The Bone Quill (13 page)

Grabbing the book fanned out on her pillow, she chucked it on to the floor.

‘Stupid
Ivanhoe
.’

Simon banged on her bedroom door. ‘The dock in thirty minutes,’ he called. ‘You three are on beach clean-up for your dangerous stunt last night.’

‘Why so early?’ mumbled Em.

‘It’s not early. So if you want breakfast before you get to work, you’d better hurry. Jeannie’s not going to wait for much longer.’

Em staggered towards her bathroom, surprised that the clock was already showing 10 am. She got dressed slowly and headed for the stairs. The still-life with the modern goblet had been taken off the stair wall.

‘Where’s the painting?’ she called down to Simon.

‘Your grandpa has it,’ Simon said, looking up at her from the foyer. ‘We’ll discuss that painting and your time-hopping after you’ve cleaned up the beach. There was a storm last night, so there should be lots for you to do.’

‘Ugh!’ said Em.

Over
a late second breakfast of sliced bananas on toast, Matt explained what he’d discovered in the library, spreading the picture out across the table in front of the others.

‘Maybe this artist’s a time-traveller too,’ he said, tapping the painting. ‘An Impressionist painting of a medieval scene that no one’s seen since the 1260s? It’s obvious!’

‘Oh man, it smells like something’s died on that,’ signed Zach, cupping his hand over his mouth.

‘Gross,’ said Em, pushing the last corner of her toast away.

‘The beach won’t clean itself,’ Simon called from the garden. ‘Let’s go!’

Matt shoved the canvas under a table placemat and grabbed his coat. ‘It’ll be okay until we get back,’ he told the others. ‘You know Jeannie will stop for ‘a wee blether’ with her friends in Seaport. We’ll be finished on the beach before she comes home. Last one to the water’s edge does tonight’s dishes.’

When they were bundled up against the autumn chill and the wind from the Atlantic, they raced each other across the sloping lawn to meet Simon on the dock. Matt won easily, but Em thought it was only because Zach was in pain from the thrashing.

At the end of the jetty, Simon passed a bin bag and a pair of rubber gloves to each of them, sending them off along the beach to pick up tourist rubbish and storm debris that had washed ashore the night before.

‘Can you imagine how long it would take to clean up the banks of the Thames in 1871?’ asked Matt, as they stuffed bags with beach rubbish.

‘Would you please let that go for a while?’ said Em. ‘I’d like to not always be in trouble with the adults in our lives.’ She glanced at Zach. ‘How’s your back?’

Zach was walking stiffly, not picking up much rubbish.

‘It hurts,’ he signed wryly. ‘Skin feels tight when I bend. Some of the cuts are itching, too.’

‘Next time,’ said Matt, ‘let’s go somewhere that children get some respect.’

‘Good luck finding that place,’ signed Zach.

‘Next time?’ said Em, glowering at her brother as she dropped a soggy disposable nappy into her bag. ‘Unless you want to keep doing disgusting chores like this every morning, I suggest we do not have a next time for a very long time.’

Zach and Matt glanced at each other. Em raised her hands to make them stop.

‘I mean it! We’re lucky that we made it back from that painting alive. If we keep breaking Animare rules like that, the Council of Guardians will come after us and bind us the second we turn sixteen for sure. Never mind what will happen if the stupid Hollow Earth Society find out about our newest talent.’

At moments like this Em wished her mother were here. She walked down to the water’s edge and kicked at the waves angrily.

Where are you, Mum? I miss you so much.

Matt came down the beach to join her. Putting his hand on her shoulder, he said, ‘Mum’s okay, Em. I think we’d feel it if she wasn’t.’

‘I just wish we knew where she was,’ said Em mournfully.

Zach sloshed around in a tidal pool next to them, digging up rocks and examining them for fossils. Above the shore, the traffic on the island’s only main road to Seaport was sparse, the school summer holidays over and tourist season dwindling to a dozen or so visitors with every ferry trip from Largs. Em looked beseechingly at her brother.

‘Let’s agree to no more time travel, Matt,’ she pleaded. ‘It scared me. I didn’t like being ... being so far from home.’

She realized that, for the first time, she really felt like the Abbey and the island had become her home.

‘Besides, we need to put our energies into finding Mum, not into developing new ways to worry Grandpa, Simon or Jeannie. Agreed?’

‘No,’ said Matt. ‘Not agreed at all.’

‘Please, Matt,’ Em pleaded, her anxiety churning up the water in Zach’s tidal pool. Several unnaturally high waves in the bay started rolling into the shore. Combing his hair off his face, Matt held Em’s gaze, trying to practise what he’d learned from Simon about drawing out Em’s fears before they settled inside her imagination. That was never good for Em, and often bad for all of them. Particularly when Em’s fears animated themselves and became a danger to others.

‘We’re going to find Mum, especially now that Grandpa is home and able to help us,’ said Matt firmly, ‘but think about it. If Simon’s right after all, and we’re the only Animare who have ever time-travelled using a painting, then there can’t be a rule about no time travel. So, technically, we haven’t broken any rules.’

‘He’s got a point, Em,’ signed Zach, high-fiving Matt’s logic.

‘No, he hasn’t!’ shouted Em.

She tossed her full rubbish bag over her shoulder and ran up the beach. Behind her, a huge wave crashed into the boys, drenching both of them.

Watching from the wooden bench at the end of the Abbey’s jetty, Simon rubbed his temples, feeling the tension. It was probably a result of the growing pains of three newly minted teenagers, nothing more.

A
fter
a late lunch of soup and sandwiches, Renard called the children and Simon to the library. Em was still smarting at the fact that the boys had ganged up on her earlier, but the boys didn’t seem to notice.

As they entered the room, Matt saluted the scarred bust in its niche.

‘Why do you always salute that statue?’ asked Zach, catching Matt’s gesture.

Matt shrugged. ‘The dude looks fierce with that scar down his cheek. I’d have liked to have met him. Apparently, he’s the one who salvaged the Abbey from its medieval ruins and rebuilt it the way it is now.’

Zach looked at the bust. ‘What’s his name?’

Matt shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ Simon had never said.

At one of the tables in front of the windows, Renard had set out the items Sandie had left behind the night she disappeared: the rusty old key and the page from
The Book of Beasts
. He’d hung the still-life with Jeannie’s pewter goblet on the wall directly above it.

When Zach and the twins were settled in front of him with Simon leaning against the French doors out to the garden, Renard began to speak.

‘After some careful thought on the still-life, and after talking with Simon about the recent evolution of your abilities, I’ve come to a decision.’

Matt and Em looked nervously at each other.

Do you think he’s going to send us away?

Don’t be ridiculous
.

My dad wouldn’t let him send you away
, Zach added in answer to Em’s question.
And neither would I.

‘I’ve decided,’ continued Renard, ‘that if you are ever to understand how truly important and unique your hybrid talents are, you must learn to use your powers wisely. And to do that, I need you to understand the history of our kind.’

Jeannie pushed open the library’s double doors with her foot, carrying a tray with a pot of coffee, three glasses of chocolate milk and slices of pound cake slathered in jam. When the cake had been devoured, Matt and Zach wiped their milk moustaches on their sleeves.

‘Barbarians,’ Simon laughed, looking at the boys with disapproval.

‘Grandpa, Simon’s taught us a lot about our history already,’ said Em, patting her mouth with her napkin. ‘We know that Calders have always lived on the islands since before even the Vikings, and that the monks of Era Mina were the first to bring together Animare and Guardians for protection.’

Renard nodded. ‘Good. But I’d like to go back even further. Because, given what you demonstrated yesterday, the speed and emphasis of these lessons must be increased. You have to learn about the islands’ geology and your unique connection to it. And all the information you need can be found in Duncan Fox’s diary.’

‘Duncan Fox is the artist who painted
The Demon Within
!’ Em gasped. Memories of the horrible painting still haunted her. The red, skinless monster ... ‘The painting Mum copied. The picture Dad’s bound in, down in the Abbey vault.’

‘Ow!’ Matt cried, as Charles Dickens’s
Hard Times
suddenly soared off its shelf and smacked him on the back of the head.

‘Em,’ said Renard gently, as the entire shelf of Romantic poets started to shiver. ‘You have nothing to fear while you are here in the Abbey with us.’

Zach reached under the table and squeezed Em’s hand, calming her fears which were making the books shake.

As the books settled, Renard pointed at the bust of the scarred man, high up in its niche. ‘That’s Duncan Fox, up there.’

‘Him?’ Matt said in shock. ‘The dude with the scar? And he’s the one who painted ...’ Matt couldn’t bring himself to say it. ‘You mean, he’s
family
?’

‘His wife was a Calder like us,’ said Renard. ‘Duncan Fox owned these islands and the ruins of the Abbey in the mid-nineteenth century, and although he spent most of his early life in London while the Abbey was being rebuilt, this was later to become his beloved home.’

‘D
uncan
Fox was the artist who started the original Hollow Earth Society, wasn’t he?’ asked Em. ‘The Society that swore to keep Hollow Earth and all its monsters a secret from the world?’

‘Yes,’ replied Renard. ‘Fox started the original Hollow Earth Society because, according to his diary, he once glimpsed Hollow Earth for himself. What he saw there was so terrifying that he wanted to bury the knowledge of its existence for ever. Reduce it to a myth, and ultimately let it be forgotten altogether. Most importantly, he wanted to protect it from any Animare powerful enough to use the mystical tools needed to open Hollow Earth again.’

In her head, Em was already imagining what these mystical tools might be. As she dwelt on this exciting question, a black hole opened in the air above the table, and an avalanche of sparkling silver wands, a gilded mirror and a shiny, gold sceptre, crusted with green gems, fell at her feet.

The room was silent until the treasures and trinkets stopped piling up. Simon and Renard looked at each other and burst out laughing.

‘Sorry,’ Em said hastily, throwing herself over the animations, exploding them in a confetti burst of light.

Em, get a grip. You’re not a kid any more.

I
said
sorry!

‘Hollow Earth is at the centre of the island of Era Mina,’ Renard continued. ‘The only way to reach it is through the images on the walls in the island’s caves. But you cannot do that without using the sacred bone quill, a pen made from the antlers of the black peryton, to animate
The Book of Beasts
. Had the monks been able to finish the book, they would have closed the portal to Hollow Earth entirely, but they didn’t ... they couldn’t. And now no one knows what happened to the rest of the book, or to the bone quill.’