It was the face of a fourteen-year-old boy.

Ollie leapt forward.

‘No!’ he shouted.

He grabbed hold of Seamus’s spear. Seamus was so surprised he let go of it, and whipped round, off balance, snarling in fury, to see who had ruined his attack, and then, before Blue could stop him, or even take on-board what was happening, Ollie rammed the point of the spear into Seamus’s good eye.

Chapter 55

55

Maxie was standing stock-still, mouth hanging open. The massive room was stuffed with huge statues, bits of buildings, tombs, gigantic columns reaching many metres up towards the roof … It was like being inside the ogre’s castle in Jack and the Beanstalk or something. Everything was way too big, crammed together like it had been looted from the treasure houses and palaces of kings.

‘What are they?’ she said.

‘They’re all, like, plaster casts of amazing things from around the world,’ said Brooke. ‘These columns are from Rome. They’re, like, thousands of years old, I think.’

They were in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was right next door to the Natural History Museum across a side road. In the centre of the museum was a large courtyard that the local kids were using as an area to grow food. Some of them had been busy working away as Maxie and the others had come in off the street. But Brooke had hurried past them and on through to here, her favourite part of the museum, the cast court.

‘Isn’t it cool?’ she said, flinging her arms wide and spinning on the spot like a little girl. ‘This is all just here, and we can come and muck about whenever we want. This is all ours now!’

‘Boring,’ said Lewis. ‘Is just old shit.’

‘No,’ said Maxie. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She didn’t say anything more, didn’t want the others to tease her, but what she thought was that people were extraordinary creatures. To build a place like this, and fill it with these amazing objects. To make those objects. The work that had gone into it. She fought back tears. Was this the end of civilization? Would humankind ever be able to make anything as awesome as this again? How many centuries would it take before they could relearn these skills? For now they’d have to live in the ruins of the old world, build mud huts when everything else crumbled and fell down, use burning wood to heat themselves, dress in the cast-offs of the dead, stare in wonder at stuff like this.

In a way the whole world had become a museum.

Too much to take in.

‘Come on,’ said Lewis. ‘This is stale. I thought we was going shopping.’

‘Yeah,’ said Brooke, ‘better push on before it gets dark.’

And the spell was broken.