Horten's Incredible Illusions Read online

  It was jet-black, so shiny that the varnish still looked wet, and the walls were painted with a scattering of red stars. Stuart took the metal star out of his pocket and held it against one of the painted ones. It was exactly the same size and shape.

  He put the star back in his pocket and walked around the pyramid again. However hard he tugged at the handles on the other three sides, none of them would shift.

  Stuart lifted the first side up again, and it clicked neatly into position, the pyramid complete once more.

  Then he tried one of the other handles again. This time it opened easily.

  Grinning, Stuart added a line to his description:

  It is only possible to open one side at a time.

  He crouched down and stepped inside the pyramid. It was quite roomy—easily big enough for an adult to sit in. He could almost imagine the scene on stage, as Teeny-Tiny Tony Horten introduced the trick: “Ladies and gentlemen, my lovely assistant, Lily, will now climb into the Pharaoh’s Pyramid. As you can see, once the side is closed again, she will have no possible means of escape …“

  And yet there had to be a way out: a concealed button, or a spring, or a handle, operated from the inside, so that the assistant could secretly get out. Stuart ran his fingertips over the walls and felt, near the top of each, a little loop of metal, just big enough to hook a finger into and colored the same jet-black as the rest of the surface. He checked, and found that there was one on the open side as well.

  He hooked his finger into the latter and heaved. The side began to swing shut.

  Should I wait for April? he wondered.

  No, he thought, pulling harder. I want to solve this myself.

  After all, what was the worst that could happen? He could be stuck inside the pyramid until April or Rod Felton turned up. A bit embarrassing, but not actually disastrous.

  Unless, of course, the pyramid was airtight.

  In which case he might start to suffocate and be found unconscious or possibly dead some hours later, so perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea after all—and maybe, on second thought, it would be better if he didn’t actually fully shut the—

  There was a loud and definite click, and Stuart found himself in utter darkness. Not the faintest chink of light was visible. He pushed at the walls but they didn’t budge. He pulled at the metal loops: nothing.

  “Brilliant,” he muttered, trying not to panic.

  And then he saw a glimmer of red light, a glimmer that strengthened and grew and multiplied—a constellation of glimmers all around him. The red stars were luminous!

  Nine or ten twinkled from each wall; as he twisted around to look at them, a glimpse of red on the floor caught his eye. One single star shone from the center of it.

  Stuart reached out to touch it, and instead of a flat, painted surface, his fingers felt a series of grooves and, at the center of them, a little flat button. Cautiously, he pressed it. There was a metallic squeal, like a hinge in need of oiling, and one of the sides shifted just a little, enough to let in a narrow triangle of light. He gave it a push, and it opened completely.

  So that’s how it worked, thought Stuart. Great-Uncle Tony’s assistant, Lily, would press the button and sneak out of the back, and when Great-Uncle Tony opened up the pyramid for the audience to see, it would be empty!

  It occurred to him that he could play a trick on April to pay her back for being late—he could hide inside the pyramid, wait until she was in the room, and then creep out and surprise her. Confidently this time, he pulled the side shut, and waited for a while in the red-starred darkness before something began to nag at the back of his mind. Something about the luminous star on the floor.

  Once again he reached down to touch it and explored the pattern of grooves with his fingertips. There were six of them, radiating out like the spokes of a rimless wheel. He felt a great surge of excitement. He delved into his pocket and took out the metal star—it would fit, he just knew it would.

  Heart pounding, mouth dry, he slotted the star into place.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  All four sides of the pyramid fell open with a noise like a thunderclap, and Stuart screamed.

  He was in the middle of a desert.

  CHAPTER 6

  Slowly, very slowly, Stuart stood up and looked around.

  Instead of the side room of Beeton Museum, he saw a sweep of grayish sand peppered with rocks. A few low thorn trees were the only vegetation; not far away, a camel was grazing on one of them. The air was cold, damp, and misty and the sky a dirty white. Overhead, a large dark bird was circling.

  Stuart shivered. This felt much too real to be a dream.

  This was—this had to be—magic.

  A breeze ruffled across the plateau, stirring the mist. Stuart waited, still stunned by the sudden change in his world. Where was he? What was he doing here? How could he get back home again? “It’s a puzzle,“ April had said when they found the letter from Great-Uncle Tony—but what sort of puzzle?

  The mist shifted and swirled, like a set of lacy curtains, revealing odd glimpses of a wide and empty landscape. Sand stretched out in all directions. It was so quiet that Stuart could hear the camel tearing off stringy strips of bark and then the soft thud of its feet as it moved on to the next tasty branch.

  Stuart looked down at his own feet. He was still standing on the square base of the Pharaoh’s Pyramid. The six-spoked star lay snugly in its matching slot. The base didn’t look broken or damaged, although he noticed that there were two little holes punched in each of the edges.

  So where was the rest of the pyramid?

  No sooner had the question jumped into his head than a splinter of sun poked through the low cloud, turning the sand from gray to golden. Out of the corner of his eye Stuart saw a bright flash, and turned to see a blinding triangle of light some distance off. Shielding his eyes, he walked toward it and realized that it was one of the pyramid sides, leaning against a huge boulder and reflecting the light of the sun.

  At that moment, just behind him, the camel gave a snort and took another step forward. One of its feet made the usual soft thud, and the other a metallic clang. Stuart switched direction and found another of the pyramid sides, this one half buried in the sand. He waited until the camel had moved on, and then heaved the metal triangle out of its resting place. It was heavier than he’d imagined, and one of its edges bore a pair of prongs, sticking out like short, blunt fingers.

  “Oh, I get it,” said Stuart out loud. “I think I get it. It’s a jigsaw puzzle.”

  The third side he found wedged in a rocky cleft, and somebody seemed to have built a campfire on top of the fourth: it was covered in ash, and a large half-charred log lay across it.

  It took him a very long time to drag the four sides back to the base. The sun was burning off the mist, and it was getting hotter all the time; Stuart’s T-shirt was dark with sweat. Would it be possible to die of thirst in a magic landscape?

  There wasn’t a scrap of shade to sit in, nothing to drink, and nothing to eat other than a single stick of chewing gum in the pocket of his jeans. He tore it in two and saved one half for later.

  Overhead, the large dark bird had been joined by three others. They weaved silently across the deepening blue sky.

  “Okay …” murmured Stuart. He braced himself and lifted one of the sides. The two prongs slotted neatly into the two matching holes on the base. Easy!

  There was a belch behind him and he turned to see the camel watching with what looked like contempt.

  “What?” asked Stuart.

  The camel flared its nostrils and went on eating. It was wearing a set of reins, he realized, and the remains of a saddle, having presumably dumped its rider somewhere in the desert.

  Stuart turned back to his task.

  The second and third sides of the pyramid slotted in just as neatly as the first. Stuart lifted the fourth side, started to maneuver it into place, and then paused. He had a sudden horrible vision of the Pharaoh
’s Pyramid vanishing, leaving him standing alone in the desert. He needed to be inside it when it disappeared. He stepped onto the base, crouched down, and with a sense of quiet triumph slotted the fourth side into place and began to pull it shut.

  Immediately, with a dull thud, the other three sides fell over.

  Stuart looked around and stared, openmouthed, at the triangles lying flat on the sand. “No,” he said out loud. “Now that’s not fair.”

  The sun bored into his back. The horizon rippled in the heat.

  Stuart got to his feet and gave it a second try. One side, two sides, three sides, four si—and then wham! As he pulled the fourth side closed, the other three collapsed back onto the desert floor.

  He stood, hands on hips, breathing heavily, panic crawling inside his chest. How was he going to solve this? And what if he couldn’t? He took a deep breath.

  “Okay, it’s a puzzle,” he said out loud again—somehow it was easier to think in a calm and logical way if he imagined he was talking to someone else. “And it’s not just a jigsaw puzzle.”

  Grimly, for the third time, he lifted three sides into place. He remembered that there was a small loop right at the top of each, and this time he hooked the fingers of one hand through them. Could he hold up three of the sides while he lifted the fourth?

  He reached out vainly.

  No, he couldn’t, it was too far away—he’d need an arm the length of an orangutan’s.

  “If I had a thin rope of some kind,” he said, “I could slip it through the loop on the fourth side and pull it up while I was still holding onto the others. But where can I find a thin rope?”

  The answer to his question walked by just a few yards away, reins dangling.

  “Okay,” said Stuart to himself. “So all I have to do is catch a camel.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Stuart had once watched a program on camels in which it had been shown that they could spit accurately and kick in any direction. But was this camel real, or was it a sort of figment of Great-Uncle Tony’s imagination?

  He moved closer. It looked real. It smelled real.

  “Stay,” he said feebly, edging toward it. “Nice camel.”

  It glanced at him, and then went on ripping at the thorn tree with teeth the size of piano keys. The reins were tied to a woven nose band which fastened just under its chin. Just under its chin and very close to its teeth.

  “Good boy.” Stuart remembered the half-stick of chewing gum in his pocket. He took it out and held it at arm’s length.

  The camel stopped eating.

  “Here, boy,” said Stuart, his voice sounding reedy and nervous. “Yum yum.”

  The camel took a pace forward.

  “Lovely chewing gum.”

  With incredible swiftness, the camel lunged toward Stuart and snatched the gum out of his hand. Stuart made a grab for the reins. The camel tossed its head and Stuart found himself flying through the air.

  “Ow,” he said, landing in the sand several feet away. The camel gave him a contemptuous look and then cantered off into the shimmering distance, chewing as it went.

  Stuart was left alone.

  As he got to his feet, he thought of a phrase in Great-Uncle Tony’s letter:

  magic may b ttle stronger

  than I inte

  “A little stronger than I intended,” finished Stuart, rubbing his leg. And then he noticed something on the ground and stooped to pick it up. It was a length of bark, revoltingly saturated with camel spit, but long and stringy nonetheless. He hunted around for other pieces and knotted three or four lengths together until they were long enough to thread through the loop. Feeling a bit like a survival expert on TV, he gave the bark string an experimental tug. It broke. Clearly it needed to be thicker.

  “Perhaps if I make three strings and then braid them …” he said doubtfully. He’d never done any braiding, but it couldn’t be that hard, could it?

  After about three minutes of hopeless twiddling and twisting and unraveling, he caught himself wishing that April was with him. He had no doubt that she’d know how to braid—it was just the sort of thing that girls always knew. They’d be out of here in two minutes.

  A drop of sweat trickled into his eyes, and he paused to wipe his forehead. His T-shirt was damp, his jeans sticking to his legs, the buckle of his belt so hot that it was actually—

  “Belt!” shouted Stuart, leaping to his feet. “My belt!”

  It took him about six seconds to get back into the pyramid, take off his belt, slip it through the loop on the fourth triangle and grab the loops on the other three sides. He took one last look at the blistering landscape, the circling birds, the blurred and distant blob that was the camel, and then gave the belt a pull.

  As the fourth side closed, the blurry distant blob moved closer, and Stuart realized that it wasn’t the camel at all but something much smaller. Something white and brown. And then, before he could see it properly, the fourth side snapped shut.

  For a moment all was darkness, apart from the glimmer of red stars, and then Stuart yelled as a vivid green shape writhed suddenly across the inside of the pyramid. It was an emerald S, which stretched and tautened and glowed and grew—and then disappeared utterly as one side of the pyramid opened.

  “Are you all right?” asked one of April’s sisters, peering anxiously in on him. Behind her, the museum looked reassuringly normal. “I heard you shouting,” continued May (or June).

  “I’m fine,” said Stuart, climbing out, though actually he felt shaky and strange and in dire need of a sofa and a glass of water. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t April come?” he added.

  The triplet frowned. “I’m April,” she said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “What do you mean, No, you’re not? I should know who I am, shouldn’t I? I’m April, and you promised to wait until I got here before you started exploring.”

  “But you’re not wearing glasses,” said Stuart. “And you’ve got a camera.”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “I was on my bike delivering papers, and then I swerved to avoid a hedgehog, fell off, and scraped my knee and broke my specs,” she said. “That’s why I got here two hours late. And then I happened to borrow May’s camera because I thought it would be useful.”

  “Oh.”

  “I so wish you’d just try to—” she began, and then tilted her head, puzzled. “Why are your shoes all covered in sand?” she asked. “And why are your trousers falling down?”

  There was a pause in the conversation while Stuart scuttled back to get his belt.

  “The thing is,” he said, bending to pick a thorn out of one of his socks, “you’ll never believe where I’ve been for the whole of those two hours. I don’t believe it myself.”

  April lost her cross expression and looked at him eagerly. “Magic?” she whispered.

  “Yes. Definitely.” And he told her about his jigsaw puzzle in the desert. And about the emerald letter S that had greeted his return.

  “Use the star to find the letters!” exclaimed April. “That’s what the message said, didn’t it? Oh, I wish I’d come.”

  “So do I,” replied Stuart honestly, “and next time you will.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.” Stuart held out his hand, and April started to shake it and then froze, gazing openmouthed past his head.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s not shining anymore.”

  Stuart turned. The sun was pouring in through the window, but the golden surface of the Pharaoh’s Pyramid barely glinted. It was still a beautiful object, but like the Well of Wishes it had lost its luster.

  “The magic must be all used up,” said Stuart wonderingly. “It’s like a flat battery—there’s no more power in it.”

  Then he remembered the six-pointed star and ducked back into the pyramid to retrieve it.

  “Whatever’s the matter?” asked April as he blinked at the object in his hand.

  Stuart held up
the star so she could see it. One of the six spokes had completely disappeared.

  She stared for a moment in amazement. “So what happens if you put it back in the socket again?”

  Stuart tried it. “Nothing,” he said, taking the star out for a second time. “So that must mean you can only do each adventure once.”

  April nodded slowly. “One down,” she said softly. “Five to go.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The opening of the exhibition was a bit low-key; only a few people bothered to follow the handmade sign in the foyer, and most of them were related to either Stuart or April. Inside the room, the only note of celebration was a table with some feeble refreshments.

  “Good thing I’m not hungry,” whispered April, grimacing at the plate of plain cookies and single bowl of chips before returning to where her parents were looking at the Cabinet of Blood.

  Stuart sipped from his cup of watery fruit juice, and watched the guests amble among the exhibits.

  Stuart’s father was being escorted around by Rod Felton, and although the two men appeared to be looking at the Arch of Mirrors, Stuart could hear scraps of Latin floating across the room, and the curator seemed to be miming a Roman sword fight.

  April returned to the table and took three cookies and a huge handful of chips.

  “I thought you said you weren’t hungry,” said Stuart.

  She glowered at him.

  “Oh,” said Stuart. “You’re not April, are you?”

  “No.”

  “June?”

  “I’m May!” she screeched indignantly. “Are you blind?”

  She stalked off toward her sisters and began a whispered conversation with them. Dark looks were cast at Stuart.

  He turned away and ate a chip or two. He couldn’t help getting the triplets mixed up—they had the same faces and the same hair, and they wore the same sort of clothes. Other than April’s glasses there wasn’t a single way of telling them apart, yet they went mad if you pointed that out. If they really wanted people to know who was who, he thought, then they should dress in different colors.