It was a game. Effie was very good at games. He had in fact recently won a spillikins tournament at school, his patience and steady hand beating everyone, even that miserable toad Nigel Nettlefell. Even the graceful and dextrous Archie.
So he closed his eyes and counted as high as he could. He was somewhere in the hundred thousands when he opened them.
It was dark.
It had been dark before, of course, but it wasdarknow. The slice of light that had been visible around the edges of the door was no more, and he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
It was cold, too. Usually his mother’s room was toasty in the winter, its large fireplace kept perpetually stoked. Clearly, they’d let it go out.
Panic started to rise in his chest. It was the middle of the night. Where was Mother?
He still had the hat, though it had been destroyed in the tussle. He clutched its remains to his chest, trying to find the grosgrain ribbons he knew to be violet. He didn’t need light to see them, and he thought stroking them might be calming. He closed his eyes and tried to make his mind fill in the images that should accompany what his fingers were feeling.
It worked for a while. Until it didn’t, and the panic started creeping back.
He began knocking again on the inside of the door. Surely enough time had passed that someone would let him out.
Knocking became pounding, shouting became screaming, crying became hyperventilating.
He had to use the necessary. He was so hungry, so frightened, so cold.
Panic became terror as he began flailing about.
Flailing will not help.
He stopped moving. Looked around futilely. Where had that voice come from?
Get up.
He considered this voice. It was insistent but not unkind. He had never heard it before, yet it was familiar somehow.
Get up.
He got up.
Open the door.
He started to talk back.I can’t.
He had already tried every possible means of escape. He had rattled, pushed, pounded. He had attempted to break down the door with his shoulder but had managed only to injure himself.
Open the door.
He stood, the wardrobe being just tall enough for him to do so. He reached his hand toward the door, and suddenly, oddly, there was a bit of light. It should have been impossible. The door was still closed. It was surely the dead of night.
But somehow, some way, there was just enough light for him to see that there was a hook and eye lock on the inside of the wardrobe. That hadnotbeen there before.
Open the door.
The hook slid easily and silently from the eye, as if the mechanism had been freshly oiled.
He opened the door and surveyed the room. Mother’s room, but she wasn’t present, as he had surmised from the cold. She must be sleeping elsewhere.
He stepped down, and he was free.
It should have been impossible.
What now?
