‘He’s the son of that man who was murdered by the Rebels, int he?’
‘I’ve seen him always hanging about the place, gawping and dallying.’
‘A bad eye he has in his head, just look at him!’
‘Mountains protect us!’
Bruno was deposited by the iron gate separating the Elders from Pitch Enders.
‘Bruno Atlas.’
Bruno looked up and into the eyes of the Temperate, who held a small cast-iron key in his hand, threaded through with a chain that hung from his neck. He unlocked the gate, the jangle and clash of its opening echoing in the Discussion Chamber.
‘I permit ye,’ said Temperate Thomas, ‘as the Head of the Elders, to enter and walk amongst us.’
There was no choosing for Bruno, no classroom disagreement, not where the Elders were concerned. He could only take in some air and try to still the shiver in his spine as he stepped through the gate. The Temperate slammed it quick behind him as if more Pitch Enders, uninvited, might try to rush through. He applied key to lock to reinstate the Elder’s safety and sanctity, and then gestured to a short, steep flight of three steps that led to the platform. Temperate Thomas’s manner was as courteous as a shopkeeper to a customer in strained times, and stiff with ritual rightness. Three steps … but three more draining ones Bruno couldn’t imagine taking. Three steps that brought him into the focus of all the townsfolk.
How could it be so difficult to stop your own body shivering? Bruno wondered. Why so difficult to swallow deep, slow breaths, not have a chest filling and emptying so quick? Why so difficult to hide emotion? And what about the medallion against his chest, beneath only flimsy cloth, hidden, but surely not for long – what would happen when it was discovered?
He faced Pitch End.
Miss Hope was on the end of the first row beside the children, her arms folded, head high, and such a look of triumph on her face that Bruno expected her to rise up and declare, ‘I knew all along! I told ye just this morning this would happen!’
In the row just behind were the Widows, ranged like morbid Forgetting Ornaments, unmoving. He looked to each, but no indication came that any was his mother. But wherever Bruno rested his gaze the reception was unsettled: townsfolk turned away, shielding their eyes and whimpering as though he could smite them by a mere look. Those whispers swelled into hissing syllables, the din too much to carry a single, unbroken sentence –
‘—Atlas!’
‘—indecent!’
‘—nasty!’
‘—Rebels!’
Temperate Thomas raised one hand; silence his command and silence the response.
‘Please sit,’ he said, voice low, the hand that didn’t hold his staff willing Bruno backwards into the vacant chair that was the Head of the Elders’ own. He found it soft beneath him, velvet-covered, not hard like the benches of the Hedge School or even the chairs he and his mother suffered at home. And then a behaviour that Bruno didn’t know how to process: Temperate Thomas smiled at him.
‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll get along rightly-well. We’ll get this nasty matter dealt with quick-smart.’
These words had been only for Bruno, but then the Temperate turned back to the Discussion Chamber and cried, ‘Bring out the crate!’
Bruno didn’t need to turn to see or know.
Rotten, cracked, heaved by two Trainee Elders from the wings, on came the crate he’d seen that morning under Gumbly’s arm on The Wintering. Tentacles of brittle seaweed crackled like wire, trailing across the platform, almost tripping the boys up on their journey. Bruno still didn’t look, but imagined a symbol the same as his medallion, and the warning splashed on the crate not to open it.
Then, too overcome with curiosity, Bruno turned to watch.
The Trainee Elders abandoned the crate at the feet of the Temperate, then hurried off.
‘Here,’ said the Temperate, facing his people, voice beginning to throb, one hand around his staff, the other a fist, ‘is the very crystallisation of all things rightly-evil. Everything we must now oppose. What we must seek to eradicate in the coming days. United – we must all stand united!’
The Temperate’s fist loosened, lifted, and the crate itself rose from the stage, guided by his Talent. The crate hovered at his chest, revolving slowly. The Discussion Chamber filled with the tough groan of wood – crooked nails wrenching themselves from the lid of the crate at Temperate’s Thomas’s command. A sharp clatter as they dropped to the stage. The lid opened. From its depths emerged a book. Large as a flagstone, as ancient and careworn in appearance as its container, scarred with rough stitching, both blackened (singed, like something only just saved from fire) and whitened (dashed as though with paint, or fouled by gulls). Bruno found himself inching forwards on the velvet seat, wanting and needing to know more closely.
The Temperate let the crate sink but left the book to hover. It was held shut, Bruno noticed, with a rusted lock and clasp.
‘The Book of Black & White,’ announced the Temperate.
Some shallow ripples of recognition spread through the crowd.
‘Oh yes, my friends,’ said Temperate Thomas. ‘That very book indeed.’
Temperate Thomas distanced himself then from The Book of Black & White and resumed his stride across the stage.
‘Jack Pitch,’ he said, ‘was the first son of our great and rightly-noble founder George Pitch. Our spiritual leader, the man who penned The Wrath from whose pages we’ve been all taking our core values these many turns, worshipping the three elements that nurture our town – sea, mountains and sky – just as he dictated. But let me tell ye of Jack Pitch’s brother, the seventh son called Arthur, who was a very different type. One who didn’t always hold the most … decent of ideas. Arthur Pitch, who fought with his brother, fell out with him, became estranged from him, and who began to form his own ideas on morality. Arthur Pitch produced the book we see here. Evil, monstrous, rightly-diabolical – just a few words I could use to describe this … piece of work. It was from this book that Dr Jonathan Bloom took his most dearly held ideas.’
More than ripples rushed through the Chamber at the mention again of Dr Jonathan Bloom – a swell of horror in the faces of the crowd.
‘Gumbly, one of a pair of remaining Withermen – Withermen, I should say, were men who had an unhealthy obsession with the dead ten turns back –’ (Liar, thought Bruno,) ‘– who had decided on a more decent vocation as a fisherman, had been missing, along with his crew, for six weeks to this day. Ye may not have known this. We do try, as Elders, to keep these small worries from ye, shoulder any heartache alone. But this morning – after much worry and prayer on my part – Gumbly and his crew did at last return to us. I had my suspicions, my fears. And though it gives me no satisfaction to say it – I was rightly-correct. Gumbly was true to his own past as a Witherman. Showed his true colours, as we say. And all of them were black. The crew on the fishing boat were nowhere to be found. He was alone. I think it safe, my fellow Pitch Enders, to assume that the other members of the crew have passed on.’
A single shriek from the crowd – perhaps the wife or mother or sister of one of the dead crew?
‘Murdered!’ decided the Temperate, shifting speculation into fact. ‘And we’ve only one suspect for these cold-blooded and needless murders: Gumbly-the-Witherman. Now, why did Gumbly murder his fellow crew members? Why was he in possession of The Book of Black & White? How did he get his hands on this – what we believed to be long-long-lost – volume of wickedness? Who was he intending to deliver it to in Pitch End?’
The Temperate passed a moment in silence. Bruno thought, has he even read it? Is he going to say what it actually is, what’s in it or what it’s about? Then Bruno realised: the Temperate didn’t need to give the Pitch Enders more, something definite. He just had to command fear, and the townsfolk would obey.
‘The question,’ said Temperate Thomas, turning to face Bruno, ‘of why all this is happening to us is what we’ll be gettin
g an answer to now. Wouldn’t that be true, Master Atlas?’
Bruno said nothing. Or no words left his mouth, but a voice – sounding like his voice, truly – spoke out, declaring with certainty: ‘Oh yes. I know rightly what’s been going on and what’s being done to Pitch End.’
He tried to trace the voice but couldn’t see any mouth that had moved. Not the Temperate, though he thought the man’s Talent so potent it might’ve summoned the words from the air like Miss Hope had summoned the flames that had destroyed Tall Tales from Pitch End.
The Temperate nodded, allowing another smile.
Bruno knew he had to speak for himself then or be lost –
‘I didn’t—’
This was all he could muster before Temperate Thomas’s Cat-Sentry leapt from the Temperate’s shoulder and into Bruno’s lap, and again this voice (not from Bruno but still Bruno’s) finished for him: ‘I didn’t know who to tell first, but I want to tell all now and make my own confession. They sought me out because I’m the son of the last man who was killed by a Rebel.’
The Cat-Sentry. Must’ve recorded my voice, Bruno thought. How long had he been followed, listened to, so that a strong enough store of spoken words could be strung together and used now against him?
His voice came again, calm, matter of fact: ‘Gumbly brought The Book of Black & White back to Pitch End so he could be giving it to Dr Jonathan Bloom. He brought it back because the Rebels are coming back to Pitch End.’
Enough, decided Bruno.
He moved to rise, cry out and protest, but in trying he realised he couldn’t move at all. His jaw was stuck shut. All he could shift were his eyes. He looked to the Temperate – the man’s fingers were dabbling, and Bruno understood that he was being pinned to the chair, held immobile and silent and guilty by Temperate Thomas’s Talent.
Bruno struggled but only in his heart. It was an impossibility to escape.
‘Ye’ve been keeping this secret to yerself?’ asked the Temperate.
The Cat-Sentry, in Bruno’s voice, replied, ‘I have.’
‘And ye’ve been glad of it, haven’t ye? Glad the Rebels are returning?’
‘I have.’
‘So glad ye’d be willing to fight against all of us? Everyone in this room? Would ye ever be as bold as that?’
‘I would,’ said the voice that Pitch End now knew as Bruno Atlas.
‘And what is this here?’ said the Temperate, his Talent teasing the chain from Bruno’s throat, the medallion slipping free and left to hover in the air. Bruno’s eyes watered in frustration – he looked to the crowd for some support, some face to offer help, an expression other than fright. But still no Pace, no mother. He realised that he had no one.
‘It’s nothing less,’ said Temperate Thomas, ‘than the Rebel symbol itself! Same as on the crate that contained the rightly-infernal book!’
And within all cages there was an uproar that was absolute and unfettered – the Discussion Chamber swept with outrage, townsfolk plucked from their seats, standing and shaking their bars, raging…
‘We must band together now!’ declared Temperate Thomas, turning anew to face his people, voice rising with the rabble. ‘We must seek out the traitors, ones like this boy! We must destroy whoever would seek to undermine our way of life and aid the return of the Rebels to Pitch End! If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll purge this town of doubt, dissent and lies! And if there’s anyone who stands in the way of this, in the destruction of the returning Rebels, then they’ll be tossed into the Sea of Apparitions with stones around their ankles!’
Bruno shut his eyes, wishing himself away, away from noise, accusation, a madness that couldn’t be ignored or blocked out…
‘Listen to me real close now – I’m gonna get ye outta here.’
Bruno opened his eyes. He saw no one close, not even the Cat-Sentry, which had left him to shadow Temperate Thomas. And yet a voice had whispered in his ear.
‘Don’t bother to be looking for me,’ said the voice. A girl’s voice? ‘I don’t want ye to see me yet. Just be listening, right?’
Bruno couldn’t nod or agree by any means. He had to continue listening.
‘Count to ten,’ the voice told him, ‘and be ready. I’ll tell ye when.’
Then he sensed (but didn’t see) that someone had left him. Bruno remembered he was supposed to be counting: One, two …
The Temperate turned to face him.
Five, six …
‘Now, Atlas,’ he said. ‘What else do ye have to be telling us?’
Seven or eight now? Or –
‘And how will I be for getting the truth out of ye?’
He stepped towards Bruno, who felt a force like a hundred hands take him. Skin and muscle and bone all pulled back against the chair and he released a scream, his truest sound since mounting the stage –
‘I’ll get it out of ye, so help me, by any means I need!’
Then a gunshot –
A single shriek –
Bruno saw a light bulb pop, then darken. Then another bulb at the end of another cage. Gunshots from someone unseen, taking out each, darkness seeping into the Discussion Chamber and engulfing it.
Bruno saw nothing but felt the Temperate’s Talent slide from his body, his father’s medallion dropping to his chest. And as his limbs were freed, his mouth slackening, cheeks damp with tears, a fierce and unseen mouth blasted the word into his ear – ‘Run.’
XII
The Dark
Bruno crouched. He saw nothing, but heard too much. Many screams, and the slow rise of a weeping-wailing –
‘They’re here already, those Rebels!’
‘They’ve got Talent to take the very light from the place, they’ll be rightly stealing the stars next!’
‘Mountains protect us!’
He didn’t hesitate.
Bruno felt with his fingers towards the short staircase, his way out. On his belly he went down the steps and then his hands met iron, fingers clutching and feeling for some release in the gate, but he knew already there was only one way: over and on into the mass of bodies in the Discussion Chamber whose cries and worries were too much to be soothed, even by the Temperate –
‘Calm yerselves, my friends! Don’t be afeared! All is well when yer Elders are present, no harm shall be coming to any of ye!’
Then another voice, closer, and which could only be the Marshall –
‘What’ll we do, Temperate? They’re losing their bloody minds here and my men aren’t much better!’
‘Lock the doors,’ replied Temperate Thomas. ‘We have to keep them in. I’ll keep an eye on the Atlas boy. And try and get them bloody lights back on.’
Now, thought Bruno, or I’ll never.
He stood, stuck his feet amongst iron coils and climbed the gate, trying not to remember Old Town and the tree and how poorly it showed him as a climber. But caution wasn’t an allowed luxury.
‘The boy,’ he heard the Temperate breathe, perhaps to his fellow Elders, perhaps to himself. Then again – ‘The boy.’
Bruno’s hand struck something sharp – spikes that he wedged one foot between, then his second.
‘Stop the Atlas boy!’ cried Temperate Thomas, for all who could hear.
Bruno had to leap before he wanted to, his left foot still held tight between spikes as he went forwards. All around was yawning black, the howling –
‘Watch for the Atlas boy!’
‘Don’t let him escape!’
‘He knows what the Rebels plans rightly are!’
He fell onto his front, one shoe left behind, impaled. His chin collided with the ground and he tasted blood, the sharp tang of it curling across his tongue like a slow ‘s’ drawn with a rusted coin. He didn’t move. He settled only for breathing.
‘Pitch Enders!’ Temperate Thomas called. ‘The Atlas boy is amongst ye, trying to make his rightly-indecent escape! If we are to find out where the Rebels are hiding, what they’re planning, we need to be finding Atlas and mak
ing him tell us! Do not let him escape!’
And then Bruno was up and plunging forwards, one-shoed and staggering, hands outstretched, other fingers touching his, eliciting cries of: ‘I felt something! He went close by me!’
Bruno took two more steps, had to stop or risk more notice, and as he stalled a burst of flame scorched the spot where he’d just stood, where he’d been detected by a Pitch Ender’s hands moments before. Blue-white, its heat tightened Bruno’s face, showing eyes and more eyes within the cages, the same eager glitter in all. The flame rose as tall as a man and then dissipated. Bruno heard the panic in his own breathing and clapped a hand to mouth to hide it.
‘If ye detect him,’ Temperate Thomas’s voice went out, the darkness stealing back in, ‘then cry out and I shall be revealing him!’
The Temperate’s Talent, Bruno thought, that’s what that sudden flame was.
Bruno moved faster, bent-backed, knowing that if he didn’t escape quick then he wouldn’t escape at all. And in their need to please, to be the one to capture the traitor Bruno Atlas, the Pitch Enders screamed from all over the Discussion Chamber, claiming –
‘Here!’
‘No, over here he is!’
‘No, I’ve got him, Temperate! I’ve got him by the hair!’
‘That’s my hair ye bloody fool! Be letting go!’
Temperate Thomas’s Talent flashed close and far, throwing light into cages, Bruno still slipping away from its reveal. The townsfolk were a single thing to him then, one animal, all claws snatching. One body caterwauling with one mouth, and one thought on its mind: capture Bruno Atlas and earn the Temperate’s praise.
‘He’s definitely here, I have him, my Temperate!’
This time right. Bruno was caught – pushed and torn at, he slammed against one cage and another and then went no further. Hands held him.
‘Let my son go.’
‘Ow! That Widow bloody bit me!’
Bruno was released and he moved out of range less than a moment before Talent in the form of fire rose behind him, higher and wider than before, showing the cage at his back: one man, six Widows.
Tall Tales From Pitch End Page 9
