Prospero's Children by Jan Siegel Page A

man getting into an old car. He tugged a bunch of keys out of his pocket, glanced at it in irritation, and put it back, subsequently producing a much smaller bunch which evidently included the key to the ignition. It came to Fern that this must be Great-Cousin Ned, and on that first keyring was the one key they sought. But the image was gone; another crowded on its heels, and another, a quickfire succession of instant and incident, fragments of history tumbling over each other, hurtling back further and further into the past. A market stall with a tray of trinkets where sifting fingers brushed over an object she could not see; a coved cellar piled with cases on which the dust lay undisturbed; a uniformed figure picking up something from a blood-smeared floor; two men staring into a flame, their faces lit from below, one chubby and eager, the other very young but already shrewd, his forelock limp with sweat, premature lines in his thin cheek. For a second, his eyes lifted, and they were brown and golden and green as a sunlit wood. Then the chimera was lost, overwhelmed in a chaos of other faces: a gypsy, a woman with languorous eyes, a man with a bitter mouth. A waveless sea trailed at the stern of a seedy fishing boat, the sails hanging immobile in the torpid air. The setting sun spilled from beneath the cloud-shelf and flashed like fire across the ocean, igniting a path of gold where a dark silhouette rose to a fatal rendezvous. And then the water closed over all, and far below a skull blossomed, growing slowly into flesh and form, but before Fern could see any clear features white hands covered it, and it was gone. At the last there came another boat, a struggling vessel with bent mast and splitting timbers, riding on a storm beyond imagining. The tempest shook the television set as if it were made of card; a gust of wind tore round the room, wrenching at the curtains, snapping the window wide. Lightning crackled in the gap where the screen used to be. Fern and Will felt themselves lifted up, they and the house and the hillside without, as if the dimension in which they dwelled had turned into a giant elevator, and the only fixed universe was inside the television. They clung to the bedposts like children on a Ferris wheel, soaring through the tumult of sky and sea, until they could see the many-colored flares pulsing like a phantom coronet above the roof of the clouds, and hear the thunder-drums rolling down below. And then a hole was ripped in the canopy and a chasm opened amidst the waves, and there was the ship plunging into it, and the helmsman was swept away, and Fern knew the glimmer at his throat was the missing key, and she saw the pale arms of the mermaid dragging him to his death. A swift darkness spread across the vision, blotting out even the storm, and a voice boomed out of it as cold and empty as the deeps of space. “It is forbidden to go further back,” it said. “The city has been banished from Time and Forever, history and memory. No man shall look on Atlantis again.” There was a snick like the closing of a door, and the screen was back in place. The room around them was stationary; house and hillside did not stir. Fern was trembling so violently she did not trust herself to speak.
    “My G-God,” stammered Will. “My
God
.” And: “What
was
that? What did it all mean?”
    “It means we’re in trouble,” Fern said briefly, when she was sure she could keep the quiver out of her voice. She pressed the eject button and replaced the video in the box.
    Will was recovering his nerve, too quickly for her taste. “It felt like a rollercoaster ride through the Big Bang,” he declared. “I’ve never been so terrified—never. Wow. Bloody wow. What do we do now?”
    “Leave,” said Fern.
    Will lowered himself over the windowsill, feeling for the topmost rung with an unsteady foot. “Careful,” said his sister. She thought she might have been able to open the door with the glove on, but she could