He gave Edwin’s backpack a heavy slap. It responded with a scrunching sound.
Here we go, thought Edwin. He was prepared to put up a struggle to keep possession of the backpack, but it was a huge disadvantage having it slung behind him.
“You’ve no right to take it!” Lanthorne squared up to Trunke, putting his hands on his hips and looking like a puppy challenging a bulldog. “It’s got his baby sister’s toys in it, and I expect you’ve just broken them all.”
Trunke muttered a few sounds that weren’t quite words. He wasn’t used to being told off by puppies. “I didn’t say he couldn’t keep it. I said he couldn’t wear it on his back. It’s too different and it’ll draw attention. Those colours.”
“Dark burgundy and taupe,” said Edwin. He was so glad it wasn’t bright yellow and sporting a crazy logo.
“He can carry it in front of him, with his arms wrapped all the way round it. Or leave it in the hansomme.”
“I’ll carry it,” said Edwin.
Their attention was diverted by a loud creak from overhead. Edwin guessed it was the inne sign swinging in a breeze they couldn’t feel. He wondered what the inne was called. The Shameless Thief, perhaps?
Once they were inside, Trunke made them stand by the door.
“Stay here,” he said, tapping a spot on the floor to show them that “here” meant “exactly here”. Then he hurried off.
Neither boy dared utter a word. Edwin clutched the backpack closely to his chest, with his face pressed into the top of it. He was afraid of what might happen if he showed even part of his face by peering around. At the very least, Trunke would probably smack him on the back of the head, but there might be other people who would want to run off with a Shiner, as Auntie Necra was doing with Mandoline.
“Everything’s paid for,” Trunke said under his breath when he returned holding two small lanthornes. “I’ve ordered a mixture of ripe and unripe food for you. They think you’re my nephews and, if anyone asks, we’re going to visit your grandmother, who’s too old to move into town.” He wouldn’t have said all this if there had been other customers nearby to overhear. Edwin’s racing heart slowed down.
Trunke pushed them quickly across the main room of the inne, through a door and into a hallway containing a staircase. The boys climbed this with a good deal of stumbling, followed a dog-leg passage to its end and eventually arrived at their small room, tucked well out of the way at the back of the inne.
As soon as he entered the bedroom, Edwin threw back his hood and took off his gloves.
“I didn’t say…” Trunke began.
“I don’t care,” said Edwin. “I was suffocating.”
Trunke grunted. “You’ve got a jar of water over there and you can have one of the lanthornes.” He put it down on the table between the two narrow beds. “I expect that door’s the toilette room. I’m going to get your food now.”
“Mine will be unripe, won’t it?” Edwin asked.
“I explained that one of you’s a very fussy eater. They laughed out loud and said I should be firmer with you. I won’t be long. There’s to be no noise and no coming outside or I’ll drive straight back to Landarn and leave you.”
Edwin sat on the nearest bed, and placed the backpack beside him.
Trunke paused by the door. “Remember what I’ve told you. And lock up after me.”
As they heard his footsteps marching down the passage, the boys at last found something to smile at.
“How did you know what was in here?” Edwin said, pointing to his backpack.
“I didn’t know. I guessed. It’s what I’d put in my bag if I was trying to find my baby sister.”
“Well guessed, you,” Edwin told him. “It certainly shut Trunke up.”
Lanthorne felt forgiven. He lay full-length on his bed, his hands behind his head. “This is almost as comfortable as my bed at home,” he said. “I like this room.”
Edwin’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. Lying down on his own bed, he could feel the coarseness of the single blanket, and the pillowcase was already chafing the back of his neck. The room was like every other room he had seen in this world—rough walls and floor and furnishings with barely a trace of colour. Did these people realize they were living in sheds? And whatever lurked in the toilette room was making its malodorous presence felt from a distance of ten feet.
Their food was a long time coming.
“Do you think I should open the door and look outside, Edwin?”
“He told us not to.”
“He promised he’d be back soon.”
What if Trunke was already on his way back to Landarn with a purse full of money and a big grin on his face? “I don’t think a tiny peep would hurt,” Edwin said.
Lanthorne unlocked the door and opened it a fraction. He moved only just enough of his head through the doorway to give him a one-eyed squint along the passage. After less than a minute, he locked the door again.
“I was hoping he’d left the food outside and forgotten to tell us,” he said.
“But he hadn’t.”
“No.”
The cheese triangles began to call to Edwin from his backpack. They were very persuasive.
“What could you see?” he asked Lanthorne.
“I didn’t see anything. It’s just a passage.”
“Oh. I thought there might be colourful paintings on the walls and spotlights and a thick carpet like the one you saw in my bedroom.”
Sarcasm was a sure sign that hunger was getting the better of him. He opened the backpack and ate another of the cheese triangles even if it did mean one meal fewer for Mandoline when he escaped with her.
The waiting got longer and hungrier. Edwin looked automatically at the pale spot on his wrist where his watch had once been.
“Why don’t I tell you something nice to pass the time?” Lanthorne said.
Edwin didn’t imagine there was anything Lanthorne could tell him which he would find in any way “nice”.
“All right,” he said dully.
“I think my parents are going to give me new shoes and a boxe for Nollig.”
“What’s Nollig?”
“What’s Nollig! Nollig Day’s the best day of the year. We give presents and have special food and we visit friends. If we have any. Nollig’s in a few days’ time. Don’t tell me you don’t have Nollig?”
“It sounds just like our Christmas,” Edwin said. “They’re obviously at the same time.” The memory of the brightness and joy of past Christmases made his voice tremble.
“I’ve been dropping hints all year,” said Lanthorne.
“Why do you want a box for Nollig?”
“Nollig boxes are special. They have lids with hinges. I’m hoping for one with a lock, so I can put my special possessions in it.”
“I keep mine in a box too,” said Edwin. “Hidden in a cupboard.”
“We hang up bundles of twigs for decoration, and my mum serves the food we put in the cupboard months ago to ripen.”
The “nice” moment faded with the mention of ripe food.
“I want to do something really nasty to Trunke, even if he did let me keep my backpack for the moment,” Edwin said, needing to change the subject. “I’d like to run him over with his own hansomme. Backwards and forwards at least three times, and then I’d pick my watch out of the mess.”
Lanthorne was also finding his grumbling stomach difficult to cope with. “I’m going down the passage,” he announced.
“Is it safe?” Edwin asked. He knew that, deep down, he didn’t really care if it was safe or not. They had to be sure what was going on. He pulled his hood right down over his face and put his gloves on again. He waited just inside the doorway as Lanthorne tiptoed to the end of the dim passage and disappeared.
Edwin waited. And waited. He guessed that at least twenty minutes had passed. Surely Lanthorne hadn’t run away and left him too? Was this a cruel plan to torment a Shiner for being so, well, shiny? Suddenly there was th
e sound of heavy footsteps, confident footsteps that didn’t care if they were heard. They certainly weren’t made by a puny boy like Lanthorne. Edwin was so shocked, he didn’t at first think to retract his head, even when the maker of the footsteps turned the corner. A tall figure was framed anonymously in the light from the single lanthorne, and it was approaching with long strides. Edwin came to his senses, pulled his head back in and managed to lock the door.
“Please don’t knock. Please don’t knock…” he whispered from the far side of his bed, where he was now crouching. The figure knocked, waited and then knocked again loudly.
“What are you playing at in there?” It was Trunke! “You shouldn’t be the one opening the door,” he said in a fierce voice when Edwin let him in. He was carrying a tray and he looked around suspiciously. “Where is he? If he’s gone off exploring…”
“He’s in the toilette room. We got very hungry while we were waiting for you, so I let him have some of my food. It disagreed with him.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Trunke. “What you lot put in your mouths would give anyone the gripes. This’ll have to do for breakfast as well.” He set the tray down on Lanthorne’s bed. “Lucky for you they had only just put some food away to ripen. It’s not what people come here to eat. Be grateful I went to the trouble, and don’t leave the room before I call for you in the morning. My room’s not far away and I’ve got the hearing of a throttlebird.”
Trunke turned his head towards the toilette-room door. “You in there. Did you hear what I just said?”
“Lanthorne’s still busy cleaning himself up,” Edwin said. “He didn’t get there in time.”
“That’s your fault. You should have waited till I came back. You’ve kept me from my supper long enough.” He pointed his finger meaningfully at Edwin and then left.
Edwin sat down beside the tray of food. He wondered whether he should have told Trunke the truth. If Lanthorne were in danger, Trunke could help him, but if Lanthorne weren’t in any danger at all and was just nosing about the inne, Trunke was bound to be angry. Knowing Lanthorne as he did, it didn’t seem a risk worth taking.
He unbuttoned his coat and started to play nervously with the zip of his anorak, moving it up and down until it snagged and he had to stop. More minutes went by and there was still no sign of Lanthorne. Edwin looked at the spot on his wrist where his watch had been. He needed to think of something else. Food.
On the tray Trunke had brought were a jug of water and two suspiciously stained wooden cups as well as two grey cloths, one at each end, covering ripe and unripe food, Edwin guessed. He slowly lifted a corner of the cloth nearest to him. A wizened nugget of bread came into view. He lifted the cloth a little higher. Now he could see a couple of shrivelled apples and a piece of cheese that resembled a sweating bar of soap. So this must be the unripe supper and breakfast. He had no intention of lifting the other cloth even a fraction. He was very hungry indeed, particularly now there was food of a sort right in front of him, but he didn’t think it would be right to tuck in until he knew his friend was safe. He stared at the world’s most unappetizing picnic and wondered how long he could hold out before attacking it.
The answer was not very long at all. He ate the bread and apples, but couldn’t face the cheese so he slid it under the cloth which covered the rest of Lanthorne’s food. He also drank more than half the water straight from the jug, pouring it directly into his mouth. The mugs looked as if they had been used to decant the water from a pond, or worse.
There was a knock at the door, a delicate scrape made by fingers not wanting to draw attention to the sound they made.
“Edwin, it’s me.”
Edwin hurried to unlock the door.
Lanthorne ran in, unharmed and strangely excited. “I need to calm down,” he gasped. “Oh, Edwin, you’ll never believe what… Food!” He whisked the remaining cloth from the tray.
It was exactly as Edwin had predicted. What was revealed looked as if it had been fermenting away at the bottom of a dustbin for weeks. On one side of the room, the stink in the toilette room was battering the door to be let out, and now he was presented with the sight and smell of the decomposing version of his own dried-up meal. In the face of brown, squishy apples, bread marbled with streaks of green and cheese too appalling to describe, all Edwin could do was to throw himself onto his bed and bury his face in his pillow. “Eat it quickly,” he said. “I think I’m going to die!”
The pillow turned out to be quite an effective gas mask and Edwin hoped that if Lanthorne put all the titbits from hell inside him, the smell would mostly disappear with them.
Eventually there came a gentle tap on Edwin’s shoulder. Lanthorne dropped onto the bed beside Edwin, beaming with delight. It was the first time Edwin had seen Lanthorne’s tiny discoloured teeth so close up. Unfortunately, they were still smeared with the putrid mush he had been guzzling. Edwin clenched his eyes shut. Concerned for his friend, Lanthorne leant over and brought his face close to Edwin’s. He breathed out, making Edwin gasp.
“Get away! Get away RIGHT NOW!”
Confused, Lanthorne went back to his own bed and sat there waiting patiently for Edwin to tell him what he’d done wrong.
“It’s not you, Lanthorne. It’s your food. Please, please never breathe it over me again.”
“Sorry.”
“If I have to live on ripe food while I’m here, I won’t survive. Nor will Mandoline.”
Lanthorne couldn’t in all honesty understand why Edwin was making such a fuss. He hated unripe food, but you wouldn’t catch him screaming at his friends if they ate it in front of him. He was also desperate to tell Edwin what had happened when he went exploring.
“Are you ready for my news?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
Lanthorne jumped up and clapped his hands together. “I’ve seen Swarme. My brother Swarme! I’ve seen him. He’s here in this inne with us.”
11
Strange Meeting
“Where did you see him? What did he say? Can he help us? No, just a minute. Does that mean Auntie Necra’s here too? You said Swarme lives with her. Is he helping her to look after Mandoline? She could be nearby.”
Lanthorne had settled himself comfortably on the edge of the bed, but Edwin’s questions stunned him. For a moment, he couldn’t reply. Then he shook his head as if to free it of the idea that Auntie Necra and Mandoline might be under the same roof.
“Trunke would know if she was here with your sister, Edwin. Everybody at the inne would be talking about it. Babies make a lot of noise, don’t they?”
“So what’s Swarme doing here?”
“I don’t know. We’ve got to find out.”
Edwin breathed in and out noisily, to calm himself. What Lanthorne had said made sense. Trunke would have picked up any talk about Auntie Necra turning up at the inne, especially if she was carrying a baby of any kind. She would have wanted to get home to Morting as soon as she could.
“I agree that we have to find Swarme as soon as we can,” Edwin said. “He’s bound to have important information we can use. Sorry, I interrupted your story.”
Lanthorne made himself comfortable again and began. “I saw Swarme, but he didn’t see me. That’s the first thing. He must be working here. My mother sometimes says, ‘I wonder what job our Swarme is doing.’ Now I can tell her! I followed the passage all the way back to the staircase, and I even went halfway down.”
“That was very daring of you.”
Lanthorne smiled at the praise. “At first there was no one about, because I think they were having dinner somewhere. I could hear kitcheny sorts of sounds. Then I heard someone running towards the stairs and I needed a place to hide. I went down the nearest passage and opened a door that looked like a cupboard.”
Edwin took in a loud breath.
“It was a cupboard.”
Edwin relaxed.
“So I shut myself in. I was really frightened because I thought the footsteps were following
me. They stopped right in front of where I was hiding, but then the person making the footsteps knocked on a door and a man answered it. The footsteps person said, ‘It’s ready. If you want some, you need to come right away. We’ve got some serious eaters in tonight.’”
“What was ready?” Edwin asked.
“Their dinner, I expect. They walked back to the staircase together and I opened the door just a little bit, because I knew the footsteps’ voice! When he turned sideways as he was going down the stairs, I could see it really was Swarme. He’s taller and a bit fatter now, but it was definitely him.”
“It was dangerous opening that door before they’d completely gone.”
“I’m glad I did. We’ve got a friend now, Edwin. Someone on our side, not like Jugge and Trunke. I’ve got to talk to Swarme. I’ve just got to.”
“Are you sure we’ll be able to trust him?”
Lanthorne stared at Edwin. “Of course we can. He’s my brother.”
“He might not like Shiners.”
“You can’t help being a Shiner. You’re my friend, anyway. That’ll be enough for Swarme.”
Edwin could feel a plan forming. “Trunke said he wouldn’t be back till the morning, so he won’t know if we go looking for your brother. The trouble is…”
They didn’t know who else was staying at the inne, that was the trouble. But if Lanthorne’s brother was happy to work there, surely it couldn’t be half as bad as Trunke made out. It might, despite all Trunke’s warnings, be a common or garden, boring old country inne that happened to be set in the middle of nowhere and where nothing unusual happened—other than people treating rotten food as a delicacy.
“I think Trunke’s been exaggerating,” Edwin said. “He’ll be in the bar buying everyone drinks with our money and laughing at us for being so scared. What must we have looked like, walking along with our hoods right down, blind as bats and falling over? He probably wet himself laughing.”
“Should we just run downstairs?” Lanthorne asked.
They decided it was still wiser to be careful.
The Dead World of Lanthorne Ghules Page 10