A Whisper of Horses

by Zillah Bethell

  “Good boy. That’s a good boy, that is.”

  “Okay. What now?” I asked.

  “Now we start climbing.”

  Tab pointed a little farther along to where the bridge started to lift itself away from the earth. The rickety fencing we’d just squeezed through gave way to a more solid, hefty-looking construction—part of the underside itself. A never-ending mishmash of rods and girders, zigzagging and double-crossing, that supported and stretched all the way across to the other side.

  “Hold on.” I shook my head. “You expect us to climb all the way over to Whales from here?”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s miles.”

  “Well, I think you’ll find that it’s not technically miles. More likely a mile, praps a mile and a bit. So not even two miles, which makes it not technically miles.”

  “We’ll get exhausted.”

  “Nah, we won’t. We can do it. It’ll be easy.”

  “Easy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about Mouse?”

  “What about him?”

  “He can’t climb.”

  “I’ve already thought of that.” Tab tapped the side of his head with his finger to demonstrate just how clever he was.

  “Oh yes?”

  He nodded before lowering the grubby rucksack from his back. He opened it up and pulled out some of the sandwiches and cakes that the Wessexes had given us only the day before. Unraveling some of the brown paper the food had been wrapped in, he fished out a large cheese roll and started stuffing it into his mouth.

  “Er … What are you doing?”

  “Wha duh I loo li ahm doon? Ahm eehen.” I could barely understand what he was saying through his overpacked gob. “Ere.” He tossed over an unopened packet. “Tuh in.”

  I caught it and knew instantly that it was a slice of the rather heavy sponge cake that Molly had baked only the other morning.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Tab swallowed down his current mouthful. “You probly can’t get any more in your rucksack, can yer? So I’ll have to dump the rest for the rats.” He got out some more food and, after feeding a handful of some tasty treat to Mouse, threw it over to the wriggling nest in the corner. His hand dived into his bag a few times and he flung the remaining parcels of food in the same direction.

  “What are you doing? We might need that food.”

  Tab gave his head a shake. “I need Mouse more.” He bent over and pulled the top of the rucksack open. “C’mon, boy. Get in.” Obligingly, Mouse crawled into the bag, turning himself around so that his head was sticking out of the top. Tab lifted the rucksack up, straightened the straps and pulled it onto his back. Mouse peered around Tab’s head at me, his tongue lolling out of his panting face like some sort of puppet. We began to climb.

  * * *

  At first, it was easy going. The beams and girders were close together and simple to get hold of. Tab was ahead of me with Mouse jutting his little head out of the rucksack, and I followed close behind. We kept to the edge of the bridge where we could see what we were doing. But as we made our way slowly across, the distance between us and the ground increased. Soon the ground disappeared altogether and hundreds of feet below us was a muddy sludge not unlike the Tems in Lahn Dan. The sun sparkled across its shiny gray and pitted surface.

  The wind was making things difficult too. Now and then it would whip angrily at us like that nasty troll trying to stop the goats from crossing his bridge in that silly old story Mama used to tell me. When it did, you had to grip tightly on to the metal and wait for it to stop. Sometimes it caught you out, blowing itself up from nowhere, and it was a struggle to stop yourself flipping away backwards.

  We forced ourselves slowly over the girders and beams, pulling our bodies through the tight squeezes where they crisscrossed, stepping carefully over the wild open spaces beneath our feet. After an hour or so, my arms and legs were aching like fiddlesticks, and we weren’t even halfway there.

  “This is tiring,” I cried over the blustering wind to Tab.

  “What?”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Yeah.” He puffled across at me. “It is a bit harder work than I thought it was going to be.” He repositioned Mouse on his back. “But we can’t stop. Gotta keep going. Can’t just lie down and have a rest up here. Too far to fall into bed.”

  We forced ourselves on, and about ten minutes later, Tab put his finger to his lips again and pointed upwards.

  “Minister’s men,” he mouthed at me. “Listen.”

  It was hard to hear. The wind whistled around the framework and you had to sort of ignore it to hear. But there were two voices. Talking to each other.

  “… problem with those old modpods. Need petrol. Won’t be long now, more’s the pity…”

  Buffeting winds knocked the voices out for a few seconds before slipping down and easing them back in.

  “… goose chase.”

  “Tell me abaht it. Rather be back in me old home with the missus. Lahn Dan might be miserable, but at least there are people around. I mean, look at it out there. Gives me the flamin cobbleywobbles, I tell yer. Sends shivers up me derriere. Nobody to see for bleedin miles and miles.”

  “Dunno what he wants with her anyway, do you?”

  “He don’t tell anyone anything, old Morbid Mordecai. He gives me the creeps an all. Puts the fear of the God Man into yer. Like he could go nuts and just shoot yer at any time over a scrap of bread. He knows why we’re chasing her but he won’t tell us. Rather die than divulge anything to us scum. It’s like that time…”

  I gripped on as the winds flew past us again. I pulled myself tighter to the girders and let the tunneling winds flick my hair all about my face. I suddenly realized that the sweat was flowing from me and that my aching arms weren’t going to be able to cling on for much longer—I wasn’t going to be able to climb much farther. Realizing that was one of the scariest things that could happen to me at that moment. I was trapped under the Minister’s men and hundreds of feet above the mud. I didn’t want to give myself up to the police men, but I also didn’t want to find myself falling to death. No matter how I looked at it, I was stuck. Stuck here with just a couple of choices of how to lose in this game.

  It was then that my body began to choose for me. My arms started to shake and my legs weakened beneath me. The whole landscape turned black and white and my eyes desperately wanted to shut themselves tight. It had never happened to me before but I knew precisely what was going on. I was starting to faint.

  Suddenly, a dull thud came from my left, and back on the Gray Britan side of the bridge, a ball of fire seemed to roll vertically up into the air. The noise smacked me awake again and I gripped on tighter than ever.

  “Blimey! Whassat?” one of the men above called to the other. “Come ere. Gimme those.”

  Tab turned to look at the fireball slowly burning itself out before looking at me with a squinting puzzley expression. I shook my head back at him.

  “There’s someone there,” the first man continued. “Someone down there.”

  “Who is it?” the second man asked. “What they doing?”

  “Dunno.”

  WHOOOMPH.

  Another fireball, much bigger and more ball-shaped than the first, filled the eastern sky and I swear I could even feel its heat from this distance.

  “What’s happening, Stu?! What’s going on?” The second man’s voice had a wobble of panic wrapped around it.

  “Er … I dunno.”

  “What we going to do, Stu?”

  “Er…” The first man seemed to be weighing up the odds. “Come on.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “But the Commander told us not to leave our post.”

  “Yeah, but what if that’s them down there? Do you want to be the one to tell him we stood here while they prannied about in front of us?”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Get yer stuff in the pod
and let’s get down there.”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, Stu.”

  “Oh, shut up and get in, will yer?”

  “Not a good idea at all.”

  The modpod’s engine started and we could hear the squeal of its tires as it pulled away.

  “Weird,” I said.

  “Weird or not,” Tab shouted excitedly, “this is our chance. Quick. Let’s get up there.”

  We rushed ourselves over to the outer edge of the framework and started scrambling up the side. The metal here was more decorative and flimsy and felt as if it might snap as you grabbed it. Bolts appeared to loosen as my weight yanked on them. My hands got scraped and sore pulling myself up over the barrier, but I kicked hard with my legs and got to the top, throwing myself onto the pavement beneath.

  Tab was still climbing when—CHUNG—a bolt ripped out from the metal girder, making one of the more fragile pieces of barrier spring out at one end. He slipped and his hand came away as he toppled to one side. Luckily his other hand shot out and latched on to another part of the bridge.

  “MOUSE!”

  The rucksack on Tab’s back had spun upside down and Mouse was starting to slither slowly out of it.

  “MOUSE!! NO!!!”

  Jumping to my feet, I stretched my arm out through the barrier, standing on tipsy-toe to reach and managed to grab hold of a clump of Mouse’s fur just as he began to sag out of Tab’s bag.

  It was enough. I pulled him through the barrier onto the bridge before he slid out of my fingers for good.

  Tab righted himself and sprang over the last few rungs and onto the pavement in front of me.

  “Thank you, Serendipity. Thank you. I thought I’d nearly lost him.” He wiped a droplet of wetness out of his eye with the back of his wrist. “I thought … I thought he was going to fall.” He sniffed and bent down to stroke the dog—who appeared not to have noticed just how close to death he had come—and kissed the mangy mutt on the top of his scabby little head. “I thought I’d gone and lost you there, boy. It was a close thing.”

  “We don’t have time for this, Tab,” I said. “We’ve got to get moving. Before they come back.”

  He raised himself up. “Yeah. You’re right.” Tears had vanished in that cold bare second. “Let’s get shifting.”

  We set off at a fast run—Tab and I alongside each other, Mouse a smudgen behind. We had already climbed beyond the first H and we quickly passed under the second one, our feet pounding the concrete, our backpacks slapping up and down.

  The bridge seemed to start casting downwards, bringing itself in to land on the opposite side with a gentle—almost unnoticeable—slope. Whales was coming into clearer view with every blister-popping stride.

  “Not far.” I strained towards Tab, who just ignored me and kept on running. “Nearly there.”

  At last the mud beneath us turned into solid earth once again and the bridge was edging closer and closer to the ground, to the place Whales would start. The large steel barrier gave way to a smaller steel barrier and joy was starting to become something real in my chest.

  But then …

  In the distance, a truck came into view, heading towards us on the Emm Four.

  “It’s the others! Mordecai. They’re coming back!”

  Tab and I rushed to the barrier and scrambled over it, Tab scooping Mouse up as he did so. Looking down to the ground beneath, I could see it was at least a fifteen foot fall.

  “We have to jump,” I said. “They’ll see us any second—we have to jump.”

  I launched myself off and fell for what seemed like forever. My legs buckled under me and I rolled over onto my side, cushioning the blow. Beside me Tab hit the ground with a terrible thud, and Mouse gave a squeak.

  “Aaargh.”

  I pulled myself up off the grass and ran over to Tab.

  “You alright?”

  “No.” His face wrinkled in a spasm of pain. “My ankle. I hurt my ankle.”

  He struggled to his feet and we tucked ourselves in closer to the foot of the bridge. We listened hard, and a minute or so later the roar of the truck passed overhead.

  PART THREE

  ACROSS

  chapter 29

  THE WIZARD ON THE HILL

  “IT KEEPS HURTING,” Tab said, his strides nothing more than stumps. “Hurts more than ever.”

  We weeviled our way down from the main road to a small blob of a town—almost a village—at the bottom of a sweeping street. It had taken us hours to get anywhere with Tab’s ankle—every step seemed to make him cry out in pain—and avoiding the major roads slowed our progress even more. But at least we had, for the moment, lost Mordecai and his men. Wherever they were. We had slipped past them and found our way into Whales without them even noticing.

  It felt good.

  “Owwwwww,” Tab moaned for the squillionth time that day.

  “We need to get you help,” I said, Tab’s arm pulling my shoulders down.

  In the center of the village there were people around. Men and women. Children and babies. Most of them seemed to ignore us, or just give us a bleating glance. Some of them, though, probably spotting how differently we were dressed and hearing how differently we talked, rushed up to us and asked us where we were going, where we had come from. Whenever I questioned them about horses, none of them knew what I was talking about.

  “Is there a doctor?” I asked, remembering Tab’s ankle. “My friend finds it hard to walk.”

  “No doctor. Not round here. But … there’s a wizard,” a young boy told me. His accent was roly-poly and hard to follow. “He lives on the hill.” He pointed vaguely along a road and up a slope. “I’ve never seen him, though. We don’t go up there. No one goes up there. Not now. Not for a long time. He lives on the Terrace. You have to be careful…” He left the sentence drooping in the air, and arched his eyebrows knowingly before walking away. Across the road another young man goggled us.

  “Don’t like the sound of tha,” Tab moaned, his leg a minute behind him. “Don’t like the sound of tha at all.”

  * * *

  Up the hill we went, Tab limping all the way, Mouse scratching and yawning every few steps or so. Following the signs to the Terrace, we passed an overgrown children’s park with long-deserted swings and a faded pirate-ship slide. As we turned a corner, a large wooden sign stood to the side of us.

  “What’s it say?”

  “Hold on. ‘Keep Out. Enter at Own … er … Risk. Beware Guard Dogs. This Is a C-C-T-V … er … Zone. Turn Around and Go Away. Now! Signed, The Wizard.’”

  “Don’t seem very friendly.”

  “No.”

  “Specially tha bit about guard dogs. I don’t think guard dogs’ll take too kindly to Mouse. Eat him up, they will.”

  “I can’t see any guard dogs, can you?”

  “Not yet, no. Can’t we just go back? My ankle feels a bit better now. Honestly.”

  I stared at Tab. “If you keep walking on that ankle without getting it sorted, you’re going to find yourself walking on your bottom. We need someone to look at it.”

  Tab huffed.

  “Wait! Look!” I spotted it lying on the ground next to the signpost, smothered in the long thin grass.

  “Wha?”

  I ran over and picked it up. It was weatherworn and scuffed with patches of greeny moss.

  Tab squashed up his face again. “A star?”

  It was large—three or four times bigger than my head—and painted with a fading goldy-yellow. A long thick rod had been stuck on the back of it at some point, before snapping in half, the star falling to the earth.

  “Wha’s tha about?” Tab asked.

  “The Professor told me that in Lahn Dan stars were sometimes used to show a safe place. Somewhere you could hide away from the Minister.”

  “This place don’t seem all tha safe to me.”

  I reached down to the locket and unclicked it, before pulling out the map. I opened it up and jabbed a finger at the pap
er.”

  “There!”

  Tab winced his way over to me and looked at the star on the map.

  “Another star.” He shook his head. “Nice.”

  “Don’t you see?” I couldn’t believe he couldn’t see. “This is that place. We’re here on the map.”

  Suddenly there was a whirring sound followed by the heavy clank of metal upon metal. A large creature stood in front of us. It was at least ten feet tall and had red glows where its eyes should have been. Its skin was shiny and hard and its muscly arms straightened out with bunched-up fists as it took loud earth-shaking steps towards us.

  “It’s a gorilla!” Tab screamed. “Run!”

  But I couldn’t. My legs were sprouted to the spot as the creature stomped its way closer to me.

  And then it spoke.

  “WHO DARES TO TRESPASS ON THE WIZARD’S LAND? I AM THE GUARDIAN OF THE TERRACE AND I INSIST YOU LEAVE NOW. OTHERWISE … I WILL CRUSH YOU.” Its jaw worked mechanically as it spoke and it lifted one of its arms and squeezed its fingers in and out to show us just how crushing its hands were.

  “Serendipity! Come on!!” Tab had limped some yards already, Mouse whimpering alongside him. “Sorry, Mr. Gorilla! Didn’t mean to intrude, like.”

  The creature took another step towards me. “LISTEN TO YOUR FRIEND, LITTLE GIRL. GO BACK DOWN TO YOUR VILLAGE AND NEVER COME BACK HERE AGAIN.”

  “Serendipity!”

  The monster was bearing down on me, its red eyes glowing even brighter than before. But there was something about its voice … Something that made me fix myself where I stood.

  “Serendipity!”

  “No. I’m not going anywhere!” I shouted.

  The creature stopped about five feet from me and bent forwards, its face level with mine.

  “FOOLISH GIRL! THEN I WILL CRUSH YOU AND EAT YOUR INNARDS FOR SUPPER.”

  “No you won’t,” I replied as calmly as I could. “You are a robot. Not a gorilla. You can’t eat me.”

  “BUT I CAN STILL CRUSH YOU.”

  “I don’t think you will, though, will you?”

  The monster went quiet for a few seconds as if weighing it all up.

  “Serendipity! What’re you doing?”