The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

equally sure that he didn’t want to. He wasn’t ready. Georgette started pulling him toward the buildings, instinctively looking for shelter.

They had only gone a few feet when Pip dug in his heels and pointed. Georgette looked up and gasped. A brilliant thread of light was zigzagging through the middle of the cloud, tiny but incredibly bright. As they watched, it swelled, forcing aside the red embers, and a golden cloud spilled out of the gap.

And suddenly the sound was back. A huge roll of thunder made the ground vibrate beneath them.

“It has to be Clovis,” Georgette said breathlessly.

Pip didn’t feel any more hopeful about their prospects, but the fact that Clovis hadn’t abandoned them made him feel like cheering. Now there were two clouds, and a strange and terrible battle was taking place above their heads. The thunder was so loud Pip thought his eardrums would burst.

It seemed at first that the golden cloud was dominant, perhaps because Clovis had taken Oswald by surprise. But gradually, inexorably, the bloodred cloud began to swallow the other. Clovis wasn’t giving in without a fight, but there was less and less gold.

All they could do was watch helplessly as the golden light grew smaller and smaller. As it shrank, it intensified, until it was so bright that Pip could barely look at it, and he allowed himself to feel a little hope: perhaps, even though the red cloud was swamping it, Clovis was becoming stronger?

But just as he thought that, the golden light snapped out, plunging them into total darkness.

Beside him, Georgette moaned with despair and Pip automatically reached out for her hand. It was all over. Maybe, he thought, this was what dying was like . . .

Another flash of green lightning, much brighter than the first, threw everything into grotesque relief. It was so dazzling that he was blinded: all he could sense was a throbbing reddish-green afterimage and warm tears running down his cheeks.

“Pip.” Georgette was tugging his hand. “Pip!”

He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, fearing for a few moments that he had gone blind. But gradually his sight returned. The sky was empty, starless and dark, but the dim silvery light that seemed to come from the buildings showed they were still in the strange cobbled street.

Clovis lay on the ground before them. He was horribly still, his face white as paper.

Pip forgot everything else and ran to kneel beside him, his heart hammering, and put his arms around him. In this place, he could embrace him: here, he wasn’t merely a presence in his head. For the first time, he realized how very small Clovis was.

Poor Clovis. He had tried so hard, and after all, he couldn’t help being a snotty prince. It wasn’t fair. He had suffered more than any child should. Yes, in his short life he never went hungry and always had somewhere to live, but then he was murdered and locked inside a tiny box all by himself for fifty years, with only a dreaming princess to hear his sobbing. Pip couldn’t imagine anything more lonely or more terrible.

“He sacrificed himself for us,” Georgette said in a whisper. She was stroking his pale face, a tear rolling down her cheek.

Pip sniffed. “He just wanted a friend. That’s all he wanted.”

Georgette met his eyes. “I think he found one in the end,” she said. “Maybe that makes up for the rest.”

“Nothing makes up for it,” said Pip. He didn’t want to cry in front of the princess, even in this terrible moment, but he could feel that his eyes were hot and damp.

And then the little body stirred in his arms.

“I did it,” Clovis whispered in his ear. His voice was very faint. “I undid the spell. You made me brave.”

“Pip,” said Georgette. “Look.”

Pip started. He had forgotten all about Oswald.

He too was back in human form, writhing in front of them a little distance away, clutching at his face. He was an old man, a man Pip didn’t recognize. As Pip watched, he realized that the old man was becoming younger: his hair darkened; his body filled out; his wrinkles vanished. And then he began to shrink, until he was a child of about five years of age. At that point he convulsed, and he was old again, but a different old man, winding back to childhood. The process repeated over and over again. The Specter’s mouth was open as if he were screaming, but no sound came out.

It was horrible, and it seemed to continue forever. Georgette made a sound as if she were going to be sick, but her eyes were fixed on Oswald in fascinated revulsion.

“What did you do?”

“It’s all the people he’s been,” said Clovis quietly. “All the souls he ate.”

“There are so many of them . . .”

Pip looked at Clovis. “Did you know you could do that?”

Clovis shook his head. He looked exhausted, as if there was nothing left inside him. “Not until I did,” he said. “It was like something went click inside me, and I just knew what to do.”

“How did you know?” asked Georgette.

“The spell is me. The old witch made it out of me. I was like . . . like a spring inside a watch, all wound up the wrong way. And all I had to do was unwind it. It was quite simple in the end. So I made everything run backward.”

“Can he do anything about it?”

“Not now. None of the Specters can.” Clovis was watching without any visible emotion. “He kind of wanted to do the opposite thing. He wanted to wind it all up so hard that it could never be undone.”

He glanced across at Georgette, who was looking baffled. “It’s hard to explain. It’s because of what the witch did. If you push the spell the other way, the opposite happens. Instead of winding back to the beginning, until he was just a mortal man, like he was at the start, he could use me