by Sarah Driver
To reach the house of Akhund Olm, take a number three Spiderbus towards Dagger Lane. Then change for a number five, travelling west towards the house of Land.
‘Heart-thanks, Spidermaster,’ I whisper, stuffing the scrolls into my pockets. I hurry down a long corridor lined on each side with tall metal cages. Half the doors are hanging open – I remember what was said about the spiders starting their own hunt, and shudder. In the locked cages, a few giant spiders scuttle closer as I pass, platter-eyes gleaming.
The shop at the front of the house is jostling with boys trying to trade for the Spidertokens I heard about. Nanny stands behind the counter, calling for quiet. I slink towards the door, hoping she won’t notice me.
‘Ma’s only gone and forgotten to send me enough silver for the week!’ moans a boy. ‘How will I get anywhere?’
I squeeze past and step outside, onto the busiest street I’ve ever seen. Figures lurch out of the smog, faces covered with stained masks that might’ve been white, once. Filthy streaks of old cobweb veil my face, hanging in the air. I reach up to brush them away and the webs stick to my fingers.
Filthy slush gnaws at my ankles. I tip back my head to stare at the towers that stretch so tall I can’t see the top of them, and someone yells at me to mind where I tread.
The Spiderstop is a tall stake pierced through the cobbled street, wrapped thickly in white spider silk. Under the silk, moths, bats, birds and flies have been smothered. An old man sits in a rickety wooden seat atop it, wisps of cobweb caught in his beard, voice creaking. ‘Next Spiderbus number three, number three next Spiderbus. Have your tickets ready.’
I step towards it, almost slipping in more of the shield-sized droppings we saw in the forest. I join a gaggle of boys waiting by the stop, hopping from foot to foot and complaining about the cold. One of them picks at the sticky silk on the Spiderstop. ‘Snack, anyone?’ he asks, poking the belly of a dead bird. I can just make out the shape of its beak under the webbing.
More boys hurry to the Spiderstop, lining up behind me, pushing and shoving. Then a giant spider click-clacks towards us, a man in a smog-belching hat sitting atop its head. ‘Whoa,’ he cries, and the creature jerks to a halt. The man tethers the spider to the Spiderstop and unrolls a rope ladder from its back. As we start to climb aboard, the spider tucks into one of the birds trapped beneath the silk.
At the top of the ladder, a circle of seats has been strapped to the spider’s back. ‘Move along, move along, use all available space!’ yells the driver.
I hand him my ticket and take a seat. A cord hangs down in the middle of the circle, marked ‘STOP’. When the last seat is filled, the driver untethers the spider and lashes it into a lurching scuttle that makes my belly feel hot and tight.
The spider hurtles to the end of the street. Then it shoots out into a busy main road, choked with a press of bodies, clanging bells and crowded stalls brewing vats of smoky black liquid. I grip the edge of my seat and stare down at the street. Everywhere I look, tall, pale spires brush the smoky, blackened sky. The place is full of sweeping stone steps and ornate lanterns and windows made of so many colours that rainbows play in the snow.
I find myself wondering what Da might be doing now, and if he’ll ever forgive me for making this forbidden voyage.
A song and the sea are kin, says his rich, gentle voice in my memory. Changeable kin, like you and your brother. For whenever you meet one or the other, neither is the same as the time before. Songs and seas are never the same twice.
I smile. Bet he’s gonna find us changed again, next time we meet.
A boy leans forwards and grabs the STOP cord, yanking it with two hands. The spider releases a bone-scraping squeal and slithers to a stop. I fall forwards, landing in a heap in the middle of the circle of seats. Boys laugh as they step over me and clamber down the ladder. I scramble back to my seat, cheeks on fire.
‘Kaffykaffykaffy! ’ bellows a voice. ‘Get yer kaffy!’ I lean over the edge of the circle, peering down at a man selling cups of steaming black liquid.
‘At your prices?’ the driver yells. ‘That kaffy might as well be molten gold!’
‘These are lean times,’ fires back the man. ‘Stay warm or die, eh? Supplies running low. Get your kaffy while you can and keep yer bones warm!’
‘That’s nothing but old dishwater. Shame on you!’ says a passing woman, cheeks threaded with fine red veins like webs.
The driver chuckles, and we set off again, dashing madly along the streets.
People shove through the crowds, carrying coffins on their shoulders. Others sit by the side of the road, faces empty of hope, like they’re never gonna get up again.
‘Gods,’ I whisper under my breath. In Nightfall, death jostles with life for space in the crowded streets. And it looks like death is winning.
‘New round here?’ asks a boy next to me.
I hunker down in my bear cloak, shrugging. I’m trying to watch for my stop, I don’t want him to distract me.
‘Dagger Lane!’ roars the driver. I propel myself forwards, grabbing the cord and pulling so hard that everyone tumbles out of their seats.
‘Watch it, will you?’ says the boy who tried to talk to me. The spider’s squeal is loud enough to make the driver curse.
I avoid his eyes as he unrolls the ladder and I slither down it, jumping into the street below.
Giant woolly spiders click past, showering me in dirty slush as I stumble through the smog, searching for signs of a Spiderstop for a number five Spiderbus. Bloodshot eyes watch from the tops of walls and lampposts – more crouched shape-changing monkeys. The spiders that ent being driven lurk behind stone, spinnerets whirring, blue eyes flashing. Now and then when I turn my head, I glimpse one shrinking back behind a wall.
Your master’s out looking for you! I hiss out of the corner of my mouth.
Ownbusinessminditminditmindit little morsel, it replies, inching a hairy foreleg out of the shadows. I hurry away. Is it the spiders making children go missing?
A puppet master stands on a stone bridge, using tricksy flicks of his fingers to work a tribe of puppets without strings, made in shapes of toothed beasts and brightly feathered birds. My mouth drops open as I watch him control a puppet of a girl my size, with long, snow-soaked yellow hair tied in a red ribbon. Her face is blank and her limbs jerk stiffly, but otherwise I’d have thought she was real.
‘Watch it!’ a woman yells, when I blunder into her shoulder.
‘Can you tell me where to catch a number five Spiderbus?’ I ask. But she’s already huffed and puffed away from me, disappearing into the murk.
As I cross the bridge, through hanging clots of smog like ghouls, I bang into a post but it’s a guttering street-lantern with great yellow icicles hanging from it like rotten teeth. I must have gone too far – I can’t even see the place where I got off the first Spiderbus.
Beyond the lantern, the bridge is lined with bent-backed old women wearing headscarves glittering with frost. They mould dumplings in their hands and set them frying by the side of the road. ‘Tater dumplings?’ they call mournfully.
‘Is this the right way for a number five Spiderbus?’ I ask one of them.
The dumpling woman shakes her head. ‘Nearest stop’s way back. Where are you trying to get to?’
‘The College of Medsin,’ I say.
‘Take a left down that side street,’ she tells me. ‘Go all the way along and then take a right, another left, then a quick right and walk all the way to the end.’
I thank her, cross the bridge and slip into the side street. Then I stare doubtfully at the web of narrow streets spreading out before me, all drifting with thick yellow smog. I stand in the dark, snow stinging my eyes, wishing I could scream.
The backstreets are much quieter, but I’m aware of eyes peering from behind filthy curtains and from doorways.
I’m turning right down another side street when a rogue spider slithers out from a dark alleyway and looms over me, rasping heavil
y.
Feaaaasty . . . richfeastingsscuttlingcloser . . .
The chatter slips into my bones. I cover my ears, backing away, slipping in the slush. The Spidermaster will get you, you’re not meant to be loose!
I fall. Roll onto hands and knees. Try to stand. But a sharp point holds me in place. When I look over my shoulder, the spider’s hairy leg has pressed between my shoulder blades, pinning me to the ground.
There’s a roaring of air as Thaw plunges through the sky.
No, Thaw, it’s dangerous!
Suddenly a yell rings out. There’s a loud thwacking noise, and the spider shrieks, before releasing the pressure on my back and hobbling away.
‘Spidermaster?’ I call. ‘Was that you?’
Thaw don’t land – she must’ve done as I asked. Two-legs take more care, she whistles mournfully, from somewhere high overhead.
I stand, trembling.
But instead of the tall, wiry-haired Spidermaster, a stooped old man walks towards me through the shifting smog.
The man walks with a staff – a smooth white stick, wide at the top and pointed at the bottom. It’s a tooth, I realise. From the gum of some giant beast. A pair of eyeglasses rests on his nose and his pale, pink-rimmed eyes peer through them at me. ‘You look lost,’ he says, smiling.
‘You saved my life!’ I gasp.
He smiles gently. ‘This city is a dangerous place, now that the spiders are ravening. Tales of missing children cut me to the quick. Would you like to come and get warm?’
I glance up and down the cold, dank street. ‘I should really be on my way,’ I tell him. ‘I’m trying to get to the College of Medsin. Have you heard of someone called Akhund Olm?’
He laughs. ‘Child, I am the one you seek. My dear friend the Spidermaster asked me to expect you. When you did not arrive on the number five, I came out to find you myself. We can go to the College together. Though even I still get lost, sometimes!’
My blood kicks. Finally I might have enough heart-luck to find Kestrel and Egret, and even the final Opal.
We walk through the narrow streets, the Akhund’s staff tapping sharply against the cobbles. He buys two cups of kaffy at a roadside stall, and we take them with us to the Spiderstop, where another old man cries the numbers. ‘Next Spiderbus number five, number five is the next Spiderbus!’
When the spider shrieks to a halt, we climb aboard and careen around breakneck bends. I’ve only got one hand free to hold on with, cos of the kaffy. The bitter, dark liquid sloshes in the cup and some spills from the lid on the top.
We pass a smog-blackened house, tall and leaning to one side. I crane back my neck to read what’s written above the gate. ‘Poorhouse. What’s a poorhouse?’
‘It’s a place for the poor to live, when they can’t afford to pay their way,’ he says. ‘The poor I visit tell me they shall stay out of there no matter what! But sometimes they are forced to break that vow, when there is no choice left.’
‘No choice left? Why don’t they have Tribes, or families? Imagine having no way to be free!’
The Akhund blows on his kaffy, nodding sadly. ‘I cannot imagine it, for I am too privileged.’ The spider lurches, and he puts out a hand to stop himself falling. ‘The Spidermaster tells me you’re to be enrolled in the College – I must say, I am so glad you’re going to be joining us, young Hog! The journey to reach our great city is perilous in these strange times, so you have already shown the strength of character needed in a future Nightfall Scholar.’
Relief punches through me. The Spidermaster ent breathed a word to the Akhund about my false papers – he’s just told him I’m enrolled as a pupil.
‘Heart-thanks! What’s the College of Medsin like?’ I ask.
‘Oh!’ he gasps, looking up at me. The kaffy has fogged his eyeglasses. ‘It is most wonderful. You will have the best years of your life at the College, Hog. It’s a big, busy place, and you’ve just missed the start of the Wakening’s Dawn Semester, but you’ll soon settle in, and learn to find your way around. I shall supply you with a map before we part.’
Gloriousness! ‘I need to find some friends of mine there.’
‘Who is it that you’re looking for?’ asks the Akhund,
‘My friends, Kite and Boar. Do you know them? Kite’s got coppery hair, and he’s tall, with light brown skin and green eyes. Boar’s got black hair, and he’s shorter, and tattooed.’
‘Tattooed . . .’
‘On the face.’
‘Ah, on the face.’ He scrunches up his cheeks. ‘Hm, it rings no bells, I’m afraid. But I will enquire around the college,’ he vows. ‘I could obtain a list of the latest scholars to enrol.’
‘Aye, heart-thanks, Akhund Olm!’ I feel my muscles beginning to relax for the first time in an age.
‘A simple “Olm” will do, youngling.’
At the end of a bridge the spider passes a gateway on the left, and gets lashed to a stop by its smog-hatted rider. ‘College of Medsin!’
When we climb down the ladder, my head’s spinning from the ride.
Bear-pelted pupils head through an archway, clutching bags and armloads of books. They climb a sweep of redbrick steps towards the wide doors of a grand house.
Olm rummages inside his cloak pocket, brow furrowed. ‘Ah! Here we are.’ He presses two crumpled pieces of parchment into my hands and takes my cold, half empty cup of kaffy from me. ‘One of these is a map of the College. The other is a Spiderbus timetable. On the back is my address – if you have need of me, you will find me there.’
I startle to see that the Spiderbus timetable is enchanted – black dots are crawling along the lanes etched into a map.
‘That one’s in real time,’ he says proudly, grinning like a kid. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
I nod, grinning back at him. His excitement catches onto me like a flame.
‘When you reach the College building,’ says Olm, ‘you’ll need to check in at the desk and then find your way to the Junior Common Hall. Your fellow scholars can show you around once you’re there. Do remember to enjoy yourself !’
I stand, blinking, inside a vast entrance hall with polished, wood-panelled walls. Candles sit inside huge round circles hung from the ceiling, sputtering the news of their fat.
Pupils hurry past, laughing and squabbling, steps echoing on the shiny floors. One drops a book with a loud smack.
I approach a stooped old man who’s sitting behind a desk so tall that at first all I can see of him is the top of his head and a pair of half-moon eyeglasses. I hand over my papers. He nods, barely checking them. I stuff the papers in my pocket and head down the passageway, following the footsteps of the scholars.
The heads of beasts are mounted on the walls and they stare down at me through dead, misted eyes. I whisper heart-sadnesses to them. May your gods roam close to you.
At the end of the passageway I step through a door marked Medsin Junior Common Hall. Inside, everything is red velvet and wood panelling again. Bear-cloaked scholars sprawl into plush chairs, pulling off their smog masks.
The room is shrunk by a huge hearth and a long oak table scattered with books. Bookshelves stand around the walls. On either side of the hearth is a human skeleton, wearing a gown. The hands have been twisted into unnatural poses.
‘Any of you seen a tall boy with red hair and green eyes round here? His name’s Kite.’
A boy wearing smudged eyeglasses picks his teeth with a gold pick and then turns it round to pick his ears. He nudges his friend, a boy with his elbows propped on the table, reading a thick book. He slips, hitting his head on the book, and then whirls to glare at the first boy. ‘I’m studying! D’you realise how hard it is to memorise all these potions?’
I step closer. ‘Well, have you?’
‘Listen to the rough way he speaks!’ scorns toothpick-boy.
‘You stink from the mouth,’ I hiss at him. ‘But you don’t catch me harping on about it.’
Someone laughs, shocked. I regret
my words straight away, but the boy blinks, turning the toothpick in his fingers. Then his pockmarked face ruptures into a grin. ‘Respect! Are you one of the new intake?’
‘Aye.’ I gulp a breath. ‘Fresh into the city.’
‘Don’t be minding any of these hooligans,’ he says. ‘But I’ve not met any red-haired boys this semester, I’m afraid.’
‘What about a boy called Boar? Black hair, tattoos?’
He shakes his head.
My belly twists. Maybe Kes and Egret are staying out of sight – I’ll just have to search. ‘Can you show me where I’ll be sleeping?’
‘I can show you around, sure. Semester’s already started, so there’s only one room left,’ he says. ‘Hope you like it!’
We step out of the Common Hall and across the hall into another passageway. He opens the door of a simple room with a polished floor and a soft bed with rich, clean linen and furs – the sort that would fetch high prices at market. Unbidden, my trader’s fingers check the weight of the cloth.
‘I’ll let you settle in,’ says the boy.
I look around the room, trying to calm my heart. There’s nothing here, so I press my ear to the door, listening in case the boy’s still lurking. But when I poke my head outside, the corridor’s empty. He must’ve returned to the common hall. I sneak out of the room and try the door of the room opposite. It’s unlocked, and empty. I slip through the door and search the room, but there’s no sign of Kes or Egret.
I search three more rooms, my heart sinking lower. But when I check the last room, my boot bumps a squishy lump stuffed under the bed.
It’s Kestrel’s battered old medsin bag – the one she kept her tools in when she stitched the wound on my face. I kneel by the bag, pop the fastenings open and a small, round, feathered bundle flaps into my face – a squidge!