Free The Nowhere Emporium by Ross Mackenzie Page B

these walls. And if that was the case, if anything was possible, then why couldn’t he see his parents again?
    Mr Silver’s warning echoed in his mind:
“If, by some tiny chance, you ever come across the book when you are alone, I must ask that you do not write a single word in its pages without me.”
    Daniel tried to turn away, to close the drawer and forget about it, but he could not shake the notion that had gripped him. His heart ached to hold the book, to write in its pages, to open a door and see his parents’ faces – faces that he could barely remember. He could almost feel their arms wrapping around him.
    And anyway, hadn’t he been creating Wonders of his own for days and days, all of them perfect? Surely it wouldn’t hurt to add another?
    A final glance at the curtain, and Daniel snatched the book from its place in the drawer. He rested it with great care on the desk, and turned to a blank page. He grabbed one of Mr Silver’s fountain pens. He dipped the pen in what was left of the puddle of ink, and lowered the shining nib to the page, hardly daring to wish or hope.
    The nib of the pen found the page, and he began to write.
    ***
    Ten minutes later, Daniel was sweeping through the Emporium towards his new Wonder. He hurried up a narrow staircase, turned a sharp corner into a passage with a low ceiling.
    For a moment, he forgot to breathe.
    The new door was just up ahead. But everything was very wrong. Something inside, something huge and angry, wasbanging and pounding on the door, straining to get out. Guttural screams filled the air as the door juddered and shook.
    And as terrible as all of this was, as confused and scared as it made Daniel, the worst thing of all was not the beast behind the door. No. The very worst thing was that Mr Silver stood by the new door, arms folded, thunder-grey eyes glaring down the corridor. In his hands, he held the
Book of Wonders.
    “What did you do?” he asked. His voice was calm and low, which unsettled Daniel more than if he had yelled.
    The door rattled. A howl came from the creature beyond. In that moment Daniel wished to be anywhere else – even back on the streets of Glasgow, running from Spud and his gang.
    “I … I wanted to see my parents,” he said, amazed he could still speak. “Every day, they get a bit further away, a bit harder to remember. When I picture them, they’re sort of fuzzy round the edges. So I wrote a room where they’re still alive.”
    Silver’s shoulders seemed to sag a little. He looked old and hunched. And then he straightened up and was himself again. Something battered the door with the force of a train. Daniel jumped back.
    “Magic cannot bring back the dead, Daniel,” said Silver, and he began to flip through the book, stopping when he found the page on which this Wonder had been written. Another scream, and the corridor trembled. “There are certain borders that should not be crossed. The line between the living and the dead is one of them; if we mess with that, we create cracks that allow terrors beyond imagination to escape, nightmares that have been trapped for eternities.” He pointed to the door.
    “Will it get out?” said Daniel.
    “If it did, we would all be in trouble,” said Silver. He ripped the page from the book, and at once the bricks around the doorway began to shift, closing in around the door, sliding and swivellinginto place until the doorway was buried beneath, the wall blank and clean. Then Silver held out his hand, and the page caught fire. Daniel watched it curl and blacken, and soon nothing remained but floating whispers of cinder.
    Silver wagged a finger at Daniel.
    “If you had told me you wished to see your parents,” he said, “I might have been able to create an image from your memories – an echo of what has passed. But they would not have been real. The dead are beyond the reach of magic. Do you understand?”
    Daniel nodded.
    “You have failed the second test,” said Silver, stowing