Garth Nix - Lord Sunday

But when he tried to move, he felt the pain in his head increase, and the cold paralysis that affected his entire right side grew stronger.

Arthur shut his good eye. Slowly, with a hand that felt ridiculously weak, he felt into the pouch and closed his bloodied fingers on the Fifth Key. Using sorcery here on Earth was bad, since it would affect the world in a negative way, but he didn’t really have a choice, other than to use only one of the two Keys, to limit the side effects on the world around him. He couldn’t wait for his body to heal itself, though he knew it probably would in time. He had to use sorcery to accelerate his healing.

He tried not to think of the hole he’d felt in his head, and how in this case “healing” probably meant regrowing part of his brain.

Arthur gripped the mirror harder, concentrated his mind on what he wanted to happen and muttered fiercely, “Fifth Key! Heal me, make me good as new, as quickly as you can!”

A terrible, explosive pain shot up Arthur’s fingers. He cried out, and then began to sob as his body was twisted from side to side, and the bones in his spine cracked and screeched. He felt his skull knitting back together and the skin stretching across, all of it accompanied by almost unbearable agony.

Then it was over. Arthur felt limp and tired, but otherwise all right. Gingerly he opened his right eye. He could see perfectly well through it, but just to test it out he read the titles on the spines of the books in the shelf above his desk, pleased to note that even in the dim light from the lamp, he could read the smallest type.

Arthur was just about to look away when he saw the small book on the far end of the shelf, a book that shed a soft and rippling blue light. He opened both eyes to make sure of what he was seeing. Certain, he jumped up and snatched it off the shelf, sitting back down with the slim, green-bound notebook held fast in his right hand.

A Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs was back in Arthur’s possession.

Arthur patted the cover, then put the Atlas carefully away in the silver pouch. As he straightened up from doing that, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the back of the door, the mirror that his mother had insisted on putting there so he would remember to comb his hair before he came down in the morning.

Arthur looked at the reflection for a few seconds, then moved closer to the mirror to study what he had become. He had been healed, true enough. But he had also been changed again. His hair had become spun gold, all perfectly arranged and shining. His skin had become a deep red-bronze, smooth and poreless. There was no white in his eyes, just a soft golden glow around an utterly black pupil and iris.

I look like some kind of android, thought Arthur bitterly. Or a statue that’s stepped off its stand.

He stared for a moment longer, before looking down at the crocodile ring on his finger. It was now entirely gold. Not even a glimmer of silver remained to show that some last vestige of humanity remained in his blood and bones. His body was one hundred per cent Denizen. Or perhaps even something more, as the gold shimmered with its own soft light and its colour varied from a rose gold to the butter yellow of the pure metal.

Arthur shut his eyes for a moment and shook his head, trying to cast away the feelings of self-pity that were rising inside him.

“I don’t…I don’t care,” he said softly to his reflection. “I have a job to do. It doesn’t matter what I have become. It doesn’t matter what I look like.”

He pushed open the door and softly trod downstairs.

I hope no one is home, he couldn’t help thinking. I hope they’re safe somewhere else. And that they don’t have to see me this way.

The house was very quiet. Arthur slipped quietly down the stairs, pausing to listen every four or five steps. He had learned to be cautious. He was also wondering what he should do. He couldn’t stay – that was for sure. He had to get back to the House as soon as he could. But before he did that, he might need to stop time again. Or perhaps try to clean up whatever had happened…

At the landing just before the living room, Arthur stopped and took a deep, unfettered breath. He still found it amazing that he could take such a breath, one that went to the very bottom of his lungs, and that he could breathe out again without wheezing or difficulty. His asthma, like his old body and even his old face, was apparently gone forever.

After taking that breath, Arthur walked into the living room – and stopped as if he’d hit a wall. There was his mother , who was sitting on the sofa and reading a medical journal, as if she had never disappeared, as if the world outside was normal, as if all the things that had happened to Arthur, his family and the city had never occurred.

Arthur took a step forward, ready to hurl himself upon her and hug her as tightly as he could, to recapture that sense of safety that he had always felt in her embrace.

But after that first step, Arthur hesitated. He had changed so much, he was so different to look at. Emily might not even recognise him. Or she might be afraid of what he had become.

Either situation was too awful to contemplate. Arthur’s hesitation turned into a terrible fear and he began to back away. As he did so, Emily put the journal down and turned her head, so that she was looking directly at him. Arthur’s eyes met Emily’s, but he saw neither recognition nor fear in her gaze. In fact she looked right through him.

“Mum,” Arthur said, his voice weak and uncertain.

Emily didn’t respond. She yawned, looked away from Arthur and picked up the journal again, touching the screen to bring up a different article.

“Mum?” Arthur walked right up to her and stood behind her chair. “Mum!”

Emily didn’t respond. Arthur reached out to touch her shoulder, but stopped an inch away. He could feel a strange electric tingle in his fingers, and his knuckles pulsed with the ache of sorcery. Slowly he pulled his hand back. He didn’t want to accidentally set off a spell that might hurt – or even kill – her. Instead he held his hand out to cover the screen of her journal. But she kept reading, as if his hand was simply not there.

The article was about the Sleepy Plague, Arthur saw. It was entitled “First Analysis and Exploration of Somnovirus F/201/Z, ‘Sleepy Plague’” and was written by Dr Emily Penhaligon. The Sleepy Plague had been the first of the viruses that had been spawned by the presence of the First Key and other intrusions from the House. Though swept away by the Nightsweeper that Arthur had brought back from the Lower House, other viruses had been created by powers of the House that should not have been on Earth. Emily was a pre-eminent medical researcher, but even she could have had no idea of the real reason the new viruses had suddenly appeared.

Arthur took his hand away and went to sit on the other chair in the room. He had felt so relieved to see his mother, because he’d thought she had somehow returned safely to their home. Now that relief was gone. He couldn’t be sure it even was Emily sitting opposite him, or that this was in fact his home.

“I’d better have a look round,” said Arthur. He spoke loudly, but Emily didn’t react. He watched her for a few seconds more, then got up and went downstairs to the kitchen.

The screen on the refrigerator, which Arthur had hoped would be active so he could check the time, date and any news, was blank.

Arthur turned away to head over to his father’s studio and the computer there, but first he noticed something unusual through the kitchen window. He should have been able to see the dawn light coming through, but it was blocked by something green that was pressed right up against the glass.