Chapter Forty A Flare in the Dark
CHAPTER FORTY
A Flare in the Dark
Face up to a starlit sky, Morrigan watched her oilskin umbrella dance lightly on the wind. She’d summoned it all the way to Queen’s Heath in Highwall from the Silver District, where she’d left it sitting on her bedroom windowsill. It floated slowly, gently downwards before coming in for a smooth landing, its silver filigree handle slipping perfectly into the palm of her hand.
It was the furthest distance she’d ever summoned across – four boroughs in all – and she wanted this moment to feel triumphant. She’d been practising every day to hone her focus, and it was nice to see that hard work paying off. But before Morrigan even turned to look at her teacher, she knew exactly what he’d say.
‘You’re distracted. Again.’
‘I am not, ’ she lied, snapping her brolly closed.
‘Then why did it take that thing eight minutes of lollygagging to arrive? If you ever reach proficiency, the summoning of small items should be instantaneous – rather than travelling to you, they should simply appear. But even when coaxing an object across a physical distance, it must take the most efficient route , not show up when it feels like it.’
Annoyingly, Morrigan knew he was right. Of course she was distracted. More than two weeks had passed since the Feast of the Manyhands, and she’d been preoccupied the entire time with thoughts of Meredith Darling and Madeleine Malcontent.
She was still furious with Aunt Margot, who’d done such a convincing job of pretending everything was normal between them, it was as if she’d forgotten what happened. She’d even started talking about plans for Morrigan’s upcoming birthday, and the possibility of throwing a ball in her honour.
But Morrigan couldn’t forget. Every time she looked at her aunt, all she saw was the pages of Madeleine Malcontent curling and blackening in the bonfire, crumbling to ashes.
She wanted that book.
Morrigan had asked Anah and Cadence about it, but neither of them had ever seen a copy. Anah said there were some books in the series that had gone out of print and were almost impossible to find. She’d promised to ask the Silver Sleuths about Madeleine Malcontent at their next book club, but hadn’t come up with anything yet.
‘It’s that ridiculous murder business, isn’t it?’ Squall demanded.
Morrigan blinked, once again surprised to find she’d half forgotten the thing she was supposed to be obsessing over. She knew Cadence could sense her waning interest in the investigation and was starting to get annoyed with her. She wanted Morrigan to try talking to Noelle Devereaux again, but no one had seen any of the Devereaux family since the night of the feast. They’d declined all invitations and stopped receiving guests altogether – such an extraordinary rudeness by Silverborn standards that it was all anybody could talk about.
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Good. Then let’s move on to—’
‘It’s about my mother.’
The whole story burst out of her, as if it had been waiting for this opportunity. She told him all about Meredith and how little anyone seemed willing to talk about her, and about Noelle giving her the book only for Aunt Margot to destroy it.
‘ You know about Meredith, don’t you?’ she demanded. ‘You told me about her that day in the Receiving Room. Tell me more.’
Squall shrugged. ‘I already told you everything I know, and you can’t believe what you read in novels or newspapers. What’s the point in patching together a false image of your mother based on rumours and lies and biased stories from third parties? You might as well construct your own idea of her and decide to believe that ; it’s as likely to be true as anything else.’
‘I don’t want to just make something up and decide to believe it !’ Morrigan whacked her umbrella against the iron gates of Queen’s Heath in exasperation, and the sound rang out in the empty woodland. ‘I want the TRUTH. I want to know who Meredith Darling really was.’
Squall huffed an impatient sigh. ‘Then why don’t you hurry up and acquire your next three seals so you can begin learning Tempus? Maybe ten years from now you’ll have scraped together enough skill to make a ghostly hour. Then you can see her for yourself. Now, shall we return to the task at hand? I’d like to be finished before – what? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I can’t wait ten years.’
‘Then work harder . Maybe you’ll get there in five.’
‘I can’t wait five.’
‘Tough luck.’
He stared at her, frowning, for what felt like an eternity. Morrigan held her breath, mirroring his perfect stillness.
Finally Squall let out a frustrated, reverberating groan and threw his hands up.
‘FINE.’
The last golden remnants of the Gossamer bridge faded as they stepped into the pastel lace explosion of Morrigan’s bedroom. Squall looked slightly nauseated by the decor but refrained from commenting.
He removed a pair of black leather gloves, pocketed them, and held up his white palms. ‘Ready?’
Morrigan copied the gesture. Their fingertips met through the Gossamer, reigniting the connection between his power (raging, torrential) and hers (a gently buzzing swarm). The first time they’d performed this odd ritual, on the night they brought the Wunimals back, she’d been overwhelmed by the chaos of their powers meeting, like two oceans pouring into one. Someone seemed sure to drown, and it would undoubtedly be her.
It felt different this time. The chaos was still there, but the bridge they’d built across it was sturdier. Morrigan still felt the pull of the undertow, but she stood firm against it, sure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t drag her down.
With the line between their powers established, they parted, and Morrigan felt a calm, confident clarity descending. She was still herself, and Squall was still Squall, but when his power leaned on hers through the Gossamer it felt like a force field. Like she could do anything, create anything, be anything. It was a wonderful, dangerous feeling.
Squall wasted no time. Morrigan heard him hum a few meagre notes – the familiar ‘ Little crowling, little crowling ’ – and instantly the air around her felt electric with Wunder. He – they – kept gathering more and more, an extraordinary volume, until Morrigan was certain all the Wunder in the Silver District had been summoned to her bedroom. She didn’t dare let her eyes relax enough to see it in case she was blinded, but she felt the force of its full attention – like a billion trillion microscopic specks of light turning towards her, awaiting instruction.
‘Don’t get distracted by the mechanics, I’ll handle those,’ he said. ‘Yours is the more important task. Delving into history to create a ghostly hour from a random, unknown moment is much trickier than having a particular moment in mind. You must at least have something to grasp on to – preferably something you have a physical connection to. Those things will call out to you through the layers of time, like … a flare in the dark.’
‘A signal through the noise,’ said Morrigan.
‘Precisely. Watch for the right signal and be ready to grasp it.’
‘How will I know when I see it?’
‘Instinct.’
Two indistinguishable figures whizzed past her in a blur. A bright golden light appeared, just for a second, where the Gossamer bridge had been moments earlier.
She was already dizzy. Squall had begun the process unceremoniously, without her realising. Time rolled back, peeling away like the paper-thin bark of a silvergum tree, faster and faster. She hadn’t expected it to be so nauseating. It was a strange, almost wrong sensation, like they were violating some sacred law of the universe. She supposed they probably were.
Layered on top of that peculiar feeling, Morrigan felt the churn of Wunder and Squall’s mastery of Tempus working through her … but she couldn’t see how . It wasn’t like the last time they’d collaborated, when she heard herself speak unfamiliar languages, saw her hands move in impossible ways. Whatever the mechanics of this process, they were invisible to her, happening inside his head. Squall’s focus was balanced on the point of a needle, just as he’d once described: perfect and precise and still.
‘Quiet your mind,’ he said, sensing she was already distracted . ‘Listen to your instinct. If you miss your signal, this will all have been for nought.’
She refocused, pushing down the nausea. Moments fluttered gently in the air around her like so many butterfly wings, like a murmuration of starlings. Sunlight and moonlight took turns to cross the bedroom floor, countless days and countless nights. The icy breath of winter became a warm, rose-scented spring breeze, became a sultry and oppressive summer heat, became a crisp autumn chill, and a wintry frost again. The sound of howling winds turned to birdsong, turned to music from another room, turned to shouting and giggling and fireworks and whispered secrets and soft, tuneless humming. Over and over the seasons turned, one after the other, year layering on year. Ghostly figures moved through the room around them, disappearing, returning.
Morrigan tried not to blink. She had an idea of what her signal might look like, and was watching for a small, white body and a pair of floppy ears to wave at her through time. She was so certain, in fact, that Emmett would be her ‘flare in the dark’, that she almost missed the quiet ping in the back of her mind, the sound of a butter knife tapped on a glass, as a small, bright moment flickered past, brushing her cheek.
Her hand shot out instinctively and grasped it, closing like a cage around a butterfly. The blurry, swirling storm of time around her stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and she had to fight the urge not to vomit.
Breathing steadily through her nose, Morrigan opened her hand to see what she’d caught. It was a soft sphere, hazy sunset-orange in colour, and it vibrated gently, tickling her palm.
With Squall guiding her movements through the Gossamer, she lifted the moment delicately in both hands, stretching it gently until it resembled a long, thin splinter of pale amber light, suspended in the air. The entrance to a ghostly hour. She stared at it, heart pounding, suddenly terrified of what she might see in there.
‘Go on,’ Squall prompted her.
The Gossamer bridge shimmered into view once again, and as Squall disappeared across it Morrigan felt the connection between their powers collapsing and fading. The familiar cavernous loss of his monstrous, miraculous power washing away from her like the tide.
She stepped through the line of light. Time shuddered.