The Second Forever (4 page)

As the two children hurried away, neither of them saw the flicker of light inside the mummy. It was so brief that even if they had seen it, they would have put it down to their imaginations.

But it wasn't. Archimedes had witnessed it and sat, waiting for it to happen again. His fear turned to greeting as he anticipated the return of the ancestor who he hadn't seen for such an incredibly long time. No, that wasn't quite true. He had seen her almost every day. He had come into the small room and waited in front of the glass case for her return.

The last time they had been together they were in another country and another civilisation, in a period when cats had been revered as gods. Unlike humans who were mummified with the help of ancient potions and chemicals, cats were merely left out to dry in the sun before being wrapped in their bandages and buried. This, of course, meant that everything they needed to return to life was there, unspoilt by poisons or chemistry.

The light flickered again and dust fell from the mummy's bindings as the lungs inside drew air. Life never stopped. It simply transferred its breath onto
the next generation.

‘
W
e didn't come back here on the bat either,' said Festival when they were back upstairs in Peter's room. ‘Remember?'

‘But the door we came through will be under hundreds of feet of water now, won't it?' said Peter.

‘Yes, of course,' said Festival, ‘but we should check it out.'

‘My dad said he was going to go back up there and build a brick wall across the door so that no one could come after us,' said Peter, ‘though I'm not sure if he ever did.'

‘Haven't you been back up there since we came through it?'

‘No, I promised my dad I wouldn't,' said Peter.

‘I think we should go and look,' said Festival. ‘If the door is still there, then it will be below millions of gallons of water. And even if your dad did build the wall, we could drill a tiny hole through and find out.'

‘I suppose.'

‘Listen, if all that water is there and we made a hole though, then the water would start to drain from my world and come back to yours,' said Festival. ‘If it did, we wouldn't have to re-write the book.'

‘Yes, we would,' said Peter.

‘I don't see why,' said Festival.

‘Well, suppose we did save your world from drowning and brought water back here. That wouldn't be enough to fix it,' said Peter. ‘The river is still running the wrong way. Your world would end up a desert and mine would get flooded. No, we have to re-create the book to make the river run the right way again.'

‘It's only a single river,' said Festival. ‘I can't see how one river running backwards can be that important.'

But they both knew it was. The drought and the flood it had caused told them that. It was as if that single small river on that remote island was the mother of every other river in Festival's world and Peter's world, too.

Still, they had a while to wait before the next full
moon, so they decided to return into the attics and find the door.

‘Do you think we should talk to your parents and your grandad first?' said Festival.

‘I'm sure we should,' said Peter. ‘But you know that if we do, they'll stop us from going.

‘And, listen,' Peter continued, ‘something's been bothering me. When you arrived, did my grandad ask you why you'd come back? I'd have thought that'd be the first thing he'd have said when he saw you.'

Festival stopped and shook her head. She hadn't thought of it before, but it was obvious and he hadn't asked her. He'd just been pleased to see her and taken her up to the apartment for tea.

‘You don't think he knew you were coming, do you?' said Peter.

‘I don't see how he could have,' Festival replied. ‘But then, I don't want to say anything nasty, I mean, he is your grandfather . . .'

‘Something isn't quite right, is it?'

‘No. I mean, now I think of it, he didn't seem at all surprised to see me, and he was standing right there in the dinosaur gallery when I arrived,' said Festival.

‘I suppose he could have noticed the bat had gone when you had summoned it, but I bet if we asked him, he'd just say it was a coincidence he was there,' said Peter.

‘It's a bit unlikely, isn't it?' said Festival.

‘Especially as he hardly ever goes around the museum anymore.' Peter paused before starting again. ‘Well, there's no way we'll ever know unless he tells us.

‘I've always thought there were lots of things he wasn't telling me,' continued Peter. ‘I don't mean now, but the first time too. It was just odd. Like the fact his sister was living in your world. He'd never mentioned he had a sister and he didn't seem surprised by what I told him.'

‘Maybe he's just trying to protect you,' said Festival. ‘After all, it's obvious he loves you very much, so I can't see how he wouldn't tell us anything that might help.'

‘Maybe,' said Peter. ‘But the weirdest thing is, the other day when I was asking him about his sister and why she had gone to live in your world, he said she hadn't. He said that's where they're originally from and he had come to live here.'

‘No way!'

‘Yes, he said his grandad stole the book from Darkwood and fled here to hide it, and his wife and my grandfather came with him.'

‘Oh my God,' said Festival. ‘So your grandfather knows everything about my world. I wonder why he didn't go there to search for your dad when he disappeared. You'd think it would have been the first place he'd look.'

‘Yes, but he was probably scared Darkwood would find him.'

‘I suppose so,' said Festival.

‘Well, whatever's going on,' said Peter, ‘I don't think we should talk to anyone else about it.'

Since their adventure together years ago, Peter had spent less and less time exploring the deserted corridors and storerooms. He had certainly never been back in the attics in any of that time. He half-thought that maybe if he hadn't gone up there in the first place, none of this would have happened. On the other hand, he had found his father and brought him home.

It took Peter a while to find the panel through to the stairs that led back up into the roof. Cobwebs strung between the walls told them that no one else had been there for a long time either. No one except Archimedes. There were no cobwebs below cat height, and where dust had gathered there were paw prints.

Two sets.

Not the same set twice, but two different sets of slightly different sizes. It was a difference too subtle for Peter or Festival to notice, but it was there. They assumed he had been there twice, which would have meant he had gone back another way, as the two sets were travelling in the same direction.

Archimedes had not been alone.

‘It's just along here,' said Peter, leading Festival through the gloom.

The skylights were buried under thick layers of dust that cut out nearly all the light. The first time Peter had travelled the corridor he had heard noises – noises that could have been distant voices, or footsteps, or things being moved around. There had been rain thundering on the roof that time, but now there was nothing, not even the sound of their own footsteps. Peter stood completely still and indicated for Festival to do the same. The silence grew stronger and, even when they held their breaths, there wasn't a single sound.

‘There were all sorts of noises when I was up here the first time,' said Peter. ‘Not just the rain, but dozens of other noises too.'

‘I don't think I've ever been anywhere where you couldn't hear something,' said Festival.

‘Oh well, we're nearly there. I think it's just around this corner.'

But it wasn't.

‘I'm sure this was where I came,' said Peter.

Two more corners just led to two more corners and two more corners and yet more, until it seemed as if they were back where they had started.

And they were.

Their footprints appeared by the door at the top of the stairs that they had come up. They walked around again in case they had missed a turn somewhere, but there weren't any. Just the single corridor with no branches and hundreds and hundreds of doors.

‘I reckon my father did this to stop me from trying to go back to your world,' said Peter. ‘There's no such thing as magic, and we are definitely in the right place. I've been all over this museum, and if there was another attic like this, I'd have found it. I think he has moved some doors around to bypass the end of the corridor and create an endless loop. And the only way we'll find it would be to open every single door and look inside. I don't know how many doors there are, but it would take longer than waiting for the next full moon.'

‘Eight hundred and twenty-seven,' said Festival.

‘What?'

‘There are eight hundred and twenty-seven doors,' said Festival. ‘I counted them when we went through the second time.'

‘Wow.'

‘And Archimedes's prints stopped at the four hundred and thirteenth door,' Festival added.

‘Well, that must be it,' said Peter.

They walked around until they reached the door.

‘It has to be the right one,' said Peter. ‘It's about where I thought it would be when we came by the first time.'

The two children stood and looked at the door, each waiting for the other to open it. They glanced awkwardly at each other and then, realising there probably wasn't anything to be scared of, reached for the handle at the same time. The touch of Festival's hand over his made Peter blush, and they both pulled their hands away with an embarrassed laugh.

Through the door was the original corridor, and at the far end where the wall had been that led to the library, there was indeed a solid brick wall.

‘If Dad built that,' said Peter, ‘I don't see why he bothered to hide the way here too.'

‘Maybe he thought we'd try to knock it down?' said Festival.

‘Mmm.' Peter felt the wall. It was completely dry, as dry as everywhere else in his world.

‘I suspect,' he said, ‘that if we did manage to dig our way through the cement and take some of the bricks out, we'd find something even harder on the other side. I mean, with all that water behind the old door, there's no way some dampness wouldn't have seeped through and made patches on the bricks. In fact, the pressure probably would have made it collapse.'

‘Probably a huge sheet of steel or something like that embedded in the wall,' said Festival.

The cat prints had gone through the last door on the right before the wall, into the room where Peter had met Bathline, the old lady who had given him the cursed book in the first place. The room looked exactly as it had done five years earlier – even the cobwebs and dust appeared as if they had been frozen in time – and Archimedes was curled up in the old lady's chair. Archimedes looked up and greeted Peter with a short meow. In the glow of the dusty sunlight pouring through the window, Peter could see the cat's eyes, which had once shone so brightly it was as if they had been lit by electricity, were looking old and cloudy.

It shocked Peter. He hadn't noticed the friend he had known all his life had been actually getting older. Partly because he had never seen the cat in direct sunlight before, but mostly because the idea of Archimedes ageing and dying was too awful to allow into his thoughts. He had always been there. He was in Peter's earliest memories and the boy had just assumed he would be there forever. He picked the old cat up and sat down with him in his lap. He felt incredibly sad and guilty that he hadn't realised his oldest friend was tired and undoubtedly in the last part of his life.

‘What's the matter?' said Festival.

‘Archimedes,' said Peter. ‘He's old. I just never thought about it before. He's always been there. I kind of assumed he always would be.'

Festival put her hand on Peter's shoulder. Archimedes stared up at her with a faraway look in his face.

‘I think he's blind,' said Festival, and Peter's sadness grew so big it made him cry.

‘Listen,' said Festival, ‘it's like your grandfather when you tried to make him well. People and animals know when their time is coming to an end. It's not something to get sad about. Life moves on. Your grandad had your father, who had you. That's how it's meant to be.'

‘What, you think Archimedes has children?' said Peter.

‘I'm sure he has,' said Festival. ‘And I suspect that we will meet them when he's ready.'

‘I suppose so, but they won't be Archimedes.'

‘Of course they won't, but it doesn't mean they won't be just as wonderful or even better,' said Festival. ‘Archimedes is like your grandfather. I think he knows more than he's telling. If you look at the cats in my world, there's something about every single one of them that looks like him.'

‘So Archimedes must have been affected by the
book,' said Peter. ‘That would explain why he never seemed to get any older.'

‘Well, he does turn up at all sorts of unexpected places,' said Festival. ‘It wouldn't be surprising if he'd been there when someone had been reading the book.'

‘That would explain,' Peter continued, ‘why he now seems to have aged all of a sudden. We did it when he destroyed the book. We made him get old.'

‘No, no,' said Festival. ‘We
allowed
him to get old.'

‘Yes, okay, all right, but in doing that we've killed him,' said Peter.

‘But remember Bathline and her son?' said Festival. ‘All they wanted was to grow older and die. Once they could, they were happy. It could be the same for Archimedes.'

‘Do you really think so?'

‘Yes, I do. Look at him. He seems peaceful and content.'

It was true. The old cat lay in the chair where Peter had put him down, purring softly to himself and staring off into the far side of some invisible distance buried in the clouds of his blindness. And even though cats can't smile, he did look at peace. Peter wondered if he should carry him back to his room and tuck him up in his own bed, but Festival thought he looked so perfect where he was that it was best to leave him be.