leaked a bright orange glow.
He put the Legend Spotter down, reached carefully into his bag and pulled out Mrs Bright’s false teeth. Directly under the device, their orange was deeper, more vivid than any other in the room. The colour had the newness of fresh paint.
“I don’t get it,” said Emmie. “What’s that mean? That Mrs Bright was a Legend?”
Finn thought of the grains of sand that had clung to Yappy’s paws and the damp fringes of its coat. He tried to make connections where none seemed obvious. All the while, the tiny echo of a message began to intrude on his thoughts.
Light up the house.
“Is it possible that Mrs Bright …?” he muttered. “Were her teeth …?”
Light up the house.
“Is that what the message really means?” he continued, only half audible to Emmie. The connections were forming in his mind, solidifying out of mist.
“OK, Finn, you’re going to have to make a bit more sense because I don’t—” Emmie stopped, eyes growing wide as she worked it out too. “Oh,” she said.
Finn began to wander the room, waving the Legend Spotter up, down, left, right, diagonally, sweeping across the floor.
“Light up the house,” he said as he passed Emmie, holding it above his head. “That’s what the note from my dad said. But maybe we’ve been lighting it up in the wrong way. Maybe it’s been about this all along.” He held the Legend Spotter upright.
Still, Finn couldn’t quite figure it out. “It just seems to be the usual desiccated Legends here. Mrs Bright’s teeth must have been on the Infested Side somehow or touched it in some way. Maybe she got caught up in the Manticore attack. Half the town would probably light up if we waved this at them.”
“Or she could have got caught up in a gateway,” suggested Emmie. “Except there’s been no gateway in weeks.”
Finn ran the Spotter across the curving length of a shelf, where the petrified Legends glowed a little brighter as he passed, dimmed slightly as he left them behind. “I just don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he said.
“But this is only one room, Finn,” said Emmie. “The note in the box said to light up the house.”
“You’re right!” Finn strode past her towards the door to the Long Hall and began sweeping along the walls, the ceiling, the doors, and waving the Spotter into each room they passed.
Still, they nearly missed it. It was weak, almost imperceptible, a tiny smudge in the dark registering in the corner of their vision. But Finn noticed it first and his heart rapped on his ribs when he did. He nudged Emmie to follow him to the wall.
The closer they got, the brighter it glowed.
Squinting, unable to quite make out any detail, Finn reached out a finger and placed it on the spot. He felt the slight bend of canvas, the roughness of paint.
“Turn on the lights, Emmie.”
She palmed her way across the wall until she found the switch. The bulbs flared in a race along the corridor, Finn’s and Emmie’s eyes briefly recoiling at the sudden intrusion of bright light. As they refocused, Finn kept his finger on the painting for a moment more.
Niall Blacktongue gazed directly at Finn’s fingertip.
Finn pulled his finger away to reveal a painted table on which were scattered a few objects, including books, a magnifying glass, a compass, a small mirror.
In the mirror was the reflection of a map.
On the map was an X.
Finn looked at it, then back to his grandfather’s face. Where there had only ever seemed to be meekness, a sagging under the weight of responsibility, now he looked relieved, unburdened, free finally of a great secret kept for so many years.
Finn forgot to breathe for a moment and, when he finally remembered, it came with a quiet utterance of relief.
“Found it,” he said.
‘The Arrival of the Human’ From The Chronicles of the Sky’s Collapse, as told by inhabitants of the Infested Side
THIRTY YEARS AGO
Finn shaded his phone’s screen from the morning sunshine, covering it with the palm of his hand to better see the picture of the map on it. He zoomed in, moved the image around, then lifted his head again to scan the grassy cliff he and Emmie were standing on. Ahead was spread out a glistening green sea. Away to their left, the buildings and walls of Darkmouth huddled up against each other as if afraid. And, below their feet, lush but uneven ground.
Nothing else.
“There should be something here,” said Finn, disappointment tightening his voice. “The X says it’s in the centre of this area somewhere. See?” He pointed at the picture.
Emmie squinted at it. “No. Sorry.”
Since finding the clue hardly an hour ago, Finn had feared another dead end. They had been wrong so many times already. So, they had agreed they should check this clue out alone, to say they were off to school as always, an illusion of normality even when their world had been turned upside down. No worrying Finn’s mother. No raised hopes. No drama. No Assessor. No Steve. No one to disappoint but themselves.
The two searched again, Finn’s bag jolting on his back, the clatter and clash of the fighting suit stuffed inside, as he marched through clumps of grass, pushed aside weeds with his feet, carefully lifted knots of thorns.
They criss-crossed the cliff, looking for something, anything.
“Anything?” Finn shouted to Emmie.
“Nothing!” she shouted back.
The table in the painting had featured some objects that had seemed relevant and a few that didn’t. There was the mirror and its map obviously. There was also a compass pointing south-east, which happened to be the direction from the house to this crest of cliff. There were two books without titles, but one looked quite like the thin notebook Finn had found which had Niall Blacktongue’s initials on it. He had brought that notebook with him this morning, just in case it helped.
But there were other things in the painting. A magnifying glass, some coins, a feather in an ink pot. They could have meant anything or everything. Or nothing at all.
Yet the map itself, while spare in details, seemed clear. This