The Indigo King - James A. Owen [14]
“Agreed.”
“Fred,” Uncas said, “give me a paw with this, will you?”
It took a moment for the Caretakers to realize what the two badgers were doing, and that was one moment too long.
“No!” yelled Jack. “Don’t close the—”
But it was too late. John and Jack both jumped for the door just as Uncas and Fred were closing it, and as the four of them touched it, they heard the gentle but unmistakable click of stone meeting wood. In that instant, the door vanished as if it had never been there.
And that wasn’t all.
The Howling Improbable and all the other badgers in the Royal Animal Rescue Squad were also gone.
So was Magdalen Tower. And from what they could see, most of the buildings of the college.
The sky had turned dark, the air chill, and a pall settled over the entire landscape. It was deathly quiet. The trees, what remained of them, were scrawny and barren of leaves. Where there had been soft grass and flowers underfoot, there was now only hard, packed earth.
The stench of decay and rot hung thickly in the air, and for a moment, it seemed to John and Jack as if they’d forgotten to breathe.
“Uh-oh,” said Fred.
“Mistakes were made,” said Uncas.
And the badger was right, thought John, but the mistakes had all been his.
He was the Caretaker Principia. He was the one who was trained, and experienced, and always, always prepared. And all the signs had been there, all the clues he needed. But he’d grown careless and cocksure. His success in the academic world had given him confidence, and the years of relative peace in both the natural world and the Archipelago had made him sloppy. It was bad enough that Hugo was paying a price for that imprecision, but now, now …
With a mounting pressure inside his head, the gravity of their situation was becoming more and more evident.
The doorway had been a trap. Jack had even said as much. And up until a moment ago, all John had to do to escape it was to listen to the warning he’d already been given by Hugo himself:
And in God’s name, don’t close the door!
CHAPTER FOUR
The Unhistory
The moon rose, and the wan glow it cast over the desolation gave an eerie bas-relief quality to everything the companions saw.
What had been the gently pastoral countryside and beautiful city of Oxford only a minute before was gone. In their place was a cold, bloodless terrain that had been drained of life. No, worse, John thought—it seemed to have been drained of the will to live. The trees were scrawny and leafless, and the Cherwell and its many streams were reduced to foul-smelling trickles that were little more than open sewers.
John, Jack, and the badgers cautiously moved onto the walking path above the river and scanned the horizon for any recognizable landmarks. There were none. This was no longer England—or at least, the England they knew.
“It’s painful just to look at anything,” Fred complained, rubbing at his eyes. “My headbone hurts.”
Uncas sniffed the air and wrinkled his snout in disgust. “Death. It smells like death all round, Master Scowlers.” The little animal shivered and pulled his son close. “I don’t like it a’tall.”
John took Jack by the elbow and pointed downriver. “What do you make of that?”
It was a tower, obscured partially by cloud and fog. They’d only just noticed it in the increasing moonlight. It seemed to suck in light, to blend with the night sky. It was, Jack estimated, almost four hundred feet tall. At the top, a reddish glow emanated from a strange crown of stones that looked more like a lidded eye than parapets.
“I couldn’t say,” Jack replied. “It’s not Magdalen Tower, but it’s the only thing I can see that seems to have been the work of a civilized mind.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” agreed John. “Until we discern just what’s happened to us, we ought to get out of the open—and except for that”—he jabbed his thumb at the tower—“it’s all open.”
“Fine,” said Jack. “But what do we do with Uncas and Fred? We certainly