Walking Mountain

by Lennon, Joan;

  They stopped breathing.

  Did the Tower sway? Did the entire structure quiver, right down to its base?

  Would faith be enough?

  There was a long, long moment . . .

  . . . and the Tower didn’t fall.

  The crowd let out a sigh, and the servant scuttled back down to the safety of the ground. The veiled lady modestly accepted the applause of her well-dressed neighbours for her piety. Father Impeccable reappeared on the platform to begin the auction for the next stone.

  ‘Not happy, the stones aren’t happy,’ wailed Rose. ‘The tower is wrong – it’s going to fall! The whole thing is going to fall—’

  ‘Rose! Don’t!’ said Singay, her voice sharp with fear.

  ‘Shh,’ whispered Pema anxiously, but it was too late. In his distress, Rose’s voice had been too loud, too clear.

  Heads turned.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Did you hear that boy? Did you hear what he said?’

  ‘Blasphemy!’

  The crowd drew back in horror, leaving a circle of clear space around the bench where Pema, Singay and Rose crouched. Whispers rippled out, like the hissing of threatened snakes.

  ‘Blasphemy . . . blasphemy . . .’

  At the same moment, at the edge of the crowd, a squad of Enforcers had appeared, pushing forward towards the Tower. Using their sticks, they prodded and shoved past people too distracted and too tightly crammed together to easily make way. The press of bodies bulged outwards around them.

  It was unclear whether it was this, or the smaller displacement of people from around Rose, but the packed crowd moved closer to the foot of the precarious Tower. And closer still. Until someone jostled someone else, and the person behind them was shoved sharply backwards and bumped into the base of the structure.

  There was a heart-stopping moment, and then Singay screamed, ‘LOOK OUT! IT’S GOING TO FALL!’

  Stone blocks shifted and groaned, grating against each other, and the whole mad structure began to tremble and tilt, further and further over the sea of trapped bodies below. The people stood, frozen, but even if they had found the will to move, it would have been impossible to run.

  They were going to be crushed – there was no escape. Any second now the stones would be crashing towards the ground. It had already begun—

  And Rose stood up.

  He was small and odd-looking and scruffy, a childlike figure standing on a bench, and yet he possessed an undeniable power to rival Father Impeccable’s hypnotic charisma. Paying no attention to the sea of faces around him, the little Driver raised his hands.

  The stones of the Tower, already committed to the embrace of gravity, slowed. They still fell, but now their descent was in slow motion. They swirled gently around each other, and settled their crushing weight onto the ground as delicately as autumn leaves. The crowd was frozen. Mesmerised. It was bizarre, beautiful, unbelievable . . .

  When it was over, the stones of the Tower of Faith lay on the ground. No one had been killed. No one had been injured. And Rose, his eyes closed and his skin the ghastly colour of something dead, had collapsed.

  ‘It’s them!’ shrieked the youngest Enforcer. ‘The demons! They destroyed the Tower of Faith! They destroyed it!’

  Father Impeccable stood on the platform, alone and unmoving. His dark eyes were focused on the Driver, and there was a look of suppressed excitement on his suddenly calculating face.

  The crowd parted abruptly to let the Enforcers through. ‘Demons! Get the demons!’

  The final rush seemed to take the three fiends completely by surprise. Heavy black bags were thrown over their heads (everyone knows you shouldn’t look a demon in the eye), their hands were tied and, as the crowd bayed and cheered, they were dragged away to Cliffton Prison.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Locked Up

  ‘Got some company for you, Noksam. A bevy of demons, but don’t worry. They’re not full-grown, and this one’s sick.’

  It had been a nightmare. They’d been pushed along with the bags over their heads, not able to see where they were going, shoved and jostled and yelled at.

  ‘You’re for the rope, you are!’

  ‘We know what to do with demons in our town.’

  ‘Hang ’em now, I say. Why wait?’

  ‘No, no, we’ll do it by the book. Make ’em suffer.’

  And all the while neither Pema nor Singay knew what state Rose was in. Somebody must have carried him from the Square – he couldn’t have made it otherwise.

  Inside the prison there was more shoving, then the sound of a metal door clanging shut behind them and then someone was pulling the horrible bags off them and fumbling with the ropes tying their hands.

  ‘Demons indeed!’ the stranger was tutting crossly. ‘Really, this town . . . There you are. Are you all right? I’m Noksam.’

  They were in a cell. Everywhere they looked was cold stone, from the floor to the walls and the stone bench down one side. There was a tiny barred window high up, and hardly room to move. The cell was not designed to house four.

  ‘Oh dear, the little one really doesn’t look well, does he. Here, put him on the bench. Did they hurt him, the great bullies?’

  ‘No,’ said Pema. ‘Not exactly. He’s sick. Could you, er, excuse us a moment? We, um, we have to give him some medicine.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ And their cellmate politely turned his back to give them what privacy he could.

  Rose looked tiny, laid out on the thin prison blanket, but his eyes were open and he managed the ghost of a smile as they bent over him.

  ‘The bag,’ he whispered. ‘It’s in my pocket.’

  But when Pema found the irradiant sack and drew it out, he thought he must have made a mistake. ‘This can’t be it – it’s so light!’ He looked over at Singay in horror.

  The little Driver didn’t say anything. He was shaking as he took the bag from Pema and thrust his hand inside. They watched intently – they could see it doing him good, starting to bring his colour back – but then, far too soon, Rose brought his hand out again and hid the bag away.

  ‘Wait – you need more,’ Singay protested, but he shook his head.

  ‘That’s all I can spare,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll rest now, I think. I can’t . . .’ His words died away as his eyes closed.

  Singay tucked the blanket round him and then just stood there, feeling helpless.

  Questions pounded in Pema’s mind. What’s going to happen to him? How can he possibly be controlling the Mountain in the state he’s in? What’s happening back at home? And, louder than all the rest, Are they really going to hang us? Are they? ARE THEY?

  ‘Please, sit! I’m sure it’s been a difficult day.’ Noksam squeezed over to make room for them at the other end of the bench. It was strange having their cellmate acting like a solicitous host, but it was comforting too.

  ‘We’re sorry to be crowding you like this,’ said Pema.

  ‘Not at all, not at all!’ said the man. Now that they looked at him properly they saw he was meagre and middle-aged, with a constantly flickering, anxious smile. ‘The prison’s always full to bursting these days. Besides, I won’t be here all that much longer.’

  ‘Oh, are you being released?’ asked Singay, thinking that perhaps this was the cell for people due to be let out.

  ‘Released? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. I’m pencilled in to be hanged early next week.’

  ‘Pencilled in . . . what?’

  ‘Well, they don’t want to say a definite date in case it doesn’t come off. It’s this summer flu that’s going around. Quite nasty. You want to stay clear of it if you can. Anyway, the hangman’s been taken bad with it, and hasn’t been able to leave his bed, but he sent word he hoped to be up and about by the middle of next week at the latest. Personally, I think you can’t be too careful with these things. Try to get up too soon and you find yourself flat on your back for twice as long again afterwards. I think he should st
ay home for a while longer, I really do. But, of course, I would say that.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘But enough about me. Please, do tell me, what did you do? To end up here, I mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pema.

  ‘They think we’re demons,’ said Singay. ‘But we’re not.’ She’d meant to sound outraged, but the words came out as more of a wail.

  ‘Of course you aren’t,’ Noksam tutted sympathetically. ‘Utter nonsense!’

  ‘And you,’ said Pema, since this was apparently jail etiquette, ‘what did you do?’

  The man looked modest.

  ‘Oh, I’m nothing so exciting as a demon! I’m just a thief. Well, at least, that’s what I’m going to be hanged as. In actual fact, I’m an accountant. Was an accountant. I looked after my employer’s money. Adding up and subtracting numbers all day, every day – that was me!’

  ‘What did you steal?’ asked Singay. He seemed such an unlikely criminal.

  ‘Oh, money,’ said Noksam. ‘Stick with what you know, I always say. Twenty-three years of blameless bookkeeping, and then snap! One Monday morning, not long before lunch, I just started cooking the books, as they say in thieving circles. Not that I know any other thieves, not to speak to. I got caught before I could meet any.’ He shrugged apologetically.

  ‘Why do you think it happened?’ asked Pema. ‘The “snap”, I mean?’

  ‘I’ve had time to give that quite some thought,’ said Noksam, ‘and in the end, I’ve decided the oil’s to blame.’

  ‘The oil?’

  ‘Yes. You see, in the beginning my employer earned roughly 2.67 times as much as he paid me, and I never considered for a moment that there was any unfairness in the arrangement. He manufactured household goods, and I did the books. But when he moved into oil-engine gizmos, suddenly he was earning ten, then fifteen times as much as me. He was a good man – he gave me a raise – but it didn’t touch the percentages. And so, as I say, snap! It was definitely the oil that did it for me. That, and religion.’

  ‘You started to feel guilty?’ asked Singay.

  ‘No,’ the man said, sounding faintly surprised. ‘Not that I’ve noticed. No, it was my employer’s wife. She gave a lot of money away to that Father Impeccable – you know, the one who’s auctioning off chunks of that Tower to the rich folks? Well, maybe she wanted to prove her faith or maybe she just wanted to swank a little, but it was a big enough sum that my employer had to come looking for a place to take it from and, well, it wasn’t exactly there anymore.’

  ‘I can’t believe they’re going to hang you just for taking money!’

  ‘Oh, they hang you for most things in this town.’

  Singay looked at Pema, her eyes wide.

  ‘They wouldn’t do that to us,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m sure they’re just trying to scare us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ said Noksam cheerfully.

  There was a pause, then the accountant-thief said, ‘I’ll tell you something for nothing, though. Speaking as a thief, you understand. That Father Impeccable has himself a nice little earner there, with that Tower of his.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Elegant and ingenious, like all the best scams. High risk, of course, but you have to expect that. That’s a lot of money they’re giving him. And extremely simple accounting required!’

  ‘It’s a con?’ gasped Pema and Singay.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Noksam. ‘But it’s got a definite time limit. Mark my words, one of these days that thing is going to fall down, and somebody is going to get hurt!’

  Pema and Singay looked at Rose. He hadn’t moved.

  The cell fell silent. Prison time passed – slow and inexorable.

  Singay heaved a weary sigh and, to Pema’s great surprise, leaned her head on his shoulder. He peered at her, going slightly cross-eyed.

  ‘Singay? What’s wrong?’ It was a stupid question. We’re in jail, accused of being demons, and we’re going to be hanged. What could possibly NOT be wrong?

  But it was Rose she was thinking about.

  ‘Look at him,’ she murmured. ‘Look at what we’ve done to him. He’s dying.’

  Pema tried to comfort her. ‘We were trying to help him. He’d no chance of getting home if he’d just stayed inside the Mountain.’

  ‘I guess. But at least he would have been safe. Safe, and comfortable and happy, with his singing stones and his projects and the desert people thinking he was a god. We dragged him away from it all. Was it just because I thought I deserved an adventure?’ She sighed sadly. ‘Do you think he wishes he never met us?’

  ‘Not once.’ It was Rose’s voice, no more than the thread of a whisper.

  Pema felt Singay stiffen beside him and then relax. Greatly daring, he took her hand. She didn’t pull away. Out in the town, the man they called Father Impeccable was busy tying up loose ends. He’d sold the blocks of stone from the ruined Tower back to the builder who’d supplied them in the first place. For a profit.

  ‘I know you’ll be marketing them as relics before the week is out,’ he said when the builder tried to haggle.

  His own financial affairs were always in readiness for a speedy exit. One of his first investments, when the Tower money had started to come in, was to buy a ticket south on one of those oil-fired speedboats. He carried that ticket in his pocket, always. But the next departure wasn’t until morning, which meant he had time for one more thing . . .

  He found Madam Phophor still in the Square amongst a crowd of twittering ladies. He separated her out from them with the skill of a champion shup dugg. As they stood together, every eye was fixed on them, hungry with curiosity and envy. Madam Phophor patted her meticulous, cauliflower-like hair and tried not to smirk.

  Father Impeccable’s voice was deep, intimate, low.

  ‘My dear, there’s something I want you to do for me.’His eyes held hers, telling her what she wanted to hear – that she was special, she was special to him, so much more than those others.

  ‘Anything, Father, you know that,’ she breathed. ‘You just have to ask.’

  Of course, his eyes said. I know.

  ‘Wait till it gets dark, and then, this is what I want – I need – you to do for me.’

  He whispered into her ear for a while, and then handed her a bag that clinked agreeably along with a small object. One last look from his mesmerising eyes, and he was gone.

  Madame Phophor’s heart beat fast. The demons weren’t demons . . . but she was to pretend they were? These were strange things to have asked of her – very, well, odd. But for Father Impeccable, she would do anything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  What Demons Do

  ‘Evening, all!’

  The prisoners blinked, rubbing their eyes in the sudden glare from the jailer’s lantern. His voice was too loud in the cramped space. Pema’s brain felt cold and sluggish and Singay had a whimper stuck in her throat.

  ‘Evening, Jopi,’ said Noksam politely. ‘Thanks for bringing the gruel. And how has your day been?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked,’ said Jopi the jailer, setting the food down on the floor and leaning comfortably against the cell door. ‘The ferliest thing happened. I’ve just had a visitor – an extremely generous visitor – who, for reasons not mentioned to me, wished to remain anonymous. Now, to be honest, having a visitor of any sort is a pretty unusual event for me. It’s a lonely job, being a jailer. If it weren’t for the prisoners, like your good selves, I don’t think I’d have the chance to pass the time of day with a living soul from shift start to shift end, and that’s a fact.’ He shook his head sadly.

  ‘But you had a visitor today,’ Noksam reminded him.

  ‘That’s right. She – oops, well, now you know it was a lady, but I’d be grateful if you’d all forget it as soon as possible. This visitor – who said she was representing someone else, who also wished to remain anonymous – made the following suggestion to me, backed up with a satisfyingly persuasive sack of coins, but that’s just
between you and me, which was . . .’ They could see him working his way back through the sentence to find out where he was meant to be going, and then, with a happy smile, starting up again with, ‘That said person did not think that justice was being served, killing young people and children generally, and you three young people and children specifically. Even if you are demons. Which she didn’t seem to have entirely made up her mind about. Nevertheless, she thought that the best thing would be for you to vanish, the way demons do. Disappear. Walk through walls, pass through locked doors. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ exclaimed Singay. ‘We can’t do anything like that. We’re not demons at all.’

  ‘Ah, now that’s the clever bit. Apparently, as long as people think you’re demons, which it would seem that people do, then they’ll believe you can. The lady suggested I let you out and then just lock the door of the cell behind you, go and sit in my guardroom and deny all knowledge. As neat a jailbreak as you could ask for, and none of this having to knock your jailer over the head or tie him up in any uncomfortable sort of fashion whatsoever, which is more usual in such a scenario.’

  ‘A jailbreak?’ exclaimed Pema.

  ‘A jailbreak,’ said Jopi. He beamed round at them, but the smile faded as he turned to the accountant-thief. ‘But not you, Noksam, I’m afraid. There’s nobody thinks you’re a demon.’

  Noksam gave a resigned smile. ‘And no more I am, Jopi. No more I am.’

  ‘No – wait – we can’t just leave you here!’ cried Singay. Turning to the jailer, she said, ‘Don’t you realise he’s pencilled in to be hanged this week?’