Snowglobe Read online

  The door swings open.

  I always thought I had a good imagination. When we played rounders at school, I’d be out in the field missing balls because in my mind I’d be riding on a starlit unicorn, or having a heroic battle with a storm giant about to lay siege to the town. I imagined what it would feel like to live in a world where fairies were real, to have a mother, to be popular like Jago.

  Never in a thousand years could I have imagined a place like this. It isn’t just the way it looks; it’s the way it breathes. The air moves; it sings with the song of a thousand worlds: with snowglobes, each one churned up as if it’s just been shaken. They ring out from their shelves, on either side of the enormous marble hallway stretching in front of me, and they swing from the ceiling on copper chains. They’re small as bubbles at the top of the shelves, and nestled into heavy iron cradles at the bottom, full of feathers, glitter and flecks of gold falling over silent scenes trapped in glass. Bridges and mountains, sculpted domes and underwater caves, all half lost in a swirling tide, each with its own tiny human figure.

  The door slams shut behind me, and a shadow flickers at the edge of my vision, twisting up a central staircase with curved banisters. The shudder I’ve been repressing worms its way up my spine. I ignore it and head for the stairs, moving carefully between the rows of gleaming globes. The air is musty, as if it hasn’t been breathed enough, and there are cobwebs in all the corners, tangled around old, flickering chandeliers and snaking over picture rails.

  I should leave. Right now. I turn on my heel and hover for a minute, two, three, looking from the door to the staircase. Then I think of my mother’s sketch, and of the book in my pocket that is the closest I have ever come to her – except being here in this house, her house. The fact that I stumbled upon it tonight, after everything that’s happened today, that must mean something. I grit my teeth and turn again, my boots squeaking on the polished marble floor, and head up the stairs.

  The banister is smooth and worn. I imagine her coming up here, her hands where mine are now, her feet lingering on the same worn places. I wonder if she played hide and seek in all the empty spaces as a child. My eyes are on stalks for signs of her – photos, height marks on walls – but there aren’t any. This is no ordinary house.

  I already knew she was no ordinary person. Pa rarely speaks about her, and when he does, it’s always from so far away. His mournful look chases every word until we’re both desperate to drop it, but there were clues in all the things he told me. She crocheted scarves with silk, and then gave them away because she didn’t need them. She laughed like a storybook witch, sang like a bird, shouted like a steam train – and nobody stood a chance against her when she set her mind to something. She rarely spoke about her family, or where she came from, but Pa knew there was magic there. It was bright and dark and full of hope, but there were other, more twisting things that gave her nightmares sometimes. She didn’t use her magic around him, said it was best left behind, and that was what they argued about – he could see how much it cost her, not to breathe that air.

  She didn’t want me to breathe it either, but she left before I took my first steps, so she never got to tell me that herself. Pa told me she’d have worried, when he began to see traces of it in the things I did. He taught me to count through the moments when it got close, so that’s what I’ve been doing. That’s what I did this morning with Jago. I counted, and tried to pretend the magic – her magic – was all in my imagination.

  Only it wasn’t. Pa’s been trying to tell me for a while that it would only grow, but I didn’t want to hear it.

  The stairs lead to a wide corridor where arched windows look out on to narrow balconies and the tangled brambles of the neglected garden. Snowglobes hang from silver chains here, clustered together like small universes. I walk around them, watching as wild storms flurry within, and in a smaller, darker corridor, globes the size of a human head are set into alcoves in the walls. They glow strangely, ancient yellowed glass making rugged landscapes look ominous. A black iron staircase looms at one end of the corridor, a ghostly light filtering down.

  Hurry.

  I back up a couple of steps at the sound of small, hushed voices.

  She’ll find you. Be quick!

  The room perches at the top of the house, beneath a huge dome roof that makes all the sounds echo. Stars wink overhead between smoky, shifting clouds, and it’s hard to make out much detail in the miniature worlds that line the room on shelves of twisted metal. They flounder in swashing tides of bright whirling snow, black sands and deep blue seas that glimmer with tiny darting fish.

  Who is it?

  Is it her? Is it Ganymede?

  No! ’Tis a new face, come to see us . . . and she has magic!

  Run, you fool. You’ll be lost as we are!

  The ghost-like voices rustle and boom and fade to nothing. My skin prickles as I venture further into the room. There is danger here. I don’t know where it comes from, that sense, but it’s as real as the taste of copper in my mouth. I peer into the nearest globe to find a solitary tree, its golden leaves in a great mound at the base of its trunk. They swirl up as I watch, so I move on to another: a half-ruined lighthouse perched on the edge of a cliff, beads of ice gathered in every crevice. The next is a circus top with a single tiger prowling around its perimeter. I stare at that one until the tiger lifts its head and roars at me, tiny stars whooshing up around its paws.

  Clementine?

  I follow the sound and see a boy at the bottom of a steep, snow-covered hill, one hand resting on the side of an enormous golden dog. The dog whines as I get closer, and the boy turns to it, soothing it with mumbled words.

  ‘Was that you?’ I ask, wincing as my hushed voice ricochets around the glass-domed roof.

  The boy turns back to face me.

  Don’t you recognize me?

  I stare at him for long minutes, wracking my brain. It’s hard to see clearly through the glass, and his features are so tiny.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Dylan.

  Snow falls harder all around him as he stares at me, a strange half-hope in his dark eyes. He curls his hand deeper into the dog’s coat, and he shivers.

  And then I know him.

  Dylan, who helped me up after the netball smacked like ice into the side of my face. Dylan, who shivered beside me at the bus stop on so many bitter mornings. Who talked to me, but only when it suited him. Only when his best friend, Jago, wasn’t in sight.

  Dylan, who was sitting beside Jago earlier today, watching silently as he poked me in the small of my back.

  What are you doing here?

  I watch him for a long time, trying to convince the logical part of my mind that it really is him, miniaturized in a snowglobe. He steps closer to the glass, leaving the dog to wander over thin grass that pokes through the snow, and puts his hands against it.

  Clementine, is that really you?

  He sounds desperate, not like the Dylan I know, who’s quick to smile, and easy with words. He tricks me every day – says ‘hi’, picks up my bag when it goes sliding across the bus floor – then we get through those green gates, and he gives me a wave and goes about his day with Jago, not even meeting my eye.

  How did he end up here?

  Please tell me you can hear me, he whispers.

  ‘I can hear you.’

  He stares at me for a long moment then presses his forehead against the glass.

  ‘Dylan?’

  How long has it been?

  I perch on the arm of one of the old chairs, so my eyes are on a level with the globe. The material is frayed and bobbly; I rub my palms into it until it hurts. Just so I know this is real.

  How long, since I was out there? He looks up, clenches his hands into fists, as if he’ll pound at the glass. As if that’s just what he’s been doing all this time.

  ‘I saw you today.’

  Have they stopped looking? How long has it been, Clem?

  ‘It was today, Dylan
! I saw you at school this morning!’

  It was a lifetime ago! he shouts, striking at the glass between us.

  When he’s finished pounding and he’s sitting on the frozen ground, I ask, ‘What happened?’ The dog shuffles around him, nudging against his neck every so often. ‘How did you end up in there?’

  He doesn’t say anything. He puts his hand up to the dog and hooks his fingers into its coat, hauling himself up. I’ve never seen anybody look so weary.

  ‘Dylan? How do I get you out? What happened?’

  I don’t know. I was walking along the street. It was misty, and it got colder and colder, and then there was a hill . . . and I was here.

  ‘With the dog?’

  Helios. He came after. I don’t know how it works. He just appeared one day.

  ‘One day? But you’ve only been here one day, Dylan.’

  No, he says. I don’t know how long it’s been, but it isn’t just a day. Weeks, or months – I can feel the time passing, but I can’t tell properly because there’s no night here. The sky doesn’t change, except when the storms come.

  He leans into Helios with another shiver, and stares at me. The hill rises behind him, snow shifting along its surface as the wind blows. On the top of the slope is a mean little house made of weathered wood with a tiny window at the top and a huge stable door at the bottom. There’s nothing comforting about it.

  ‘Is that where you live?’

  I’ve tried to reach the house, but the hill is too steep, too icy. I can’t get up there.

  Snow begins to fall, and he tucks his chin into his jacket as it gathers in his brown hair, catching on his eyebrows.

  Are you really here? he asks, his voice muffled.

  I nod. ‘I’ll get you out.’

  He shakes his head. And then his face darkens, and the globes around him begin to swirl. The snow falls harder, Helios barks and then silence. Utter stillness, all around, Dylan and Helios frozen into position, his face turned from mine so I can’t see his expression.

  A bony hand claps on to my shoulder.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asks a dry voice that sounds as if it hasn’t spoken for a thousand years. ‘Turn, child, let me see you. How did you get in?’

  I swallow and turn, the hand still on my shoulder. Against the pale starlight of the room, she is a shadow, a collection of shapes that makes no sense.

  ‘Light,’ she snaps, drawing away from me, her voice swelling and filling the room. The globes begin to glow, their light a silver haze that grows until the shadows are gone.

  We stare at each other for the longest, strangest time. She is tall and angular, her features softened only by an enormous mane of silver hair, some of it matted, some of it plaited, some of it twisted into a bun on top of her head. Her long robe seems to be a collection of materials she threw together in a hurry: lace trails from the sleeves, the pewter bodice looks almost like armour and the collar is made of pale, speckled feathers. The air around her vibrates, as though she’s in the centre of a heat haze. She’s unearthly, beautiful, alien and thoroughly chilling.

  Ganymede! scream the voices from the snowglobes.

  ‘Who are you?’ I whisper. Who is Ganymede, and what does she have to do with my mother? There must be a link; her name was in my mother’s book, and this is the house my mother drew. This place rings with the magic that I’ve been denying for so long.

  ‘Who am I?’ she shrieks. ‘Who are you?’

  Run, run, run, RUN!

  The air simmers between us, and her fingers twitch as her eyes narrow; any moment now she’s going to grab me again.

  RUN!

  I run and I don’t look back. I don’t linger on the globes I pass, though tiny figures put their hands up against the glass as avalanches thunder around them, though the whole house seems to rumble with my footsteps.

  I just run.

  This is a mistake. I skitter down the marble steps, already knowing it’s the wrong thing to do. By the time I hit the path, my stomach is churning, not because of everything that’s just happened, but because I’m running away. I could at least have grabbed Dylan’s snowglobe.

  I never even thought of it.

  I linger by the twisted iron gate, my back to the house, my mind a scramble of snowglobes and tiny whirling storms, and that woman Ganymede’s silver eyes, staring right into my heart as if she already knows everything inside me.

  What if I turn round now and the house isn’t there any more? What if I just cursed Dylan to years longer living like that? He’s two-faced, and sometimes I think that’s worse than just plain mean, because it plays tricks on you. But, whatever he is, he doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to be abandoned there by me.

  I steel myself and turn to go back in, but the door bangs open and a thousand voices roar out:

  RUN!

  Pa is pacing the hallway when I get in. My whole body is shaking, wired with adrenaline.

  ‘Clem! Where have you been?’

  ‘I was walking. Sorry.’

  He looks me up and down, and I obviously look pretty awful, because he doesn’t say anything else. He just strides off to the kitchen and calls me in after him. I loiter in the hallway, taking my jacket off, flicking through the pages of the book, hoping to see a page usefully labelled ‘Snowglobes and How to Break Them’.

  I have to go back – I’ve been chanting it to myself the whole way home. I need to get him out of there. I’ll read the book and figure out how to protect myself against Ganymede, whoever she is, and then I’ll go back in there. I imagine it: moonlight striking through the glass dome as I liberate him; Ganymede standing powerless before my magical powers. I picture myself like an energy ball, strobes cutting through the air as we escape, and it’s not so different from all the fantasies I’ve built in my mind over the years, except this time it’s real, and I’m already cross with myself because when it came to it I wasn’t as brave as I thought I would be.

  ‘Clem!’

  ‘Coming!’ I tuck the book into my back pocket and trail into the kitchen.

  Pa scrambles eggs, toasts bread. Shoves the plate over to me.

  ‘Aren’t you having any?’

  ‘I already ate,’ he says. He stares at me while I eat. ‘Clem . . .’

  ‘Hmm?’

  But he can’t find the words. He just looks at me sadly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just . . . don’t get lost.’

  I look down at the empty plate. He knows things are going on. Maybe he knows more than I do. Why is it so hard to ask? Why don’t I just say, ‘Oh, hey, I discovered this house today, and you’ll never guess who was in it, trapped in a snowglobe . . . !’

  ‘Pa?’

  But he’s already gone. I missed the moment.

  I cannot sleep. I don’t know why I’m even trying. I should just get up and go back there right now, except Pa is a light sleeper, so I’ll have to wait until morning. But I’ve never felt guilt like this; it’s like a rock on my chest. I reach down under the bed for my head torch and shove it on, grabbing my mother’s book. I’ll just read a couple more pages. My eyes flick over the words and it’s hard to focus, but eventually, fair sparking with frustration, I find a page where the writing is smoother, more evenly spaced. The passage is boldly entitled ‘MAGIC’, and that seems as good a place to start as any.

  In reality, our magic is not so much the spell-saying or anything formal like that. It is a connection with the world; with the growing of new life, or the shaping of metals; with the moon and the sun (Ganymede is the moon, I have always thought, and Io the sun, and I . . . perhaps the earth?). Ganymede says I dream too much and should take our work more seriously. I do not think that magic ought always to be serious. It is such fun! It is full of colour and life! My sisters do not see it the same way, I suppose. For them, it is always the pull of power and control, of responsibility.

  Our parents trained them well in that, especially Gan. She has a way with the globes that made Papa glow with
pride. One look of her sharp silver eyes, one click of her fingers, and those marauding magicians are caught up and trapped in their little glass cells. I am not sure it is right, to trap all things magical. I would like to leave this place, to venture further and find the magic that is still out there in the real world, but my sisters are welded here, their roots deep within the walls of the house. Io sees no interest in the outside world, she calls it grey and dull, and Ganymede would rather hide from it all. She can hide the whole house!

  Ganymede is my mother’s sister! It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m related to such an odd creature, and yet it doesn’t feel comfortable at all. That house raises so many questions, and I ran away, just like my mother did. All those years of planning my bravery, and, when it came down to it, I ran.

  I can go back. If Ganymede and my mother have magic, then so do I, and there must be a way to help Dylan. I think back to this morning, which seems like years ago already, and the feeling that came over me before I knocked Jago across the room, that feeling that changed everything. It had been building up for so long – I counted and counted, and he poked and poked, until my blood was roaring. I turn the head torch off.

  One, two, three, four . . .

  This is not how Pa imagined me using his counting trick.

  Seven, eight, nine . . .

  I shove my hand out into the darkness. Nothing.

  Forty, forty-one . . . fifty-six . . .

  I thrust again, and a tiny wire of amber spirals between my thumb and my index finger.

  Yep, I’m weird. I grin as the room lights up.

  That’s magic. Real, actual magic, done by me.

  A door bangs and I’m awake, dreams of lost boys and orange sparks still alive in my mind. It’s almost surprising to find myself in my same old bedroom, with all my same old stuff; it takes me a while to work out that it was the front door that woke me. It’s only just dawn, but Pa is always out with first light, even in midsummer when it’s barely five. Sometimes I used to watch him go. He seemed a little bit magical himself then as he trod light-footed in the shadows, head high, hair blazing, birds singing all around as the sky started to lighten.