Chapter ?

It was the middle of the night with the silvery moon-face of the clock speaking twitchy rhythms when Dackery decided that nothing was worthwhile anymore. A certain lonely hush comes this late at night, the polar opposite of the excited buzzing quiet of an empty room in the afternoon. Instead of thin spiderwebbing shadows, every object took on lines of pallid light and was transformed and made like glass, or ice, a world in which everything has been turned into ice, a world frigid and empty, a world where everything you lick gets your tongue stuck to it and everything you love quickly melts.

Dackery was, in fact, the crown prince of Gromit, but things don't always go according to plan, particularly if your father, the king of insanity if nothing else, has you banished for fear you will overthrow him. Not that he didn't deserve it. The exiled prince now lay on the kitchen floor of Iggy Gloom's house, and was only permitted to stay there because both of Iggy and Beatrix's foster parents had gone missing two nights ago, and had yet to return. He was certain they would, and the day loomed unknown in his mind like a death-sentence. Beatrix was proving to be a disturbing house-mate as well, despite her small stature and tender age. The girl would stay up all night, experimenting, so she said, but she would never say on iwhat/i, and every time someone knocked on her bedroom door there was a large and grand production to be heard of Beatrix moving things around before at last the door was opened and revealed her bedroom, looking exactly the same as before. When left alone for a while she obviously got less cautious with whatever she was up to, because strange smells and sounds of wailings, bangings, and faint buzzing came downstairs when she thought no one was about. She only came downstairs for meals, which she ate while still wearing anti-radiation gloves and goggles, which Iggy believed was unsanitary.

When she wasn't in her bedroom, Beatrix went for long spells in the attic at the top of the stairs, where she would remain for hours on end without anyone hearing so much as a sound, not even when someone knocked on the door. It gave Iggy and Dackery a creepy feeling in the pit of their guts, especially when they would ask Beatrix later that day why she hadn't answered, to which she would reply, "I didn't hear you," even though Iggy at one point had banged so hard he'd almost knocked the door in. She also seemed to lose track of time up there, and was often surprised to read how late (or early) the clock said when she came downstairs so many hours, or just a few minutes, later.

She was also refusing to go to school, which Iggy found annoying but, being a delinquent himself, he didn't argue.

Iggy had been a great comfort to Dackery, because whenever Dackery was missing the life he had once had and people he was so far away from, Iggy would explain his own predicaments, which made Dackery feel stupid for thinking himself misfortunate in the first place. On the whole it made the situation seem a lot more bearable, like an annoyance compared with a travesty, or the flu versus having your foot cut off.

Tonight was difficult nonetheless, because Dackery kept thinking back on his gryffin, Greyquill, who he'd been inseparable from for years until his father had sold the beast at auction, along with everything else belonging to his son, including a pair of levitating boots and an ancient flying ship thought to be alien. Dackery had always been fascinated by flight. But Greyquill wasn't just a toy, he was a friend, and the cruel-looking Tajikbaani man he was sold to was probably whipping him right now and making him do hard labor moving rocks and then he'd probably sell him to a slaughter house. Dackery was sure Greyquill must be feeling very sad and confused about why his human would leave him. Dackery was sixteen, and thought himself too world-wise and manly to cry, but he was crying right now and really couldn't help it.

At this point in time Beatrix chose to come downstairs and walk all over Dackery in the dark. Dackery started swearing and complaining that she'd done it on purpose, then got even more enraged when she chose to turn the light on and start making a hot coco.

"Stop crying about it," she griped. "Crying is useless and infantile."

"I'm not crying about you stepping on me, in fact, I'm not crying at all. Leave me alone and go away."

"Yes you are, and I've got a head for drama, so tell me, trouble in paradise?"

"What?"

"Did you and my brother have a falling out? Is your faggoty relationship on the rocks?" she asked this blatantly, and with a sickly-amused sneer.

"We're just friends and he isn't the problem."

"Oh snap. I do wish you two would admit to your cosiness so I could laugh at you. You know, Iggy's gone out with a guy before."

"I don't believe you and I think you're highly annoying."

"Oh but it's itrue/i. Feel free to ask him." She made a move to leave, but Dackery caught her arm.

"What do you do all day, upstairs, by yourself?" he asked. Beatrix looked at the floor in silence, lost in thought, perhaps over what to say. Finally her round brown eyes looked up.

"Have you ever read 'The Chronicles of Narnia'?" she asked, like a TV with the volume turned low.

"Yes," Dackery said with an undertone of surprise and suspicion he just couldn't hide. "Why?"

"And do you remember, how Lucy finds a wardrobe, which leads to another world?"

Dackery stared and kept his mouth shut, wondering where this was all going.

"The attic leads to another world. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I'm sure you'll only spoil it."

Dackery, who believed in UFO's and bigfoot and anything else, who possessed a mind so open that not only was the front door unlocked but it also did not have a back wall or roof, found a hard time accepting this. "Another world?"

"Yes. But you see, I suspect certain secret worlds attract certain types of people. Lucy found Narnia. Alice found Wonderland. And well, I found this."

"Dorothy found Oz too. And Meg found all sorts of worlds with a tesseract. I wonder why it's always a young girl."

"Surely not for our kindness and innocence, if I fit the bill. My entire purpose of going there is to conquer it," Beatrix said, turning the corners of her eyes to him. "I am the heir of Faust." A decaying light, a light like a dying fire or the dead, ruby glow of a sunset field tinted red (was it light or blood?) thrust imperceptably from the back of her eyes and into her corneas, making them masked and impossible to read while at the same time filling Dackery's insides with a stabby feeling like swallowed knives that screamed "Something's wrong!" Dackery twitched, just once about the shoulders, and shuddered. "And, as heir of Faust, conquering all that exists of life and death is my birthrite, just as Faust sold his soul that our line might rule in terror and bloody effigy. First I will take over the world I found, Deathworld, and with its souls I shall form an army and crush all that stands in my way. The time is soon." Beatrix turned on her heel and went back upstairs, and Dackery couldn't help but notice that, although she was ascending the stairs, her feet did not move.