The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner

Author:Sally Gardner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

chapter twenty

These days Yann was feeling that the past was well behind him. Then, with three simple words, the world that he thought was his to inherit slipped through his fingers like sand. It was what Orlenda had predicted, and what Yann had chosen to bury somewhere deep in his unconscious mind: His destiny and his fate lay across the water.

On a hot summer’s evening, with the study door open to the garden, Mr. Laxton had read him a letter he had just received from Cordell. The three words that stood out, illuminated diamond-bright, were: “Têtu is alive.”

It seemed that Têtu, after three years working in provincial theaters where he knew Kalliovski would not find him, had returned to Paris, confident that with all his other activities the count’s interest in him had waned. He had been to see Cordell, and was proud and delighted to hear how well Yann had acquitted himself.

Cordell had asked Têtu if he knew anyone who could be trusted to get Sido de Villeduval safely to England, and Têtu had suggested Yann. If Sido refused to abandon her father, then the last resort would be to try to get them both out. For that they would need papers and passports.

As Yann listened, he knew that his future lay not here, but in France; and he remembered with a shudder Orlenda’s three predictions and realized that one, if not two, had already come true. Orlenda had told him that he was to take comfort that Têtu was still alive. The next thing she had predicted puzzled him greatly and made him sure that she must be wrong about the dwarf. She told him he had already met the only person he would ever love.

“What is her name?” Yann had asked.

"It begins with S.”

All he could think to ask was, “Will we be happy?”

“This love could be the death of both of you,” said Orlenda.

Only now could he acknowledge that she had meant Sido— not Sophie Padden. Perhaps, if he was honest with himself, he had always known it, even from the very first moment he had seen her.

The last of Orlenda’s three predictions had been the one that had terrified him the most and made him run away. It had been the reason he had wanted no more to do with magic. Finally he realized that there was no more running to be done; he would have to go back and face the bullet. Perhaps, like the magician, this time he would be able to catch it.

Mr. Laxton put down the letter and said firmly, “These are very dangerous times. You don’t have to do this.”

“But I do,” said Yann. “I can’t explain why. All I can tell you is that I have known this day was coming. I have been waiting a long time for that letter to arrive.”

His determination to give up all that he had earned took Henry Laxton completely by surprise.

“What about university?”

“It can wait. But Sido can’t.”

Mr. Laxton paused. “Yann, as I said, this is not going to be easy.

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