Lily and the Shining Dragons (2 page)

Henrietta sniffed. ‘She wants you because Georgie isn’t good enough.’

Georgie coughed. ‘I am here, in case you’d forgotten,’ she said sweetly. She didn’t always get on with Henrietta, who thought she was feeble. Unfortunately, sometimes Lily had to agree. She adored Georgie, but her big sister had a definite feeble streak.

‘I hadn’t.’ Henrietta waited, staring at her, in case Georgie was planning to deny it, but Georgie only went pink and looked miserable.

‘The spells might not have worked when we were back at Merrythought, and Mama was teaching you them, but they work now! That’s the problem!’ Lily pointed out. ‘They work too well. That wolf-thing you made was so good it nearly ate you, as well as tearing Marten to bits.’

‘And me.’ Henrietta nodded.

Lily had always hated Marten, her mother’s maid, without really knowing why. It had been horribly unsurprising to learn that the black-clad creature wasn’t human. Marten had been a construct of thousands upon thousands of intricately layered spells. Her mother’s work of art.

The work of art had followed them to London, like some sort of magical bloodhound. Marten had been sniffing for traces of the spells that the girls’ mother had woven into Georgie. She had been sent to drag them back. Mama had been on the point of giving up on Georgie, but the magic was starting to work in her now, seeping out whenever Georgie gave it a chance. Which wasn’t often. Georgie had locked her own magic away deep inside, frightened of what she might let out with it.

It was Mama’s own fault she had lost Marten, Lily thought, smiling to herself. It was almost funny now, a few days afterwards. But at the time, when she’d had to stand and watch her sister being dragged away, with Marten’s blackish claws stabbing into her throat, it had not been funny at all. Then Georgie’s terror had let the spells come slinking out, and it was Mama’s own magic that had destroyed her servant. A huge wolf, made from London dust, and a trickle of blood from Georgie’s scratched neck. The grey-red beast had turned on Marten, tearing away lumps of greenish spell-flesh, until she was only a pile of black clothes, and rustling dust.

Henrietta, however, had been rather put out by the wolf, as it was basically a much larger dog than she was, which offended her pride. ‘The spells are there, inside her, no question. But she doesn’t know what she’s doing with them! Do you?’ she added to Georgie, with a little snap at the hem of her skirt.

‘Don’t you dare bite that! This dress is new!’ Georgie hissed back. She wasn’t at all feeble about her clothes. Being at the theatre, and let loose in the costume wardrobe, she had discovered that she infinitely preferred sewing to spells. ‘I can’t help not being to control the magic. It was made that way, wasn’t it? I’m not supposed to be able to control it. Mama has the key, somehow…’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Ugh, how horrid. Like a sort of wind-up doll…’

‘But if we find our father,’ Lily explained to Daniel, ‘there’s a chance that he will have the – the key, too. Or at least, he’ll be able to help us work it out.’ She sighed. ‘Well, he’s the only other magician we know about, apart from Mama. He’ll have to help. And we have to find him.’ She sighed.

‘If he isn’t part of the plot as well,’ Henrietta muttered.

Lily glared at the dog disapprovingly. She was trying to cheer Georgie up, not make her worse.

‘He isn’t. I’m sure he isn’t. The letter, remember? He said he wasn’t!’ But Georgie was wringing her hands together worriedly. She wasn’t sure at all, and neither was Lily. Their father was their only hope – but it was a slim one.

‘How are you going to find your dad?’ Sam asked slowly, and the girls looked up in surprise. They had almost forgotten he was there. Sam was never talkative, but he had been one of the first people in the theatre, apart from Daniel, to learn their secret, and they trusted him. Henrietta adored him, and he made a special fuss over her, saving her bits of his lunches. He had liked her even before he knew she could talk, and now he regarded her as a little wonder – much more exciting than the girls, even though Henrietta couldn’t do magic herself.

Lily and Georgie looked at each other, and Georgie shrugged. ‘He’s in prison…’

‘And the prison might be in London – that’s where the letters to Mama came from. That’s all we know. Really everything.’ Lily sighed. Then she glanced at Daniel. ‘Do all magicians end up in the same prison?’ she asked him, frowning. ‘I suppose it can’t be just any old prison, can it? There must be special defences. Or guards who can stop spells. That’s what Father’s letter seemed to say. Although…that would probably mean they were using magic themselves, which is illegal, so I don’t see how…’ She swallowed, feeling suddenly a little sick. ‘Unless they do something to the prisoners, to stop their magic working. Cut the magic out of them, or something horrible like that…’

Daniel hugged her. ‘If they could do that, I think there would have been more fuss made about it. The old queen would have had it trumpeted from the rooftops.’ He held Lily’s shoulders, so he could look her in the eyes. ‘They couldn’t do it, Lily. There would have been problems from abroad, as well. It’s only here that magic’s illegal, remember. Magicians are flourishing in most of the rest of the world. Even here, if they renounce their magic, the way your mother swore to the Queen’s Men she had done, magicians are free. Under suspicion, always, and watched, but free. Your father must have refused to give his magic up.’

Lily smiled. She could understand that. She couldn’t imagine living without hers, even though Georgie seemed not to mind. She loved the permanent sense of tingly, sparkling possibility inside her. The way it rushed into her fingers so eagerly as soon as she called it. Even the cross, jumpy feeling under her skin when she’d cooped it up for too long, and it was aching to be set free. And she could put up with spells always making her hair curlier, although she would have loved sleek, straight hair like Georgie’s.

She felt closer to her father than she ever had, realising that he must have been the same way. He had curly hair too, she remembered, thinking of the wedding portrait in her mother’s green leather photograph album. He had been in prison for most of her life, and she had no memories of him.

‘Can you visit prisons?’ Lily asked Sam, rather doubtfully.

Sam snorted with laughter. ‘If you pay the guards. Or if you’re bringing in missionary tracts. But like you say, Miss Lily, it might all be different in a magicians’ prison.’

Daniel was scowling, running his fingers through his black hair, so it stood up on end even more than usual. ‘I must say, it would be a weight off my mind if you were to find him. You’re too young to be without anyone, the way you are.’

Lily smiled. Daniel sounded like a respectable old man with side-whiskers. Not the seventeen-year-old owner of a scandalous theatre.

‘Magicians’ prison. All I know about it is that it’s a secret. Closely guarded – no one knows where it is. The kind of thing you can be imprisoned for even asking about. Although you’d think there would be something about it in one of my books,’ Daniel murmured now. Books on magic were outlawed just as magic itself was, but Daniel had done a great deal of research for his conjuring act, and owned several banned volumes. He wandered towards the steps at the front of the stage, muttering to himself, and making for his office by the grand entrance to the theatre.

‘If you want this trick ready in two days’ time,’ Sam called after him, ‘don’t you think we ought to see if she fits? I know Miss Lily won’t be the one doing it for long, but you did tell that journalist that was here yesterday that there was to be a new trick, remember? The Devil’s Cabinet is old hat now, you said. Vandinovksi at the Ottoman Palace has the trick almost as well as we do. This weekend, you said. Come to the show on Saturday, you said.’

Daniel turned round, red-faced. ‘Yes. I quite forgot.’ He sighed. ‘And to be honest, Lily, I don’t think I’ll be able to find out what you need in any of my books. I’d have remembered, I’m sure. I’ve read them all so many times.’ He pushed up his shirtsleeves in a businesslike sort of way. ‘So. Here we are.’

Lily looked at the wooden cabinet in front of them, and nibbled her top lip doubtfully. She still didn’t see how it was going to work. Admittedly, she never could see through Daniel and Sam’s contraptions before they were explained to her, but then they’d never involved very sharp saws, till now. She was particularly anxious to make sure this one worked. She did wish Daniel wasn’t quite so butterfly-minded. When one was going to be sawn in half, one liked to know that the person with the saw was really paying attention.

‘Now, there is a very, very slight risk with this trick,’ Daniel explained, as he undid the shiny brass catches on the cabinet.

‘Of being cut in half?’ Lily asked, taking a step backwards.

‘No! Of course not. Just – well, it’s possible we might catch your toes. If you’re not quick enough.’ Daniel smiled at her winningly. ‘We’d only nick them…’ he said, in an earnest sort of voice.

‘She isn’t doing it!’ Georgie and Henrietta both snapped, at practically the same time. Then they glared at each other.

‘How would you cut my toes, when you’re sawing through the middle of me?’ Lily peered at the cabinet. Daniel had undone it now, so that it looked like a table, with two hinged boxes that folded down over it. The table had chains, and looked most unpleasant.

‘I’ll show you. Look, lie down here.’ Lily stared at the table suspiciously, and Daniel sighed. ‘I won’t even pick up the saw. I promise. Here, Henrietta, sit on it.’ He laid it on the floor, and the black pug planted her paws firmly on the handle.

‘Go on. I want to see,’ she commanded. ‘Hurry up, Lily.’

‘You lie down here – smiling, and waving, you know, so that the audience sees you aren’t afraid.’ Daniel ignored Henrietta snorting here. ‘And we put the chains around your arms, and your feet. The feet are very important.’

‘I know!’ Lily hissed. ‘Which is why I’d like to keep my toes!’

Daniel exchanged a look with Sam, a rolled eyes sort of look, but Lily didn’t care. ‘Lily, I haven’t even got the saw – let me just explain how it works!’

Lily wriggled gingerly into the box, and allowed Daniel to drape the chains over her. ‘Of course, for the show, we’ll make a fuss with padlocks, that sort of thing,’ he explained. ‘And then I fold the boxes down over you – and now you see, your feet are hidden, yes? But the audience can still see your face. I think it would be good if you looked just a little nervous now.’

Henrietta snickered, and Lily wriggled uncomfortably. The box fitted tightly around her neck, and it felt very strange having just her head sticking out at the end.

‘Not quite that nervous, please.’ Daniel frowned at her. ‘Now, do you see the tiny gap between the two boxes?’

‘No!’ Lily snapped. ‘I can’t see anything down here.’

‘Ah, no, of course not. Well, there is one, and that’s where the saw goes, you see.’

‘But then where does Lily go?’ Georgie asked worriedly. ‘I can see just a scrap of her dress through the gap – you can’t saw through there!’

‘She slips her feet out of the chains – because that hasp that fitted over them looks tight, but actually there’s plenty of room, Lily, especially if you lift your ankles a little bit. You pull your feet out, and curl up in this end of the box. It’s really very simple. The way the box is made, it looks shallower than it really is, that’s all. And the audience knows that you’re chained down, so they’ll be convinced that I’ve cut you in half! Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘I suppose so…’ Lily admitted. She had a feeling the illusion would look better when viewed standing up, rather than from inside.

‘What about the toes?’ Henrietta demanded, getting up, and standing on her hind legs to sniff at the gap between the boxes.

‘Ah. Yes. Lily, try to slip your feet out, and curl up, the way I described.’

Lily wriggled her ankles experimentally, and found that it was just as Daniel said, there was plenty of room. She drew her knees up to her chest, hugging her feet in as tightly as she could.

‘You’ve done it?’ Daniel asked hopefully, and Lily nodded. She was squashed so closely into the first box that she could hardly breathe, let alone talk.

‘Good! Now, you see, in the performance Georgie and I will work the saw back and forth – with a suitable effort, you know, as though we were really cutting through you – and then these steel plates slot in, here and here. And again, I’ll force them down, as though there’s resistance—’

‘Ugh…’ Lily muttered. Daniel’s eyes were shining with excitement; it was rather sickening.

‘So then the box hinges apart, like so!’ Daniel flipped the catches, and dramatically swung the table so it split in two. It was rather an anticlimax to see Lily’s black button boots, squashed up into her petticoats – Sam even averted his eyes. ‘Well, of course the audience will only see the steel plates. You fit perfectly, Lily. But you mustn’t stick your feet out any further…’

‘But how will I know if they’re far enough in?’ Lily asked him, wriggling anxiously. ‘And more to the point, how will
you
know?’

‘I won’t, that’s the slight drawback with this apparatus. But it will be fine! You’ve got lots of room. Really!’

‘Are you worrying about the new trick?’ Henrietta asked. She was lying on the bed next to Lily, on her back, with her little black paws waving in the air. It was an undignified position, which she never would have taken up in company.

Lily stared down at her fondly. It was mid-afternoon, and she’d been planning to sleep, as the variety show ran on late, and the second part of their act was the finale. But she’d given after up after a few minutes’ irritable wriggling, and now had her chin on her hands. She was vaguely reading one of the illustrated papers that someone had left lying in the theatre. ‘No. Well, maybe a little. I don’t like the sound of those steel plates. And I wish Daniel didn’t sound so gory about it all.’

Henrietta leaned sideways, and licked one of Lily’s hands. ‘Mmm. He was enjoying all that talk of saws. Silly little boy.’

‘Exactly.’ Lily sighed. ‘But that wasn’t actually what I was worrying about. I was thinking about Father.’