Tall Tales From Pitch End

by Nigel McDowell

  And Bruno saw his only chance – he crept forwards fast, fingers reaching for The Book of Black & White long before he touched it … but the deeper he went into the chamber the more exposed he felt, not wholly unseeable but just a discreet presence hoping to remain unnoticed. He felt as though the book itself knew that it was about to be taken and was eroding his Talent, determined to reveal him.

  His foot caught on uneven stone and he stumbled. He looked up – the Temperate was looking at him.

  No more hesitation – Bruno scooped The Book of Black & White from the stone table, turned and ran as Temperate Thomas snatched out for him, hoping that Sabitha’s strength would hold longer –

  A wail from the Elders, hollowed chorus as Bruno tried to refocus – I’m nothing, no one can see me, I’m not here, I’m gone – as he passed into the long passageway, but again, in his too-big shoes, Bruno stumbled, and he knew before it happened what he was going to do.

  He fell.

  The slam of his body, the slam of the book, woke the slumbering Cat-Sentries, and their screams – all recorded, human agony – shattered his Talent completely.

  ‘The book! Get the book!’ The cry of the Temperate –

  Cat-Sentries pounced and tore at Bruno, same as Temperate Thomas’s own in the town hall, but with no Louise to save him he fought one-handed, the other scooping up The Book of Black & White. Pain ripped his cheek, but not as deeply as in the town hall – these Sentries were slow, sluggish enough that he could fling them off, kick and send them cracking off the wall.

  On he charged, up spiral stairs almost on all fours, turn after turn, satchel thudding on his back, climb feeling like forever then rising into the body of the Clocktower, shouting, ‘Pace! Pace, let me out!’

  The door didn’t open.

  ‘Stop! In the name of the Elders of Pitch End!’ came Temperate Thomas’s cry against the caterwauling of the Sentries.

  Then the door moved and Bruno was out and through before it had opened even half.

  It was raining again, a world in agony.

  Pace retrieved the pocket watch from its niche and handed it to Bruno.

  The door rolled shut.

  Silently, Pace laid his stooped weight against one of the statues. Bruno noticed ‘Arthur Pitch, the Seventh Son’ chipped across its chest. The statue leaned –

  Footsteps rose fast in the Clocktower –

  And Arthur Pitch toppled, falling across the doorway.

  A thud inside – the uncanny urge, Bruno felt sure, of Temperate Thomas’s Talent. How long before he forced his way out?

  Bruno looked to Pace and followed the Witherman’s gaze – at The Book of Black & White that Bruno held in his hands. The weight of the thing dragged on him. But Bruno’s worry, heavier still, was threatening to anchor him where he stood. He thought: what have I begun?

  XVI

  The Passing Gate

  ‘Pace,’ said Bruno, breathless but feeling he needed to tell, let someone else know. ‘I saw the Temperate. Children. He’s been—’

  ‘I know,’ said Pace. ‘And now ye know too, and know how rightly-important all this is.’

  Another impact of Talent shook the statue of Arthur Pitch.

  ‘Where do we go?’ asked Bruno.

  ‘Only one place safe now,’ Pace breathed. His body shivered, back stiffening like a coil of wire trying to straighten itself. ‘Outta Pitch End altogether.’

  Then the Witherman moved off, faster than Bruno could’ve thought. Bruno followed, The Book of Black & White growing heavier the longer he bore it.

  Across the town square and then at the entrance to Old Town they stopped –

  Enforcers. Cigarettes poked from their mouths, a smouldering constellation. They were collected on the very same darkway Bruno had ventured down hours before, in what he considered a different, more innocent life. And, so swiftly they could’ve been dragged from ten-turn hibernation, posters bearing the face of Dr Jonathan Bloom gawped from every window and door. Bruno doubted whether the man was as demonstrably and diabolically evil as the posters made out – eyes just slits, brow heavy and primitive, hair tangled like madness and in his right hand a dagger that looked like it had been dipped in something dark. A gruesome legend had been rendered above his face in drops of the same stuff that coated the knife:

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS SWINE?

  Bruno adjusted The Book of Black & White; the weight of a stone in his arms, it felt too obvious, even rendered unseeable, to carry. He opened his satchel and stuffed it in, its bulk pushing everything else aside, then shouldered it again.

  They waited. Bruno looked to Pace for guidance, but he said and indicated nothing.

  A palpitation of thunder, short flickers of lightning and Bruno was shown shuddering Enforcers. He thought: they’re barely older than I am, and they’re afeared of everything.

  Knowing this made his own fear fade a little. Just enough. He took the decision. ‘Now,’ he whispered. He tugged on Pace’s sleeve, both sinking deep into the protection of their Talent, hurrying forwards, clinging to buildings, dodging Enforcers, leaping puddles like pewter that held disturbed reflections.

  They reached the end of the darkway, and between them and the high stone wall that surrounded Pitch End was a narrow strip of swampy ground – Mickleward Marsh. It encircled the town, shore to shore, between buildings and the wall. Narrow-looking but deep, Bruno had heard. But, he wondered, where’s the Passing Gate?

  An Enforcer close by provided it – a lantern was hooked on the crook of his arm and, as he paused in his patrol on the edge of the Marsh, the Passing Gate bloomed: high and wide, magnificently rusted and corroded, a mass of every kind of metal Bruno could recognise, welded and nailed and woven together. Stretching (and to Bruno, it really did look stretched) from the ground – a series of spikes leaving not a hand of space to worm under – to a stone arch humped like a raised eyebrow over more spikes. A plaque, tarnished, declared in all Elder verbosity:

  THIS PASSING GATE WAS SEALED ON THE ORDERS

  OF TEMPERATE THOMAS II

  WITH THE EXPRESS HOPE OF PRESERVING

  THE RIGHTLY-DECENT PITCH END WAY OF LIFE

  (AND TO KEEP OUT FOREIGNERS)

  ON 30TH APRIL, YEAR +290.

  HE – OR SHE – WHO OPENS IT, AND LEAVES BY IT,

  MAY CONSIDER THEMSELVES FOREVER BANISHED …

  AS THEY’LL NOT BE LET BACK IN.

  HAVE A PLEASANT PITCH END DAY.

  ‘What do we do when we get out even?’ Bruno whispered to Pace. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Mount Tome,’ said Pace. ‘Central peak of the Elm Tree Mountains, that’s where ye’re heading. Other Rebels who’ve been hiding out, same as Louise, they’ll be waiting for ye.’

  Yet another pull of thunder, fiercer rain, all silver and black.

  Bruno was overwhelmed with sudden worry then: if he left Pitch End, violated the Gate – was ‘banished’ and not let back in – would he never see his mother again? Never come home again? He may have spent so many turns imagining leaving the town, but on the brink of doing it he felt –

  ‘They’ve stolen the book! The Rebels have The Book of Black & White!’

  ‘They’ve stolen the key to the Gate! Prepare to fire! Anything that moves, shoot it!’

  Temperate Thomas, then the Marshall.

  Bruno had no time for further feeling.

  ‘Pace,’ he said. ‘I—’

  ‘I’ll give ye time,’ he said. ‘Go slow across the strip of Marsh, that’s the trick.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘None of yer arguing now, Bruno. Just trust yerself up there. Ye’ve got yer father’s way of seeing things, and ye’ve got the truth now. Trust in that and ye won’t be going wrong. Keep the book safe, and that pocket watch too. Do ye understand?’

  Bruno nodded.

  ‘Good lad,’ he said. A final rest of his hand on Bruno’s head and then Pace left him, vanished. The Witherman didn’t want Bruno to see him any more. He was alone.

&nbs
p; ‘Be securing the Gate!’

  The Temperate and the Marshall were approaching at a run, trailing Enforcers, but before anyone could act on anything the darkway was swamped with Cat-Sentries. From roofs they fell as though chasing something – someone? – unseen, crying their recorded cries, climbing the legs of Enforcers, pouncing with paws sprouting blades, and the Marshall kicked them away as his Enforcers, no more than boys, squealed. And in the confusion Bruno heard that hot blast, familiar:

  ‘None of yer usual waiting about,’ said Louise. He suddenly had a very large, heavy key in his hand. ‘When it opens, ye’ll have ten ticks, so don’t be hanging about! Go on, for Pitch sake!’

  Bruno ran, slipping-almost-falling, then stopped. He took slow steps, feeling the Marsh churn beneath, ready to take him if he moved too swift. He turned to look –

  Cat-Sentries still in disarray, leaping, thrown –

  Bruno slipped, fell onto his front and grabbed out for the Gate, pulling himself across the last metre of Marsh and then straightening to search the Gate’s surface. He found no place for the key to go. Then lightning like a silent scream showed him; he screwed the key into the dark space for it, a loud graze of metal on metal. Cogs, chains, locks awoke. The entire Gate was reanimated, mechanisms spinning, clicking and whirring in one interminable, ancient movement, teeth locking into teeth, chains clattering from one end to the other until, with a jarring prang, the gate sprang open and back. A steady, ticking countdown began. No chance of such a thing going unnoticed –

  ‘The Gate!’ cried the Temperate, looming out of the rain, any Cat-Sentry that approached him being thrown back by his Talent. He looked exhausted, Bruno thought. Perhaps what he’d done to Sabitha, using his Talent to steal her youth, had drained him?

  Ten ticks.

  And then, like the whipping away of a dark sheet, Pace reappeared. But not just for Bruno’s eyes –

  ‘There!’ cried the Marshall. ‘Stop him!’

  Bruno, intent on his Talent, not wanting to leave Pace to the mercy of the powers of Pitch End but remembering the insistence of the Witherman and Louise, slipped under the arch of the Passing Gate, and out.

  I’m through, thought Bruno. I’m gone. I’ve left Pitch End.

  ‘Shoot him!’ The Marshall ordered.

  Bruno turned. A spurt of blood left Pace’s kneecap and he crumpled without a cry. Bruno wanted to cry out, to run back and help. Being shot not enough, another opportunistic Enforcer landed a blow to the Witherman’s mouth with his rifle butt.

  ‘We’ve got him!’ shouted the Enforcer who’d taken the shot.

  ‘I helped too!’ called the second, the one who’d probably broken Pace’s jaw.

  ‘Keep shooting, ye fools!’ the Temperate shouted. ‘He doesn’t have the book, he wasn’t alone!’

  ‘Shoot at what, Temperate Thomas? There int nothing there!’

  ‘At the open gateway, ye numbskull! Someone is standing there, I know it!’

  The Gate continued to tick down, hadn’t shut. And Bruno, standing beyond the wall, outside Pitch End, watched the Enforcers focus, taking aim against the empty archway. Already to Bruno they had the appearance of ghosts, or the Shadows from The Tall Tale of the Dishonest Elder. He was beyond them now, set apart. He didn’t move. Any twitch might reveal him, darkness itself peeling back to show, betray him.

  All the mechanisms on the gate began to churn back, to slide home –

  ‘Stop!’ Temperate Thomas bellowed and he rushed forwards, his eyes locked on the key Bruno had left in the Gate. A Cat-Sentry leapt (or was thrown?) into his path and he stumbled, fell into the Marsh –

  Bruno darted back towards the gate –

  The Temperate crushed the Sentry with a snap of his Talent and rushed on, sinking to the knees but still coming –

  The Gate shut. Bruno snatched the key from the lock. He was locked out, Temperate Thomas and the Enforcers locked in.

  The Temperate came so close to the Gate that Bruno backed away. He thought that it might merely surrender itself, come apart under fear, the presence of the Head of the Elders enough to wither it. The same eyes that had shamed every conscience at the town meeting were fixed on the dark. But Bruno couldn’t be sure if he was being seen or merely sought. Still he didn’t want to move. Once again – hardly dared breathe.

  The Passing Gate shook, and Bruno knew Temperate Thomas was trying to move the thing with his Talent. Only moments and then it ceased; the Temperate leaned against the Gate, breathing deeply. He had no energy left, thought Bruno. Or perhaps – as Bruno was learning himself – he couldn’t summon enough of the emotion needed, enough power and concentration to fire his Talent.

  ‘Open it,’ muttered the Temperate, breathless but still looking at the space where Bruno stood.

  The Enforcers looked to one another behind the Temperate’s back. Bruno saw fear transmit amongst them – they’d been schooled for ten turns on the evils of the world outside the wall, beyond the Gate.

  ‘But how?’ said one, the youngest present, stepping into the Marsh, falling over himself to be helpful.

  ‘Don’t ask me how,’ Temperate Thomas told him, ‘just do it.’

  ‘But we dunno how to be opening the Passing Gate without a key,’ said the same Enforcer. ‘I thought that you would know, seeing as ye closed it. I mean’ (he began to dig) ‘I have Forgotten everything like ye said we should so I don’t remember right-well.’

  Said with an embarrassing truthfulness, no malice intended. Just what the Elders preached: honesty, subservience, Forgetting. But that didn’t stop the Temperate from interpreting it otherwise, from sweeping around and slapping the boy across the jaw, hard.

  ‘Never speak to me like that again,’ he said. ‘Ye understand me well?’

  The Enforcer could do nothing but assure him. Yes, he understood.

  ‘Good. Now, I want this gate open. I don’t care how ye do it. Just do. And I want a horde of Enforcers to head into the forest.’ The Temperate pointed to the mass of trees rippling with storm on the slope of Mount Tome.

  The struck Enforcer, now dabbing a bubble of blood on his split lip, looked unsure. But under the gaze of the Temperate, he could again do nothing but nod in agreement and promise in a mumble that yes, it would be done.

  The Temperate walked, half-waded, back through the Marsh.

  ‘Sir,’ said the Marshall, when Temperate Thomas had rejoined him, ‘with all due respect, my men have captured the Witherman.’

  The Temperate snatched a lantern from the Marshall’s hands, held it high and said in a whisper fierce enough to carry through the gush of rain: ‘He wasn’t alone, Marshall. It’s clear as anything…’

  He lifted the lantern higher. A rush of light showed two sets of tracks in the Marsh – Temperate Thomas’s and Bruno’s.

  The Marshall said nothing.

  ‘The Atlas boy,’ said Temperate Thomas.

  ‘My men will be rightly-fearful,’ said the Marshall, glancing at the Enforcers. ‘They’ve heard the stories, like all of us. Tales of whispers in the mountains. Phantasms, the dead left there, cursed children wandering through the forest and in the dark places under the earth.’

  ‘Children?’ repeated the Temperate. ‘This is the greatest fear of the Head of the Pitch End Enforcers – children?’

  The Marshall didn’t reply.

  ‘If that is yer men’s greatest fear,’ said Temperate Thomas, ‘then that is what they’ll have to be facing. We must stamp out this rebellion before it gets wind in its sails.’

  ‘Ye will try,’ said Pace then, words crackling from a broken jaw. ‘And ye’ll get yer lesson, Ignatius Thomas. Ye’ve taken too much, tried too rightly-hard, treated too many people too badly. Not just anger and fear can be used to power a Talent. But ye wouldn’t know that, being the sanctimonious sod that ye are.’

  Temperate Thomas turned to Pace. ‘Ye have something,’ said the Temperate. ‘Something I’m wanting to claim, Wither. Let’s see if I can use my Talent – humble
as it is. Let’s see if I can be taking it.’

  Bruno watched Temperate Thomas’s Talent find new purpose. And Pace watched as his own fingers – plucked as though by a breeze, like emptying gloves – began to dissolve, a stream of ash peeling away from them. Bruno noticed the intense working of Temperate Thomas’s digits, working as though bound together and he was trying to free them.

  Enforcers all around looked to one another, transfixed, terrified.

  ‘The Rebels,’ said Temperate Thomas, his voice as low as it had been in the chamber beneath the Clocktower, his tone as gently explanatory as when he’d addressed Sabitha. ‘And all who are for following them will soon be forgotten, Witherman. Soon, they’ll be nothing more than dust.’

  A final, swift rush of the Temperate’s Talent consumed Pace, unpicking him furiously, particle by particle: feet first, legs, torso, chest, charring without fire, humanity evaporating. Last of all the face. Disbelief widened the Witherman’s eyes, taking their last look at Bruno.

  The leaves of the Faerie Fort, thought Bruno, ridiculously, before the end.

  Pace was there, and then not, survived only by Dr Bloom’s addition, the old, battered clock without hands falling with a dull clatter to the cobbles. And the last glimpse Bruno took before he turned, ran – Temperate Thomas, hand on one knee, crouching for the pocket watch, on his face such a satisfaction, such a stretching smile that the dark couldn’t disguise it.

  XVII

  Boy and Blade

  The mountainside was softening to sludge, every step becoming a lunge, almost impossible to advance. Behind Bruno, the shouts of Enforcers rigging explosives. Ahead, a rustling darkness he knew in daylight as the forest that wound itself around the middle of the Elm Tree Mountains, trees falling just short of the three main peaks that formed Pitch End’s other horizon. He looked high and saw – as Pace had told him – Mount Tome, central peak, his apparent destination, its tip as jagged as the shattered neck of a bottle.

  A single cry from the Marshall: ‘Back! Stand yerselves back!’