James Potter And The Morrigan Web (58 page)

Ralph spoke up. “You’re all forgetting the most important thing of all. The big question is what the Morrigan Web is. What does it do and how do we stop it?”

James shook his head slowly. “This is the problem, isn’t it? They’re all really serious questions. All of them are important. How do I know which one really is the one the dream inducer wants to answer?”

“I have a novel idea,” Albus shrugged. “Why don’t you just try it and find out?”

Ralph nodded thoughtfully. “It’s worth a try. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Rose stared hard at the burs in James’ hand. “I guess most of the danger really is just in getting to sleep. I suppose the answer will explain the question, once you wake up. Perhaps Albus is right.”

“I don’t know,” James said, suddenly hesitant. The burs prickled in his palm, tickling it slightly. “Maybe one of you should do it instead. Rose, you try it. You’re the smartest one of all of us.”

“Hah,” Albus scoffed.

“I can’t,” Rose replied, putting her fists on her hips. “The Yuxa Baslatma chose you. It will only work for you. For me, or any of the rest of us, it would just be a really strange, wild dream, full of nonsense.”

“Like all of my dreams,” Ralph nodded.

James gulped. “Suddenly I’m not all that tired.”

“Oh, we can totally help with that,” Louis said cheerfully, jumping to his feet. “We can make you a nice bed out of all our cloaks and then shoot them full of sleep charms. Rose knows those backward and forward, right Rose?”

Rose nodded. “Sure, yeah. They’re super simple, and work a treat. What do you say, James.”

James looked from Rose, to Albus, to Louis, to Ralph. All of them looked back at him with hopeful expectancy. Finally, he looked aside at Lily.

“You don’t have to, James,” she said worriedly. “It doesn’t seem all that safe. Perhaps it isn’t worth it.”

Strangely, his sister’s warning helped make up James’ mind. “I don’t think we can afford not to try,” he said, mustering his determination. “And I guess I’d rather try it with all your help than by myself in the dormitory.”

“Excellent!” Albus declared, producing his wand. “This is better than Winkles and Augers any day. Everyone toss your cloaks and stuff here on the bench. Rose, warm up those sleeping charms.”

A few minutes later, James clambered awkwardly onto the pile of cloaks, stretching out full length on his back.

“You don’t look like you’re ready for a nap,” Rose criticized. “You look more like a dead body that misplaced its casket.”

“I’m not used to napping with a load of people gathered around staring at me!” James complained nervously. “All of you just cram in on the other bench and quit ogling.”

“How’re those sleep charms working, then?” Ralph asked, wedging himself into a seat next to Rose. “Feeling tired yet?”

“I feel less tired than I have my whole life.” James groused. This was not entirely true, however. Even as he lay on the cushion of cloaks, his fists crossed over his chest, he could feel the subtle magic of the charms seeping into his body, loosening his tight shoulders and relaxing his tensed jaw.

Lily was the only one still standing. “Here, James,” she said, handing him a small bottle. “It’s what’s left of Louis’ liquorice soda. It’ll have to do.”

James sat up (with some effort, considering the effects of the sleep charms) and accepted the bottle. He opened his other fist, revealing the somewhat mashed pair of burs. “You think I should do the whole thing?” he asked, turning to Rose.

“All or nothing,” Albus nodded. “Down the hatch already.”

Rose merely shrugged. “Too much might be dangerous. Perhaps you want to save one for another question? If they even work that way.”

James took a deep breath. Finally, he tipped his hand over the mouth of the bottle, allowing both burs to roll into it. They caught there and he poked them with his finger until they plopped inside. He shook the bottle slightly, nervously, and then held it up to the light of the window.

“They’ve dissolved already,” he said.

Louis rolled his eyes. “They’re magic. Drink up.”

James didn’t like taking orders from Louis, but there didn’t seem to be any point in putting it off. He sniffed the bottle, which smelled strongly of black liquorice (with only a hint of something wild and musty), then, squeezing his eyes shut and holding his breath, he tipped the bottle against his lips. He gulped until the bottle was empty.

“How was it?” Lily asked, a bit breathlessly.

James shrugged, stifling a belch and handing the bottle to her. “Like liquorice soda. I don’t like it any old time, but it didn’t taste any different than ever. I wouldn’t have even known the dream inducers were in it.”

“Make with the napping, then,” Albus insisted, leaning forward in his seat. “You’ve only got ten minutes before magical brain scramble time.”

“No pressure, though,” Lily squeaked.

James flopped backwards onto the bed of cloaks. He knew that, on some level, he was nervous. But the feeling was distant, almost academic. Mostly, what he felt was a pervasive sense of extreme comfort, as if every muscle in his body, including his brain, had happily turned into pudding. The others continued to talk as he closed his eyes, but their voices were suddenly unimportant and far away. The subtle shimmy-rattle of the train became a lullaby, escorting him down, down, through descending layers of consciousness, until all that remained was a fog of expectancy.

The answer to my most vexing question,
he thought dimly, concentrating on the words, trying to cling to them.

The train lumbered on beneath him, and suddenly the journey seemed much longer than usual. It was no longer a journey of mere hours and miles; it was a journey of years and leagues, across oceans, over decades, spiralling below normal sleep and into something as bottomless as space and endless as time.

And slowly, on the other side of that great divide, James began to wake up.

“For Fredericka,” a girl’s voice said faintly. James looked to the side. A young woman, barely older than James himself, stood nearby. In her outstretched hand, smoking lazily, was a small pistol.

“For Fredericka,” she repeated faintly, “from her fiancé, William. And from me, her sister. Helen.”

James followed the aim of the pistol and saw a man lying face down, obviously dead. There was nothing else to see-- only the girl (Helen) and the dead man (Magnussen!), surrounded by infinite black void. But then, slowly, shapes began to resolve out of the dark. James looked around as buildings unsheathed from the empty fog all around. Wet cobbles spread away from Magnussen’s body. Barrels and crates shimmered into view, cramming a narrow, dank alley.

I’ve been here before,
James said, but his voice was silent, merely a thought in the void. He looked down and saw that he had no shape or form whatsoever. It was as if he was a ghost, invisible and unimportant, a mere observer in a world that was not his own. A shock of panic overwhelmed him and he turned on the spot, seeking some help or even a friendly face.

The first face he saw, however, was his own. His cheeks were pallid in the darkness, lit only by a guttering gas lamp near the mouth of the alley. His eyes were wide with shock. His wand was lowering in his hand.

“We’re sorry for what happened to Fredericka,” a voice-- Ralph’s-- said solemnly. “This man may have been a part of our world… but we aren’t like him.”

James suddenly saw it all. This was the night that he, Ralph and Zane had gone in search of the dimensional key, a magical silver horseshoe held by the powerful and sadistic Alma Aleron professor Ignatius Magnussen. Having followed the professor into mid-nineteenth century Philadelphia, they had witnessed the rather shocking truth of his demise-- that rather than escaping into the World Between the Worlds with the aid of his dimensional key, Magnussen had been cut down by a single Muggle bullet, fired by a young woman, the sister of one of Magnussen’s victims.

But why was James here now, watching it happen again? Was he meant to stop it somehow? Or was he meant to see something that he had missed the first time?

James watched as Helen met a young Muggle man (William?) near Magnussen’s corpse. The man limped slightly; he had nearly been killed by Magnussen and his vicious magical cane before Helen had appeared at the mouth of the alley, the pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart. The man knelt, pried the cane out of the dead man’s slab-like hand, and then, with a determined grimace, snapped the cane over his knee.

James knew what happened next-- he had already lived it once. William (the one-time fiancé of the murdered Fredericka) took the velvet bag containing the dimensional key from Magnussen’s other hand. He gave it to James, Ralph and Zane, who quickly made their exit, splashing through puddles as they dashed back to Alma Aleron and the fabled Timelock.

But dreaming James did not follow them. Surprisingly, he remained with Helen and William as they began to walk in the other direction, much more slowly, leaving Magnussen’s body hidden under a pile of rubbish. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the surroundings began to fade away again, receding into darkness like actors slipping behind a curtain, until all that remained was Helen and William, walking slowly away, huddled together and strangely silent.

And somehow James knew there was something secretly important about them. They were the main story now, not he, Ralph and Zane. He watched the young man and woman as they dwindled into distance.

In Helen’s apron pocket, still warm and smelling of spent gunpowder, was the small six-shot revolver. In William’s hand, clutched loosely, was the broken head of Magnussen’s cane, its eyes dark and diminished, but not dead. Never dead.

A cold wind buffeted over James, taking away the vision of William and Helen, the revolver and the cane. James sensed their story happening beyond the reach of that wind, as if the wind was time itself, stripping away days and weeks, months and years. Helen and William, strangely but not quite surprisingly, fell in love. They were married, and eventually they moved out of the grimy warren of Philadelphia’s wharf district and started a new life in the Pennsylvania countryside. There was a ramshackle (but lovingly maintained) farmhouse, surrounded by carefully planted fields, ribbons of straight, narrow roads, and a fresh, bubbling spring.

And there were children. They were happy in the farmhouse, or at least as happy as siblings can be, with their constant rivalries, dramas and petty quarrels. There were three daughters and one son, the youngest of the lot. The son’s name was Phillip, and James saw him grow through the years, becoming a fine young man, thin and tall, with a sharp, witty, inquisitive mind.

When Philip was twenty-five, his mother, Helen, died. The illness had fallen over her quickly, in the form of a fierce cold that had blossomed into pneumonia. Philip’s sisters lamented how suddenly fate moved, taking their mother in mere days, but Philip was secretly grateful. He was old enough to have seen how lingering illnesses can sometimes diminish their victims, leeching them slowly of joy, dignity, and purpose. Even in his grief, he was glad for his vibrant, joyful mother; glad that she had left the world swiftly, like a young bride eloping with fate, rather than being dragged along by it, slowly and reluctantly.

James hovered outside the old farmhouse as the funeral took place. He sensed the grief and sadness within, the celebration of a life well lived. The faint sound of hymn singing leaked into the evening air, led by the bereaved husband, William, his tenor voice not precisely musical, but strong and clear.

And then, sometime later, as the sun descended into the trees that fringed the fields, turning the sky a cauldron of copper and pink, Philip emerged from the house. He moved quietly, quickly, almost (James recognized this from his own adventures) furtively, dashing along a path between the fields, looking back once or twice to assure he was not followed.

James approached him, followed him silently, as the young man turned east, toward a thin strand of trees, and a rocky gully that bordered it.

Something was buried there. James sensed it pulsing in the earth, felt the pull of its dark magic and undiminished will. Philip was a Muggle, and yet he seemed aware of the buried force as well. Of course he did, for he had been there on the day his mother had buried it, many years earlier. He had been just a boy then, and when his mother had finished her task and returned to the farmhouse, he had dashed into the gully himself, curious to see what she had hidden away there under the rocks. Because Philip understood something that no one else did: his mother-- the woman who darned the holes in his socks and sprinkled brown sugar on his oatmeal, who hummed happily to herself from beyond the closed upstairs door of her bedroom every morning and who tucked him in each night with a kiss on his forehead and both cheeks-- his plain, pretty, everyday mother…
was magic
.

James understood. Helen had been no witch, but neither had she been purely Muggle. Like Petra’s sister, Izzy, Helen had occupied a strange middle ground between the polarities of power, instinctively following some deep, magical instinct, but not aware of it enough to embrace it. That’s how she had known to come to the alley on that fateful night in 1859, the pistol stashed in her apron, arriving at the very moment to save her future husband’s life. Her secret magic had compelled her. She herself didn’t understand it, but neither did she question it.