When I’d looked everywhere, including pulling the bedclothes off and dragging the mattress on to the floor, I looked everywhere again.
Then I ran to the doorway and began screaming for Jotto and next for Grembilard.
Some monkeys answered from a tall tamarind.
After that I recalled a bell-pull thing in the pavilion, rushed back and yanked on it so hard it broke and fell down.
I thought no one would come. (They’d all gone off after breakfast.) I started running about up and down outside the pavilion.
Now and then I’ve read of people ‘tearing their hair’ – and I was. I was, as they say, beside myself. What I felt was worse than anything – even fear, though it was a sort of fear. Indescribable, or I could cover pages. Panic, loss, fright. And shame. Why shame? Of course, you’ll see at once, although I didn’t.
Then abruptly there was Grembilard, and Jotto too.
‘Is something wrong?’ asked Grembilard.
I shrieked, ‘My book – my book’s disappeared!’
‘Oh my,’ said Jotto. Then, sensibly, ‘Don’t fret, lady, we’ll find it. What was the cover like, and what was the title?’
‘Oh you – oh – it wasn’t that sort of – it was—’ I floundered. In my head I heard Nemian that time/s on our journey to the Wolf Tower, patronizingly calling it my ‘Diary’. ‘Diary!’ I screamed, hopping from foot to foot. ‘My diary’
‘Oh, um,’ said Jotto.
Grembilard said, ‘It can’t have gone far, madam.’
‘I’ve looked – everywhere – everywhere—’ I scrambled after them back into the pavilion. I stood cursing them as they wasted time looking carefully everywhere I had, (including under the mattress and behind the stone porcupine). At the same moment I was praying that they somehow would find the book where it couldn’t be.
They didn’t.
‘Could you have left it under the tree at breakfast?’
I knew I hadn’t, but I bolted for the tree. I rummaged round its roots amid fallen toast and flowers.
The monkeys yelled with laughter.
I wouldn’t cry again.
‘Well, lady, it looks as if it isn’t here.’
‘Oh – Jotto—!!!’
‘Perhaps, while you were walking, madam—’
Trying to be calm. ‘No, I did take the bag, but I didn’t take the book out. I know I didn’t—’
I wavered. Wondering now if I had. I hadn’t trusted the pavilion to keep still, not really. If I was going to be more than a few strides away – I lugged that bag with me, and on every long walk. Tired, I’d sling it down and sit on it. I never took out this book – I hadn’t wanted to, afraid of reading bits over and feeling worse.
But if I had, and had forgotten – maybe left it somewhere for a monkey to play with, eat—
All the things that have happened to me, and I’d kept hold of it. This book, which somehow meant and means so much, because I have filled it with my own truths, and almost everything that I’ve seen and felt. In this book I wrote how I first met Argul. I wrote about that first time he kissed me.
I will NOT cry.
Some monkey has it up a tree. That’s why they’re making that terrible row. They’ve eaten my book, my life – and it’s given them indigestion—
Or a bird’s found it and flown—
I went completely still.
‘Oops,’ said Jotto. ‘She’s going to have a turn.’
‘The window,’ I said, staring at him coldly. ‘My dream. The owl—’
It was Jotto’s mouth that dropped open. Why is he so human? Grem, the human one, stood there like a machine.
Jotto asked, ‘She means the prince’s owl?’
‘Yes I do. It was in my room. I thought I dreamed it. The owl took my book!’
I spun round and began to run again. The grass whirled by under my feet. I leapt over flower-beds and through clawing bamboos. They cantered after me.
I was plainly heading for the rock-tower. His place.
‘Don’t,’ I grunted, ‘try to stop me—’
‘But – but –’ called Jotto, not out of breath, because he doesn’t have to breathe, but still somehow breathless, ‘he’s not there!’
I faltered, not meaning to, tripped on something and flopped over.
Grem and Jotto helped me out of the oleanders.
‘Prince Venn isn’t in his room,’ said Grem. He shook his head to underline that.
‘How – convenient – as if – I’d believe you.’
‘Look for yourself,’ said Jotto. ‘I carried his breakfast up all those stairs – and there he was, gone.’
‘I’ll see for myself.’
They let me, only escorting me. His door doesn’t open unless it ‘recognizes’ you. Like the door in the Wolf Tower. Jotto explained this.
In the eight-sided room, the thieving owl dozed on its perch. Red silk veils dimmed the windows. All those books. Were any of them mine? No, this book doesn’t look like that. I wanted to search anyway, pull all the books down and open every cupboard and drawer. They wouldn’t let me. I gave up struggling. Both of them are strong.
‘Where does he go then, your charming prince who steals things – gets his pet owl to steal them – things that belong to other people – where does he go when he isn’t here?’
‘He might be anywhere, lady,’ said Jotto, looking quite unhappy. ‘And if he’s in the palace – well, with it always moving—’
I wanted to scream and scream. To behave the way the evil letter had said I did – and perhaps I do. Do I? But I walked out and down the steps. I didn’t want to stay in his room. And the owl, though I could have wrung its feathery neck (well, I couldn’t; it was an owl) had only done what he’d somehow made it do.
Why?
Why …
Was he even now curled up somewhere, a cooling drink to hand, reading my book?
Reading my truths, my life? About the House and the Law and Argul’s kiss?
I threw myself on the ground. I behaved as they said, as I’d seen my foul mistress at the House, Jade Leaf, behave. A Tantrum.
‘Oh dear, you’ve quite flattened this fern.’
‘Go away.’
‘Poor lady. I’m sure he didn’t mean to upset—’
I
