Deep Secret

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “That was what I did that evening. Only they were marching along on either side of me like police and the candles were burning down and Maree was waiting out there, and I was still scared she’d wander off, so I thought I’d hurry it up a bit. I said, ‘What did you want me for then?’

  “I hope that was not what sent Gram White following after me. It was out of character for me. I usually wait quite patiently for Mum to issue her orders once she’s found me. But Rupert thinks Gram was after Rob really. Could be. After the fuss and the trail of blood Rob left all through the hotel when he came, everyone knew there was a centaur there, even if most of them seemed to think it was me in disguise.

  “I could see Mum hadn’t actually got any orders. She just wanted me where she could see me. Gram White said, ‘We don’t want you consorting with those people in that room, young man. They’re not nice to know.’

  “I said they were harmless in there, only rather boring. I yawned a bit.

  “Then Mum said, ‘Go to bed, darling. Have an early night. You were up till all hours yesterday.’

  “So I said I would go to bed (and I did in the end, didn’t I?) and went slouching off. It wasn’t hard to look tired after all the pulling at Maree I’d done, and all the running to get back. They stood watching me. I had to go all round all the corners on the top floor. Seven right-angles. I ran as soon as I was out of their sight, but I still only just made it back to Rupert’s room before they sent Rob off without me. Rupert says I must have broken a fairly strong compulsion-working in order to come back, but I didn’t notice. I think I may have been quite used to breaking compulsions put on me.

  “I know it gave me an awful shock when Gram White suddenly came round the corner and shot at Rob. Rob too. Neither of us had ever had anything like that happen to us before. We couldn’t wait to get our handfuls of seeds and our candles lit. Then we pushed off at once. I knew the room door was open behind us, and I kept expecting Gram White to come through behind us, shooting. I didn’t relax until we were well down the first hill.

  “Carrying those candles made a lot of difference. The road was far easier to see. You could even see vague, shivering grass on both sides. And it didn’t seem to matter how fast we went. The candles didn’t blow out. There wasn’t any wind, even from moving. The flames just went straight up. Rob went at a fast walk and I sort of trotted. And in no time at all we were through the dead river and going down towards the bridge where they’d sent me back. I asked Rob if it had seemed a long way and he said no. He was limping a bit, but not badly. It was mostly the stitches dragging, he said.

  “When we came down to the bridge, my heart did strange things – sort of hopped up into my throat and then kicked in down in the right place but going like crazy – because I couldn’t see Maree. But she was there. She was in the black shadow at the gate, hanging on to the grille with her fingers and talking to the guardian on the other side.

  “‘It’s the frustration that does it,’ I heard her saying. ‘Everything went wrong lately.’ Then she heard Rob’s hooves and turned round slowly, as if she couldn’t believe it. ‘Rob!’ she said. ‘And candles! Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick. Are they important?’ From then on, she was talking almost normally, except that nearly everything she said was peculiar.

  “‘Candles, water and a handful of grain with salt,’ Rob said.

  “‘What about air?’ Maree said.

  “‘Our own breath,’ Rob said. Being mage-trained, I suppose he knew better than me what Maree was on about.

  “We tried to fix her up with her candle and grain, but she insisted on checking Rob’s side first. She said she hoped he wouldn’t have to put too much strain on it. But finally we got her to put a bottle of water into her jacket pocket – I took one too – and take the grain and the candle. It was creepy when we lit her candle. She went whiter all over, and a bit luminous, as if the candle was lighting her from inside, not outside.

  “When we looked away from Maree, there was no grille across the bridge and no one standing there. Not even the two statues. We shrugged at one another and walked out across the bridge. Rob’s hooves didn’t make as much noise there as you’d suppose. In fact, everything was nearly noiseless. That big full river rushing below didn’t make a sound. The bridge was as broad as a main road and it arched uphill, and it all seemed easy enough until we’d come to the top of the arch and were going down the other side.

  “Then it all went weird.

  “For a start, the bridge only seemed to be there where the candles lit it. Everything was like that from then on. After a while we got used to taking our own lighted space of realness with us, and it was just the way things were, but then, not having seen anything like it before, we were pretty frightened. You looked up, and there was black nothing beyond a few feet of perfectly good road. You had to keep your eyes on the lighted bit. But you couldn’t look straight down. The candles spread a ring of shadows round your feet, and the shadows were black nothing too. It was worst underneath Rob’s body. He seemed to be walking on an oblong of emptiness. When he saw he was, he braced all his hooves and just stood there, panic all over him. His tail at the end of him lashed. But Maree and I were nearly as bad.

  “‘We – we have to keep going,’ Rob said at last.

  “‘The only way to go on is to go on,’ Maree said.

  “So we got going, creeping along, afraid we were going to go down into the emptiness every next step.

  “As if that wasn’t enough, there was a feeling from under the lighted part as if the emptiness was waiting for us to fall through. It was an emptiness that was alive. I can’t describe it, though I knew it was black and pointed – it was worse than any of Dad’s demons. We all knew it was alive. We heard it shifting and creaking and felt cold breathing up from it. It kept level with us under our feet.

  “Rob said, sort of inching along sideways, with his teeth shut, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life.’

  “‘Good,’ said Maree. ‘I’ve been dying to say that too.’

  “I couldn’t speak.

  “Then it got worse because, the nearer we came to the other side, the more broken up the bridge was. It was in pieces like ice-floes. Down in between the pieces the emptiness waited for us to fall. And we only saw each new piece as our candles came near enough to light it. Some of this was worse for me and Maree, like the time the next floe was a huge stride away, and we had both hands full and couldn’t hold on to one another for balance. You just more or less shut your eyes and stepped long and hoped. Some of it was worse for Rob, when the pieces were small and irregularly spaced. He had to sort of tiptoe, hoof by hoof. Once or twice his eyes rolled and I thought he was going to go berserk. But we all managed, piece by piece, and after what seemed miles of it, we saw the carved pillars at the end of the bridge. We went between them and on to firm ground with a rush.

  “It was no better there, just different.

  “The road we lit up with our candles was really only a path, partly overgrown with gorse bushes or brambles or something, and some of these were taller than Rob. The spines were fierce. Rob had a bad time there, because he wouldn’t turn sideways like Maree and I could. Then, when there were gaps in the bushes, there was a vicious wind. The candle flames fair roared sideways in it. Even so, the candles never blew out. We gave up trying to shield the flames after a while. It was very awkward anyway with the hand you were trying to use full of grain. Besides, we needed that fist, all of us, to push the thorns back with.

  “I can’t remember when our clothes disappeared, but they went, shoes and all, at some stage. At first I just felt perishing cold. Then a dirty great bramble went clawing straight across my belly and I realised I was stark naked. Maree was naked too, up in front of me, looking more luminous than ever, and when I looked round, I saw Rob had lost his shirt. I was absolutely freezing by then. I could hear Rob’s teeth chattering. Maree was chanting out, ‘This is so embarrassing, this is so emba
rrassing!’ but actually I thought having no shoes was worst. The stones in the path were sharper than the thorns, and there were dead thorns down there too. It was so awful, I did wonder about turning round and going back, to tell the truth. But I remembered the bridge.

  “After an age, the path ran through a sort of clearing in the bushes where the wind was worse than ever. There was something pale there, sort of darting and fluttering at us just ahead. We all saw it at once. I yelled. Maree stopped. Rob nearly gibbered, ‘What’s that?’ It looked demonic.

  “‘It looks like the week’s washing coming for us to kill us!’ Maree said. ‘Oh!’ And then she went rushing towards the flapping things, crying out, ‘This aye night, this aye night!’

  “‘What is it?’ Rob shivered.

  “‘Fire and flete and candle-light!’ Maree yelled up ahead. ‘Come on, idiots, it’s clothes!’

  “We went over there and – well, I know we weren’t anywhere ordinary, but I could hardly believe it all the same – the clothes caught on the bushes were Maree’s old skirt and sweater, and the jeans and sweatshirt I’d given her to take down to the charity shop. It made me think a bit. Down on the ground were quite a lot of old shoes. There wasn’t much point wondering how they’d come there. We stuck our candles in the ground and got into the things one-handed. I used a sharp stone to make a hole in the toes of the biggest pair of trainers. That was so awkward that I didn’t care about rhymes and spells any more. I stuff the grains in my pocket so I could work on the shoes with both hands. Then I realised that my little bottle of water had gone with my other clothes. I looked round to tell Rob, and there he was, shaking all over, with his arms wrapped round his top half, and no clothes in the bushes to help him get warm.

  “‘Didn’t you ever give away any old clothes?’ Maree asked him.

  “‘No,’ he shivered. ‘Knarros made us wear everything until it fell apart.’

  “‘Have you still got your pouch?’ I asked. ‘Will’s pouch, I mean.’

  “I was going to say that if he hadn’t got it, then we’d lost all the water, but he looked at me as if I’d just had the brainwave of the century. ‘Of course! Thanks!’ he said. He got the pouch open and then stuffed his handful of grain inside it and pulled out the lump of goat’s wool. He passed me his flaring, streaming candle to hold and tore a piece off the lump. Then he set to work pulling and teasing out that small bit. It kept opening up. in no time, it was big enough to flap about in the wind, but Rob caught the edges down and went on pulling.

  “‘Oh, a horse blanket,’ Maree said.

  “It ended up bigger than that, a fine fluffy thing, like mohair. Rob tied the ends round his neck. Maree told me to spread it right across Rob, down to his tail. So I did, and it clung there. It seemed such a good idea that I took half the rest of the wool and made a sort of shawl with it. Maree said she was warm, but when I touched her, she was icy. I made a shawl for her too. We knotted them round our necks and set off again. I was feeling a whole heap better, but Rob and Maree seemed to get more and more tired from then on.

  “That thorny path went on and on. I think it was sloping uphill all the time, but you know how hard it is to tell things like that when all you can see is the little ring of light you’re walking in. But when we came to the end of the thorns at last, the way in front was really steep. It was all bare rock, eaten into hundreds of spikes and ledges and edges, like a stack of knives. I was surprised Rob could get up it, but he said there was plenty of traction. It was Maree who had trouble with it. She almost couldn’t climb it. In the end, Rob stopped and said we’d never get up like this and Maree had better ride on his back.

  “‘But it’ll hurt you!’ we both said.

  “Rob knew it would. He answered in the really irritable way you do, when you know you have to do something nasty, ‘Put her up on me and don’t argue!’

  “He held all three candles while I heaved Maree up on to him. It was lucky she had gone so light. I’d never have managed her normal weight. And it did hurt Rob. He stamped and winced and got more irritable than ever. Maree lay down on her face on his back because that seemed to hurt him less. And while I had both hands free, I took the spare bottle of water out of Rob’s pouch and put it in my pocket. I was glad I did later.

  “Then we went on, toiling up across the sharp edges, until suddenly Rob gave a yell and all his hooves slithered. I thought his side must have torn open again, but it wasn’t that. There were three kids standing at the edge of the light, on the other side of Rob from me. I couldn’t see much of them except their white, peaky faces. They were just standing there, sort of staring, two youngish boys and a girl. They didn’t do anything, but Rob got in a real state.

  “‘Oh don’t, don’t, don’t!’ he said. ‘I always liked you!’

  “We were all looking at the kids when birds started coming out of the dark at us. You’ve no idea how frightening it is, great big birds coming whipping and whirring into your face out of nowhere. They were black birds and white ones. First they dived at us. We shouted and batted them off, so they left us and started trying to peck bits off the three kids. The kids didn’t seem to know what to do about it.

  “Maree shouted, ‘Quick, quick! The grain, the grain!’ And she leant off Rob and scattered some of her handful on the rocks at the kids’ feet.

  “The birds swooped down on it at once and began fighting one another for it. They behaved as if they were really starving. I was trying to get my grain back out of my pocket when Rob took hold of the plastic bag with the spare grain in it and poured the lot out in front of him. The birds dived on that too. The black ones – they were mottled brown in the candle-light really – threw the grains aside and went for the salt, but the pale birds gobbled down the grain.

  “‘Run away. Now, while they’re busy,’ Maree told the three children. They looked at her as if they didn’t understand, but after a bit they backed off into the darkness. They didn’t seem with it at all.

  “We went on before the birds could get interested in us again. Maree said, ‘But we ought to stay and help those poor stupid kids!’

  “Rob said, ‘There’s nothing any of us can do to help them.’ He sounded so wretched about it that Maree didn’t say any more.

  “Beyond that was what felt like half a century of climbing and slithering. At least the wind had died down a bit, but it was still blowing, cold, sudden gusts. None of us got too hot. And at last we came out on what felt like the flat top of a hill. For a few blissful seconds, we thought we had got where we were going. There were what seemed ruined buildings all round us. Then Rob held his candle up beside the nearest ruin, and we saw it was really a weird pinnacle of rock. Very black rock. Some of them were low – knee-high – and some towered like church spires. And each one was a peculiar shape. Every so often, the path seemed to stop, and we all thought we had arrived at last, but then one of our candles lit a white gleam of it winding away between more of the pinnacles.

  “Rob had trouble squeezing through. Maree got down to make it easier for him. She said she was rested, but she looked pretty weak to me. But she went marching ahead, holding her candle high, with the wind gusting the flame to show new black spires each side. The wind made strange sounds in these rocks. At first we thought that was all it was. Then the sounds were definitely voices.

  “Most of it was just murmuring and mumbling. That was creepy enough. Some of it sounded to be in strange languages. But I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone said, just by my shoulder, ‘You won’t get away. I’ll be waiting for you outside after school.’ It seemed like a real threat. But there was no one there.

  “After that, we were all hearing voices, but I don’t think we heard the same things. Whatever Rob was hearing, it made him try to cover his ears. Candle-grease ran into his hair and his hair sizzled sometimes, but I could see he preferred that to listening. Maree was going along with tears running out from under her glasses. I mostly got more and more annoyed after that first scare. There was one v
oice that kept saying in a bored, self-satisfied way, ‘No need to worry. Consider it done.’ It really got up my nose. The worst of it was, it sounded like my own voice. I yelled back once or twice. I yelled, ‘Oh shut up! I do say nice things sometimes!’ But it didn’t stop. In the end, I was so fed up, I shouted at Rob to tell me what the voices were saying to him.

  “He turned round as if I was salvation. He shouted back that they were telling him his looks would be ruined if he went on. ‘They keep saying I’ve only got to squeeze between the next gap this side and I’ll be home,’ he said. At least, I think that was what he said, but my voices kept drowning him out and muddling everything else.

  “And it went on, like bedlam, until we wormed between two last pinnacles of rock and the voices, and the wind, just stopped.

  “Then there was a long, long straight stretch. Rob and Maree were fine in this bit and they walked side by side, talking. Rob didn’t know what to ask for in Babylon, would you believe! He said that Will had made him see he badly needed to ask for something, but he couldn’t see what. He told Maree some of the things Will had said.

  “While they talked, things got to me again. It was the way there was only darkness in front and behind and to the sides. Particularly at the sides. I felt as if I was walking on a tiny ribbon of land with a void all round. That cold, hungry void with sharp points in it that was under the bridge. While Maree was saying to Rob, ‘You sound as if you ought to be asking for a new soul,’ I went to the side of the road and held my candle out to see what was there.

  “There was nothing there. Truly. There was just an enormous precipice. Like a fool, I went scuttling over to the other side of the road and held my candle out there. And it was just the same. Another precipice. We really were walking along a ribbon in the middle of nothing.