19

The elementals and goblins, the firesnakes that dwell in deep meres, the fish-headed men and the hounds that ride across the moon, these haunt my dremes. These speak in my ear. But I know the words to dismay them.

From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

WITH MOLL GRINNING at him through her tangle of hair and Long Tom’s blade nudged into his back Jake didn’t find it too difficult to look scared and cowed.

The Conciergerie was an ancient, dismal fortress, and it was crammed with prisoners. Through every door and grille faces peered out, hands reached for them, desperate pleas and promises echoed. There must be hundreds. How would he find his father among all these?

Moll had thought of that. She nodded at Tom, who shoved Jake up to the nearest guard and snarled, “Orders. This one goes out in the morning with the doctor’s lot.”

“Doctor?”

“The citizen whose protests are so loud.”

“Ah, him.” The jailer shrugged, taking a bite from a chicken leg. “Too late.”

Jake’s heart gave a leap of terror. It was all he could do not to gasp out the question, but Moll did it for him. “How, too late?”

The man winked at her. “He’s been moved, sweetheart.”

Jake gave her a mute look. She said, “Moved where?”

“To the cell in the Place de la Révolution, right beside Madame Guillotine herself. To spend the rest of the night hearing the citizens of Paris bay for his blood.” He chewed and laughed, shaking his head. “And then at dawn, an appointment with Death himself.” The jailer stood, gestured them ahead of him. They turned and walked down a dark and dripping corridor, and he stopped before a low door and took a great ring of keys from his pocket. “We’ll put this one in here for now, citizens, and I’ll—”

He turned, straight into the hilt of Tom’s sword. The blow was swift and brutal; the man went down like a sack of coals.

Jake grabbed the keys from the dust. “Let’s go!” He ran backward along the corridor. “We’ll let them go! All of them. Create as much chaos as we can.”

“Are you crazy?” Moll gasped. She snatched the keys from him. “Get a grip, Jake. Yer dad’s not—”

“No, but Venn’s here somewhere!”

That stopped her. She swore softly. “Oh hellfire, so he is! Jake, you are such trouble. Next time I journey, I’m just going to leave you tucked up in your warm little bed.”

But she was grinning, her eyes were bright, and he knew she was loving every second of this, of the exhilaration and the danger.

Quickly she unlocked the nearest door and flung it open. “Out!” she screeched. “Everyone! Run, you dull beggars!”

The crowd of disheveled prisoners, many of them from the masked ball, stared at her in disbelief. Jake saw frizzled hair, wide eyes, painted beauty spots, torn silk dresses. But no Venn.

Then he was racing after Moll, with Tom walking backward, musket steady, keeping guard behind. All down the corridor they unlocked every door; the cells were packed with the vicomte’s guests, but Venn was not among them.

As the crowd grew bold, surging out, Moll yelled, “Go with them.”

“What?”

“Go with them. Get to this holding cell and get in. Let them capture you if you have to. We’ll find Venn.”

For a moment, in all that tumult, doubt struck him. He looked at her through the shoving crowd in the dingy corridor. Then Moll reached out and took his arm in her dirty fingers. She shook it softly. “Don’t you trust me, Jake?”

“Moll—”

“I’d never let you get hurt, Jake. We’re mates. Right?”

He nodded. But something made him say, “I should have come back for you. I’m sorry, Moll.”

“That’s okay, cully.” She smiled, tight. “I forgive you.”

He was no longer sure he could forgive himself, not for this flash of doubt. But there was only one way to show her that he trusted her entirely, so he turned and walked, pushing through the crowd of fleeing prisoners, straight toward the outer doors, already crammed with guards and weapons.

Once there, he took one look back.

But Moll and Tom had vanished.

Maskelyne had only one thought and that was to keep the coin from Summer’s claws.

He took a step backward.

The owl eyed him. He waited for her to speak, to ripple into another shape, but she did nothing but watch, and for a moment he doubted himself, and wondered if this was really only a normal bird.

Her feathers lifted in the dawn wind.

But all his centuries-old senses tingled with the danger of her, the prickle of the sweet scent of the Shee, and just beyond hearing, their unbearable music.

Behind his back, clutched tight, was the plastic bubble wrap.

The owl opened her wings and flew.

He gasped, ducking. She soared over him, and she was greater than any owl should be, and through her wings the moonlight was fractured; it dazzled his eyes. He stepped back. His footing slipped. And then he was on hands and face, sliding, sliding down, grabbing at tiles, at lichen, at anything, until his feet jarred into the gutter and he hung there, splayed in the pale night.

But the package was still in his hand.

He looked up. With a shriek that made him jerk aside, she dived, and only his speed saved him; he felt the savage beak tear his hand, the warm blood between his fingers. He fought against her, desperate to summon some defense, but in seconds she was back, screaming straight at his eyes.

He yelled, and the gutter gave way; he fell over the edge of the roof and landed with a breathless crack on a lower section.

The wrapped coin bounced out of his hand. He grabbed for it but it was gone, slithering down and rattling over the thick tiles, coming to a stop wedged in the top of an ancient downpipe.

Breathless and sore, Maskelyne lay and stared at it.

She would plummet down in seconds and snatch it.

He stretched after it, his arm reaching to its uttermost limit, straining, his fingers touching the plastic, squirming after it, finally, with huge relief, gripping it.

“Have you got it?” Rebecca was half out of the window, anxious.

“Yes. Get back inside!”

She turned, but it was too late; the shadow over the moon was a ghostly blur. He closed his eyes, searched deep in the broken places of his memory. The words were fragments, he spoke them as if they caused him pain, spat them out as if his lips bled from them.

Let all the seeds attend me.

Let all the sepals open.

Let all the weeds speak.

In swarm and cloud.

In bright currents of air.

In the shafts of the sun.

To hide, to cover, make secret,

To mask, to intervene.

Let them attend me now.

Turning, he saw the owl against the stars. But also there came out of the air, sudden and drifting in vast airy clouds, the billion, million seeds of summer, white clouds of dandelion fluff and rose bay willow herb, the flung spores of puffball, the crackle of pollen.

The sky was clogged with them; they came down like unseasonal snow, warm and whirling. He felt them in his hair, against his face, and the sky was blanked out by them, even the ridge of the roof below him was lost.

From somewhere he heard the owl’s high-pitched rage, knew she would land, change shape, so, heedless of danger, he let go and slipped down, crashing up against the solid mass of a chimney.

“Maskelyne!”

Rebecca had climbed right out of the window and was balanced on the frail ledge that led to the roof. She was crazy, but he realized he loved her for that. He hesitated barely a moment. Then he yelled, “Catch!”

The package circled through the air. It went high, and for a moment he knew she’d miss it, that Summer would swoop and snatch it away, and fly to the Wood with it in her beak.

Then Rebecca’s hand shot out; she caught the package deftly and was already turning, diving down, wriggling in under the sash.

He laughed.

Among the softly falling snow of seed he lay there and laughed and listened to the owl as she rose and circled high above the Wood.

“I’m in!” Rebecca hissed. “Now you.”

He caterpillared down the steep roof. Reaching the narrow ledge, he grasped the window and clambered in, slamming it tight. They both slid to the floor of the dusty attic, and sat side by side.

“That was so scary!” she muttered, at last.

He looked at the parcel. “Open it.”

Feverishly she tore the bubble wrapping open and the cellophane off. Then she tipped a small gold thing into her palm and held it up.

From the windowsill the wooden bird gave a chirrup of delight. “That’s it! Fantastic! You would not believe the trouble I went to over that thing! She kept it in this red box, and there were whole galaxies in there . . .”

They hardly heard.

The gold coin had been cut in half; its edge was jagged and uneven. The profile of the Greek god was sliced away, the surface worn by centuries of long-dead fingers. Rebecca stared at it in awe. Could such a little thing mean so much?

But she had no doubt when she saw the way Maskelyne looked at it. He reached out and she put the piece of gold into his hand, and saw how he held it up and how the moon caught its chipped edge.

“So long ago,” he murmured. “So far away.”

A great clang silenced him. It came from deep in the house, far below them.

“What was that?” Rebecca said.

They listened for a moment. Then she caught the smallest, slightest whistle of piping. It made her spine shiver.

Maskelyne stood; he crossed instantly to close the door. “Don’t listen. We dare not listen to it.”

The bird sat in an odd unhappy silence.

And, with a chill of dread, she knew the Shee were inside the house.

“Slow down,” Wharton muttered. “I’m getting out of breath.”

Piers stopped and looked back. “You’re not, actually. It’s just that you’re not breathing at all.”

“Rubbish.”

Piers sighed. “Mortal. There is no air on the moon!”

Wharton stood stock-still under the jet-black sky and looked around him. The bare rocky landscape stretched to the horizon—but now that he came to think about it, that horizon was oddly close. There wasn’t a single living thing on the plain but himself and Piers. Not far ahead a low wall of rock reared against the stars.

“Why is it night? Surely—”

“It’s not night. There’s just no atmosphere.”

“But if we were on the moon, wouldn’t we be bounding around all over the place? Not to mention dead?”

“The Shee invent whole worlds. They don’t feel the need to be accurate.” Piers turned and plodded on.

As they gained the crest of higher ground Wharton stopped and gasped.

Before him, so huge it filled the sky, the Earth was rising.

“Oh my God!” he said.

Of course he had seen all the photos, the images from space probes, the Apollo missions. But this huge, weightless, beautiful bauble of blues and greens and swirls of white—this rare vision—he could barely believe it existed, or that he saw it.

But then . . . this was all the Summerland. So it probably didn’t exist at all. And yet, what if down there was a whole other Earth than the one he knew, an alternative Earth imagined by immortal creatures. What unbelievable continents, what crazy cities might be down there!

For a moment the whole concept fascinated him.

Piers said, “They really annoy me. I mean, that’s why I went off on my own. They have no idea about order.” He looked around.

The crater wall was craggy and abrupt; its shadow was ink black.

Wharton giggled, still staring up.

“I suppose this means I’m really the Man in the Moon now. Where’s my lantern and my dog . . . was it a dog? And a bush . . . there was a bush . . .”

Piers frowned. He had seen mortals go quite insane when faced with the illogic of the Summerland. All he needed was the big teacher to crack up now.

“Come on,” he muttered.

He knew it would be here somewhere.

Wharton dragged himself reluctantly from the glory of the rising planet. “What are we looking for?”

“A hole. A small chink.”

Wharton giggled again, but ignoring him, Piers bent and scrabbled in the dust and rock at the crater wall’s base. “There’s got to be something here.”

But it was Wharton who said, “Look at that!”

A point of light, pure and golden and warm. It pierced the pure black of shadow like a keyhole in a door.

“That’s it.” With considerable satisfaction, Piers rubbed his small fingers together.

“It’s a hole. Through to what?”

Piers felt beside it, grasped a knob of rock, and pulled.

With a crack like the opening of an air-lock, a whole rectangle of stone was dragged open, debris dropping from the lintel, a cloud of dust rising to make Wharton cough.

A butterfly gusted through.

Beyond was a green lawn and a pale sky between trees. And deep in the combe, dark as a silhouette, the roofs and turrets of Wintercombe Abbey.

“Brilliant, Piers!” Wharton said, hoarse.

Piers tried to look modest. But it was a complete failure.