Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [104]
The passage led into a Well Hall—a circular space open to the sky. In the middle was the well, which was protected by a low wall and a wooden cover, on which stood three buckets of varying sizes. Above the well was a complicated pulley system that allowed heavy buckets to be easily drawn up from the huge fresh water cistern built into the foundations of the Ramblings. Rushlights cast a warm glow across the smooth, damp stones, which were warm enough to melt the occasional snowflake that drifted down. Set into the curved walls were some well-worn stone benches; pots with candles and wrapped sweets had been left on the benches and gave the Well Room a festive look. But even this popular meeting place was, like everywhere else, deserted.
Jenna waited by the well while everyone caught up. She caught Sarah’s eye and smiled, hoping that Sarah recognized the place where she used to draw water and spend many hours chatting to her neighbors. But to Jenna’s distress, Sarah just gazed blankly back.
“Nearly there,” said Jenna, trying to keep cheerful.
“Hey, Jens, remember when you dropped your bear down the well and I fished it out in a bucket?” said Simon.
Jenna ignored him. She didn’t think Simon had any right to use the old name he used to call her by before he kidnapped her and planned to kill her—no right at all. She spun on her heel and strode off into a narrow whitewashed corridor, which was lined with an array of multicolored candles. After a minute or so the party emerged once again into Big Bertha, having cut off a huge loop. They went around one more bend and then Jenna turned down a wide alleyway, which proclaimed itself There and Back Again Row. A few moments later she was standing outside the door to the room where she had lived for the first ten years of her life.
It looked different. No longer a scuffed and dismal black, the door was now painted bright, shiny red, just as it had been in what people still called The Good Old Days. In her hand Jenna held the precious key that she remembered Silas locking the door with every night, and which had hung on a high hook on the chimney the rest of the time. No one but Silas or Sarah had been allowed to touch the key because—as Silas had informed everyone one night when its hook had fallen out of the wall and Maxie had hidden the key under his blanket— it was a precious Heap heirloom. The Big Red Door, complete with lock and key (with Benjamin Heap inscribed on the bow) was the only thing that Silas’s father had left him.
Jenna knew exactly what to do with the key. She handed it to Sarah.
“You open it, Mum,” she said.
Sarah took the key and looked at it.
Jenna watched Sarah anxiously. She glanced up and saw that everyone else was watching too. Even Marcellus. It felt like an eternity while Sarah Heap stared at the big brass key lying on her palm. And then, very slowly, recognition dawned in Sarah’s eyes and the corners of her mouth flickered into the beginnings of a smile.
Hesitantly Sarah placed the key in the lock. The door recognized Sarah, and when she began, very weakly, to turn the key, the lock did the rest for her and the door swung open.
Chapter 35
The Longest Night
A large variety of animals had spent time—sometimes their whole lives—in the room behind the Big Red Door, but Thunder was the first horse. Sam had once brought a goat in but only for a few seconds. Sarah Heap did not, in those days, have things with hooves in her room. But this time Sarah had no problems with hooves. She was perfectly happy to have a huge black horse standing in the corner while her Simon fed him some withered apples that he had found in a bowl on the floor.
Sarah was amazed at the transformation of her old home. As she stood gazing about her, taking in all the