Chapter 9
Angelmere
“This is The Magic Capital?” I ask as my trainers squelch down into the muddy mess inside the gate. At least I hope it’s mud. It smells suspiciously like something else.
“Welcome to Angelmere,” De Silva says, bowing before us. “My home from home. You stand now on Salmon Street, as Lodinitus once did.”
A wide dirt track lined with tiny, straw-roofed stone houses runs up the hill before us. At the top a clock tower rises into the sky.
The street is busy. People scurry about like ants; carrying sacks or crates, pushing and shouting; their feet churning the dirt track into an even muddier mess.
“Get yer charms here. Magic charms!” a red-faced, red-bearded man shouts from behind a rough wooden table to our right. The table is covered with necklaces made of different coloured stones, glass boxes containing what look to be body parts and small bottles with handwritten labels. The nearest one says, ‘Orc Repellent’.
Alice taps my arm.
I grin. “Wonder if he’s got troll repellent?”
“I’d buy the lot!”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” De Silva says. “That’s Osgord. The Angelmere Guild of Magical Traders kicked him out last week for selling green beans and calling them baby troll fingers.”
“Why would you buy baby troll fingers?” Alice asks, wrinkling her nose.
De Silva looks shocked. “Why wouldn’t you?”
A bell rings out from the clock tower, the sound washing down the street, cutting through the babble of the crowd. People start to head off up the hill in a steady stream. It looks like the working day is over.
Osgord pulls a large sack from behind him. He shakes it once, opens it and moves the open end across the table in front of him. My eyes widen as every bottle, necklace, stone and box is sucked up into the sack – like some kind of weird magical hoover. In seconds the table is clear. Osgord slings the sack over his shoulder like it weighs nothing and sets off up the hill.
I grin. “Did he just…”
Alice gapes, her mouth open like a fish. “I think he did. This place is nuts!”
“Damnation!” De Silva spits the word out. “Magical trading hours are over. And Hazel’s a stickler for the rules.”
“Hazel?” I ask, a small sliver of doubt worming its way into my excitement.
De Silva rubs his chin and stares up the hill towards the clock tower.
“Why are we seeing this Hazel?” Alice asks.
“So I can get you home of course. You need to be returned, tout de suite. I have some...things I must do.”
“Can we help, Sir?” I ask.
“With what?”
“You know, the…things.”
De Silva shakes his head and gives me a thin smile. “No. But thank you. It’s just a few simple errands.” He runs a hand over his face. “We’ll sleep here tonight, go to the market in the morning, see Hazel and have you home in time for tea.”
It’s cool we get to stay a night – even cooler that our parents won’t notice – but I can’t get rid of the gnawing feeling that whatever things De Silva is mixed up in are dangerous.
I really, really need to speak to Alice.
I nudge her. “We get to stay the night. Well cool, eh?”
She nods distractedly, probably thinking the same thoughts I am.
We follow the crowd up the hill to a wide stone square with the clock tower in the middle. The tower is surrounded by a moat and out of this run twelve small streams, equally divided like the clock face above. The water flows outwards to the edge of the square before diving underground.
A few people are sat around, taking in the last rays of the sun and I turn my face up to the sky, enjoying the warmth.
The tower is made of the same stone as Gunwaddle’s bridge and stretches high above us. It looks a bit like Big Ben, just slightly smaller, much older and way stranger.
“Lodinitus created this,” De Silva tells us. “The clock tower is the oldest building in Angelmere. This side shows the time here: five thirty-four. The opposite side shows the time in Fae: six thirty-four. The Fae don’t do daylight saving.”
Me and Alice walk around the tower, staring up at the clock faces. The Angelmere side is made of a polished white stone that reflects the reddening sky. The numbers are some kind of black metal; embossed onto the surface.
The Fae side is black and silver. Ornate carvings edge it and it seems to shimmer, to glint as if in moonlight, even though it’s not yet dark.
The other two sides are blank. But as we pass around the tower a second time, the sun drops behind the buildings causing long shadows to creep across the square. Numbers begin to slowly form on the blank clock face we’re staring at. They’re like shadows thrown from faraway: slanted and distorted; grey at first but as the sun drops lower, they deepen to black.
A cold excitement creeps through me.
And then ghostly, gloomy, strangely ornate clock hands grow outwards from the centre point.
The time shown is 10:23.
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“What the…” I whisper.
Alice nods and runs around to the other side. “If you think that’s weird, come and check this!”
The other side has got no hands at all, and the shadow numbers are totally messed up, backwards, or with chunks missing from them. They shift slowly around to the left – anticlockwise – in a sort of ticking, rocking motion.
“Strange, isn’t it?” De Silva says, coming to stand beside us.
The shadows darken, twist, settle again.
I nod, staring wide-eyed at the bizarre display. The sun is on the other side of the tower. Shadows this side should be impossible. “What is it?”
“No one knows. This side has been blank since Lodinitus built the tower. Many think it has something to do with a corruption in the Shadow Time.”
My heart flutters. “The Shadow Time?”
We follow De Silva around the tower to where we saw the ghostly clock hands form. The time is still 10:23 although at least a few minutes have gone by.
He points upwards. “That is the Shadow Time.”
Alice runs her hands over her braids and narrows her eyes. “That’s the time back home, isn’t it?” She pulls out her phone. My stomach flips as she shows me the time on the screen – 10:23am.
It makes sense now. Time is slower in our world than here. It should take a whole day for this side of the clock to tick five minutes. It’s not like I didn’t believe Sir De Silva, but seeing it myself brings a real, true calm followed by a buzz of excitement.
We have time to explore this strange new world. And our phones will tell us exactly when we’ll get back home to Bledgley.
De Silva folds his arms. “Very good Sir Werdun. The Shadow Time is the time in your world. The real world you might call it, although it’s no more or less real than this one. The appearance of The Shadow Time means the world we live in and that of the Fae are aligning again. The Fae haven’t entered the mortal world for twenty years.” He falls silent and begins chewing one of his nails.
Unease oozes from him.
It seems to soak into me, into my bones, filling me up like a sponge in water. The story of the knight cursed by the Fae Queen comes back to me. I’m desperate to know what happened – why the Fae disappeared and why they’re returning now – but the questions sit heavy in my chest.
De Silva runs a hand through his hair and whispers to himself, “Another strange tale of The Shadow Time. Not told in prose, but told in rhyme.”
Me and Alice exchange a glance.
“What was that, Sir? A poem?” she asks.
De Silva snaps back from his thoughts. “Hmm?” He shivers a little.
My chest suddenly feels heavy, like someone opened me up and stacked stones inside. Something’s definitely not right, and I’m pretty sure Alice feels it too.
De Silva claps his hands together. “You know what? I’m as famished as a goat on boat, and Jeremiah at the Dragon’s Tail does the best Lamb’s Stomach in town.”
“Anything else on the menu?” Alice asks.
“Of course!” he replies. “There’s Pig’s Ear Pie, Goat’s Horn Soup and Pottage for the less adventurous. The landlord, Jeremiah may have hands the size of dinner plates, but in the kitchen they work some real magic.”
I get a tingle through me at the word magic. “What? He, like, uses spells?”
De Silva laughs. “You will think so once you taste his cooking. But no. That was just a turn of phrase.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling slightly disappointed I won’t be eating magic pies and floating chips. My stomach rumbles. Magic or not, I need some food. “What’s Pottage?” I ask, hopefully.
“Vegetable soup, served in a bowl made of crusty bread. It’s very good, but you’d be mad not to try the stomach!”
I turn to Alice. “You having the lamb’s stomach then?”
“Luckily, I’m vegetarian.”
“Well lucky. Sounds like it’s Pottage for dinner.”
She puts her hands on her hips and grins. “I reckon.”
We follow De Silva past the clock tower and out of the square to where a cobbled road curves away to the right, its edges lined with old, twisted tree trunks.
I frown. The tree trunks look identical. They rise up out of evenly spaced gaps in the pavement and, like streetlights, curve at the top. No branches or leaves grow from them and each and every one has a hollowed-out section at the end – kind of like where the bulb would be.
As the sun finally drops behind the outer walls of the town, dusk creeps over my shoulder and onwards through the streets of Angelmere, sprinkling unease and wonder in equal measure.
A cart loaded with wood trundles past, its wheels clacking loud on the stones. The cart heads up the street and stops outside a huge building of dark wood and white walls that sits on the curve of the road. A sign showing a black scaly tail creaks gently above the door. In the low light I can just make out the letters painted in gold at the bottom of the sign:
The Dragon’s Tail Inn
First Free House of Angelmere
Proprietor: Jeremiah Higglesworth
This is too cool. I love it. It’s like I’m inside one of my books.
De Silva stops and breathes deeply. “Ah, the gloaming.” He holds up a hand. “Look up, young knights. You are about to witness one of the many wonders of Angelmere.”
I tilt my head back.
One by one the stars seem to unpick themselves from the night sky and float downwards. Hundreds of shining points of light. They come together and descend in a line, like a laser beam then break apart and spread out over the town. One floats by me warming my cheek. It bobs and weaves like a butterfly then enters the hollow of the nearest tree. A second later, light spreads outwards in a soft edged circle. And all down the road – from every tree hollow – similar lights wink on spreading a warm, welcoming glow over the twilight streets of Angelmere.
There’s a street sign right next to me. I’d not noticed it before, but now, lit by the hazy yellow glow from the lamp-tree, I read:
Salmon Street <~~~~
The Dragons Tail Inn ^
Market Place ^^
The Cut ~~~~>
(No Access between twilight and dawn.
DANGER: Chance of eternal disappearance.
Angelmere Town Council accepts no responsibility
should death or disappearance occur)
The Cut is a dark alleyway that runs by the side of the inn. Just looking down into that thick, velvet darkness makes my heart beat faster. A point of floating light tries to enter the alleyway. It pulses like it got stung before shooting back into the sky.
“Not even The Lamplighters can enter The Cut at night,” De Silva says.
“What’s down there?” I ask, fighting a strange urge to walk into that darkness – to let the unknown swallow me whole.
“A strip of grass that leads to a brick wall,” De Silva answers. “At least in the daytime.” He shrugs. “At night, no one knows. No one who’s gone in has ever come out again.” He points at the street sign. “Suffice to say, don’t go in there at night. In the day it’s perfectly safe though.”
It takes all my effort not to take a step forward. De Silva puts a hand on my shoulder and turns me away so I’m facing the tree-lamps.
It’s like a cord has been cut. It’s like at the Kao tree. So many things to tempt you. Do you just run headlong into some and then work out what you’re going to do next?
“The Lamplighters are something else, are they not?” De Silva says gently.
Alice stands on tiptoes and tries to peer into one of the hollow openings at the end of the lamp-trees. “What are they?”
“Some will tell you they’re the spirits of the departed come to light the way for the living. Others that they’re remnants of Fae Dust left over from the magic that created Angelmere.”
“They’re amazing.” Her voice is full of wonder.
De Silva smiles. “Sometimes when you’ve seen something so often it’s easy to forget how magical it is to experience it for the first time.” He sighs. “How easily new experiences become old. New experiences are gifts we should cherish.”
His words sink into me: directly into my heart. I feel like they’re just for me. And like a key to a box they open something inside. The rush of emotions is dizzying. Fear, excitement, anger, and happiness all swirl, bouncing off one another.
My life is like a school exercise book, the first few pages already filled. But I’ve turned to the next sheet, am faced with a blank page and now it’s my choice whether I write carefully, scribble or rip the whole thing up.
“And now my good knights,” De Silva says, “let me show you another wonder of Angelmere: The Dragon’s Tail Inn! A meeting place of the strange and wonderful. An interesting place for the bored to while away a few hours. A hub of news and employment. Whatever you want, you’ll find or lose it at The Dragon’s Tail.”
I adjust the foil in my belt: take a deep breath and follow Alice and De Silva as they cross the road and head towards the wood and metal door of the inn. As we get closer a pleasant glow spills out from the open windows, along with the shouts and laughter of those inside.
It almost feels like I’m home.