Read Online Battle of the Sun by Jeanette Winterson - Free Book Online Page A

himself through many lifetimes, and coming to the surface of this life, now.
    ‘It is too late,’ he said in a whisper.
    ‘Not too late,’ said Jack, ‘I’ll be quick as a thief, but help me, please – where does he sleep, the Magus?’
    ‘He does not sleep,’ said the Sunken King faintly, echoing the Dragon, ‘yet his chamber is near your own, and there you will find the Cinnabar Egg.’
    As the King said these last words his voice faded away like a ghost pulled back through time.
    Jack hesitated, nodded, then ran back up the stairs. His mind was racing – if the Magus was still in the library, if Jack could discover the chamber, if he could take the Egg . . .
    He was already at the foot of the first flight from the hall to the upper floors, when the library door was flung wide open and there was the figure of the Magus standing in the doorway.
    ‘Jack . . .’
    Jack turned, afraid.
    ‘Don’t be afraid, Jack, I am not going to punish you. Come back – you ran away too fast.’
    Jack entered the room. There was his mother, standing quite still on the far side of the table, by the fireplace.
    ‘Did you think I would not know? Did you think I would not divine it?’ said the Magus.
    ‘Know what? Divine what?’ replied Jack defiantly.
    ‘Oh, Jack, you are cleverer than that, and I am far cleverer than you. This is your mother, Anne. She came to find you.
    But fear not, I shall not send her away. Indeed, I have made quite certain that she will stay with us. Come here, Jack.’
    Reluctantly Jack went round to where the Magus was standing with his mother. When he saw what he saw he cried out.
    His mother had been turned to stone.
    ‘Jack, have no fear,’ said his mother bravely.
    Jack looked down. His mother’s feet, her shins, her knees, the tops of the legs to her waist had been turned to stone. Her arms were free and her upper body was flesh.
    ‘It is well, is it not,’ said the Magus, ‘that your mother should watch over you?’
    Then, like a lion, the Magus seized Jack in both his hands and held him in a grip so tight that Jack thought he would burst his blood vessels. ‘Jack,’ said the Magus, ‘you will not disobey me, you will not betray me, for the next time you do, then I will turn your mother to stone up to her neck, do you hear, and after that, if there is a third time, she will be as stone as a statue.’
    ‘Let her go!’ said Jack.
    ‘When you become my true assistant, when you serve me as I require. When the mighty work of the Opus is complete, then on that day, I tell you, Jack, on that day and on no other, your mother will be freed to life. Do you understand, Jack? The choice is yours. Your mother’s life is for you to keep or to lose!’
    The Magus let go of Jack and walked towards the window, where the light was just beginning to open the black night sky.
    The second the Magus turned away, Jack’s mother motioned to her son, and as he came forward she slipped him the iron tool. As the Magus turned back, all he saw was the two of them embracing.
    ‘Most touching sight,’ he said, ‘a mother and son.’
    ‘Did you never have a mother yourself, sir?’ said Anne, ‘a mother who would do for you what I have done for Jack? ’Tis only what any mother would do.’
    ‘My mother died in childbirth,’ said the Magus. ‘I never knew her. My father sold me for a gold coin.’
    The Magus took a worn gold coin from his pocket and spun it into the air, where by some magic it hung for a moment like a small sun in the cold room. As it fell, the Magus caught it. ‘That was my price . . .’
    There was a silence in the room, such a silence as Jack had never heard. It was the silence of loss.
    ‘And so,’ said the Magus, ‘I take pity on boys who like me have no father and mother, and I give them work and shelter. They shall all be rewarded in good time.’
    ‘Jack is not a boy without mother or father,’ said Anne.
    ‘You cannot keep him.’
    ‘He is the Radiant Boy,’ said the