The Puzzle Ring Read online

  ‘The mirror might break,’ Donovan said.

  ‘We’ll wrap it up well,’ Morgana said.

  So the four friends helped Morgana wrap up the black-bound mirror in a thick, dark blanket which Hannah fetched from the house, and tied it up with rope that Max fetched from the shed, and then they rowed out onto the dark, still loch. Somewhere an owl hooted. The moon was rising and turning the world to silver and black. They went far from shore, in a deep gulf between the islands, and there they heaved the mirror over the side of the boat. It sank in seconds, leaving only a ripple to disturb the silvered water.

  ‘So will you go and take her place in the fairy realm?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘I will, the very next time the gate opens,’ Morgana replied. ‘The next thin day is the spring equinox, in seven weeks’ time. That will give me time to prepare. I can’t just leave the shop as it is, it wouldn’t be right. Donovan, I thought I would leave it all to you. The shop, my flat, my savings. You’re my only kin.’

  Donovan was wide-eyed and silent with amazement.

  ‘It’s not much,’ Morgana said, ‘but it’s something. It should mean you’re never wanting for anything. If you look after it and don’t waste it.’

  ‘Mum and Dad will help,’ Hannah said, feeling a little secret thrill at being able to say those words. Mum and Dad . . .

  ‘Max, Scarlett, I thought you could choose something from the shop, whatever you like. And Hannah, I thought you would like my books. And perhaps my wand and my dagger.’

  ‘I’d love them!’ Hannah said.

  ‘Let’s go home now,’ Morgana said. ‘It’s late and your parents will be worrying.’

  They rowed back to shore and tied the little boat up at the rickety wharf. Wintersloe Castle was warm and welcoming with lights that streamed across the frosty grass. The forest and the hill and the road that ran down to the town looked cold and dark and lonely.

  ‘Do you want to come back for dinner?’ Hannah asked Donovan in a low voice.

  He shook his head. ‘I think I’d better go talk to my dad, don’t you? Tell him that I know.’

  ‘That’ll be hard.’

  He grinned. ‘No. It’ll be good. He should’ve explained to me a long time ago. We could go looking for stags in the morning if you want? I’ll come chuck some stones at your window, bright and early.’

  ‘Okay. See you then. Bye, Max! Bye, Scarlett! See you tomorrow. Bye!’

  Blowing on her frozen hands, Hannah went up the slope towards the house, which lifted its mismatching turrets against the starry sky. A delicious smell of roast grouse and bramble crumble filled the air. Hannah looked back once at the loch, now hiding another secret in its murky depths, then smiled and ran up the stairs to the house where her family was waiting for her.

  Blackthorn Blossoms

  Almost seven weeks later, as the sun was rising on the morning of the spring equinox, the green hill opened its secret door and let in a grey-haired, middle-aged woman and an old hunchbacked woman with cloudy green eyes.

  Morgana carried a box of books and treasures she could not live without. Linnet carried one large, warty toad and a small, grey cat, which wriggled desperately, trying to get away.

  ‘Don’t cry, my lamb,’ Linnet said to Hannah. ‘Och, but it’s glad I am to be going home at last. I don’t think I could survive another Scottish winter.’

  ‘Oh, but Linnet, I don’t want you to go!’ Hannah sobbed.

  ‘Wheesht! You’ll come to visit us, by and by, you and the laddie. You know where the door is.’

  ‘But I haven’t got the hag-stone any more!’ Hannah wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and cast a longing look at Morgana, who wore the hag-stone on a cord about her neck.

  ‘You don’t need the hag-stone. You’ve got the wild magic, in here and in here.’ Linnet tapped Hannah on the head, between the brows, and then again above her heart. Tears sprang to Hannah’s eyes again, and she threw her arms about Linnet and hugged her close.

  ‘Och, you’ll be breaking my bones if you keep on so! Now, I need you to be looking after your great-grandmother. She’s had me all her life and she’ll miss me sorely. Will you do that? I’ve left you my recipe book. She does love my marmalade cake. Could you be cooking it for her sometimes?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Hannah said, glancing back down the path to the clearing beside the yew tree, where the rest of the family waited by the witch’s pool. Linnet had prepared them all one last feast before leaving them, and it was spread out on a picnic blanket. Roz and Robert leant against each other, feeding each other strawberries, while Genie and Allan were busy cutting the marmalade cake and pouring glasses of home-made lemonade. Lady Wintersloe stood, leaning on the rowan walking-stick, waving her handkerchief. A few weeks in hospital, and healing water made with the help of the hag-stone, had seen her broken leg mend, but she was still not nimble enough to climb the steep path to the fairy hill. She was very sad to see Linnet leave, but glad that the old fairy had at last been released from her centuries of service.

  Hannah’s friends were there too. Scarlett was demonstrating how she had fought off the witch-hunters in Fortingall, and had just thrown Max over her shoulder and flat onto his back. Breathless, his black hair sticking up, his glasses on crooked, Max was protesting loudly, while the adults all laughed.

  ‘And you might want to get her another cat. She loved this bogey-beast, Lord knows why!’ Linnet waggled the grey cat who hissed and spat at the toad. Angus just blinked his imperturbable black eyes.

  ‘I’ll find her a lovely little kitten,’ Donovan promised. ‘A white one with green eyes to remind her of you.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to turn Angus back?’ Hannah asked. ‘I do hate to think of him being a toad for so many years!’

  ‘Sure I will,’ Linnet answered. ‘Lucky he was a toad, and was there that night to see your father throw the hag-stone into the pool. Else it might have been lost forever!’

  ‘Strange how things work out,’ Hannah said.

  ‘I will miss you two,’ Linnet sighed. ‘Take care, won’t you? Don’t go falling off any mountains, Donovan! And look after Hannah for me, won’t you?’

  ‘I will,’ he promised.

  ‘I don’t need looking after,’ Hannah flared. ‘I’m quite capable of looking after myself.’

  ‘Oh, you are, I know it, my lamb,’ Linnet said, and gave them each a last kiss before following Morgana into the dark cleft of the hill. Morgana had cut a way through the blackthorn with her witch’s knife, which Hannah now held in its embossed white leather sheath, along with the twisted wand of shining black wood.

  ‘Hannah! Donovan!’ Roz called. ‘Come and eat.’

  ‘One minute!’ Hannah called back. She and Donovan pressed their ears to the rock.

  ‘Can you hear anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Sssh!’ Donovan said.

  They listened intently and heard, far away, a high, wild, ethereal song, weaving through the caves and chambers of the knowe. ‘It’s there! Can you hear it? It’s the throne, singing for the child of true blood,’ Donovan cried. ‘Oh, isn’t it beautiful!’

  Hannah nodded, unable to speak.

  ‘They’ve made it. They’re home.’ Donovan dashed his arm across his eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ Hannah said after a moment. ‘I want to get a photo of us, all smiling and happy, for the great hall. The first happy snap of the Rose family in more than four hundred and forty years. We don’t want to have red eyes and miserable faces! I’ll get Scarlett to take it. Max can’t keep still long enough to take a decent photo.’

  They walked back towards the sound of voices and laughter under the ancient spreading branches of the yew tree.

  ‘Look, it’s snowing!’ Donovan said. ‘Yet it’s such a beautiful sunny day. How can it be snowing?’

  Hannah and Donovan stood still, holding up their hands to the shower of sweet-scented white blowing over their faces. ‘It’s petals,’ Hannah said. ‘White petals.’

 
Instinctively they both looked back at the green knowe. The blackthorn tree upon its crown had burst into blossom. Like tiny white stars, the flowers bloomed all over the black twisted twigs, turning the tree into a shining beacon upon the hill. Hannah and Donovan smiled at each other.

  ‘Come on!’ Hannah cried. ‘Let’s go tell Belle. Now we know the curse truly is broken. Everything will be all right now.’

  The cousins grabbed hands and ran down the pathway. A gust of wind sent a spindrift of blackthorn blossom spiralling up around their running bodies and flying hair, before falling down to float upon the dark surface of the witch’s pool.

  The Facts Behind the Fiction

  Is time travel really possible?

  People have toyed with this idea for a very long time, but most would have thought it was absolutely impossible before the brilliant scientist Albert Einstein came up with a couple of radical theories about the nature of time and space in 1905, when he was only twenty-six. He completely changed our understanding of the universe.

  One of the side-effects of his research was to show us that, theoretically, time travel is indeed possible. Many scientists have wondered about it since, arguing with each other about how it could be achieved and what the consequences could be. It’s a fascinating—and mind-boggling—subject, and one that will keep scientists wondering and worrying for many more years, let alone non-scientists like you and me.

  Just remember, the laws of physics tell us what is possible, not what is practical. I can’t see a time travel machine or a working wormhole being invented any time soon. However, who knows what will happen tomorrow? History is filled with underestimations of what is possible in the future. In 1899, Charles H. Duell, the commissioner of the US Office of Patents, said, ‘Everything that can be invented has been invented.’ Marshal Ferdinand Foch, French commander of Allied forces during the last few months of World War I, said in 1918, ‘Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.’ And in 1943, Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM, said, ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.’

  It seems funny now, doesn’t it? So will people laugh at us one day for ever doubting the possibility of time travel?

  The Paradoxes of Time Travel (you can skip this part if you don’t like your mind being boggled and baffled)

  There are a number of problems with the idea of time travel, a lot of them linked with cause and effect. If you could go back in time, would this change history? What would happen if you met yourself at a younger age? Is this even possible? Can someone or something exist in two times at once?

  One problem with time travel is called ‘the grandfather paradox’. For example, if you went back in time and accidentally killed your grandfather, he could never have given birth to your father, who could never have given birth to you. Therefore, you would not exist, which means you could never have travelled back in time to kill your grandfather.

  This kind of paradox is one of the many problems that have kept scientists stumped for more than a century. Lots of different solutions have been proposed, including parallel universes and multiverses (i.e. lots of universes). The idea of parallel universes is that every time something happens that affects the course of someone’s life, the universe splits into two. Of course, this means there are an infinite number of universes, each with different histories and different futures. It does, however, solve some of the paradoxes of time travel, because it means that you are simply going back in time to another branch of reality. In essence, you are sidestepping into a parallel universe.

  Other scientists argue that the past is the past and cannot be changed. This new speculation, based on the laws of quantum mechanics, is quite simple—you could go back in time and meet your grandfather, but even if you tried your hardest, you would not be able to kill him. The past—including your role in it—has already happened, and the consequences of your actions are already unfolding in the present and into the future.

  So it may be possible to travel back into the past, according to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, but it is impossible to change that past, according to the laws of quantum mechanics. You can affect the future, of course, as every action that you take will have consequences. You just can’t change what has already happened. This idea is called the Novikov self-consistency principle, a difficult name for what is really quite a simple solution.

  It actually has a great deal to do with what Hannah decides to do, and how. You may ask: why didn’t she go back and stop Eglantyne from casting the curse in the first place? Or why did she not go back and save her father from being captured by Irata?

  Both of these things would have been impossible for her to do. Hannah could not have stopped the curse from being cast because it was known that the curse existed, and the consequences of that curse could be seen in the present. She could not have saved her father that night because it was known that he had disappeared and been missing for thirteen years. She could only bring him back to a day after her initial decision to go back in time, thereby affecting the future but not changing the past.

  Hannah could, however, find the lost loops of the puzzle ring and restore them into one ring, because this would not violate any known facts in the present—the rings had been lost and not found in all that time.

  So how then did Robert manage to rescue Eglantyne from the fire? The point is that he did not change the past. The consequences of his action were always evident in the present day—in the story of the white flash of fire and the fact that Eglantyne’s remains were never found. And the consequences of Hannah’s actions while in the past are also evident in her present, without her being aware of it—the story of the Red Rose who would one day save a Black Rose, solve the puzzle ring and break the curse, for example, or Miss Underhill’s family story of a red-haired witch.

  It might help to think of time as a loop of cause and effect, with no beginning and no end. Of course, this sets up its own paradoxes, often called causal loops. Linnet’s marmalade cake is a causal loop—Linnet cooked it for Hannah because she knew Hannah loved it, yet Hannah only loved it because Linnet cooked it for her.

  Mind-boggling, isn’t it?

  If you know your history, you could argue that Hannah’s actions in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, are evident in that tragic queen’s fate. For if Hannah and her friends had not called out Lord Bothwell’s name when they went back through the city gate, and if they had not woken Lord Darnley from his slumber, perhaps there would not have been so many unexplained mysteries about his death that led to the people of Scotland rising up against Queen Mary and forcing her to flee.

  So, let me help you know your history . . .

  Mary, Queen of Scots

  Mary, Queen of Scots, was one of the most intriguing and controversial monarchs of the sixteenth century. At one time, she claimed the crowns of four countries—Scotland, France, England and Ireland—yet it all ended for her on the executioner’s block at Fotheringay, when her head was chopped off on the orders of her own cousin Elizabeth I of England.

  Born on 8 December 1542, Mary was the only child of King James V of Scotland and his French wife, Mary of Guise. Her father died when she was only six days old, and almost immediately people began fighting over who would control her. Her great-uncle, King Henry VIII of England, wanted her to marry his frail young son, Edward, and when Mary’s mother refused, Henry invaded Scotland in a series of attacks called ‘the rough wooing’. Eventually, Mary’s mother sent her to France to marry the French king’s three year old son, the Dauphin François. She was just five years old. Queen Mary spent the next thirteen years at the French court, accompanied by her own court consisting of the ‘four Marys’,—four little girls her own age, all named Mary, the daughters of the noblest families in Scotland.

  On 24 April 1558, at the age of fifteen, Mary married François, and when his father, the king, died a year later, she became Queen of France.

  She had already laid claim to the thrones of England and Ire
land after the death of her cousin Mary I of England, even though Henry VIII had had another daughter, Elizabeth. Mary, Queen of Scots, was Catholic, and in the eyes of many Catholics, Elizabeth was illegitimate because her father had married her mother while his first wife was still alive. Claiming the throne of England was a big mistake on the part of Mary, Queen of Scots, because her Protestant cousin Elizabeth I of England never forgave her.

  François died on 5 December 1560. Mary went from being the queen of France to being a hated and ignored daughter-in-law to Catherine de Medici, the new regent of France, who enraged her by recognising Elizabeth I as Queen of England. Aged eighteen, Mary returned, humiliated, to Scotland on 19 August 1561.

  Scotland was by now devoutly Protestant and regarded Mary with suspicion, the flames being fanned by the radical reformer John Knox. He condemned Mary for dancing, playing music, dressing too frivolously, speaking French and for her insistence on worshipping as a Catholic.

  In July 1565, Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, her first cousin. She pleased no one with this marriage and enraged many. Darnley was one of the hated English, he was a rake and a gamester, and he was too close to the English throne for Elizabeth’s liking.

  In March 1566, Darnley and his friends murdered Mary’s Italian secretary, David Rizzio, right in front of her. Darnley’s motivation seems to have been jealousy, racism and the hope that Mary and her unborn child would also be killed and he could seize the throne and rule in Mary’s place (and yes, the story of the bloodstains that never fade is true—you can go and search for them yourself on the floor of Mary’s chambers at Holyrood Palace.)

  Mary persuaded Darnley to let her escape, but their marriage would never recover. Their son, James (to be James VI of Scotland and James I of England), was born a scant six weeks later.

  On Sunday 9 February 1567—almost one year later—Holyrood Palace was filled with music and dancing and laughter, as Mary celebrated the marriage of her valet, Sebastian Pagez to one of her maidservants. Later that evening, Mary rode out from Holyrood Palace to visit her sick young husband, who was staying at Kirk o’ Fields, a house just inside the city gates of Edinburgh. With her went her court of admirers, including her most faithful supporter, Lord Bothwell, and various musicians and singers, hired to entertain Lord Darnley.