Diana Wynne Jones’s Magic and Myths Collection

“What do you think?” Troy said to her.

Hayley had no idea what they were supposed to do in the game anyway and the card made her very curious to find out. Besides, everyone else was standing by the markers jigging with impatience. James, who was nearest, said, “Hurry it up, can’t you!” and Tollie, in the distance, was jumping up and down shouting, “Cowards, cowards, cowards!”

“I think we’d better try,” she said.

“Great!” said Troy. He seized her by one arm and towed her over to the double marker. “Leave the card on the grass for Harmony to collect.”

Back by the table, Harmony wound up the clock. It seemed to be a musical box as well as a clock. When Harmony set it down on the table, ticking loudly, it began to play a small tinkly tune. Grandpa had played the same tune to Hayley once and told her it was by Mozart.

“A Little Night Music?” she said to Troy.

He nodded. “We all hear different tunes,” he said. “Harmony’s good at that. Start walking.”

All over the paddock the others were setting off. James charged downhill towards the orchard. Tollie came rushing back up the hill. Lucy was walking rather carefully in a straight line, looking nervous. Most of the rest were running towards the house.

“Some of them are cheating,” Troy said, pulling Hayley forwards. “Tollie always does.”

Hayley hastily dropped the card by the markers and let herself be pulled towards the garden shed at the side of the paddock.

It was a simple brick-built shed with a pointed roof, but when they came to it, Hayley was highly delighted to find that the top half of the door was of panes of stained glass, in nine different colours. As Troy pulled the door shut behind them, Hayley saw Lucy pass slowly across outside, from thundery yellow, to stormy red and then to twilight purple as she walked out of sight. Inside, the old lawnmowers and the stack of deckchairs were in a sort of rainbow dusk. Troy, keeping hold of Hayley’s wrist, edged them past the lawnmowers – and through some thick, dusty cobwebs that caught unpleasantly on Hayley’s hair – and on into coloured twilight beyond. Shortly, it was almost dark. But there seemed to be a passage there, or perhaps even a path, and Troy led her firmly along it.

Path, Hayley decided, as they brushed among leaves and out into some kind of cold dry place. It was very dark here, but Tollie was clearly visible when he rushed suddenly and jeeringly across their way.

“Stupids!” he called out. “You’re on the wrong strand!”

Hayley stopped.

“Take no notice,” Troy said, pulling at her. “He’s always trying to put people off.”

“Yes, but where are we?” Hayley said.

“Out in the mythosphere by now,” Troy answered. “I think we’re nearly halfway, but it’s bound to get more difficult as we go on.”

“Then that’s all right,” Hayley said. “I’ve been out here before with Flute. How can you and Tollie do it too?”

“Oh, we can all do it,” Troy said. “All our family belongs to the mythosphere, didn’t you know?”

“What? Even Grandma?” Hayley exclaimed.

“Of course,” Troy said. “But she’s one of the ones, like Mercer, who does what Uncle Jolyon says and—”

Here Tollie rushed across their path again, coming the other way. “I’m telling of you!” he shouted, and vanished away into the dark.

Hayley almost stopped again.

“Don’t you believe it!” Troy said, hauling her onward. “If he tells tales, he couldn’t play. Uncle Jolyon would stop this game like a shot if he knew we were playing it. And,” he added, “Harmony would get it in the neck worse than any of us, for inventing it.”

Hayley hoped Troy was right. She did not trust Tollie one bit.

They could see the strand they were on now, a silvery, slithery path, coiling away up ahead. The worst part, to Hayley’s mind, was the way it didn’t seem to be fastened to anything at the sides. Her feet, in their one pink boot and one black, kept slipping. She was quite afraid that she was going to pitch off the edge. It was like trying to climb a strip of tinsel. She hung on hard to Troy’s warmer, larger hand and wished it was not so cold. The deep chilliness made the scrapes on the front of her ache.

To take her mind off it, she stared around. The rest of the mythosphere was coming into view overhead and far away, in dim, feathery streaks. Some parts of it were starry swirls, like the Milky Way only white, green and pale pink, and other more distant parts flickered and waved like curtains of light blowing in the wind. Hayley found her chest filling with great admiring breaths at its beauty, and she stared and stared as more and more streaks and strands came into view.

She was taken completely by surprise when a comet came fizzing past her face, with its tail roaring out behind like a rocket. “I’m telling, I’m telling!” it shouted in Tollie’s voice. And Hayley went sideways with the shock of it. She had to save herself by clutching the sharp, icy edge of the strand.

Troy hauled her upright. “Oh, go away and play your own game!” he shouted after the comet. “Are you OK, Hayley?”

“Perfectly, thanks.” Hayley stood up, shaking her icy hand, and stared scornfully after the comet as it roared away. Grandpa had told her about comets. “He’s got it all wrong,” she said. “Comets go tail first. Not like rockets.”

Troy laughed as if he couldn’t help it. “So much for you, Tollie!” he said. “Come on. We’re nearly there.”

He was right. They laboured up round another slithery curve, which took them through a copse of silvery trees that rattled as they passed, and then brought them out into black night filled with stars. Everything was made of stars there. Over to the right, a huge lion prowled away from them, shaking a mane that was all stars, pacing on great starry paws and twitching a long tail made of stars. Much nearer to the left, an enormous woman stood still as a statue – except for her hair that was trails of blowing stars – and stared at them with huge, disapproving star eyes.

Unfortunately, Hayley was still remembering the things Grandpa had taught her. “We oughtn’t to be able to breathe here!” she cried out. “There’s no air!” Her lungs heaved in and out, but nothing happened. She knew she was suffocating.

Troy shook her arm. “Don’t be silly! This is the mythosphere. I told you we both belong to it! Of course you can breathe!”

Hayley was rather ashamed to find that he was quite right. As soon as Troy spoke, she stood there breathing in a perfectly normal way. “What do we do now?” she asked, a little sulkily, because she felt stupid.

“Wait for the dragon to arrive, I suppose,” Troy said. “I’ve never been here either.”

He looked over to the left, beyond the starry woman, where a huge set of weighing scales was just coming into view. Hayley looked right, towards the lion, hoping it would go on walking away and not notice them. And something swam slowly towards her from beyond the lion. It was a bulky, complicated mass of stars, but as the lion swung its huge head round to look at it, it uncoiled a little and produced a long spiky tail, like a lashing river of stars, and seemed to be warning the lion not to mess with it. The lion lashed its own tail contemptuously and went pacing on, and the dragon floated onwards. It was surrounded in fiery flakes now, like burning snow, that its movements seemed to have dislodged from its tail.

“It’s coming,” Hayley said, nudging Troy. “It’s going the other way.”

Troy whirled round, just as the dragon floated level with them. It was coming surprisingly fast, in spite of being all coiled up. It was made of stars fitted together like a mosaic or a jigsaw puzzle and quite blindingly bright. It looked at them as it glided by, out of an eye that was like a small sun deep inside a glass ball.

“Er – hello?” Troy said.

The dragon went on looking and did not answer. But then the huge starry woman noticed it. Slow icy anger came into her remote face and she waved an arm the way a human woman might try to swat a bat. The dragon uncoiled menacingly at her and she snatched her arm back. Next moment the darkness was filled with more burning flakes from the dragon, all blowing towards Troy and Hayley in the wind from the woman’s movements. Troy grabbed at one as it sailed past his face and stood holding it while the dragon floated away beyond the huge woman.

“I’ve got one,” he said, looking rather stunned. “We’ve done it. Come on, let’s get back. We might even win.”

He took Hayley’s hand, and together they went sliding and scrambling down the silvery strip. Sometimes they sat down and slid, sometimes they stood up and ran along the flatter parts, while around them great misty swatches of the mythosphere turned and arched and rippled. Troy hauled Hayley along so fast that she had little time to notice anything they were passing, but she did notice that the star-shaped flake in Troy’s other hand grew dimmer as they went. And now that Tollie did not seem to be around to distract her, she caught glimpses of planets whirling in the distance, and saw a centaur – unless it was a man on a horse – and a person who seemed to be half goat, and several odd-looking ladies, and a man with a bull’s head. After that she kept glimpsing people, who seemed more like ordinary humans as they went downwards, until Troy dragged her between some bushes and they were once more in the garden shed. By then the thing in Troy’s hand was a shiny curved oval that looked like a metal seashell.

Up at the top of the paddock, where Harmony was standing by the table, the clock was still chiming out its tune. Harmony smiled as Troy and Hayley came panting up to her. “Any luck?”

“We got one!” Troy gasped.

“It kept shaking them loose,” Hayley explained.

Before Harmony could answer, Lucy came dashing up, pink and proud and pleased. “I got it! I picked it up when it fell off her foot,” she panted, and held out a little glass shoe. “This truly is Cinderella’s slipper! Have I won?”

James raced in from one side, equally out of breath, and held out something clenched in his fist. “Prester John’s beard is seventy-seven centimetres long and he says we’re to stop coming and asking him for hairs all the time.” He looked at Lucy, Troy and Hayley. “Damn! Didn’t I win? Who did?”

By this time, the clock’s little tune was slowing down. Tighs and Laxtons began arriving from all directions. Harmony was soon surrounded by people waving strange objects at her and saying things like “This is Blind Pugh’s stick!” or “I got the firebird feather! Look!” or “One Aladdin’s lamp, as ordered!”

Harmony picked each object up as it was pushed at her and looked at it very closely. She nodded at the curly grey hair James was holding and at Troy’s dragon scale and Lucy’s shoe. “Those are genuine,” she agreed. “They can go in the trophy cabinet. So can this lamp. Put it down on the table, Charlie, and be careful not to rub it. But you got this feather from the vase in the lounge, didn’t you, Sarah? Go and put it back. Yes, this says DRINK ME – it’s from Alice all right. But this isn’t a walking stick, Oliver. It looks like a broom handle to me.”