The Threads of Magic, Alison Croggon [uplifting novels txt] 📗

It didn’t wait for an answer.

“Ow!” said Sibelius.

The owl was correct. It stung. Quite a lot.

RIGHT NOW, PIP HATED CLOVIS. THAT ARROGANT, spiteful little worm deserved nothing better than a good kick in the shins. Although, of course, being dead, he didn’t have any shins.

Since the moment Pip had touched the Heart, he had sensed Clovis’s presence, but now, when Pip most needed to speak to him, the prince had gone silent. He couldn’t feel him anywhere.

Oni was frowning, staring at the table and plucking her lip. “Maybe he’s just hiding, Pip,” she said. “Maybe he’s scared.”

“He should be.”

“Well, think about it. Maybe he didn’t mean to take El.”

“He did mean it. He wanted to take you too.”

“But maybe it was, like, you know, when you lose your temper and do something awful, but then afterward you’re sorry.”

“Why would he be sorry?”

“I don’t know. But when he was killed, he was just a little boy. And, you know, he was lonely. I could feel it when I touched the Heart. He was a lonely, frightened little boy.”

“Like I care.”

Oni looked up. “Do you want to get El back?”

Pip didn’t answer. Of course he did.

“Well then. Stop being angry and think. I know it’s hard for you, Pip, because you’re not very clever, but we got to think.”

Pip opened his mouth to object to the insult but ended up saying nothing. He didn’t have the heart to fight with Oni.

Where had Clovis gone?

Inside his head, maybe, where he was before. But hiding. Pip closed his eyes.

All right, Clovis, he said. I’m not angry anymore.

He waited, but nobody answered.

We need to talk. Are you there? I promise I’m not angry.

He waited again, watching the pendulum on Missus Orphint’s wall clock swing back and forth. One, two, three, four, five. No answer. This wasn’t going to work.

You are angry, said Clovis. I can feel it.

Pip took a breath, trying to suppress his mounting rage. Can you blame me? You hurt my sister. She never did you any harm. She never did anyone any harm. And look what you done. It’s not fair.

She didn’t like me. Clovis sounded sulky. Why should I care?

If you want to be friends with me, you should care. You hurt El, you hurt me. You hurt me really bad, Clovis.

Silence. But this silence felt different. It had a tinge of surprise, as if Clovis had encountered a novel thought.

Princes don’t have friends, he said after a while. Princes can’t afford the weakness of sentimental bonds. He sounded as if he were quoting a lesson learned by rote.

Who says? said Pip. Everybody needs a friend. Anyway, you’re not even a prince anymore. You’re just dead. Sort of.

That was a mistake. Pip felt a lash of hurt, and Clovis vanished.

Hey, Clovis. Come back. Pip waited. I’m sorry, he said. I just want to talk.

Nothing.

He opened his eyes and jumped. Oni was closer than he had realized, staring straight into his face.

“I can hear Clovis,” she said, her eyes wide. “I couldn’t before, but now I can hear him too.”

“He’s gone again,” said Pip.

“Yes, but he’s probably listening.”

Pip hunched his shoulders. “This is weird,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“Let’s try again.”

Oni shut her eyes. Pip noticed how her long eyelashes rested on her cheek, how the candlelight threw warm shadows on her skin.

This time Clovis spoke first. I don’t like being dead, he said. It’s cold here.

Pip couldn’t think of what to say. For the first time since El had vanished, he felt a tiny stab of compassion.

I miss the taste of food, said Clovis. I’m not hungry, but I miss it all the same. Sometimes I try to remember what plums taste like . . . and roast goose. Roast goose was one of my favorites.

Oni’s voice, a whisper : “Are you all alone?”

Yes.

“That must make you sad,” she said.

A silence. Yes.

“Can you imagine how sad Pip is now that El is gone? Now he’s all alone too.”

A pause. He can talk to me, said Clovis. I’ll be his friend instead.

“It doesn’t work like that,” said Oni. “You can’t just replace one person with another. Every friend is special, like no other person in the whole world. And you can have more than one friend.”

I’ll order him. He’ll have to be my friend.

Pip felt his anger rising again. This was hopeless. “You can’t order people to be your friend. That’s not what friends do.”

Then how can you be sure that they’ll stay your friend?

For a moment Pip felt a sense of disbelief: Was he really trying to teach a dead prince about friendship?

Yes. Yes, he was.

“They just do,” he said. “If you’re proper friends.”

“When you’re friends, you trust each other,” said Oni. “Everyone makes mistakes. You learn to forgive mistakes. But you never order friends around. Never. You never punish them. You learn to trust each other. You keep your word.”

Another pause.

“Friendship takes time,” she said. Oni’s voice was as soft and sweet as honey. “And sometimes it doesn’t work. But when it does work, it’s the best thing in the world. El is my friend. My best friend. And I miss her. I miss her really badly.”

This time there was a long silence. Pip held his breath.

If I bring her back, will we be friends?

Suddenly, heartbreakingly, there was an emotion in Clovis’s voice that Pip hadn’t heard before.

Hope.

“We can try,” said Oni.

“Yes,” said Pip. “We can try.”

SIBELIUS HAD GIVEN UP ON REALITY. WAS THIS really a hallucination? Maybe, he thought dazedly, he was actually dead and had entered some kind of afterlife that none of the books talked about.

He was standing in a yellow-and-green striped tent. He had no recollection of how he had got there. He didn’t remember anything after the blinding pain, which had felt exactly as bad as if he had been stung all over by wasps. At least that had passed now, but he still felt extremely shaky.

The owl seemed to have disappeared, but a tall woman