Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [183]
“She lives here?” the woman murmured in a singsong accent.
Lucy nodded shortly. Anxious to get going, she started purposefully up the wide path that led to the Palace. But her companion was not following. The woman was still on the landing stage, talking to what appeared to be an empty space. Lucy sighed—why did she always pick the weird ones? Reluctant to interrupt the woman’s one-sided conversation— which seemed to be a serious one, for she was now nodding sadly—Lucy carried on, heading toward the lights of the Palace.
Lucy did not feel good. She was tired and cold and, above all, she was beginning to be anxious about the kind of welcome she would receive at the Palace. She put her hand in her pocket and found Simon’s letters. She drew them out and squinted at the names written in Simon’s large, loopy handwriting: Sarah Heap. Jenna Heap. Septimus Heap. She placed the one addressed to Septimus back in her pocket and kept hold of the ones addressed to Jenna and Sarah. Lucy sighed. All she wanted to do was to run home and know that it was “all right, Lucy-Lu.” But Simon had asked her to deliver the letters to his mother and sister, and—whatever Sarah Heap thought of her—deliver them she would.
Lucy’s companion was now hurrying after her.
“Lucy, I am sorry,” she said. “I have just heard such a sad story from a ghost. It is sad, so very sad. The love of her life— and of her death—has been Banished. By mistake. How can any Wizard make such a mistake? Oh, it is a terrible thing.” The woman shook her head. “Truly terrible.”
“I suppose that must be Alice Nettles,” said Lucy. “Simon said he’d heard that something horrible had happened to Alther.”
“Yes. Alice and Alther. So very sad . . .”
Lucy did not have much time for ghosts. The way she saw it, ghosts were dead—it was being with the person you wanted to be with while you were alive that mattered. Which was, she thought, why she was back at the Castle right now, shivering in the bitter north wind that was blowing in off the river, tired and wishing she was wrapped up warmly in bed.
“Shall we get going?” said Lucy. “I don’t know about you, but I’m frozen.”
The woman nodded. Tall and thin, her thick woolen cloak wrapped around her against the wind, she stepped carefully, her bright eyes scanning the scene in front of her because, unlike Lucy, she did not see a wide, empty path. For her, the path and the lawns bounding it were full of ghosts: hurrying Palace servants, young princesses playing tag, little page boys, ancient queens wandering through vanished shrubberies, and elderly Palace gardeners wheeling their ghostly wheelbarrows. She went carefully, because the trouble with being a Spirit-Seer was that ghosts did not get out of your way; they saw you as just another ghost—until you Passed Through them. And then, of course, they were horribly offended.
Unaware of any ghosts at all, Lucy strode up the path at a fast pace, and the ghosts, some of whom were well acquainted with Lucy and her big boots, got smartly out of her way. Lucy soon reached the top path that encircled the Palace and she turned around to check on her companion, who was lagging behind. The oddest sight met her eyes—the woman was dancing up the path on tiptoe, zigzagging to and fro, as if she was taking part in one of the old-fashioned Castle dances—on her own. Lucy shook her head. This did not bode well.
Eventually the woman—flustered and out of breath— joined her, and Lucy set off without a word. She had decided to take the path that led around the Palace and to head for the main front door rather than risk no one hearing her knock on the multitude of kitchen and side doors.
The Palace was a long building, and it was a good ten minutes before Lucy and the woman were at last crossing the flat wooden