I could not believe it when the Izzys turned up! It seemed like the last straw, even though it was more proof that I wasn’t imagining the conspiracy, since it made it clear that Heppy and Judith had really vanished, too.
Then the Izzys insisted on coming with us to find this Romanov person. We should have simply dashed off and left them while they were busy pulling strings of cheese off their toast with their teeth. But they shouted to know what we were doing, and Nick took entirely the wrong line with them. He told them they had to stay behind and explain to Dora. He said they were too young to go on the dark paths. You would not credit the whining and arguing and winning persuasions this led to from the Izzys. When that didn’t work, they followed it up with double yelling. At least that gave Grundo time to eat a proper breakfast.
When he and Toby had finished eating, I gave in. I said, “All right, you can come.” They instantly stopped whining, wiped their greasy hands on their sailor suits, and flung their arms round me, exclaiming that I was the most marvelous cousin in the world! I pushed them away. “On condition that you stop acting about and behave,” I added. They looked wronged and hurt and saintly. “Just stop trying to twist everyone around your greasy little fingers,” I said.
“Yes, cut the glamour,” Nick said. “You’re like a couple of aging film stars. You could be sixty instead of six.”
“We’re not six!” Isadora exclaimed—if she was the one in white. “We’re nearly nine!”
“Whatever,” said Nick. “I’ve had enough. Let’s go.”
We all bundled out into the garden at the precise moment when the goat bit through the last of her stake with a snap. Nick dashed over and caught hold of the stake at both ends, so that the chain fastened to the goat’s neck couldn’t slide off it.
“Now, Helga,” he said, “we want you to take us to Romanov. Romanov, Helga. All of you think very hard about this goat taking us back to her owner.”
Helga leered up at Nick with her evil goat’s face and chewed her cud, quite unmoved. We stood round her, panting and trying to will her to obey Nick. I tried to find a spell among the hurt woman’s flower files that would help. But that woman knew goats. I found, under Teasel, to drive sheep without a dog, and to call cattle, and to influence a pig, and after further searching, I found to teach a dog to obey, to call a hawk to the hand, and even to tame a feral cat, but not a single thing about goats. So I dropped that idea and looked through journey spells instead. I found the Speedwell spell and the one Mrs. Candace had used, and a whole string of magics called journeys in the spirit, none of which seemed quite right. The trouble with ordinary journey spells was that they were just that—spells for travel in country that you knew—and the spirit journeys meant that you left your body behind. I gave up and found one called to bless a journey instead.
And while we waited, I couldn’t help noticing that it was the most heavenly day, one of those days with a milky look over the blue sky, where everything seems to be holding its breath for something marvelous to happen. Beyond the hazy chimneys around the garden, I could hear the huge, hushed mutter of London. The lawn we were standing on was gray-green with dew, marked all over with the faint green footsteps of salamanders. In the distance a silvery clock was striking the half hour, up and down the scale, as if London were singing encouragement to us.
By then Nick was putting out instructions to the goat so strongly that I was actually getting mental glimpses of a flat green shore where the sea was divided into big triangles of differently colored water. As the clock finished striking, Helga sighed. Then she ducked clear of Nick and bounced sharply away, pulling the chain taut with a rattle.
“All hold on to me and to one another,” Nick said. “Don’t let go.”
We each snatched hold of the nearest person. Grundo grabbed Nick, and I took hold of Grundo’s shirt. Behind me, one of the Izzys said, “You’ll disarrange my pleats!” and as she said it, we were off at a run, diagonally across the dewy lawn. I just had time to think what fools we looked, rushing through the garden in a line behind a goat, when we were not in the garden anymore. We were plunging down a steep, earthy path that very quickly became a short tunnel. Some Izzy squeaked that it was dark. Then
we came out into the queerest and most terrifying place I had ever seen.
It was like the sky on a summer night. It was dark and blue, but with light in it somewhere, so that it was not totally dark, but there were no stars. The terrifying part was that this sky was all round us, above and below, in an immense dark blue void. In front of us, stretching away into distant distance, was a line of bright islands. They were just hanging there, like unstrung beads, or huge stepping-stones, for as far as we could see. Each island was a slightly different shape from the others, but each shone out in various greens and golds and blues, blazing a path across the void. And each one was only about ten feet across.
As I got to the end of the tunnel, the goat jumped to the nearest island, which dipped and swung and swayed under her, quite hideously.
“I can’t do that!” I gasped. I was giddy just to look.
“Interesting, though,” Nick panted, scrambling on the earthy edge of the tunnel. He sounded just as scared as I was, but he said, “They must be universes. It’s just the way a goat would see things.”
The goat galloped on across the island, and he had to jump after her. The island positively plunged under his weight. I had to jump then, because Grundo leaped after Nick, and the island not only plunged again, but went jogging around sideways when the other three jumped onto it. I couldn’t stand up. The awful thought was that if I over-balanced, I’d simply fall into that empty blue night and go on falling. It was too much for me. I went on one hand and both knees. Clinging to Grundo’s shirt for dear life, I scrambled across a surface rather like roughened glass. If I looked down through the glassiness, I saw dim seas and continents, mountains and rivers and had to shut my eyes. It was truly horrible to have to open my eyes and stand up at the edge of the island and then to make that jump across nothing to the next island.
It was only just near enough for me to jump to. I was sure it was too far for the Izzys and Toby. I whimpered to Nick, and he hauled on the goat and stopped her on the dipping, jogging, slippery surface, while I stayed standing up and held out my arms to catch first Isadora, then Toby, and finally Ilsabil. Ilsabil nearly slipped off backward. My heart banged in my throat and my arms felt weak as I grabbed her wrists.
Worse, I looked back the way we’d come as I steadied her. It was hard not to. And the line of luminous islands stretched back into the distance that way, too. There was no way to tell which one was Blest. There was no way to tell which direction to go in. If it hadn’t been for the goat, we would have been completely lost out there. The Izzys were making little squeaks about it. Toby’s teeth were chattering. I think we were all shaking. But the goat dashed off as soon as Nick stopped hauling on her chain and leaped to the next, slightly nearer island, and we had to go, too.
We took the next few islands at a fairly swift pace, leaving a line of them bucking and twirling behind us and trying not to think about falling off. And Nick and the goat suddenly went down inside the next one. Oh, good! I thought. We’ve arrived! In the greatest possible relief, I went hurrying down another tunnel on Grundo’s heels.
“Hell!” Nick said from in front of me. “This is wrong. Wrong, Helga!” We were in a library, the lot of us, surrounded by the smell of wood and books. I could have cried. The thought of having to come out of here and jump across islands again was almost more than I could take.
It was a dark, low-beamed place, full of dark books, so I didn’t see straightaway that there were people in it. Then someone beside us said, “Who on earth are you? How did you get here?”
We all whirled round to find a lamplit table in an alcove just beside us. There were open books and pages of notes spread on the table. Four boys of about Nick’s age were sitting there with pens in their hands and looks of slightly condescending amazement on their faces. Nick has the same superior look; it must go with that age group, I think. These boys were wearing suits of fairly new-looking pale suede, which had blotches of ink and dinner and chemicals down the fronts, quite disgustingly, and the blotches were as new-looking as the suede.
“Mistake,” Nick said to them. “We’re just leaving.”
“But why the goat?” asked one of the boys. “Do tell.”
“You probably need a goat and a pair of twins for a transport spell, where they come from,” another said.
“Did you say spell or smell?” asked the third.
The fourth boy, who was rather spotty and looked even more superior than the other three, stared at Nick with his eyes narrowed. “You know,” he said, “it’s that false novice who tried to get near the Prince in Marseilles. I recognize the psychic profile. Fear not,” he said to Nick. “I shan’t give you away as long as you tell us how you got in among security like that.”