Alchemy by Margaret Mahy

Author:Margaret Mahy [Margaret Mahy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007406760
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

19. ON A RIVERSIDE BENCH

He walked slowly back across the footbridge, but found he could not bring himself to go home straight away. Instead, he sank down on to one of the seats in the reserve, and sat there, unnaturally still, looking out across the river towards Jess’s house. He felt for his bike helmet in a distracted fashion, even though he already knew he had left it in the hall behind that green door, and that he did not have the will to reclaim it right then.

“Changed! I’ve been changed,” he muttered to himself, just to hear what this idea sounded like in the outer world, studying first the back of his hands and then, rather more closely, his palms, in case he might see an altered fortune scribbled there. “Changing! I’m changing!” Inside or out, he knew it was true.

What he could not understand was just how he was changing. He was certain he would be recognisable. When he arrived home, none of his family would stare at him, alarmed to find a stranger coming boldly through their door. Any rearrangement that might be taking place would not be visible. An inky mark on his right-hand forefinger intrigued him; an ordinary, grubby life was patiently waiting for him to start living it once again. Soon, he promised it silently. Something had pushed him out of that life, and it was now his job to work his way back into it once more. Raising his head, he looked around him.

Lights were on. People strolling in the reserve were looking out at the river and at the trailing willows, backs turned to the loading bays on the other side of the road. Some of them were within speaking distance, but all those strolling around seemed to exist in a different state from his own. Roland felt he was either the only real person in a world of ghosts, or perhaps the only ghost in a world of real people. After watching the passers-by vaguely for a minute or two, he began to stretch, straightening his shoulders as if to remind himself just how he was fitted together. “The head bone’s connected to the neck bone,” he mumbled. The really peculiar thing was that he was already beginning to feel truer being a possible ghost than he had felt earlier in the day as the man of the family or as a successful Crichton College prefect. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes! Only twenty minutes ago he had been someone – no! something… different.

The creature had not just faced him. It had walked through him. It hadn’t asked him a riddle, hadn’t requested an answer or a gift, as creatures in fairy tales were supposed to do. It had just walked though him. He had felt – what had he felt? Something like a sting of cold, except that it hadn’t been cold. Something like an electric shock, except that he hadn’t been plugged into any current. And now, here he was, wave after wave of sensation rushing towards him, rearing but never quite toppling.

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