by Caro King
‘Thanks, mate,’ said the guard, sounding more cheerful now the problem was off his hands.
Leaning on his shovel, the gravedigger watched them tramping away into the distance. Everything went quiet. Then he leaned over and prodded the corpse in its ribs.
‘You ain’t dead,’ he said. ‘I know dead when I see it and you ain’t it. Own up, or I’ll bury you anyway.’
Jonas rolled over and sat up on his elbows, turning the throb in his head into an agonising thud. Wincing in the light, he opened his eyes and looked to see what had rumbled him.
It was horrible. It was at least nine foot tall and would have been taller if it bothered to stand up straight. It had skin as dark as granite that looked hard and shiny, like a beetle. Its eyes were yellow with cat-like pupils and it had talons. And teeth. Big talons and teeth. Its face would have looked fine as a Halloween mask and it was wearing a pair of sackcloth trousers topped by a huge T-shirt decorated with the words ‘Gardener of the Year’.
‘Fabulous,’ muttered Jonas.
‘Too right! One of the last goblins, me. Name’s Taggit Sepplekrum. And you are?’
Jonas tried to rise and bright lights flashed in front of his eyes. He flopped back again. ‘Jonas,’ he mumbled weakly.
He lay for a while, listening to Taggit digging. Eventually the pain in his head died down enough for him to drag himself into a sitting position. He thought he might be sick all over Taggit’s well-kept grass, but fortunately he wasn’t.
Although he was in a vast, underground graveyard – he could see the rocky ceiling above him – there seemed to be daylight. Turning his head slowly he saw huge arched windows cut into the rocky wall, looking out on to sky. Fresh air blew in through them. After a while he managed to get to his feet and wander, very, very carefully, over there.
Propped against the strip between two windows, Jonas breathed in the air and began to feel better. Now he could see that the windows were cut into the cliff face. Below, sea swirled against the rocks. He could smell the salt and hear seagulls crying.
‘Better?’ Taggit was standing behind him, carrying the shovel on his shoulder.
‘Much, thanks. I’ve … um … lost a mudman though. Have you seen one about anywhere?’
‘Oh we don’ ’ave Land Magics ’ere. Don’ need ’em, see. Got the servants.’
Jonas nodded, wondering what to do. He could go back and look for Jik, but the pain in his head told him he wouldn’t get far. The gravedigger hadn’t given him away to the guards, but even so, Jonas wasn’t sure he counted as a friend yet. Best to keep quiet about Jik. The mudman was perfectly able to look after himself and it meant that one of them was still free to search for Nin.
‘I expect he’ll have gone back to earth by now anyway,’ he said, as if it didn’t matter.
‘Right-oh. Come with me and we’ll brew a cuppa. Then you can explain all this glowin’ eyes and goin’ for the throat stuff.’
‘It’s a long story,’ said Jonas, following Taggit towards a wooden hut at the edge of the graveyard. He went slowly because his head was spinning.
‘We’ll just ’ave t’ brew a big pot, then, won’t we?’ The goblin pushed open a door and led the way in.
The room was a fair size, although with Taggit there it seemed small. There was a table with two chairs, a bed, a sink, a stove, a crate full of food, a crate full of china and pots, several shovels, a couple of pictures in frames, a vase of flowers (dead), a spare coffin and a lot of oversized cushions.
‘You’ve got a garden?’ said Jonas, nodding at the gravedigger’s T-shirt as he sank gratefully into a chair.
‘Just the graveyard,’ said Taggit, putting the kettle on and tracking down a couple of mugs. He tipped the old tea down the sink, gave them a rub on his T-shirt and set them on the table. ‘But I keep the grass nice and do a lot of plantin’.’
‘What? Flowers and things?’
‘People mostly,’ said Taggit with a grin.
Jonas stared at him and then laughed. It hurt his head and shadows clouded his eyes for a moment.
‘Now, you get started with the story and I’ll sort out this cuppa, then we’ll do your ’ead. Want some cake? It’s sticky lemon. Not sure it’s s’posed t’ be sticky, but that’s ’ow it came out so that’s what it is.’
‘Um. Maybe just a small piece,’ said Jonas cautiously as he wondered where to start.
Deep under the pile of earth Jik stayed still and thought. He was perfectly comfortable where he was, cocooned in the mud he was born from, but he knew he had to get out if he was to help Nin. He wondered what had happened to Jonas – had he been buried too and if so was there anything Jik could do about it, or had the Quick’s oxygen run out already?
He listened for signs of struggling. There was nothing to hear but the sigh of the Land, which was everywhere all the time anyway. He began to move, swimming through the mud like a fish would swim through water, curving round the bigger rocks and pushing the stones aside as he went. He soon fell out the other side, but there was no sign of Jonas.
Jik set off, running quickly down the middle of the tunnel until he came to a fork. Which was a problem as he had no idea which way to go. He scanned the ground. The earth was packed too hard and was too stony to show any footprints, but there was something dark and wet-looking on the floor to the left.
Jik hadn’t had much experience of human insides. If he had, then he would have recognised the dark wetness for what it was, the blood that had dripped from Jonas as the guards carried him on down the left-hand tunnel.
As it was Jik kept out of its way in case it meant puddles further on. He chose the right-hand fork and kept going.
26
Over the Roof
ost of the Sunatorium trees grew on the left with the crystal wall on the right. At the top, the glittering surface had grown around the branches, leaving them room to poke through.
‘It’s alive,’ said Milo. ‘It was one of Mr Strood’s experiments. He blasted a fortune-teller’s crystal ball with leftover magic from a wand and it started to grow, so he trained it over a frame to make the Sunatorium. It screams if you break it and it’s poisonous.’
He was sweeping the Sunatorium path, which was scattered with fallen leaves and petals from the greenery. Nin followed, holding the sack open for him. The soft rustle of the trees and the splintered sunshine was already doing her good. While they worked she told Milo about Errol. She didn’t think she would be able to talk about it, but once she started it all poured out.
‘So that’s it,’ she finished sadly. ‘My brother has to be dead. Nothing could survive the Maug, right?’
Milo looked at her oddly. ‘You did.’
‘Yeah well, how often is a snail going to drop out of the sky and whack a guard on the head?’
‘But that’s not the point, is it? The point is that YOU are lucky. He doesn’t have to be.’
Frowning, Nin turned this over in her head. ‘You mean, like, he doesn’t have to be lucky to escape the Maug, because if I’m lucky then I’ll find my brother. And that means he’ll have to have escaped the Maug somehow so that my luck can work. Right?’
‘I think,’ said Milo.
Nin dropped the sack and beamed at him. ‘Milo, you’re brilliant!’
Milo beamed back at her. ‘You can’t go looking for him like that, you’ll stick out a mile and the Eyes’ll spot you. Look, when I come back at lunchtime, I’ll bring you a uniform. That way you’ll look like a servant.’
‘A disguise, you mean?’ said Nin, eagerly, her hopes rising even further. ‘Thank you, Milo, that’s perfect!’
The top of the House was a world of slanting roofs, unexpected windows and crumbling chimney pots. In the centre, rising above the weathered brick and tiles, was the bell tower. Skerridge knew that the bell ringer would be somewhere about, but that was no problem. The creature wasn’t a guard. If anything, it would probably look the other way as soon as it saw him.
Moving fast, though not at
superspeed just in case he melted the tiles, Skerridge soon reached his destination at the far end of the Terrible House. The crystal roof of the Sunatorium.
He stared at the shiny expanse sweeping away to nothingness before him. Its uneven surface splintered the light and made the whole thing sparkle like it was studded with diamonds. It made his eyes water. Where the crystal had grown around the branches of the trees below, allowing them to burst out into the air, leaves rustled in the breeze. They looked out of place against all that glitter.
What Skerridge had to do was aim for one of those branches. What he had not to do was break, chip or crack the poisonous crystal.
He drew in a deep breath and let steam whistle out slowly from between his teeth. Then he picked a branch and hopped nimbly on to the top of the roof.
‘Shoulda lowered meself carefully,’ he muttered, as his feet went from under him. ‘Make a note fer nex’ time.’
He found himself on his front slithering face-first towards a sheer drop, right past the branch he had been aiming for. Panic stirred in his insides. He was gaining speed as the roof curved away before him, a glittering slide into thin air. He could feel the coolness of sea breezes on his face, see the gulls whirling in the emptiness ahead, hear the crash of the waves hurling themselves on to the rocks below.
A splash of green appeared to the left. Skerridge reached out to make a grab at it, but it was too late. Leaves brushed his fingers and then they were gone. The only result was that now he was spinning like a Catherine wheel as well as hurtling towards certain death.
‘GAAAAAH!’
In a second Skerridge plunged over the edge. Below him the waves dashed their frothy selves nonchalantly over the jagged rocks. This is it, thought Skerridge, and shut his eyes. He opened them again pretty sharply when something stabbed him in the ear.
Far below the waves and the rocks were still doing their thing, but they weren’t getting any closer about it. Which was nice.
Gently, so as not to disturb anything, Skerridge turned his head. The thing sticking in his ear was now sticking in his eye. But at least that meant he could see that it was a twig. Twigs belonged on branches and branches were usually found on trees. Skerridge grinned broadly.
Somehow, by some phenomenal piece of luck, he had caught himself on one of the lower branches sticking out of the side of the Sunatorium wall. So here he was, dangling by his fancy waistcoat, far above certain death.
There was a loud crack. Skerridge winced as his branch jerked under him. With one hand he grabbed hold of the branch where it poked out of the top of his waistcoat above and behind his head. With the other he undid the buttons.
Reaching up awkwardly he slashed at a shoulder seam with a claw, cutting it open. Once one arm was out, the waistcoat sprang free, flicking over the branch and dangling loosely from his other arm. This was a good thing as Skerridge was fond of that waistcoat and didn’t want to lose it entirely.
Gripping the branch he swung round so that he was facing into the crystal wall. The branch gave another crack and this time it dipped as well. Skerridge hung on grimly. He went hand over hand towards the crystal wall where the branch was wider and he was able to pull himself up. All he had to do now was squeeze in through the glass where the branch came out.
His heart sank as he looked at the gap. Bogeymen were pretty good at squeezing through tight spaces, but it added another dimension when the tight space you were squeezing through could kill you horribly. Still, he had come this far so he might as well go on. In fact the way things looked, he had no choice.
Skerridge pulled the damaged waistcoat from his other arm and tucked it into his pocket with his sack. Then he flattened himself against the branch. Aiming his fire-breath at the twigs in his path, he let out a short, controlled blast and burnt them back to the branch so that they would not get in his way. Carefully he began to inch forwards.
At last, propped in the crook of the tree on the inside of the Sunatorium, Skerridge stopped to rest. The gap had been so narrow that when he squeezed through, the edge of the crystal wall had scraped gently down his back. He had felt the sting as its rim rubbed over his skin.
The crystal hadn’t been broken, and that might be the saving of him, but he had a nasty feeling that even that much contact might be enough to give him a dose of Temporal Phase Fever.
Which meant that he had better stop hanging about and get himself to a place where he could be ill in comfort. Just as he was about to move, he heard voices.
When Milo came back, he had a brown cloth dress, a white full-length pinafore and a cap, all stuffed into his sack.
‘They should fit,’ said Milo, ‘you’re quite small and thin. I sneaked them out while nobody was around. I thought it was safest not to tell anyone about you just yet, not even Samfy.’
Nin ordered Milo to look out of the crystal wall while she nipped behind a tree and changed into the dress. Then she bundled her own clothes up and stuffed them into her rucksack.
‘I’ll hide that in the dusters box for you,’ said Milo. ‘What’re you going to do now?’
‘Find Toby. Find our memory pearls. Escape.’
‘If anyone can, you can! Look, I’ve been thinking about where your brother might hide. There’s the great library, for a start. Nobody goes there much so it’d be quiet. Or there’s the storeroom, which is one floor below that and has got plenty of supplies in it. They’re the best places. After that you could see if he’s wandering about on the thirteenth floor. There’s nothing there but a locked room.’
‘Great! You wouldn’t happen to know where the memory room is, I s’pose?’
Milo shrugged. ‘Only the BMs know that, and they wouldn’t tell anyone.’
‘Is it a secret?’
‘Nope, they just don’t wanna tell. Mean-minded lot, bogeymen.’
‘Well, I’d better get on anyway. The storeroom sounds like a good start.’
But she sat quietly with Milo for a moment longer, enjoying the sun through the trees, before starting her search.
Once they were gone, Skerridge allowed himself a huge grin. Then a chuckle. And then a roar of laughter that he choked off instantly, more to stop himself from accidentally crisping the trees than anything else.
At last he clambered nimbly down the trunk to the ground, vaporised the couple of leaves he had brought with him, and headed for the way out.
27
Fish Man
onas was sitting at Taggit’s cramped table, poring over a map. The lightning in his eyes had faded to a white shine and he looked tired and edgy.
‘So there are nineteen floors including the up-house ones, right? Four above ground, counting the attic, and fourteen below. Plus the ground floor.’ He rifled through the clipped-together pages.
‘Back in the old days there’d’ve been a map on one sheet of paper that just showed exactly what you asked for.’ Taggit sighed. ‘Some of the sorcerers could do fantastic stuff !’
‘Did you meet them?’ Jonas looked up from the map and stared at Taggit.
‘Meetin’ a sorcerer ain’t exactly clever,’ said Taggit reasonably. ‘There were a few of ’em about back then, it weren’t ’ard to run into one occasionally. They were a snooty lot though, didn’t mix well with others.’
‘They weren’t nice to the Quick, I know that. Though Nemus was all right.’
‘Oh yeah,’ snorted Taggit. ‘I expect ’is attitude’s improved a lot now ’e’s worked out ’e needs the Quick to keep goin’!’ He got up and went to the stove. ‘Top up?’
Jonas looked at his mug. Taggit’s tea was like watery tar, but it tasted fantastic after the first few mouthfuls. Horrible, but fantastic.
‘No, thanks. I’d love to hear about them, but I’m not going to be around that long.’
‘Wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Taggit comfortably. ‘When you’ve either found the kid alive or worked out that she’s copped it, you’ll ’ave to think about what to do next. Gettin’ out of the ’Ouse, now the Secret Way�
��s caved in, ain’t gonna be a picnic. So, you can come back t’ me if you like. Good to ’ave a bit of company. Well, some that’s alive anyway.’
Jonas laughed, then folded up the map, tucked it into the pack that Taggit had given him and gulped down the last mouthful of tea. ‘Better get on. Got a busy morning, what with finding Nin, finding her memory pearl and escaping from the House. Thanks for everything, Taggit.’
The goblin grinned, showing yellowed fangs that a shark would be proud of. ‘Good luck, kid. Yer gonna need it.’
Jonas thought that if Nin had escaped Strood then she might take cover in the main storerooms. According to Taggit, you could live there, undiscovered, for months. He checked the map one more time, put it back into his coat pocket, then shouldered the bag Taggit had given him, packed with food and a bottle of water, and moved on up the narrow, shadowy stairway.
On the next floor he found the vegetable garden. He didn’t know what he had expected, but not this. For a start a gentle, warm rain was falling. Jonas peered up. Copper pipes ran across the rocky ceiling and strung along them at regular intervals were metal clumps that looked like a cross between a dandelion head and a watering-can sprinkler.
Like the graveyard there were windows to the outside world, but here they were round holes plugged with crystal. Sunlight streamed through the crystal, its heat magnified and its light scattered about the cavern. The ground was rich and loamy and neat rows of cabbages, carrots, parsnips and potatoes ran from wall to wall. Further over, poles were twined with leafy peas and runner beans. There didn’t seem to be anyone about.
Jonas followed a central path through the gardens to a long corridor, which opened out into a dome-like space filled with a shimmering gloom. Although there were still windows in the wall of the dome, they were small and high up and let in only thin beams of light that glanced off the walls and reflected on the ripples in the water below.
