“I am Havoc, the miller’s son,” I mumbled. It was the name I had used with Martin since I was tiny. There was no time or need to invent another.
“Damn,” he said again, thrusting parts of his apparatus into cases. “Jaybee, you got enough footage? Bill, ready? There are only minutes left.”
The man addressed as Bill turned his face toward me, grimacing. He was shorter than I, the height of a child, with hair the color of ripe apricots, and he wore the same kind of singlet and trousers as the others. “Ready,” he said, staring at me with something like pity in his eyes.
I did not understand the word “footage.”
“Janice?”
The other woman looked into the eyes of her contrivance and nodded. “Plenty,” she said in a cold voice. Her hair was white as snow, but she was not an old woman. Her eyes when she looked up at me were hard and black, like fowls’ eyes.
“What are you doing here?” I wanted to know.
The white-haired woman laughed, a quick bark of laughter. “A documentary, boy. We are recording the vanishment of magic from England—and from the world. Now, do you know any more than you did before?”
“That isn’t true,” I said, shaking my head. “No.”
“Not yet,” she smiled. “But soon.”
The one called Jaybee stared at me as he had been since I came from behind the bush. His jaw moved restlessly, like that of a boar pig, and I resolved to stay away from him, for tushes or no, he had that look to him which says all pigs are sows to him. “We need to get rid of this kid,” he said, glaring at me. “I’ll do it.”
“No!” shouted the Alice one. “Killing him would show up on the monitors. Don’t! We’ve only got a minute left.”
Jaybee sneered at her and grabbed me by the shoulder. When he jerked me, my hat fell off and my hair tumbled down. He shouted, then laughed and grabbed me up from behind, one great hand clamped on each arm near the shoulder, holding my arms tight as he turned me toward a thing standing behind us, like a great barrel with a door in it. On my shoulder, Grumpkin snarled and scratched at him, but he paid no heed. Both of us were thrust through the door and the others tumbled in after us, all of them shrieking at Jaybee, telling him to put me out, and him fending them off while holding onto me.
Alice staggered to a certain part of the barrel where there were buttons and a flickering of light. She bent over them, muttering. Then we were all twisted inside out. I was. I presume the others were, for Janice cried out and then cursed. Grumpkin screamed. So did I. It felt as though I were being slowly torn apart from inside by rats.
[As was I, for I took hold of the thing she was in and went with her. Or tried. A barrier stretched from the bottom of the world to the top, from side to side. Impenetrable. My powers were absorbed by it, like a sponge. I could not move it. I could not get through. I was being sucked dry, sucked out, killed. I felt Beauty leaving me and could do nothing about it at all. And then she was gone. What she carried was gone with her. All our hopes gone. I was still there, sitting on the hill and weeping when Israfel found me, I who had not wept since the fountains of the deep were sealed.]
Then everything stopped. Quiet came. The pain went away. The others began to stir and bend and mutter. And the little man, Bill, opened the door into the twenty-first century.
12
My Life in the Later Centuries
“I want her,” said Jaybee. “She’s mine.” His fingers were making holes in my arms.
“No,” Alice snarled at him, her voice like a whip. “You’ve gotten us all into enough trouble. You were a stupid fool to drag her along. They’re already watching you! Risk your own life all you like, but you’re not going to get me killed. Get out of here! Do something to distract the guards at the door, and maybe they won’t see there’s an extra person!”
“Let Bill take her,” said Martin. “Nobody’ll bother Bill. I’ll see to the guards.” He pushed me at the little man and then walked away behind the scowling Jaybee, talking loudly, gesturing, making people look at him.
Bill held me by one wrist. He gave me no time to see anything. I had an impression of grayness, of round things like lance shafts hung across a wall. All sounds echoed, dwindling away in reverberations, as though we were in a great stone hall. I remember a mighty clamor of voices. Some were ours and echoes, but there were others. One of the women said, “Get that animal out of sight. Hide her hair.”
Choking down a curse, I put Grumpkin under my shirt and held him there, feeling his ragged breathing against my belly and his claws in my skin. Bill bundled up my hair and pushed my cap down on my head. He must have picked it up when it fell off.
“Now! The guards are looking the other way! Get her out of here, hurry.”
The little man pulled me along with amazing strength. He was not much larger than Papa’s fool, but he was very powerful. He dragged me up a flight of stairs that clanged under our feet like swords upon armor.
The women were behind us. One of them said, “God, there’s a pop-patrol.” I heard it as one word, “popatrol.” I looked for it, thinking it must be some kind of dangerous animal, but saw nothing except heads and legs, people moving in all directions, up and down and across, all dressed alike, all looking alike. The surface we walked
