They waited for Nic, then watched the smoke disclose him.
‘I see no one about,’ Nic said, though he didn’t sound convinced.
‘Well ye wouldn’t see anyone in this, would ye?’ said David.
They waited again, and Bruno held the same question in his head still: how were they going to get inside?
‘Do ye think they’ll have traps set?’ asked Louise.
Without a word, Nic left them again. David and Louise followed quickly, Bruno behind. The Book of Black & White was like granite on his back, like something gaining weight.
Light appeared ahead, hovering, then dividing – a trio of small orbs, white. Bruno realised that Nic must’ve brought a miner’s lamp with him. Towards it he ran.
Shortened by smoke, Bruno noticed Nic and David were only thighs and everything up, himself and Louise not even this. They all moved close to Nic, who crouched to examine a space between his feet. Bruno had the faint, uncertain impression of glass. ‘Only way in,’ said Nic. ‘Dave and Louise, stay out here and keep watch for us. Use the signal if ye need to.’ Nic held up his pocket watch, and Louise and David did the same with theirs.
Nic took his blade, raised it for a moment, then down – a crunch of metal, glass, then an opening, an untainted space for smoke to pour into and explore. There was a momentary clearing and Bruno saw Nic pull a rope from his bag, a crooked tooth of metal bound to the end, and latch it to the edge of the opening, feeding it in and down. David and Louise kneeled, held it there.
‘Go,’ said Nic. He was looking to Bruno.
Bruno wished he could have no doubt, could throw himself into whatever situation without fear or thinking, just knowing on instinct what to do (climb a tree, fly a glider, fire a gun) and not be stymied by imagining what could go wrong, what might happen for the worse. But didn’t say a word as he kneeled beside the other remaining Rebels and manoeuvred himself around, rope loose in his hands. He felt Nic grip his shoulder. ‘Ye’ll be alright,’ he said. ‘Clamp yer feet around the rope good and tight, keep a good distance between the hands. Go slow. I’ll be right after ye. Trust me.’
Bruno held the guidance in his head like he held his Talent. He began his descent.
The Faerie Fort was a blush below. Bruno remembered the din of the Discussion Chamber, cages holding insults, the shame at being summoned to the stage, his escape … But the town hall held no trace of what had happened. There was placid peacefulness everywhere, only crimson leaves for light, but fading, surrounded by a determined dark.
Bruno’s bare feet touched the floor, and cold shot to the ends of him.
He expected to be seized. How could he not? Alone, his Talent felt like a petty, fragile thing, easy to see through, whip away. He stepped back from the rope and held himself. A sound like a razor on wire and Nic arrived beside him in a blink, sliding the length from roof to floor without stopping.
‘This way,’ said Nic. ‘Let’s be seeing if Louise was right.’
They moved away from the Faerie Fort, to the right and the back, the rope inching upwards behind, being retrieved by David and Louise.
The miner’s lamp was unlit in one of Nic’s hands, curved blade in the other.
‘Here,’ breathed Nic, pulling Bruno close. ‘See it?’
He blinked, did see: a door, tall, wider at the top than the bottom, no handle or knocker or keyhole. Bruno had a feeling; no more than an idea, but he grasped the door and pushed. It opened without protest.
They looked at each other. Both sets of eyes spoke – a trap?
But they couldn’t turn back. No choice but to accept good fortune and move in. Bruno and Nic’s shoulders brushed one another in the narrowness. They let the door close by itself.
Nic’s fingers fiddled with the dial at the base of the miner’s lamp and it woke, its light a bleary company. He shook it to rouse fully – they were at the top of the stone staircase Louise had reported. Bruno tried not to think of the junction that would come soon below, the moment when Louise’s information would stop and his memory of the Tall Tale, his father’s long-ago whispered words, would have to lead.
Down then, walls narrowing as though behind the stone on either side there pushed forces determined to stop them, squeezing so tightly before the end that Nic had to shuffle sidelong and Bruno had to squeeze, be prised free, head and arms first, legs and feet after.
Bruno wanted something other than what Louise had told them but the passageway ahead indeed splintered into six, each way heavy with darkness, walls leaning like they’d been animal-dug. Nothing distinguished them, cold air a long slow sigh from each.
Nic looked to Bruno. Nothing needed saying. Now me, thought Bruno. He shut his eyes, needing to remember –
‘When the locksmith’s sanguine son stepped into George Pitch’s house, he saw that there were many ways and rooms. George Pitch wasn’t a man who loved luxury or prized pennies (he’d a habit, in fact, of giving all he could to his people, to his town!), but he needed a large home to welcome people into. It was a place of inclusion, comfort, joy, unlike so many places in Pitch End.’
No, thought Bruno, need to get past these bits. It felt not like his father’s voice but like the voice of the writer, Dr Jonathan Bloom, trying to educate, preach even. Bruno breathed, trying with delicate, intangible movements to slip ahead … Something more returned to him:
‘Below, in the darkness, in the space beneath the house, he came to six ways. Six choices, and the locksmith’s son made the best and bravest decision, taking the way that looked darkest.’
‘They’re all rightly-dark, Bruno,’ said Nic.
Bruno opened his eyes. He’d been speaking aloud.
‘One has to be darker than all the others,’ said Bruno, speaking more to himself than Nic. He stepped forwards.
‘Darker, darkest,’ Bruno whispered, then said, ‘Let me have the lamp.’
He turned, and hated the doubt he saw in Nic’s eyes.
‘Ye have to trust me now,’ Bruno found himself saying.
‘Ye’re to be careful with it,’ said Nic. ‘This one was me da’s own.’
Nic held the lamp out, Bruno moving halfway to meet him, to take it.
Bruno confronted the tunnels, left to right, holding the miner’s lamp high, letting light crawl into each. None promised an end, just continuing long past any relief offered by the lamp. At the final opening, the same darkness. Or darkest? Bruno could see five feet of ground then nothing else. He moved back to the previous passageway, holding the lamp high – more than five feet, maybe twice that before the light stopped.
‘Isn’t a passageway,’ said Bruno.
‘What?’ asked Nic.
‘It’s this way here,’ said Bruno.
He moved into the last passage with Nic close behind and within moments they were stopped. Bruno reached, touched stone.
‘Can’t be this way,’ said Nic, and Bruno heard frustration in his voice. Only a small, niggling note, but not nothing.
‘It is,’ said Bruno, and he recited for Nic:
‘The darkest way, darkness so dark it turned solid before the eyes of the locksmith’s son and he had to push against it, fight the dark, before it allowed him to continue.’
Nic sighed and said, ‘Best get pushing then.’
Shoulders to it they pressed and after long minutes of refusal, feet rasping the ground, it moved. Continued to move. Strength spawned strength – the more it shifted, the more Bruno felt he could push it.
‘Almost there,’ said Nic.
A gap wide enough to slip through and Bruno went first, miner’s lamp throbbing in his hand and blessed words still unspooling in his mind:
‘A banshee with a gaping mouth stood barring the way. The locksmith’s son thought of what his grandmother had told him once: “Banshees just like attention with all that keening and nicking people’s babbies! And Pitch End banshees are worst of all for the wailing on and on and taking what isn’t there’s. But like all Pitch Enders, if ye give em a penny
they soon shut their yap!”’
Bruno faced himself many times over from all angles; mirrors were fitted, floor to ceiling, all points of the compass, rust wreathing their contents. Bruno stepped forwards and watched his body twist, contorting into many question and exclamation marks.
‘What is that?’ asked Nic, stepping up beside him.
A banshee, in sculpted black stone, was crouched on a narrow stone pillar, fingers and feet boasting long, pointed nails. Between its toes like hawk talons was clutched a small bundle of deep-ridged stone. Bruno moved closer, looked and saw a small face within – an infant, eye sockets clogged with dust.
‘Now what?’ said Nic, again in frustration, anxiety.
But Bruno felt calm, didn’t panic, because he could feel understanding rising. He moved closer again to the banshee. Her mouth gaped with silent screaming. Bruno thought – if ye give em a penny they soon shut their yaps! – and then remembered.
He returned the miner’s lamp to Nic. His hand fell against his pocket. But would he still have it? From that dull morning, that world to this with so much changed – Pace’s black penny, given moments before everything altered?
Bruno’s fingers moved into his pocket and felt nothing. Nothing, and then solid something – his fingers snatched at it, like a penny was a thing that could vanish with too much seeking and not enough seizing. He brought it out, pinched between finger and thumb.
‘Thank you, Mr Pace,’ he said.
‘What are ye … ?’ asked Nic.
Bruno stepped up to the banshee and slipped the penny past her tongue.
It joined others in a stone belly, a hollow clash against earlier offerings.
For a long time, worse than nothing: pressing silence. Bruno was left to thinking he’d not remembered right at all, Nic watching him, and the miner’s lamp too, with its low, thoughtful and (to Bruno) sceptical-sounding hum.
Then a scream that sent hands to ears, worry striking against their hearts – we’ll not go unnoticed now, thought Bruno – and a crack was flung into one of the mirrors. A cascade of glass and behind was a new opening. The screaming stopped but its echo thrived long after.
‘Good,’ said Nic. ‘Now hurry.’
Bruno saw the desperation in Nic. Not fear (he couldn’t imagine fear ever showing itself in Nic) but a need, after so many turns of rebuilding an army, of waiting and work, a need for the final thing to set it going. Bruno took care through the new way that had opened behind the shattered mirror but Nic leapt, shards blanked by miner’s lamplight.
Sooner than Bruno would’ve expected, wanted, came a shout somewhere behind them, and heavy footfalls.
‘Definitely a bit quicker now,’ said Nic.
Bruno nodded.
They ran. Into a long, straight passageway, Bruno in a desperate murmur to himself:
‘The longest tunnel, one that the locksmith’s sanguine son thought could’ve rightly taken him around the world twice and back again. And all along the route, the dead who had perished in the tunnel, unable to find their way back to the surface, their hearts neither as true nor as genuine as that of the locksmith’s son.’
Bruno saw statues like slumbering bodies, so lifelike, tucked into niches with legends chipped above. He grabbed names in glances:
BODLETEMPERATE BODLE – +167 TO +174
TEMPERATE WALLINGS – +175 TO +186
TEMPERATE HIGGINBOTTOM – +187 TO +200
They stopped and had a choice, left or right. Bruno decided on no more than instinct: ‘This way,’ he said, turning left, not wanting to slow but still exhausted.
He heard Nic behind him: ‘I hope ye’re right, Bruno Atlas.’
More shouts, more feet – were they being pursued as close as it sounded?
A curve that they had to take so sharp it turned them to face the way they’d come; a lowering of the ceiling, a crouch and then a crawl needed to make it through:
‘The locksmith’s son had to shrink, scramble slow like an infant, had to think himself smaller … and when that wouldn’t work he tried to think himself younger, more childlike, remember bygone days that lived in him still – no worries about his father’s shop and its business, no concern over why his mam had died when she did, or over what the neighbours would think of the holes in his shoes, what the other children in Hedge School thought of his torn trousers. All this he had to shed, weight he had to shrug off … and then, barely, just about, he managed to pass through.’
Through and then standing, Bruno and Nic came to a single, towering step that curved away out of sight on both sides.
‘The Giant’s Staircase,’ said Bruno.
‘Taking a wild guess that the locksmith’s son climbed,’ said Nic, ‘and quick-smart.’
He handed Bruno the lamp and attacked the step with a leap, chest slamming against the edge, fingers clawing stone. Bruno rushed to support him, push his soles up and clear. Nic turned and reached down, taking the miner’s lamp, settling it on the step beside and then hauling Bruno up. They knelt there, turned and looked up – a dozen more steps. And still behind (though closer, without question nearer) the following of Enforcers or Elders? Marshall or Temperate?
‘Up,’ was all Nic said, and he threw himself onto the next step.
‘Wait,’ Bruno tried to tell him, but too breathless. Something was in his mind, some part of the Tall Tale, no more than a throw of words, but important. ‘Wait,’ he said again.
‘No time,’ said Nic, reaching down for Bruno once more.
‘There’s an easier way,’ said Bruno, and then it arrived with him, words he told Nic:
‘After only one step, the locksmith’s son – without breath, without energy – collapsed upon the Giant’s Staircase, defeated. And perhaps he would’ve stayed there, never completing his father’s task, were it not for a companion. The boy’s Shadow – best friend, true self, that part that would survive him and live on in memory and time, never fading so long as someone lived who remembered him – looked down on the boy and knew he must help. With a great wrench he tore himself free of the boy’s fallen body, conquered the Giant’s Staircase in mere moments, and looked down. He saw what the boy could not see from his place at the bottom: the curve of the staircase was not as wide as it seemed, but instead at its furthest edge grew shallow, steps more easy to be taken. Knowledge flowed like shared dreams from Shadow to boy, and the locksmith’s son awoke and knew without worry what to do.’
A clear voice behind Bruno then –
‘I hear someone talking up ahead! Come on!’
Bruno and Nic looked at one another.
‘I hope this works,’ said Nic.
Again they ran, following the curve of the Giant’s Staircase to the left, Nic a step above Bruno until the stairs began to shrink, Bruno rising, Nic sinking –
‘I see it,’ said Nic. ‘I see the steps getting smaller.’
And soon they were alongside one another again, same height at the edge of the staircase. They turned right onto shallower steps, each with a hand pressed to the wall and faster, more easily, towards the summit and onto a landing, a final tunnel, the final choice –
Three low doors, a Cat-Sentry surmounting each.
Bruno listened to their slow whine, the twist of their winding keys.
‘Which one?’ demanded Nic. ‘Which way? What does the story say happens?’
‘Wait,’ said Bruno, looking to each in turn. ‘I need to think.’
‘Can’t wait or think,’ said Nic. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
The Tall Tale whispered in his mind, but like someone moving away, a fading voice –
‘Now, a cat is always a troublesome, flighty thing, to be sure, and should never be trusted. The boy knew this as well as anyone in Pitch End. But he knew too how to get their secrets and … and …’
And that was all.
‘What happens next, Bruno?’ asked Nic.
Bruno shut his eyes. He’d known this, seen it approaching. The memory, the past and its voices ha
d been drowned by more recent storms. He was incapable of more.
‘Bruno,’ said Nic. ‘Speak!’
Bruno swallowed, opened his eyes and confessed: ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’
XXIV
Knowledge
‘What do ye mean ye can’t remember?’ said Nic.
Bruno cleared his throat for words but spoke none.
Nic faced him fully, toes pointed, miner’s lamp listing in his hand.
‘Ye have to, Bruno,’ said Nic. He moved closer, his eyes bright, mouth parted, top lip shivering. Only the two of them, for that moment. ‘Ye have to,’ he said again. ‘We can’t be getting beaten now, not this close. Ye must remember.’
Bruno thought, maybe I can move beyond the story, finish things myself?
Voices below –
‘We can’t get through this gap, Marshall!’
‘Then the smaller ones of ye – Tonner, Tidsell – be crawling under there!’
Not maybe, thought Bruno – must, like Nic said.
He moved towards the three doors, steps small, barely stirring sound. But stirring something else – the Cat-Sentry above the door furthest left twitched. A fuzz of static, and then came a divulging of recorded words in a deep male voice Bruno knew. The Temperate said –
‘The demise of lighthouse number four was as a result of a rightly-nasty and opportunistic attempt on the Mayor’s life by one of the Rebels.
‘The bullet from a Rebel rifle ricocheted off one of the pillars of the town hall, hit the back of a jellyfish in the Sea of Apparitions and struck the lighthouse, shattering its glass.’
Quickly – response triggered by words from the first – the second Cat-Sentry over the second door protested. A different recorded voice, all passion and exclamation –
‘No! It was destroyed by an Elder!
‘Elder Dishonest, killing that farmer cos he was lusting after the man’s wife!
‘Then he lied and lied and tried to cover it up. But he was got in the end.
‘Things don’t just go away.’
And the third Sentry threw more words into the debate, yet another side to things, yet another voice –
Tall Tales From Pitch End Page 18