LITMIR.BIZ

      It took a while for Jack to calm down sufficiently for Merry and Leo to make any sense of what he was saying. One minute he was talking about the recent attacks in Tillingham – attacks he now knew he had carried out – the next he was reliving the past, mentioning names and places neither of them had ever heard of. But one thing was clear: the manuscript was right. Gwydion had woken from the enchanted sleep. As far as Jack knew the wizard had only been awake for a few minutes. But that had been enough to trigger the recovery of Jack’s memory, at least partially.

      ‘This is all Gwydion’s fault, not yours,’ Leo offered. ‘You know that, right? It’s not really you attacking people.’

      Jack shook his head.

      ‘My hands wield the blade. My hands are red with their blood.’ He looked at Merry, his eyes glittering in the moonlight, and Merry thought how different his face was really from that of the King of Hearts: still beautiful, but kind and sad too. ‘Did I not try to kill you?’

      Merry nodded. ‘Yes. Though you didn’t get to, in the end. I mean, something stopped you, or stopped whatever was controlling you.’ She didn’t know what else to say. But, as Jack dropped his head into his hands, she felt a twinge of pity for this strange boy, fifteen hundred years away from his home, more alone than any of the other seven billion people on the planet. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I wish we could help you. I wish—’ She caught herself, and stopped. Because she wasn’t supposed to help him, not really. She had to keep reminding herself: if she was reading the manuscript right, she was supposed to kill him.

      ‘There is one thing you can do.’ Jack started ripping blades of grass out of the ground next to him. ‘You can tell me truthfully how long I have been asleep.’

      * * *

      All things considered, Merry reflected, Jack was taking it pretty well. He accepted Merry’s outline of what had happened – there was a lot of stuff he still couldn’t recall – and her explanation that a new plan for dealing with Gwydion had been constructed while he was asleep. But when she finally told him, after using as many delaying tactics as she could think of, exactly how many years had passed since he had last seen the sun, she thought he might freak out. After all, he had just learnt that all the people he had ever loved were dead. And not just dead: so dead that nothing was likely left of them but dust. Not even dust.

      If it were me, thought Merry, I would be completely freaking out right about now.

      But Jack didn’t. He clenched his jaw, and for a moment Merry could see his hands, balled up into tight fists, shaking. But that was it.

      ‘Um, are you OK? I mean, it must be a terrible shock for you. Do you—’ I’m sitting here in the dark with a fifteen-hundred-year-old boy who tried to stick a sword in me eight days ago, and I’m about to ask him if he wants to talk about it. Seriously?

      Merry cleared her throat. ‘Do you believe us now? That we are who we say we are? Because we really need your help.’

      ‘I believe you. And I will do anything I can to stop the wizard.’

      ‘OK.’ Leo leant forwards. ‘Do you know what Gwydion’s current plan is? I mean, is he trying to get out from under the lake himself, or is he just going to keep sending you out? And aren’t you meant to be cutting people’s hearts out?’

      Jack groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

      ‘Oh,’ Leo murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’

      They waited while Jack recovered himself. After a few moments he looked up again.

      ‘I cannot answer you at the moment. Perhaps the knowledge will return to me. But Gwydion must not escape the lake. Before, he would take people from their homes, practise his magic on them – I used to hear them screaming …’

      Leo blanched. ‘We can’t let that happen here. And we’re not going to. We’ve got various, you know, magical artefacts that have been passed down to us.’

      ‘May I see them?’

      Leo went to get the parchment out of Merry’s pocket, but she put out her hand to stop him. ‘I think – I think maybe that’s not a good idea. We don’t know whether the – whatever it is, that takes you over, whether it gets to know the things you know.’ She frowned. ‘Or whether it tells Gwydion what it knows. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

      ‘Yes. You are right, of course. I am not—’ Jack’s mouth twisted into a parody of a smile, ‘—safe. When the curse controls me, I am trapped inside my body. I see what it does as it follows the wizard’s orders, hear it speaking with my voice, but I have no knowledge of Gwydion’s deeper strategies. Perhaps it is reversed when I am myself.’

      ‘Vengeance,’ Merry whispered, almost to herself. Jack’s eyebrows raised. ‘Um, in the story our gran told us, Gwydion wanted revenge, on your mother. Because she wouldn’t marry him?’

      ‘My mother?’ Jack shook his head. ‘I have no memory of her. But you may be right.’ He hunched over, wrapping his arms around his knees. The movement revealed thick white scars around his wrists.

      Merry wondered briefly what had caused them, before deciding she would much rather not know. Instead, she asked: ‘What’s it like, under the lake? How do you get in and out?’

      Jack glanced over at the water. ‘There is a staircase, up to the lake bed. The shadow within me speaks to the rock – at least, that is how it seems to me. And somehow a passageway opens … But I can never remember the words it uses. There is no other way in or out of the ruins.’ He waved a hand towards the lake. ‘The tower is gone. All was drowned.’

      Silence fell. Merry poured herself some more coffee from the flask. It was even colder tonight, almost as if the seasons were running backwards; Leo was looking at his phone, and she could see his breath condensing in the air.

      She thought of the braid, the thing that had protected her from Gwydion’s own servant – if the manuscript was right. Was it Gwydion’s hair she had tied round her wrist? The idea turned her stomach.

      ‘Jack, when you were about to, you know, hit me with the sword last Sunday, something stopped you. Leo said it was like you’d run into a brick wall.’ Merry hesitated. ‘A brick is a sort of—’

      ‘I know what a brick is.’ Jack said.

      ‘Of course you do. Sorry.’

      ‘The

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