Nothing happened after he pressed the button. Arthur’s hand trembled as he punched it again. The button pressed in easily enough, but the door didn’t open. Arthur kicked the door, but it wouldn’t budge. As he kicked it again, a red flame ran around the door frame. The same rich, deep red of Noon’s fiery sword.

‘The back door, my Fetchers! Ar-tor attempts the back door!’

Noon’s voice carried through the fire alarm, the siren, and the Fetchers’ barks. Arthur immediately knew that Noon had used his powers to seal the door. But Arthur had his own magic. Or at least he had something that had power, even if he didn’t know what it really was or how to use it.

The Key.

Arthur touched the door with the point of the minute hand and shouted, ‘Open!’ There was a flash of white light, a sudden heat upon his face, then the twin leaves of the door flung open and a new alarm joined the cacophonous wail. Arthur ran out onto the fire stairs and jumped down the first two steps. Then he suddenly stopped, whirled, and jumped back. He had to close the doors behind him or the Fetchers would catch him for sure. But he had wasted a precious second – could he do it in time?

He threw himself at the doors and slammed them shut, just as two Fetchers leaped at the gap. Arthur was thrown backwards and the doors started to open again, the Fetchers yowling and growling as they tried to grab him. Fingers ripped at his shirt, buttons went flying, but he slashed with the Key and the Fetchers let go, screaming horrible high-pitched screams.

Arthur slammed the doors again and made a wild cut across them with the Key, shouting out, ‘Shut! Lock! Close!’

Whether it was the cut or the words, the doors stayed shut, though Arthur could hear the thuds as the Fetchers threw themselves against the exit. But he didn’t hang around. Arthur knew that no doors would stop Noon.

He’d only made it to the narrow hall between the library and the school refectory when there was an explosion above him. He crouched down and looked back as flames jetted out in all directions, and the doors flew over his head, whistling towards the science block quarter of a mile away. Noon strolled out onto the fire stairs, black smoke rolling out in coils above his head, with the Fetchers crouched around him. They looked less like men now and more like half-human dogs, their black suits in rags and their bowler hats lost somewhere in the burning library.

Arthur turned to run again. But he had only gone a few yards when he heard the whoosh and beat of giant wings above him. A cold shadow passed over his head, and Noon landed right in front of him. His wings were spread wide, his flaming sword had appeared in his hand once more, and it was pointed right at Arthur’s throat.

‘Give me the Key,’ instructed Noon calmly.

‘No,’ whispered Arthur. ‘It was given to me.’

‘It was a mistake, you foolish boy,’ said Noon. He looked through a window at the sun and frowned. ‘Hand it over, circle end first. I haven’t got all day.’

Something about the frown and the way he said those last words sparked an idea in Arthur’s mind. He looked down, pretending that he was thinking about handing over the Key. But he was actually looking at his watch. It was one minute short of one o’clock.

‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Arthur. Desperately he looked around. He could hear the Fetchers coming up from behind, and the flaming sword was close enough for him to wince at the heat. Sweat was dripping down his face, stinging his eyes. But at least he could breathe, though he was pretty certain that would stop as soon as he let go of the Key.

‘Give me the Key!’

‘Come and get it!’ shouted Arthur. He spun like a discus thrower and hurled the Key across the hall at the nearest door and threw himself after it.

The very tip of the flaming sword caught him on the left arm as he ran, burning a line of intense pain from his shoulder to his elbow. Noon shouted something, but the boy didn’t hear. His lungs had frozen as he let go of the Key, and suddenly he didn’t have any breath at all, perhaps not even enough to last a few steps.

He’d expected the Key to bounce off the door for him to pick up, but the clock hand had flown like a thrown dagger straight through the paper-thin gap between the door and the wall. So Arthur crashed into the door instead, and once again his expectations were confounded. It should have been locked, but instead of bouncing off and back into the path of Noon’s flaming sword he went slam-bang through it and rolled onto the floor beyond. His open hand fell on the Key and his fingers closed on it as tightly as they could. With the Key in his grasp he felt blessed breath come back and the burn on his arm fade into a dull ache.

‘There is really no point to your ridiculous acrobatics,’ said Noon as he stepped through the doorway. ‘Give me the Key and I shall allow you to crawl away. Otherwise I shall cut off your hand and take it.’

Arthur looked at his watch. The second hand was sweeping towards the twelve. It was almost one o’clock. His watch was very accurate, and he had set it only a week or so ago.

Slowly, he began to loosen his grip on the Key, as if he were obeying Noon’s instructions. As he let go, he felt his lungs tighten again, and the burn on his arm began to return.

‘Hurry up!’ shouted Noon. He raised his sword and the flames upon it roared into brighter, hotter life.

The second hand was on eleven. Arthur gulped as he realised that he was about to bet his hand – his life – on a guess. A guess that Noon could only be here in Arthur’s world for the single hour between noon and one.

‘No!’ shouted Arthur. He snatched the Key back and recoiled, shutting his eyes. The last thing he saw was Noon’s eyes reflecting red and the flaming sword hurtling down towards his hand.

But no pain came. Arthur opened his eyes. The second hand of his watch was past the twelve, the hour hand and minute hand on one o’clock. There was no sign of Monday’s Noon, and the Fetchers were silent, though slavering, just beyond the door. There was a smouldering line of ash along the floor, an inch from Arthur’s fingers. He stared at it and wondered how Noon could have missed.

The fire alarm was still ringing, and the siren still sounded its steady whoop. In the distance, Arthur could hear other sirens growing louder as fire engines converged upon the school.

Arthur slowly got up and looked around. He was in the back of the refectory, in fact in the staff and delivery entrance for the kitchen. There was no one around, though it was clear from all the partly made meals, readied ingredients, still-steaming pots, and rotating microwave platters that the kitchen staff had only just left, responding to the evacuation alarm.

He looked back at the Fetchers through the open door. They were silent now, standing in ranks. Somehow they had got their bowler hats back, and their black suits were restored. Once again they looked more like very ugly men and less like dogs.

One of them stepped forward and opened its mouth, showing large canine teeth. Then it made a curious repetitive grunting noise. It took a moment for Arthur to realise it was meant to be a laugh. But what reason could this Fetcher have to laugh?

Then he saw what it was holding in its stubby-fingered, long-nailed hand. The Atlas! Arthur’s own hand flashed to his shirt pocket and came away holding a strip of cloth. The pocket had been torn off, back when they’d almost got hold of him at the library. His chest was scratched as well, though he hadn’t noticed it at the time. Now it hurt. But not as much as losing the Atlas.

The Fetchers all started to laugh now, if you could call a rising-falling series of grunts a laugh. Arthur recoiled as their stinking, sickening breath gusted out with each grunt. They obviously thought they’d captured something very important and won a victory.

Glumly, Arthur had to recognise they had. If he was ever to make any sense of what was going on, he needed the Atlas. So he had to get it back. What had the Atlas said about the Fetchers? They couldn’t cross thresholds and –

Salt! Arthur turned to the kitchen shelves. There had to be salt here, and probably lots of it. It was a commercial kitchen. He ran along the shelves, the Key held fast in one hand while he turned bags around and shifted containers with the other. Sugar, four different sorts of flour, spices of all kinds, other grains, dried fruit . . . salt! There it was, a big tub of regular salt and a small sack of rock salt.

Arthur hesitated, then slipped the Key through his belt like a dagger. As soon as he let go, he felt his asthma returning. The deep breaths of a moment ago were lost to him. But he still felt some ease from the Key. Perhaps having it close was better than nothing.

He put the rock salt in his backpack, slipped it on again, then picked up the tub of salt and threw away the lid. The tub was two-thirds full of fine white salt. Arthur held the tub by its handle in his left hand and took a fistful of salt in his right.

Then he marched back to the door, wheezing and panting a little, but prepared for battle. If he could surprise them, he thought, throw the salt across the front rank, he might be able to dash out and grab the Atlas when they . . . well, when whatever the salt did to them happened.

At the back of his mind, a doubting question immediately popped up. What if the salt just annoyed them, and as soon as he jumped out they grabbed him and bit him and scratched him to pieces?

Arthur didn’t answer that question. He forced himself to focus on one thing – getting the Atlas back. Once he had that, he could ask some more questions.

These thoughts were racing through his mind as he came to the end of the shelves. Arthur gulped, took as deep a breath as he could, and jumped out in front of the door, screaming and throwing salt.

‘Yahhhhh!’

Seven

SALT SPRAYED OUT of Arthur’s hand and across the front rank of Fetchers. Their laughter instantly stopped, dissolving into startled yelps and cries. As the salt hit, the Fetchers squealed and fell over one another in a panicked attempt to escape, becoming a tangled mess of shrieking arms and legs and ugly faces that made it even easier for Arthur to throw handful after handful of salt over them.

The salt sizzled on the Fetchers as it struck. Both flesh and the black cloth melted, as if the salt were the most potent acid imaginable. Even a pinchful of salt hitting a Fetcher started a chain reaction that in a matter of seconds reduced the creature to a bubbling pile of nasty-looking scum.

After Arthur threw his ninth or tenth handful of salt, there weren’t any more Fetchers. There were only fourteen hubcap-sized mounds of evil-smelling glop that looked like a cross between elephant dung and hot tar.

Arthur stared at the piles, salt still dribbling from his hand. He could feel his lungs tightening even more, so he took the Key from his belt. As soon as he touched it he felt his chest loosen and his breath come back, free and unfettered. He could still feel an asthma attack lurking, but it was held at bay by the strange power of the Key.

The asthma was a reaction to what had happened, he knew. He was shocked by the effect the salt had on the creatures and unpleasantly reminded of salting the leeches that had attached themselves to his legs on a hiking trip last summer.

He was also repelled and disgusted by the idea that he would now have to search through each mound to find the Atlas.

There was no way he was going to touch those piles with his bare hands. Breathing only through his mouth, Arthur gingerly touched the closest pile with the toe of his shoe. But just as he made contact, the pile shivered and turned into a column of smoke as black and shiny as his school shoes. Arthur leaped back as the smoke formed into a small misty replica of the Fetcher. The tiny replica spun around several times – and disappeared!

Moments later, every mound did the same. As Arthur desperately kicked at the remnants with his foot, the last pile of glop vanished in a twisting puff of smoke.

Now there was just the concrete alley floor. No sign remained of the Fetchers at all. And wherever their salted leftovers had disappeared to, so had the Atlas.

The fire alarms and siren were still going strong, which didn’t help Arthur’s thinking process. There were many additional sirens now as well, and Arthur realised that he could hear helicopters too. The fire must be worse than he’d thought.

Suddenly Arthur remembered Mrs. Banber. She’d been unconscious at the front of the library! He’d been so scared getting away from Noon and the Fetchers that he’d forgotten. He had to tell the firemen that she was in there!

He ran out into the hall again and looked up. As he’d feared, there were huge clouds of smoke boiling out of the smashed doors and out of the library roof as well. The fire must have spread with incredible speed.

Arthur started towards the stairs. He figured that if the Key helped him breathe despite his asthma, it might help him breathe even through the smoke. Maybe it would protect him from fire as well, since it had instantly healed the cut from Noon’s flaming sword.

He hoped it would protect him.

Arthur could hear the deep bellow of the fire inside as he ran up the stairs. A terrible, frightening sound, made worse by the lurid, leaping colours that shone out the door, lighting up the dark smoke.

Arthur was almost at the top of the stairs when he felt something grab his ankle. He fell forward, lost his hold on the Key for an instant, and felt the terrible heat and instant panic as his lungs were compressed by a deathly grip. Then he caught the Key again and with it came relief. He gripped it tightly and wriggled around, ready to slash with the Key, expecting that it was a Fetcher who held his leg.

But it wasn’t. Arthur saw a bright yellow suit, a red helmet, and an indistinct human face behind the visor of a fireman’s breathing apparatus.

‘It’s okay, I’ve got you!’ shouted the fireman, his voice muffled and distant. He lifted Arthur up and over his shoulder. Other firemen edged past, all wearing full suits and breathing apparatus. Some carried axes and extinguishers; others were trailing hoses.