Deep Secret (51 page)

“Maree doesn’t even remember this much. All she can recall is the last bit, when we both think we arrived beside a thing like a stone trough – only it was as strange as everything else because it had all the other directions too, which made a queer shape for a trough. And we thought about it a bit. I said, ‘We can’t just stand and ask. They have to tell us it’s all right to ask first.’

“Maree said, ‘Give me a bottle of water.’ I’d only the one, but I passed it to her, and she carefully poured about half of it into the trough – and you had to be careful, because the water went round all sorts of directions too and made it hard to aim. Then she passed the bottle back to me and said, ‘Now you pour some. Then scatter grain.’

“I did, and it was even harder with the grain. It went all over the place and round all the corners and only a few seeds went in. But as soon as the seeds had gone into the water it all began foaming and sort of growing, until it was rushing like a river at the brims of the trough.

“Then I
think
a voice spoke. But I’m not sure, because if it
was
as voice, it was more like notes or chiming. And it seemed to me to tell us Maree could ask first, provided she was in great need.

“I nudged at Maree. She sort of jumped. I whispered at her what to say. She nodded happily and I thought she understood. She pushed her glasses up and said, ‘I ask that my little fat dad should be cured of his cancer.’

“I couldn’t
believe
it. It was a total waste. I knew I was going to have to ask for the other half of Maree for my own wish and I could have screamed. There was no chance of getting her back if I didn’t, and I would have wasted everyone’s trouble. I think I cried at the waste. But it was pointless to have come all this way and
not
ask. So I asked for her.

“And there was a sort of chiming. Maree suddenly went the right colour. She even looked heavier. And she seemed to have her mind back properly. Anyway the shape of her face was right again. And I suppose I was glad. Well, yes, I
was
glad.

“Then there was another chiming, and this one meant we had to go. But I think it gave me a hint too. Anyway, I thought of the stories, Orpheus and so on, and I didn’t look at Maree again. I just turned round and started to go back.

“I’ve no idea how I got so far ahead of her. Maree doesn’t know either. She thinks she had my candle in sight most of the time. I heard her behind me quite often. I heard her scrambling down the moss after me, and I felt it swaying under her. I heard her walking while I was crawling along the ribbon of rock with the precipices on either side. I just don’t understand it.

“Going back was awful. The worst of it was, you knew just what you were in for. The one thing that wasn’t the same was when I was coming down the rocks like the stacks of knives. I never saw the children or the birds there. But the rest of it was all there, waiting. Another difference, now I think, was when I got to the thorns. I kept expecting my clothes to vanish again, but they didn’t. The only thing that did vanish was the shawl made out of the goat’s wool. And when I got to the bridge, there was nothing at the other end, no gateway and no statues. By then I was so tired I almost didn’t notice. I was just glad that nobody tried to stop me, and trudged on. I was so tired that I almost didn’t know I could stop when I got back to Rupert’s room at last.”

[3]

They all listened to me reading, leaning forward, attending to every word. I was so busy reading at first that it took me a while to notice that the sheets of paper were sort of filtering away as I read them. Almost every time I put a page underneath the pile after I’d read it, it went. By the end, I was holding three sheets of paper. I looked. The top one was the part about the birds and the children.

Someone quite a long way down the table asked, “Do you know who those three children were?”

I said, “Yes. They have to have been the Emperor’s other children who were killed.”

“And what do you think the birds were?” another distant voice asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought maybe
you
did.”

“I wish we did,” the person right beside me at the end of the table said. “This is as strange to us as it is to you.”

Then I had only two pages. The top one was now the bit after I’d come back and we were chasing the quack chicks. My stomach wobbled.

It was one of the people on the side bench against the wall who asked me about that. She was an old, old lady with sucked-in cheeks. She said, “What are your feelings about your mother now?”

I couldn’t answer. I simply didn’t know how – and I’d been trying to work it out ever since Dad and Maree and I went back to Bristol.

The old lady said, “Try to answer. It might help.”

The only way I could manage to answer was to talk about something else. I said, “Last year, I had a boil on my neck. It was quite impressive. It grew and it grew and it was a sort of purple-red. And all the time it was growing it was wonderfully neat and well shaped, quite round and pointed and regular, with a funny little dip in the middle at the top. When I looked at it, I used to think it was such a perfect shape that it almost seemed as if it was a proper part of me and meant to be there. But it hurt more and more, in a dull sort of way, and it made me hold my head on one side. In the end, Dad marched me off to the doctor with it. The doctor took a short look, then he lanced it. That made the most appalling mess and it hurt ten times more. When I got home it looked even more of a mess. It was not even a good shape any longer, and it kept running and felt horrible, but the pain was a much better sort of pain, even though it went on for a long time and I’ve still got quite a mark.”

“Fair enough,” said the old lady.

That left me with only the one sheet. I looked down at it and I sort of clenched. It was the last sheet, and I was absolutely
not
going to tell them what I’d wanted to wish for. But I wasn’t sure how I could stop them making me.

Somebody right along the table asked. He said, “You’ve left out your motive. You haven’t said why you went through with this.”

“What do you mean?” I said, defending for all I was worth.

“I mean,” he said, “that you’ve made it clear why you hung on to the centaur and asked for the other half of your sister, but there was at least one occasion where you wanted to turn back, and your account shows that you
could
have done. Why did you go on?”

“Oh,” I said. I tried not to show them how relieved I was. “I went on because I was
interested
, of course. I wanted to know what would happen.”

That seemed to amuse them all. There was quite a ripple of laughter round the room, and when it stopped, all my papers had gone. Rupert seemed to think we were going to leave then, but they hadn’t quite finished. One of the stern ones in the middle of the table said to me, “One moment. This account of Babylon contains substantial parts of the deep secret of the Magids that is called Babylon. For this reason, we are going to have to expunge all trace and memory of it from you. Please understand and forgive this assembly for it. It is necessary.”

That is just what they tried to do. I really didn’t remember a thing – though I was puzzled to see that Maree was the right colour again, and couldn’t think why – until I got home and found the note I’d left for myself.
Look for disks
. So I looked all over and found about twenty of the hundred disks I’d hidden. The rest were gone, and the file wasn’t on my hard disk. But I don’t think the Upper Room realised how cunning I’d been.

You see, after Rupert told me that the computer games people didn’t want my Bristolia game after all – they said it was too complicated! – I decided I’d do a Babylon game instead. Blow that about deep secrets! Rupert and Maree say that the basic job of a Magid is to gradually release all the special knowledge anyway. And besides, I want to remember. It strikes me as one of the best ways of forcing that Upper Room to make me a Magid too. That was what I’d been going to ask for, until I had to ask for Maree instead. Now I’ll have to get to be one another way round.

About the Author

Diana Wynne Jones’ first children’s book was published in 1973. Her magical, humorous stories have enthralled children and adults ever since, and she has inspired many of today’s children’s and fantasy authors. Among Diana’s best loved books for older children are the
Chrestomanci
series and the
Howl
books. Her novel
Howl’s Moving Castle
was made into an award-winning film. She was described by Neil Gaiman as “the best children’s writer of the last 40 years”.

Titles by Diana Wynne Jones

Chrestomanci Series

Charmed Life

The Magicians of Caprona

Witch Week

The Lives of Christopher Chant

Mixed Magics

Conrad’s Fate

The Pinhoe Egg

Howl Series

Howl’s Moving Castle

Castle in the Air

House of Many Ways

Archer’s Goon

Black Maria

Dogsbody

Eight Days of Luke

Enchanted Glass

The Homeward Bounders

The Merlin Conspiracy

Deep Secret

The Ogre Downstairs

Power of Three

A Tale of Time City

Wilkin’s Tooth

The Game

For older readers

Fire and Hemlock

Hexwood

The Time of the Ghost

For younger readers

Wild Robert

Earwig and the Witch

Vile Visitors

Copyright

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz in 1997

This edition first published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins
Children’s Books
in 2013

HarperCollins
Children’s Books
is a division of

HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd, 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB.

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1997

The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work.

ISBN 978 0 00 750754 2

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780007507559

Version 1

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