LITMIR.BIZ

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she didn’t know quite what to do: stomp away to bed or stay and see what this creeping around was all about. “All right,” she said finally, and after taking a breath she started up again. “We had a large house. My father did well, selling fine cloth to rich ladies.”

      The Book began to speak in unison with her, matching every word as she uttered it, but they waved her on, and despite a sceptical glare she kept speaking. “But gradually, the rich women stopped coming to his store. They didn’t like the colours and complained about his prices. Father himself became ill, and when he died there was nothing left, no money to support me, no one to care for me.”

      The Book of Lies hadn’t missed a word. What was more, Marcel and Bea recognised the voice itself. “It’s Lord Alwyn. This was what happened on the night you arrived,” said Bea excitedly.

      “What’s going on?” Nicola came closer, leaning over the Book, reaching down with one wary hand but pulling it away at the last moment. “What sort of book is it?”

      “It’s the Book of Lies,” Marcel told her.

      “I don’t understand. It said what I said, at the very moment I said it. How could it do that? There’s magic here, isn’t there? What does it mean?”

      Marcel could barely believe it, but he had an answer for her. “It means this book has your life written in it, or at least what you think is your life. It’s all lies, you see. Not your real life at all. Your name probably isn’t even Nicola.”

      “You’re mad, both of you,” but as she spoke she looked directly at Marcel. He had been named Robert, for a few hours at least. Then he had become Marcel, and suddenly that wizard and his beast in the tower had come out of hiding. It was enough to make her ask again, “What does it mean?”

      “It means you’re like me. Your real life was wiped from your mind, just like mine was, except that Lord Alwyn gave you a new one in its place.”

      “I don’t believe it,” said Nicola defiantly. “My mother. She was beautiful…”

      “Your real mother might still be alive,” said Marcel.

      At this, the Book of Lies started to flip and fan its pages, but Marcel wouldn’t be distracted. “Don’t you see, Nicola? You’re not an orphan after all. You don’t have to go to another family, like that one down in Fallside. You have your own family.”

      “I don’t know what to believe,” said Nicola, putting her hands to her forehead. “The memory of my parents is all I have now that I’m stuck here, alone, with no one to love me.”

      “But don’t you understand what I just told you?” Marcel urged in frustration. “Instead of dead parents you can only dream about, you might have a mother and a father alive somewhere, desperately looking for you.”

      It was all too much for Nicola. She turned away abruptly and ran to the darkness of the staircase.

      “This book is the key to everything” said Marcel when she was gone.

      “Maybe it is, but I have to take it back to the tower tonight,” Bea insisted. “If I don’t, Lord Alwyn will know it’s gone and he’ll send Termagant to find it.”

      Marcel tried to imagine Bea crawling back through that pitch-black tunnel alone. “I’ll come with you, then,” he told her, swallowing a hard lump in his throat.

      “You can’t.”

      “But Termagant…”

      “You can’t come with me because you smell,” she told him bluntly.

      “What do you mean I smell?”

      “You’ll leave a scent and Termagant will pick it up.”

      “What about you, then?”

      She thrust her arm under his nose. “I have no scent.”

      Marcel pulled his head back awkwardly. No scent! There were so many strange things about this little girl. “Bea,” he whispered uncertainly, “why is it, well… sometimes I can see you plain as day and other times it’s as if you’re invisible. Is it magic, like Lord Alwyn’s?”

      She shook her head. “No, not magic. I’ve always been like this. I don’t know why.”

      The hint of pain in her voice told him it was a touchy subject. But it had been a night of strange discoveries, and now Marcel’s mind was working fast. Didn’t Bea seem special, like Nicola and he did? What if Lord Alwyn had stolen away her life too?

      “Where are you from?” he asked her. “How did you come to live here with Mrs Timmins?”

      “I don’t know where I come from.”

      “You mean you’re like me? Did you come here in the middle of the night as well?” he pressed hopefully.

      “You think my life is hidden in the Book too,” Bea guessed.

      “If you are, then we can soon prove it.” Marcel was excited now.

      “No,” she said sharply. “I don’t want the Book to hear my story”

      Marcel couldn’t work out her reluctance. Why wouldn’t she want to know the truth, just as he did? “Are you afraid of something?”

      She nodded miserably, and suddenly he understood. “You’re not afraid that it will find you are like me and Nicola, you’re afraid that it won’t.”

      Bea looked up, her eyes glistening in the candlelight and clearer than ever before. “If I’m not like you, then I’m truly a foundling after all.”

      Marcel slipped her hand into his. “There’s only one way to know for sure, isn’t there? You have to tell your story.”

      She shifted herself closer to the Book, and with a last glance at Marcel, she began.

      “A baby girl…” Her mouth had become dry and her throat suddenly hoarse. “Abandoned,” she tried to say, but she needed a moment to calm herself.

      “As a baby girl I was abandoned on the steps of a church. The priest found me there in the morning, blue with the cold and almost starved.”

      The pages hadn’t moved, but she wouldn’t give up now. “He took me to a convent where the nuns fed me and kept me warm. They named me Beatrice after their patron saint. I could grow up and become one of them, they said, and they took good care of me. I liked it there.”

      Still no response from the Book. Bea closed her eyes and Marcel guessed her story was about to change. “But after a year or two, when I could walk and talk, the nuns became afraid of me. If I stood perfectly still in the shade of a tree, it was like I’d vanished into thin air. They thought I was bewitched and complained to the priest about the child he had brought them. The priest had no answer for their questions, but it was clear the nuns didn’t want me among them, so he brought me to Mrs Timmins.”

      Now that she was finished, she dared to open her eyes and look at the Book. It cast a golden glow into the kitchen’s dim light. Her story was not in Lord Alwyn’s Book of Lies. It hadn’t given her this life to replace her own. What she had just spoken aloud was the truth.

      Bea sat before the silent, unmoving Book and the hope seemed slowly to leave her body. “I’m not like you,” she sighed.

      They could not delay any longer. It would soon be light, and they had to return the Book. Bea shook herself free of her sadness and ventured out into the damp night air, making her way to the far side of the house. Marcel followed Bea as best he could, using his ears more than his eyes. Then she disappeared altogether into the overgrown shrubs beside the house.

      He waited anxiously, scouring the darkness, expecting to see Termagant at any moment, until suddenly Bea was back beside him and he could breathe again. Then they crept noiselessly into the house once more, up the stairs and into their beds.

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