Page 86 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“Watch out!” James grabbed Magda and pulled her back, just out of reach of a creeping branch, an angry yellow flower flaring at her feet and then collapsing again.
“How can one man do this so quickly?” Magda wondered, pressing into James. And yet she already knew the answer.
Because he’s not a man.
“Magic,” James said, confirming her thoughts. “This is all magic, isn’t it?”
Magda saw ivy knitting into the rosebush hedge now, waxy, triangular leaves curling and crawling between the branches to strengthen the increasingly impregnable wall. There were other flowers too, English flowers, daisies and buttercups and even bluebells, pushing through the tangle of rose stems, the colours of summer knotting together. And the hedge itself continued to advance, crawling along the street behind them, thorns puncturing tires and scraping against glass and metal, but in front of Magda it continued to move within the space it already occupied, writhing and coiling as if the street were covered in snakes.
“Is all of London like this?” she wondered aloud, narrowing her eyes against the rain to gaze up at the height of the hedge. It was as tall as the buildings, three stories or more. “The whole city taken over by nature? What are people going to think? Magic’s not secret now, is it?”
Before James could reply Henry reappeared, walking straight out of the rosebush hedge in front of them, Will following after her, his hand in hers. Magda glanced behind her at the crowd, but nobody was paying them much attention, nobody had seen the ghost emerge unscathed from the churning, roiling wall of thorns and stems.
“Where’s Frank?” Magda demanded, as Will snatched his hand away from Henry and quickly stepped back.
“You’re welcome,” Henry snapped at Will. Magda saw Will turn on the spot, his eyes widening as his gaze travelled across the hedge, as he saw the scale of it for the first time. “Oh my god,” he muttered, backing away.
Henry faced Magda, and she looked exhausted, perhaps showing for the first time that she too was being affected by everything that was happening. “He won’t come,” she said.
“What?” Magda demanded.
“Stupid old man,” Henry muttered, turning her face back to the hedge. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing.”
“Whatishe doing?”
“That’s the thing: nothing.” Henry threw up her hands, as if despairing. “He said it’s his home and he’s not leaving.”
“Tell her!” Will shouted then, and when Magda looked at him his cheeks were flushed red, his eyes blazing. He was a bundle of anger and fear, pressing himself against the building behind him, as if trying to get as far away from the roses as possible.
“Tell me what?” Magda asked.
“He already has it,” Henry said, and to Magda she sounded exhausted.
Never known Henry to be exhausted before. Never.
“The book,” Henry elaborated. “That man, Lukas. He’s already there.”
Magda shook her head. “If he has the book... he can makeanythinghe wants. Any magical item that could do anything. He wouldn’t need the Impossible Box. It’s nothing compared to the book.”
“Frank wanted to take it to the basement!” Will shouted. “And then he arrived. That man. He took it from us, Magda! He has the book.”
Magda stared at Will in disbelief for a moment, then faced the churning hedge, the flowers flourishing and dying rapidly in a ceaseless kaleidoscope of colours.
“Take me in,” she decided.
“What?” Henry asked.
“We’re going to get Frank out of there if we have to drag him out. And then...”
And then what, Magda, what are you going to do?
“And then we’ll stop Lukas, somehow.”
“How are you going to do that?” Will shouted at her, all of his composure deserting him, his face glistening in the rain, his clothes soaked. “He’s a magic man who can’t die, isn’t he? He’s turned London into a bloody greenhouse! What the hell are you going to do, Magda?”
She ignored Will—mostly because she didn’t have an answer for him—and looked at James, who was watching her silently. She handed him the Impossible Box. “Take this,” she said. “Take it as far away as you can. Whatever he does with the book, Lukas will want the box aswell and he can’t have it. Just get it away from here. Who knows, maybe there’s something in here we can stop him with, if it comes to it.”
“Of course!” Will shouted at her. “More magical items, that’s just what we need! You are out of your minds!”
