by Jay looked like he was strongly disposed to vomit.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. Quite uselessly, for he clearly was not.
‘Fine,’ he replied through gritted teeth.
‘Your legs are shaking.’
‘My everything is shaking. But I’m fine.’ He got to his feet and stood, visibly trembling. But since he was also wearing the clenched-jaw look of a man who will not be helped, I left him to it and devoted myself to a largely futile attempt to figure out where we had ended up.
We were in the middle of a henge, of course, though it was not the flashy kind that hordes of tourists come to see. Little remained of it but a ring of decaying wooden posts half-sunk in wet earth, and surrounding that (and us) were… trees. Straggly ones, thick enough to obscure whatever lay beyond but otherwise rather sad-looking.
‘Place requires some tending,’ I said.
‘Most of Britain requires some tending.’ Jay took a deep breath, stretched, cast a quick glance around himself and set his face resolutely in what appeared to me to be a completely random direction. ‘Ready to go?’
‘Where? I have no idea where we are.’
‘Somewhere in the vicinity of Glenfinnan. We’re a few miles away from Finnan Enclave.’ He checked my shoes and, oddly, smiled. ‘Boots. Good.’
‘Why do you seem surprised?’
‘I thought you might have shown up in heels or something.’
‘I am not that much of an airhead, Mr. Patel.’ I haughtily shouldered my bag. ‘Lead on.’
Jay’s comment did not much surprise me. I am not expected to be much of a walker; you wouldn’t anticipate that about a woman with a fondness for delicate, impractical clothes and improbable hair, would you? But actually, I love to walk. I enjoyed our hike, for the environs of Glenfinnan proved to be green hill country, dotted with patches of woodland, and here and there glimpses of an expanse of clear, serene water. The air was bright and crisp and I breathed deeply, somewhat regretful that our errand was of such urgency as to prevent of our exploring.
Jay clearly had no soul for scenery, for he marched on without ever pausing to admire. Nor did he ever waver as to direction. He certainly had focus. He seemed so little inconvenienced by his obvious shakiness before, I didn’t want to admit that my knees were shaking, too, and it took half an hour for the waves of nausea to stop assaulting my stomach. I pretended I was fine and so did Jay, and we accomplished our forced-march in rather less than an hour.
Finnan Enclave’s front door proved to be at the base of one of those gorgeous, craggy hills, a bit like at South Moors. We stood in the twin shadow of two swelling peaks, one rising on either side of us. Drifty clouds had raced over the sun, and we stood bathed in a mild, unpromising gloom as we studied the green, heathery slopes before us.
‘Are you sure this is it?’ I said after a while, when Jay seemed undecided.
‘Yes.’
All right, then. I waited while Jay rambled about a bit, looking this way and that in a decisive fashion, and occasionally touching protruding rocks.
‘Do you know where the door is?’ I said at last.
‘Of course I do.’
I waited a little longer, watching in idle delight as a tiny pink skreerat poked its head out from in between a tuft of grasses, eyed Jay beadily, and vanished again.
Jay finally gave up his futile search. ‘It’s one of these,’ he said, gesturing broadly at a tumble of fallen boulders.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I looked them up on Nell’s system before we left.’
Clever of him, though it was not currently availing us much. I rummaged in my satchel, ignoring Jay’s disbelief as I extracted rather more objects from within than could reasonably fit inside. ‘Aha,’ I murmured, drawing forth my oversized key and a pendulum, the kind that had probably once belonged inside a grandfather clock. ‘This,’ I said to Jay, ‘is a basic burglar’s toolkit, magicker style.’ It was the work of a moment to coax the pendulum into activity and it began to swing gently in my hand, back and forth, back and forth. ‘It is a little clumsy, the pendulum,’ I observed as the charm did its work. ‘I would have enchanted a pathfinder’s charm onto something a bit more elegant, myself. A filigree compass, for example, with quartz fittings and a handsome chain. But—’ I paused as the pendulum’s sway slowed and eventually stopped, leaving the device pointing unerringly at a large, craggy black boulder about six feet away from where Jay had stopped. ‘It works, proving that elegance is not at all necessary in life.’ I smiled, packed the pendulum away again, and advanced upon the boulder.
We had to go through the usual process of requesting entrance, of course. I laid my palm against the boulder and announced us. When that didn’t work, Jay tried.
We were not surprised to find that the silent hills remained silent. There was no promising creak of an opening door, no gust of air to welcome us into a yawning portal.
‘Breaking and entering it is, then,’ I said, with a sense of satisfaction I could not disguise. I can’t help it: I love doing things the sneaky way.
Jay was not so thrilled. He did not object, for Milady had essentially ordered us to get into these Enclaves one way or another. But he was visibly uncomfortable as I employed my unlocking charm upon the boulder and…
…and nothing. It did not work. Oh, the key worked all right; it glimmered with that promising aura of power, and the boulder glittered in response. There was communication between the two charms, as there should have been, but the boulder declined to be affected by it. The rock remained untouched, stubbornly inert and immoveable.
‘Some burglar you are,’ said Jay.
I put the key away. ‘On to Plan C.’ That skreerat had to have come from somewhere. Magickal beasts don’t typically wander the wilds as freely as, say, wood mice or stoats or whatever. They mostly stick to the Dells, which are pockets of Hidden landscapes folded between the Ways. Finnan Enclave had firmly closed its outer doors upon the non-magickal world, as they all did, but its regular entrance would undoubtedly be situated on the edge of one of these Dells. If we could not walk straight into the Enclave, we’d have to get into Finnan Dell first and then break into the Troll settlement. Their back door, so to speak, was unlikely to be so well protected as their front door.
I went back to the spot where I’d seen the skreerat, and kept walking that way. It wasn’t too long before I saw it again: a glimpse of pinkish-grey fur whisking into the concealing cover of a cluster of frondy grasses.
I delved into my satchel again, removed an object which markedly resembled an ordinary torch (because, in essentials, it was), and switched it on. Its beam blazed forth, illuminating the grassy path the skreerat had followed in a haze of misty light.
‘Is there anything you aren’t carrying in that bag?’ said Jay.
‘Nope.’ I waved the torch around a bit, but the quality of the light did not change.
Hm.
‘The wonderful thing about the Society is its forward-thinking attitude,’ I told Jay as I clomped around in circles, throwing hazy light everywhere. ‘Somewhere in the attic is Orlando’s lab. Nobody is allowed in there, not ever, but the most wondrous things come out. Including this torch. It’s a hybrid, see? It is electronic in its basic function, but Orlando blends these things with charms in some unfathomable way and comes out with totally unique effects.’ There: a flicker of bright energy in the near distance, lancing through the brumous glow like a lightning strike. ‘This particular one illuminates traces of magickal energy, making them visible to the eye in ways they usually aren’t. See that?’
Jay saw it. He was off before I could say another word, striding ahead of me at such speed I found it hard to keep up.
About twenty seconds later he disappeared.
I found the spot where I had last seen him, and shone my torch about one more time. There was a long, vertical split in the air: a thin, wavering line about twelve feet high, traced in white light.
I turned sideways, and fell through the tear in the atmosphere.
There are those who manage this procedure with rather more grace than I. I can only achieve a chaotic tumble, so of course I ended in an undignified heap upon the floor of the Dell beyond. I chose not to worry about what Jay might think of this display of clumsiness and quickly picked myself up, dusted bits of grass off my coat with studied nonchalance, and took a look around.
Jay, thankfully, was about ten feet off, and not looking my way. No wonder, either, for when one is surrounded by such spectacular beauty, why waste your glances upon me? Finnan Dell was like Glenfinnan, only more colourful. We stood at the top of a low, sloping hill; ranged around us was a lusciously rolling landscape composed of several more peaks and dales, all dusted with heathery grasses ranging in hue from serene jade to vivid emerald. Clumps of bushes painted in shades of blue were dotted here and there, sprouting spring blossoms in glorious profusion. The air was balmy, and held that slightly hushed, hazy quality the outer world only displays at the height of summer, and early in the morning. A lake lay spread at the bottom of the valley before us, adding the clean scent of fresh water to the bouquet of floral nectar I was luxuriating in.
‘The Enclave is this way,’ said Jay in a no-nonsense tone, proving once again that he has no heart for beauty.
I fell in behind him anyway. We did have a job to do.
And there we were, faced with another dreaming hillside, though this one was attractively sun-drenched. Finnan Enclave’s Dellside door was another huge, black boulder embedded into the hill’s face. No one answered this one, either, but my excellent key worked like a charm (…so to speak). The boulder groaned mightily and heaved itself aside, and in we went.
My first impression of Finnan Enclave was that it was, unbelievably, messier than South Moors. The winding, curved stone streets were familiar enough, though their houses were of a different architectural style: stone and wood-built with little arches, and some intriguing polychromatic brickwork. Grand, handsome and sweet in equal measure, and most attractive. I’d live in such a house.
But those streets were thick with debris. A heavy, not unpleasant scent of compost hung in the air, the source of which proved to be the piles of long-rotted something heaped up in every sweeping corner. A thick, oppressive silence hung over everything, and though we walked down street after street, we saw nobody about. No one at all.
Jay and I exchanged twin looks of concern. ‘I think it is time for a little more breaking and entering,’ I suggested.
I expected a refusal from Jay, and he did hesitate, but finally he nodded. ‘I don’t think we’ll even need your key, here. Look.’ He indicated the nearest house, whose grand elmwood door hung slightly ajar.
Not a good sign.
‘None of this mess is litter,’ I said, upon a sudden realisation.
Jay, already halfway up the path to the house, stopped. ‘What?’
‘There’s no litter. This is all leaves, twigs, branches, dead flowers… swept in off the hillsides, probably. There is nothing here that looks like it was dropped by somebody living.’
Jay frowned, and made for the house again at a half-run. I followed.
The house was gorgeous inside, all wood panelling and sweeping archways. There was an entrance hall hung with tapestries, a dining room, two parlours, a handsome stone kitchen… whoever lived here lacked for neither money nor taste, clearly.
Only, it was empty. Not only were there no signs of life, there were no signs there had ever been any life. Everything was dust and desolation, like some kind of show home that had fallen out of use.
‘This is weird,’ said Jay, and I agreed, for it was weird.
It wasn’t just that house, either, for a quick survey of the next few along the street told the same story. They were all empty, dust-laden, abandoned.
‘This entire town is dead,’ said Jay wonderingly, when we regained the street.
‘As a dodo,’ I agreed.
Jay took out his phone. ‘We’ve got a big problem here.’
