. Then the pilot rolled up his map and walked out.

“He says,” Gabriel told the children, “that there is no volcano in that region, and that this would be a thing he knows since he has flown all over this area. But he will fly us to the base of the Horns, and we will see if we can find the cave. We must hope the weather holds.”

“There is a volcano,” Michael said, surprised at his own stubbornness. “I know there is.”

Gabriel nodded. “I believe you. But I am worried about this cave. These memories you inherited are more than two hundred years old. In that time, there could have been landslides. Earthquakes. The cave could be hidden or collapsed. Either way, we shall see. Now eat. The sun will soon be up.”

“I’m getting seconds,” Emma said. “Since Mr. Sausage here won’t share.” And she picked up her syrup-smeared plate and carried it to the grill.

Soon, they were in the air. The sun had finally risen over the horizon, and as they flew, Emma kept jumping from one side of the plane to the other, pressing her face against the windows. The night before, she’d been too tired and upset to appreciate her first-ever plane ride. Today, she was fed and rested. Though really, Michael knew, the change in her mood was due to Gabriel. After breakfast, in the tunnel-like corridor outside the café, Michael had heard him whisper, “I won’t leave you again,” and Emma had leapt up and thrown her arms around his neck. Since then, she had been more and more her old self, and now, with the sun shining in the distance and a beautiful, strange land passing below, she was clearly enjoying the moment.

He was not quite so carefree.

The certainty he’d felt in the café had given way to doubt. What if the pilot was right and there was no volcano? Or there was, but the Guardian was sending them into a trap? Michael only had a few of the dead man’s memories; he didn’t truly know the man’s mind. He could be leading Emma and Gabriel to their deaths! He wanted to mention this to Gabriel, to let the man assuage his fears, but he was terrified of appearing less than completely confident. He couldn’t come across as weak.

“Michael!” Emma cried. “Come quick!”

He joined her at the side of the plane.

“Look!” She pointed to the ground far below. “It’s Derek!”

Michael could just make out a small, dark shape moving across the white expanse.

“Are you sure that’s him?”

“Oh, that’s definitely Derek. I’d recognize him anywhere.” She pressed her forehead against the window, peering down. “I wonder where he’s going.”

Michael felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Gabriel, and he motioned them to the cockpit. Michael and Emma crowded in behind the pilot, who grinned and pointed through the window.

Emma let out a low gasp.

Directly before them was a range of enormous mountains, white peaks rising from a white plain. The mountains were wide-waisted and packed in tight, one against the other, but two peaks stood out. They were the furthest forward, and the tallest and the thinnest; there was no mistaking them.

The Horns, Michael thought.

He experienced a moment of intense déjà vu. For though he was seeing them for the first time, he knew the mountains from the dead man’s memory. Michael found it unsettling, as if his sense of who he was—the things he knew, the things he remembered, the things that made him him—had begun to blur at the edges.

“These are the mountains?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes.” His voice was barely audible over the whine of the engine.

The pilot then spoke to Gabriel, who nodded and turned to the children.

“We will be there in twenty minutes. He will land a few miles from the base of the Horns. From there, we will go on foot. It is time to get ready.”

Michael’s hand shook as he tried to zip up the front of his parka, and he turned so no one would notice. Soon, both children were muffled in parkas, hats, face masks, goggles, mittens; all that remained were the hard outer boots that Gabriel had bought at the outpost. The children were too stiffly dressed to bend over, so Gabriel had them lie on the floor while he stuffed their old boots into the new ones and snapped them shut. Then he checked to make sure all their gear was zipped and cinched properly.

Michael could scarcely move, and he wondered how in the world they were supposed to hike for three miles.

The plane bumped and rocked as they glided lower. Clinging to a strap on the wall, Michael watched as Gabriel went over the contents of a large pack, double-checking that he had food, water, an emergency shelter, ropes, an ice ax, and other necessary gear. He also, Michael saw, strapped a slender, three-foot-long, canvas-wrapped object to the pack. Michael knew it was Gabriel’s falchion, the machete-like weapon the children had seen him use while fighting in Cambridge Falls. It reminded Michael—as if he needed reminding—that they had no idea what lay ahead.

The plane skipped across the ground, and Michael and Emma lost their grips on the wall straps and flew forward, crashing into the bulkhead, though their many layers kept them from getting hurt. Twice more the plane struck the ground and rebounded into the air, for while the snow was hard, it undulated like a frozen sea. Finally, the plane settled, wobbled unevenly for a hundred yards, and came to a halt.

Michael looked at his sister.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m hot,” Emma grumbled. “I wish they’d open the door.”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I’m just hot.”

Gabriel checked their clothing one last time.

“We have four more hours of daylight. If we find this cave, the Dragon’s Mouth, we will continue on. Failing that, we will either return to the plane or camp if we can find shelter. Gustavo will wait till midnight, then fly back to the outpost. He will come here every day for three days and wait for us during daylight hours. Are you ready?”

Michael saw that Gabriel was looking at him, waiting for an answer, and it crossed his mind to say, “You know, now that I’ve had time to sit with it, I think we should scuttle the whole thing.” But he knew that wasn’t what Gabriel was asking. Their way led onward, not back; and in asking if he was ready, Gabriel was merely letting Michael make the decision to begin.

Michael reached up to straighten his glasses, realized he was wearing goggles, and straightened them instead.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

Gabriel opened the door, and it was as if all the cold air in the world swept into the plane. Gabriel carried his pack out first, then helped Emma to the ground. Michael saw the pilot, Gustavo, watching them with a worried expression.

“Thank you for the ride,” Michael said, his voice muffled by the mask. “We’ll see you soon. I hope.”

And he followed Emma out into the cold.

The ground had a hard, icy crust, which allowed them to walk without snowshoes. The Horns loomed above them, outlined against a blue sky, their crooked peaks bending in toward each other. Gabriel led, with Emma in the middle and Michael bringing up the rear. Looking back, Michael could see the pale disk of the sun hanging above the rim of the earth. More than ever, he felt like a voyager on some distant planet.

With the extra weight of the clothes and the boots, walking was hard work, and Michael’s legs soon grew heavy. His watch was buried under multiple layers, and the only landmarks he had to gauge their progress by were the mountains before them (which seemed to grow no closer) and the plane behind them (which, somewhat distressingly, became smaller and smaller).

They had been walking, Michael guessed, for half an hour when Gabriel stopped and turned, staring past the children.

“What is it?” Michael could see nothing except the plane, tiny and dark, in the distance.

“I am not sure.”

Gabriel knelt and took a rope and set of metal clips from his pack. He ran the rope between the clips, and fastened the clips to his, Michael’s, and Emma’s jackets, linking them together.

“What’s this for?” Emma asked.

“Safety.”

They kept walking. The ground rose. Michael was cold now, even though it seemed impossible that a person could be cold while wearing so many layers. To distract himself, he thought about the library in the house in Cambridge Falls, and how much he wished he was sitting beside the fire with a cup of hot chocolate and The Dwarf Omnibus open in his lap, watching the snow fall outside. Maybe eating a grilled cheese.

And he was thinking this, and thinking how much nicer it was to read about adventures than to actually have them, when he noticed how faint his shadow had become. All the time they’d been walking, his shadow had stretched before him, sharp and black against the white ground, but now it was barely visible. He turned and saw that the sun had disappeared. But that made no sense. There were still several hours of daylight left. Then he realized that he could no longer see the plane either. He began to have an uneasy feeling in his stomach.

“Gabriel—”

That was all he managed before the storm hit. It was like a wave, crashing over him, knocking him into Emma. Sprawled upon the snow, the children were blown helplessly forward. Michael scrambled for something to cling to, but his hands found no purchase. He saw the two of them being blown, like leaves before a hurricane, to the other side of Antarctica. Then—with a jerk—they stopped. Gabriel had dug his boots into the ice, planted his ax, and wrapped his arm around the rope tying them all together. Like a fisherman reeling in his catch, he drew the children toward him, angling his back to take the brunt of the wind. Michael and Emma huddled into the small eddy of his body. The howling filled their ears. Visibility was an arm’s length or less.

A whiteout, Michael thought, having read the word somewhere. We’re in a whiteout.

Emma yelled something, but her words were swept away.

Gabriel leaned forward, shouting over the wind.

“I will set up our shelter! It is useless trying to return to the plane! We would become lost! We must wait out the storm!”

“But we’re so close!” Michael shouted. “If we get to the cave, we’ll be safe!”

“We’ll never find it! Even the mountains have disappeared!”

“I can find it!”

The words surprised Michael. He hadn’t thought them, or planned on saying them, but he knew that what he’d said was true. All the time they’d been walking, some invisible force had been pulling him forward. He was only fully aware of it now that they’d stopped; but he knew that if he let himself be led, he would find the cave.

“What’s going on?” Emma turned from Michael to Gabriel. “I can’t hear anything!”

Gabriel was staring at him, his eyes hidden behind dark, frost-covered goggles.

“Are you sure? It is a risk!”

He means we could all die, Michael thought. Become hopelessly lost. Stumble into a crevasse. Setting up camp was the only sensible, practical thing to do.

He looked at Emma, swiveling her head between him and Gabriel, saying, “Huh? What’d you say?! It’s so loud! Huh?!” It wasn’t fair. Michael would risk his own life willingly; why did he also have to risk his sister’s? Or Gabriel’s?

“You must decide!” Gabriel shouted.

Michael closed his eyes. The tug was still there, like an invisible hook attached to his chest. He knew it was the Chronicle.

“Yes! I can find it!”

“Find what?” Emma shouted. “What’re you two talking about?”

Gabriel didn’t answer, but set about switching the rope so that Michael was leading.

“We’ll follow you!”

He handed Michael his ice ax, and Michael stood and started off through the storm. He had to brace himself at every step to keep from being blown over, and it was incredibly tiring, walking forward while pushing back with all his strength. With the gusting of the wind, there were brief moments when things would clear and Michael could see ten or even fifteen feet ahead. But most times, he waved his hand before his face and saw nothing.

Please, he kept thinking, please don’t let me be wrong.

But he could feel the Chronicle out there, calling to him, more and more strongly with each step. He found himself thinking of a field trip that he and his sisters and a bunch of other kids had taken to a farm a few years before. They’d been out in the middle of nowhere, and the driver of the van, a sulky teenager, had scoured the radio for any station that, as he put it, “didn’t play banjo music.” Finally, he’d found one. It had been scratchy and faint at first, but as they drove on, and presumably got nearer to the source, the signal had become more and more clear.

Michael felt that way now, as if he’d finally gotten close enough to hear the music.

“Michael!”

Emma had shouted in his ear, and was grabbing his shoulder and pointing.

Michael looked up—he’d been staring at the ground, focusing on not leading everyone into a chasm—and there, ten feet away, just visible through the whirling snow, past three pillars covered in snow and ice, pillars that tapered as they rose to give a very credible impression of fangs, was the dark, gaping maw of a cave.

Moments later, they were inside the cave, stamping their feet, beating the caked-up snow and ice from their bodies, brushing the crystals off their fur-lined hoods, as the storm raged outside. Gabriel clapped Michael on the shoulder.

“Well done.”

Michael tried to shrug, but the gesture was lost inside the enormous parka.

“Oh, you know, it was no big deal.”

“Yeah,” Emma said, “you’re probably right.”

“Well,” Michael said, irked, “it was kind of a big deal.”

Then Emma laughed and clapped her mittens together (or tried to—she couldn’t quite make her hands meet while wearing the parka) and told Michael that of course it was a big deal and if King Robbie were there he’d probably give Michael a dozen more dwarf medals.

“Ha-ha,” Michael said. Though he couldn’t help thinking a medal wouldn’t be uncalled for.

“Are you still cold?” Emma asked. “You’re shaking.”

In fact, Michael was trembling, but it had nothing to do with the cold. In trusting his instinct, he should have been filled with confidence. But the opposite had happened. He didn’t understand how it had worked, how he’d succeeded. He felt out of control, and the feeling scared him. He’d gotten very lucky, and he mustn’t count on it happening again.

“I just need to start moving.”

“Then let us.” Gabriel had taken three flashlights from his pack, and he handed one to each of the children. “You’re the leader. Lead.”

Michael looked at Emma, who shrugged and said, “Just don’t get us killed.”

And with that, Michael turned, and they set off into the cave.

The cave was different from all the other caves and tunnels the children had explored in one major respect: it was covered in ice. Floor, ceiling, and walls were glazed in a hard blue-white shell. Luckily, the new boots Gabriel had bought them had rough soles that gripped the slick surface. Still, they proceeded slowly, and their flashlights kept reflecting back at them, making the children’s hearts beat faster as they imagined beasts with glowing eyes peering at them from the darkness.

Soon, the sound of the storm had faded, and the tunnel opened into a vast cavern, and they walked along a narrow track that hugged the wall. They shone their lights into the abyss, illuminating a lake of black ice, and Michael peered down and saw things with claws and teeth and wings held in a frozen sleep. The tunnel resumed on the far side of the lake, and the ice on the walls began to give way to bare rock till there were only patches of ice here and there, and then finally none at all. Michael found himself pulling down his mask, pushing back his hood, unzipping his jacket.

Then he snapped off his flashlight.

“Michael …,” Emma whispered.

“I know.”

The end of the tunnel was before them, and light poured through it. Not the dim, grayish haze of a snowstorm, but sunlight, golden, warm, bright sunlight.

Only that wasn’t possible. Michael knew that wasn’t possible. And then …

“Michael, can you hear …”

“Yes.”

It was the sound of a bird singing.

“Did you know—”

“No.”

“None of this …”

“No.”

“Because it’s … wow.”

Yes, Michael thought. Wow.

They had come out of the tunnel and were high above an enormous, crescent-shaped valley. From where they stood, sheer rock walls dropped down nearly a mile to the valley floor, while snowcapped mountains rose above them, encircling the valley in an unbroken ring. Michael guessed it was at least a mile to the other side. To both the left and the right, the valley curved away and out of sight. The sky was a pure, crystalline blue, and the air was warm and still. Far below, the valley floor looked to be covered in a dark canopy of green.

Michael thought of taking a Polaroid, then decided a photo wouldn’t do the view justice.

“But we’re at the South Pole!” Emma said. “There should be penguins! And snow! And—and polar bears!”

“Polar bears are at the North Pole.”

“You know what I mean! This is—”

“It’s the Chronicle,” Michael said. “Thousands of years ago, I bet this was just like the rest of Antarctica. Then the Order brought the Chronicle here and everything changed.”

They were silent, staring down at the impossibly lush valley. Then Gabriel said:

“There.”

He was pointing to the right. Past the bend of the valley, just visible over the shoulder of a mountain, a thin trail of black smoke rose into the air.

“The volcano,” Michael whispered.

“Amazing,” Emma marveled. “You were actually right.”

“You don’t have to act so surprised,” Michael said.

“But I am,” Emma said. “I’m really surprised.”

Quickly, for they were already hot and sweating, the trio removed their cold-weather gear—their parkas, heavy boots, insulated pants, long underwear, goggles, mittens, and hats—and Gabriel stowed everything inside the cave for their return journey. Michael was surprised to find the gray-blue marble hanging from a strap around his neck and realized that in the excitement of the last twenty-four hours, he’d forgotten all about it. Obviously, now was not the time to ponder who had sent it or what its purpose might be, but as he tucked the glass orb back inside his shirt, Michael promised himself he would try to figure it out the moment he got the chance.

The tunnel had given onto a promontory, from which a set of nearly vertical stairs, cut into the face of the cliff, wound down to the valley floor. Gabriel took the safety rope and clipped it to the children’s belts.

“We’ll get to the bottom,” he said. “Then make for the volcano.”

The stairs were more like a ladder than a staircase, with every step nearly two feet high. Only once did Michael peer over the side to check their progress, and he found it was a straight drop to the bottom. After that, he kept his attention on each individual step. The further they descended, the warmer and more humid it became. Michael’s glasses kept slipping down his nose, and his T-shirt stuck to his back. Birdcalls echoed through the valley, and soon they could hear the sound of running water.

They stopped halfway down, and Gabriel gave them bread, hard sausage, and dried fruit from his pack. Michael was checking his watch, thinking that the sun should’ve set and yet it was still light, when they heard something that was not a bird. The cry came from the direction of the volcano. It was harsh and savage and silenced everything in the valley.

“What was that?” Emma whispered.

Gabriel shook his head. “I do not know.”

Neither did Michael. But he did know that whatever had made the sound was very, very big.

They finished their meal in silence and resumed the descent. Thirty minutes later, they reached the canopy of trees. From above, Michael had expected to find a tropical jungle, but the valley floor was covered by a forest of enormous redwoods. He recognized the trees from photos and movies, but these were taller and larger than any he had ever seen. Indeed, the valley floor turned out to be much lower than they had thought, for even after reaching the canopy, they kept climbing down and down and down.

“Can you believe,” Emma said when they were finally at the bottom, “we have to go back up that?”

The light had now begun to fade, and it was darker still under the canopy.

“I know you’re tired,” Gabriel said. “But we should push on. I would like to camp closer to the volcano so we can arrive there tomorrow morning.”

Michael nodded, Emma groaned, and they kept walking, no one mentioning that the creature’s cry had come from the direction of the volcano. Michael felt as if they were walking through a forest of sleeping giants. Even Gabriel stared up in awe at the massive red-brown trunks. But the going was slow, as the forest floor was covered in a thick bed of ferns, and Gabriel had to use his falchion to bushwhack a path.

Little else moved in the forest. The birds kept to the canopy, and the only other wildlife were shiny black beetles that scuttled up the sides of the great trees and, with a furious whirring and clicking, abruptly took flight, weaving away between the trunks. The beetles were the size of turtles, and after Michael was struck in the back of the head and literally knocked off his feet, the children learned to duck when they heard one coming.

Still, Michael thought, fingering the sore spot behind his ear, if this is all there is, birds and beetles, why do I feel like we’re being watched?

As they hiked, the sound of rushing water grew louder, and eventually they came to a river, perhaps forty yards across, running clear and swift down the center of the canyon. They were hot from the walk, and Gabriel let them lie on their stomachs and dip their faces in the stream. The water was ice-cold, and they drank until their teeth ached.

Refreshed, the small party continued on, following the bank of the river until it was too dark to see and both children were dragging their feet and Emma had said for the fifteenth time, “This looks like a good place to stop.” Gabriel made camp on a large rock that gave views both upstream and downstream, and he brought out food—more bread, sausage, and dried fruit—and said they would not risk a fire. Michael wondered if Gabriel also felt they were being watched; if the man did, he said nothing. After they had eaten, Gabriel cut fronds from nearby ferns and made a thick, soft bed on the rock, and Emma lay down and was asleep in a moment.

“Sleep,” Gabriel told Michael. “I’ll stand watch.”

Michael fully intended to tell Gabriel to wake him in a few hours and let him stand his turn, but exhausted and aching in every part of his body, and lulled by the murmur of the river, Michael lay down beside his sister and slept.

Michael dreamed.

Again, he was in the long, dark tunnel, walking toward the red glow.

Again, he stood before the lake of fire, staring into the surface as his eyes burned and the heat stifled his breath.

He knew the Chronicle was somewhere nearby. But where?

And then, strangely, he heard music. It seemed to be all around him. The heat lessened. He could breathe without pain. A weight lifted from his shoulders. He felt as light as air, as if he could float up into the sky and sail away.…

A hand on his shoulder jostled him awake.

It was still dark; Gabriel was leaning over him, a finger to his lips telling Michael to remain silent. There was music drifting out of the forest, and Michael recognized it as the music from his dream. He sat up; indeed, he might have leapt up had Gabriel’s hand not rested on his shoulder.

“I heard—”

“Yes, it began a minute ago. I am going to investigate. Stay with your sister.” Gabriel rose, then paused. “You will stay with her.”

There was a question in his voice.

“Of course, yes, I’ll stay with her.”

The man stared at him. Michael couldn’t help himself.

“Just the music … it’s so … beautiful.”

“Try not to listen.”

“Okay.”

Gabriel kept staring at him. Michael realized he was humming. He stopped.

Gabriel said, “I will be back soon.” And, unsheathing his falchion, he slipped noiselessly into the trees.

Michael glanced at his sister. Emma was smiling in her sleep. Michael had never seen Emma smile in her sleep. Usually, she slept with her hands clenched into fists as if she were fighting battles in her dreams. He wondered if she could hear the music. It really was so beautiful—

No! Gabriel had told him not to listen!

Taking off his glasses, Michael lay down on the rock and splashed ice-cold water on his face. He was instantly wide-awake.

That’s better, he thought.

Then he realized the reason it was better was because he could hear the music more clearly. He stood, water dripping from his face, and looked about the starlit darkness. Everything around him—the air, the water, the earth, the rocks—all seemed to be responding to the song. But Gabriel had said not to listen! Well, Michael thought, Gabriel was a wonderful fellow and knew about a great many useful things, but music was obviously not one of them. There could be nothing dangerous about such a song. It was a song about the air and the water, about the trees and the birds, about those giant beetles that flew without looking where they were going; it was a song about life. And it was asking you to join it—to dance. Michael began swaying back and forth, his right hand ghost-conducting in the air. And I love dancing, Michael thought, even though he’d never danced once in his entire life and had always taken great pains to avoid it.

He shook Emma awake.

She moaned and kept her eyes shut. “… Stop it.”

“Emma, wake up!”

“But I was dreaming and there was …”

She fell silent. Michael saw she’d heard the music.

“It’s real.…”

“I know!” Michael was bursting with happiness. He’d had the most wonderful idea. He’d told Gabriel he wouldn’t leave Emma, but what if he brought her along to search for the music? “Come on! We’ve gotta find it!”

And he seized Emma by the hand and dragged her into the forest. The music was coming from further along in the direction of the volcano. Strangely, the ferns that had fought their passage all day now seemed to give way before the children, bending back to open a path.

“Where’s—Gabriel?” Emma panted.

“He went to look for the music!”

“You think we’ll find him?”

“Maybe. If not, we can look for him while we’re dancing!”

“Yay!” cried Emma, who generally disliked dancing at least as much as Michael did. “And then Gabriel can dance with us!”

“Ha! He’s probably there dancing already!” Michael laughed.

And then, quite suddenly, they arrived.

It was a large, circular clearing, ringed by great trees. The ferns stopped at the edge of the clearing, and the ground beyond was covered by low, thick grass. Across the clearing, Michael could see figures with torches emerging from the trees. They were too far away to see well, but Michael knew that they were the ones making the music. And it was then he realized that the music was singing, that voices were making those beautiful sounds.

Emma let out a small cry and leapt forward, but Michael yanked her back.

“What’re you doing? We—”

“I just had an awful thought.” They were crouched beside one of the trees at the edge of the clearing. Michael tried to sound as grave as possible. He needed Emma to understand the seriousness of what he was about to say. “What if we’re not wearing the right clothes? I don’t want to look stupid.”

Emma stared at him, then nodded. “That’s really good thinking.”

“I know,” Michael said. And he cursed himself for not making Gabriel carry a set of fancier clothes in his pack. He should’ve known something like this would happen.

The figures were moving toward the center of the clearing, and as they drew closer, the torches shone on their faces. The children stared in wonder.

“Michael … are those …?”

“Yes.”

“Really? I mean, really and truly?”

“Yes.” His voice was dry as a stone, but he managed to say, “Those are elves.”

There were perhaps forty of them. Some were carrying torches, others had lanterns. All of them were singing, and while not exactly dancing, the very way they walked, even their smallest gesture, was more graceful than any dance. And every one of them—Michael’s heart sank as he realized this—was dressed incredibly well.

What Michael thought of as the girl elves wore long white-and-cream dresses of frilly material, while the boy elves wore white trousers and shirts, along with pink-and-white-, blue-and-white-, or green-and-white-striped jackets. The boy elves wore stiff-brimmed straw hats. The girl elves twirled parasols on their dainty shoulders. A few of the elves carried wooden tennis rackets.

Michael recognized the clothes as the fashions of a hundred years ago, and the logical part of his brain, which was still functioning, albeit at a very low level, reminded him that it had been a hundred years ago that the magical world had gone into hiding. The elves, it seemed, had simply kept up the trends of that time.

And right they were, Michael thought. They looked marvelous.

“Their clothes are so beautiful!” Emma was on the verge of tears. “We’ll never find clothes like that!”

“Shhh,” Michael said. “I want to hear.”

For the elves had all gathered in the center of the clearing, and they abruptly shifted from the ethereal, wordless song that Michael and Emma had heard in their dreams to a new song, one with a jaunty, let’s-all-go-boating sort of tune.

And this time, Michael could make out the words:

Oh, she has to eat, she has to eat,

She’d better watch her figure.

Her shape is long and slender,

Her nails, they cut like ice.

Her eyes still shine like diamonds,

And yet her stomach rumbles on.

Oh, she has to eat, she has to eat,

She’d better watch her figure.…

“What’re they singing about?” Emma asked.

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “It’s a lovely song, though. Don’t you think?”

“It is,” Emma said. “Very lovely.”

And it occurred to Emma that she didn’t use the word lovely half as often as she should and she would definitely correct that. It was a lovely word, lovely.

“Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely …”

“What’re you doing?” Michael whispered.

“Just saying the word lovely,” Emma whispered back.

“Oh,” Michael said, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that. “Right.”

And as they watched the elves and listened to the song, they both murmured, “Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely …”

Some of the elves were doing cartwheels around the clearing, a few played leapfrog, and one was riding around on one of those old-fashioned bicycles with a giant front wheel and a tiny back wheel. Several of the elves had opened wicker picnic baskets and were handing out beverages and food, mostly cake. Two of the elves had begun to set up what looked to Michael like a dunking booth. The whole scene was strangely familiar, and Michael realized where he’d seen such things before: in old movies, when people would have town fairs, with bobbing for apples and pie-eating contests and something involving a greased pig. Just as their clothes were stuck in the past, so too were the elves’ traditions. Michael was charmed.

“Lovely,” he murmured. “Lovely.”

And the song went on:

Her arms are just so shapely,

Her waist is slim and fine.

Her nose knows no equal (ha-ha!)

And her teeth, her teeth, oh let them always shine.

Oh, she has to eat, she has to eat,

She’d better watch her figure.…

“Did you know there were elves here?” Emma whispered.

“No. It’s a really nice surprise, though,” Michael said.

“It sure is. How’s my hair look?”

This was the first time in her life that Emma had asked this question.

Michael looked at her. She had not showered since the previous day, when they’d stayed at the cottage in Spain, and since then they’d climbed through a tomb, run through a sewer, jumped into a canal, hiked through a blizzard—which involved the wearing of hats and hoods and much sweating—and slept on a bed of ferns.

“Honestly?”

“Yes.”

“It looks like a bum’s hair. I’m sorry. But you have bum hair.”

“It’s okay,” Emma said. “You have bum hair too.”

“Look what they’ve got!” Michael exclaimed.

“Oh, lucky!”

The elves had set up a long wooden vanity with four stations, each one facing a mirror and outfitted with a full complement of brushes, combs, tweezers, clippers, various ointments, tonics, and powders, and the children were filled with such desire for those brushes and tonics and powders that they very nearly rushed into the clearing, and indeed might have had not the vanity’s chairs been instantly filled by girl and boy elves fixing their hair, powdering their cheeks, plucking invisible hairs, though several of them, Michael noticed, just sat gazing at themselves in the mirrors, exclaiming, “You look wonderful! You really do! You look wonderful!”

“We can’t go out there like this,” Michael said. “I’ve got scissors on my knife. We’ll just cut off all our hair! No hair’s better than bum hair, right?”

“Wait,” Emma said, “I’ve got a better idea!”

She ran a few feet into the forest and returned with an armful of fern fronds.

“We’re going to make fancy hats! Then no one will see our bum hair!”

Michael could scarcely believe what amazing ideas Emma was having tonight. First saying lovely over and over, and now the fancy-hats idea.

They set to work, using Michael’s pocketknife to cut the fronds into five- and six-inch pieces, but they soon hit an obstacle, realizing they had no way of actually attaching the fronds. Then Michael got the idea of scooping up handfuls of moist, mud-like earth from the bases of the trees and using it to coat their heads.

“It’ll be like glue! The fronds will just stick to it!”

Emma was so pleased that she told Michael he was her favorite brother.

“I’m your only brother,” Michael said.

“I know! Isn’t it great? Now hurry up! I bet they’re gonna start dancing any second!”

Not wasting any time, the children smeared the mud from just above their eyebrows, over the tops of their heads, all the way down to the base of their necks. Gooey helmets in place, they seized fistfuls of fern fronds and began slapping them, more or less willy-nilly, to any free patch of mud. In a few moments, Michael and Emma had more than two dozen floppy green fronds sticking out in all directions from the top, sides, front, and back of their heads.

“How do I look?” Michael asked his sister.

“You look great! How do I look?”

“You look amazing! You should wear that hat all the time! Even when we’re not dancing!”

“I was just thinking that!” Emma said, supremely pleased.

“Are you ready?” Michael said.

“Am I?! Let’s go!”

“Hold on!” Michael pulled the blue-gray orb from inside his shirt so that it lay on his chest like a sort of decorative necklace. He had never been one for jewelry before, but he thought the glass marble gave him a certain flair. He saw Emma’s eyes go wide.

“Oh, I want one!”

“I’ll let you borrow it later. Come on!”

And the children were about to plunge into the clearing when the song changed:

We’ve brought you something special

To remind you what you were.

For deep below that nasty hide

There’s a princess hiding still.

Please come back, oh please come back,

We really, really miss you.

Please come back, oh please come back,

Change your gold band for this one.…

And the children saw four elves emerge from the trees, carrying something on a litter: an object draped in black cloth. The crowd sang louder and louder, and the elves all joined hands so they were dancing around the litter in a large, skipping circle.

Sensing that something momentous—and potentially wonderful—was about to happen, the children hesitated at the edge of the trees.

The four elves carried their burden to the center of the clearing and set it down. It was not easy to make out what was happening, what with the wavering torchlight and the elves moving around and around and blocking the view. Then two of the elves whipped away the black cloth, and Michael had a glimpse of something ghostly and white, and there was a flash of gold. The pitch and frenzy of the celebration increased tenfold, the singing filled the entire canyon, the dancing elves whirled about faster and faster, and Michael thought that if he didn’t go and dance right that very instant, he would never be happy again.

“Michael!” Emma cried. “We have to—”

“I know, I know!”

And, with a quick fluffing to ensure their leafy headpieces appeared to best effect, the children jumped up. But they were destined never to join the dance, for just at that moment, a cry tore through the valley. It was the same savage, chilling, terrible shriek they had heard while descending the rocky staircase that afternoon. In an instant, the singing stopped, the torches went out, and the whole party of elves, along with the dunking booth, the wooden vanity, the picnic baskets, and the giant bicycle with the two different-sized wheels, vanished.

It was dark and silent and the children stood alone in their fern-frond helmets at the border of the trees.

Michael felt a heaviness enter his body. He no longer wanted to sing and dance. Indeed, he remembered he hated dancing. And what did he have on his head? He glanced at Emma, visible in the starlight, and saw a mass of mud and ferns matted into a tangled nest upon her head. A few of the fronds had begun an oozy slide down the side of her face.

“Do I have a bunch of leaves and gunk stuck in my hair?” Emma asked.

“Yeah,” Michael said, hoping that what he felt moving over his ear wasn’t a bug. “Do I?”

“Yeah.”

Wordlessly, the two children pulled off the fronds, wiping away, as much as was possible, the half-solid mud caking their hair. Neither asked the other how he or she looked.

“Where’d all the elves go?” Emma said.

Michael shrugged; he was far too irritated to care. He’d always known that elves were lazy and vain, but it turned out they also sang songs that made you want to dress up and rub mud all over your head and—and—

They were just children, he thought. Just silly, stupid children!

Looking out into the clearing, Michael saw that the elves had left behind the ghostly object they’d unloaded from the litter. Suddenly, he had to know what it was.

“Wait here.”

“What? Michael, no—”

Emma tried to grab him, but Michael was already running in a low crouch across the clearing. Just as he reached the object, another harsh cry echoed down the valley. It was closer than the last. Whatever was making that noise was on the move.

But even so, for a long moment, he simply stood there and stared. The object was the figure of an elf girl carved in clear ice. She looked to be about Michael’s age, and her crystalline hair tumbled down her back and she had been carved smiling and laughing. Even though Michael’s elf annoyance was at an all-time high, he had to admit that the elf girl was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. He reached out and ran a finger along the elf girl’s arm and felt the coldness and slickness of ice starting to melt. A thin gold band, almost like a crown, had been placed on her head. Very carefully, Michael lifted it off. The ice girl was so lifelike that Michael half expected her to protest. She didn’t, of course, and Michael, glancing down at the circlet, saw it was actually dozens of fine gold bands all woven together.

But what did it all mean? And who was she?

Michael was woken out of his reverie by another of the awful shrieks. It was closer than ever. The thing was coming, and coming quickly.

“Michael!”

Emma was running toward him across the clearing. Without thinking, he slipped the golden circlet into his bag, and he had just started to yell at Emma to go back when there was a shout and Michael turned and saw Gabriel charging out of the trees from the other direction.

“Get down!” the man shouted. “Down!”

Then there was another cry, this time from almost directly overheard, and before Michael could look up, he was pushed roughly to the ground.

“Stay down!” Gabriel commanded.

Emma was still calling her brother’s name, and Michael, flat on his stomach, heard the sound of wing beats, and, looking past Gabriel, he watched as the monster swooped down out of the night sky and plucked his sister into the air.

“Hey, wake up! Come on, wake up!”

The small girl named Abigail, the one who’d helped her find clothes, was leaning over Kate and shaking her.

“I’m awake,” Kate said groggily.

All around her, throughout the old church, the day was starting. Children were making their beds, lighting fires in stoves, sweeping the stone floor. The air was so cold that Kate could see her breath before her.

“Guess what just happened?” Abigail said.

“It started snowing?” Kate yawned. She reached under her pillow, where she’d placed her mother’s locket the night before, and slipped it into her pocket.

“No. Well, yeah. It’s been snowing all night. But not that. Rafe was just here,” the girl was barely able to control her excitement, “and he said seeing as tonight’s New Year’s Eve and the big Separation and all, Miss Burke wants to have a party!”

“Oh?” Kate glanced around; the boy Rafe was nowhere to be seen.

“Last time we had a party, Scruggs did fireworks. This one, he made a goblin appear. Lots a’ kids got scared and screamed. Not me. Well, maybe me a little. If he does that again, I’m not gonna scream. Put your boots on, let’s go get breakfast. Wow, you move slow in the morning! Is that ’cause you’re so old?”

Breakfast was served at two long tables in the basement. The fare was scrambled eggs, potatoes, and thick slices of fried bread. The head cook was a thirteen-year-old girl, who was assisted by an army of younger children, all of whom seemed to take their jobs very seriously. The talk at the tables was about the party that night, and what life was going to be like after the Separation.

“So if the magic world is invisible,” asked a small boy whose hair stuck out in all directions, “does that mean we’re gonna be invisible too?”

“No, dummy!” replied Abigail. “Just, like, certain streets and stuff are gonna be invisible!”

“And are people really gonna forget there’re such things as wizards and dragons?” asked a girl further down the table.

“They ain’t gonna forget! They’re just not gonna think they’re real!”

“So if I’m invisible—” asked the small boy again.

“You ain’t gonna be invisible!” Abigail insisted.

“Maybe his brain’s gonna be invisible!” shouted another boy.

“Yeah, it’s invisible already!” added a third.

“Is not!” said the small boy, though he looked somewhat concerned and even reached up to touch his head.

Kate listened, but didn’t join in. She was thinking about how she’d woken in the middle of the night to find the church silent and dark and Abigail, having snuck into her bed, curled up against her. Kate had put her arm around the girl, as she’d put her arm around Emma countless times, and she had been about to drift back to sleep when she’d noticed a shadow moving among the children. She’d realized it was Rafe, whom she had not seen since her interview with Henrietta Burke in the tower. He was going from bed to bed, touching a shoulder or a head, whispering to this or that child, letting them know he was there.

Suddenly, there was a great banging of pots and pans, and Kate looked up from her reverie to see Jake and Beetles standing on a bench and calling for attention. Over the shouts of the other children, the two boys announced that they were on a special mission from Rafe, a mission—they took care to point out—that Rafe had not felt comfortable entrusting to the intelligence of anyone else (this occasioned much groaning and cries of “Yeah, yeah, go on!” and “You mean he couldn’t find anyone else stupid enough to do it!” and a few lobbed pieces of bread, which Beetles expertly caught and stuffed in his mouth).

“—and we are here,” Beetles mumbled through the bread, “to read out the various duties that you scrubs will have to accomplish to get ready for the party!”

This was greeted by cheers, at which both boys bowed, followed by more thrown bread and cries of “Read it! Go on! Read it!” And they proceeded to read a list of names and chores and who was responsible for what.

“And you gotta do it double-quick!” Beetles said, swallowing the last of his bread.

“Yeah,” Jake said, “so if any a’ you were thinking of sitting here and opening a shop—”

After breakfast, Kate went upstairs to get her coat—she’d promised to help Abigail with her errands—and she’d turned down the long hall that led to the main body of the church when something lunged out of the shadows and grabbed her arm.

“Why are you here?” demanded a raspy voice.

It was the old magician, Scruggs. He was wrapped in his tattered brown cloak and was still wild-eyed and unwashed. Kate sensed that he’d been waiting for her.

“I’m going to get my coat—”

“No! Here!” His grip, already tight on her arm, became even tighter. “Why did you make the Atlas bring you here?”

Kate felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. “You know?”

The old man grinned. “That you’re the Keeper of the Atlas? Of course I know. It’s written on your face. At least for those with eyes to see. You’re here for the boy, aren’t you?”

“I … don’t know what you’re talking about. What boy?”

He shook her arm, hissing, “You’re here for the boy! You’re here for Rafe!”

“What? No! I came here by accident! I just want to get home!”

She tried to twist free her arm, but the man was too strong.

“You’re telling the truth.” He seemed almost surprised. “So it wasn’t you at all. It was the Atlas.” And he murmured, “Deep, very deep …”

“What’re you talking about?” Kate demanded.

The man leaned closer. “You think it was chance you came here? To this time! To this place! It wasn’t you, yes! I see that. It was the Atlas! It has plans! Him, I’ve known about for years! Tried to tell Henrietta. She wouldn’t listen! But now you arrive. Things are finally becoming clear, yes. And of course it would happen now, with the Separation upon us.”

“What’re you talking about? Who is Rafe?”

“Tell me.” The old man leaned even closer. “Are you here to save us, or to destroy us?”

Mastering her voice, Kate said, “I just want to go home.”

The sound of a violin drifted down the hall. Kate went rigid.

“What is it, girl? Don’t like the music?”

Kate didn’t respond. The last time she’d heard a violin had been aboard the Countess’s boat, when it had heralded the arrival of the Dire Magnus. But that song had been manic, feverish, otherworldly. This tune was nothing like that. It was a slow, mournful song, and very real. It was coming from a room at the end of the hall.

The old man gave a snort. “We’ll see what happens, won’t we? We’ll see, we’ll see.…”

He released her arm and shuffled off down the hall. Kate waited there a moment longer, the music moving through her, unsettling her. Then she turned and hurried away.

Outside, it was still snowing. More than a foot had fallen during the night, though most of the snow had been tramped down and pushed to the edges of the sidewalk. Kate’s breath plumed before her, and she burrowed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. Abigail did not seem bothered by the cold. She carried four or five empty canvas bags over her arm and was repeating aloud the things they had to get.

They had just started off when there were cries of “Hey! Wait!” and Jake and Beetles came huffing up.

“We’re coming with you!” Beetles said.

“Did Rafe tell you to watch me?” Kate asked, sounding as annoyed as she felt.

The boys looked at each other, then at her. “No.”

“Uh-huh, you two are terrible liars.”

“Well,” Beetles said, “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. But we ain’t gonna tell. Not even if you torture us.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “You can chop off our heads, cook ’em, eat ’em; we still won’t tell you!”

“That’s right!” said his friend. “Ha!”

“Oh, come on,” Kate said.

It turned out to be fun having the boys along, and the four of them spent the morning going around the city from store to store, taking care of the items on Abigail’s list. Their first stop was a cheese shop, where Abigail bought two medium-sized blocks of cheese, ignoring the boys’ pleas to buy the massive wheel of cheese in the window, which was larger than any of them and would’ve had to be rolled back to the church like a wagon wheel.

“Boys,” Abigail muttered to Kate. “That’s why I keep the money.”

After that, they went to the pasty shop and ordered five dozen pasties of different sorts—ham and cheese, potato and herbs, cheese and potato and mushroom—and, after a great deal of begging, with Jake and Beetles finally agreeing to do all of Abigail’s chores for a week, she bought them each a sausage and onion and cheese pasty. “I would’ve gotten them pasties anyway,” Abigail confessed to Kate as they walked through the falling snow eating their hot turnovers, with the boys before them each extolling the virtues of his own pasty while peering into the other’s and pronouncing with great regret that his friend had been tricked and his pasty was filled with chopped-up rat butts. And they went to a chocolate shop, and the smell of the cooking chocolate made the air seem itself like a delicacy, and Abigail bought five pounds of chocolate to use for cocoa. The owner was a jovial fat man who gave the children steaming mugs of hot chocolate, and they sat on oak barrels in the front of his store, watching the snow fall past the window, the men and women hurrying by with their bundles and packages, the horse-drawn carriages clopping along the street, tossing up clumps of grayish-white slush. And they went to a pie shop, where Abigail placed an excitingly long and complicated order, which they would return for later that afternoon, and then it was on to a shop that sold varieties of cider, and the boys bemoaned the fact that they hadn’t been given the job of going to the sweetshop or the fireworks shop, as everyone knew they were the two best.

“Pshaw!” Abigail sniffed. “You be glad you got what you got by coming with us! Left to yourselves, you’d’ve been peeling potatoes all day.”

By noon, Abigail’s bags were stuffed to bursting and divided among them, and the boys were complaining that their feet hurt and they were hungry, and Abigail said they had one more stop, down in Chinatown, and they would get lunch there, and as she said it, the boys looked at her, exclaiming, “Wait, you’re getting firework makings for Scruggs, ain’t you?” And Abigail smiled and said, “Rafe gave me special orders ’fore I left,” and the boys whooped and led the way.

As they came into Chinatown, they found the streets packed with noodle stands inside canvas lean-tos, small vendors selling massive, twisted roots of various colors, jars with dried and blackened leaves, one vendor who seemed to be selling nothing but teeth, ranging from the impossibly tiny to a yellow canine as large as Kate’s arm. Men and women bustled past in padded jackets, the men with long, tightly braided pigtails hanging down their backs. Everywhere Kate looked there was something interesting to see, and she wished Michael and Emma were there with her.

“Hey!” Beetles shouted. “There’s Rafe! Hey, Rafe!”

Kate saw the older boy at the edge of a vendor’s stall twenty yards away. He seemed like he’d been caught out and was even then contemplating slipping away. But then he changed his mind and turned to face them.

“What you doing here, Rafe?” Jake asked. “You getting stuff for the party?”

And Kate thought, He was waiting here, for me.

“We came down to get fireworks like you told me,” Abigail said. “But we were gonna get lunch first ’cause these two’re bellyaching.”

“Were not!” Jake said.

“Yeah,” Beetles said. “We were worried about you fainting, is all.”

Abigail just laughed. “Ha!”

“Go to Fung’s around the corner,” Rafe said. “It’s the best place in Chinatown.”

“Yeah, sure,” Beetles said. “Fung’s. We know that place. Got a green door.”

“A red door,” Rafe said.

“Oh yeah,” Beetles said. “They musta changed it.”

Then Rafe, looking at Kate, said, “You all go on. She’ll catch up.”

The children hurried away and Kate and the boy were left standing there. She saw snowflakes were melting on his hair and shoulders, and there were dark circles under his eyes. She wondered how much he’d slept the night before, or if he’d slept.

“Those’re the clothes Abigail gave you?” he asked.

Kate looked down, feeling suddenly self-conscious in her shabby wool pants and old boots, the patched shirts and jackets.

“Yes. What’s wrong with them?”

“Nothing. I should’ve looked at you before you left the church. Where’s your cap?”

Kate pulled it out of her pocket.

“I didn’t need it. My head wasn’t cold—”

“It ain’t just to keep you warm. Put it on.”

Kate twisted up her hair and pulled the cloth cap low over her eyes. The boy reached toward her face, and she flinched back.

“Hold still.”

He tucked a couple of loose strands of blond hair into her cap, and she felt his fingers brush the tops of her ears.

“All right, lemme see your hands.”

She held them out, and he took them, turning them over. She saw how clean and white her hands were compared to his. There was a small coal fire burning in front of the stand they’d stopped beside, and he bent and gathered soot and ash from the fire and rubbed the warm black powder over her palms and fingers and the backs of her hands. Then he reached up—Kate held still this time, though to her annoyance the trembling in her chest had returned—and brushed his fingers over her cheeks and forehead. She stared at his face as he did so, the deep-set green eyes, the slightly crooked nose, and she noticed how carefully he avoided her gaze. She had the strange sense that he was as nervous as she. He stepped back, clapping off the excess soot on the legs of his pants.

“There. You could walk past an Imp now, and he wouldn’t know you.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, her voice fainter than she would’ve liked.

“So what’s this then?”

It took Kate a moment to understand what he was holding; and by the time she realized that he had her mother’s locket, that he must’ve taken it from her pocket while he’d been checking her wardrobe, Rafe had snapped it open and was looking at the decade-old picture of her and Michael and Emma.

“Give that back!”

Kate snatched the locket from his hand and clutched it tight in her fist.

“I wasn’t going to steal it,” the boy said. “But you should get a chain instead a’ keeping it in your pocket. You’ll lose it that way.”

“I had a chain,” Kate said angrily. “I traded it for this coat.”

“Yeah? Well, if it was gold like that locket, you got robbed.”

“And you would know all about robbing someone, wouldn’t you?”

Her face was hot, the nervousness gone.

“So who are they? In the picture?”

Kate stared at him, weighing whether or not to respond. “My brother and sister,” she said finally. “The picture’s ten years old. They’re the reason I need to get back.”

“What about your parents? Where’re they?”

Kate said nothing, and the boy seemed to understand. They stood in silence for several seconds, then Kate said:

“So is that it? I’m hungry.”

She started to walk away, but Rafe placed a hand on her arm. “I’ll show you the place.”

He turned down a narrow street and led her to a flight of stairs, at the top of which was a red door marked with a symbol Kate couldn’t read.

“That’s it there.”

Kate started up the stairs, not intending to say goodbye, when the boy said:

“I shouldn’t have taken your locket. I’m sorry.”

Kate stopped. She was two steps above him. She knew for certain then that he had come to Chinatown to find her and that he was indeed sorry. She thought again of her encounter with Scruggs that morning and heard herself say:

“Why don’t you come in?”

He shook his head. “I ain’t hungry.”

“But you haven’t eaten, have you? I mean … I hear this is the best place in Chinatown.”

He looked at her a moment longer, then nodded and stepped up past her and opened the door. A pair of rugs hung from the ceiling a couple feet inside the restaurant, providing a buffer against the cold, and Rafe waited there till Kate had closed the door behind her. For a moment, the two of them were standing close and facing each other in the small space, then Rafe pushed through the rugs, and they stepped into the restaurant.

It was loud, crowded, and smoky, and the air was heavy with the smell of cooking oil, onions, and ginger. There were long tables with benches, all of which were full, and there was a counter at the back for more diners, and behind the counter at least a dozen cooks were taking orders and shouting while passing bowl after steaming bowl out into the waiting hands of the crowd. There were several groups of dwarves scattered among the tables, but most of the diners were Chinese men, all of whom, it seemed to Kate, were speaking at once, and everyone was packed in so tight and close that Kate felt herself retreating from the press of bodies.

“There they are,” Rafe said, pointing to where Jake and Beetles and Abigail were stuffed together at a table and waving.

“There’s no room,” Kate said.

“We’ll sit at the bar.”

And he took her hand and led her through the throng and found space at the counter. They were crammed in tight, shoulders, elbows, and hips pressed against the diners on either side and against each other. There was a short wall separating the counter from the cooks’ area, and Kate watched a young Chinese man dice an onion with such blurring speed that she was sure several fingers would end up in someone’s soup.

Rafe spoke to the cook and, a moment later, two steaming bowls of honey-colored noodles landed before them. The noodles were served in a milky broth, and she could see, but not identify, various vegetables and herbs floating among hunks of egg and chicken. Rafe handed her a set of chopsticks, and she watched how the boy balanced his own between his fingers and the crook of his thumb. He saw her staring.

“They don’t have these where you’re from?”

“We have chopsticks. I’ve just never used them. Especially not with soup.”

He grinned; it was the first time he’d truly smiled at her.

“It kinda involves a lot of slurping.”

He demonstrated, shoveling a wad of noodles into his mouth and then sort of vacuuming up the tail ends. The noise it made was tremendous, and only covered by the fact that everyone around them was doing the exact same thing.

“I guess manners are a modern invention,” Kate said with a smile.

“Try it.”

Realizing that she was starving, and that she hadn’t eaten anything since her pasty with Abigail hours before, Kate applied herself to the bowl. The noodles were thick and squishy, and it took her four tries to get one that didn’t immediately slip out of the chopsticks, and even then she bent close to the bowl, fearful that if she brought the noodle higher, she would lose it. The noodle slapped the side of her cheek as she slurped it up.

“Well?”

She turned to him, a stunned look on her face. “That’s amazing.”

“Told you.” And he grinned again.

For a while, Kate forgot everything but her noodles and was slurping away as loudly as anyone in the restaurant. When she glanced over and saw Rafe lifting his bowl and drinking the broth, she did the same, and after that, she got braver and began lifting the noodles high, sometimes with a piece of egg or chicken, and lowering the whole delicious mess into her mouth; and as crowded and loud and smoky as the restaurant was, and though she was constantly being bumped and jostled, or feeling cold air against her neck when someone pushed through the rugs by the door, somehow it was all wonderful. It was as if Kate had managed to leave outside everything she carried with her on a daily basis, her thoughts of her parents, the need to find them, her constant worry about her brother and sister. Sitting there, wedged at the counter, she was, however briefly, just a girl in a strange, exciting place with a boy her own age.

“So you’re really from the future?”

“Yes.”

“And the Separation, it works? People forget that magic is real?”

Kate nodded. “Everyone thinks—I used to think—it’s just from fairy tales.”

The boy idly stirred the remains of his soup with his chopsticks. “Well, maybe Miss B’s right then. Though I still don’t see why we should be the ones hiding.”

Kate stared at him. An uneasy feeling began to stir inside her.

“Not all normal humans hate magical people. You can’t judge everyone that way.”

The boy turned on her. The intensity in his green eyes was like nothing Kate had ever seen. It required effort not to look away.

“Course they hate us. What do you think happened to Miss B’s arm? Who you think did that?”

“But it doesn’t make sense. You’re human too! You’re no different. Just, you can do magic.”

The boy laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You don’t think that’s enough? They hate us ’cause we can do things they can’t. Makes ’em jealous and afraid.” The boy began flexing one of the chopsticks between his fingers. “There’ve been riots in other cities. Mobs burning down magic quarters, chasing folk out, killing them. That’s the whole point a’ the Separation, a way to protect ourselves. Then, even if we’re still living among ’em, they won’t know it. I guess it’s the right thing.” The chopstick snapped, and he laid the pieces down.

Neither spoke for a moment, then Kate said:

“Was that you playing the violin this morning?”

The boy looked at her.

“I was in the hall,” she said. “I couldn’t help but hear.”

Rafe nodded. “It was something my mother taught me. From her old village. She always had me play it to her, said it reminded her of home.”

“Oh. Is she—”

“She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

They were both silent again, which seemed fine, as the restaurant was so loud around them.

“Hey, you guys done yet?” Beetles and Jake were behind them.

“Abigail’s outside already,” Jake said. “She says we gotta hurry and get the rest of the stuff. She’s kinda bossy.”

“I’ll be right there,” Kate said.

The boys hurried out through the crowd. Kate looked at Rafe.

“Thank you for lunch.”

Rafe nodded and then, abruptly, as if he’d made up his mind and feared that if he hesitated he might not follow through, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, fat purse.

“Here. Take it.”

Kate glanced at the purse, then at him. The boy wasn’t looking at her.

“What is it?”

“Money. Enough to get you to that place up north. Or wherever.”

“I don’t understand. Miss Burke said it would be a few days.”

“This has got nothing to do with Miss B.”

“I don’t understand—”

“There’s nothing to understand.” The boy was keeping his voice low, but he was getting frustrated and when he looked at her Kate saw something like desperation in his eyes. “I’m telling you to go. I’m asking you.”

“But why’re you doing this now? Now, all of a sudden?”

“I got my reasons. Just take it. All right?”

He grabbed her hand and curled her fingers around the purse. Kate felt utterly confused. On some level, she sensed that the boy was trying to protect her; but she also knew there was much he wasn’t saying.

“And you won’t tell me why?”

“I can’t—”

“Or how you know me? Because I know you do. There’s no point in lying.”

The boy said nothing. Kate pulled her hand away from his. She felt the heaviness of the purse, the shapes of the coins under the old leather. She could go up to Cambridge Falls, find a way back home, be reunited with her brother and sister; but then she would never learn the boy’s secret. And she thought of what Scruggs had said, that the Atlas had brought her here for a reason. Was it possible that this boy was the reason? If so, who was he?

She set the purse on the bar.

“Then I’m staying.”

And she walked out.

Abigail and the boys were in high spirits after lunch. They went to the firework maker, picked up Scruggs’s order, and then headed back toward the church, laden with their purchases. Kate glanced behind them several times, but could not see Rafe following. She felt deeply confused.

And then something happened that confused things even more.

They were walking down a narrow cross street, and as they passed a small house, they saw a dwarf couple—it was the first time Kate had ever seen a female dwarf; mostly, she looked just like a male dwarf without the beard—carrying out furniture to load into a donkey cart.

“See that,” Jake said. “They’re getting out before the Separation. Probably going to one a’ them big places upstate. What they calling them? Reserves?”

“Once the Separation happens,” Beetles explained to Kate, “there’re gonna be a few streets downtown that’re only for magic folk. Normal humans won’t even know they’re there. But dwarves and gnomes and stuff, all them that can’t pass for human, or that can’t afford glamours to disguise themselves, lots a’ them are getting outta the city for good.”

Suddenly, something struck the dwarf in the head, exploding all over his face and shoulders. It was a snowball, Kate realized, and then another struck the dwarf’s wife, hitting her square in the back. A few more snowballs smashed against the cart. Kate saw three surly-looking teenagers across the street, packing snowballs and jeering.

“Go on!”

“Get outta here!”

“We don’t want you!”

They threw another volley of snowballs, striking both dwarves and knocking a small figurine off the pile of goods in the cart. The figurine hit the curb and shattered. Kate started forward, furious, not sure what she was going to do, certain only that she was going to do something, when Abigail grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

“Let me go! Don’t you see what they’re doing?”

“Better not make trouble,” Abigail said quietly. “Rafe says we’re supposed to keep clear when things turn bad. They’re okay. See?”

Leaving the pieces of the figurine on the sidewalk, the dwarf and his wife had climbed into their cart and were driving down the street, pursued by the taunts and snowballs of the teenagers.

“Come on,” Abigail said, and pulled Kate away.

Kate was deeply troubled by the incident. So was everything Rafe had told her true? The teenagers seemed to hate the dwarves for no reason but that they were different. She felt sick to her stomach.

“So it’s really always like this?”

Abigail laughed. “That ain’t nothing.”

“It’s worse?”

“Worse? You heard what happened to Rafe’s ma?”

“What’re you talking about? She’s dead.”

“Yeah, and how’d she die? Some human without a drop a’ magic in him killed her.”

“What?” Kate stopped in her tracks.

“No one talks about it, but we all know. Why you think Rafe hates them so much? And he’s gonna be real powerful someday. I heard Scruggs telling Miss B—”

Kate grabbed the girl’s arm and wrenched her around. “What did you hear? Tell me.”

Abigail seemed surprised at Kate’s vehemence. “Nothing, really. Just I’d gone up to the belfry—they didn’t know I was there, see—and I heard ’em talking about Rafe.”

“And what did Scruggs say? Please, Abigail, this is important.”

“Just what I told you, that Rafe is gonna be a real powerful wizard. Why?”

Kate had no answer. All she had was her deep conviction that Rafe was connected to her, and not just to her but to Michael and Emma, to the search for the Books. But how? And was he their friend or enemy? She needed to know.

Just then there was a pounding of feet, and they turned to see Beetles and Jake running toward them, red-faced and grinning.

“We gotta go!” Beetles said.

“Why?” Kate said. “What happened?”

“Remember how we weren’t supposed to do nothing?” Jake said. “Well, we didn’t do that.”

“We threw some snowballs,” Beetles explained. “We didn’t think they’d be magic or nothing, but after we threw ’em, the snowballs started changing colors on their own and getting all goopy and—”

“There they are!”

The cry had come from down the block, and Kate turned and saw the three thuggish teenagers, led by a tall, angry, pinch-faced youth who looked to be covered in a greenish sludge, sprinting toward them.

“Get the freaks!”

“Run!” Kate cried.

The children needed no encouragement. They bolted down the street, the teenagers hard behind them, howling with fury.

“Can’t you—do something?” Kate panted. “Some—magic?”

“You gotta be calm to do magic,” Beetles said. “It don’t work if you’re scared.” And he added, “Not that I’m scared!”

“Me neither!” Jake said.

Kate’s mind was racing; she knew they couldn’t outrun the teenagers. But then she saw, past the end of the block, an avenue crowded with pedestrians, carriages, carts. On a packed street, there would be places to hide. That would work, she knew, as long as someone led their pursuers away.

“Listen, when we turn the corner, you three are going to hide. I’ll make them follow me.”

“Uh-uh!” Jake said. “Rafe said we’re supposed to watch out for you!”

“Stupid!” Beetles said. “You’re not supposed to tell her that!”

“There’s no time to argue! You look after Abigail. I’ll meet you back at the church!”

“I don’t need anyone lookin’—” Abigail began, but they were already rounding the corner, and Kate spied a set of steps leading to a basement below a grocer’s. She pushed the children toward it.

“There! Go now!”

Jake and Beetles grabbed Abigail and dragged her down the stairs and out of sight. Kate leapt into the midst of traffic. She heard cursing and the neighing of horses, the sound of reins being snapped tight, but she plowed ahead, her feet sliding in the slush, looking neither left nor right, till she reached the far sidewalk. Once there, she turned. The three teenagers had reached the corner and were searching for their quarry.

“Hey! Here I am! Come catch me!” she taunted.

Shouting with rage, they charged after her.

That’s right, Kate thought, come on.

Then she turned and ran for her life.

But she hadn’t gone more than thirty yards when she realized the boys were going to catch her. They were too big, too fast, and too angry. She could hear the pounding of their footsteps growing louder and louder. Then she spotted the ladder of a fire escape hanging down. She thought if she could climb up and pull the ladder after her, she could get away. Kate put on a final burst of speed and, five yards from the ladder, crashed into a man stepping out of a shop.

It was like colliding with a brick wall. Her head snapped back, and her entire body seemed to rebound and slam against the sidewalk. She was dizzy and her vision blurred. Her hat had fallen off, and she had to push back her hair to make out the man standing above her, a mountain of a man in a long fur jacket and fur hat. He hadn’t moved.

“You all right there, lass? You should be looking where you’re going. Running pell-mell like that through the streets.”

She heard the boys skidding to a halt behind her. She looked back, still too unsteady to get to her feet, and saw the tall, pinch-faced boy, backed on either side by his thuggish friends, pointing his finger at the man in the fur coat.

“Get away from her! She’s ours!”

Kate knew she had to run, but she also knew if she stood now, she’d just fall over.

“And what would you be wanting with a sweet, innocent girl like this?” the man asked. “Sure, she’s done nothing wrong. Face of an angel, she has.”

“She’s a freak! She—”

And Kate, who was still looking at the boys, watched as their expressions changed. Something they’d seen had given them pause.

“What’s that you’re saying about freaks?” the man asked.

The tall boy looked angrier than ever.

“You’ll get yours too one day! All a’ you!”

“Begone,” the man said, “before I find myself losing patience.”

The tall boy spat on the ground, then they all three sulked off. Feeling steadier, Kate slowly stood and turned to thank the man. She froze. He was flanked on either side by bowler-hatted Imps, their small eyes fixed upon her.

“It’s her,” one of the creatures said. “I remember.”

“Sure, isn’t it herself,” the man purred. “Can’t I see it written on her face?” He placed a large hand on Kate’s arm. “Would you mind coming with us for a wee bit? There’s someone who would very much like to speak with you. Oh, but where’re me manners?” He removed his fur hat, revealing the great bald stone of his head. “The name is Rourke.” Twice, Gabriel lifted Michael to his feet, and twice, the boy’s knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground.

“If you fall again,” Gabriel said, pulling him up once more, “I will have to leave you here.”

“That—thing took Emma!”

“I know.”

“But it took her!”

“Yes, and I cannot both pursue it and carry you; so either stand or you will be left behind.”

They were in the clearing. Emma and the creature had disappeared moments before. In the starlight, Michael could see the thick vein of Gabriel’s scar pulsing on the side of his jaw. Michael knew that Gabriel was restraining himself from going after Emma alone. He knew he needed to pull himself together.

Gabriel released his shoulders, and Michael swayed, but kept his balance.

“That thing,” Michael said. “Did you see—”

“Yes.”

“And was it a—I mean, was it actually—”

“Yes.”

It seemed that neither man nor boy wanted to name the creature aloud; but for Michael, it was enough that Gabriel had seen what he had—the great, leathery, bat-like wings, the long serpent’s body, the jagged line of spines ridged along the creature’s back, the enormous talons that had snatched Emma off the ground.…

He hadn’t imagined it; his sister had been taken by a dragon.

“But”—and, for a second, he felt so weak and lost that he was sure he would topple over and be left there by Gabriel—“what’re we gonna do?”

“We will find your sister and kill the beast that took her.”

“But what if—what if she’s already—”

Gabriel lunged, seizing a handful of Michael’s shirt. His face was cloaked in shadow, his voice a growl.

“She is alive. She is alive, and we will find her. Now—come!”

And he sprinted away across the clearing, with Michael staggering along behind.

Michael lost track of time. Half an hour. An hour. Gabriel kept disappearing into the darkness, leaving Michael to carve his own path through the thicket of ferns that blanketed the forest floor. Again and again, just when Michael was convinced that Gabriel had finally abandoned him, the man would appear from behind a tree, hissing, “This way! Faster!” and Michael would push himself on as the ferns beat at his arms and face and the same refrain played over and over in his head:

You lost Kate, and now you lost Emma.…

You lost Kate, and now you lost Emma.…

You lost Emma.…

You lost Emma.…

Then, abruptly, the trees and ferns ended, and Michael stepped out onto a rocky plain and found Gabriel waiting. Free of the weight of the forest, Michael felt the immense openness of the night sky, and he took a deep, relieved breath.

“There. You see?”

Gabriel was pointing up the valley to where the volcano rose from the plain, a quarter of a mile distant. It had not occurred to Michael what direction they were heading in, and he stared now in wonder. The volcano took up almost the entire width of the plain, a perfect pyramid rising nearly to the height of the canyon walls. Looking up, Michael could see an ominous red glow emanating from the cone.

Unbidden, the memories he’d acquired in Malpesa came surging up, and he had again the feeling of déjà vu. The Chronicle was close.

“You see it?” Gabriel asked.

Michael realized that Gabriel was pointing to a spot about a third of the way up the volcano’s slope, where a light flickered in the dark. Squinting, Michael could just discern the outline of a large structure. The dead man’s memories filled in the rest.

“It’s the Order’s fortress,” he said. “This is where they brought the book.”

“What I care about,” Gabriel said, “is finding your sister.”

And they set off once more.

The lower slope of the volcano was a jumble of giant black rocks, and Michael had to clamber upward on all fours as Gabriel strode ahead. Soon, the boulders gave way to small rocks and scree, and for every two steps, Michael slid back one. Still, he kept on. By now, the fortress was in sharp relief, and Michael could make out thirty-foot-high walls of black stone, ramparts and battlements where a defender might take position. He could see nothing of the buildings inside the walls save a lone tower that rose into the sky, at the crown of which a fire blazed forth.

It was an impressive, imposing structure, but Michael couldn’t help but question the wisdom of building on the side of a volcano.

“I mean,” he muttered, panting his way up the slope, “they do blow up after all.”

Gabriel was standing before the fortress gates, a pair of heavy wooden doors the height of the walls, and Michael arrived trembling and out of breath.

“Sorry. I’m … actually in excellent shape. Must be the altitude—”

“Look.”

Gabriel gestured to the three interlocking circles carved into the door. The fortress, the whole valley, was still and silent.

Michael whispered, “Do you … think they know we’re here?”

Gabriel picked up a large rock and hammered—thud—thud—thud—thud—till the doors swung open. He dropped the rock.

“Yes.”

With Gabriel leading, they passed into a courtyard of packed earth. Michael waited, and when no arrows came whistling out of the dark, he relaxed and allowed himself a quick survey. The fortress had been built on a flattened plot a hundred feet wide and perhaps twice that in depth. The central courtyard—where he and Gabriel stood—was dominated by a two-story stone building with long, narrow windows. The high, flame-topped tower rose from the building’s back corner. A wooden skeleton of ladders and catwalks clung to the inside of the fortress walls, providing access to the battlements. Other than that, Michael saw a few ramshackle structures—a small pen for livestock, a blacksmith’s forge, several storerooms—and all were dark and empty.

Gabriel unsheathed his falchion. “Stay behind me.”

Michael didn’t argue.

Gabriel kicked open the door of the stone building, and they stepped into a large, high-ceilinged room. Thick-bodied columns ran the length of the chamber, while an eerie red glow, rising from a gap in the floor, pushed back the darkness. The building was a keep, Michael realized, a place to retreat to should the fortress be breached.

They advanced slowly to the gap in the center of the floor. It was perhaps fifteen feet square, and there were a dozen steps leading down to a heavy iron gate, past which Michael could make out the mouth of a tunnel. The red glow was coming from deep in the volcano, and the heat rose up and stung Michael’s eyes. Still, he could feel himself being pulled forward by an invisible force.

“The Chronicle is down there,” he said quietly.

“Then it is not alone.”

Michael glanced at him, questioning.

“That gate locks from the outside,” Gabriel said. “It is not meant to keep us out; it is to keep something in.”

He nodded upward, and Michael found himself looking through a large, jagged hole in the keep’s ceiling. The hole was directly over the mouth of the tunnel, and Michael imagined that something very big—something, say, dragon-sized—had come roaring out and blasted through the roof of the keep.

Except that the gate over the tunnel was down and locked, which meant the dragon had returned home. Michael thought of the creature he’d glimpsed in the clearing, the huge, razor-sharp talons, fangs the length of his arm.…

“I guess,” he said, trying to sound gruff and ready and not completely, bone-shakingly terrified, “we should go down there, huh?”

“Yes.”

Michael nodded. And suddenly he knew that scared or not, if going into the tunnel was the way to save Emma, he would do it. Though he wondered if he should take a moment to stretch.

“But first,” Gabriel said, “we will search the tower.”

“What? Why?”

“The dragon did not close that gate. I want to know who did.”

He headed for a doorway in the far corner, through which a set of stairs could be seen climbing upward. Michael hurried after him, and for a few moments, the chamber was still. Then a shadow separated from one of the columns, and a cloaked figure drew a sword and followed.

“Emma!”

Michael ran forward and threw his arms around his sister.

He and Gabriel had reached the top of the tower. Climbing the last flight of stairs, Michael had looked up and seen the night sky still brimming with stars, the looming, snowcapped mountains, the red and smoking cone of the volcano; he’d seen a fire burning in a brazier on the tower wall; he’d been nervous, not knowing who or what might be waiting in ambush; then he saw Gabriel stiffen in surprise, and he turned and there was his own sister, alive and unharmed.

“Oh, Emma!” He hugged her as if he would never let her go ever again. “I was so worried! Gabriel too! We were both really, really worried!”

Gabriel said his name, but Michael ignored it.

“Emma,” he said, holding her arms and stepping away. Now that she was safely back, he felt the need to be the stern older brother. “I know you’ve been through an ordeal, but I did ask you to stay out of that clearing. I think there’s a lesson here, don’t you? Perhaps you should pay more attention when I tell you things?”

“Michael …”

“Just a moment, Gabriel. Emma, do you hear me?”

“No, I do not think she does.”

“What? What’re you—?” Then Michael finally realized that the whole time he’d been hugging her, Emma hadn’t once groaned or tried to push him away or made a joke about why didn’t he go hug a dwarf.

“Something has frozen her,” Gabriel said.

For a moment, Michael stared at his motionless sister. Her arms were stiff at her sides and her eyes unblinking; the curled tip of a fern was stuck in her mud-caked hair. As he reached over and plucked it out, he felt the coldness of her skin.

Then he said faintly, hopelessly, “Can you fix her?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“What about Dr. Pym?”

Gabriel hesitated only a fraction of a second, but Michael understood. They had left the wizard fighting for his life in Malpesa. Who could say when they would see him again?

“Never mind,” he said. “I know—”

Without warning, Gabriel spun around, his falchion hissing through the air; there was a loud metallic clang, and Michael turned to see a cloaked, sword-wielding man stagger back.

The man had almond-colored skin, long, unkempt black hair, and a wild black beard. He was shorter than Gabriel and very thin. His clothes were ragged and patched and looked to have been salvaged from a dozen different sources, giving him the appearance of a down-on-his-luck harlequin. Michael’s eyes went to the man’s tunic, where, stitched into the fabric, were three faded, interlocking circles.

Gabriel took a step forward, more to shield Michael than to attack, but the man dropped his sword, threw up his hands, and fell to his knees, crying, “I yield! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill poor Bert!” and promptly burst into tears.

“He’s not what I expected,” Michael said.

“He has likely been here a long time,” Gabriel said. “Perhaps alone. Solitude can have a terrible effect on the mind.”

That much, Michael thought, was obvious.

The man had finally stopped whimpering and seemed to believe, at least for the time being, that Gabriel and Michael were not going to murder him. He was sitting on the short wall that encircled the tower and consoling himself by munching on a fat black beetle he’d taken from a pocket of his cloak.

“I just expected someone … cleaner. And not named Bert.”

“Do you want to question him or shall I?” Gabriel asked.

That was clearly the next step. Finding out who the man was. Was he indeed a member of the Order? Was he alone here or were there others? Was the dragon locked safely inside the volcano? Was it guarding the Chronicle? What was the dragon’s connection to the man? Why had it left Emma atop this tower? And, most importantly, what exactly had happened to her and could it be reversed?

Michael looked at his sister. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she’d been on the point of speaking; her eyes were narrowed, and there was a wrinkle of fury on her brow. Michael saw that her hands, down at her sides, were clenched into fists. He knew the signs and was not surprised: his sister had been fighting when she’d been frozen.

“I will.” Emma was his sister, his responsibility.

“Very well. I will be here if you need me. But be quick.” Gabriel gave him a meaningful look. “Sooner or later, the dragon will return.”

Michael conceded that Gabriel had a point. He stepped forward.