Galloglass

by Scarlett Thomas

  A deep species memory told him that this alleyway would normally be a dangerous place, full of cats waiting to attack him. Indeed, he knew from Mirabelle’s pet noir stories that Bad Things happened in alleyways. Occasionally the cat-detectives in her stories had to confront gangsters in alleyways while fighting off the feral, scrawny local cats. Neptune quite fancied a fight. It would warm him up. Despite his thick coat he was freezing. But there were no cats here. There was no one at all. Just slush and rubbish.

  Neptune felt dirty. This World Beyond wasn’t as clean as the school grounds. He jumped up onto a wall and began to wash himself. Neptune decided to have a little think while he was washing. It was all very well setting off on an adventure, but didn’t most adventurers have some sort of objective? Neptune reminded himself that he was looking for the missing cats. Well, they weren’t here. They were probably all dead. How much did he really care? He let out a small sigh. Could he go home now?

  Just then, he smelled something unmistakable.

  Guinea pig.

  It was coming from the garden on the other side of the wall. It smelled delicious.

  Surely just one wouldn’t hurt . . . For the road, as they say.

  Everybody who visits a library does so for some reason. People go there to pick up another thin paperback featuring doctors falling in love with nurses or beautiful secretaries who feel compelled to marry their sulky bosses. There were many Matchstick Press editions of these sorts of books still out there, mainly in provincial libraries and dusty corner-shops, that were enchanted, and therefore incredibly addictive, and so people who’d read one had to read more.

  Other people visit libraries to discover facts, or to find out how to make things – sometimes even quite dangerous things. Some people go to libraries to learn how to read tarot cards, or write in secret code, or create a detailed astrological chart, or write novels, or install a washing machine without a plumber. There is not much that cannot be learned in a proper library.

  And then there is the small, rather niche group whose members go to the library looking for the precise spell that will help them in their plan to take over the entire universe.

  ‘I do not see why,’ said a Russian voice, ‘we are wasting our time in this library to which almost everyone in every known world has access. The spell will not be here! It will be hidden.’

  ‘The spell is here,’ said a clipped Northern European voice. ‘Hidden in plain sight, as all the best things are.’

  ‘What does that even mean?’ asked a familiar, sulky voice, the kind that went with the kind of hair that has been over-styled with a heated comb. ‘“Hidden in plain sight?” It’s always sounded a bit stupid to me, to be honest.’

  ‘In my experience,’ said a haughty voice that made Lexy’s blood run a little cold, ‘if you want to hide something from the masses, you put it in a prayer, or a book about antiques, or a poem. Some of the greatest secrets about this world are still hidden in Plato’s Republic. Yet more are published every day in a popular newspaper’s Country Diary column. The more you hide something, the more likely people are to look for it.’

  ‘Yes, well, we have the poem already,’ said the Russian voice.

  ‘And most importantly we have the author of the new universe,’ said the Northern European voice hurriedly.

  ‘Ow!’ said the Russian voice, as if its owner had just been kicked.

  There was then a strange period of silence.

  Raven looked at Lexy. They were crouched down between two shelves in the section of the library that seemed devoted to spell books. The library was not arranged in any normal way. There was no catalogue, as the librarian had said. Raven and Lexy had had to turn a large brass winder to get these shelves apart at all. No dead bodies had dropped out, thankfully. Raven had just found a book called Spells for Healing Your Spider – which was either very lucky, or in fact proved the existence of cosmic ordering, the zero point field and magic in general – when the voices had entered this section of the library.

  The voices – and their owners – were now in the next stack along.

  ‘Yes, I told you,’ said the Northern European voice. ‘Here it is. Instructions for Entering Other Dimensions by Thomas Lumas. Oh, and a companion volume by the same author called Pedesis for Beginners. Bingo.’

  ‘Well, if it’s that easy to find the books, why isn’t everyone just travelling to other dimensions all the time?’

  ‘They are,’ said the haughty voice. ‘People are always popping off to the Otherworld and the Underworld. Especially since the worldquake. The Otherworld is 10 percent closer to us now, which is of course another good reason for shutting it down. It’s having too much influence here.’

  ‘Well, why can’t we also just “pop off” in this way?’ asked the sulky voice.

  ‘You know why. I thought we explained this. The Diberi are banned from entering the Otherworld by normal means. And to penetrate as deeply as we want to means we need help. A lot of help.’

  ‘And the consciousness of the Truelove girl.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said the Northern European voice.

  ‘What is it?’ said the Russian voice.

  ‘Well, if we wanted to go to the unfortunate realm known as the Troposphere – long abandoned as simply the closed and dangerous imaginary world of an early twenty-first-century novel – we’d only need some holy water and homoeopathic charcoal. But to get as deep into the Otherworld as we want to, we’re going to need to create a rather more complicated spell.’

  ‘And? We can do that, surely?’

  ‘Yes, so long as we can manage to get hold of the Northern Lights, the Bermuda Triangle and the Luminiferous Ether. And obtain, somehow, the eye of a live yeti. Oh, and a pure maiden. Some snakes. And . . . several hundred live cats. Well, that bit will be easy at least.’

  ‘And we’ll have to kidnap the Truelove girl, of course.’

  ‘Yes. That bit should also be . . . Wait! Did you hear something?’

  It was true. There had been a noise. The noise had been Raven gasping, for the second time, when these unseen voices had said ‘the Truelove girl’. Whoever these people were, they were planning to kidnap Effie, and then . . . Raven didn’t understand what they were talking about exactly, but it seemed to involve some sort of raid on the Otherworld – probably Dragon’s Green, where everyone was always trying to get to.

  Lexy kicked Raven.

  ‘Shhh,’ she said.

  It was too late. The footsteps belonging to the voices started moving out of their stack and towards theirs. Raven cast the Shadows, a simple spell that bends the darkness near you in such a way as to make you virtually invisible. She cast it on herself and Lexy, although it seemed to take longer than usual – as if something nearby was weakening her magic.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ said the Russian voice.

  ‘Well, let’s close this stack anyway,’ said the haughty voice. ‘I want to see what’s in the next one.’

  This was the second major problem with stack systems, which had also been explored in every horror film in existence ever to feature a library. It wasn’t just that they were full of dead bodies. It was that the reason they were full of dead bodies was because of how easy it was to be crushed to death in them.

  Unfortunately the Shadows rather slows down those under its influence. Raven and Lexy tried to move as quickly – and quietly – as they could to the end of the stack as the shelves started to close in on them. But it looked as if they were going to be too late.

  ‘N—’ Raven began to say.

  Then two soft hands silently grabbed Raven’s arms and pulled her into the next stack along. A hand quickly clamped over her mouth. It smelled sort of familiar. Raven struggled and twisted and turned until she could see who her captor was.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ hissed Laurel Wilde.

  ‘Looking for books. What are you doing here?’ asked Raven.

  �
��Shhh!’ said Laurel Wilde. ‘They’ll hear us . . .’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Our esteemed colleagues,’ whispered Dora Wright, emerging from the closing stack in a quiet puff of glitter and perfume, and holding on to Lexy.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Just be quiet for now,’ said Laurel Wilde. ‘We’ll explain everything later.’

  11

  The guinea pig smell was coming from an old brown shed at the end of the garden of a narrow, yellow-brick terraced house. The aroma was strong. Could there be more than one guinea pig in there? Neptune imagined a vast, illicit feast. Then a long, deep, meat-fuelled sleep. Then a bit of guilt, of course; there was always that. But then, afterwards, continuing with his adventure would probably put all those unpleasant thoughts out of his mind. Yes, perhaps all he needed was sustenance. No adventurer got very far on an empty stomach, after all.

  Neptune sprang easily down off the wall and into the garden. As well as the guinea pig scent, he could sense a lot of Cosmic Web activity here. Maybe some hibernation going on nearby, maybe under this holly tree? Hmmm. Exotic food. But where . . .?

  No, the Cosmic Web around here was very much awake. Neptune could pick up excited babbling and chatter coming from inside the shed. The door was closed, but there was a latch similar to the ones on the guinea pigs’ cages in the school staff room. Neptune jumped up onto a convenient window-sill and used his paw to knock the latch from horizontal to vertical. The unlocked door seemed to breathe out as it opened. Then Neptune jumped down and used the same paw (his left – like many cats he was left-pawed) to pull the shed door open so he could slip inside and . . .

  And . . .

  Well, what the . . .???

  There was a guinea pig here, that was for certain. It was in a cage on a table at the far end of the shed. It was long-haired, black and appeared very, very old, with wise black eyes pressed into its face like tiny ancient raisins. It had the beginnings of a grey beard. All around the cage and down on the floor members of the Cosmic Web – squirrels, rabbits, robins, blackbirds, shrews, mice, voles and hedgehogs – were . . . were . . . Neptune moved into the shed to see more closely. But yes, how bafflingly peculiar. The animals seemed to be . . . they seemed to be . . .

  They were actually worshipping the guinea pig.

  The babbling he could hear was some kind of ancient Cosmic Web chant: a Song of the Divine from the very olden days. Not that the Cosmic Web experienced time in the same way as humans and domesticated animals, of course. For them, the olden days were now, and vice versa. Time wasn’t a line; it was more of a blob. Soon, Neptune began to make out some of what they were chanting. Oh venerable one, wise one, mighty one (the guinea pig didn’t look very mighty, or even very meaty, in fact, but whatever), sagacious master, knowledgeable one, long-haired sage, seeker of the ultimate mystery . . .

  Then, abruptly, the chanting stopped.

  A new, quite different song began.

  Cat!!! Cat!!! Danger!!! Danger!!!

  The Cosmic Web was good at removing itself quickly when it had to. In a haze of fur and feathers and claws and beaks the shed began to empty, as all the small mammals and birds escaped through the many holes and burrows by which they’d entered. In a few moments, the shed had cleared, and Neptune faced the guinea pig alone.

  It seemed to take for ever before the voices – the Russian one, the haughty one, the Northern European one and the slightly sulky one – faded and eventually disappeared from the University Library.

  Laurel Wilde let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She released her grip on her daughter.

  ‘Now will you tell us what’s going on?’ asked Raven.

  ‘Soon,’ said Laurel. ‘Where are your other friends?’

  ‘Maximilian and Effie?’ said Raven.

  ‘And Wolf,’ said Dora.

  ‘Wolf isn’t here,’ said Lexy. ‘But Effie and Maximilian are still in the other wing, I think.’

  The Old Town University Library’s Special Collections section had two different wings. Although there were no signs, and no real classification system, it seemed that just under half the books related to the Realworld and just over a third to the Otherworld. There was also a small section of dark-looking volumes devoted to the Underworld. Maximilian had last been seen there. Effie had remained in the Otherworld section, browsing through maps and guidebooks.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t become a Diberi,’ said Raven to her mother.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling,’ said Laurel. ‘But there’s no point my saying anything until we’ve gathered you all together. And we should stay as quiet as we can in case any of them are still here. We have to keep what we’re doing top secret.’

  Raven, Lexy, Dora and Laurel moved quickly and quietly through the library. Raven’s magic was weakened by the proximity of her mother, so Dora Wright cast the Shadows and kept them all more or less hidden. Maximilian visibly jumped when they all materialised next to him just as he was trying to work out how he could borrow all fifteen books he was clutching to his chest. As a result, he dropped them all, which made a massive crashing noise, which made Effie come from four stacks away to see what was happening. She was holding three books of her own. Otherworld Customs and Traditions: A Modern Traveller’s Guide was the biggest one.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Effie, when she saw Laurel Wilde and Dora Wright, and then registered the confused concern on her friends’ faces.

  ‘You need to come with us now,’ said Dora Wright. ‘Then we’ll explain.’

  ‘Can we take these books out first?’ asked Maximilian.

  ‘All right, but we must hurry,’ said Laurel Wilde. ‘We have to go back upstairs into the main university. To the chapel . . .’

  ‘The chapel?’ said Raven.

  ‘The Diberi can’t go into chapels and religious places. We’ll be safe there.’

  ‘So you’re definitely not the Diberi?’ said Raven.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, darling,’ said Laurel. ‘Stop asking stupid questions and follow us.’

  It turned out that taking books out of Special Collections was easy. The librarian even seemed quite glad to see the books go.

  ‘Are you sure you only need fifteen?’ he said to Maximilian, when he put his pile down on the wooden counter. ‘Take more! Take the whole blooming lot – see if I care. Less to clean. Less to read. No blooming space down here anyway . . .’

  Effie checked out her books as well – which also seemed simply to involve vaguely showing them to the librarian while he shrugged and rolled his eyes – and then followed Maximilian up the stairs. Maximilian didn’t move that fast at the best of times, and his pile of books slowed him down even more. By the time they reached the door back into the main University Library, Laurel, Raven and the others were fading into the distance.

  ‘Hurry up,’ said Effie.

  ‘I’m trying!’ said Maximilian.

  The university buildings were very confusing. It was a bit like being in a massive version of Truelove House. There were long corridors and dark passageways, little sets of winding stairs leading to courtyards and cloisters that led to other little winding sets of stairs. It wasn’t long before Effie and Maximilian were completely lost and there was no sign of the others. Perhaps they should have turned right, rather than left, at the bottom of that last set of stairs.

  ‘Do you have any idea where the chapel even is?’ said Maximilian.

  ‘Nope,’ said Effie.

  ‘Is there a map anywhere?’

  ‘Back at the main entrance,’ said Effie. ‘But I don’t know where that is from here either.’

  ‘I thought interpreters were supposed to be good at reading maps!’

  ‘They are if they have one.’

  ‘All right. I’ll use the Spectacles of Knowledge. Hang on while I get them out of my rucksack. I had to put them away when we were in Special Collections because they were getting too—’

  Suddenly, voices e
merged from a window somewhere above them. One sounded Russian. Another sounded sort of familiar. A bit sulky. Effie and Maximilian instinctively shrunk into the darkness, and Effie cast the Shadows.

  ‘I should find it fairly easy to kidnap the Truelove girl,’ said the familiar voice. ‘I’m friends with her father. At least, I think we’re still friends. There was an unfortunate incident where I—’

  ‘And then, darlink, you will bring her to me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You don’t think there’s anything wrong with us having our own tiny little separate plan, do you?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Your hair, darlink, looks so marvellous today. And how is your beautiful book coming along? I hear it is going to be magnificent.’

  ‘Um . . . Yes, well – gosh, a little warm in here, isn’t it? Shall I open the window a bit more?’

  ‘Some of this champagne will chill you, darlink. But first let us talk about this book of yours. Remember our agreement? You will be author of the new universe, and I will be its queen. I will have total power, and you will serve me.’

  ‘But Skylurian said . . .’

  ‘Her plan was beautiful indeed, but now she is not here and so you need a new queen. You must not forget to write me properly, darlink. Make it clear I am ruler of all – and give me unlimited powers.’

  ‘But my editor . . .’

  ‘I am your editor now, darlink. And don’t you forget it.’

  ‘And Professor Forestfloor . . .’

  ‘You can completely ignore him.’

  There was a popping noise, and the clink of glasses.

  ‘Haha! That tickles.’

  ‘This should cool you down a little . . .’

  There was the sound of a window being closed, and then the voices disappeared.

  Effie and Maximilian looked at each other.

  ‘Was that who I think it was?’ said Maximilian.

  ‘Terrence Deer-Hart,’ said Effie. ‘Yep. And Lady Tchainsaw too, from the sound of it.’