The Freemen were constructing an octagonal pavilion, studded all over with jittering golden batteries.
“I’m kidding, of course,” said Nimue. “I’ll be doing all your thinking for you from now on.”
With this she turned, her dress spinning, and let her Freemen build a magical power station around her.
Each of its eight sides thrummed with stolen glamour, glamour from Mick and Harvey and a litany of other poor unfortunates. Each of its sides was tethered to a thick electrical cord, and these were gathered into a bundle that spooled away from the octagon to a dynamo near Emily’s fishbowl.
The black-robed Freeman who joined the power cords to the dynamo then approached Emily, head lowered, and kneeled just outside the glass of her cage. His head lifted and his eyes met hers.
It was Mr. Wilson. Of course it was Mr. Wilson. Nearly everyone she’d met today was Mr. Wilson.
“Dad,” said Emily. “Woohoo. You’re here to save me.”
“No,” said Mr. Wilson. “No, no one is coming to save you, Emily. You’re going to die here.”
Emily frowned and shrank to the back of the fishbowl. “Well this is different,” she said.
Mr. Wilson crouched low and leered up at her from the floor. His teeth were crooked, his face dirty.
“You think you deserve to be rescued?” he said. “Do you?” A cough rattled his body. “Do you?”
“Is this a rhetorical ques—”
“After what you’ve done? After you left two goblins to die burning in that London deathtrap? Chained them with cold iron, didn’t you—but it wasn’t cold for long. Was it?”
“Um—”
“Their bodies ruined, burned to cinders, but it takes a stronger fire than that to burn away the magic, Emily. It takes more than a bonfire to kill a goblin—”
Even if he had let Emily get in a word, she probably wouldn’t have warned him about the second hooded Freeman sneaking up behind him. This second Freeman raised a shining monkey wrench and brought it swiftly down on the back of Mr. Wilson’s head, and with a ripping sound Mr. Wilson’s robes and body scattered like dry ashes to reveal two blackened little goblins underneath.
“Naked!” said the one on top before tumbling to the floor. “Naked again!”
“Your fault, Mr. Poke,” rasped the other. “The head of the donkey was improperly made.”
“The ass of the ass is an ass,” answered the first, and they both ran off into the darkness, shouting the kind of language that would have made an ancient Celt blush, had there been any ancient Celts hanging around.
The second Freeman glanced over his shoulder at the others, and at Nimue—but they were still occupied with their improbable machine. He removed his hood.
“Hello, Emily,” said Mr. Wilson with an empty smile. He had a red welt on his forehead and one of his lenses was cracked.
“Ohhhkay.” Emily sighed. “Now we’re back on track.”
“We have to hurry,” he said. “While Nimue and the rest are distracted.”
“Quality plan, Dad.”
He punched something into a keypad that Emily couldn’t see, and the walls of the fishbowl rose just a little above its floor, just enough that Emily could slip through the gap. But she didn’t slip through the gap.
“Quickly,” said Mr. Wilson. “Don’t be afraid.”
Emily rolled her eyes and pushed herself off the base of her cage and onto the floor with a minimum of effort. Mr. Wilson’s hand darted inside his robe and reemerged with a corn-husk doll as big as Emily, wearing the same hospital gown. He slid it inside the cage and closed everything up again.
“What is that?” Emily asked him, though she had a guess.
“Decoy.”
He took her hand and away they ran, through the dark to a red-lit door in the far corner.
“I have a theory?” said Mr. Wilson. “That the entire Goodco headquarters—that the island, even—is imaginary. It only exists because everyone in Goodborough believes it exists. I’ve been circulating an email saying it’s a hoax, that it’s just a big painting in the distance. If enough people believe me, we should be able to walk out through the walls.”
“Uh-huh. And that big red mark on your forehead?”
Mr. Wilson adjusted his cracked glasses. “It didn’t work on the way in.”
Nimue’s voice buzzed suddenly, like a hornet in Emily’s mind.
Where are you going, dear?
They pushed through another door, and there was another fishbowl, and Erno.
“Emily! Dad!” he shouted. He threw down a file folder filled with pages and pressed his face against the glass. “All right!”
Mr. Wilson entered his code, and now Erno was free too. He hugged Emily. She stood in the center of the hug like a void, like the hole in a doughnut.
“Where am I going?” Emily muttered. “You tell me. This is your dream.”
Not this time.
Erno drew back. “Did you say something?”
Emily tried to take stock of all her senses. The warmth of Erno’s body. The dizziness, the harsh lights of the labs, the smell of chlorine and frosted corn. It seemed real, but it had always seemed real.
Mr. Wilson was sniffing around. Actually sniffing. Emily could feel Erno’s eyes on her as he said, “Nimue gave me my file. To read. Mr. . . . Mr. Wilson?”
The frazzled man turned and looked at Erno, or at least in the boy’s direction. There was something unfocused about his gaze, like he was trying to watch two television channels at the same time.
Erno had a question for Mr. Wilson. It appeared to be a hot potato, this question.
“You’re . . . you’re my real dad, right?” Erno asked, pantomiming a shrug. “My . . . biological dad.”
Mr. Wilson seemed to be really thinking. He searched the air around Erno for some clue, then once again flashed that empty smile.
“I used to know this,” he said.
“Yeah.” Erno shrugged again. “Never mind. I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway.”
Mr. Wilson stared for another few beats. “Better go,” he said.
He began dragging them both through another flashing corridor. “Now,” he said, “we just have to find—”
A door at the end of the hallway leaped off its hinges with a screech, hit the opposite wall with a clang.
“Mr. Biggs.”
A giant filled the corridor—still wearing the button-up pajamas that had recently been the only protector of his modesty, but which were now getting a lot of assistance from the six-inch-long chestnut-brown hair that covered every square inch of his body.
Gunfire crackled behind him. He rushed toward them—first running, then galloping like an ape—
“YAA!” said Mr. Wilson.
—then took them in his arms and vaulted up through the pressboard ceiling.
Erno’s voice carried through the darkness, muffled where his face pressed against Emily’s shoulder. “Wait! The cat,” he said. “What about the unicat?”
No one answered. Biggs’s fur was soft, his breathing even. All was confusing in the dark crawl space between the floors, but Emily was watching two channels at once too—part of her mind was still in the room with her fishbowl, watching the anxious Freemen through Nimue’s eyes. The golden batteries of the magical machine spun around her. The Lady of the Lake must have been glowing like a candle.
“If this isn’t one of your head games,” Emily whispered, “then why didn’t you try to stop me?”
Stop you? came Nimue’s lustrous voice. Precious girl, you’re my greatest creation. My horseman. Why wouldn’t I want you loosed upon the world?
Emily winced, and breathed. “Well . . . call off your flying monkeys, then,” she said. “Your greatest creation is about to get shot in the back.”
They crashed down through another part of the ceiling, and Biggs carried them through a door to a stairwell at the end. Shouts followed them, then the crack of another gun.
Inside the octagon, Nimue’s ha
ir danced, the hems of her gown floated implausibly around her.
Biggs had put them down, and they were running through a vast cold room where a flickering giant tugged listlessly at the shackles that chained him to the wall.
The batteries circling Nimue flickered too—golden, then pure white, and the Freemen backed away, shielding their eyes.
Biggs shielded their bodies—Emily’s, and Erno’s, and Mr. Wilson’s—on the roof of the headquarters while a dozen men with rifles told them it was over. Erno insinuated that now might be a good time for Emily to accidentally turn the Freemen into mushrooms, or toads, or lightning bugs.
And the batteries were mere lightning bugs, while Nimue was the lightning—Nimue at the center of a tantrum of fire and possibility.
Biggs gathered them up once again in his impossible arms, and then his impossible feet swept them to the edge of the roof and he stepped out onto nothing at all—
—weightless—
—weightless—
—and now Nimue was becoming something more, becoming the Godmother—
—and Emily, Emily was becoming something decidedly less.
CHAPTER 22
Scott and the others radioed to the American Antarctic base and were picked up by a big red-and-white vehicle with stout black all-weather tires called a Terra Bus. Called, specifically, IVAN THE TERRA BUS, if the sign painted on the side was to be believed.
The bus was slow. They bounced in their seats, fidgeted, their hearts straining against their chests. Here they needed a speeding motorcade, and the only available transportation was a cartoon tortoise.
“So,” Mick said with a gleam, scootching up onto the bench where the tiny Elizabeth II was sitting. “Is there a mister Queen of England?”
The queen shifted slightly away. “Certainly there is,” she said primly. But a moment later she was smiling out the window.
McMurdo Station wasn’t as Scott expected—he’d been looking out the windows of the Terra Bus for a single snow-buried building, but the base was more like a small town. There were dozens of buildings, places to eat, two bars, even gift shops. Something like a thousand people lived here. There was soft-serve ice cream in the cafeteria.
They used phones on the base to call Erno and Emily, but their mobile numbers just rang and rang.
The staff at McMurdo Station was introduced to the Queen of England, and then things really got rolling. She explained to them roughly what had brought her here, and of the great calamity that was befalling the world. She demanded immediate transport off Antarctica and was promised it without question. Oddly, the fact that she was two feet tall only made everyone listen to her more. Clearly this was a woman who knew things the rest of the world didn’t.
There were already reports of trouble back home—thousands of children suddenly missing, or found wandering the streets, all walking in the same crooked direction. Children blank-faced and empty of affect until you got in their way, and then they fought you tooth and nail like animals. And not just children—adults too. There were two adults here, at McMurdo Station, who’d sleepwalked right up to the edge of the sea, trembling in their sleep clothes. One of them was possibly going to lose some toes to frostbite.
“I don’t know where they thought they were heading,” the station manager told them.
“New Jersey,” said Scott.
The manager frowned. “Why New Jersey?”
Merle shook his head and said, “There’s never been a decent answer to that question.”
Military planes came to the continent from time to time, bringing new people and supplies, taking researchers home again. There wasn’t a flight scheduled to leave anytime soon, but exceptions could be made for medical emergencies, and the Queen of England being only two feet tall seemed like as much of a medical emergency as anything. Soon they were winging their way to New Zealand on a gray, no-frills passenger plane.
Scott sat with Mick, his insides dissolving with worry.
“I lost Polly,” he said.
Mick nodded. “I lost Finchbriton. Don’t yeh fret—they all have each other. An’ a pixie-girl can make the Crossing easier than most.”
Scott looked over his seat at John. “I lost Polly,” he said.
“I know,” said John. “You did all you could.”
“I just . . . lost her.”
“We’ll get her back.”
They landed in a city called Christchurch, where a Royal New Zealand Air Force Boeing jet was waiting to take them to Los Angeles, then New Jersey. Aboard this new plane, the queen established a video link to the office of her prime minister in London.
He stood, surrounded by staff, and bowed his head quickly, as if afraid to take his eyes off the screen. He had the uncertain look of a man who suspects he’s being pranked. Who knows the boutonniere is going to squirt him in the face but whose position requires he smell it anyway.
“Your Majesty,” he said. It sounded a little like a question.
“Prime Minister,” said the queen. “I bring alarming news.”
“Yes? I mean . . . do you?”
“The world is in peril, Prime Minister.”
“Ah. Bad luck, that.”
“The woman you’ve called queen these past months has been an impostor. I am Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor and I was kidnapped, but I am once again in safe hands. On a Kiwi Air Force jet to the States, specifically. I suppose you’re not going to believe me now.”
“Um,” said the prime minister. He looked over his shoulder at some aide, and then back at the screen again. “Thing is, we might, actually. We’ve been keeping it quiet, but when the queen didn’t rise at her usual time this morning, one of the house staff checked on her and found her skin to be . . . ah . . . empty.”
“Then there are two goblins on the loose, possibly still in the palace. We will have to have it fumigated.”
“Your Majesty . . . I ask this merely in the spirit of scientific curiosity, but . . . are you—?”
“Currently two feet tall?” said the queen. “I am. I congratulate you on your keen powers of observation, Prime Minister. I assure you I feel otherwise fine. Better than fine—though I am short in stature, I seem to have all the strength of my customary nine stone. It’s quite invigorating.”
Scott unbuckled, and he and Mick moved to empty seats behind John and Merle so that they wouldn’t disturb the queen.
“Yeh seem upset,” Mick told him.
“I am upset.”
“What about?”
Scott gave him a look.
“All right,” Mick admitted, “but what particularly?”
Scott chewed a nail. “Erno and Emily and Biggs. I called each of their phones six times from the base.”
Mick nodded. “In hidin’, I expect. They might’ve ditched the phones too,” he added. “Like in case Goodco could track ’em? Stop me if I’m embarrassin’ myself—technology isn’t really my breadbasket.”
“Aw, you’d never know it, Tiny Tim.”
Scott sighed. “Oh good,” he muttered. “Haskoll’s here.”
“What’s that, lad?”
The ghost had popped up in the row behind them. Scott hadn’t seen him in a while and had begun to hope that he’d moved on to his great reward or whatever.
“Nothing,” said Scott. Then he screwed up his face. “No, you know what? It’s not nothing. The ghost of Haskoll has been following us around for days, and I’m the only one who can see him, and I’m sick of pretending otherwise.”
“Well, that just sounds like crazy talk, Scotto.”
Mick looked like he might feel the same way. “Haskoll . . . that’s the changeling, tried to kill yeh last year? Harvey dropped a plane on ’im?”
“Not how I would have put it personally—”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Scott. “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about this whole question of the circles.”
“What’s this?” Merle asked, twisting to look back at them.
“Emily says the Gloria and the worlds separating was because of what happened in Avalon, when you and Arthur activated your time machines.”
“Plus something else,” Merle reminded them. He had a pleading look. “She said something else was at fault—some kind of big, magical hoo-ha.”
“Okay, sure. But the point is, if it started in Avalon, then why isn’t Avalon the center of Pretannica? Instead the center is Fray’s island, but Fray didn’t seem to know anything about that.”
“She’s lying.”
“Maybe. I don’t think so. Did you see that golden monument of hers?”
“No,” Merle said. “I mean, Fi mentioned it, but when we tore through Fray’s castle I was too busy trying not to die to really notice anything else.”
“Fi also said the monument was Fay magic, not pixie,” Mick added. “I’d have to agree.”
“This scene is boring,” said Haskoll.
Scott pictured the golden monument, tried to remember the whole scene. Tried to get hold of this strange feeling he had that it should be reminding him of something. The gleaming shaft of the monument in the middle, the tall window on one end, the tapestry on the other. The tapestry with that now-familiar symbol of two worlds split by a spear or sword . . .
Some movement up front distracted him. There were two armed guards on the plane—members of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, Scott assumed. They had little hats and carried handguns in shoulder holsters over baby-blue shirts. One of them—the one who’d just stood—had a pink breast cancer awareness pin on his lapel, and Scott’s heart leaped up into his throat.
“Um,” Scott said, and he considered for a moment whether to say anything. Sometimes a breast cancer pin is just a breast cancer pin. Sometimes a crazy look in someone’s eye is just a crazy look in someone’s eye. Yep, Scott thought, I should have said something.
The airman drew his weapon now, and aimed it at his counterpart.
“Unholster it slow and slide it up the aisle at me, Nigel!” shouted the airman. “I’m serious,” he added, and there was no doubt about that. He had the glassy, up-all-night look of someone with no sense of humor at all.