Prospero's Children by Jan Siegel Page B

use. When it was recovered the recipient thought it an object of no value, the symbol of a cheat; his family kept it as they would keep a grudge, passing it on with legend and moral attached, until a young bride traded it to a tinker for a knot of ribbons. He stole a kiss as well, which was not part of the bargain; they said she looked coldly on her husband ever after. The tinker took his purchase to a collector of such things, sensing its mystery if not its power, a backstreet alchemist one-eighth sorcerer, seven-eighths charlatan. They studied it, he and his apprentice, scanning the smoke for visions and peering into crystal balls, learning the sort of things that you learn from staring at smoke and Venetian glassware. The alchemist also dealt in love potions and poisons—not very successfully: his potions were over-optimistic and his poisons half-hearted. Unfortunately, a dissatisfied client among the warring nobility decided to take his revenge: the alchemist was beaten senseless, his lodgings ransacked, his possessions commandeered. The object was lost again, and never found.” He paused, sighed, as indifferent to rain and wind as the rock he had chosen to imitate. Fern was reminded of a venerable hippy, beyond the reach of marijuana or hallucinogen, looking back with cold eyes on the psychedelic phantoms he once pursued. She was damp and chilled; but she did not move. “We searched for it,” he went on, “long after, when we learned its importance, but it was too late. The feuding families of that time had hidden their treasures so efficiently that even their descendants could not find them. They left clues, and ciphers, but the clues were mislaid and the ciphers indecipherable. The trail had vanished. And then, about twenty years ago, a famous chalice was sold at auction—one that had gone missing during the relevant period. Apparently it had been retrieved in the last great war when a bomb demolished the wall concealing a secret vault. I could not trace the minor items which might have been found with it, but I imagine a traveler collecting flotsam could well have bought one of them for a few pounds from a market stall. It seems a likely theory.”
    “Great-Cousin Ned,” Fern said. “And then? How did you find
him
?”
    “He was found: I don’t know how. A chance meeting, a spell—it doesn’t matter. The interest of others drew
me
. This thing could be here—may be here—if it is, you must get to it first.”
    “
I
must?”
    He ignored the interruption. “In the wrong hands, it could be put to the wrong use. What would happen I’m not sure— and I don’t want to find out. I’ve been watching the investigations very carefully: they—whoever they are—know hardly more than we do. So far. You have to stay ahead of them. You have to find it.”
    “What is it?”
    The answer came slowly, softly, as if the Watcher feared to be overheard, there on the empty hillside without even a bird in sight. “A key,” he said. “Didn’t you guess? It’s a key.”
    “Of course,” said Fern. “We’ve been looking for the keys to open the writing desk and the chest in the attic, when all the time . . . it was the keys themselves which mattered.”
    “Just one key. It’ll be smaller than the others, made of stone or something that looks like stone. You’ll know it when you see it. Hide it from everyone.”
    “And then . . . I give it to you.” The doubt crept back, darkening her mind. “And then what? What will
you
do with it?”
    For the first time he smiled, an unexpectedly impish smile which dug punctuation marks in his cheeks and buckled the lines round his eyes. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve been at this search for decades—centuries—and when I find it,
if
I find it, I won’t even know what to do. It could prove the ultimate jest—if we get the chance to laugh.”
    “Who are you?” she asked, suddenly aware that she was very wet, and cold, and Mrs. Wicklow was