The Key (40 page)

She follows Viktor as he steps through a gap in the hedge.

It is like entering a room with green walls, the bright blue sky for a ceiling and dark stone flags for a floor. There are two circles, one inside the other, outlined in a lighter stone. Five people stand around the inner circle.

Walter’s eyes are hidden behind a pair of pilot’s sunglasses, but she can still feel his gaze directed towards her. He is tanned; his greying hair is swept back. His clothes are casually elegant: sand-coloured chinos and a thin, slightly burled cardigan.

‘There she is!’ he says with a welcoming smile. Clara, on Walter’s right, smiles too.

The talking stops. Everyone looks at her.

‘Well, it feels bloody great to have the whole gang in one place at last.’ Walter waves to Minoo and Viktor. ‘Over here! Felix, move over a bit.’

A boy with black hair, standing on Walter’s left, shuffles sideways.

Minoo avoids looking at the others as she steps across the circles and goes to stand next to Walter. Viktor is on her other side.

She wonders what Walter has told the others about her. Did he use the same words as he used to her?

The most powerful witch who has ever existed
.

A wave of performance anxiety makes her sweat even more.

‘You already know some of us,’ Walter says. ‘But this is Nejla Hodzic.’

He gestures towards a plump, bored-looking girl who stands next to Clara. Her long dark hair is very straight with a central parting. She is wearing a black T-shirt with the word
BATHORY
on the chest. Minoo has no idea what that might mean and she has the feeling that Nejla would despise her for that. The girl glances at Minoo, then returns to doing something on her mobile.

‘This is Sigrid Axelsson Lilja,’ Walter continues.

Sigrid stands next to Nejla. She is petite, with glasses and blonde curly hair that reaches her shoulders. She is wearing a 1950s-style dress with a leaf pattern, and her smile is warm and genuine, if a little curious. Minoo likes her instinctively, even though the elfin Sigrid is the type of girl who usually makes her nervous.

‘Hi, Minoo,’ Sigrid says.

‘Hi.’

‘And this is Felix Nowak.’ Walter points to the boy with black hair.

Minoo takes a closer look at him. Felix is wearing a grey polo shirt and black jeans. His eyes are brown. He looks intently at Minoo with narrowed eyes and his eyebrows drawn together. She can’t work out if it’s she who irritates him, or the sunlight.

‘Today, we won’t have a long session,’ Walter says. ‘First and foremost, I wanted Minoo to meet you all. But also, there is something I want to show you …’

He stops and checks his watch.

‘The time has almost come. Viktor, are you ready?’

Viktor nods and holds up a small object not unlike a lipstick. Minoo recognises it. Adriana also used one of those ectoplasm tubes. The silvery metal glints in the sunlight.

‘The fate of the entire world is at stake,’ Walter tells them. ‘But you’re young and need to sleep. Some nights we will be here until late. I suggest that nine would be a reasonable time to start in the mornings. Agreed?’

Minoo looks around the circle. They all nod. She feels that she has somehow missed something. Possibly a lot of things.

‘Good,’ Walter says. ‘That’s it, then.’

‘Sorry,’ Minoo says, and feels everybody staring at her again. ‘But when do we work together?’

‘Nine o’clock.’

Walter takes off his sunglasses and looks down at her with a quizzical smile. Minoo isn’t used to feeling short, but she does now, standing between Viktor and Walter.

‘Yes I know but …’ She hesitates. ‘At nine o’clock but, but … which day?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Walter tells her. ‘And every day for the rest of the week to come. Better book us in for the weekend as well. That will help us get off to a good start. Later on, I hope it will be possible to give you the weekend off, or at least Sundays. If you’re to deliver at peak ability, it’s so important to have time to relax and recover.’

‘But I …’ Minoo begins, but can’t see her way to completing the sentence.

But I must go to school. I haven’t got time to save the world
.

She can’t say that aloud. But she can see that Walter has already realised how little she understood of what would be required.

‘Right,’ he says slowly, and she notices a hint of disappointment in his eyes. ‘Now, I can’t quite follow your thinking, Minoo. You had a choice. And you chose to join us and help us in our work. I must say I assumed your priorities were clear to you. Was I wrong?’

Minoo feels all her blood rush to her face.

‘No, not at all,’ she says. ‘Absolutely. It’s just that I … was thinking along the wrong lines. I’ll arrange … things.’

She falls silent. How will she arrange being away? The collective gaze of the others burns more strongly than the sun’s rays.

‘Excellent.’ Finally Walter takes his eyes off her. ‘Now, the time has come. Please see to it that you stand inside the outer circle.’

Viktor steps forward, bends over at the edge of the inner circle and slowly draws the sign for the element of water.

She will have to leave school. Take a sabbatical year. How does one do that? Does she have to speak to the principal? Or can she just stay away? Are there forms to fill in? Mum and Dad, will she have to tell them? Or could she carry on coming here and use school as her alibi? Tricky to get out of once it’s time to graduate, but by that stage the world might be annihilated anyway.

‘Now. Soon,’ Walter says.

Viktor puts the top back on the ectoplasm tube. From the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulls out a small silver bottle engraved with two concentric circles.

Minoo wonders who makes all these things. Does the Council run boutiques for magic accessories?

Viktor shuts his eyes briefly, then opens them again and turns the bottle upside-down over the elemental sign.

Water flows as slowly as syrup from the neck of the bottle, spreads in a thin layer over the flagstones and settles into a perfect round, reflective surface in the inner circle.

Viktor puts the bottle back and straightens up.

‘Come closer,’ Walter instructs.

Minoo takes another few steps forward until the tips of her shoes almost nudge the water’s edge. The others are also moving towards the centre of the circle. She can smell Walter’s aftershave.

The surface is dark now and completely still, like tinted glass. Although Minoo knows it is only a thin sheet of water, it is like looking into a very deep well. In the centre of the surface, the sun is reflected as a bright disc. Their silhouettes are little more than shadows.

‘Whatever you do, don’t look up,’ Walter says.

At first, the stirring is so slight that Minoo thinks she has made a mistake. Then she thinks she sees a small flake of rubbish floating across the water.

‘Fucking hell,’ Nejla whispers.

A blackness is moving in over the bright sun. The process is so slow it’s barely noticeable, but soon there can be no doubt about what is happening.

The sun is slowly being obscured by a black mass.

Minoo sees how the light in the garden is changing now, growing duller, first to matte gold and then to bluish grey, as if every colour in the world is disappearing. As if twilight is falling far too rapidly.

Then darkness falls.

Viktor takes her hand and she clasps it gratefully as they stare into the water’s surface.

The sun flickers, a star’s last desperate flash of light before darkness swallows it whole.

* * *

‘Don’t look up!’ Ove Post, the biology teacher, shouts to the pupils who are standing at the windows or clustering by the front door. ‘It could blind you!’

Anna-Karin won’t look. She doesn’t want to see darkness take over, as it did in Minoo’s vision. That must be it, mustn’t it? The world is ending right now. And people are just staring at it.

She scans the packed entrance lobby, looking for Vanessa and Linnéa in the crowd.

‘Get away from the windows!’

Inez, their chemistry teacher, is shouting and, small as she is, her voice can be heard everywhere in the hall.

Anna-Karin!

Linnéa’s voice in her head. Anna-Karin probes the crowd to locate her friend’s energy field. She finds Linnéa’s and Vanessa’s energies at the same time, and follows the trail until she spots them, hand in hand by the steps to the dining area.

‘People usually know about solar eclipses in advance, right?’ Vanessa says quietly when Anna-Karin joins them.

‘Yes,’ Anna-Karin agrees. ‘People do.’

‘Thought so,’ Vanessa says.

‘It’s going away!’ someone shouts.

Anna-Karin turns to the windows and sees the world outside growing lighter.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ Ove screams. ‘Don’t look, I’m serious!’

The sun breaks through the dullness outside. All over the lobby, people applaud and cheer.

‘There now,’ Ove Post says from somewhere. ‘It’s all over.’

Why do I have the feeling it’s precisely the other way round?
Linnéa thinks.

‘That’s it folks,’ Walter says.

Minoo automatically follows the movement of the others as they back a few paces away from the water’s edge. She looks around. Everything is as it was. No trace of anything alien in the blue sky.

Sigrid has taken her glasses off and is fingering the frame. Felix shades his eyes with his hand and scans the sky, as if looking for clues to what happened. Viktor looks at Clara with worried eyes. All colour has drained from her face.

But Nejla is beaming.

‘That was massive,’ she says. ‘So
fucking
massive.’

‘What we have just observed is a portent,’ Walter says seriously.

Minoo expects that somebody will ask,
A portent of what
? and that someone else will answer,
Nothing good, that’s for sure
, but no one interrupts Walter.

‘The red moon in the sky over Engelsfors showed that the veil separating the dimensions has started to weaken,’ Walter continues while looking at Minoo. ‘The red moon could only be seen by the Chosen Ones and certain ordinary people in, as it were … sensitised states. That’s right, isn’t it?’

She recalls some of the many things that happened during the night of the blood-red moon. The accidents. The fights. The nervous breakdowns. She remembers what Rebecka’s mother had said about how several of the casualty patients had been speaking about a red moon, but that none of the staff had seen it.

‘Then there were other significant events,’ Walter says. ‘The elements reacted, one way or the other, to the heightened levels of magic. Minoo, perhaps you could tell the others something of what went on?’

He looks expectantly at her.

And suddenly, the logic of the chain of events strikes her. She knew of course that the strange phenomena in Engelsfors signified increasing levels of magic. But she had never twigged that the reasons were elemental reactions.

‘The crack that appeared in the schoolyard,’ Minoo begins. ‘That was the first thing that followed. Actually it happened during the night of the blood-red moon. And that was … an “earth” reaction?’

Walter smiles more generously now and she feels reassured.

‘Precisely,’ he says.

Sigrid has put her glasses back on and looks expectantly at Walter and Minoo.

‘Then the water began to behave very oddly,’ Minoo continues. ‘That was due to the water element, of course. And the endless electrical problems must have been linked to metal. The sawmill burnt down. That was a fire reaction.’

Walter nods.

‘Anna-Karin found dead birds in the forest,’ Minoo continues. ‘It looked as if they had fallen out of the sky. So, air. And we have all found new areas with dead trees. That’s wood, isn’t it?’

‘Sounds like it,’ Walter agrees.

‘And, also, there was a period of unnaturally warm weather – last summer and the winter that followed,’ she goes on. ‘But I can’t work out which elements were reacting then. Perhaps several together?’

Oh my God, how
keen
she sounds. Far too eager to show off to Walter.

But nobody looks impatiently at her. There’s no Linnéa to say something sarcastic about how much Minoo adores sucking up to teachers.

Minoo realises that here, she has no need to hold back. Everyone here is like her. It’s so relaxing she feels almost guilty. Because this isn’t her true circle. This is not where she belongs and she must keep reminding herself of that. Especially now, when Walter looks at her with such approval.

‘There are no absolute distinctions,’ he says. ‘The important fact we have observed is that all the elements have responded to the increase in the level of magic. And now we have observed the next significant event. That is, what we have just seen.’

‘It can’t have been a solar eclipse,’ Felix says. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Indeed, Felix. Obviously it was no regular eclipse,’ Walter snaps. ‘Perhaps you should have refrained from interrupting us to point that out.’

He turns back to Minoo with a complicit smile. Felix sends her a dirty look.

‘What we have just experienced is the first sign that we are entering a new phase,’ Walter explains. He pauses to make sure that he has everyone’s attention.

‘Another six signs, or portents, will occur. One for each element, and all concentrated around the portal. And then a great darkness will envelop Engelsfors.’

Was this the scene Minoo had watched in her vision? The smoke that snaked down the streets and coiled itself around the houses, swallowing them. Swallowing everything.

‘You must be ready by then,’ Walter instructs them. ‘Ready to close the portal.’

No one speaks.

Minoo doesn’t really dare to speak either, but there is one question she must ask.

‘How do we do it? How do we close the portal?’

‘It is a complex process,’ Walter replies. ‘We must generate a high output of magic energy so we must develop our powers and become as strong as possible.’

Minoo’s heart is beating fast. She longs to tell the others about what he has just said. Make them see that there’s a plan. That Walter knows what he is talking about.