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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
The Golden Butterfly danced in the air, beautiful and impossible, yet there before their eyes. Then The Magnificent Marko flicked his wand again. There was a shower of sparks, a bang and ... The Golden Butterfly vanished. It's 1897 and since The Magnificent Marko dramatically departed the stage, no magician has come close to performing a trick as spectacular as The Golden Butterfly. With her grandfather gone, Luciana feels that the world has lost its wonder. Then the imposing leader of the Grand Society of Magicians appears, searching for something belonging to Marko, and Luciana is drawn into a world of danger and deception. As she battles to protect her grandfather's greatest legacy, can she distinguish reality from illusion? A dazzling tale of bravery and friendship in this fast-paced historical adventure for fans of Katherine Woodfine, COGHEART and THE NOWHERE EMPORIUM.
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Seitenzahl: 276
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For the staff of The Yard Kitchen, Penrith, at which this was partly written. Is finished!
Contents
Chapter One
There were tiny lights glinting on the snow, as if the last breath of magic in the world had collected right outside the window. Luciana pressed her forehead against the cold glass and watched them form shimmering lines in the night-dark of the orchard, spinning apart every few minutes before coming together to dance again somewhere else. She knew it wasn’t really magic. It would be Charley tramping about in the pasture between their two houses, hunting winter rabbits by the light of his portable gas lamp.
Luciana shut her eyes, wishing that she could turn back the clock. She already knew exactly when and where she would go. It would be to a time and place she held close in her heart and thought about often: the theatre, the one and only time she had seen the Golden Butterfly. In her mind she heard the orchestra start up, and suddenly Luciana was there again, watching from her seat. The lights on the stage were full and bright. The theatre was packed to the rafters and the air fizzed with excitement. Everyone there knew that they were about to witness something spectacular: the most extraordinary illusion ever performed. Then her grandfather stepped into the spotlight and the audience erupted with rapturous applause. They were all under the spell of the Magnificent Marko, and they wanted to see the wonder that he had promised them. They wanted to see him transform a woman into a butterfly.
Luciana’s grandfather raised his wand and his assistant appeared from the other side of the stage in a dress of shimmering gold silk. The audience fell into silence. The Magnificent Marko waved his wand through the air and drew her out of the shadows, into the light cascading from above. Tiny jewels glinted in her hair, her dress flowed around her like water. She was magic personified, wonder sewn into her every movement. She reached the centre of the stage and the Magnificent Marko flicked his wand. She began to rise into the air, as lightly as a mote of dust. A susurration ran around the auditorium: the sound of five hundred people all drawing in their breath. Then wings sprouted from the woman’s back, gossamer-thin and stitched from the colours of moonlight.
The Golden Butterfly danced in the air, beautiful and impossible, yet there before their eyes. The audience murmured and laughed, astonished and delighted. Then the Magnificent Marko flicked his wand again. There was a shower of sparks, a bang and…
The Golden Butterfly vanished.
Luciana opened her eyes. Her forehead was still pressed against the cold window, and outside Charley’s light was still bobbing on the snow. Her heart felt heavier than ever. There was no magic here. There was no magic anywhere. Not any more.
The murmuring in the shadows behind her grew a little louder. She recognized the whispers as first her grandfather’s voice, then her grandmother’s. Then, finally, there was Doctor Stott’s.
“Luciana,” her grandmother called quietly. “Your grandfather wants to talk to you, darling.”
Luciana slid from the window ledge, landing lightly on the Persian rug. When she had been little, she had played in this room for hours. Her grandparents’ four-poster bed had been her chariot then: in her mind it had been given wings to go with its lion’s-paw feet. On it she had ridden to faraway places, searching for the butterflies he had taught her about.
What did you find today, little chick?
Today I found the Distant’s silverstreak, Grandfather.
And what would it be called in my books?
The Iraota distanti, Grandfather.
Wonderful! And where did you find it?
In a place called Sumatra.
Very good, little chick, very good. Now show me Sumatra on the globe, and draw me a picture of the butterfly’s wings, and then I will show you how to make a coin appear from Charley’s right ear.
She stepped into the puddle of candlelight around the bed. Her grandfather was small among the shadows, propped up by white pillows. Luciana was dismayed by how frail he looked. She reached out and took his hand. “I’m here, Grandfather. I have been here all the time.”
Her grandfather smiled. “I know you have, my dear. What a good child you have been for us.”
His voice was hoarse and thin, like the winter wind. Where was the giant who had often carried her on his shoulders? Where was the man she had once seen turn a woman into a butterfly in front of a theatre full of people? The patient teller of funny stories who had finally managed to banish her nightmare fear of fire? Luciana felt tears pricking her eyes.
“Now, now,” her grandfather said gently. “There is no need for that. I have had a good life, a very full life. Everything changes, Luciana, but that does not mean that everything ends, even when it seems to. Remember the caterpillar and its cocoon; the butterfly it becomes. There are wonderful things ahead of you. I want you to try to be happy, my dear.”
Luciana felt the tears weighing on her eyelashes. In that moment she could not imagine ever feeling happy again. Then Doctor Stott asked her to move away. Luciana squeezed the frail fingers in hers once more and let them go. She went back to her place on the windowsill. Outside, Charley’s light had disappeared. Instead she watched through her own reflection as the night turned into a new day. By the time the stars were lost to the low sun of winter, her grandfather had faded with them.
*
“Do you remember,” Charley asked, “the time that your grandpa pulled a whole string of silk scarves out of half a walnut shell?”
It was a week later, a Tuesday, and the day of Marko Cattaneo’s funeral. Charley had tramped up the hill from the vicarage, where his mother was housekeeper. He’d been doing that since he was old enough to walk, and before that his mother had brought him in her arms. Over the past week he and Luciana had wandered the house together, five storeys that held memories of their shared childhoods. Luciana was struggling to comprehend that Marko would never be there again. She had been an orphan since she was two and she couldn’t remember her parents at all, however hard she tried. Her grandparents were her whole family – apart from Charley, who might as well have been a brother – and now, at thirteen, with Marko gone, Luciana felt as if she had lost half the landscape of her world.
Charley’s words prompted a memory: the two of them kneeling right there on the rug in the drawing room, her grandfather sitting in his favourite chair. It was a rainy day and Marko had been keeping them entertained. The room had been chilly, but they had not lit the fire. That was back when Luciana’s dreams had been so haunted by flames that she could not bear to be near one, even in daylight. Charley had brought them a blanket each and they had watched as Marko pulled the shell from his pocket. He held it up for Luciana and Charley to inspect before turning it over and tapping it with one finger, as if shaking out a bug trapped in a glass. A corner of bright blue silk had poked from the shell. Her grandfather had tugged at it and a whole line of silk scarves had appeared, sheet after sheet of vivid colour pulled into existence from nowhere.
Luciana laughed. “That was so funny,” she said. “You couldn’t believe it!”
“Neither could you,” her friend said, grinning. “I think I’m still deaf from you shrieking in my ear.”
Luciana thumped him lightly on the arm. “Yeah, but I’m the one who learned how to do it for myself.”
“You did not,” Charley scoffed.
“I did!”
“I don’t believe you,” the boy said, and then sighed. “I don’t believe anyone could do magic like that except the Magnificent Marko.”
The use of her grandfather’s stage name brought a new lump to Luciana’s throat. She looked up at the old framed poster on the wall. It had been colourful once – daubs of yellows, reds, greens and blues – but now the bright hues were beginning to fade.
The Magnificent Marko!
Be Amazed!
Be Intrigued!
Be Flabbergasted!
See the Greatest Magician Alive!
He had performed at a big theatre in London three nights a week and Luciana and her grandmother would attend a show once each month. Sometimes, as a treat, Charley would go with them. What excitement those days would always bring! The bumpy carriage ride to the station, then the train journey from the country into the smoky city. It felt like magic itself to watch the landscape transform as they steamed closer to the metropolis. The fields grew smaller, turning first into gardens and then into mazes of streets. The colours would change too, from vivid watercolour-greens into drab angles of grey and brown, brick-red and ochre.
Then just before Luciana’s ninth birthday and at the height of his fame, the Magnificent Marko had vanished from the stage himself. No one had ever told Luciana why her grandfather had stopped performing, and every time she had asked, he had simply smiled. Not everything is meant to last forever, little chick, he would say. Now, show me how to chase the king of clubs. I know you have watched me do it. Overnight her grandfather had ceased to practise his talents, abandoning the world of magic without explanation. Luciana missed it, and knew that her grandfather did too. She’d often found him reading The Magician’s Times and sighing mournfully. But he would never tell her why.
Now, four years later, the Magnificent Marko was gone for good.
Luciana went to the small table beside the fire. Pulling open its little drawer she took out the empty walnut shell. With one hand she held it up for Charley to see, quickly using her other hand to fold the thin sheaf of silk, which had been in the drawer beneath it, into her sleeve before he noticed.
“Here,” Charley said, astonished. “That’s not the same one, is it?”
Luciana held up the shell and tapped it, just the way her grandfather had. A glimpse of purple silk pushed its way out of the shell. She pulled at it and there was another colour behind it, blue this time, then red, then green, then yellow. Charley stared as the scarves floated down to settle on the floor around their feet.
“I told you,” she said, laughing again, happy that she hadn’t forgotten how to perform the trick.
“But how—” Charley began, when he’d found his voice.
He was interrupted by the door opening. Luciana’s grandmother, face pale and back stiff in her black mourning dress and veil, gave a small smile.
“It is time, my dears,” she said. “The carriage is here to take us to the church. Are you ready?”
Luciana nodded. She didn’t put the shell back in the drawer. She slipped it into the sleeve of her dress instead, and gathered up the silks too. It seemed important to have something of her grandfather with her as they said a final goodbye.
Chapter Two
The snow began to fall again as the mourners stood by Marko’s graveside. Luciana lifted her face and let the flakes land on her cold cheeks and the curls that had escaped from beneath her black bonnet. Charley slipped his hand into hers and she squeezed his fingers. When it came time for her to scatter a handful of earth on her grandfather’s coffin, she let go of the walnut shell too. With it went the bright silks. The scarves drifted down to cover his last resting place. Marko would have loved the flash of vibrancy. His life had been full of colour. Why should his death be any different?
The other mourners began to filter away, but Luciana and Charley remained at the graveside, even though Luciana’s toes were becoming blocks of ice in her best black shoes.
“Come now,” said her grandmother, slipping an arm round Luciana’s shoulders and pulling her close. “We should go home, before we both catch a chill. Your grandfather wouldn’t want that, would he? Charley, take your mother home, dear. We will see you tomorrow, I’m sure.”
As Luciana turned away from Marko’s grave, she remembered some of the last words he had said to her. Everything changes, but that does not mean that everything ends. But this, here, now, was an ending, as sure as there ever could be one.
*
They turned into their gate to find a large black carriage waiting beside their steps. Luciana’s grandmother frowned as the hooves of their old grey mare crunched to a halt on the gravel behind it.
“Grandmother?” Luciana said, leaning forward to look out of the window. “Who is it?”
Before her grandmother could answer, both doors of the carriage opened and six men dressed in black suits and heavy black coats stepped out. One of these figures turned in their direction and Luciana felt her grandmother start in surprise. Then a look of intense dislike flashed across her pale face. Luciana was astonished. She could not remember her grandmother ever disliking anyone.
The man strode towards them. He was big, with dark eyes in a round, pale face. He reached the trap and looked up at them. Luciana felt a chill pass down her spine and coil itself in her gut.
“Isabella,” he said in greeting. His voice was crushed glass, its edges sharp and unpleasant.
“Thursby,” replied Luciana’s grandmother. “What are you doing here? If you came to pay your respects, you are too late.”
The man’s lip curled. He held out a hand. “Please,” he said. “Do let us try to make this as civil as possible.”
Luciana watched as her grandmother hesitated for a second, then reluctantly allowed him to help her to the ground. Luciana followed but the man barely cast her a glance.
“You know why I’m here,” Thursby said, once they both stood facing him.
“Oh yes, I know,” said Luciana’s grandmother calmly. “What you are looking for no longer exists, Thursby. And you are not welcome in this house.”
He smiled coldly. “Welcome or not, Isabella,” he said. “We will come in. For all his many – many – faults, Marko at least understood the way of such things. And I do not believe that you can do without the widow’s pension he arranged for you through the Society. Or perhaps you can. Shall we find out?”
Luciana stood watching, willing her grandmother to send this person away. But after a moment Isabella Cattaneo took a single step back.
“Go,” she said, raising her chin stiffly towards the house. “But you will find nothing. Marko gave away or destroyed everything when you forced him from the stage.”
“We shall see, dear lady.” Thursby was already half turned towards the house. “After all, it would take a man – a magician – to recognize it.”
Luciana watched as Thursby’s bulk disappeared through their door. A shadow passed the drawing-room window: one of his men inside, searching for … what?
Luciana reached out and touched her grandmother’s hand. Isabella’s fingers twitched, then grasped Luciana’s tightly.
“Who are they?” Luciana asked.
Her grandmother shook her head, thin-lipped, and her grey eyes glinted with anger. “Men unworthy of our time or energy. Come, let us walk a little.”
Luciana did not want to walk. She wanted to go into her house and throw out the men who were violating it, but fear held her back. She allowed her grandmother’s grip on her hand to remain as she was tugged towards the skeleton of their orchard.
“What did you mean,” she asked, as they tramped through the snow, “when you said that Thursby had forced Grandfather from the stage?”
Her grandmother looked down at her, pale face highlighted by two flashes of pink anger tinting her cheeks. “It is not worth talking about, my dear,” she said. “It is done with, it is gone. As Thursby and his men will be soon enough. Then that will be an end to it, once and for all. Marko is dead, and at least he will not be here to see the age of great magic fizzle out thanks to that monster.”
The vehemence in her grandmother’s words shocked Luciana into silence.
When they returned to the house, the strange men were preparing to leave. A look of thunder was rolling around Thursby’s face. Luciana felt the fear coiling in her stomach again, that horrible twist of dread.
“I told you it was not here,” said Isabella Cattaneo, as he stalked down the steps. He moved past her without a word and she called after him, her strong voice rising with the wind. “This is the last time you will gain access to this house, Thursby. I am not bound by the rules that Marko swore to. Should you ever again set foot on my property, I will call the constables. Marko is gone, and with him the Golden Butterfly. Let it rest.”
Thursby paused but didn’t turn back. A moment later he had vanished into the carriage. Then it clattered quickly out of their gate and away.
Luciana’s grandmother did not watch them go. Instead she pulled her granddaughter into the house, both of them shivering. Luciana could feel the tread of those horrible men everywhere, as if they were still lurking in the shadows of their home.
“Go into the drawing room,” said her grandmother. “I will find you a change of clothes.”
“Don’t light the fire,” Luciana heard herself say, as if from very far away. “Please don’t light the fire.”
Isabella stared at her. “But you haven’t been afraid of the fire for a long time, my darling,” she said. “A fire in a grate is safe, don’t you remember? And anything else is nothing but a bad dream.”
Still Luciana hesitated. The cold was eating into her bones, but the thought of sitting in front of a fire seemed at that moment to be the most terrifying thing in the world. It was daylight, but she felt herself surrounded by the same nightmare that had haunted her when she was little. It had been brought back by Thursby and his horrible men.
Her grandmother squeezed her shoulder gently. “Go,” she said softly. “I will bring you a blanket instead.”
Luciana did as she was told, her teeth beginning to chatter with cold and some other emotion she could not identify. She pushed open the door to the drawing room, walked inside, and stopped dead.
The poster of the Magnificent Marko was no longer on the wall. It lay on the floor, its frame smashed open and the poster itself torn in two.
Chapter Three
That night Luciana woke screaming, drenched in sweat and shaking with fear. Her grandmother was already there at her side, trying to soothe her.
“Hush,” Isabella whispered. “You’re safe now. Hush now, hush.”
Luciana threw her arms round her grandmother’s neck and Isabella hugged her close. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes.
“Was it the dream?” her grandmother asked eventually.
Luciana nodded. “The house was burning and I couldn’t get out. There were flames everywhere, coming closer, and there was a man in the flames, all burnt, burning, and I—”
“Shh,” said her grandmother, stroking her hair. “It’s all right. It was a nightmare, Luciana. It wasn’t real.”
“Why has it come back?” Luciana asked, her voice muffled against her grandmother’s shoulder.
Isabella held her tighter. “I don’t know, my darling. But we beat it before, didn’t we? We can beat it again.”
They huddled together under the coverlet until the light of a new day chased away the darkness of night.
*
“But who were they?” Charley asked the next day, when Luciana told him what had happened with Thursby and his men. “What did they want?”
They were sitting on the floor in the drawing room with blankets round their shoulders to ward off the cold. Luciana had told Charley about the return of her nightmare and how her awful fear of fire seemed to have come back. Charley had given her a hug and said that blankets were fine with him. Now they were playing with a deck of cards as they talked. Luciana had fanned them into a perfect semicircle face down on the rug between them.
“Grandmother thought it was the Golden Butterfly,” she said. “Now, pick a card. Look at it, but be sure not to let me see it.”
Charley took a card and glanced at it, but Luciana could tell he wasn’t really concentrating as she collected the rest of the deck with one hand.
“Wasn’t the Golden Butterfly the trick you got me into trouble with?”
Luciana bit her lip, feeling guilty but also fighting the urge not to laugh. “Um…”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Charley exclaimed. “You wanted to do it yourself so you made me help you. Didn’t we use one of your grandma’s dresses and a rope from the stable?”
Luciana couldn’t help it – she laughed. “Yes. I was convinced I had worked out how it was done and wanted to perform it in the hallway.”
“That’s right!” Charley shook his head as he remembered. “You made me hold you up on the rope while you dangled over the banister. Your grandma lost her rag when she saw what we were doing – and I got the blame for it! Everyone assumed it had been my idea. My mum was so upset – she thought I was going to be banished from the Big House forever!”
Luciana shook her head. “I used to get you into trouble like that all the time, didn’t I? I’m so sorry. I just wanted to be the Golden Butterfly. It was so amazing – the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, even though I only saw it once.”
“And your grandma thinks that’s what this man Thursby was looking for?” Charley asked. “The Golden Butterfly? How can they have been looking for a trick?”
“I don’t know.” Luciana sighed, cutting the cards and holding out one half of the stack. “It doesn’t make any sense to me either but Grandmother won’t talk about it.” Charley added his card to the pile in her hand and Luciana shuffled both together again.
“Have you checked to see that they didn’t take anything away with them?” he asked.
“Everything seems to be in its rightful place,” Luciana said, as she shuffled the deck. “Apart from the poster, that is.”
Charley looked over at the two ragged halves of the colourful paper sheet. Luciana had gathered them up and put them on the table beside the empty fireplace. Ruined though it was, she couldn’t bear to throw the poster away. The pieces were curling in on themselves, the torn paper dry and fragile.
“Why would they bother taking it off the wall?” Charley wondered. “Did they think there was something behind it? A safe?”
“Maybe,” Luciana agreed. “But that doesn’t explain why they tore it in half. There couldn’t have been anything behind it, the frame is too thin.” She fanned the deck again and slid out one card, face down. “Turn it over. Is that your card?”
Charley held up the queen of diamonds. “Yes, it is! How did you do that?”
“Magic, of course,” she said with a quick grin, though the rush of happiness she’d usually feel from getting a trick right was absent.
“It’s the other thing that Grandmother said that I keep thinking about,” she told Charley. “She said that Thursby forced Marko from the stage. She obviously hated the man – I could see it in her face – and I’ve never known her to hate anyone.”
They were both quiet for a while. Charley picked up the deck of cards and shuffled them. Watching him reminded Luciana of seeing her grandfather turning cards in his hands as he produced trick after astonishing trick. His manner was so quick, so smooth, so clever. Luciana had spent hours just watching him, trying to work out how he did it.
She got to her feet and went over to the two torn pieces of the poster. Picking them up, Luciana turned them over to look at the back.
“What are you looking for?” Charley asked, watching.
“I was just thinking,” she said slowly. “You’re right – you can’t look for a trick, that doesn’t make sense. But what if they’re looking for the key to how the trick was done?”
Charley got to his feet. “You mean – the method? How it was constructed?”
Luciana nodded. “If so, they were probably looking for something written down, weren’t they? In a notebook, or on a piece of paper – that would make sense, wouldn’t it? That would explain why they took the poster off the wall. Perhaps they thought it could be written on the back.”
Charley looked down at the blank, yellowing back of the poster she held. “But it wasn’t.”
“So where else could it be?” Luciana bit her lip. “They went through all the papers in his desk – they left them in a mess. All the books in the library too.”
“If there was something about this trick that was so important that he was forced off the stage because of it, Marko would have hidden it really well, wouldn’t he?” Charley said. “Where would that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Ana,” Charley said. No one but him called her that – it had started when they were small and ‘Luciana’ was too difficult to say. Even now they were older, the name had stuck. “Think. I know you. Your mind works just like Marko’s. It’s in there, somewhere. Think.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away.
“I’m sorry,” Charley said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It doesn’t matter anyway. None of it matters. Like Mrs Cattaneo said, it is done with.”
Luciana took a deep breath and dashed away the tears. “It does matter,” she said. “It matters to me. Magic was my grandfather’s whole life, and now he’s gone and I miss him so much. If there’s a chance that some of his magic is still out there … I want to be the one to find it, not that horrible man or anyone else like him. Who is Thursby anyway, and how did he make my grandfather give up what he loved? And why he is looking for the Golden Butterfly now that Grandfather is dead? That was the Magnificent Marko’s greatest trick. If the key to it is still out there somewhere, I can’t let anyone else steal it!”
“OK,” said Charley with a smile. “Then where do we start?”
Luciana looked down at the poster. Even as damaged as it now was, she loved to look at it. There was her grandfather, painted wearing his black magician’s cloak and top hat, holding his magic wand.
“Thursby’s men looked everywhere,” she said, thinking aloud. “But they couldn’t find what they were looking for.”
“Maybe it’s not here in your house at all, like your grandmother said?”
“Maybe…” Luciana stared at the image of her grandfather with his wand raised. A magician’s wand is his simplest but most important trick, he had told her once. It’s all about misdirection. Distract people with the wand and they’ll miss everything else, even if it’s happening right in front of them. “Or maybe they were just looking in the wrong place.”
“Well then,” Charley said. “Where would have been the right place?”
An idea was beginning to bloom in Luciana’s mind. “They thought they were looking for something that was written down. That was my first thought too. But perhaps we should be looking for something else.”
“Like what?”
Luciana stared at him, suddenly completely certain that she knew exactly where Thursby and his men should have been searching.
“Like a puzzle,” she said, heading for the door with a confused Charley starting after her.
Chapter Four
Luciana pushed open the door into her grandfather’s study. The walls were lined with many books, but the most striking object in the room was Marko’s huge desk.
“I thought you said they went through all his papers and books?” Charley asked doubtfully, as Luciana went to it.
“They did,” said Luciana.
Charley shrugged. “Then what are we doing here?”
“Isn’t the desk amazing?” Luciana asked. “Just look at it!”
It was a huge piece of furniture. The large writing level was surrounded on three sides by shelves, cabinets and drawers that formed a cubicle tall enough to loom over them both. The whole was formed of many different types of wood, from the darkest ebony through the rosiest chestnut to the palest pine. There were so many tiny cupboards and sliding panels that it was impossible to count them all in just one glance, and each of these – as well as the rear panels behind the shelves – were all richly decorated. Some were inlaid with intricate geometric patterns, others had pictures of trees, flowers, landscapes or seascapes. The impression was of a detailed patchwork quilt made of wood. The more one looked, the more there was to see.
“Grandfather had it made for him,” Luciana told Charley. “It took the carpenter years to make. When I was little I used to spend hours just opening and shutting all the drawers and doors.”
She kneeled on the floor and pulled open the door of one of the two larger cupboards that stood either side of her grandfather’s chair. Inside were concealed three more small drawers, all fitted with keyholes. The locks of each had been smashed open, the beautiful wooden patterns disrupted by jagged cracks and gaping holes. Luciana and Charley took in the damage in dismay.
“Well,” Charley said, after a moment. “If whatever it was they were looking for was in one of those drawers, they would have found it.”
Luciana looked up at him with a quick smile and then moved around the side of the desk. The outer panels were just as elaborately decorated, though with a more abstract design. The background pattern was formed of uneven wavy lines, each constructed from small sections of different woods in varying shades. Within these were concentric circles, like the expanding ripples left after a stone is dropped into a pool of water, and scattered inside and between the waves and circles were small raised spurs of wood. The spurs looked as if they might be rivets that the carpenter had used to hold the desk together, but they were too randomly placed for that, dotted through the flow of wood like stones on a riverbed, some in clusters, others more spread out.
“That,” Charley said, dropping to sit cross-legged beside Luciana, “is enough to make you dizzy just by looking at it.”
Luciana smiled. “I used to stare at it for hours. I’ve always thought it looks like the stream down at the bottom of the orchard. I once heard Grandfather teasing Grandmother that he was testing a new type of hypnosis that kept small children quiet for hours. And then—”
She reached out, resting her fingers on one of the spurs. Then she used her thumb and forefinger to twist it. It turned, silently.
“It moves!” Charley exclaimed.
Luciana said nothing. Instead she turned another spur below the one she had first turned, then the one directly to the right, before moving to rotate the one to the right of the first she had moved. Once she had done so, there was a faint clicking sound. She and Charley watched as the circles within the invisible square she had created shifted a little with each click. As they did so, some of the connected pieces in the background flow of the ‘river’ shifted too, curving a different way, as if some of the water had got caught in a little whirlpool. A few of the wavy lines now formed new outlines around some of the little spurs of wood.
