The Forgotten Book Read online

  “No,” I said, and carried on writing, hoping against hope that I was not going crazy. “But how would you feel about having Sinan in your group for the biology project?”

  Hannah tilted her head to one side, then the other—and then she nodded. “Forget the unicorn,” she said.

  December 1758

  My strength has deserted me. For weeks now I have been confined to my bed. I feel that Death is near, and I welcome it. My time on this earth is drawing to a close. Soon I will be no more. But something of me will live on, even after my body has returned to dust. Now, at last, I am certain of it.

  The same is true of my words in this book. They will last forever, I know it, for I have tried many times to undo or to change them.

  But always in vain.

  6

  The next few days were a drop in the ocean compared to the castle’s long history.

  But they changed everything.

  I’d always wanted to be able to change things. Ever since I was a child I’d hoped, someday, to become somebody who made a difference; somebody who helped people and made the world a better place. And because I knew those things took a lot of effort, I’d always been a trier. I’d studied hard for my exams, and last year I’d even been elected school council rep. But so far I hadn’t really managed to change anything (unless you counted the part I’d played in the long-drawn-out negotiations over our school uniforms). Now, however, with the help of the chronicle, I suddenly had opportunities I could never even have dreamed of before, and which were only gradually starting to dawn on me.

  A few of my efforts had already borne fruit: Hannah and Sinan, for instance, had been put in the same group for our biology project and had spent Thursday afternoon planning the wetland habitat they would be creating and observing over the next few weeks. And with just a few strokes of my pen I’d done what no doctor had ever been able to do: For days now my dad had been fit and healthy, plagued neither by migraines nor asthma nor imaginary tropical diseases. His mood had improved markedly as a result. I’d even seen him jogging in the park yesterday and could scarcely believe my eyes. He was also smiling a lot more.

  To cap it all, Dr. Meier and Miss Berkenbeck were now officially a couple. At dinner a few days ago, some of the students had seen the two of them disappear into the corner behind the drinks machine. Since then they’d been spotted several times holding hands on the castle grounds. Nobody knew quite what had persuaded Miss Berkenbeck to forgive our history teacher for the kissing-on-the-countertop incident. Hannah and I, on the other hand, had a pretty good idea.

  Charlotte and Toby had also happened to run into each other in the corridors more than usual lately. But unfortunately they hadn’t ended up rekindling their romance. Whatever had happened between them, it looked as though Toby’s interest in Charlotte had faded as quickly as it had begun. Eventually, Charlotte (who’d guessed that I was incapable of leaving the book alone) asked me not to write anything else about her. And she didn’t seem to like talking about the chronicle in general, either. In the evenings, while Hannah and I chattered away about the book and its powers and decided what to write about next, Charlotte did everything she could to stay out of our conversations. She confined herself to repeated warnings that we should be careful, but she would have preferred it if we’d simply put the book back in its secret compartment and forgotten all about it. “Why do you want to interfere in the course of events, anyway?” she’d asked us more than once.

  But I knew there was no going back. Not now that I knew the kind of power that lay within the book’s well-thumbed pages. I couldn’t and didn’t want to forget what I’d found out—I was too enthralled by it.

  By now I’d gotten very good at using the book to influence minor events. I knew how to describe things so that they would happen in an inconspicuous, seemingly coincidental way. I still hadn’t mastered the chronological aspects of the book’s powers, though. Some of the things I wrote about would happen immediately, almost before the ink was dry on the page. Others could take several days. Two days ago, for example, I’d written an entry about us getting the west wing library back from Darcy. But it hadn’t happened yet. Darcy still hadn’t left the castle, nor had he unlocked the door to the library.

  It was now Saturday and my dad had promised to deal with the issue that morning. We were due to meet in the west wing in half an hour to negotiate with Darcy—who would have to back down eventually, surely. Surely he must see that?

  I yawned widely as I swung my legs out of bed and skimmed the parquet floor with my toes, trying to find my slippers. Hannah had gotten up much earlier than me, as had everyone else in the castle, I imagined. I’d missed breakfast, at any rate. And still I was dog-tired, having stayed up late reading the chronicle and not slept very well afterward.

  Not for the first time, I’d been tormented by nightmares full of paper dragonflies with rustling wings. They seemed to be following me. And recently the creature with the curled horns and the goat’s legs—the faun—had also started to appear in these dreams, creeping through the castle, scurrying down secret passageways that everyone had forgotten existed, and lurking in the shadows of the ancient halls. Although I never came face-to-face with the faun, I knew it was him.

  In the last few hours I’d woken up several times, heart pounding, and quickly checked that the book was still there under my pillow. Every time I’d woken up I’d been afraid someone had stolen it while I slept.

  Now, by daylight, these fears seemed a little ridiculous. Apart from Charlotte, Hannah, and me, nobody even knew of the book’s existence, let alone the powers it possessed. So who would think of stealing it? I was getting myself all worked up about nothing.

  I finally located my slippers, put them on, and shuffled into the bathroom. I stood under the shower and started to feel more awake as the stream of hot water and the scent of my favorite shower gel (lemon and mint) banished the last of the nightmares from my mind. Then I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, brushed my teeth, and tied my hair back in a bun. I dabbed a little concealer on the dark circles under my eyes, but there was no time for mascara—it was already five to eleven.

  I hurried over to the west wing, where my dad was already in conversation with Darcy de Winter. They were both standing outside the library door, with Darcy clearly refusing to hand over the key.

  “I’m aware that your family does retain certain rights of ownership over the building itself,” my dad was saying as I joined them. “And I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. But, as headmaster, I am entitled to act as the representative of the owner of the castle. Which is why I must ask you to please unlock this door!”

  Darcy folded his arms across his chest. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and already looked a bit like the lawyer he would probably become in a few years’ time. “As far as I know this library is no longer used for the day-to-day running of the school,” he said.

  “Where did you even get the key?” I asked.

  “Ah, Emma, there you are. Good morning,” said my dad.

  Darcy greeted me with a nod, then turned back to my dad: “That’s right, isn’t it? This wing is no longer used for staff or students? There are no regular events here, nothing like that?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” my dad replied. “But my daughter has been given permission to host a … er…”

  “Literature club,” I supplied.

  “She has my official permission to use this library for a literature club. So I would be much obliged if you’d open the door. Otherwise, of course, we can always come back with the caretaker and his set of master keys.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Darcy, but he still didn’t move. He wrinkled his nose and exhaled. “It’s open.”

  Oh, please. I grabbed the door handle and turned it. The door swung open. We’d been checking the doors on this corridor every day for a week, and yesterday afternoon every single one of them had still been locked. And now …

&
nbsp; We entered the west wing library—or what was left of it.

  I heard my dad give a sharp intake of breath behind me as I burst into the room.

  “It … I found it like this ten minutes ago,” said Darcy.

  I cast my eyes over the library.

  Heaps of books lay scattered around us: There was not a single book left on the shelves. Some of the shelves themselves had also been pulled off the walls and lay broken on the floor, surrounded by bits of splintered wood and ripped fabric. The curtains had been torn down and the upholstery on the sofas and the armchairs slashed open. The drawers of the desk and the chest had been wrenched open, and their contents lay strewn across the floor. Someone had even managed to pull up some of the floorboards—perhaps in search of something hidden underneath.

  “Didn’t you say you and your friends were going to tidy up?” asked my dad.

  “Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “We did … we…” I broke off and glared at Darcy. “Were you looking for anything in particular?” I spat. I balled my hands into fists. I was absolutely livid at the sight of my beautiful library in ruins.

  “No,” he said, “I—”

  “Then why did you do it? To stop us from meeting here and disturbing your sleep?”

  “I already told you: It wasn’t me.”

  “The room was locked,” I retorted. “You were the one with the key.”

  “So all this chaos is new?” asked my dad. He’d taken a few steps across the room, picking his way between the heaps of books, and was prodding at the loose springs sticking out of one of the armchair cushions. “It is important to give children the space to find their own place in the world,” he quoted from his book. “But I’m really not sure this is the right place for you and your book club, Emma. Look, one of the windows is broken. You’d catch cold.”

  Darcy and I rushed over to the window, where there was indeed a fist-sized hole in one of the leaded glass panes.

  “Maybe somebody got in from outside,” suggested Darcy, but I was having trouble believing in his innocence. Wasn’t it much more likely that he was the one responsible for the destruction? He was the one who’d banished us from the library, after all, and locked all the doors. He’d taken over the whole corridor. And for what…?

  My reflections were interrupted by Darcy saying: “Even if they didn’t get in through the window, there’s dozens of secret passages in this old place. There must be plenty of entrances other than the official front door.”

  “They? Who’s they?”

  “The intruders.”

  “Of course, the intruders. Strangers came and broke into the castle specifically in order to trash this room. And pigs might fly.”

  “It does seem unlikely,” my dad agreed. He was still looking warily at the rusty springs, as if afraid they might come pinging out of the cushion at any moment and take someone’s eye out.

  Darcy shrugged. “I’m sorry I threw you out of the library. That was … very rude of me.”

  “Yes, it was,” I said. I could think of plenty of less polite words than rude to describe Darcy de Winter.

  “I apologize,” he said, and I wondered if I’d heard him right. “I shouldn’t have behaved that way. Of course you can meet here and watch your films—er, sorry, I mean read your books.”

  “Because you’ve found whatever it was you were looking for in the library, and now that you’ve finished ransacking it you’ve got no more use for it? Wow, thanks. That’s big of you.”

  “Emma,” he said, taking a step toward me, “we de Winters always admit when we’ve made a mistake, and I’m genuinely sorry, okay?” I blinked. Well—I had written an entry in the chronicle to this effect, hadn’t I?

  Darcy lowered his voice out of earshot of my dad, who was now examining the other chairs for deadly springs. “I wasn’t in a very good mood that evening,” he said quietly. “I was tired and … and stressed. I was out of order to you. But this”—he gestured at the devastation around us—“is not my doing. After you left the library, I locked the doors and I didn’t set foot in here again until a few minutes ago. That’s the truth. Over breakfast this morning I decided I should stop behaving like an idiot and give you your library back, and then I came up here and found it like this. I’m surprised I didn’t hear anything, to be honest—my bedroom is practically next door, and whoever did this must have made a lot of noise.”

  I studied him for a moment, looking for an indication somewhere in his chiseled face that he was lying. But I found none. He genuinely looked as though he meant what he was saying. Hmm. Assuming Darcy really was innocent, what on earth had happened here? Who else could have done this? And why? Had someone been looking for the chronicle? My fears of last night suddenly didn’t seem so unreasonable after all … and I started to wonder whether there was something weird going on at Stolzenburg—something other than my experiments with a magic book, that is.

  I looked suspiciously around the room at the jumble of broken furniture and books. The drawers from the immovable chest had been pulled out, but the secret compartment didn’t seem to have been touched. The intruder must have overlooked it. When I crouched down to take a closer look, I spotted something else amongst the chaos of books and loose floorboards. Strewn across the floor was a cloud of tiny silver leaves that weren’t much bigger than my thumbnail.

  They were exactly like the ones I’d found in the woods the previous weekend.

  I pressed them gently with my fingertips. Some of them crumbled at my touch, and the rest I gathered up and put in my trouser pocket. Then I stood up again.

  “We need to talk,” I said to Darcy. Even if he’d had nothing to do with the trashing of the library, I’d started to think that his sudden appearance at the castle was as strange as that of these little leaves. “Why did you come to Stolzenburg?” I asked. “And please spare me the story about your European road trip. I know it’s something to do with your sister.”

  He seemed to reflect for a moment, then slowly nodded. “All right,” he said, “but not here.” He glanced at my dad, who was attempting to reassemble one of the broken drawers. Then the ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “How about we go for a walk?”

  * * *

  The woods around Stolzenburg were dense and wild. They consisted mainly of spruce trees, and their fallen needles formed a soft blanket on the ground. When you left the path and walked among the trees it felt as though you were walking on a thick carpet, and it gave the woods a cozy feeling even in the iciest depths of winter.

  That morning, however, Darcy and I took one of the paths that led in a broad curve around the estate. It was less a path, really, than a set of tire tracks, and we each walked in one of the two ruts. Ferns sprouted on the green strip in between. The sunlight slanted through the treetops and bathed the tree trunks on either side of the tracks in a golden light.

  I waited for Darcy to start speaking. But he contented himself with kicking a pinecone along the ground in front of him.

  It was only when a startled fox burst out of the undergrowth, ran up the hillside, and disappeared behind a rock that Darcy emerged from his reverie. It was as if a curtain had been drawn back from his face. “Gina and I both attended Stolzenburg from age eleven,” he explained. “It’s a tradition in my family. After my ancestors moved out of the castle and the school was set up, all the de Winters came here for their education. Only Gina and I didn’t get to finish ours.”

  “I heard about that,” I said. “About Gina, I mean. How she went missing four years ago. People say she ran away.”

  He was silent again, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. For a few minutes the only sound was our muffled footsteps and the occasional burst of birdsong. “She didn’t run away,” he said at last. “She disappeared. There’s a difference. Gina would never have run away. Not without telling me.”

  “Of course not.”

  “We’re twins.”

  “Of course,” I said, but I did wonder whether Darcy’s confid
ence might be misplaced. Sure, it was often said that twins had a special connection. But was it true? There was a pair of identical twins in Year 8 (Robb and Todd) who hated each other’s guts and whom Mrs. Bröder-Strauchhaus had had to put in separate rooms to stop them from killing each other in their sleep. Those two definitely took things to the opposite extreme.

  “Sorry, but I don’t think you can really understand it,” said Darcy. His voice was quiet and cool, and he stared straight ahead into the dense thicket of tree trunks.

  “Well, anyway—so now you’ve come back to find out what happened to Gina?” I ventured. He nodded.

  “The police searched every inch of the woodland,” he said. “They told us she must have fallen in the river and drowned, and my parents accepted that explanation. They mourned Gina’s death and took me out of the school and said they didn’t want me to dwell on it anymore. They thought I was just reopening old wounds.” He kicked the pinecone a long way away and suddenly looked so sad that I felt an urge to touch his arm, comfort him. I didn’t, of course. “But I can’t just accept it. I won’t accept it. I don’t believe Gina’s dead. I … I can sense she’s alive,” he went on, and then added tonelessly: “Particularly the past few nights. I can just feel that she’s still here, you know?”

  Goose bumps crept up the back of my neck. “Do you think she’s somewhere nearby?” I murmured. I looked warily at the tree trunks around us and the crumbling remnants of the monastery wall, which were now coming into view. Were these woods really as cozy as I’d always thought?

  Darcy shrugged. “I know the whole thing sounds completely mad, and to be honest I’m not sure why I’m even telling you about it. But I just knew I had to come back to Stolzenburg if I ever wanted to see Gina again.”

  “I see.”

  We clambered over a fallen tree, which must have been brought down in a recent storm. I, too, was a little surprised that he was telling me all this. But only a little. The fact that Darcy was being so open with me and had even apologized for his past wrongdoing was, of course, the direct result of one of my entries in the chronicle. I’d written that he should apologize and let us back into the library, and it had worked like a dream. Darcy had handed over the library and apologized to me—and to cap it all, here we were having a conversation like two normal people!