A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,38

sounded sleepy.

“I’m not sure,” said Annabel. It was difficult to read upside down.

The light was too dim, and Kitty did not move her heart light closer.

She heard Kitty laugh softly, and it made her feel cross again.

“Can you read it?” Annabel asked and knew in asking that she wanted to shame the wild girl.

Kitty shook her head. “Can’t read,” she said. “But I know the way the sun shines a little different every day and how it hits the grand old lady hornbeam straight on in summer but on her left cheek only by the winter, and how it changes her mood. And I know which birds sing first at Kensal Green and what their song says. Not everyone has a need for fancy letters, Annabel Grey.”

Annabel sat very quietly, ashamed.

Kitty stared at her sullenly. The boat slid through the dark tunnel, pulled by the strange current. The river made a new sound, but only Kitty heard it. It said, Come, come, come.

Annabel thought perhaps she should look into the glass. Maybe it would tell her what to do. She took it from where it was tucked into her bodice, glad it had survived her time in the rushing river. She peered into it and tried to empty the cup of her mind, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. It was just empty ruby-red glass.

Kitty frowned and looked away.

“What if those shadowlings are coming?” whispered Annabel. There, she’d said it at last. She was scared, panicked. Why had they sent her on such a journey? They obviously needed a much more magical girl.

“Hush,” said Kitty. “You saw what the Vine Witch did with her wand. That is all we need do if they come. You will point the wand at them and make fire come out of it, and that will keep them away.”

Annabel looked at the wand. She had no idea how to make anything come out the end of it and knew Kitty knew that. The tunnel widened and the current quickened further. The boat felt lifted, carried by the river. The stench had disappeared. The place smelled of rain.

Annabel looked at her arm to be sure they were in the right tunnel. The line of the passage they were in twisted and turned. It led to the Singing Gate, sure enough, and she reached out her finger to touch the line but stopped. The place felt strange. Even just looking at the line drawn upon her skin, she felt a trembling and lightness. She shook her head. After the Singing Gate the line threaded off to the side of her arm. She turned her arm in the dimness to see what was above her elbow.

It was impossible. They should have given her the map on a piece of paper. She would have been able to read a proper map. She was very good at reading ordinary, unmagical maps.

“The river will take us now,” said Kitty, curling up further in the bow. She coughed her harsh cough. “I must swallow my light because I cannot have it out of me so long.”

“Please,” said Annabel.

“I must,” said Kitty. “The river will take us.”

“But how do you know?”

“Can you not feel it?” said Kitty. “Can you feel nothing?”

That made Annabel’s cheeks burn. “I can feel it,” she lied.

Kitty swallowed her heart light.

“The river is singing to us,” said Kitty in the darkness. “Listen, and up above, London is still dreaming.”

“I know,” lied Annabel.

“You don’t know nothing, Annabel Grey,” she said.

Annabel closed her eyes and tried to think of the emerald-green ice skates she’d had her heart set on. She tried to conjure them up, but it was no good. However much she tried, they dissolved and she saw Kitty instead, and shadowy things in Miss Estella’s bedchamber, her mother standing on a faraway railway platform. She felt the map stinging upon her skin.

She began to cry.

“Stop crying,” said Kitty before she fell asleep. Or she thought she said it. She was already dreaming.

“But we’re both crying,” she dreamt Annabel Grey replied.

The shadowlings slipped down the ladder, their claws click-clacking on the rungs. They scampered up the brick ceiling and formed themselves into the shape of something huge, something unspeakable. The thing stretched out its shadowy tentacles through the tunnel.

They came to the place where the three arches stood.

At each entrance they opened their mouths and breathed in to catch the taste of her.

At the third they moaned and hushed and laughed against each other’s dark cheeks.

They whispered the word,