This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2022 by Garth Nix

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

www.apub.com

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ISBN-13: 9781662510021 (digital)

Cover design by Will Staehle

Cover image: © Art Collection 2 / Alamy Stock Photo

Jordan Harper was just leaving his bungalow on the Pharos Pictures lot when a breathless messenger ran up. Unusually, it wasn’t one of the boys from the North Office but a girl from what was known as Animal Corner, the studio’s small zoo, which naturally excluded the horses that were over at the more salubrious Grand Corral (though that wasn’t much more than a stable and paddock). Harper recognized the girl in the blue overalls with the missing front teeth as Trudy, the eight-year-old daughter of the Pharos dog trainer, Jim Lowgen.

“Sir, sir! Dad wants you to come straightaway.”

“Let’s go, then,” said Harper. He’d been hoping to head over to the Lookout Bar on Hollywood to make a couple of phone calls best not overheard by the switchboard girls, but as was so often the case for the studio fixer, something had evidently come up.

“What’s the problem?” he asked as they walked past a procession of four Assyrian chariots, all linked together and towed by a Fordson tractor, heading over to the Twenty Acre back lot, where a temple had been built for The Wolf on the Fold, a semibiblical, not noticeably epic film, very loosely based on Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib.”

One of the reasons it was very loosely based was because it costarred a dog, a German shepherd called Kon Kar Kin, who was actually played by three near-identical sibling canines. Pharos was being sued by Warner Bros. for the obvious copying of the far more successful Rin Tin Tin, but that would probably follow the usual Pharos trajectory: the suit would be settled after four or five quickie films, and there would still be a profit in it. Sol Theakston, the head of the studio, was trying to move away from these imitative films and inevitable lawsuits, but he had inherited the series from the previous management. There was one more Kon Kar Kin picture in the works after The Wolf on the Fold, but it would be the last.

“It’s Ellsworth,” said Trudy.

“Who’s Ellsworth?” asked Harper, momentarily puzzled. He thought he knew every Pharos employee. It was part of his job. He kept files on them all.

“The oldest Kon Kar Kin,” replied Trudy. She looked astounded he didn’t know. “The main one. He does the most, and Bud and Ken—I mean Budworth and Kenworth—we get them to do some special tricks they know but he doesn’t.”

“Okay,” said Harper. He turned down the lane between Stages Six and Seven, immediately noting the gaggle of gaffers and grips passing a bottle in a brown paper bag outside the fire door of Stage Seven. The bottle disappeared, and the gaggle dispersed back inside as they saw him, but he had already memorized everyone who was there, and they would have their pay docked later. The scheduled morning break was over, and drinking on the lot was forbidden, save for actors and executives, and they were required to be as discreet about it as possible. He also made a mental note that shooting had evidently stopped on The Violets of Spring, which needed to be looked into.

“Ellsworth is sick,” said Trudy.

“Has Doc Vance seen him?” asked Harper.

Vance was primarily the horse doctor, but he was a pretty good all-around veterinarian. He’d also come in handy a few times for human medical procedures that had needed to be kept secret from the press, an unfortunate necessity given Harper had recently discovered the new medico they’d gotten after old Dr. Schenk had retired was prone to taking bribes from the gossip columnists.

“He’s there now; he doesn’t know what’s wrong. He says Ellsworth is asleep, but we can’t wake him up. He gave him a ’jection, but that didn’t work neither. Then Dad said to get you. Can you wake him up?”

“I’m not sure,” said Harper cautiously. He felt the prickle of something strange, an intimation of dread, the hair lifting on the back of his neck. It was never a welcome feeling—the two or three times he had experienced it previously, it had warned him something unusual and terrifying was about to happen.

Why would Lowgen call him for a sleeping dog?

“I love Ellsworth,” whispered Trudy. She wiped her eyes and grimaced. Harper pretended he hadn’t heard or seen anything. All the kids who worked in the studio were tough as nails, and it took a lot for one to show any kind of emotion that might be construed as weakness. He started walking faster, thinking about the implications. At least they had the other two dogs, so filming on The Wolf on the Fold would not be delayed. But he’d need to send a wire to Sol, who was on his way back from New York via Chicago on the Chief—it’d be delivered at one of the train’s brief stops.

More importantly, Sol’s personal assistant, Mrs. Hope, would get the telegram and read it first. In many ways she was the true fixer at the studio, knowing everything and everyone and fixing the more unusual problems, even those that were beyond the ken of mere mortals, though Harper had not known this until their encounter with the horrible multiplicity of feeding mouths in the service of the ancient sorcerer who called itself Ozymandias. This had ended with Harper blowing a silver five-franc piece into the sorcerer’s head, unfortunately losing the tips of his thumb and forefinger on his left hand in the process.

But it had been worth it, and Harper knew he had survived only because of Mrs. Hope’s peculiar knowledge of the arcane. She had told him what to do, though she still had not fully explained how she had come to know of such things, other than to say it was part and parcel of a long and continuing struggle against evil. A hidden war where long periods of inaction were interspersed with sudden, vicious confrontations. She was a foot soldier in that war.

Harper was looking forward to Mrs. Hope being back, but not simply because of her efficiency and knowledge and now his presentiment of danger. The confrontation with Ozymandias had brought them together, cementing something that had long been brewing, almost without his awareness. He had always thought her more attractive than any of the film stars he knew but hadn’t thought his attraction might be reciprocated. And as it turned out, there was no Mr. Hope.

He’d missed her the week she had been away. They still kept their new personal relationship secret from everyone else but now spent most nights together when Harper wasn’t working or Mrs. Hope wasn’t engaged in some confidential business of her own.

“I wish you were here, Mrs. Hope,” said Harper under his breath. “I really wish you were here.”

“What?” asked Trudy. Harper was surprised she’d caught any of his muttering; the girl must have very sharp ears.

“Nothing,” he said gruffly and quickened his pace, the girl skipping along at his side. He noticed she was trying to look—while not being caught looking—at the well-disguised prosthetic thumb and fingertips on his left hand, made by the same people who had made Harold Lloyd’s. He’d never said what had happened to his hand the year before, and he knew the studio was rife with stories about it, all of them wrong.

Animal Corner was fenced off from the rest of the lot by a log stockade that often doubled as a US Cavalry fort, which was what it had been built to be in the first place, a decade or so back in the early twenties, the key set for the Lost Troop series of films when Hoot Gibson had briefly been at Pharos. Trudy led the way through the gatehouse, being careful to shut the outer gate behind them before opening the inner one. Jim Lowgen trained his kids as meticulously as his assistants.

“Dad’s got Ellsworth over at the house,” said Trudy when Harper began to turn toward the row of kennels by the south wall. The studio had a number of different dog stars for different purposes, and though the publicity about them said they lived in rich apartments and were waited on hand and foot, in fact they all lived in the row of kennels, though they were usually allowed to roam about the stockade. Right now, every dog was chained up in front of its kennel, even the toy poodle, Charlotte, who was generally too lazy to go anywhere, having gotten used to being carried around in a handbag in the My Secretary, the Detective films.

The house was a bungalow identical to Harper’s own, looking rather out of context not lined up with the others in Executive Row, even more so because it had been built behind the really old, Spanish-era gravel pit that had been repurposed as the tiger pen. There were no tigers there at present, the last one having died old and toothless the previous year, but the iron rails around the pit remained.

The main path to the bungalow ran around the pit to the right, alongside a large monkey cage built over two long-since-expired deodar cedars. The cage still housed a small tribe of monkeys, who would howl and shake their bottoms at everyone who passed. They had been procured for a jungle picture but could not be trained, even by Jim Lowgen.

“Your dad still hasn’t got rid of the monkeys?” asked Harper.

“No one will take them,” said Trudy with distaste.

“Maybe I should just shoot them,” said Harper.

He flipped his coat open for a moment, revealing the .45 automatic in the shoulder holster. He had kept it from his service in the war but very rarely had to use it.

“I wish you would,” said Trudy.

Harper glanced at her. She looked like she meant it.

“I was joking, Trudy. I wouldn’t shoot a monkey for doing what monkeys do. We’ll find a zoo or somewhere to take them.”

“Dad says you shoot people,” muttered Trudy. She looked up at him and hastily added, “Bad people, I mean.”

“Is that right?” asked Harper. He stopped and looked at her carefully, his face neutral. “He say that to you?”

Trudy hung her head. “Naw, I was listening, but I couldn’t help it; I was holding the—”

“Who’d he say it to?” interrupted Harper.

“Only the doc,” said Trudy anxiously. “Not an outsider.”

By outsider she meant someone not employed by the studio.

“Sorry, Mr. Harper,” she whispered. “Did I get Pa in trouble—”

“Not this time,” said Harper easily. “But don’t go around repeating what anyone says, you hear? About me or anyone else in the studio.”

He reached in his pocket, felt around the small weighted sap, and pulled out a nickel, then flicked it to her. She caught it expertly and disappeared the coin in one swift movement, relief smoothing her small furrowed brow.

Not for the first time, Harper wondered how he could soften his reputation as the hard man of Pharos Pictures. He didn’t like to think of himself as a terror. Violence and fear were always his last resort, used only on those who employed it themselves. He fixed things with talk far more often than with force. But what people remembered and talked about was always the action.

The monkeys screamed as Harper and Trudy approached the front door of Lowgen’s house. Harper wrinkled his nose. Animal Corner quite often smelled worse, particularly if there was some sort of jungle production underway and the central court was packed with animals in wheeled cages borrowed from circuses or other zoos, but the monkey cage stank like a powerful, disgusting spice that rose above all else.

Trudy opened the door but didn’t go in, instead shouting, “Mr. Harper’s here, Pa!” before streaking away.

Harper went inside. Lowgen peered around the door to the parlor and gestured for him to enter. Again, it was a carbon copy of Harper’s own bungalow, with the same studio-issued furniture. Ellsworth, a majestic German shepherd, lay atop a tartan blanket on the lounge, his black snout and one front paw hanging over the side. His characteristic tall ears were laid back, and he was snoring gently.

Lowgen and Doc Vance were standing by a polished-steel-and-glass cocktail cabinet, tumblers of bourbon in their hands. Vance’s gladstone bag was open at his feet. It was almost twice the size of a human doctor’s and must have weighed a ton, but Vance was a big man and easily carried it around. Lowgen, on the other hand, was short and slight; he’d been a jockey before moving into animal training. Yet of the two of them, Harper would rather have Lowgen at his back in any serious trouble. The little man was all sinew and get-up-and-go, whereas Vance was merely big.

“So what’s going on with the dog?” asked Harper, shaking his head as Lowgen gestured toward the bottle.

“I never seen anything like it,” replied Lowgen. “He wasn’t needed on set until after lunch today, so I let him lie in his kennel. I was a mite surprised he wasn’t up and about by ten, so I went to see . . . but I couldn’t wake him, and the other dogs wouldn’t go near him. His brothers! They usually roll around on each other like they’re still pups, but they wouldn’t go near Ell today—no, sir! Me and Harry carried him back here, and I called the doc, but—”

“I can’t wake him either,” interrupted Vance. “I don’t understand it. He’s not in a coma—as such, he simply appears to be asleep. I gave him a stimulant, to no avail. The only thing he responds to . . . well, watch this.”

The vet took a large Eveready electric flashlight out of his bag, flicked it on, and pointed the beam at the dog. The light was much brighter than the weak sunshine coming through the gauze-curtained windows. As it lit up the dog, Ellsworth’s skin rippled violently, his ears stood up, and the hair rose along the ridge of his spine. He didn’t wake but shook like a jelly from head to tail until the vet switched off the light again. The dog became still, his flanks slowly rising and falling, the faint snore resuming.

“I flicked it on to look in his ears,” said Vance. “I have no idea what causes this reaction.”

“Why’d you call me over?” asked Harper. “I mean, if the doc can’t do anything—”

“I reckon you’d want to know, private like,” said Lowgen. “Ellsworth is due on set for the close-ups with Miss Celine this afternoon, and Bud and Ken are no good for that—”

“What?” snapped Harper. This was serious.

“The other dogs can’t act,” said Lowgen. “They do stunts, but Ell is the actor.”

Harper shook his head slowly.

“I’ll take that drink now. I thought the whole point of having three identical dogs was so they could stand in for each other?”

“That was the plan,” said Lowgen. He inspected a glass from the cabinet, found it clean or clean enough, and poured Harper a decent slug. “But Ellsworth is just a lot more talented. He can make his eyes—”

A phone rang in the office across the hall. Lowgen stopped talking and turned toward the sound. Another one of Lowgen’s daughters answered it immediately—Harper could hear her voice. Several seconds later, she appeared in the doorway. It was Kelly-Ann, the oldest, who would probably take over from her father in due course.

“Uh, Mr. Harper, they need you over at Miss Celine’s,” she said.

“What now?” asked Harper. It never rained, but it poured.

“They just said you’re needed fast,” said Kelly-Ann. “Real urgent.”

Harper drained the whiskey in one gulp and was out the door, calling back over his shoulder, “No one say a word about this! Not to anyone!”

It was bad enough to have an apparently irreplaceable dog star down, but Celine Howard was the closest thing to a real star Pharos had ever managed. It was a minor miracle she hadn’t already been poached by one of the majors. Sol had big plans for her, and she was not only a key part of the renaissance the studio chief hoped for but a massive investment. Celine’s salary had been doubled with every successful film, and she was now on $3,000 a week. Her next film was planned to be Pharos’s biggest ever, and she wouldn’t be costarring with a dog—it would be George Brent. Sol had won the actor from Harry Warner in a poker game, at least for a single film.

Harper walked fast along the gravel path, the monkeys too slow to scream at him. He went out through the double gates like a whirlwind. In five minutes he was back at Executive Row, gathering his breath outside Celine’s accommodations. Befitting her recent elevation to the top of the roster, her bungalow was double the size of any other, even Sol’s hideaway, though his suite in the North Office was probably larger overall.

Harper knocked on the door but didn’t wait for a response, going straight in. This bungalow had a large reception room, and the two people waiting in it jumped up as Harper entered, almost as if caught out in wrongdoing. Both were junior executives, of no account. Harper ignored them, striding past to the hallway and then on to Celine’s bedroom. He knocked there and did wait, the door being opened a few seconds later by June, Celine’s dresser, confidante, and, secretly, lover. She was pale and shaken and stood aside, quivering. Dr. Kastenberg was behind her, wringing his hands.

Celine was sitting up in bed, fast asleep, with three pillows behind her. Revealing her true background as a farmer’s daughter from Bixby, Oklahoma, Celine wore a plain flannel nightie done up to the neck, one sleeve rolled up past the elbow. It was nothing like the sleepwear she sported in the magazine stories that claimed she was the love child of a titled Englishwoman and a Canadian war hero, sadly killed three days before they could be married.

“I can’t wake her,” said Kastenberg. He licked his lips nervously, not quite looking at Harper. He had been warned recently about tipping off gossip columnists and knew his job was on the line, or maybe something worse. “She seems simply asleep, but nothing will wake her. It isn’t any drug I know—”

“It isn’t drugs!” snapped June. “Celine doesn’t use anything—you know that, Mr. Harper!”

“Yeah, I know,” said Harper. He didn’t bother to add the not now. One of the reasons Celine’s career was back on track was because Harper had taken her to a remote clinic in Mexico for three months when Sol had first spotted her at an even more down-at-the-heels Poverty Row studio and decided she had potential, if her cocaine addiction could be addressed. June had been hired on to be Celine’s nurse for that rehabilitation. Harper hadn’t expected them to become a couple, but he considered it a bonus, as June was very steady and kept Celine on the straight and narrow.

“You turn off the light?” asked Harper. It was gloomy in the bedroom, the ceiling light off and the curtains shut. There was a breakfast tray on the side table by the bed with a covered plate, a full glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee missing maybe two mouthfuls.

“I did,” said June. “That was what started it. Me turning it on first, I mean.”

“Okay,” said Harper. His feeling of dread was growing worse. He had something of a sixth sense for unusual happenings and had learned to trust it—first in the trenches of the First World War, where it had helped him avoid certain death, and more recently here at Pharos Pictures with the Ozymandias incident.

“Tell me from the beginning.”

“Celine wasn’t needed on set this morning, so she had a lie-in,” said June. “I took in her breakfast about twenty minutes ago. She drank some coffee and said, ‘Good morning,’ and I came over and switched on the light. She made a sound, and when I turned around, she was sort of shivering all over, and she said, ‘The light, the light,’ so I turned it off, and she just lay back and went to sleep. I called Dr. Kastenberg, who came straightaway, and your office—”

“You tell them why you needed me?” asked Harper.

“No, just asked where you were,” said June knowingly. “Then I called the zoo.”

“Okay, we got to keep this quiet,” said Harper. “That goes double for you, Doc.”

He looked directly at Kastenberg as he spoke, and though he sort of smiled, it wasn’t in a friendly way.

“Understood, understood!” exclaimed the doctor.

Harper nodded decisively and flicked the overhead light on. Immediately, Celine’s face rippled unpleasantly, a subdermal shiver that extended across every part of visible skin, including her bare arm. It was exactly the same as what had happened with Ellsworth when the flashlight had been shone on the dog.

“Oh, don’t!” exclaimed June.

Harper turned the light off and stood still, thinking.

Whatever was happening to Ellsworth and Celine was not normal. He needed Mrs. Hope’s expertise, and he needed it soon.

“Celine’s got a cold,” he announced. “She has to take the day off, doctor’s orders. June, no one sees her but you and the doc.”

“Yes, but what is wrong with her?” asked June fearfully.

“We’ll find out,” Harper reassured her. “Tell me—she was shooting Wolf yesterday, with Kon Kar Kin? What scene?”

“Uh, the gate of Jerusalem bit. Where the dog brings her the key for the little door in the gate, and they get in, just ahead of the Assyrians. That’s why Madame didn’t need her this morning; they’re filming the chariots coming up just too late to catch the shepherdess and her dog—I mean the princess, because her true identity has been—”

“Yeah, yeah, I read the script,” said Harper. “I have to make some calls.”

In the reception room, the junior executives did the jack-in-the-box impression again.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Harper. “Doesn’t matter. Miss Howard has a cold; she’s taking the day off. Bulletin to be issued at five—everyone’s hoping it isn’t influenza. Tell Bibby in publicity and anyone else who needs to know.”

The two men snapped out keen affirmatives and departed, eager to obey. Harper waited until they’d gone, then picked up the phone and dictated a wire to Sol alerting him to Celine’s cold and some other unspecified problems that might delay production while really communicating to Mrs. Hope that something strange was going on and he urgently needed her help. He looked at his watch and grimaced. The telegram would get delivered at the Albuquerque stop around two o’clock, but the train still wouldn’t arrive in Los Angeles until after eight tomorrow morning.

That left the afternoon ahead, and the night, without Mrs. Hope’s help and expertise. Harper shut his eyes for a moment at the thought of the night, though he couldn’t say why. He just felt he needed her here before the sun went down.

But there was nothing he could do about that, except try to figure out what the hell was going on. He rang the lab and ordered the rushes from the previous day be readied to watch in Sol’s private screening room and went over there, walking fast, his shoulders forward and chin out. Everyone who saw him got out of the way, including several people he was sure had planned to intercept him to ask his help with some small problem or other before deciding none was so major it could not be left for another day.

He had just settled in to the deep plush of the big central chair and was about to buzz the projectionist to roll film when the door swung open and Sylvie “Madame” Loriquet stormed in, all directorial in her jodhpurs and boots and wielding a riding crop, which she swished across the backs of the lesser seats in the row behind Harper.

“What is this bullshit, Jordan!” she shouted. “Celine has a cold? And all three dogs have got the sneezes? Doesn’t this cockamamie studio have doctors and vets or anyone competent to make sure I can actually make a damn film?”

“Calm down, Sylvie,” said Harper. Loriquet was a good director but prone to acting herself—she liked playing up when there was a problem. Outside the studio she dropped all the directorial clothes and mannerisms, and people who worked with her every day often didn’t recognize her outside.

The director sat down next to Harper with a sigh and poured herself a couple of fingers of gin from Sol’s chairside bar table, then splashed in some bitters and a slice of lemon. Even when Sol was away, all his little luxuries were laid out ready, every day. Harper had already resisted smoking one of the boss’s cigars.

“So what’s going on?” she asked. “Why do you want to see yesterday’s rushes?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Harper reasonably. “Did anything unusual happen?”

“I don’t think so,” said Sylvie. She took a sip of her drink and then another. “Straightforward. Rubbish, but as per the script. Lab said it printed up okay, despite the light—”

“What?” interrupted Harper. “What was the problem with the light?”

“We got some cloud cover around three,” said Sylvie. She seemed puzzled by his reaction. “Threw some shadow, so we had to rig lights to match the earlier shots. We used the new lamps, the Klieg knockoffs from Jasperson. You know, the cheapos Sol wanted us to try. They definitely aren’t as bright, and I wasn’t sure about the color, but Erich at the lab said it matched up okay . . .”

“Let’s see it, then,” said Harper. He buzzed again. The room darkened, and the screen flickered with a standard Pharos trailer and then a slate identifying the shot by the film name and scene and take. There was no sound—it hadn’t yet been synchronized—and it was black and white. Pharos had made only three Technicolor films so far, though again, it was Sol’s ambition to make more.

Celine, in a gauzy dress no Assyrian shepherdess would have ever worn, was grappling with the sally port, the small door set in the bigger gate. She kept looking over her shoulder, her kohl-washed eyes wide in apprehension. She banged on the door and shouted something, but the door did not open.

“We’ll cut away to the approaching chariots here,” said Sylvie. “Got my second unit shooting that now.”

“You have a second unit?” asked Harper, not taking his eyes off the screen. “Since when?”

“Okay, I left Phil the Greek in charge after I set it up,” said Sylvie. “Here comes some nice action.”

An Assyrian warrior ran in, axe held high, and was just about to bring it down on Celine when Kon Kar Kin leaped upon him, supposedly from the wall above, though Harper knew it was from a platform out of shot that was nowhere near as high. The dog wrestled with the warrior, jaws clamped on his wrist, and held him there long enough for Celine to knock him on the head with a handy stone. The shepherdess then turned back to the door and resumed her attempts at entry as Kon Kar Kin tugged at the hem of her dress.

There was another slate for the next shot, and the light changed, just a little, the shadows darkening. The camera was closer now, a two-shot on Celine and Kon Kar Kin. The woman was kneeling, and Kon Kar Kin dropped a huge key from his mouth into her hand.

“Where was that key when he was biting the Assyrian?” asked Harper.

“Who cares,” snapped Sylvie.

Something flickered between the door, the shepherdess, and the dog. Harper leaned forward, intent on the screen.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“A shadow,” said Sylvie. “Maybe the mike boom . . . it’s only there for a second.”

“It looked like it came out of that disk on the door,” said Harper. “What is that, anyway?”

“Some dirty old mirror,” said Sylvie. “You know Meredith likes to stick real old stuff on wherever she can—says it looks better.”

Harper nodded. Meredith McLure was the studio’s chief designer. She did love the historical pictures and tried her best to make them look good, even if authentic was too far a stretch.

He buzzed to stop projection and picked up the internal phone. There were five phones by Sol’s seat, direct lines to the projection booth, the studio exchange, Sol’s office, his home, and the head office in New York. There used to be only two phones—to the booth and to the exchange—but Sol had heard Louis B. Mayer had four telephones in his screening room, so he had to have five.

“Sal, take it back to the dog giving the key to Celine, and run it in slow motion till I tell you to freeze it. I want to see something,” he instructed. “What? Well, hand crank it, whatever. Slow.”

“What is this?” asked Sylvie. “No one’s going to notice that shadow.”

“Yeah, it’s not about that,” said Harper. “I’ll explain later. You get back to Phil before he gets so good he takes over your job.”

Sylvie snorted back a laugh and finished her gin.

“And what am I supposed to do without my two leads this afternoon?”

“Whatever you can,” said Harper, not taking his eyes from the screen. The film had been winding back but was now going forward again, much more slowly and jerkily. “More chariot stuff, whatever. You figure it out.”

“All right,” said Sylvie doubtfully. She got up and walked away, looking back over her shoulder. From her expression she was seeing an unexpected side of Harper. Like a child suddenly aware of a parent’s fallibility.

“Wait a sec!” called out Harper as she reached the door. “I’ll be over at the back lot in fifteen. Have Meredith meet me there.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sylvie. “Anything else?”

Harper didn’t reply. He was intent on the film. Kon Kar Kin—no, Ellsworth—had dropped the key; there was a tiny flash on that dull mirror, and there it was: a shadow leaping across like a striking snake or a thrown spear.

“Freeze it!” snapped Harper, leaping up to advance to the screen, then ducking under the projected light.

“It’s gonna burn,” protested Sal, loud over the cinema speakers.

Harper studied the image. The shadow had definitely come out of the mirror, gone through the young woman and the dog, and disappeared. He stepped closer, trying to see more, but a white spot appeared in the middle and flared, eating into the picture until there was only white light.

“Told ya,” said Sal.

Harper went back to pick up the phone.

“Yeah, you did,” he said. “But I don’t want you talking about this. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” snapped Sal, all trace of laconic ease gone from his voice.

Harper dropped the phone; picked up a cigar, which he tucked in his inside coat pocket; and went out. He still didn’t know what to do, but instinct kept him moving. He had to look at that mirror, find out more about it. Maybe smash it? Hide it in the dark? Mrs. Hope would know.

Halfway to the Twenty Acre back lot, he stopped at Stage Three to use the telephone there, calling the studio’s chief engineer to issue an instruction that surprised the imperturbable Scotsman.

“All the lights, Mr. Harper?”

“All the lights. Everything you can turn on, inside and out. Come to think about it, get our searchlights out to the back lot—I want it lit up all night.”

“Uh, we’ve only got four of the big carbon arcs, and they’re on loan to Grauman’s tonight for the Cleopatra premiere. DeMille’s latest.”

“Borrow some from somewhere else!”

“Paramount already borrowed everyone’s,” said McTavish. “There’s supposed to be a hundred searchlights along Hollywood Boulevard tonight. Going to be some sight.”

Harper was silent.

“You all right, Jordan?”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Just keep every light we can on, all right? Thanks.”

He stormed toward the back lot like a shark through a shoal of fish as Wolf was breaking for lunch and everyone was going the other way, streaming back to the commissary. They split before him, knowledgeable extras in Assyrian robes and armor nudging the new ones who didn’t know who Harper was, urging them to get out of the way. Contract actors and technicians nodded and smiled, and an assistant director even essayed a “Good afternoon, Mr. Harper,” but he didn’t acknowledge these greetings or slow his pace.

A studio guard saluted as he walked onto the field, the wranglers looked over from the horse lines, and the carpenters and wheelwrights suddenly sped up their work in the chariot park. Harper was on the warpath—everyone detected it and hoped it was not something they had done or failed to do. Some excessively guilty types were likely even contemplating the usefulness of early confession.

Meredith McLure was waiting by the gate of the Jerusalem set. As always, she was dressed like a Victorian Englishwoman going exploring, in a long white dress, complete with solar topee and tied-back veil. Phil Kantanzares, Sylvie’s first assistant director, was chatting with her, but after seeing Harper approaching across the field, he edged away and disappeared through the sally port, then shut it behind him.

Harper stared at the round mirror mounted in the middle of the door. The afternoon was typical for LA: whatever clouds had been present the day before were gone, the sky was a pure blue, and the sun was bright and hot. He was used to keeping his coat on to hide his gun and the small knife sheathed at the small of his back, but most of the others around had long since shed their jackets and rolled their sleeves up, and the women had started in sundresses anyway, with nary a sleeve to speak of.

But the mirror was not reflecting the sunshine. It was dull and kind of greenish, probably from a layer of verdigris on the bronze.

“What’s up with the mirror?” asked Meredith. Her accent, redolent of Queens, belied her very English dress. “Sylvie said you had a thing about it. It was two bucks, let me tell you, nothing expensive—”

“I’m not checking up on your spending, Meredith,” said Harper. He felt reluctant to get too close to the mirror but told himself this was ridiculous, so he leaned in and examined it as best he could. At the same time, he was thinking up a story to tell the set designer.

“It seems this might be a real antiquity, stolen from a museum,” he said finally. He could faintly see something that might be writing—or at least some kind of symbols—around the edge of the bronze disk. Very small—too small to make out with the naked eye.

“Oh yeah?” asked Meredith, brightening. She liked her antiquarian credentials to be burnished by external authority. “I knew it was the real thing!”

“Real what?”

“Mesopotamian. You know, Assyrian, or maybe Babylonian,” said Meredith.

“Where did you get it from?” asked Harper.

“An estate sale couple weeks back. A guy called Colonel Gerald Travers, died in March, had a big house over in Burbank. Don’t know whose army he was a colonel in, if he really was one, but he traveled around a lot. I bought a bunch of stuff: Egyptian, Indian, Chinese.”

“Did you notice this writing here?” asked Harper, pointing to the rim.

“Nope,” replied Meredith. She hunched down, careful to keep her dress out of the dirt. The chariots had really churned up the field. “Hmm. Need a loupe for a proper look, but I’d say that’s cuneiform—all those little wedge shapes . . . which museum was this stolen from?”

“British Museum,” said Harper after a second’s thought. “One of the extras yesterday is some sort of professor here visiting family; they thought he’d enjoy the Hollywood experience or something. He recognized this. So we’ll have to give it back.”

“Which extra?” asked Meredith eagerly.

“Never mind that,” said Harper. He looked at the mirror again. “How is this stuck on?”

“Glue,” said Meredith. “My special stickum. Soluble in alcohol—it won’t damage metal or wood. I’ll get one of the boys to unstick this now if you want.”

“Yeah, do that, please,” said Harper. He stepped away from the disk, feeling like he was backing away from a fight, something he didn’t do. There was a faint buzzing in his ears too—a sound reminiscent of the western front, which made him look around for a trench to dive into before he realized that while it was a plane, it wasn’t a German one coming in to bomb or strafe them.

“Flying kind of low,” said Meredith doubtfully. She shielded her eyes with one hand held against the brim of her solar topee.

Harper followed her gaze. An orange biplane was coming in above Santa Monica Boulevard, but as he watched, it turned southwest and was angling down, seemingly straight at the Twenty Acre field, as if it might come in to land there.

A minute later, Harper realized that was exactly what the pilot intended. The aircraft would touch down just beyond the Jerusalem gate and then supposedly stop before it ran into the north wall of Stage Twelve.

Surely they wouldn’t try to land if the field wasn’t big enough? He had no idea how much space the plane would need. But one thing was obvious.

“Clear the field!” he shouted, waving his arms at the only obstacle that lay in the way: a technician of some kind taking a solitary walk to puff on his pipe. “You with the pipe! Get off the field!”

Harper could shout very loudly when he had to, a skill learned leading men in combat. The pipe smoker looked around, saw who was yelling at him, saw the descending plane, and panicked. Instead of running off the field, he dived onto his face, throwing his pipe aside in a shower of sparks.

Its engine stopped or was switched off thirty seconds before touchdown, but the biplane glided easily down, landed lightly, and sped over the field—straight at the prostrate pipe smoker. For an awful moment it looked like he would be run over, probably causing the plane to flip, but just before it hit him, the plane turned and taxied in a tight circle, closer to the gate, completely under control. It came to a stop only thirty yards away. Harper started walking toward it, an inkling of what might be going on rising in his mind.

His suspicion was confirmed as the pilot jumped down, took off her helmet and goggles, and shook her hair before restraining it under a demure scarf she took from the pocket of the overalls, which were clearly not her own, being much too big.

“Mrs. Hope!” called out Harper, letting his eyes show the enthusiasm that he could not otherwise publicly show. “I didn’t know you were a pilot!”

“I was for a time employed in a barnstorming circus, Mr. Harper,” replied Mrs. Hope. “I have an urgent private message from Mr. Theakston for you, which required me to borrow this very fine Stearman in Albuquerque and fly on ahead. Perhaps if we could have a moment alone, I could pass it on?”

Harper whirled around, the welcoming light gone from his eyes. The gathering crowd stopped gathering, the excitement of the plane’s sudden arrival deflated.

Harper looked at his watch.

“Sixteen more minutes for lunch,” he said loudly. “Make the most of it. And someone pick up that idiot over there and his pipe.”

Mrs. Hope moved to his side, and they walked around the back of the Jerusalem gate set, all bare scaffolding and ladders. A couple of grips fiddling about with a camera mount on top of the gate looked down for a moment but were not close enough to hear quiet talk.

“Thank heavens you’re here,” said Harper. “I sent a wire, but you can’t have had it, and I never imagined you would fly. What does Sol want me to know that’s so urgent?”

Mrs. Hope smiled the enigmatic smile that no one else ever saw.

“There is no message from Mr. Theakston,” she said. “I heard your call, and though it was not urgent then, I knew it would be.”

“My call?”

“I wish you were here, Mrs. Hope.”

“You heard that? I didn’t even say it aloud!”

“Your soul spoke, with a presentiment of danger,” said Mrs. Hope. “I felt it, too, and knew I must hurry. So what is going on?”

Harper told her, continuing the tale as they walked twice around the walls of Jerusalem, finishing as they once again approached the front of the gate, the sally port, and the disk of bronze.

Mrs. Hope examined it, kneeling close. Her eyes were better than Harper’s, because she was able to see the cuneiform writing and write the symbols down in her notebook.

“Can you read that?” asked Harper quietly.

“Some,” said Mrs. Hope. “It is Sumerian, not Assyrian, and it is much older. This mirror was a prison of sorts, made by priests to confine something even older than their own civilization.”

“How did it escape?”

“I don’t know for sure,” said Mrs. Hope. “But I suspect it was an unfortunate effect of the lights deployed by Madame to match the sunlight. The inscription refers to ‘a shadow bound in shadow,’ those bounds dissolved by a certain spectrum of the artificial light. Not something the priests could have expected.”

“I saw a shadow leap from the mirror, into Celine and the dog. But what is it really?”

“I’ll need to refer to my books,” said Mrs. Hope. She continued to study the mirror up close.

Harper nodded. He had been shown the hidden library in Mrs. Hope’s apartment, accessed behind the vast, unused fireplace in a Spanish Colonial house that had been split into five separate dwellings. But she had shown him only how to open the secret door in case of trouble and had not let him examine the contents in any detail. In addition to the shelves of books, there had also been a cabinet of weapons, from the medieval to the modern, and a chemist’s bench—or, probably more accurately, an alchemist’s.

“I have puzzled out the name of the prisoner, I think. Or former prisoner, I should say. Unfortunately.”

“What is it?”

“Roughly translated, ‘Gnawer of Shadows,’” said Mrs. Hope. “What time is it? My watch stopped somewhere around Flagstaff.”

“Two oh four,” said Harper.

“Sunset at six thirty-five,” muttered Mrs. Hope.

“I’ve ordered all the lights to be left on, everywhere across the whole studio,” said Harper.

“Unfortunately that won’t be of any use,” replied Mrs. Hope. “Not once the sun has gone down. It does not really fear artificial light, only that such light reminds it of the sun’s presence outside. It would do far more than shudder if it did. It is a great pity Miss Celine and Ellsworth were not kept filming longer yesterday; it could not have endured within their flesh in bright sunshine for more than a few hours. And of course it has grown much stronger overnight and will be ready to enslave more living beings.”

“Enslave more—”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Hope. “Its appetite will not be met by one woman and a dog, having been imprisoned so long. Gnawer of Shadows is not really a good description—such an entity does not consume the shadow alone but all of its victims: body, shadow, spirit. Slowly and with relish.”

“Celine and Ellsworth—”

“There is chance it is not yet strong enough to gorge. It might need another night, even more to consume its current victims. We might be able to save them.”

“So what do we do?” asked Harper.

“I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Hope. “I must consult my books, as I said.”

Harper stared at her, dumbstruck. He had felt such relief when she’d appeared, like an angel sent for their salvation, even if she had arrived in an airplane rather than on her own silver wings.

Mrs. Hope hesitated, reacting to the look in his eyes. It was very unusual for anyone to see Jordan Harper totally at a loss.

“I do have some idea,” she said reluctantly. “Meet me at Animal Corner at five thirty. The girl, Trudy—she told you she loved Ellsworth? And she’s what, eight?”

“She didn’t tell me, but I heard her say so, and yes, she’s eight,” replied Harper. “But what—”

“Do you think she’s brave?”

“She’s a Lowgen; I don’t think they have any choice but to be brave,” said Harper. “Lions, tigers, the damned monkeys . . .”

“Good. Make sure she’s there. And her father.”

“Why?” said Harper, now totally mystified.

Mrs. Hope didn’t answer.

“Don’t be late,” said Mrs. Hope. “We won’t have much time to get ready.”

“Should I have Miss Celine brought there too?”

“You won’t need to,” said Mrs. Hope. “Come nightfall, she will come to us. Or rather, the Gnawer of Shadows will bring her. You should also send everyone else home before dark. Everyone you can. In case we fail.”

“We’d better not,” said Harper.

“No,” agreed Mrs. Hope. She looked around swiftly to ensure they were unobserved, darted forward, and placed a kiss on his lips before striding purposefully away. Harper raised his hand and touched his mouth, unable to prevent the awful thought that this momentary, fleeting kiss might be their last.

He was at the cavalry fort before half past five, pacing up and down on the walkway behind the palisade. The monkeys had stopped screaming at him and were now gathered in one corner of their cage, silent, all huddled together, as if they, too, knew what the fall of night might bring.

It was strangely quiet. There was none of the usual busy noise of the studio. Everyone save the gate guards, Celine, and Jim Lowgen and Trudy had been sent home, told there’d be an explanation tomorrow. June had not gone quietly; Harper had to remove her himself, assuring her every few yards that he would personally look after Celine.

Whatever explanation he did come up with would have to be good. He hoped he would have the chance to come up with something ridiculous enough to be believed. Some whim of Sol’s was probably the best bet . . .

He saw Mrs. Hope approaching, no longer in overalls. She was wearing a white robe, something the wardrobe department might come up with for a priestess in The Wolf on the Fold, except it didn’t look like a costume; it looked right. She wore an olive wreath as a crown, sported bracelets of wound silver wire on each wrist, and carried a string bag that held two bottles, one of bronze and one of thick green glass, and some sort of old clay bowl.

Harper ran down the ramp and around to the gates, then opened the inner one as Mrs. Hope came through the outer, disregarding Jim Lowgen’s rules.

“I have discovered what we must do,” said Mrs. Hope. “And found what is needed. If Trudy can help us, all will be well.”

“What—”

“Hush,” said Mrs. Hope, resting one hand lightly on his arm. “I will explain inside.”

She marched onto the gravel path, Harper at her side. The monkeys did not leave their huddle, watching with wide, frightened eyes as the intruders passed them by.

The sun was already setting, the sky tinged with red.

Jim Lowgen, Trudy, and Ellsworth were waiting inside. Jim had clearly drunk a lot more bourbon, and he was snoring next to Ellsworth, his head tilted back. Harper bent to wake him, but his initial shake had no effect. He shook him again and then slapped him lightly on the face. Lowgen did not respond at all.

“He’s out,” said Trudy. “He doesn’t normally drink so much—you know that, Mr. Harper! I only seen him like this once; that was when Ma died.”

“Yeah,” said Harper. He tilted Jim’s head forward and made him lie back against the couch. “I know he’s not a drinker in the usual way.”

“This is very unfortunate,” said Mrs. Hope. She seemed more dismayed than Harper had ever seen her, her usual icy cool evaporated. “We need his permission for you to assist us, Trudy.”

“Doing what?” asked Trudy.

“This will be hard for you to believe,” said Mrs. Hope. “But what afflicts Ellsworth is not some disease or condition that can be explained in our modern world. He has been possessed by an ancient evil, a creature of the deep darkness, long imprisoned, who was yesterday freed.”

Trudy nodded, as if this somehow did not surprise her at all.

“When night falls, Ellsworth will seem recovered,” continued Mrs. Hope. “But he will not be. He will be under the sway . . . he will be controlled by . . . the monster that is within him, a thing the Sumerians knew as the Gnawer of Shadows.”

“The Nora?” asked Trudy.

“G-n-a-w-e-r,” said Mrs. Hope. “It means eater. Slow eater.”

Trudy’s hand went out to rest on Ellsworth’s head.

“Can you get it out of him? Kill it? Mr. Harper can shoot—”

“It is not something that can be shot. But yes, I hope we can lure it from Ellsworth and from Miss Celine too—”

She paused as Trudy gasped in shock. In studio terms, Celine didn’t simply play princesses—she was one, the most important of them all.

“From Miss Celine, too, and destroy it. But I need your help, Trudy.”

“What do I need to do?” asked Trudy.

“We need to offer the Gnawer of Shadows something it wants more than the bodies it already inhabits,” said Mrs. Hope. “Something to bring it to a place of my choosing and distract it. And for this foul creature, the younger the life, the sweeter it is.”

“A tethered goat,” said Trudy. “Like how Pa caught old Sinbad?”

“Yes,” said Harper, who knew that story. Sinbad had been Jim Lowgen’s first animal star. He hoped Trudy didn’t remember that the tiger had been captured after it had killed the tethered goat.

“We need your father’s permission,” said Mrs. Hope. “It is an enormous risk; I—”

“I’ll do it,” said Trudy. “Anything to save Ellsworth. And Miss Celine too.”

“I don’t know . . . ,” muttered Mrs. Hope. She went to the window and twitched the curtain aside to look up at the sky. The sun was no longer visible, though a band of red light remained.

“There’s no other way, is there?” asked Harper.

“No,” said Mrs. Hope. “You’re a very brave girl, Trudy.”

“I’m a Lowgen, like my pa,” said Trudy. She gave Ellsworth one last pat on his head and stood up. “There’s nothing we’re afeared of.”

“Very well. Trudy, I want to lure the Gnawer in the two bodies it presently occupies into the gravel pit. Harper, I need you to shut the gate behind Celine and Ellsworth after they go in, but wait until they are at the bottom of the pit, not straightaway. The Gnawer does not know iron; the fence will keep it in for some time if . . . if things don’t go as planned.”

The sunlight behind the curtains suddenly faded, and Ellsworth lifted his head. Though his eyes were still shut, he sniffed the air and began to stretch.

“Quickly now,” said Mrs. Hope. She led them outside, the doors left open. “Harper, hide behind the monkey cage, and be sure to shut the gate to the pit, but not straightaway.”

The iron fence around the pit had been built with the acrobatic abilities of tigers in mind. It was twelve feet high, and the bars were six inches apart. The gate was a little rusty, squealing as Mrs. Hope pushed it open. She took Trudy’s hand as they went down the broad steps. The floor of the pit was concreted over, and at one side there was a domed hut, a kind of stone igloo, which had been the tiger sleeping quarters.

It was already dark down at the bottom of the pit, and there were stars becoming visible in the sky above.

“Stand here, please, Trudy,” said Mrs. Hope, indicating the very center. “It is important you don’t move until they are just about to touch you; then I want you to run away, up to the gate if you can. I will strike then, and they will not be able to follow.”

She put her net bag down and took out the bronze bottle. After opening it, she pressed a white handkerchief against the neck and upended it a couple of times.

“This is a perfume called kyphi; it is made from cinnamon and honey, terebinth resin, saffron, wine, and myrrh. The Gnawer will be lured by the scent, from a time when offerings were freely made to it by foolish people. It will also serve as a distraction.”

She dabbed the handkerchief against Trudy’s neck and wrists and then tucked it in the front pocket of the girl’s overalls.

“Is Ellsworth going to be all right after this?” asked Trudy quietly.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hope. “Dogs are very resilient, even against evil magic.”

“And Miss Celine?”

“She will be fine,” said Mrs. Hope, with far less conviction. “Remember, stand here until they are very close. The Gnawer will move dog and woman together, slowly, savoring what is to come; it won’t rush you.”

“Got it,” said Trudy.

Mrs. Hope retreated a dozen steps to the igloo. Inside, she took out the glass bottle, which contained sesame oil, and used it to fill the pottery bowl, which had a curious upturned lip on one side—a straggly piece of string lay on it, the other end in the oil.

Trudy watched her, eyes bright with anxiety, though she did not move from the spot in the middle of the pit.

“The lamp of Khedebneithirbinet,” said Mrs. Hope, as much to herself as to the girl waiting outside the igloo. She put the little clay bowl on a shelf that was still faintly stained with the blood of all the haunches of meat that had been placed there over the years for the tigers’ delectation. “Or rather, a much more recently fashioned lamp dedicated to her, which is as effective. She was an Egyptian queen, a sorceress and implacable enemy of things like this Gnawer of Shadows. The papyrus wick was a bit harder to get hold of. Thankfully, Meredith’s acquisitive proclivities helped as well as harmed.”

Mrs. Hope put a box of matches down next to the lamp and took out two, laying them on top. “I will light the lamp the moment they try to touch you, Trudy. You must wait until the last minute to run.”

Trudy nodded and opened her mouth to say something but stopped and looked back up toward the steps. Mrs. Hope heard it too: soft footfalls. She hunched down and picked up a match.

Celine’s and Ellsworth’s eyes were darker than the night. The woman and the dog came down the steps together, very close. Trudy turned to fully face them but did not otherwise move. Mrs. Hope could smell the perfume on the girl, stronger even than the lingering animal stench of the pit.

The Gnawer in its two bodies moved closer to the girl, human steps and dog paces getting smaller and slower, as if it did not want to close too soon. Mrs. Hope rested the head of the match against the side of her shoe, ready to strike.

Two more steps.

Trudy shivered and made a sound low in her throat. Up above, the gate gave out a low squeal as Harper shut it. Trudy shook still more, sure Celine and Ellsworth would turn to that noise, would spring to the attack.

But they didn’t. They came closer and closer to the girl. Celine reached out with one elegant hand, and Ellsworth leaned forward, his snout reaching for Trudy’s fingers.

The girl screamed and leaped backward as if she were a tiger cub herself.

Mrs. Hope struck the match and held it against the wick with a steady hand. Harper came sprinting down the steps, pistol in hand. He’d shut himself in as well, ignoring Mrs. Hope’s unspoken suggestion he might be able to escape.

Celine and Ellsworth moved even faster. But they did not turn to attack Harper and Mrs. Hope. They went after Trudy, and they would have caught her, if the lamp of Khedebneithirbinet had not suddenly burst into full brilliance, shedding a light too bright for Harper to bear. A light that filled the pit not with the scent of burning sesame oil but with the rich, wet smell of a great river that could only be the Nile.

Through narrowed eyes, Harper saw Mrs. Hope carry the lamp out of the igloo and hold it high. Celine and Ellsworth were captured like statues modeled in midstride, their shadows falling long on the other side, as frozen as they were, caught out of time.

But there was another shadow between those of a woman and a dog, a grossly misshapen thing larger than either of them, a blurry blot of darkness, a shape that contained multitudes. It was not still but shivered and shook and twisted, as if trying to free itself from restraint.

Mrs. Hope walked closer, and the lamp burned brighter than the noonday sun. She spoke aloud, words Harper could not comprehend. They went in his ears and through his brain without lodging, and ever after he could not remember anything about them, not the sound or the meaning or the sense. He only knew Mrs. Hope spoke in the light, and when she finished, the horrible writhing shadow that was the Sumerian demon was no more.

The lamp dimmed, becoming no more than a small flame burning in a dish. Celine slowly collapsed to the ground, hugging her knees and sobbing. Ellsworth turned in circles, snapping at his tail until Trudy dropped from where she’d been hanging on the railing bars and ran to hug him. He leaped into her embrace, licking her face with loving abandon.

Harper went to Celine and knelt down beside her, fearing what he might find. But she looked up at him with clear, though puzzled, eyes.

“I had such an awful dream,” she said slowly. “Have I been sleepwalking or something? You know, I haven’t been taking anything, Mr. Harper. Honest, I haven’t.”

“I know,” soothed Harper. “I know. You’ve been ill, feverish. Mrs. Hope and I came to find you. We’ll take you back.”

“Oh,” said Celine, looking nervously at the older woman. It was a variant of the look men gave to Harper. “I hope you haven’t been put to too much trouble.”

“Oh no,” said Mrs. Hope. She pinched out the lamp with her fingers and put it down on the ground. “Not too much.”

Harper helped the future of the studio up and walked her out of the pit, with the others following. Mrs. Hope held Trudy’s hand, and Trudy held Ellsworth’s collar, the dog leaning affectionately into the girl’s side.

“How nice,” said Celine, looking out from the porch of the house at the glow above the lot. “All the lights are on everywhere. You should make them do that every night, Mr. Harper.”

“Maybe I will,” said Harper, with a glance at Mrs. Hope, whose eyes seemed to him brighter and more exciting than any studio lights could ever be. “Maybe I will.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2018 Wendy McDougall

Garth Nix is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple science fiction and fantasy novels including the Old Kingdom series, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, and several children’s and middle-grade books. His accolades include the Aurealis Award, the ABIA Award, the Ditmar Award, the Mythopoeic Award, and the CBCA Honour Book.