Free Deep Amber by C.J. Busby Page B

piece that fitted exactly into a blank space. But the sword was also somehow mixed up with something that Simon was pretty sure was magic, not ‘electrical energy’ or ‘radiation’. And all of it came back, in the end, to Dad.
    Simon hadn’t thought about his dad much, before now. He’d seen pictures of him, knew aboutwho he was, what he’d done, but he only had the faintest memories. Since the sword had arrived, though, Simon had experienced a strong sense of his dad’s presence – the smell of him, the feel of him, the bristly chin when he’d picked Simon up to kiss him goodnight. Suddenly, Simon had found for the first time that he missed him, properly, as a person he’d known, but who wasn’t there any more. And that had made Simon wonder – if there was magic in the world, and if his dad was connected to it, could it be possible that…
    Simon propped himself up on his elbow.
    â€œCat,” he said, hesitantly. “Do you think… Could it be that… Could Dad be alive, somewhere? Could he… could he have sent the sword from this other side that Albert Jemmet was talking about?”
    Cat looked up from tracing another rune, shocked. “Alive?” she said. “But – how could he be alive?”
    She was right, thought Simon, it was a crazy idea, but he ploughed on anyway.
    â€œWell, maybe he came from this other world, maybe he had to go there for some reason and couldn’t come back… So he sent us his sword…”
    Cat shook her head in disbelief. “Simon – that’s just mad! You can’t seriously believe Dad might be alive and in another world?”
    Simon sighed. “Oh, I don’t know – I guess not. But it just seemed… you know? Odd. The sword was his, and then it just appears…”
    Cat gave him a sympathetic look, and reached over to gently pat him on the knee. “I wish Dad was alive, too, you know. But there was definitely nothing strange about him. He was a bit crazy, and into all that medieval stuff, but so are lots of people. Mum is! It doesn’t mean they’re from some… other world. And he definitely died. I remember it – the funeral and everything.”
    Simon sighed. She was probably right. But then someone had to be responsible for all the odd things that had started happening.
    â€œWhat about Great-Aunt Irene, then?” he said. “We found all this stuff in her house, after all. And she was a bit weird.”
    â€œShe was completely nuts,” said Cat. “But that doesn’t mean she came from another world either. Besides, she’d lived in this house for ever . She must have been from here.”
    â€œOh!” said Simon, throwing himself back onhis pillow in frustration. “I don’t know! Maybe they’re all from another world. Great-Aunt Irene, Dad, Uncle Lou – the whole town!”
    â€œOr maybe no one is,” said Cat, firmly. She threw him half a chocolate bar she’d dug out of her school bag. “Because there aren’t any other worlds, and magic doesn’t exist .”
    Simon shrugged, and munched his chocolate slowly, watching Cat bend in concentration over the book of runes once again. They seemed to be getting nowhere.
    â€œMaybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe it really is just some electrical fault and a few strange coincidences, and Albert Jemmet’s just a bit mad… Hey, Cat?”
    But Cat wasn’t listening, because she’d suddenly worked out what the second combination of symbols meant.
    â€œIce!” she said. “It’s ice. Water that’s solidified! Oh, yes! I am totally a genius! And it’s inside the symbol for earth… We can use some soil from the garden!”
    The kitchen was full of smoke, and the smoke alarm was beeping fit to bust. Cat waved a magazinein front of it while Simon wrenched open the back door, and after a few