“You’re really not going to come with me?” I felt like my body had been dipped in icy water.
His smile became wider and I felt some of my fear thaw. “This is your dream, Serendipity. Dreams are things that you have to reach and stretch for. And your dream is a good dream. The best dream.” He stood back from me.
“But, Professor—”
“No buts, Serendipity. I’m afraid you don’t have time for buts.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “They’re not that far away. Anyway, I’ve every faith in you. As far as apprentices go, you knock old Mrs. Potts into a cockled hat.”
I found myself grinning.
“On top of which, you survived Lahn Dan without your mother. And if you could survive Lahn Dan without your mother, I’m certain you’ll survive the rest of the world without me. Now go, my dear. Find those horses.”
I scrambled down the ladder, my rucksack on my back, and looked up as the Professor pushed the manhole cover back into position. A pale crescent moon of blue light waning, the man in the moon fading from view.
* * *
At the bottom of the ladder, Tab stood with his light stick glowing. Mouse skittered around on the floor at his feet.
“Where’s the ole fella?” he asked.
“He’s not coming,” I replied.
Tab shrugged before moving off down the long dank bad-smelling tunnel. “Huh. Probly just as well. He’d only have slowed us down.”
PART TWO
OUTSIDE
chapter 15
THE KING
CLIMBING OUT ON the other side of the wall, the night looked no different. The sky was the same rumble of bruised blue, the horizon just a silhouette. Tab and I pushed the cover back into position and then turned to see exactly where we were.
The road we were standing on was nothing more than a cracked strip and on either side of it were swathes of emptiness.
If this was the rest of the world then I wasn’t sure that I wanted it. At that moment an enormous part of me just wanted to climb back through the sewer into Lahn Dan and into my cozy bed. I wanted to slip back into being the person I was just days before—a storyteller’s apprentice and a girl without a mother. How silly I’d been for thinking I’d needed to escape. But now it was too late. I could never ever go back. I was a fugitive. I was on the run.
“Let’s go.” Mouse ran alongside Tab, his head turned to hear his master’s voice. The idiotic little thing seemed to dote on him.
“Where are we going?”
“To find my people, of course.” He gave a doh slap on his forehead to remind me just how stupid I was. “You comin?”
* * *
The glow was coming from a city of tents, hundreds and hundreds of them flapping in the night breeze. Fires flickered between them, and as we approached, I could hear the beat and screechy blare of music being played. Horns and pipes, strings being strummed over the thud and the thump of a drum. And voices. Whooping and laughing and screaming.
“Is it a party?” I asked as we passed line upon line of old-fashioned two-wheel modpods—the ones you see in old pictures with people sitting on top of them.
“They’re smugglers.” Tab shrugged. “Every night is party night for smugglers.”
Smugglers?
The outer edges of the tent city were deserted, but as we zigzagged through, a youngish man emerged out of one of the tents and yawned, stretching his arms awkwardly upwards as he did so. Peeling open his eyes, he spotted us passing nearby.
“Hello, Tab. Got caught again, didya?”
Tab said nothing, just grunted and nodded in response before carrying on towards the noise at the center of the camp.
“Don’t think the King is best pleased,” the man continued. “Better go and see him and be all apologetic like. Who’s yer friend?”
Tab turned a little as he walked. “Not a friend. Just someone.”
As we skipped our way around a couple of small dying fires, I came alongside Tab and poked him on the arm.
“That’s not very nice, is it?”
“Wha?”
“Saying I’m just someone.”
“Well, you are, aincha? Everyone’s just someone. Stands to reason. Or doncha understand English?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Anyway”—I let my voice dip into a whisper—“who’s this king he was talking about?”
“The King. King Billy, of course.”
“Who’s King Billy?”
He rolled his eyes. “You don’t know nuthin, do ya?”
“No. I don’t think I do.”
“His Royal Highness King Billy is king of all the smugglers. He’s our Comandeer in Chief.” Tab looked nervous and stared straight ahead. “He’s the one who’s gonna fetch me a right clunker for getting meself caught.” He gulped. “Again.”
* * *
“Tab, Tab. Come here, my lad.” The music stopped suddenly as we entered the ring of jumping, swinging people. I looked around at them all as we made our way through. The clothes they wore were bright and colorful even in the dimness of the night. Reds and greens and yellows and blues that clashed happily against each other without a care. Shirts and blouses, all shiny and silky. I looked at Tab and noticed for the first time that even his blue top was quite a different thing from the stiff, uncomfortable overalls of the Pbs. More like something an Au would wear. Staring closer at the people, I could see pictures on their arms. Dark swirls and patterns that had been scratched into their skin, weaving their way up their sleeves. They all seemed to have them.
“Here he is, everyone. Come on, my lad. Come on up here.” The man was sitting on a chair on top of a low platform. He wore a plain wooden crown on his head and his face was craggy and hairy, like a war had been raged across it and both sides had lost. “Come on. Don’t be afraid.” He waved towards Tab in a warm and inviting way, beckoning him up to the throne.
Tab edged forwards gingerly, the crowd parting as he went. I noticed Mouse close on his heels, his stubby tail wagging like a blind man’s stick. As Tab climbed up onto the stage, the King stood up out of his chair and grabbed Tab by the shirt with both hands, lifting him clean off the ground and into the air.
“How many times is it now?” the King growled. “I’ve lost count. Is it eight? Nine? Twenty? A hundred? Can you even remember yourself?”
Tab’s legs dangled a couple of feet off the platform and he tried to speak even though his chest was being squeezed tight against his own shirt. “Six. Or seven. I think, Yer Royal Highness.”
“Six or seven, is it?”
“Yessir.”
“Tell me, Tab. Do you like getting captured? Do you like putting our little setup at risk? Is that it? You like risking the livelihood of every member of our community?” Mouse started yapping up at the big hairy man. “Or perhaps it’s this horrible little ball of fleas that gets you snatched each time.” The King kicked Mouse off the end of the podium like a piece of rubbish. I ran over to the dog but he just flicked himself back onto his feet and carried on with his unstoppable high-pitched barking.
“No, sir. Not Mouse, sir,” Tab croaked. “All me own fault. Every time. But…” He seemed to pause to try and suck in his own breath.
“But what?” The King frowned hard into Tab’s face.
“But … I always manages to escapes, sir. Dun I?”
The King stared frostily at him. Then, eventually, his eyes softened a bit. “Yes. Yes you do, Tab.” He slowly lowered him down to the ground. “Every single time they capture you and every single time you escape.” He smiled, then rubbed and scruffled the top of Tab’s head with his large hand. “You’re our own little Houdini, aren’t you?” The King laughed out loud then turned to the crowds of people standing before him. “Come on!” he shouted. “We need some music to celebrate the return of our own little Houdini!”
Everyone seemed to sigh as one and the drumming and tootling started up again with limbs and bodies swaying and bouncing in time with the music. It was strang
e and exciting both at the same time. Perhaps even a touch scary-looking. I had no idea who this Houdini was, but the very mention of him seemed to evaporate any tension in the air.
To one side I could see a long table of food piled up like mountains all the way from one end to the other. Breads and meats and strange-colored fruits and vegetables I’d never seen before in my entire little life. It smelled delicious.
“And who’s this?” The King peered down at me and I suddenly felt smaller than Mouse. His eyes burned me with their stare. “What’s your name?”
“Serendipity. Sir.” I found myself gulping. “I escaped with Tab. And Mouse. Under the … er … wall.”
“Want to become a smuggler, do you?”
“Well … er…”
The King clicked his fingers and one of the guards standing just behind the King’s throne came forward. The King spoke loudly into the guard’s ear. “Prepare a tent for this one. She looks fit to collapse. And fetch some new clothes. She needs to shake off these miserable London rags.” He pronounced Lahn Dan oddly. The guard retreated and the King clicked his fingers once again. This time a female guard stepped forward, holding a silver tray with expensive-looking glasses on it. The glasses were half filled with a ruby liquid that slopped from side to side as she moved. “Give our two little fugitives some wine. I think they deserve it.” Then he turned back to face me. “Drink. Eat. Dance. Then sleep. Tomorrow is a different day.” The King returned to his throne and the female guard handed Tab and me a glass each.
We slipped off into the crowd towards the table of food, Mouse forever tagging on behind Tab. I lifted the glass to my nose and sniffed the wine. It made my nose spasm. I wasn’t sure if it smelled nice or not, so I started to lift it to my lips, to see if it tasted nice or not, when Tab slapped the glass clean out of my hand and it tumbled onto the blackened earth at my feet.
“What did you do that for?” I turned, stunned.
Tab threw his own glass down. “Don’t drink that. It don’t do you no good. Everyone’s grumpy in the morning because of that stupid stuff. They shake and shiver and moan about their stupid heads. Here.” He scooped some juice out of a bowl with a small plasticky cup. “Drink this instead.”
I swallowed it down. It was soothing and beautiful.
“Apple juice,” Tab said, scooping some up for himself.
“What? From apples?”
He looked at me like I’d gone doolally. “What else is apple juice gonna be made of?”
“You mean it’s made from real apples?”
The expression on his face was like that of a cat who’d fallen out of a tree. Shaking his head he decided to just ignore me. “Better than that stupid wine rubbish,” he spat. Then, in a whisper, “All adults are idiots.”
Drinking the juice made me realize just how thirsty and hungry I had become. All the excitement and fear had pushed it to the back of my mind, but now, stood here watching these strange people dancing and laughing, my body pleaded with me to eat. Tab must have felt the same way because, almost as one, we launched ourselves into the piles of food that adorned the long wooden table.
I stuffed myself on meats and breads and cheeses and fruits and things I couldn’t even name. When I looked up at Tab and saw that he had juice dribbling down his chin and onto his clothes I laughed for the first time in days. Tab gave me yet another look that said “Are you mad?” but it didn’t even matter, I felt that happy.
I watched the dancing for a while but before too long my eyelids were flickering shut. A kindly woman with a big smile but very few teeth showed me to the tent they had kept free for me on the edge of the camp. I thanked her before climbing inside, zipping myself in and falling fast asleep.
chapter 16
A GOOD HEART
I AWOKE TO find new clothes stacked in the corner of the tent. They were colorful and neat and I happily changed out of my heavy dungarees and into the fresh, light trousers and top. The boots left for me were solid and untarnished. They were cherry-picker red with laces that went up through lots and lots of little holes. I tried to read the label that stuck out at the back of the boots, but all I could piece together were the letters DrM. I pulled them on and hooked my fingers through the laces to tighten them up.
The camp outside was silent now. Silent and empty.
The sky was the same monotonous violet it had always been—no different from the sky above Lahn Dan, and I gave my head a shake, thinking how silly I must have been to imagine it would suddenly change color the moment I stepped beyond the Emm Twenty-five Wall. We were, after all, only a mile or two away.
The tent city looked dead in its emptiness. Only the canvas flapping gently in the morning breeze told me that it was part of a breathing, living world.
I worked my way around the tents. The silence was picked away by the occasional sounds of snores and yawns and bad-head groans coming from inside them. Tab had been right about the wine, then.
When I did come across Tab, he was working hard. Slaving away, to be honest. Sweating. He and two young men—one slight, the other lumpen—were carrying out boxes and packages from the back of a bloated modpod.
I sat a short distance away on a patch of brown grass and watched them as they worked—none of them seemed especially pleased to be doing it. Eventually, after a lot of moanings and groanings and to-ings and fro-ings, the modpod sped away and the three of them wandered off in different directions.
“Hey,” I called out to Tab. He looked up and nodded without smiling. “What was that you were doing?”
“Heaving.”
“Heaving?”
“The King’s put me back on heaving duties.” He continued walking and I strolled along behind. “Moving all the stuff about. Taking it from ere and putting it there. Meaningless work. Says he don’t trust me on smuggling trips anymore.” As he walked, his finger picked at slivers of wood caught in his trousers and shirt. “Stupid, really.”
He stopped walking and sat down on a tump of earth a little away from the canvas city, where life was slowly starting to crack out of the triangular fabric eggs. I sat down beside him. It was then that I noticed that Mouse was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s … your dog gone?” I didn’t want Tab to think that I’d paid enough attention to him to correctly remember his dog’s name.
“Restin. Somewhere. Or getting scraps off anyone who shows an interest. Treacherous little so-and-so he can be.”
We both remained silent for a while, watching the drinkers and dancers from the night before crawl back out into the dull light of morning, their eyes squinting, limbs aching and heads sore.
It suddenly struck me that all through that morning and during the previous night’s revelries, I’d not seen any other children.
It felt a bit like suddenly realizing that your left shoe had disappeared. It was obvious but for some reason only noticeable the moment you noticed it.
I fished up the point with Tab, who gave me a dull, uninterested look.
“What about it?”
“Well … er … why?”
He shrugged and stared down at the ground, his hands playing with the clumps of earth between his feet. “No idea. You’re right, though. I think I’m the youngest smuggler in the crew.”
There was a touch of the swagger in his voice, so I quickly tried to cripple it.
“And the least successful.”
His eyes flicked up at me. “No need for that.” He sounded hurt as his fingers crumbled the dry mud beneath him. “No need for that, at all.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “So what about your parents?” I asked. “I’ve not seen them yet.”
“Neither have I,” he replied. “Never met them.”
“What? You don’t know who your parents are? That’s awful.”
“Is it.” His voice was flat and what should have been a question certainly didn’t sound like one. “I just don’t think about it.”
“But it is awful,” I said. “Everybody needs to know about
their parents.”
Tab threw a stone as far as he could. “Okay. Tell me about your parents then.”
“Eh?”
“Let’s hear all about them. Must’ve been a marvelous pair to have one as perfect and spotless as you.”
“Hold on—”
“Go on. Tell me about them.” His eyes were as cold as steel. “I’d loooove to hear about them.”
I stared back at him. I needed to make a point. “My mother died recently.”
If I thought that statement would make Tab ease off, I was terrifically much mistaken.
“Everyone dies,” he replied, looking hard at me till I turned away. “Even Princess Serendipity will die in the end. What about your father? Is he dead too?”
I kept my mouth shut. Mama had never told me anything about my father. She would mutter jokey stuff and chuck away comments like rubbish, but she’d never sat me down and told me anything about him. And I didn’t ask. It just wasn’t what we did. We lived our lives without my father and we didn’t really question it. Neither of us. We rolled along merrily enough on our own.
“Was that ole fella yer father? The creaker who left you to fend for yourself? The one you deserted last night?”
I felt like swinging a fist at Tab’s idiot face. What did he know? He knew nothing. All he knew about was heaving boxes around and getting himself caught by the Minister’s Police Force. His brain was probably riddled from rabies or something that his fudgy little mutt had given him. That or rotten innards from drinking too much apple juice. I wanted to scream and shout at him and poke him in the eye.
I bit my tongue and said nothing.
“Can I ask you a question?” Tab’s voice was as quietly angry as I was feeling. “Why were yer escaping? Whadya done in Lahn Dan that was so bad you had to escape? Hmm?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “We hadn’t done anything.”
“Wha? Nuthin?” Tab shook his head disbelievingly.
A Whisper of Horses Page 9