LITMIR.BIZ

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Kill him magically? Stab him? Cover his mouth and nose with a pillow until –

      Merry squeezed her eyes shut against the pictures in her head. Even though the image of Jack standing over her with the broken blade was fresh in her mind – still made her breath short with terror – she couldn’t hate him. After talking to him this evening, she pitied him. More than that: she almost (kind of) trusted him. It didn’t make any sense. But somehow, he felt … familiar.

      Poor Jack. She tried to imagine him dressed in modern clothes and with a different haircut, and the thought made her smile a little. Jack would make a pretty cute twenty-first century teenager. If things had been different, maybe they could have been friends.

      In the dream, Merry wasn’t wearing pyjamas. She was wearing a gown of thick, red-brown wool that fell in heavy folds from below the belt around her waist. Glancing down, she saw objects hanging from the belt: a leather pouch, a knife, a stone with a hole through its centre. Nearby stood a pair of enormous wooden doors, dark-coloured, scarred with runes and symbols.

      There was a touch on her shoulder. Jack was standing behind her. He cupped her face in his hands, gazing down at her as though he was trying to memorise every detail of her skin, her eyes, her lips.

      ‘Jack …’ Merry’s eyes closed. Jack’s lips were firm and cool as they moved against hers; he put his arms around her and pulled her close. For one infinitesimal, infinite moment, Merry was burning, and liquid gold was running through her veins.

      Jack drew away, and Merry realised the wooden doors had swung open to reveal –

      Trees. Crowded up against the doorway, blocking out the light. Huge holly trees with thick black branches, dark green leaves the size of her hand, long spines, like talons tipped with silver, curving out from their edges. Jack was whispering in her ear.

      ‘You left me. You poisoned me with the black holly and you left me there, buried alive, as the centuries passed.’ Slowly, his hands tightened around her wrists; he began pushing her forwards, towards the trees. ‘You shouldn’t have left me.’

      ‘Jack, what are you doing? You’re hurting me.’ Merry struggled to break his grip, to force him back from the doorway, but his hands were like iron manacles on her arms. ‘Jack, stop!’

      They passed the door posts and Jack did stop, holding Merry a few centimetres in front of the wall of holly.

      ‘It’s time for you to sleep, Meredith.’ Jack shoved her forwards.

      Merry closed her eyes as the spines pierced her skin …

      Jack woke up in the darkness of his room under the lake.

      He remembered things, now. He remembered sitting with Merry and Leo next to the lake, confessing the terrible things he had done or been made to do. And all the time his memories of the past were getting clearer. It was hard to believe that Merry was right, that such a weight of years had passed since the witch sisters had left him and Gwydion sleeping under the lake. And yet, the world was so very different. He could recall his childhood: playing among the wood shavings while his father worked, or listening to the clatter of the loom as his mother wove cloth.

      His foster-mother, not his actual mother. Because he had only seen his birth mother once.

      Once, in – Helmswick. That was the place. Jack closed his eyes, trying to inch his way into the past, to that particular evening. To the night he had been sent out to kill his own brother, to cut out his heart –

      The memory flooded back. That was what he had been trying to describe to Merry: the only other time he – the King of Hearts – had failed …

      In his mind’s eye Jack could see the room clearly, the bunches of mistletoe and scarlet hangings: it was near Yuletide. His brother was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, a smile on his lips. Dreaming about the girl he loved, no doubt: the very thing that made him vulnerable to the King of Hearts’ malice.

      The smile faded when he opened his eyes, and saw Jack.

      The boy stared at him, and somehow – was it the wolf’s-head brooch Gwydion made him wear, or some family resemblance? – recognised him.

       ‘Jack.’

      ‘Yes,’ the King of Hearts replied. ‘And you must be Edmund. There’s no need to be afraid. I am here to help you. To save you.’

      The boy talked to him. Imagined he could, somehow, save himself ‘Please, Jack – you are still my brother. Let me help you. Surely there is some part of you that is still – human?’

      And Jack fought for control of his body, felt the shadow within him waver, weaken – but only for a minute. ‘No, Edmund. I do not desire your help. I desire only to serve my master. And his desire is to set you free.’

      Edmund leapt towards the door then, but the King of Hearts shouted out the words that rendered his victims powerless and the younger boy fell as though someone had swept his legs out from under him.

      Jack went to stand over him, drew his sword, raised the blade point-down above his head –

       ‘Jack!’

      A woman, standing on the threshold, eyes wide, burning against her pale skin. His mother. The next moment she threw herself across Edmund’s body, shielding him. But the curse inside Jack did not hesitate. Jack watched, horror-struck, as his own arms plunged the blade downwards towards Edith’s back, as Edmund screamed –

      The blade shattered.

      Jack gasped and opened his eyes. And there was Gwydion, standing before him, unchanged by the centuries that had passed: the same dark hair, touched with grey; the same scarred, narrow face; the same contemptuous expression. Jack felt for his knife.

      ‘It is not there. Neither is the sword. My King of Hearts put them somewhere safe on his return from the world above.’

      Jack did not reply. Gwydion watched him for a while.

      ‘How many years has it been, Jack, since we last stood together under the open sky?’

      Still Jack remained silent. How much had the dark shadow that inhabited his body already revealed to Gwydion, that was the question.

      ‘Oh, I know what has been happening at the lake: when the King of Hearts loses control of you he is deaf, but he is not blind. But who is she, this girl who has thwarted my servant, turned him aside from his purpose?’

      ‘I do not know,’ Jack burst out. ‘I only understand a little of what she says, and I do not know how she is able to – to prevent me from …’ He stopped. Gwydion would surely realise that he was lying, at least in part.

      And then what? Torture. Or Gwydion would use some spell to break open Jack’s mind like an oyster shell – Somehow, he would have to resist.

      Gwydion was speaking again. ‘… that is the question. What is it about this girl that defeats us?’ Gwydion paused, his eyes narrowed, studying Jack’s face. ‘Soon I must rest, but first I think … I think it is time to renew the curse.’

      ‘No!’ Jack backed away.

      Gwydion raised his eyebrows. ‘No? But the magic has to be fed, until I can make the effect of the curse permanent. Come now.’ Gwydion beckoned to Jack. ‘You know you cannot resist me.’

      Jack stared into Gwydion’ dark eyes, but found no mercy there. ‘I know it.’

      He followed Gwydion along corridors, up and down stairs, until they reached a cavernous room lit only by a fire burning in a trench in the floor. There was a chair set facing the fire; a huge chair, made out of some dark wood, carved all over with swirling patterns that seemed to form leering faces when Jack looked too closely. Narrow leather cords were attached to the frame of the chair.

      Jack murmured a prayer, took a deep breath, and sat down on it. The cords came to life like so many snakes, wrapping themselves around

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