Darkwater by Catherine Fisher Page A

in.
    â€œI just want to bring my father home,” she muttered.
    â€œI know that. Sign it.”
    â€œThe cottage is too cold for him! He wasn’t brought up to it.”
    He took her hand and guided it to the paper. “There. Just your name.”
    â€œAnd you’ll really go?”
    â€œThe Hall will be his. Legally. If you sign.”
    She shook her head, unbearably weary, and laughed an exasperated laugh. “I don’t know what to make of you. I think we must both be mad.”
    â€œIf we are, it doesn’t matter,” Azrael said.
    So she put the paper on the bench and signed it.
    Sarah Trevelyan

thirteen
    A t once all the clocks had started ticking. Lying in bed now, shivering under the heavy covers, she remembered that, and it seemed to her as if the house had woken up at that precise moment, that the windows had begun to rattle and the boards creaked, as if far below the Darkwater raging through its underground caverns had roared with a strange fury. Even lying here now, barely awake, she could hear tiny movements that had not been in the house before, gusts and the bang of a door, the rapid scuttle of a beetle across some wainscot.
    It took her a long time to fall asleep.
    When she did, her dreams were a jumble. She found herself in a room full of clocks, their ticking so loud she put her hands to her ears, staring around. It was the laboratory. But Azrael’s experiments had dust all over them, the alembics cracked, the liquids and chemicals in every tube dried and crusted.
    â€œWhere are you?” she called.
    There was someone standing by the mechanical model of the planets. A dark man, shadowed by the heavy curtains. As she watched he set the model moving, and the planets spun off their wires and went careering around the room, whizzing past her. She had to duck, feeling their fiery glow, the ends of her hair singed by Mercury’s sizzle.
    â€œStop it!” she hissed. “You’re breaking it!”
    It wasn’t Azrael. It was the tramp. He stepped out of shadow and she saw how big he was, taller and broader than she remembered, his coat tied with string looking more like a belted robe, and a great sword in his hand.
    â€œTha’s done it now, ain’t thee!” he said angrily. “Tha’s made the pact with him!”
    â€œI had to. I had no choice!”
    â€œThere’s always a choice!” he roared. “Thou’rt lost now, girl! Lost forever and all eternity!” And he swung with his sword, and the glass vessels crashed and tinkled, the top of the bench cleared with one terrible sweep, a thousand fragments bouncing and shattering on the floor.
    â€œThis too,” he raged, and she jumped aside as he shoved the telescope over and dragged everything off the mantelshelf, notes, papers, books, carvings, globes, and hurled them all into the fire.
    The fire! She had never seen it so huge; it snarled and crackled and spat like something alive. She was almost sure she could see hands in it, tiny red hands that grasped and seared and curled the paper, a demonic delight in the roaring and heat. It had spilled out of the grate; now it rampaged through the laboratory, devouring benches and tables, and in the heart of the smoke the tramp was unlocking the wall safe with a great black key.
    â€œCome on,” he yelled to her. “This way!”
    There was a glass jar inside, and with another key he opened a tiny door in its side and grabbed her hands and pulled her in, the fire laughing hoarsely behind them.

    The room was a strange one. There was a bed in it, and the odd lamp she had seen before, and a box-like contraption and small, cheap-looking furniture. All its colors were bright. On the walls huge colored pictures of men in ridiculously short trousers with numbers on their garish shirts shocked her. They were photographs. She was amazed at their color, at how real they looked.
    The twins were there. One lay on the bed, the