Carry On

So Simon and I show up in this clearing, and I can feel straight away it’s a dead spot—but it’s more than that. It’s worse. There’s this weird whistling on the wind, and everything’s dry, so dry and hot.

Maybe it’s not a dead spot, I thought, maybe it’s a dying spot.

“Lancashire,” Simon said to himself.

And then—the Humdrum was there.

And I knew it was the Humdrum because he was the source of everything. Like the way you know that the sun is what makes the day bright. All the heat and dryness were coming from him. Or sucking towards him.

And neither of us, Simon or me, cried out or tried to run, because we were too much in shock: There was the Humdrum—and he looked just like Simon. Just like Simon when I first met him. Eleven years old, in grotty jeans and an old T-shirt. The Humdrum was even bouncing that red rubber ball that Simon never put down our first year.

The kid bounced the ball at Simon, and Simon caught it. Then Simon started screaming at the Humdrum, “Stop it! Stop it! Show yourself, you coward—show yourself!”

It was so hot, and so dry, and it felt like the life was getting sucked out of us, sucked right up through our skin.

Both of us had felt it before during the Humdrum’s attacks—that sandy, dry suck. We knew what he felt like, we recognized him. But we’d never seen the Humdrum before. (Now I wonder if that was the first time the Humdrum was able to show himself.)

Simon was sure the Humdrum was wearing his face just to taunt him. He kept howling at it to show its real face.

But the Humdrum just laughed. Like a little kid. The way little kids laugh once they’ve got started, and they can’t stop.

(I can’t really say why I think so or what it means, but I don’t think that the Humdrum appeared that way as a mean joke. I think that’s his true form. That he looks like Simon.)

The suck was too much. I looked down at my arm, and there was yellow fluid and blood starting to seep through my pores.

Simon was shouting. The Humdrum was laughing.

I reached out and took the ball from Simon and threw it down the hill.

The Humdrum stopped laughing then—and immediately darted after the ball. The second he turned away from us, the sucking stopped.

I fell over.

Simon picked me up and threw me over his shoulder (which is pretty amazing, considering I weigh as much as he does). He pushed forward like a Royal Marine, and as soon as he was out of the dead spot, he shifted me around to the front—and big bony wings burst out of his back. Sort-of wings. Misshapen and overly feathered, with too many joints …

There’s no spell for that. There are no words. Simon just said, “I wish I could fly!” and he made the words magic.

(I haven’t told anyone that part. Magicians aren’t genies; we don’t run on wishes. If anyone knew that Simon could do that, they’d have him burnt at the stake.)

We were both hurt, so I tried to cast healing spells. I kept thinking that the Humdrum would haul us back as soon as he found his ball. But maybe that wasn’t the sort of trick he could manage twice in one day.

Simon flew as far as he could with me clinging to him—stuck to him with spells and fading fast. Then I think he realized how mad we looked and landed near a town.

We were going to take a train, but Simon couldn’t get his wings to retract. Because they weren’t wings. They were bones and feathers and magic—and will.

This is what my nightmares are about:

Hiding in a ditch along the side of the road. Simon’s exhausted. And I’m crying. And I’m trying to gather the wings up and push them into his back, so that we can walk into town and catch a train. The wings are falling apart in my hands. Simon’s bleeding.

In my nightmares, I can’t remember the right spell.…

But I remembered it that day. It’s a spell for scared children, for sweeping away practical jokes and flights of fancy. I pressed my hand into Simon’s back and choked out, “Nonsense!”

The wings disintegrated into clumps of dust and gore on his shoulders.

Simon picked someone’s pocket at the train station, so we could buy tickets. We slept on the train, leaning against each other. And when we got back to Watford, it was in the middle of the end-of-year ceremony, and Mum and Dad were there, and they dragged me home.

They almost didn’t let me come back to school this autumn—they tried to talk me into staying in America. Mum and I yelled at each other, and we haven’t really talked properly since.

I told my parents I couldn’t miss my last year. But we all knew that what I really meant was that I wouldn’t let Simon come back without me.

I said I’d walk back to Watford, that I’d find a way to fly.

Now they make me carry a mobile phone.

37

AGATHA

Watford is a quiet place if you’re not dating Simon Snow—and if you’ve spent so many years with Simon Snow that you never bothered making other friends.

I don’t have a roommate. The roommate the Crucible gave me, Philippa, got sick our fifth year and went home.

Simon said Baz did something to her. Dad said she had sudden, traumatic laryngitis—“a tragedy for a magician.”

“That would be a tragedy for anyone,” I said. “Normals talk, too.”

I don’t really miss Philippa. She was dead jealous that Simon liked me. And she laughed at my spellwork. Plus she always painted her nails without opening a window.

I do have friends, real friends, back home, but I’m not allowed to tell them about Watford. I’m not even able to tell them—Dad spelled me mum after he caught me complaining to my best friend, Minty, about my wand.