Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [158]
“Never said anything to me. It was the Young Army way, Jen. I never knew I had a family until I bumped into the bunch of you.” Septimus grinned.
“Bit of a shock, I bet.” Jenna smiled back.
“Yeah . . .” Septimus did not often think about how he might never have known who he truly was but right then, among his friends and family, a feeling akin to terror passed over him as he thought how different life might have been if Marcia had not rescued him from the snow only four years ago. He looked at Wolf Boy and realized that he had never found his family—surely he must have one?
“Tomorrow I shall go and ask to look at the Young Army records. There might be something in there about 409. You never know.”
Jenna smiled—she’d just remembered something. She took a small present out from her pocket. “Happy birthday, Sep. It’s a little late but we’ve been a bit busy recently.”
“Hey, thanks, Jen. I got you something too. Happy birthday.”
“Oh, Sep, thank you, that’s lovely.”
“You haven’t seen it yet.”
Jenna ripped open her present to reveal a very small and very pink crown encrusted with glass beads, sporting trailing ribbons and a pink fur trim. She burst out laughing. “That is so silly, Sep.” She put the crown on and tied its pink ribbons under her chin. “There, that makes me Queen now. Open yours.”
Septimus ripped open the red paper and extracted the set of Gragull teeth.
“Brilliant, Jen!” He put them in and the two yellowing canines slipped neatly over his lower lip. In the light of the candles Septimus looked so realistic that when Marcia finally finished her conversation with Beetle and turned to Septimus to ask him something, she screamed.
Queen and Gragull spent the rest of the evening fooling around opposite the two great dignitaries of the Castle—the ExtraOrdinary Wizard and the Chief Hermetic Scribe. Jenna felt indescribably happy. She had her old Septimus back and—as another burst of laughter and seagull noises erupted—her old Nicko too.
In the shadows two ghosts looked on contentedly.
“Thank you, Septimus,” Alther had said, when asked to join the party at the table, “but I’d just like to sit quietly and be with my Alice. You Living, you’re a noisy bunch.”
And they were. All night long.
As the sun rose the windows to the ballroom were flung open. The party climbed out into the snow and made their way down to the Palace Landing Stage. A lone ghost saw their approach and slipped away onto the trading barge that was moored at the Landing Stage, ready to leave before the Big Freeze began to ice up the river. The ghost of Olaf Snorrelssen wafted down into the cherry-wood cabin that, long ago, he had made for his wife, Alfrún. He sat waiting for his wife and daughter to arrive, as he knew they surely would, and smiled. He was home at last.
But the party had not come to say good-bye to Snorri and her mother, who were not leaving until the next day. They had come to bid a final farewell to Jillie Djinn, who lay silent and snow-clad in her Leaving Boat, ready to be cast adrift to float down to the sea on the outgoing tide.
As they watched the Leaving Boat drift down the river, a rich blue silk banner fluttering from its flagstaff, Jenna turned to Beetle.
“I bet you hope she doesn’t come back and haunt the Manuscriptorium,” she said.
The Chief Hermetic Scribe grinned. “I’ve got a bit of peace and quiet first,” he replied. “You know where she’ll be for the next year and a day.”
Jenna giggled. “Oh! Of course—the place where she entered Ghosthood. Marcia’s so going to love that!”
What Happened in the Darke Domaine— and Afterward
VICTIMS OF THE Darke Domaine
Marcia’s Great UnDoing came just in time—three days and three nights is the longest most people can survive in a Darke Trance. Most of the Castle children woke up feeling fine, but the majority of the adults did not feel so good. They woke with a thumping headache, a raging thirst and ached from head to toe. Many assumed they had been to an extremely lively