The bird jumped back apace at this sudden, yelling, dashing creature, two black braids whipping. Released for a split second, Myrtle flung herself right into Comfrey’s arms. The hawk hissed, beak wide, showing his hot red tongue, and took to the air. Comfrey held the trembling hare close as she watched the flaming hawk wheel over them on deep orange wings, then swoop low down the far side of the hill. Sparks flitted in his wake. The bird alighted on the top of a leaning cart. A loom-ladder folded up one side of the cart and a woman with big cone-shaped hair, wearing a yellow dress that was bright against redwood-dark skin, stirred a pot over a fire beside it. Delight lit in Comfrey’s stomach. She looked down at Myrtle, whose face was buried under the folds of her blue cape. The leveret’s narrow chest rose and fell in great shudders of panic.
“Shh, it’s okay, you’re safe now,” said Comfrey instinctively, stroking the leveret’s delicate long ears, surprising herself with the assuredness in her voice. She looked down to examine the hare’s back, where the hawk’s big talons had grasped.
The woman looked up from her fire and pot of soup at the sound of the hawk landing. She set the soup ladle down with a clatter. Comfrey jolted back a few paces. Only now did she realize fully what she and Myrtle had done. They had left the Country altogether. This was the far side of the ridge-top. They were in the land of Olima. Panic jolted through her, quick as flame, and she turned to run.
“Not so fast, darling,” the woman said. It wasn’t a yell, but her voice somehow carried over the distance from downhill, strong and clear as an echo in a cave, with that rasp of smoke in it.
“We didn’t mean to come this far. Well, that is, in a certain sense we did, but—” Comfrey stuttered, stumbling backwards. After all, the flaming hawk had tried to kill Myrtle. What might these women try to do with her? How naïve she had been to think they might become her friends! “But really, it’s no matter, we should be getting home now.”
The woman was walking uphill towards them now, the hawk on her shoulder, flaming, but somehow not singeing her coiled hair.
“Home? You can’t go back Home now, child. You have crossed into the land of Olima. Look behind you,” she said, mellifluous, matter-of-fact, pointing. The hawk ruffled his feathers, and sparks flew.
Myrtle poked her head out of the cape, sniffed the air, whimpered, and ducked inside again. Comfrey turned. Down the hill towards the Country, a gathering of tall, golden-furred Coyote-men lined the marsh and the willow valley that marked the fault line and the boundary between worlds. They had long, fierce human faces that shifted frighteningly between laughter and menace, and wore the lean, close-fitting garb of warriors, ragged and black. Bone knives of various sizes bristled at their belts.
Their teeth were bared. One began to howl.
Sebastian gaped at the sight of the Fiddleback as Tin pulled back the ragged rugs, and Mallow bounded all around its shining legs, sniffing.
“How could you have kept this a secret? It’s incredible!” Seb exclaimed. He ran his hands over the round leather seat, the little gold wheels, the colourful window.
“Just wait,” Tin said, opening the door and starting to clamber in.
“Holy grasslands!” came Mallow’s voice from near the engine. “You’d better come and look!”
Both boys crouched down at once and Tin held up his lantern. The light made long shadows of the gleaming legs.
“What is it, Mallow? What—?” But then Tin saw what Mallow saw and he almost dropped the lantern. Woven under and over the metal spokes that comprised the Fiddleback’s underbelly was a thick web made entirely of golden thread. The bobbin, which only a few hours earlier had been wound with a little bit of cotton thread, was now thick with a spool of golden silk. The grappling hook hung from it, securely bound. Huddled up against the bobbin was a large fiddleback spider who seemed to have set up her house there. Attached to her back was an egg sac nearly as big as she was, woven of the same fine golden threads. Tin sat back on his heels, flushed and too astonished even to smile. Mallow leaned closer to the spider. She perched expectantly, watching them all.
“Most extraordinary, Mr No Plan,” murmured the leveret. “It seems you’ve won the loyalty of a venomous mother spider. And not just any spider, but a spider who can spin silk into gold. A most ancient undertaking…”
Despite the awe in his voice, Mallow looked solemn. He sniffed at the spider and her egg bundle, his whiskers almost touching her.
“But – how is that possible?” Seb burst out. “We’ve been trying to turn scraps into stargold for the Brothers our whole lives! And all along spiders have been able to do it?”
“But they can’t!” interjected Tin. “I saw a fiddleback in Brother Christoff ’s closet, maybe this one, and her web wasn’t gold—”
“Hush!” snapped Mallow. “We’re talking.”
Tin and Seb looked at each other.
“What, in your minds, like telepathy?” said Tin.
“No, and yes. Too complicated to explain. And spiders are especially difficult to understand, I can hardly make sense of any of it.” Mallow flicked his ears, exasperated, and turned away from the bobbin and the fiddleback, towards the boys. “Listen, as far as I can make out, the spider is hitching a ride with you. She’s hoping that in exchange for this very fine spool of unbreakable gold silk, you will ferry her and her little children safely out of the City Walls. Those abominable lamps and their electric currents prevent her going on her own.” Mallow explained all of this in quick tones, with surprise and new-found respect for Tin in his voice.
“At your service, Madam,” Tin said after a stunned silence. He bowed low and flourished an imaginary hat. Seb laughed.
“This is no joke, young sirs,” chided the hare. “This is a very serious task, a high honour if truth be told. Spiders are very secretive and very, very old. As old as the beginning of the world. Let’s not completely botch it, please.”
“I know,” said Tin. “Bowing is what one does before a queen or a lady, right? Well, this is the Queen Fiddleback.” He smiled at Seb, his voice light, but inside he felt a flood of elation.
The sound of boots on packed earth thundered suddenly in the tunnels; it came from somewhere near the kitchen cellars.
“In, in!” exclaimed Mallow, raising himself up on his hind legs. The boys scrambled inside, almost crushing the hare, who squirmed indignantly until he was perched, stiff, on Tin’s lap.
“Okay, here goes nothing,” muttered Tin. But for a moment the Fiddleback didn’t move. His stomach dropped. What if it didn’t work this time, with all of them inside it? He pushed his pale curls out of his eyes, set his hands on the silver wheel, and deftly managed several slim knobs at once with his fingers. Suddenly the Fiddleback surged to life, its every surface bright with gold. In fact it surged to life much more powerfully than it had before, lurching from its corner and wheeling rapidly towards the low, arched doorway, and upsetting quite a bit of dust in the process.
Seb almost shouted with surprise. “What on earth…!” he gasped over the sound of the wheels. The little lantern dangling over the front flickered, casting a dizzying light.
“Quite extraordinary,” Mallow gasped from Tin’s lap, trying to keep his balance.
The footsteps got louder behind them.
“They’re in it!” came Brother Warren’s voice. “Somebody give orders to cover all the trapdoors, fast!” Footsteps retreated at a sprint.
“They’ll have all the doors blocked,” Seb groaned. “There’s no way out! Where will we go?”
“Straight for the walls! It’s now or never with that silk!” said Mallow urgently.
“What if the silk can’t hold us?” said Seb over the jostling and veering of the Fiddleback, its eight legs flexing and retracting as Tin whipped it round corners.
“It will,” said Tin firmly, looking ahead into all that dark.
“The courtyard, that’s the nearest shot!” said Seb, closing his eyes briefly to visualize the maps he had made of the Clois
ter’s underground. They were in his knapsack now, but the space inside the Fiddleback was too cramped to wrestle them out. He pointed left where the tunnels forked.
Tin nodded, turned, skidding slightly on the light gold wheels. A scuffle came from behind them, closer than they realized, as Brother Warren rounded the same corner on swift feet.
“Get out of that thing now, Martin Hyde! Give it over, and we can pretend none of this happened!” he yelled, gulping air between breaths. His brown habit was hiked up over his knees. Seb looked back, giving a mock wave. Tin snickered.
The tunnel narrowed dramatically as it neared the surface and became a lean flight of stairs leading to a grate. The boys and the leveret threw themselves out of the Fiddleback. They used the top of the Fiddleback to press upward and lift the grate, then folded the legs in and shoved the whole thing through, careful not to harm the little spider and her egg sac tucked against the bobbin. She huddled, stoic and brave, in her web, the golden bundle cradled there amidst the threads. Behind them, Brother Warren was mounting the stairs, slowing from a run to a walk, pale with exhaustion. The boys slammed the grate down just as Brother Warren reached his hand up to hoist himself through, crushing several fingers. They righted the Fiddleback and scrambled back in as Brother Warren bellowed, cursing with pain.
By now the moon had set, and the sky, though cloudy, was dry again. Rainwater pooled among the cobblestones, and for a moment Tin remembered the sight of Mallow dropping from those owl talons only a few hours earlier. In those hours the world had grown so much larger around him that they may as well have been months or even years.
“Faster, faster!” cried Seb, pointing frantically at the southern door that opened onto the courtyard from the library, where four Brothers in tall rainboots came running, hiking up their habits. Tin giggled, despite the seriousness of the situation, at the sight of all their pale hairy knees pumping away under those stately robes. Behind them Brother Warren groaned in pain as he pushed open the grate.
“This is no time for laughter!” said Mallow, nipping at Tin’s hands. “Honestly, is this your idea of fun?”
Smiling ruefully at the leveret, Tin reached his hand carefully through the hole in the bottom of the seat above the bobbin, wary of the spider, to grab the grappling hook. The silk was very sticky and taut as it unspooled in his hands, covering them in gold dust. The wheels skittered and bounced against the cobbles, but the Fiddleback whisked ahead, towards the far side of the courtyard. The long row of classrooms flanking the courtyard were backed by a high stone wall, smooth with age, and Tin pointed the Fiddleback straight towards it.
“Turn, turn, quickly!” exclaimed Mallow in his ear, seeing a tall, lanky Brother closing in on their right.
Tin braked and swerved, moving the supple Fiddleback like a darting animal, then swerved again and made straight for the wall behind the classrooms.
“I’ve never tried this, but it’s all in place. I’m gonna throw the hook up, far as I can, and hope it holds to something. Then I’ll wind this lever here, and we’ll hoist up. But we’ll all be upside down, spider style, so hold on to something!”
A gunshot rang out then, not aimed at them but up towards the sky.
“They’re using the guns on us!” gasped Seb. “I thought bullets could only be used against criminals!”
Tin saw Father Ralstein standing just inside the door frame of the classrooms, right where they were heading, holding a smoking pistol.
“I’ll shoot the legs off that thing, Martin Hyde, if you don’t hand it over right now!” His voice boomed and cracked out into the dark courtyard, impossibly loud.
“I don’t believe you! I know what you want!” yelled Tin, veering right at the last minute, swallowing his fear at the sound of that voice and the gun, startling Father Ralstein back just long enough. Tin leaned forward and threw the hook out of the front of the Fiddleback’s carriage and up as far as he could, onto the steep roof of the classroom building. It hitched against the peak, and the silk stuck faster than any glue to the stone shingles. Tin looked wide-eyed at Mallow, who was in a stiff panic at this prolonged chase.
“Up, up!” yelled Seb, catching sight of Father Ralstein levelling the gun. With a gulp, Tin began to wheel them up. The Fiddleback skidded and flipped abruptly. Tin grabbed hold of Mallow just before the hare fell to the ceiling.
Outside they could see six or seven Brothers just reaching the place they’d left a second before, staring up with awe at the golden Fiddleback, which was upside down and shimmying skywards on a line of impossibly strong golden silk. Father Ralstein lowered his gun in pure shock.
The Fiddleback reached the first roof with a clatter. Tin leaped out, unhitched the hook from the slate tiles, and threw it again, aiming for the main Cloister wall above the classroom roof. But the wall was higher than he had anticipated, and the silk slackened as the hook fell back down again onto the roof where they perched. Tin’s stomach fell with it. The air was cold and damp, the sky still dark. The sharply pointed crown of one of the Star-Breakers loomed to their left. A thin line of steam seeped from it into the sky. Tin looked at Seb.
“It’s too far,” he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
Mallow let out a high-pitched sigh. He laid his ears back along his body.
“Okay, look, maybe we can take it bit by bit, hitch the hook halfway up the wall in a cleft in the stone, climb…” reasoned Seb.
Tin pulled furiously at a curl by his temple, thinking.
Mallow sighed again, more audibly, muttering something about “No Plan.”
Down below, the Brothers had grown oddly quiet as they stared up at the spindly silhouette of the Fiddleback where it sat poised, spider-legged, on top of the classroom wing. Father Ralstein had ordered the Brothers to hold their fire. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally kill Tin with a stray bullet, or damage his creation. The boy really had made stargold. Not just the golden Fiddleback, but the golden thread as well. They needed the boy and his Fiddleback unharmed. With a sharp gesture he called the Brothers to him. Then all together they filed back into the Cloister.
“Where are they going?” said Seb. “Are they giving up?”
Tin peered over the side of the roof, down into the dark courtyard. He felt a chill.
“It must be a trick,” he said, straightening up again, his feet clinging to the sloped roof.
Mallow sat up suddenly, ears perked, as if he had caught the sound of danger on the wind. The boys looked around, but heard nothing. A pale line of blue was beginning to rim the eastern sky, beyond the ever-present blaze of the lanterns along the Wall.
Suddenly, a barn owl swooped towards them, her flight silent as the cold, damp dawn, making straight for the Fiddleback. Mallow leaped behind Tin’s knees as the bird landed. Quivering, he peeked round at the owl. But the leveret understood as he watched the white heart of her face, the glitter of her black eyes, that she wasn’t there for him. She hadn’t eaten him the first time, he reasoned, so why would she now? Something larger was clearly at stake – owls cooperating with hares, spiders with boys. Mallow sighed for a third time.
“Give her the silk,” he said to Tin, his voice trembling but certain.
“Why am I not surprised by this?” Tin said quietly. “Yesterday, I would never have believed it…”
He kept one protective hand on the hare’s head as he scooped up the fallen hook and long rope of silk with the other, then held it out for the owl. She veered down fast, her crescent talons outstretched. Tin, watching the silent beauty of her wings, her speckled breast, her big dark eyes, didn’t shy away. She plucked the golden silk from his hands, flew it up to the top of the wall, hitched it there in a cleft between stones, and perched at the edge, her caramel-brown wings folded.
Whooping with excitement, Tin and Seb clambered back into the Fiddleback, and Mallow followed. Then Tin began to reel them skywards. In a moment, they crested the top of the Cloister wall and balanced there, the wall barely wider than t
he Fiddleback’s eight legs. Through the open front window Mallow and the owl regarded each other, Mallow secure on Tin’s lap. Tin lifted up a hand to offer thanks. The owl blinked her solemn black eyes once, then took to the air in total quiet. Mallow went limp with relief on Tin’s lap, and the boy put his hand on the leveret’s ears, stroking them. Normally proud, Mallow let Tin keep his warm hand there. It reminded him of his sister, or sitting with the Greentwins by the fire when the fog came in.
“Tin, look,” said Seb. He pointed a hand out towards the City, his palm sweaty from the chase. “We’re about to go out there, into the real City.”
“Not a place I want to stay a second longer than I have to,” hissed Mallow, sniffing at the air beyond the Cloister walls.
Tin smiled, feeling almost dizzy with wonder at the sight of it. The City rose and fell below them and into the distance: hills covered in cement streets; old ornate houses and big apartment complexes, dense and steep and worn at the edges; the ocean, dark blue-black at this hour, far away to the east.
“We’re really doing it,” breathed Tin. He tried not to look at the Wall and its blazing lights. Even his metal and cloth Fiddleback would not survive a journey past those deadly electric lamps, let alone the real spider who hid in its bobbin. He reeled the silk in tight, then carefully manoeuvred the Fiddleback down the outside of the Cloister. It flipped, and they were upside down again. He let the silk out slowly, bit by bit, and they descended.
“Never thought I’d be hanging upside down from the outer wall of the Cloister,” said Seb, his eyes bright. “Well, except maybe as some sort of punishment.”
Tin laughed. “I can’t believe the silk holds, and sticks!” he said, hands focused and precise on the bobbin lever. They lowered down some thirty metres, more or less exactly the length of the spider silk, as if the little fiddleback now perched in the bobbin had scuttled up the whole wall, measuring with her immaculate legs.
“Well, that was lucky,” snorted Mallow. “Lucky you didn’t kill me by accident.”
The Wild Folk Page 7
