Alex Bell - Fighting with fire

Jeremiah? bean-stained and dusty? stared at the cowboy for a moment. Then his eyes swivelled round to the window where Lex was watching. All eyes were on Jeremiah and? as this was make-or-break point? Lex broke character a second time, just long enough to emphatically mouth the word, ‘ Go!’

To his relief, Jeremiah finally turned on his heel and stalked back towards his carriage with his head held high like there weren’t really beans dribbling all the way down his back. Lex only breathed a sigh of relief once Jeremiah had climbed up into the driver’s seat, grabbed up the reins and ridden away, back in the direction he’d come.

‘He’s really going to hate you now,’ Jesse remarked in their lime-green bedroom the next morning.

Lex shrugged. ‘He hated me anyway. Besides, this is all his fault. He started it by spiking my drink in the Wither City.’

‘You really are one to hold a grudge, ain’t you?’ Jesse said.

‘I never forget an insult,’ Lex replied in a hard voice. ‘A person might wrong me once but, by the Gods, they won’t do it again!’

‘Well, if you feel that strongly about having a bit of somethin’ extra put in your drink in what was just a childish sorta prank, then think how Jeremiah must feel about having his uncle killed and a family mansion stolen away by a gang of ruffians like us.’

Lex was slightly startled by that, for he hadn’t thought of it in that way before. But he had to admit Jesse had a point. If Dry Gulch House had once belonged to the Trents, Lex would have been every bit as outraged as Jeremiah? more so, probably? and utterly determined to get it back. Only he would have been cleverer about it. He would not have simply marched in, expecting self-righteousness and legal technicalities to carry him through. He would have made sure he succeeded. And he would never have waived his right to rent? never! He would not simply have got the house back from the cowboys, he would have had his revenge on them, too.

But he shrugged Jesse’s comment off carelessly. ‘The Easts have plenty of other family mansions. I’ll bet they don’t even miss this one. It’s not like any of them would want to live here, especially after what happened to Nathaniel. Anyway, enough of all this talk about Jeremiah. I need to carry on looking for the sword.’

Although it was now morning, Lex had decided to continue his search straightaway, after snatching a few hours sleep, rather than waiting for nightfall again. It didn’t matter much, anyway, since the other cowboys tended to spend all their time in the bar. There was, therefore, no reason why Lex shouldn’t search during the day as well. Especially as he was fast running out of time.

‘Ain’t you tired of that, yet?’ Jesse asked. ‘I told you, that sword ain’t real. You’re lookin’ for somethin’ that don’t even exist!’

Lex scowled. The truth was that, even if the sword were real, he was starting to think that he might be forced to concede defeat for the simple reason that he was going to run out of time. In a house this huge, it could be hidden in any number of places. After hours of exploring, there were still rooms he hadn’t been into at all. Let alone the countless secret passageways he knew the house to contain but which he was yet to discover. It could take him a year or more to locate the sword.

And yet the thought of having to admit failure was a bitter pill to swallow for Lex. He had bragged to Jesse about finding the sword. The idea of having to admit that that had all been a lot of talk was intolerable. Jesse would gloat insufferably. He would rub it in and pour salt into the open wound. Lex knew he would do that because it was exactly what he would have done himself.

‘The sword is here!’ he snapped. ‘Just because you were unable to find it doesn’t mean that I won’t. It’s right here, somewhere in this house. I just wish I knew where that sword was. Then I could-aarghh!’

He broke off with a cry of pain as something very hot suddenly started to burn through his trouser pocket. He reached his hand in, grabbed the velvet pouch and flung it on to the bed. It was practically smoking. Gingerly, he picked the pouch up between thumb and forefinger to tip the contents out on to the bed. The Wishing Creatures of Desareth tumbled out together. The white and red Swanns and the blue Dragon lay there as usual. But the black Swann was steaming hot. In fact, as Jesse and Lex watched, it even started to char the sheet.

The black Swann? the one whose wish was recorded as ‘unknown’ in Erasmus Grey’s book. And Lex had just said aloud that he wished he knew where the sword was hidden. Now the Swann was burning hot to the touch. When Lex had been very little, he had played a game with his brother, which involved one of them hiding an object for the other to find. The seeker would move around the room whilst the hider said they were getting hotter the nearer they got to the hidden object, and colder the further away they went from it.

Could it be… Could it really be that the black Swann’s wish was not to turn pumpkin pies into poo, as Lex had feared, but to locate missing objects instead? Could it be that just one of his Wishing Creatures could actually do something useful?

‘What are those things?’ Jesse said, peering down at the stone animals on the bed.

Lex ignored him and used a corner of the sheet to pick the black Swann up gingerly. ‘I wish I knew where my brother, Lucius, was,’ he said, loudly and clearly.

The Swann did not go instantly cold as he had expected, but remained hot instead. Lex frowned at it for a moment before the idea occurred to him that perhaps the Swann could not locate more than one missing object at once. Perhaps it would not ‘reset’ itself, so to speak, until Lex had found the sword.

He picked up the other Wishing Creatures and thrust them into his pocket before looking around for something with which to pick up the Swann. He couldn’t carry it in his bare hands for any great length of time without it burning his skin. He could try using a piece of the sheet but he feared the Swann would burn right through that, too.

‘Here,’ Jesse said, crossing over to the fireplace and picking up the cast-iron tongs. ‘Use these.’

Lex took the tongs and used them to pick up the black Swann. It left behind a big circle of black on the sheet. Hopefully no one would notice. They hadn’t exactly been white to begin with. And they were already riddled with burn marks where cowboys had clearly fallen asleep with lit cigarettes in their hands.

‘So,’ Jesse said, staring suspiciously at the Swann. ‘D’you mind tellin’ me just exactly what it is you’ve got there?’

‘Yeah, I do mind. Don’t be so nosy.’

It was no use, though. Jesse, despite appearances, wasn’t stupid. He’d heard Lex say that he wished he knew where the sword was right before the Swann started to burn through his pocket. He’d seen Lex’s reaction? known that little cogs were turning in the thief’s brain. He knew that Lex suspected the Swann might lead them to the sword, somehow. And with something magical hopefully guiding the way, there was no chance that Jesse wasn’t coming, too.

Lex was not best pleased. After all, he knew that the cowboy wanted the sword and that he’d been to Dry Gulch House on more than one occasion to search for it. But there was nothing he could do to stop Jesse from coming. Resolving to keep a very sharp eye on the cowboy, Lex stepped out into the corridor. First they went upstairs, and the Swann cooled enough that Lex was able to hold it with his bare hands. So they went downstairs, and the Swann got even hotter than it had done in the bedroom. It was a little difficult to follow, for the Swann was so hot that a shift in temperature was only noticeable if it was a larger one. Lex was a little worried that other cowboys might see them wandering around and think them a strange sight, what with the glowing-hot Swann Lex was carefully carrying in the tongs? although it was, perhaps, the sort of odd thing Slow Sid might do for no apparent reason. At any rate, no one appeared beyond the recesses of the bar.