The Book of Beasts Read online

  ‘Ow!’

  She jumped back as a teardrop of blood splashed on to the leaf and settled like a dot of red paint.

  Are you OK, Em?

  As Zach bent over Em’s hand in concern, the blood spread towards the edges of the leaf, becoming part of the animation. It stretched and moved across to the next leaf, and the one after that, on and on until there were no more leaves left within its reach, reaching deep scarlet fingers up towards the sky like a plant stalk seeking the sun.

  The animation was no longer a vine of ivy. Instead, it was a blood-red silhouette of a princess warrior with her broadsword extended in front of her. The protective shield had taken on the form of the last thing Em had drawn.

  Zach keyed the code to open the iron gates into the keypad on a small steel casing tucked under the hedge. He hit the last number just as Em caught sight of what was happening. As she gaped at the transforming clumps of ivy above their heads, she grasped a crucial problem.

  The shield hadn’t de-animated.

  She darted between Zach and the wall.

  Zach, stop!

  But it was too late.

  The bloody warrior princess sheathed her sword, lifted her bow and took aim. The air filled with an impossible number of scarlet arrows, their tips shaped like ivy leaves and their fletches like roots, as if formed directly from the earth.

  Em screamed and dived into the hedge as the arrows rained down. Several arrows hit her back, but instead of feeling pain, she experienced only a flash of light behind her eyes as they exploded on her skin in puffs of dust. Not one broke the skin on her arms or her legs. In the safety of the hedge, she gazed thoughtfully at the broken skin on her finger.

  Zach was nearly all the way under the hedgerow when an arrow tore through the hedge and drove into his calf. He yelled in pain, clutching his wounded leg, and tucked himself deeper into the bushes.

  Em suddenly began to crawl out of the hedge again, back into the line of fire. Zach grabbed her.

  What are you doing? Get back in here!

  Pushing him off, Em crawled on, all the way out of the safe cover of the hedge and got to her feet. She closed her eyes, raised her arms and let the arrows swarm down on her.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The first wave hit Em in a blast of scarlet and exploded against her in robust pops of red light. The second swiftly followed. Wrapped in a red fog, Em’s skin felt oddly chilled, as if she had jumped into the sea in winter. Although she felt no pain, her knees started to resemble toffee as the number of arrows mounted: thirty, forty, fifty. She wanted desperately to lie down. She could no longer see the wall through the cloud of red that surrounded her. When she turned to look for Zach, it was like looking down the lens of a kaleidoscope, the scene in front of her fragmenting in slivers of colour. She thought she saw him on his phone, but everything was becoming so red and she was so tired.

  She collapsed to her knees. Her eyelids felt like tiny fingers were holding them closed. She shivered, then giggled for no reason. Forcing her eyes open, she lifted her hand to Zach’s terrified face. An arrow shot into her palm and disappeared, leaving a tiny print of light on her skin before fading to nothing.

  And then as quickly as it had started, the barrage stopped.

  Her eyes fluttered shut.

  All was darkness.

  Can you hear me, Em? Em!

  Panicking, Zach shifted Em’s head and shoulders on to his lap.

  Why did you do that, Em? I would have been OK!

  He gently brushed her forehead, releasing a puff of red dust into the air. It smelled of lavender and fresh air, of soap and… and sadness. It smelled of Em.

  Through the gravel, Zach could feel the vibrations of a vehicle coming down the lane. The Land Rover skidded to a stop a few feet away, and Simon flew out of the car towards them.

  ‘Will she be OK?’ Zach’s hands were trembling so violently he could hardly form the words.

  ‘We need to get her back inside the Abbey,’ Simon answered, his fingers a blur. ‘I de-animated the shield as soon as you left the house, and had no idea it hadn’t switched off before you called. Then Vaughn found this, jammed in the shield on the south-west corner of the compound.’

  He handed Zach a large medallion. It was identical to the coins Renard had shown them up at the house but for two crucial differences. One side showed a black peryton instead of a white one. The other showed an inverted silver spiral. ‘He says it matches the one that Malcolm stole from the cottage of a dead Animare years ago. Renard believes there were only a handful of them forged in the nineteenth century.’

  ‘It was enough to disrupt the stream without disconnecting it completely,’ Simon signed.

  Zach dropped his eyes back to the coin. ‘I don’t understand. Who put it there?’

  ‘Renard sensed it belongs to Henrietta de Court,’ Simon signed grimly. ‘Her emotions were so focused when she planted it that he felt their residue on the coin. She’s somewhere on the islands. And she has help.’

  Zach felt Em’s pulse strong and steady beneath his fingers.

  ‘I think she’s asleep, son. We forget how much creative energy it takes for an Animare to animate.’ Simon gazed thoughtfully up at the warrior princess, blood-red and quiet, her arrows back in her quiver.

  ‘Can we move her?’ Zach signed.

  Simon looked more carefully at Em’s arms and legs. ‘She doesn’t seem to have any injuries, so I don’t see why not. She’d certainly be more comfortable in her bed than on this gravel.’

  Zach still felt confused and frightened. ‘But how is it possible she has no injuries? At least a hundred arrows must have hit her body.’

  Simon looked again at the warrior princess above them. ‘Em touched the shield, yes?’

  ‘She cut her hand on one of the leaves.’

  Simon nodded. ‘Yes, blood would do it. By touching the shield in that way, Em changed it. It must’ve absorbed something from her extraordinary imagination.’ He paused and smiled at Zach. ‘I’ve a feeling that in time, we’re going to witness a lot more of the impossible from Matt and Em.’

  Dimly, Em could sense Simon kneeling on her left, and that she was cradled in Zach’s lap. She felt safer than she had in months. But the longer she stayed in this place between consciousness and unconsciousness, the more Zach’s anxiety and fear were infiltrating her senses, creeping slowly and deliberately up her spine.

  Oh, Em! Why did you save me?

  Em’s eyes opened. She smiled up at Zach.

  Because I knew I could.

  The air cleared of the lingering red fog, and the sun came out as Simon and Zach helped Em into the back of the Land Rover. Simon was about to start the Land Rover and turn the vehicle round when Em strained against her seatbelt.

  ‘Simon, stop!’ she croaked. ‘We never checked to see if Grandpa’s folder was on the postbox.’

  Zach jumped out of the Land Rover and punched in the code again, unlocking the gates. He was gone for several minutes. When he returned, with a shake of his head and empty hands, Em noticed he was limping. A red gooey gash gleamed on his leg, shining as if illuminated beneath the skin.

  Minutes later, as they pulled up in front of the Abbey, the only evidence that Zach’s injury had ever existed was a smudged red tattoo on his calf. It was the size of a penny and the heart shape of an ivy leaf.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Auchinmurn Isle

  The Middle Ages

  Solon lifted the key from under his tunic, unlocked the arched wooden door of the Abbot’s tower and slipped up the stone steps. He had no idea what might be waiting for him at the top.

  How many times had he skipped up these stairs for lessons? He had learned what it meant to be a member of the Order of Era Mina from Brother Renard, but from the Abbot he had been taught how best to prepare a skin so that it absorbed the monks’ illuminating inks slowly and evenly; how to fight with a knife and a sword; and perhaps the best gift of all: how to read.

  A strange stench fille
d the spiral staircase. It reminded Solon of the cabbage water that his mother saved in clay pots on the shelf above the hearth, for use whenever any of the children were gripped with illness. Nothing was moving. Not even a breeze from the sea penetrated the arrow slits in the walls. Everything was eerily still.

  The first door Solon reached after two flights of stairs was the Abbot’s bedroom. He nudged the door with his toes and it swung open. The canopied bed was empty, but someone had slept in it recently: the heavy brocade quilt was bundled at the foot of the bed and the pillows were on the floor. Monks were nothing if not fastidious, and the Abbot was no exception. He would not have left his bed unmade.

  Out of respect, Solon shook out the quilt and spread it neatly across the bed. When he picked up the pillows and tossed them on top of the quilts, each filled the air with a red chalky cloud.

  Click-clack. Click-clack.

  Something was climbing up the tower steps. Solon ducked behind the door. Slipping his bronze dagger from its sheath, he wiped his palms on his tunic and prepared to attack.

  When a black cockerel lurched into the room on scrabbling claws, Solon almost laughed with relief. Sheathing his dagger again, he climbed up the last flight of stairs to the Abbot’s study.

  This room had been torn apart, the furnishings smashed to pieces. The Abbot’s chair and desk were upside down in one corner. The tapestry that the Abbot had spent years supervising was in shreds on the floor.

  Solon swallowed his pain. He could not do anything about the broken furniture but he could at least restore the desk and chair to their rightful positions.

  As he pulled the desk back on to its feet, he noticed a piece of parchment peeking out from underneath a splintered panel of wood. Solon carefully freed the Abbot’s ledger, its pages filled with elegant columns and figures. The Abbot had clearly been working on the monastery’s accounts when Matt’s father had taken control.

  Solon sank into the Abbot’s chair, holding the ledger to his chest. He couldn’t carry it with him while he and Matt searched the rest of the monastery, but it was too valuable to leave here. He needed to find a safe hiding place.

  Outside he heard the hoot of an owl and the strange drone that he and Matt had heard echoing beneath the catacombs. Time was running out.

  As a young novice in the monastery, the Abbot had been a carpenter. Solon got to his feet again and scanned the room for some kind of secret compartment. He walked carefully round the room three times, tapping, stomping and listening for hollows in the floor. The walls were rock solid. There was nothing.

  Solon returned thoughtfully to the Abbot’s chair. It had been the Abbot’s prize and glory, carved when he himself had been an apprentice to the Abbot before him.

  Examining the detail in its carvings – the story of the twin perytons etched into the wood on the high back panel – Solon first tried to manipulate the arms of the chair. When nothing happened, he set it on its side and played with the legs instead, tapping and twisting them. Then he noticed something puzzling.

  Viewed from underneath, the back of the chair was thicker than it looked when the chair was upright.

  It took only seconds for Solon to discover that pressing and then turning the image of the white peryton on the tall back panel released a series of tiny gears. The gears whirred, clicked – and slid open.

  Solon felt such a rush of adrenaline that it set him back on his heels. A manuscript wrapped in leather lay securely tucked into the secret cavity.

  He lifted the manuscript out. As he did so, he was hit with a roar of sound so loud that he bit his tongue. Scrambling backwards in pain and shock, he dropped the folio on to the floor. He knew what he had found.

  My master dedicated his life to finishing this, he thought, gazing at the leather-bound manuscript with troubled eyes. But now he is too frail for the task.

  Carefully untying the leather straps, he opened the book.

  The last beast that old Brother Renard had illuminated was the griffin, with the head of a giant eagle and the body the size of ten lions. According to the text, the griffin was a ferocious guardian who could gallop on the ground faster than any other beast of the land. Its speed in the air was second only to the peryton.

  Solon closed the book and fastened the leather straps again. After a moment’s thought, he decided to put it back in its little chamber, together with the ledger. It was clear that no one else had discovered the chair’s secret. It would be safe there a while longer.

  Next, Solon did his best to re-create the chaos he had found when he’d entered the study. He turned over the chair and the desk again. He cleared his mind as far as he could of any thoughts of the Abbot, the griffin, and most of all, The Book of Beasts.

  Then he left the room. He needed to find Matt.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  There it was again. The same whirring noise they’d heard earlier. It sounded like the shuttle of a loom shooting back and forth, and it was coming from deep in the catacombs. Solon moved across the courtyard, ears pricked, scanning the wave-shattered space for Matt.

  A muffled scream echoed from the nearby woods. Solon froze. The tree tops rustled. He decided it was an owl catching prey.

  A lantern bobbing on a rowing boat out on the water caught his attention. Darting along the broken wall of the monastery kitchens, Solon ducked for cover behind what remained of the hearth, and watched.

  Two figures dragged their boat up on to the sand and tethered it to an outcropping of rocks. Solon recognized them as the gravediggers who had come to Auchinmurn to bury the dead after the Viking attack, and then remained to drink the wine from the monastery cellars. They were simple-minded, shiftless men. Solon thought it likely that Matt’s father had them under his control.

  ‘Ach,’ one complained, ‘that auld witch bit me when ah tried to feed her. Nothing more comin’ tae her ’til dawn. And if she doesn’t want it then it’ll be all the more fer me.’

  ‘Burn ’em all. That’s what I say. An ah’ll keep saying it. Abomininshawns.’ Solon heard a gurgling sound as the second man washed his words down with a swig from a jug hooked on his fingers. ‘An the de’il himself can go with the banshee for all ah care.’

  ‘Wheesht!’ hissed the first. ‘The de’il himself will hear ye!’

  Passing the jug between them in silence, the men headed unsteadily for the Keep, a secure square building on the other side of the chapel where the monks kept their stores of rye, barley and beer. At the Keep’s small arched doorway, Solon watched them come to a stumbling halt.

  Looking around to be sure they hadn’t been followed, the heavier one lifted a master key from round his neck to unlock the door. ‘Fancy a wee night cap, ma friend?’ he offered, waving the key under his companion’s nose.

  ‘Don’t mind if ah do, noble sir.’

  The lock creaked and they disappeared inside.

  Solon had no doubt who the ‘witch’ was. Jeannie, the old woman from the future who had controlled the wave. The woman Matt was so intent on finding.

  He unhooked the walkie-talkie from his strap and held his finger on the button the way Matt had shown him.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Breathless and red-faced, Matt appeared at Solon’s side within moments. The young scribe was gazing around in consternation, looking for the source of the rapid high-pitched squeal coming from the walkie-talkie in his hand.

  ‘You can take your finger off the button now,’ Matt said.

  Solon did. To their relief, the squealing stopped.

  ‘I think I know where your Jeannie is being held,’ Solon said.

  Matt tensed. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the tower on Era Mina. I saw the two drunken fools who have been taking food to her.’

  Matt climbed over the rubble and out on to the rocks that lined the shore. Even with the help of the opera glasses, all he could see was the faint outline of the pencil tower in the pale light of the moon. It was still amazing to him how dark it was in the Middle Ages.

&nbs
p; ‘We need to get across there and see,’ he said, lowering the binoculars.

  ‘Did you find my master?’ Solon asked.

  Matt shook his head. ‘The cell is empty. What happened in there? The whole room smells of bird droppings.’

  ‘One of my master’s inadvertent animations.’ Solon untethered the gravediggers’ rowing boat and dragged it to the water’s edge. ‘If your father has locked your Jeannie up in that tower, then he may have done the same to my master.’ He climbed in the boat and took the oars in his hands. ‘Are you coming?’

  As Solon rowed them both towards the small island, Matt thought about animating an outboard motor. But an engine noise, of any size, in this time would call attention to them. So far they had managed to avoid his dad’s notice. No point in pushing their luck, just to save a little time.

  The island loomed up in front of them. The boys climbed out into the freezing, knee-deep surf, dragged the boat to a level above the tidemark and ran to the tower.

  The first thing that Matt noticed was the way that the door stood almost two metres from the ground. Perhaps it had been built that way to avoid the tower flooding during high tides. The second was the thin pulsing glow of an animation shield around the door’s perimeter, much like the one Simon had created for the Abbey. But it was the third thing that lifted his heart. He could hear singing. Melodic and merry and unmistakably Jeannie.

  ‘Your Jeannie carries a fine tune,’ said Solon, looking up at the arrow slits, the only openings in the tower other than the door.

  Removing his parka, Matt tore out another piece of the lining to use as a canvas, leaned against the stone wall and began to draw. Seconds later, he shoved Solon out of the way as the air above him rustled and a wooden ladder fell from nowhere.

  After Matt had helped Solon up from the rocks, the boys manoeuvred the ladder against the wall, driving its wooden legs securely into the sand.

  ‘I’ll climb,’ said Matt. ‘You watch for any changes in the door animation, or for anyone coming across the bay. If I can see into the arrow slit at the top, I might be able to talk to Jeannie before we risk breaking in.’