Lor led them past more skeletons, curtains, and some wooden statues that reminded Sally of totem poles, until they came to a room with a couple of benches in the middle, like in a museum or an art gallery.  Sally and Rube sat on one, while Lor took the one opposite, folding her right leg in front of her so that one foot was on the bench and the other one was on the floor.  “So,” she said, “The situation.”

She went silent for a bit, long enough that, if Jeanette was here, she’d have probably told her to get on with it.  Sally really missed Jeanette.

Finally, she said, “How much has Colwyn told you about the paths?”

Rube shrugged.  “He hasn’t really told us anything…”

“But you know there’s limits to them, right?  I mean, people from your world can go wherever they like, but everyone else can just go to yours and to our own.  I couldn’t go to Wallfruit Cove, for instance.”

Rube made a confused humming noise.

“I knew that,” said Sally, “Kai told me.”

Lor started.  “Kai?”

“He’s a friend of…”

“I know who he is.  Is he OK?”

Sally was surprised… but, really, she shouldn’t have been.  Lor was in the Iridescence house, right?  And that was where Kai had escaped from.  “Yeah.  He was a bit bashed-up, but I helped him get sorted out.  I think he’s in Wallfruit Cove now.”  Or at least, that’s where he’d been heading the last time they’d seen him.  Hopefully he’d have gone back there when he saw they weren’t in the Tavin family’s dungeon anymore.

“That’s a relief.  I was worried…  Well.  It’s good that he’s recovering.”  She looked at the floor, then back up.  “They say- the people in Opal Hill say, anyway- that the Iridescences have something that allows them to travel between the worlds.  All the worlds.”

Rube nodded.  She was leaning forward with her hands folded in her lap, like she was in school.  “So you came here to…”

“Steal it, yes.”  Lor gave a little nod.  “Only I got talking to one of their captives, and he convinced me to send a letter to Colwyn Ballantine at Dovecote Gardens.”

“Kai?”

“Exactly.  It was all fine.  I sent the letter anonymously so I didn’t blow my cover.  But then I really made a mistake.  Lost my footing in one of the lower basements, and broke part of a wall.  Kai used that as an opportunity to escape, but they saw him and fired at him almost straight away.  The only reason they didn’t catch me is that it happened while Colwyn was visiting, and they thought he did it somehow.”  She gnawed her lip again.  “So…  It was my fault they took him prisoner.  But, if I break him out, they’ll know I’m in the house.  You see my problem.”

Rube spoke in a kind of loud whisper.  That was the only way Sally could think about it- not quiet enough to be a whisper, but too breathy not to be.  “Why do you want to steal it that badly?”

 “Mainly so that they can’t use it.  They’re the last people who should…”  Lor let out a little huff.  “Kai told you what they did to him, right?  Well, that’s the sort of thing they do whenever they get the chance.  Any little bit of power, no matter how small, they use to hurt and humiliate people.  Just because they can.” 

Sally wondered if Lor was basing this on personal experience rather than just stuff she’d heard.  Maybe the Iridescences were just as horrible to their fellow townsfolk as they were to everyone else.

“There’s… artefacts all over the house from different worlds on the paths.  Works of art, pieces of technology we don’t have here…  I don’t even want to think about how they got them.  But whoever owned them last is probably still having nightmares about it… or their surviving relatives are.”

Rube nodded.  “So, what would you want from us, in order to rescue Colwyn?”

Sally was sure that Lor was going to say that she had it all wrong and she didn’t want anything, she was just trying to explain how complicated it was, that’s all.  Instead, she clicked her tongue and said, “I… think I’d have more luck searching for whatever they’ve got if I had some help.”  She looked up at them, looking strangely meek and wide-eyed, like she was embarrassed to be asking.

Rube took a breath.  “Well, I don’t know how much help I can be, but if you help us to rescue Colwyn, I’ll do whatever I can.”

Sally stared at Rube.  She’d said ‘I’, not ‘we.’  Sally wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted.

Lor held up a hand.  “It’ll be in the basements somewhere.  We might have go quite far down.”

“We’ll just see how it goes.”  Rube smiled at her.

Something occurred to Sally.  “Maybe when we see Colwyn, he’ll be able to give you some advice about it?  Maybe he could help you narrow down where it could be?”

Lor laughed.  “Yeah, if he’s not furious with me for getting him locked up.”  She nodded at Rube.  “Like your sister said, we’ll just see how it goes.”

(To be continued)

It was getting on for midnight.  On the front steps of Dovecote Gardens, Jeanette sat with Falada/Colwyn beside her, propped up against the railing.  In front of them were the five Iridescence siblings (split apart so they could squabble easier), the Finery family, that tit from Kindling Grove, and a woman who said her name was Inger and that she was from somewhere called Underhill Towers.  Everyone was yelling at the top of their voices and refusing to let anyone else get a word in edgeways, but the person in front of Jeanette had managed to drown the rest of them out every time.

There was a fifty-foot dragon with shiny blue scales sitting in front of Dovecote Gardens.  And Colwyn was just talking to him like everything was normal.

“You say there was a problem in the shopping centre?” he asked, craning his wicker neck to look up at him.

The dragon rumbled, like you’d expect a dragon to.  Like they did in films.  “It was a man who said he was from Dovecote Gardens.”  Little bits of smoke and ash kept coming out of his mouth, and Jeanette thought about people who spat when they talked.  “In fact, he seemed to think that you were our landlord.”

“Well, I assure you, I certainly haven’t…”

A loud voice came from their right.  “Heaven forbid!” crowed one of the Iridescence sisters, the one with the curly hair who looked like she was constantly sucking on a lemon.  Jeanette thought she remembered the others calling her ‘Pin.’  “He’d certainly like us to think he was our landlord.”  She twisted her head in a funny way, and Jeanette realised she was trying to catch the Kindling Grove jackass’ eye.

One of her brothers must have been doing something weird, because Inger from Underhill Towers suddenly stepped out in front of him.  “Are you going somewhere?” she asked, in that polite voice that told you to forget what you’d been doing and behave yourself, if you knew what was good for you.  To his credit, the Iridescence brother did exactly that.

Probably wanting to draw everyone’s attention away from that, the oldest Iridescence brother- Eg- decided to stand over Jeanette and roar, “What were you doing in our house?!”

Jeanette opened her mouth to reply- she’d have enjoyed doing that- but then one of his sisters, the giggly one with the cheekbones, cut in.  “Oh, I seem to recall that someone was against letting them in from the start.  Now, who could it have been?  Hmm, let me think…”

Eg turned back to growl something at her, so Colwyn took advantage of the interruption to ask the dragon, “Was this man quite tall?  Long brown hair and stubble?”

Jeanette gave a start.  “Dad?”  What with everything else that had been going on, she’d completely forgotten about that phone call.

The Kindling Grove jackass rolled his eyes.  “Why am I not surprised?”

Jeanette didn’t completely understand that, but one of the Iridescence sisters gave a long, loud laugh.  She couldn’t have been more obvious about sucking up to him if she’d tried.

The Finery family, who were still in silver-tree-form, twitched a bit.  “Now, look, this is all very well, but can you prove that you’re actually Colwyn Ballantine?”

“I can,” said Colwyn, not missing a beat, “If I describe certain documents to you, you should be able to find them upstairs.  They’ll be my identification.”

And the Finery family would probably have had a reply to that, if Eg Iridescence hadn’t suddenly screamed, “They can’t merge!  They’re still in our house!”

“What?” gasped Pin.

Ohhh, shit, thought Jeanette.  She’d known this moment was probably coming, but that didn’t stop her stomach from dropping all the way to her knees.

Colwyn sniffed.  “I’m also in your house, and that doesn’t seem to bother you.”

Immediately, with amazing speed for his size, Eg Iridescence was on the stairs, lunging towards Jeanette and Colwyn.  Jeanette dodged sideways, only realising a moment too late that he wasn’t after her.  His foot was raised, aiming a football kick at the wicker horse’s head, when suddenly he left the ground.

The dragon held him in his claws, six feet in the air.

(To be continued)

“You’re from Dovecote Gardens,” said the blue girl.  It was the kind of sentence that sounded as if it should have a “…right?” on the end, but it didn’t.  Maybe it was just really obvious.  “And I’m guessing you got here on your own, or you wouldn’t be walking around back here.”

They were standing about four metres apart, Sally and Rube in the middle of the room and the blue girl at the back, all three of them tensed as if they were about to run away.  “Do you work for the Iridescences?” asked Rube.

The blue girl snorted.  “No.”  She said it in the exact same way that girls in Sally’s class did when you asked them if they were gong to sign up for the French workshop at half term.  “If I did, you’d all be handcuffed to the wall five times over by now.”

Rube nodded.  “Sorry.  I had to ask.”  She relaxed her arms a bit.  Probably not so much that the blue girl would be able to tell, but enough to be obvious to someone who knew her.  “My name’s Rube Warbeck.  My sister’s Sally.”

The blue girl made a “hmph” noise.  “Lor Radiance.  And just so you know, the Iridescences have no idea that I’m sneaking around in their house.”

Put like that, it did seem obvious.  But like Rube had said, they’d had to ask.

“So… why are you?” asked Rube, “Sneaking around, I mean.”

Lor made another irritated noise.  “Why do you think?  I’m trying to find out what they’re up to.”

“We’re looking for a man called Colwyn Ballantine.  Do you know where he is?”

“Sure.”  Lor pointed vaguely behind her.  “He’s up in the attic.”

Sally justrestrained herself from punching the air and yelling, I knew it!  Just.

“Brilliant!”  Rube’s face broke out into the kind of smile that made you think of rainclouds clearing.  “Can you help us get up there?”

“Well… that depends.”  Lor gnawed on her lower lip.  Sally wasn’t sure if she had a really big chin for a girl, or if it just looked like that because she kept pulling weird expressions with her mouth.  “What are you planning to do when you find him?”

“He’s our uncle,” said Rube, “We need to get him home.”

Lor let out a long, whistling breath.  “That might not be as easy as it sounds.”  She motioned over her shoulder again.  “Listen… let’s sit down for a moment,  I might be able to help you, but… well, things are complicated.”

(To be continued)

If he’d been asked ten minutes ago how he’d react if the Iridescences knocked on the door, Kai would have seen himself flying down and spitting in their eyes, secure in the knowledge that he had Colwyn and his nieces backing him up.  But when it actually happened, it was like running into a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour.  The only reasonable reaction- the only possible reaction- was to fly away and hide in the furthest, darkest corner of the house.

He just couldn’t stop shaking.

It couldn’t be right for them to be in Dovecote Gardens.  Nothing good could come from them being here.

Kai was in a house that contained the Iridescences.  He’d been in a house that contained the Iridescences for most of the last fifteen years, but this time it felt like the end of the whole damn world.  And so much for spitting in their eye- one look at them had been like gazing into the eye of a massive tornado.  Kai couldn’t stop them from whatever they were about to do any more than he could stop the wind from blowing.

But the Iridescences were right here in Dovecote Gardens.  Colwyn wasn’t actually here, and Jeanette didn’t know what she was dealing with.  He had to do something.

He was small, but not too small to light a match, if he could find one.  If he could move.  If he could just stop shaking.

(To be continued)

At the moth’s instruction (and how it pained him to even think those words), Onrey lifted up the wicker horse’s head from the debris on the ground, and hung it back on the wall.  The moth fluttered up to sit on the nose.  “I think this is how they said to do it…  Alas, young queen, passing by / If this your mother knew / Her heart would break in two.”

Those words resonated with Onrey more than he would have liked.  If his own family knew what had happened since he set out, that he’d been beaten in a fight and forced to rely on the aid of something as pathetically small as this moth, what would they say?  But he had no time to dwell on it, because as soon as the words were out, the horse’s mouth began to move. 

The eyes- just glass a moment ago, but now alive- fixed on the moth, and a gasp came out of the wooden mouth.  “You’re Kai Domino, aren’t you?”  Onrey had never heard Colwyn Ballantine’s voice before, but he knew immediately that he was hearing it now.

“I am, yes,” said the moth, “I’m sorry about…”

Onrey gathered up the tattered remains of his confidence, and cleared his throat.  “I’m Onrey Tavin, and we have matters to discuss.”

The horse- Ballantine- went quiet for a moment, and seemed to be sizing him up.  “Alright,” he said eventually, “But first, do either of you know where my nieces are?”

“They’re fine,” said the moth, “Or they were last time I saw them, anyway.  As far as I know, they’re still on their way to Opal Hill.”

“Well, that’s something.  Has the house been broken into?  I know the horse’s head was knocked off the wall somehow…”

“There was a guy…”  The moth made an irritating whine to indicate that he was uncertain.  “He said he was the girls’ dad?  He broke the lock and threw a bunch of furniture around, looking for…”

Onrey was not going to leave it to the moth to tell the story of his humiliation.  “His name was Joe Warbeck, and he beat me half to death for questioning his manners.”  He practically spat the words.  “Friend of yours?”

The moth eyed him nervously, then turned back to Ballantine.  “Actually, I should probably just let this guy tell it.”

Ballantine didn’t voice any objection, so Onrey got straight to the point.  “Your nieces trespassed on my family’s property and told a pack of lies in order to escape.  And when I came here to ask for an explanation, I was set upon by this Joe Warbeck.”  He stared into the horse’s glass eyes, waiting to see how he responded.

“I see.  Where is he now?”  No hint of an apology.  Onrey didn’t know why he was still surprised, at this point.

The moth spoke right across him.  “We don’t know.  He ran away after knocking this guy out.”

Once again, Onrey restrained himself from crushing the loathsome little insect between his fingers.  “Mr Ballantine, I came here today because our two families should have spoken face-to-face a long time ago.  We demand that you restore the use of the paths to us.”

Ballantine blinked.  “What?”

“You seem to feel that only you and your family deserve the right to travel from place to place.  Why should that be?  Why should the rest of us have to pass through Dovecote Gardens just to communicate?  Is it truly just so you can grow fat off the profits?”

Ballantine shook his head.  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.  Are you saying that you think…?”

A knock at the door interrupted them.  Onrey had closed it before picking up the horse’s head, but the thing was still barely hanging on its hinges.  Even so, somebody felt the need to knock.

“Oh,” said Ballantine, “I don’t suppose one of you could answer that?”

Onrey spluttered.  “I’m not your doorman!”

The moth flew up and tsked at him.  “Alright, you drama queen, I’ll do it.”

Onrey would have liked to have seen how the moth planned to open a door that was a thousand times his size, but, after a moment’s reflection, he decided to walk across the hallway and open it himself.  It was not done to wait around while others did things for you.

He opened the door to see one of Colwyn’s nieces- the one with the long hair, the one who’d lied to his father’s face when he’d asked them to catch the rocfinch- flanked by two tall, silver beings whose heads looked as if they were topped with tree-branches.  Opal Hill, he remembered from his father’s notes.  Each of these people was actually five or six siblings combined.

Before he could say anything- a greeting to the Opal Hill folk, an admonition to the girl- Onrey heard a voice from behind him.  “Jeanette?  Is that you?”

The girl’s face lit up.  “Colwyn!”  And she strode past Onrey as though he wasn’t even there, straight up to the horse’s head on the wall.  Her companions stayed where they were, as if rendered speechless by her behaviour.  “Right,” she told her uncle, “Before we say anything else, tell the Finery family where you are right now.”

“Hm?”  Ballantine glanced over at the Opal Hill folk in the doorway.  “Oh, I see.  I’m in the Iridescence family’s attic.  They’ve been keeping me here for two or three days.”

Onrey blinked.  That certainly changed things. 

“See?” said the girl Jeanette, looking over at her friends, “What did I tell you?”

One of the silver beings said, in a voice as deliberate as it was furious, “What on Earth is going on here?”

“Are you saying that’s Colwyn Ballantine’s voice?” asked the other.

“I am saying that!” said the girl Jeanette, with an impudent grin.

“Where’s the evidence?” demanded the furious silver being, “The pictures of your brother?”

“Oh, right.”  The grin widened.  “I don’t actually have a brother.  I just made that up so you’d let me into your house.”

The silver being looked about to say something, but had to stop for breath on the way.  So Onrey spoke instead.  “Quite good at lying, aren’t we?”

If he’d been expecting shame, then he was disappointed.  “Pretty decent, yeah.”

The other silver being- the one who’d asked about the horse’s head- tapped their fingers on the doorframe.  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what…”

They went silent, and looked up.  A huge, dark shadow had descended over the entire house.

(To be continued)

The space behind the door was pale, half-finished, and smelled of sand, and as they walked through it, Rube talked continuously so that she wouldn’t panic.  (She almost thought, “so that Sally wouldn’t panic,” but then she decided to be honest with herself.)

“I don’t think they’ll notice we’re gone unless someone points it out,” she told Sally, “Think about it- they know the three of us are sisters.  And they can… merge with their siblings.”  They rounded a corner.  “And they probably know that humans can’t, but if no-one reminds them, their minds will just fill in what they expect to see, right?”

“Right,” said Sally, with a look on her face as if she was humouring a lunatic.

“It’s like that thing where you try to read a paragraph, and all of the words have the first and last letter in the right place, but the rest of the letters are mixed up, but you can read it and understand it anyway.  You see what you expect to see.  That’s why…”

She broke off.  Up ahead of them, in the inside wall, was a door.  It was hanging slightly ajar.

“We need to be quiet when we walk past,” Rube told Sally, nodding towards it.

Sally shook her head.  “I don’t think it goes back into the living room…”

She was right.  The door looked as if it had warped and swelled over the years s that it could no longer close properly, and as they got closer Rube could see through the gap.  It looked like there was a set of steps.  They went down rather than up, but they went somewhere.

Rube opened the door fully, and glanced at Sally for confirmation on what they were going to do.  She didn’t really need to, though.  They hadn’t come this far not to check everything out.

So they descended into the Iridescences’ basement, Rube fighting every instinct that told her what a bad idea it was.  She couldn’t even see what was down there.  A beige curtain, made out of some kind of thick, heavy material, hung over the bottom of the stairs.  When Rube touched it so she could move it aside, it had a grubby, greasy feel to it, as if it had been there gathering dust for decades on end.

On the other side was a hallway, and Rube was unnerved by how featureless it was.  The walls, in the same shade of grey as the scuffed tile on the floor, looked as if they had been made out of the same cardboard as cheap egg cartons, all rough and knobbled, looking as if it would fall apart if it got even slightly damp.  There was light, enough to see everything clearly, but no matter how much they looked around, they couldn’t find the source of it.  No bulbs, no windows, no anything.

At the end of the hallway, there was a bend that led into another.  And halfway down that hallway, jutting out of the wall, was a huge skeleton.

Sally was the one who screamed first, which at least meant that Rube felt less embarrassed later.  It was understandable, though- that thing had practically leapt out at them.  It towered over them, taking up half the hallway, its fangs and empty black eye sockets reminding Rube of that close-up photo of a spider in her old Biology textbook.

Sally, her hands still clutched in front of her chest, let out a sheepish laugh.  “Do you think it’s an elephant?”

“Maybe?” said Rube, “Or a mammoth?”  She eyed the skeleton warily.  They were in a new place, after all, and they didn’t know all the rules yet.  Rube couldn’t be completely certain that the skeleton wouldn’t suddenly roar into life.  “But what’s it doing…”

She broke off.  She’d heard something.

There were footsteps coming towards them.  Rube and Sally turned to the other end of the hallway, beyond the skeleton, just in time to see someone put her head around the corner.  A girl about Rube’s age, with hair the same shade of blue as her skin.

(To be continued)

By the time the door clicked open, Sally felt as if she’d been waiting in there for hours.  She probably hadn’t.  It was just that worry tended to stretch time out as far as it could go, especially when there wasn’t anything else to do.

Sally had hoped that she’d open the door and immediately find a staircase leading to the attic, but instead she found… well, the inside of a wall.  A thin, uneven-looking corridor that seemed to stretch most of the way around the outside of the house.  Not that Sally had seen all of it,.  She’d decided to duck round the first corner and wait there, so that if the Iridescences followed her in, they wouldn’t catch her straight away.

Not long after that, Sally realised something unpleasant: she didn’t know whether or not her sisters knew where she’d gone.

They probably did.  Even if Jeanette had been too absorbed in her story to notice Sally leaving, Rube definitely would have.  Mum had told Rube that she was in charge, and when you said that to someone like Rube, they took it seriously.  It became a massive, crushing weight of a responsibility.  Rube definitely wouldn’t have let Sally disappear without checking where she was going.  She’d have known.

But Sally didn’t know for sure.  She hadn’t checked.

When Sally heard the door open, she instantly stuck her head around the corner (completely blowing her cover if it turned out to be one of the Iridescences, but at least she’d still have a head start).  It was OK.  It was Rube.

Sally mouthed her name (she didn’t know how much the Iridescences would be abe to hear from outside, and she didn’t want to risk it) and beckoned her over.  Rube gave her a brilliant smile and ran up to meet her.

“I am so sorry!” she whispered as soon as she got there, “I had to wait for Jeanette to get them to go past the door…”

Sally waved this aside (though it did make her feel better to know that she might have actually been waiting a long time).  “Did Jeanette see which way you went?”

“Yes.  We didn’t talk, but…”  Rube stopped, held up a finger, and bent over with her hands on her knees, breathing heavily.

As she waited for Rube to talk again, Sally looked down the long corridor, trying to see if she could spot anything down at the far end, where she hadn’t been yet.  If they followed it long enough, they’d find the steps to the attic.  Because they had to.  Sally wouldn’t accept anything less.

(To be continued)