My breast was still rising and falling, and my skin was covered with tiny beads of sweat, but you couldn’t rule out the possibility that Darth Vader and Lord Alastair were right. I mean, I was already flying through the air as a glittering mote of dust, and there wasn’t a trace of color left in my face down below. Even my lips had gone gray.

Gideon had tears pouring down his face. He was still pressing his hands down on my wound as hard as he could. “Stay with me, Gwenny, stay with me,” he whispered, and suddenly I couldn’t see anything, but I did feel the hard floor under me again and the dull pain inside me and the full weight of my body. I drew a last rattling breath, and knew I wouldn’t have the strength for another.

I wanted to open my eyes to look at Gideon for the last time, but I couldn’t do it.

“I love you, Gwenny. Please don’t leave me,” said Gideon. That was the last thing I heard before a great void swallowed me up.

All kinds of inanimate items and materials can be transported through space in both directions without any problems. However, at the moment when an item is transported, it must not be in contact with anything or anyone, apart from the time traveler who is carrying it.

The largest object so far moved through time was a refectory table twelve feet long, taken from the year 1805 by the de Villiers twins in 1900 and back again (see Volume 4, Chapter 3, “Experiments and Empirical Investigations,” pp. 188 ff.). No plants or parts of plants, and no living creatures of any kind, can be transported, since time travel would destroy or entirely dissolve their cell structure, as many experiments on algae, various seedlings, slipper animalcules, woodlice, and mice have shown (again, see Volume 4, Chapter 3, “Experiments and Empirical Investigations,” pp. 194 ff.).

The transportation of any items, other than under supervision or for experimental purposes, is strictly forbidden.

FROM THE CHRONICLES OF THE GUARDIANS,

VOLUME 2: GENERAL LAWS OF TIME TRAVEL

TEN

“SHE LOOKS to me strangely familiar,” I heard someone say. There was no mistaking James’s plummy tone of voice.

“Of course she does, bonehead,” replied another voice that could only belong to Xemerius. “It’s Gwyneth, but wearing a wig and minus her school uniform.”

And now other sounds and agitated voices began getting through to me. It was like a radio with the volume slowly being turned up. I was still lying on my back, or maybe I was lying on my back again. The terrible weight on my breast had gone away, and so had the dull pain deep inside me. Was I a ghost like James now?

Someone cut my bodice open and ripped it apart, with an ugly tearing noise.

“He got her aorta,” I heard Gideon saying desperately. “I tried to stop the flow of blood, but … but it went on too long.”

Cool hands were feeling my upper body and touched a painful spot under my rib cage. Then Dr. White said, sounding relieved, “It’s only a superficial cut! Good heavens, what a fright you gave me!”

“What? But that can’t be so. She—”

“The sword only scratched her skin. See that? Madame Rossini’s corset has obviously done good service. Aorta abdominalis—good God, Gideon, what on earth do they teach you in medical school? For a moment, I really believed you.” Dr. White’s fingers were pressing against my throat. “And her pulse is strong.”

“Is she all right?”

“What exactly happened?”

“How could Lord Alastair do such a thing to her?”

Mr. George, Falk de Villiers, and Mr. Whitman all spoke at once. There wasn’t another squeak out of Gideon. I tried to open my eyes, and this time it was easy. I could even sit up without difficulty. I was surrounded by the familiar, brightly painted walls of our school art room in the cellar, and the heads of the assembled Guardians were bending over me. They were all smiling at me, even Mr. Marley.

Only Gideon was staring at me as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. His face was white as a sheet, and I could still see the traces of tears on his cheeks.

Farther away stood James, holding his lace handkerchief to his eyes. “Tell me when it’s safe to look again.”

“Not yet, anyway, or you’ll be struck blind on the spot,” said Xemerius, who was sitting cross-legged at my feet. “Half her bosom is falling out of her bodice.”

Oops. He was right. Feeling embarrassed, I tried to cover myself up with the torn remnants of Madame Rossini’s wonderful dress. Dr. White gently pressed me back on the table where they must have laid me down.

“I’ll have to clean this scratch and put a dressing on it,” he said. “Then I’ll give you a thorough examination. Do you feel pain anywhere?”

I shook my head, only to groan “ouch!” next moment. I had a splitting headache.

Mr. George put his hand on my shoulder from behind me. “Oh, my God, Gwyneth, you gave us quite a fright.” He laughed softly. “That’s what I call a really good faint! When Gideon came back with you in his arms, I seriously thought you could be—”

“Dead,” said Xemerius, finishing the sentence that Mr. George had left tactfully hanging in the air. “To be honest, you certainly looked dead. And that boy was beside himself. Yelling for vein clamps and stammering all sorts of other confused stuff. And shedding buckets of tears. What are you staring at?”

This last remark was for little Robert, who was gazing at Xemerius, fascinated. “He’s so cute. May I stroke him?”

“Not if you want to keep your hand, kid,” said Xemerius. “It’s bad enough having that perfumed coxcomb there thinking I’m a cat all the time.”

“Oh, really. Cats don’t have wings. I know that perfectly well,” cried James, with his eyes still shut tight. “You’re a cat out of my fevered dreams. A degenerate cat.”

“One more word, and I’ll eat you,” said Xemerius.

Gideon had taken a couple of steps away and dropped into a chair. He took off his wig, ran all his fingers through his dark hair, and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t understand it,” he said indistinctly through his fingers.

I felt just the same. How could this be possible? I mean, I’d just died, and now here I was feeling alive and well again! Can you imagine a thing like that? I looked down at the injury that Dr. White was treating. He was right—it really was just a scratch. The cut I’d given myself with the vegetable knife had been far longer and hurt much more.

Gideon’s face surfaced from his hands again. How green his eyes were in his pale face! I remembered the last thing I’d heard him say, and once again I tried to sit up, but Dr. White wouldn’t let me.

“Can someone please take this unspeakable wig off her?” he said brusquely. Several hands at once began taking the hairpins out, and it was a wonderful feeling to be free of the wig again.

“Careful, Marley,” warned Falk de Villiers. “Remember Madame Rossini!”

“Yes, sir,” stammered Mr. Marley, almost dropping the wig in alarm. “Madame Rossini, sir.”

Mr. George took the hairpins out of my hair, and gently undid the braid. “Better like that?” he asked. Yes, it was much better.

“Curlylocks, Curlylocks, wilt thou be mine? Thou shalt not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine,” sang Xemerius in a silly voice. “Your hair’s a mess—pity you don’t have a hat, that’s the answer to a bad hair day. Oh, I’m so glad you’re still alive and I don’t have to look for a new human. It’s making me talk nonsense! Curlylocks, indeed.”

Little Robert giggled.

“Can I look now?” asked James, but he didn’t wait for an answer. After one glance at me, he closed his eyes again. “Upon my word! It really is Miss Gwyneth. Forgive me for not recognizing you when that young dandy carried you past my niche just now.” He sighed. “That in itself was odd enough. You never see people properly dressed in this house now.”

Mr. Whitman put an arm around Gideon’s shoulders. “What exactly happened, my boy? Were you able to give the count our message? And did he give you instructions for the next meeting?”

“Oh, get him a whisky and leave him in peace for a few minutes,” growled Dr. White, sticking two small strips of plaster over my wound. “He’s in shock.”

“No. No, I’m fine,” murmured Gideon. He cast another quick glance at me, then took the sealed letter from his coat pocket and handed it to Falk.

“Come along,” said Mr. Whitman. He helped Gideon to his feet and led him to the door. “There’s a bottle of whisky up in the principal’s office. And a sofa in case you want to lie down for a while.” He looked around. “Coming with us, Falk?”

“Certainly,” said Falk. “I hope old Gilles has enough whisky for us all up there.” He turned to the others. “And don’t take Gwyneth home in that bedraggled state, is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear, sir,” Mr. Marley assured him. “Clear as day, if I may say so.”

Falk cast his eyes upward. “No one’s stopping you,” he said, and then he, Mr. Whitman, and Gideon disappeared through the doorway.

* * *

IT WAS MR. BERNARD’S evening off, so Caroline opened the door to let me in. She was talking nineteen to the dozen. “Charlotte’s been trying on her elf costume for the party, it’s ever so beautiful, and she was going to let me pin the wings on, but then Aunt Glenda said I must go and wash my hands first because she was sure I’d been petting dirty animals again—”

She got no farther, because I grabbed her and hugged her so tightly that she could hardly breathe.

“That’s right, go on, squash her!” said Xemerius, flying into the house after me. “Your mum can always get another little girl if you hug this one to death.”

“My darling, sweet, dearest, cute little sister,” I was murmuring into Caroline’s hair, laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, I love you so much!”

“Okay, I love you too, but you’re blowing into my ear,” said Caroline, cautiously wriggling free. “Come on, we’re in the middle of supper. There’s going to be chocolate cake from the Hummingbird Bakery for dessert.”

“Oh, I love, love, love chocolate devil’s food cake!” I cried. “And I love life that gives us such wonderful things!”

“Aren’t you overdoing it a bit? Anyone would think you’d just been having electric shock treatment.” Xemerius sneezed grouchily.

I meant to give him a reproachful look, but I could only smile lovingly at him. My darling, cute, grouchy little gargoyle demon! “I love you too,” I told him.

“Oh, wow!” he groaned. “If you were a TV program, I’d switch channels.”

Caroline was looking at me rather anxiously. On the way up to the first floor, she took my hand. “What’s the matter with you, Gwenny?”

I wiped the tears off my cheek and laughed. “I’m absolutely fine,” I assured her. “I’m just so happy. Because I’m alive. And because I have such a wonderful family. And because these banisters feel so wonderfully smooth and familiar. And because life is just so, so, so good.” When the tears came back into my eyes again, I wondered whether it was really just aspirin that Dr. White had dissolved in a glass of water for me. But my euphoria could be simply because of the overwhelming fact that I’d survived, and now I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my days as a tiny mote of dust.