Big Change for Stuart (7 page)

WHEN STUART CAME
into the kitchen the next morning, he saw two letters pinned to the cork-board. The first was addressed to Stuart's father.

The second was addressed to Stuart. As he stood reading it, his father joined him in the kitchen.

Father and son looked at each other.

‘Orange, banana, peach, plum or melon with your morning repast?' enquired Stuart's father, peering down at him.

‘Peach please. And I'm going to the museum all day, with April, and then to St Cuthbert's church hall to see a magic show, with April – I'll write it in a note for you. And I'll take a door-key.'

‘And I shall prepare a portable container of noon-tide comestibles for you,' said Stuart's father, going over to the fridge.

‘Thanks,' said Stuart. He had a sinking feeling that the contents of his packed lunch were going to be very, very healthy.

April was already waiting for him in the side room of the museum, sitting at the curator's table. He was relieved to see that she was wearing a new pair of glasses. She was also wearing a new badge. ‘Rod Felton just gave it to me,' she said, rather gloomily. ‘He said it would make me more official. Don't laugh.'

The badge had a picture of a baby in a business suit, sitting at a computer, and it read:

‘You're laughing,' said April.

‘No, honestly,' lied Stuart.

‘And I've been given a visitor's survey as well,' said April. ‘It's got questions like
Do you feel that the exhibition captions give sufficient information?
'

‘Well, they don't at the moment,' said Stuart. ‘We ought to get started while there are still no visitors to bother us. Do you want to choose which illusion to explore next?'

‘OK.' April walked over to an empty space in the middle of the room, closed her eyes, spun round a couple of times and pointed randomly.

‘The Arch of Mirrors,' she said, opening her eyes and staggering slightly. ‘Two questions: What's the trick of it, and where does the Magic Star fit in?'

‘Three questions,' corrected Stuart. ‘If we find where the Magic Star fits in, then where will it take us?'
To the desert again?
he wondered.
Or to a different magical world, with a different sort of puzzle?

He followed April over to the arch. It was nearly as tall as Stuart's father, and every inch of it was
covered
in mirrors. Each mirror was square and was set at a slightly different angle. In the sunny room, light beams seemed to bounce across the surface like ping-pong balls.

April pushed and then pulled one of the small mirrors. ‘It feels quite springy,' she said, ‘as if it's supposed to move. I bet one of them lifts up or swings round in some way.'

Stuart walked right round the illusion, seeing his reflection shift and change a hundred times. It would take hours and hours to try every mirror, and it would be easy to lose track and forget which ones had been tried.

‘It's making my eyes hurt,' complained April. ‘Too many reflections.' She went across to the light switch and turned it off, but sun still flooded in through the single window.

‘There's a blind,' said Stuart, going over to where a cord was looped around a hook on the wall. He started to free it.

April had crouched down beside the arch. ‘That's odd …' she said.

‘What?'

‘One of them doesn't reflect.'

The blind rattled down, blocking out the sun. Stuart turned round.

The arch had totally disappeared.

‘April!' he yelled.

‘I'm here!' She was laughing. ‘Lift up the blind again.' He hauled it up, and heard himself gasp. The arch was still there, but instead of being covered in mirrors, it was totally black.

‘And now look,' said April, still crouching beside it. She fiddled with something, and the mirrors suddenly appeared again, like an eye opening. ‘They're all on a swivel,' she explained. ‘And one of the mirrors near the bottom isn't a mirror at all, it's just painted to look like a mirror. When you turn it round, they
all
turn round, and the backs of them are coloured black.' She demonstrated again; the arch turned from brilliance to near-invisibility in a second.

‘So really,' she went on, ‘it's the
Disappearing
Arch of Mirrors. I bet they put the lights down in the theatre, did a drum-roll, and then all the audience screamed their heads off when it
suddenly
wasn't there any longer. And look here …' she added in a quieter voice.

Stuart knelt beside her. On the black side of the painted square was a series of grooves in the shape of a star – a star with just five spokes.

They grinned at each other.

‘So maybe that's how it works,' said April. ‘We find how the trick operates – the switch or the swivel or the lock or the handle or whatever – and
that's
where the Magic Star goes.' She gave a bounce of excitement. ‘So let's get going! This is the next one, isn't it? The next adventure.'

‘Yes. Right. OK.' Stuart realized that he was feeling a bit nervous. Those hours in the desert had seemed awfully real, and there'd been times when he'd felt a bit desperate, not to mention hungry and thirsty. He went over to his rucksack and took out a lunch box and water bottle. ‘Right,' he said again, steeling himself, half thrilled, half frightened; at least he wouldn't be on his own this time.

He took out the star, and knelt beside the Arch of Mirrors.

‘Can we hold hands?' asked April. ‘I don't want to be left behind.'

Stuart checked to see that no one else was in the room. ‘OK,' he said reluctantly. April grabbed his left hand; with his right, he fitted the five-spoked star into its socket.

And the world went black.

IT WAS ONLY
dark for a second, but when the lights came back on, everything had changed. Stuart was still standing in front of the Arch of Mirrors, but it was smaller than before – no taller than himself – and it was brilliantly lit, as if by a spotlight. The only other object in view was an easel, also spot-lit and facing away from the Arch. Everything else was in utter darkness; Stuart couldn't see whether he was in a room, or a hall, or even on a stage. The silence was total. April was nowhere to be seen. Feeling anxious, he called her name, but his voice sounded thin and weedy, and it disappeared into the gloom, unanswered.

He stepped round to the front of the easel. Resting against it was an empty picture frame.
It
was square and about the width of Stuart's outstretched hand. He could look straight through it and see the arch, a small image of himself reflected in every mirror. Written across the top of the picture frame were the words:

Stuart picked up the frame and turned it over but there was nothing written on the back. As he returned it to the easel, he got the sudden feeling that something was wrong – that he wasn't seeing something that he
should
be seeing. For a second time he picked up the frame, and realized with a chill that there was no answering movement from the reflections: all those rows of Stuarts had remained perfectly still …

He walked over to the arch. He could see his own face in each mirror, brightly lit in front of a dark background. He could see the blue of his T-shirt, and the dirty smudge that he appeared to have on his right cheekbone. But when he lifted a hand to his face, no hand appeared in the mirrors. He
moved
closer. The images in the mirrors weren't painted: they had depth, they were alive, they were breathing, but they weren't
reflections
. It was as if each were a TV screen, showing a continuous programme of himself. The Stuart Channel. But each programme was slightly different – one Stuart was smiling, another was biting his lip as if perplexed, a third seemed to be looking off to the left.

‘Weird,' said Stuart. He was still holding the picture frame, and on a sudden impulse he placed it flat against the arch. The mirrors that made up the surface were exactly the right size for the frame.

‘So do I have to choose one?' he asked out loud.

He glanced from image to image, wondering what he was supposed to be looking for. Stuart after Stuart grinned, sneezed, stared, blinked and shrugged at him.

And, he reminded himself, there were all the mirrors on the other side of the arch as well – he ought to look at those too. He started to walk round it, and then found that he couldn't: his feet were moving, but he made no progress, as if he
were
walking on a treadmill or an ice rink. After a couple of minutes of panting effort he gave up; clearly he was supposed to stay where he was.

‘OK,' he muttered. ‘I'll just have to pick one on this side. They're all me, anyway.'

He reached out randomly towards a Stuart who was yawning hugely. The mirror came away after just a single tug. There was a black gap in the arch where it had been.

What now?

Stuart walked back to the easel, fitted the mirror into the frame, and put the frame back on the little ledge where he'd found it.