Looking around the featureless landscape that used to be Suki’s world, I noticed a brick building about a mile away. It was the only sign of civilisation, so I started walking towards it, picking my way over the rock that the machinery had turned over.
When I got to the building, I was surprised to see that it was a house, not some kind of office for the mine. Perhaps the people here would be able to tell me what was going on. I rang the doorbell. I waited a short while and then the door was opened. I stared at the person on the doorstep, and she stared back.
‘You!’ I said.
‘Well well. It’s Pete and he’s forgotten his gorgeousness spell this time,’ said Arabella. ‘Of course I never forget mine. If you’d asked the wand about me, it would have said that there was a spell affecting my appearance, and then you would have realised that I was the witch.’
‘I had too much to think about with my own spell,’ I said slowly.
‘Anyway, don’t stand on the doorstep or make another boring excuse. Come in!’
I followed Arabella inside. I knew it was dangerous, but I didn’t think I would be any safer standing on the doorstep. I was also kicking myself. How could I have been so stupid as to walk up to the front door and ring the bell?
‘Of course I already had an idea you were involved with magic,’ Arabella called to me as she led the way inside. ‘I looked out of my window one day, and I saw you filming my sunflower. You wouldn’t have done that unless you knew what it was doing.’
‘So why did we see Siôn? Was he betraying his family?’
We were now in the lounge. The furnishing was luxurious to the point where it lacked common sense. I realised that mud from my walking boots was contaminating a carpet that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a museum.
‘Have a seat,’ said Arabella, gesturing towards an antique armchair. ‘Yes, that one, then you can look at our other original Rembrandt while we talk. That one is called “My Mum” and it is the first picture Rembrandt ever painted.’
I stared in disbelief. It was just a childish squiggle, in an ornate frame. However Rembrandt got his talents, clearly he wasn’t born with them. I wondered how much this one had cost.
‘Even though I knew you’d put that spell on yourself,’ said Arabella thoughtfully, ‘I must have been affected by it. I remembered you as being quite cute, but as I said, I must have been affected by the spell… Um, where was I? Oh yes. Siôn didn’t betray his family, that was just the spell I put on the camcorder.’
I could feel myself starting to panic. Clearly I had been out-thought all the way through, and now I was trapped on a deserted world with the nutcase who had killed half the original population. I knew I had to start thinking, but right now all I could think of was the salesman’s last resort: Keep Talking.
‘So is Suki here?’ I asked.
‘Guards!’ called Arabella.
Two strange creatures entered. One was slightly smaller than a human, and entirely covered by a dirty green cloak. The other was a dense patch of shadow that moved.
‘You see,’ Arabella said to me with a self-satisfied smile, ‘I keep a ghoul and a spectre for my personal use.’ She turned to the guards. ‘Bring Suki in.’
When the ghoul returned, it was carrying a cage, and a defeated-looking Suki was slumped in the corner. ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she said faintly. ‘Now you will be processed too.’
‘Processed?’ I said.
‘Let’s begin at the beginning,’ said Arabella smiling smugly. ‘Guards! Take the pixie away. And bring us each a cup of tea and a fruit scone. I’ll have low fat margarine, but no one I catch lives long enough to put on weight. Do Pete’s with clotted cream.’
I took a sip of sugary tea and nibbled the scone.
‘Five years ago, I was going out with a trader from a hedge fund. He’d got some bonus, a paltry few million, but he wanted to celebrate. So we sat in his stupid flat in Docklands doing lines of coke.
‘This was no life, I thought. And then the solution hit me. I needed more money, beautiful works of art, lovely houses—and most of all I needed to upgrade my boyfriend. What is more, I knew how I was going to do it. I was working as a scientist, and my team had found a way of visiting another world; this one. In the lab we had lots of chemicals, so it was easy to get some arsenic and put it in the teapot.
I put my cup down quickly.
‘Relax, I wouldn’t put anything in your tea, you’re too cute. Anyway, the whole team visited this world with flasks of tea. Everyone except me. I stayed behind to operate the equipment, and of course there was a small problem. One of the computers went wrong, and it took several days to fix it. When this was done, the team were nowhere to be found. Presumably they are dead from the arsenic, but there was no chance of finding the bodies unless I showed the police how to visit this world. It was the first perfect murder!
I realised that I had one weapon. Arabella needed to talk about how clever she was, and while she could do that, perhaps I would stay alive.
‘Then I got my boyfriend to buy the house in your village. Our research showed that travel between the worlds was easiest if it started from that place. The fairies had noticed that too. That’s why they land the magic carpets there, but I didn’t find out about that until later.’
‘So I was right! Your solar panel isn’t a solar panel. It’s part of your equipment. If it was a solar panel it really would be black.’
‘Yes. I couldn’t believe you swallowed that nonsense about muddy brown electricity. Anyway, I started extracting oil and minerals from this world, and selling them at home. That made enough money to buy the Rembrandts. Then I realised it would be much more fun if I was a billionaire, but that would mean doing the same with other worlds. By now I was tapping into magic too, and I knew the fairies could go to other places, but unless I had more power, I couldn’t.’
‘But why did you care? What is the point of having that Rembrandt, which was obviously painted before he learnt to paint?’
‘That’s just envy,’ said Arabella smugly. ‘You wouldn’t be saying that if you could afford a Rembrandt too. I found I could get the power I needed by processing magical creatures, but annoyingly I had chased them all away. I sent the ghouls and spectres—and the wolves—to round up as many of them as possible. All I want is Suki’s power, it’s nothing personal.’
‘Nothing personal! You’re going to kill her, right?’
‘I think we’re wasting too much time. Have you finished your scone?’
‘Not quite.’
Arabella took the last bit of scone from my plate and ate it, then drained the last few drops of tea from my cup. ‘Guards!’ she called. ‘Kill him!’
Again the ghoul and the spectre came into the room. I wished I had a cup of sunlight, but then I realised that I did have a wand. I wished for light, and a bright cold light began shining from the end of the wand. The ghoul and spectre backed off. Apparently the dim light coming through the net curtains was tolerable, but light of this intensity was not.
Arabella had picked up something that looked like a TV remote control. She pressed a button, and I found that producing the light was requiring more mental effort. I could see what was happening: Arabella had access to this power through technology, not through the woodland spirits. That realisation didn’t help me, though. I struggled to keep the light shining as Arabella pressed a second button. This time the effort was too much and the light went out.
I found myself surrounded by absolute darkness, and it became oppressive and suffocating. I felt dizzy and was no longer sure which way was up or down. I struggled to get the wand to shine again and failed. I was vaguely aware of falling down, and of the wand falling from my grasp.