Free The Lion Tamer’s Daughter by Peter Dickinson

round on my knees till I could reach my head in and put my mouth against her ear and ask her what was going on. But when I switched over so she could tell me she just said, “Wait. She’s still there.”
    It was uncomfortable kneeling like that so I twisted myself round, not letting go of her hand, and tried to get her to make room for me by sitting up a bit, but she turned her head away and from how she pushed up with her other arm I realized there’d got to be something stopping her, clothes on the hangers maybe, so all I could do was settle on the floor in front of the cupboard and hang on to her hand.
    After a bit of that I got worried about the light still being on and no blackout so I let go of her and went and switched it off and felt my way back to her. I couldn’t see anything at first, and then only where the windows were, and it was a bit creepy sitting there knowing there wasn’t just Adalina in the room but this other person, the one Adalina called “she,” who’d slung her in the cupboard. Then I thought it had got to be the same for her—I was there and she couldn’t see me—and I wondered if there wasn’t somehow I could give her the creeps like she was giving me, and I was still thinking about this when I felt Adalina moving around and then running her other hand up my arm until it had to stop where the door was in her world.
    That shook her, and no wonder, finding it was just my arm poking through the wood. She tried to let go of my hand, but I hung on and gave her a squeeze and twisted myself into the cupboard and felt around with my other hand until I found her head and got my mouth against her ear.
    â€œIt’s all right,” I said. “I’m here. What’s going on?”
    â€œShe’s gone,” she said, when we’d sorted ourselves out the other way round.
    â€œHow long for?” I said.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “Ages. It’s so she can flirt with Mr. Silvey.”
    â€œLook, I don’t understand much about any of this,” I said. “Far as I can make out, we’re in two different places, only they’ve both got this house in them, but I can’t see or hear anything in your place except you, and it’s the same for you.”
    â€œI don’t understand,” she said.
    â€œNor do I,” I said. “All I can tell you is this cupboard is in both places, only I’ve got the door open and you’ve got it shut, which is why you can’t get out and I can. And when I switch on the lights in my place they don’t come on for you till you’ve switched them on too. And you saw me walk through the door into your dad’s bathroom, didn’t you? I could do that because I’d opened it in my place.”
    â€œIt doesn’t make sense,” she said.
    â€œIt’s a bit easier when you’re used to thinking about it,” I said. “But you’ve got to understand I don’t know anything about your place except what you tell me. I don’t know who Mr. Silvey is, or this woman who shut you in here. Why’d she want to go and do a thing like that?”
    â€œSo that she can go and flirt with Mr. Silvey. He’s Father’s secretary. She wants to marry him so she can stop being a governess. At quarter to six I go downstairs to read to Father, so that he can see how I am progressing with my reading, and then I must be back in the nursery at half past six for my bath, and if I’m late Miss Tarrant is furious because of wanting to be off to see Mr. Silvey. So Father lets me go at twenty-five past six. It’s all right in the summer, when it’s still light, but when it starts getting dark … there’s that bad place on the top stair …”
    I took my head away so she had to stop.
    â€œI call it the cave,” I said. “There’s something waiting round the corner.”
    â€œI call it the black