by Jon Mayhew
‘A riddle?’ Salomé’s eyes glowed a deeper green. Slowly she eased Edgy back on to the rooftop and dumped him flat on to the tiles. ‘Oh, Edgy, you are naughty. You know I can’t resist a riddle.’
‘If you can’t get it,’ Edgy croaked, straightening up and sitting next to her on the roof ’s edge, ‘you must let me go.’
‘Oh, you are clever, Edgy Taylor,’ Salomé smirked at him. She dangled her booted feet over the edge of the roof and kicked them like a child on a grown-up’s chair. ‘But I know it, you see. It’s a wart. A wart clings to face or hand and then one day it’s just gone!’
Edgy’s heart plummeted. He felt as though he were falling all over again.
‘Just give me the letter, silly,’ Salomé giggled. She leaned over and pulled out the letter from his pocket. ‘That’s twice you’ve lost to me. Have you solved my first riddle yet?’ Her eyebrows rose as she scanned the letter. ‘Oh, I see. Mr Scrabsnitch suggests a revitalising pint of ale at the Green Man Inn, does he? Fascinating.’ She carefully folded the letter and slid it back into Edgy’s pocket. ‘What’s Mr Janus going to think when you tell him about our meeting?’ She smoothed Edgy’s hair and whispered, ‘You could lie. Say you managed to run away or tell him you out-riddled me.’
‘You mean,’ Edgy said in a hoarse voice, ‘you’re gonna let me go?’
Salomé laughed and wrinkled her nose. ‘Of course I am. You’re the best fun I’ve had in centuries. I only wanted to look at the letter. I could have tortured it out of that old goat Scrabsnitch but where’s the fun in that? Just don’t get too interested in Moloch – it’s not healthy.’ She jumped to her feet and, putting her hands behind her back, skipped up the roof. Edgy sat as if cemented to the roof edge, slack-jawed, watching her vanish over its apex.
It took Edgy a full hour and a half to clamber down from the rooftops. His feet seemed to slip with every move and each step was torture. His body ached with dangling from gutters and his clothes were covered in soot and bird muck from the slates. Shame burned in his gut like a furnace. He’d wanted to please Janus. How could he tell him that Salomé had taken the message from Scrabsnitch so easily? Henry tumbled from the sack with an indignant yelp and shook himself.
‘Sorry, old friend,’ Edgy said. Henry gave another shake and licked the back of his hand.
Edgy should have run from corner to corner, hiding behind fruit barrows and slipping into shop doorways. But what was the point? Salomé could kill him with the flick of her finger. A tall lady passed by, laughing out loud, making him flinch. Tears stung his eyes.
A grey rain pelted down on Edgy as he trudged across Eden Square and up the steps to the Society.
‘Been busy?’ Slouch muttered from his sofa as Edgy staggered into the hall, soaking and dishevelled.
‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘How ’bout you?’
‘Rushed off me feet,’ Slouch yawned. He stopped and a frown slowly spread across his wrinkled brow. ‘What’s in the bag?’
Surprised, Edgy pulled the book from the sack and showed him The Legends of Moloch.
Slouch gave a shudder. ‘Read The Legend of Aldorath and Moloch,’ he said. ‘It’s my favourite bedtime story.’
Edgy grimaced, slumped on the floor and rested his back against the sofa. The book fell open at the chapter he wanted. Edgy began to read silently to himself.
‘Not like that,’ moaned Slouch from deep within the sofa. ‘Read it aloud. Like I said, it’s my favourite.’
Heaving a sigh, Edgy began to read to the dozing demon.
The Legend of Aldorath and Moloch
Aldorath was a young demon who loved nothing more than making mortals dissatisfied. It was all he lived for. He was never happier than when whispering into a new bride’s ear, pointing out how her new husband snored so loudly at night and belched at the dinner table. He revelled in making young children dream of the toy their parents could never afford. Any misery Aldorath could think of, any reason to be miserable, he would whisper into mortal ears. As far as he was concerned, life was good for him when it was not satisfactory for mortals.
Then one day he woke from a particularly poor slumber. He scratched his backside and belly as he wondered who to discontent today.
And something strange happened.
As he stood thinking, an emptiness, a feeling that something was missing, overcame him. Yes, he could go down to the old woodcutter in the forest and make him wish his son wasn’t such an idiot. But what was the point? Yes, he could visit the bakery and make the baker raise his prices and put chalk in his flour so he could make enough profit to buy a wig. But where was the challenge in that? Was this all life had to offer?
Aldorath had made himself discontented and there was nothing he could do.
Or so he thought.
One day, as he sat on a tree stump, sighing, Satan chanced by.
‘And what is your complaint, my fine demon fellow?’ Satan asked.
‘I’m fed up and bored,’ said Aldorath, not recognising Satan, who never sat still long enough to have his portrait painted. ‘I’m tired of making mortals discontented. I want a challenge!’
‘Well, if it’s a challenge you want,’ laughed Satan, ‘then a challenge you shall have.’
‘Anything,’ said Aldorath, ‘if it will make me happy again.’
‘Very well.’ Satan gave a toothy grin. ‘Somewhere in this blue-green world, I have hidden the body of Moloch. Find it. That is your challenge.’
‘And what if I find it?’ Aldorath asked, worried now because he’d realised who he was dealing with.
‘You won’t,’ Satan said, raising his eyebrows at such a stupid question. ‘I have hidden him well. You’ll never find him.’
‘Oh, won’t I?’ Aldorath loved a challenge as much as the next demon. ‘But just supposing I did? What would you do then?’
‘I’ll probably skin the flesh from your body and scatter your bones across this blue-green world, so be sure you don’t.’ And with that, Satan vanished.
Aldorath pondered Satan’s challenge. On the one hand, he couldn’t resist such a quest. On the other, he could never win. Common sense told him to forget about it and carry on being discontented, but demons are weak creatures and victims of their own vices. After much anguishing and agonising, Aldorath decided to search for Moloch’s body.
Long years passed and stretched into decades. Aldorath wandered the blue-green world hunting for the lost remains of the arch-demon Moloch. He swam among strange sightless fish in the blackest, deepest ocean ravines. He crawled and hacked his way through the thickest jungle floors.
But he didn’t find Moloch.
Long decades past and stretched into centuries. Aldorath stumbled through blinding white blizzards, feeling his way with icy blue claws. He flew over mountain tops, soaring with eagles as he scanned remote passes and valleys.
At last, after many lifetimes of Man, he found the Demon Lord Moloch, though nobody knows where that was.
Satan was furious when he found out that Aldorath had found Moloch. He sent his fleetest demons to catch him, ordering, ‘Stop him before he speaks to anyone and bring him to me. Tear out his tongue before he can speak to you or you will perish too.’
The demons flew faster than arrows and caught Aldorath, tearing out his tongue as they were commanded. Satan threw Aldorath into the deepest caverns of hell.
I’m doomed for sure, Aldorath thought to himself. Satan doesn’t want anyone to find Moloch, but I’ll show him.
And while Satan held him captive, Aldorath carved a map deep into his own flesh, into the very bone of his skull. A map showing where Moloch’s body lay.
I can’t tell anyone myself , thought Aldorath, but one day someone will find my bones and then they will know.
True to his word, Satan had Aldorath’s flesh hacked from his body and scattered his bones across the blue-green world.
No one has found them to this day.
‘Until Lord Mauldeth, that is,’ Edgy muttered to himself
, remembering Janus’s outburst. He pictured the skeleton as he had seen it the other day, standing in the exhibition hall.
A perfect triangle cut out of its skull. Edgy’s eyes widened as he realised. He dropped the book. A perfect triangle where the map would be. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the sliver of bone that the dying boy had given him. It was a perfect triangle and it had marks and squiggles on one side. Part of a map. The skull had a map on it. A map showing where the body of Moloch lay. Or at least part of it. He’d been carrying it all the time! The rest was carved into the top of the skull. All Edgy had to do was link the two together and they would have the location of Moloch’s body. For a moment he sat there, imagining Janus patting him on the back. The thought was so sweet after his bitter humiliation at Salomé’s hands.
Trembling, Edgy scrambled to his feet, but a blur of red rocketed into the entrance hall, knocking him back down.
‘Spinorix!’ Edgy snapped. ‘What the ’ell are you playin’ at?’
‘I didn’t know who to turn to . . . Mr Janus would tell the governors and Sally just laughed.’ The imp’s face was streaked with tears. He gripped his long red tail in his fists and twisted it like a dishcloth. ‘It’s happened again,’ he sobbed.
‘What has? What are you on about?’
‘Something else has gone missing, Edgy.’ Spinorix stared up at him with wide eyes. ‘The skull of Aldorath. It’s vanished and when Lord Mauldeth finds out, he’ll ossify me!’
True Thomas lay on yon grassy bank,
And he beheld a lady gay,
A lady that was brisk and bold,
Come riding over the ferny brae.
True Thomas, he took off his hat,
Bowed him low down till his knee.
‘All hail, thou mighty queen of heaven!
For your peer on earth I never did see.’
‘O no, o no, True Thomas,’ she says.
‘That name does not belong to me;
I am but the queen of fair Elfland,
And I’m come here for to visit thee.’
‘Thomas Rhymer’, traditional folk ballad
Chapter Fifteen
Subterfuge
The great arched ceiling of the exhibition hall echoed with the sound of Spinorix sobbing. Edgy looked down at Henry, who looked back with furrowed brows. They stood before a perfect skeleton, the bones wired together into a standing position. Perfect but for the fact that its head was missing. Two strands of thick wire stuck out from the top of the spine where the head should sit.
‘Well, it wasn’t me who took it so yer can get that idea out of yer head,’ Edgy said, giving a rough cough while Spinorix sat and bawled like a baby. Edgy noticed a handkerchief in his breast pocket and handed it to him.
‘Thank you,’ Spinorix sniffled and blew his long nose into the hanky. He seemed to blow for ages and then offered the slimy remnants back to Edgy.
‘No, no, keep it,’ he smiled, trying not to wrinkle up his nose. ‘My pleasure.’
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ Spinorix sighed, his eyes wide and expectant as if Edgy was going to jump up with a solution. Edgy stared back awkwardly.
‘Look, Spin, you’ve got to pull yourself together,’ Edgy said at last. ‘Lord Mauldeth won’t ossify yer.’
‘He will,’ he groaned. ‘Or worse, he’ll send me down to the boiler room and I’ll stoke coal for eternity.’
‘They have imps stoking up the boilers?’ Edgy raised an eyebrow. No wonder it was so stuffy and warm all the time. Edgy could imagine imps zealously piling coal into the boilers down below as if they were stoking the furnaces of hell itself.
‘Never mind that,’ Spinorix wailed. ‘Do you know how many decades it’s taken me to work my way up to be curator of this collection? I hope Lord Mauldeth does ossify me – better that than the shovel!’ The little imp threw himself down and beat his crimson fists on the tiled floor.
‘How often does he come down here for a start?’
‘What?’ Spinorix stopped sobbing and stared up at Edgy.
‘Well, does he come every day? Once a week? Will he notice, is what I’m askin’ yer?’
‘Will he notice?’ Spinorix began wailing again. ‘Of course he’ll notice. He doesn’t come down very often, but when he does, he’ll see. I mean, you can’t miss it. If it were a toe or a vertebra . . . But the head!’
Edgy gazed around the hall, desperately scanning the room for some inspiration. Finally, his eyes rested on a display cabinet full of horned skulls. He strode over and wrenched open the door.
‘How about if we use one of these?’
Spinorix jumped to his feet, his eyes so wide Edgy could barely make out any of his other features. ‘Use one of those?’ he spluttered. ‘Just slap another skull on top of the body of Aldorath? Just like that?’
‘Yeah,’ Edgy said. Henry whined, licking his lips as Edgy rocked the skull in his palms.
Spinorix groaned. ‘It was bad enough when that horrible boy cut a hole in it . . .’
‘What did Lord Mauldeth say about that?’ Edgy said, thinking of the piece in his pocket.
Spinorix gave an embarrassed cough and twiddled his fingers. ‘Well, you see, I hadn’t quite plucked up the courage to tell him about that.’
‘I reckon you have a choice,’ Edgy said. ‘You can go and tell Lord Mauldeth –’
‘No,’ Spinorix gasped. ‘He’d never forgive me.’
‘Well then, you can either leave it as it is and hope nobody notices or,’ Edgy tossed the skull to Spinorix, who gave a shriek as he caught it, ‘you can stick that on, which’ll buy us more time to figure out who is nickin’ all this stuff and get it back!’
Spinorix jumped up and down on the spot, the points of his ears wobbling. ‘Oh, you mean you’ll help me find them? Thank you so much! I knew it wasn’t true what they said about you,’ he gabbled, shaking Edgy’s hand.
‘Who? Said what?’
‘Oh, I just heard Sally grumbling to Slouch, that’s all.’ Spinorix went a deeper shade of red, if that were possible. ‘I didn’t join in. Backbiting isn’t my style.’ He glanced away from Edgy’s gaze. ‘But she said you were just the sort to go waltzing off with someone else’s head.’
‘I bet she did,’ Edgy said, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. ‘What did Slouch say?’
‘Not much,’ Spinorix sniffed. ‘Couldn’t be bothered.’
‘Right, let’s get started,’ Edgy said. ‘We need to find the skull that will fit the best. An’ we’ll need a pen an’ ink . . .’
It took longer than he’d hoped. Spinorix took ages rummaging around in drawers for a pen and once that was achieved, some of the skulls they selected wobbled on the wired spine and fell off. One clipped Spinorix’s toe, making him curse and hop around the hall. Finally, Edgy stood back and admired the new head. Spinorix bobbed and weaved nervously around him, jumping up on his shoulder at one point to get a better view.
‘There,’ Edgy said, trying to keep his voice bright. ‘Looks like the real thing to me.’
‘How would you know?’ Spinorix muttered. ‘No one’s going to be fooled by that scribble on the top of it.’
He did have a point. The skull they’d chosen was a little small for the body and Edgy’s attempts at drawing a map on the top of the skull were smudged and clumsy.
‘It’s hard to draw on a curved surface,’ he said, stiffening at the complaint. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t have to be perfect, just less obvious it’s missing so we’ve got a bit of time.’
‘And how are we going to catch the thief?’ Spinorix’s eyes glowed and he grabbed Edgy’s sleeve. ‘Have you worked it out?’
Edgy glanced at Henry, who cocked his head as if he wanted to know the answer too. Things had just got a bit more complicated. Edgy had imagined himself fixing the triangle of bone back into the skull and presenting it to Janus with a flourish. But now he had to find the skull first – and whoever had taken it. Edgy’s eyes widened. And if Mr Janus reads the book, he’l
l find out about the skull and want to see it!
Before Edgy could speak, Janus came striding into the exhibition hall.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he said, ignoring Spinorix. ‘Did you get my book?’
‘The book?’ Edgy twitched and nodded to the volume. He had set it on top of a display case right next to the bones of Aldorath.
‘Yes, that’s what I sent you for, wasn’t it?’ Janus said, peering at Edgy. ‘Is something the matter? Did you have any trouble on your errand?’
‘No, no,’ Edgy lied. He couldn’t stop Janus getting the book. ‘It’s there, sir. Sorry, I was goin’ to bring it straight to you but Spinorix distracted me.’
Spinorix’s knees buckled. He clasped his hands together and looked despairingly at the false skull. Janus seemed oblivious.
‘Never mind, never mind,’ he snapped, skipping over to the book and flicking through the pages. He clenched his fist and shook it triumphantly in the air. ‘This is excellent. Excellent!’
‘There was this too, sir,’ Edgy said, pulling Scrabsnitch’s message from his pocket.
Still staring at the book, Janus took the letter. Long seconds crept by. He was lost in The Legends of Moloch. Edgy stood, glancing sidelong at Spinorix, who just stared at the skull. Edgy gave him a swipe with his foot, making him yelp.
Janus looked up, startled, and gave a grin. ‘This is superb news, Edgy,’ he said, scanning the letter. ‘I think we should pay a visit to the Green Man Inn tonight!’
‘Righto,’ Edgy said, giving a thin smile.
The story of Aldorath was halfway through the book. At least Janus wouldn’t have time to read up to that point today. But it was only a matter of time. Edgy had to find the skull before then or Spinorix would be in deep trouble – and so would he.
Satan couldn’t get along without plenty of help.
Traditional proverb
Chapter Sixteen
The Green Man Inn
The Green Man public house stood at the end of a narrow, twisting alley near the leather market. Tall warehouses flanked it, making it look like a drunk hanging from the shoulders of two friends. The roof sagged, the windows slanted. Everything looked as if it would slide into a stagnant heap at any moment. Dark shadows crossed and weaved across the grey of the pub’s misted-up windows. A magic lantern show of drinkers and merrymakers. The murmurs, cheers and laughter rose and fell from inside.