The Second Forever (3 page)

Festival had come back into Peter's world on the full moon and to return to her world, the two of them would have to wait for the next one.

Downstairs in the main fossil gallery, suspended high up in the rafters, was the giant bat that had brought her. It hung there among the other exhibits, lifelike yet lifeless. Except, unlike everything else in the gallery, its recent journey had blown away its blanket of dust. But on the night of the full moon, it could be woken by the sound of the Journey Bell
that lay locked in the base of one of the display cases.

It had been several years since Festival had climbed onto the creature's back and been carried back to her own world. In all that time hardly a week had passed without Peter walking through the gallery and looking up at the sleeping giant, and in all that time it had never moved. Each time he had looked at it, he had felt a touch of sadness that Festival hadn't returned. He hadn't really been expecting her to, but it would have been nice to see her again. She had been the closest thing he had ever had to a sister, or a brother come to think of it. But then, this was not her world. Everything she knew – her family, her friends, her whole life – was in the other world in the heart of the library. She had only been in Peter's world for a couple of hours. Yet Peter hoped she might return one day, and as time had passed, that hope seemed to have grown and not faded as logic said it should.

Peter's grandfather carried the key to the case around his neck. When he had retired as the museum's caretaker and had passed the huge collection of keys onto his son, he had kept the one key that ensured the Journey Bell was locked safely away. As far as Peter knew, only he and his grandfather – and Festival, of course – knew about the key and what it hid. Peter
had thought of asking his grandfather to send him back to Festival's world, but he knew the old man wouldn't. As he had missed Festival more over the years, he had even thought of stealing the key while his grandfather slept, but he didn't.

But Festival was here now and the giant bat that had brought her hung back under the roof, and was slowly beginning to collect a new layer of dust.

‘It took a while for anyone to connect the book with the flood,' said Festival. ‘When I got home I didn't tell anyone about meeting Darkwood or the Ancient Child or reading the book, and I certainly didn't tell them I'd been here.'

‘So what made them think the book and the flood were connected?' Peter's grandfather asked.

‘Well, at first, everyone blamed it on global warming,' said Festival. ‘They said that your world was killing ours, but it didn't make sense. And then the penny dropped. I told my dad about what had happened when we'd read the book at the bottom of the waterfall, and he told someone who told someone who told someone else and they all agreed that it must have been that.'

She said that eventually she had told them about the bat and they had said she had to go and get Peter and re-write the book.

‘A lot of people thought it was a terrible idea,' she
continued, ‘especially those who had read the book and been freed when we destroyed it. They knew how evil it was but they were overruled, and I was sent back to fetch you.'

‘Why did you wait so long?' asked Peter's grandfather. ‘You could have come at least two years ago.'

‘I know,' said Festival. ‘I tried to talk them out of it, not the coming-to-see-you idea, but actually re-writing the book. Some people didn't agree with it, but as the water rose higher and yet another gallery had to be abandoned, it became our only choice. No one knew if it would work or not, but there were no other options.'

Festival had arrived on the last possible full moon. The water had risen so much that the Journey Bell the two children had climbed up the steep path through the forest to reach was about to vanish beneath the waves. By the time the next full moon arrived, the water would be lapping at the bell's rim and Festival wouldn't have been able to summon the bat.

‘Another couple of days and the bell would not have rung,' said Festival.

‘Did the deaf, dumb and blind man . . .' Peter began.

‘Earshader?' said Festival. ‘Yes, he sailed me out to the island again. Even with our whole world about
to drown, people were still too scared to go out there.'

The children could see Peter's grandfather had grown tired and was struggling to keep his eyes open. Their words were drifting over him.

With a month to wait until the next full moon, Peter took Festival around the library. He took her to places no other living person had visited, through the hidden doors and along the dusty corridors to long-forgotten storerooms full of fantastic things. There were places that only he and his cat Archimedes had visited, places he had never imagined he would show to anyone else. Now, sharing them with Festival was exciting and wonderful. This was not simply just another part of the museum. It was his part, his secret world within a world, and taking her there made her part of it all.

‘In your entire world,' said Festival, ‘which is the place you love the most?'

‘Here,' answered Peter. ‘The museum, every single square inch of it.'

‘But what about outside?'

‘There is absolutely nowhere outside that I would rather be,' said Peter.

‘Will you take me outside while we wait for the next full moon?' said Festival.

‘Why?'

‘I can't imagine a place that looks as though it goes on forever,' said Festival.

‘It doesn't,' said Peter. ‘If you start anywhere and travel in a perfectly straight line, you will eventually end up where you started. The world is a huge ball.'

‘But you can't stand anywhere and see all the boundaries like in my world, can you?'

‘No, of course not,' said Peter. ‘It's not so much because your world is a lot smaller than mine. It's because your world is the inside of the ball and mine is the outside.'

‘But my world is much smaller.'

‘Yes, and if you got in a rocket and shot off up into the sky in my world you would go on forever,' Peter said. ‘You'd be able to look behind you and see earth getting smaller and smaller. If you flew in a rocket in your world, you'd just crash into the opposite side of it, no matter what size it is.'

‘I like that,' said Festival. ‘That you can see all of it in one go. You always know where you are.'

‘The museum's like that,' said Peter. ‘But there's also outside.'

This ended the discussion because they had reached the where-did-everything-come-from point, which can never have an answer.

‘All right,' said Festival. ‘But there must be some places outside the museum that you do like.'

‘Actually, there is one place I like nearly as much
as this museum,' Peter said. ‘And I think part of the reason is that it's got a really tall brick wall surrounding it, so it's got the same sense of a safe boundary that we've got here.'

‘Well, can we go there?'

‘Yes,' said Peter. ‘It's the botanic gardens, though since the drought came, it has become a really sad place.

‘My grandfather calls it the Paradise Garden because he says that the word “paradise” is an old Iranian word that means a walled garden and that's exactly what it is,' Peter added.

While he had agreed to go there with her, it still didn't feel right taking Festival outside the museum. Peter knew it made no sense, but nevertheless he felt uneasy about it. He would take her, but only after they had exhausted all the possibilities of getting back to her world before the next full moon.

‘After all,' he said, ‘I didn't go to your world on the bat. I fell through a wall. I think we should see if we can go that way. Then we won't have to wait.'

They went to the tiny room with the mummified cat, where Peter had fallen into Festival's world.

‘There you are,' said Peter, picking up his old cat Archimedes, who was sitting in front of the display case staring at the mummy. ‘Guess who has come to see us? It's Festival.'

The girl reached out and tickled the cat behind
the ear. ‘He looks exactly the same as he did when I met him five years go,' she said.

‘I know, he hardly seems to get any older,' said Peter. ‘He's amazing. He's always been the same ever since I can remember. Though he does seem a bit lazier than before. He used to spend most of the day asleep on my bed, but often he's there all night too. I thought it meant he had seen all there was to see, but I suppose it's old age.'

In the dimly lit room, the cat did look the same, but out in bright light you could see that Archimedes was actually beginning to age. Fur that had once been the colour of gold was turning white, and old whiskers that broke now took longer to replace or did not regrow at all.

‘Maybe he read the book,' Festival joked.

‘Or he was on someone's lap when they read it,' said Peter.

Peter's grandfather had pushed the display case across the room so it covered the part of the wall where Peter had been sitting when he fell through to the other world. While Festival kept watch in the doorway, Peter pushed the case aside again. The wall looked no different from those in all the other rooms – dark wooden panelling that had the same slightly hollow sound no matter where he tapped it.

‘There must be a hidden door,' he said, ‘but I can't
see any trace of it.'

‘I'm sure if it was a simple as that,' said Festival, ‘someone would have found it before and would know where it was.'

‘But you can't just fall through a solid wall,' Peter said. ‘Not unless you're having a dream. There's no other explanation. Remember how I pinched your arm the first time we met? I thought it was all a dream . . .'

‘Yes, but it wasn't.'

‘No. So there must be a door of some sort. I just can't see it.'

‘Well, if you could see it,' Festival said, ‘it wouldn't be hidden then, would it?'

‘No, but I've always been really good at sensing the museum's secret doors,' said Peter. ‘It's kind of like a second sight. I can find them without fail.'

‘You can't say that for sure. There could be lots of secret panels you've never found.'

‘I suppose, but I don't think so.'

That night when everyone else was asleep, the two of them went down to the workshops at the back of the museum and borrowed some tools. Then they returned to the side room and Peter forced a chisel into the edge of the main panel, creating a small gap. He used a crowbar to push back the opening until the panel split.

Archimedes, who had joined them, backed away around the side of the cabinet. His eyes grew wild and the fur on his neck rose, and although he could have run away, he didn't. He stood fixed to the spot.

‘Can you see anything?' said Festival as Peter shone a torch into the fracture.

‘Nothing.'

‘Well, there must be something,' said Festival. ‘A brick wall or more wood, at least.'

‘There's nothing there at all,' said Peter, reluctant to put his hand into the darkness. ‘It's just completely black.'

They moved the crowbar and pushed and pulled it until a large piece of wood broke free, making a hole wide enough to squeeze through. Cold dust-free air blew out of the gap and it was damp, like it would've been before the world had entered its drought.

Although the opening was big enough to climb through, neither of them did. Peter moved the torch up and down and it was exactly like he had said.

There was nothing there.

No matter where he pointed the beam of light, it simply disappeared into the darkness. Peter reached in and dropped the chisel. It vanished too, and if it had landed somewhere below them, it had made absolutely no sound.

Neither child said a word, but they were both
terrified. Peter had known the library his whole life. He had been through dozens of secret doors and visited deserted rooms and attics far from the galleries, places where his footprints were the first in a hundred years. He had seen artefacts that could never have come from earth, furniture that could never have held a human. But he had always felt safe and secure, except maybe for the time when he had met Bathline in the far attic – the meeting that had begun his quest to the other world. But even there he had always known he could turn and run back to familiar safety.

This was different. There was something evil in the darkness inside the wall. Something that was trying to entice them through the gap.

‘There's something bad in there,' said Peter. ‘Like it doesn't belong to this world.'

‘Darkwood,' they both said at the same time.

Although they both knew that Peter hadn't come to any harm when he had fallen into Festival's world, neither of them would so much as put their hand into the darkness for fear of something grabbing it and pulling them in.

They nailed the broken panel back into place, covering the missing splinters with sticky tape, and pushed the display case so that the damage was hidden. As they did so, Bastin the mummified Cat
God shook on its ebony stand. It should have fallen off, but somehow righted itself just in time. Its dried wrappings split along its back where no one could see it, and a small bone fell out.