Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 94

“‘Didn’t you ever give away any old clothes?’ Maree asked him.

“‘No,’ he shivered. ‘Knarros made us wear everything until it fell apart.’

“‘Have you still got your pouch?’ I asked. ‘Will’s pouch, I mean.’

“I was going to say that if he hadn’t got it, then we’d lost all the water, but he looked at me as if I’d just had the brainwave of the century. ‘Of course! Thanks!’ he said. He got the pouch open and then stuffed his handful of grain inside it and pulled out the lump of goat’s wool. He passed me his flaring, streaming candle to hold and tore a piece off the lump. Then he set to work pulling and teasing out that small bit. It kept opening up. in no time, it was big enough to flap about in the wind, but Rob caught the edges down and went on pulling.

“‘Oh, a horse blanket,’ Maree said.

“It ended up bigger than that, a fine fluffy thing, like mohair. Rob tied the ends round his neck. Maree told me to spread it right across Rob, down to his tail. So I did, and it clung there. It seemed such a good idea that I took half the rest of the wool and made a sort of shawl with it. Maree said she was warm, but when I touched her, she was icy. I made a shawl for her too. We knotted them round our necks and set off again. I was feeling a whole heap better, but Rob and Maree seemed to get more and more tired from then on.

“That thorny path went on and on. I think it was sloping uphill all the time, but you know how hard it is to tell things like that when all you can see is the little ring of light you’re walking in. But when we came to the end of the thorns at last, the way in front was really steep. It was all bare rock, eaten into hundreds of spikes and ledges and edges, like a stack of knives. I was surprised Rob could get up it, but he said there was plenty of traction. It was Maree who had trouble with it. She almost couldn’t climb it. In the end, Rob stopped and said we’d never get up like this and Maree had better ride on his back.

“‘But it’ll hurt you!’ we both said.

“Rob knew it would. He answered in the really irritable way you do, when you know you have to do something nasty, ‘Put her up on me and don’t argue!’

“He held all three candles while I heaved Maree up on to him. It was lucky she had gone so light. I’d never have managed her normal weight. And it did hurt Rob. He stamped and winced and got more irritable than ever. Maree lay down on her face on his back because that seemed to hurt him less. And while I had both hands free, I took the spare bottle of water out of Rob’s pouch and put it in my pocket. I was glad I did later.

“Then we went on, toiling up across the sharp edges, until suddenly Rob gave a yell and all his hooves slithered. I thought his side must have torn open again, but it wasn’t that. There were three kids standing at the edge of the light, on the other side of Rob from me. I couldn’t see much of them except their white, peaky faces. They were just standing there, sort of staring, two youngish boys and a girl. They didn’t do anything, but Rob got in a real state.

“‘Oh don’t, don’t, don’t!’ he said. ‘I always liked you!’

“We were all looking at the kids when birds started coming out of the dark at us. You’ve no idea how frightening it is, great big birds coming whipping and whirring into your face out of nowhere. They were black birds and white ones. First they dived at us. We shouted and batted them off, so they left us and started trying to peck bits off the three kids. The kids didn’t seem to know what to do about it.

“Maree shouted, ‘Quick, quick! The grain, the grain!’ And she leant off Rob and scattered some of her handful on the rocks at the kids’ feet.

“The birds swooped down on it at once and began fighting one another for it. They behaved as if they were really starving. I was trying to get my grain back out of my pocket when Rob took hold of the plastic bag with the spare grain in it and poured the lot out in front of him. The birds dived on that too. The black ones – they were mottled brown in the candle-light really – threw the grains aside and went for the salt, but the pale birds gobbled down the grain.

“‘Run away. Now, while they’re busy,’ Maree told the three children. They looked at her as if they didn’t understand, but after a bit they backed off into the darkness. They didn’t seem with it at all.

“We went on before the birds could get interested in us again. Maree said, ‘But we ought to stay and help those poor stupid kids!’

“Rob said, ‘There’s nothing any of us can do to help them.’ He sounded so wretched about it that Maree didn’t say any more.

“Beyond that was what felt like half a century of climbing and slithering. At least the wind had died down a bit, but it was still blowing, cold, sudden gusts. None of us got too hot. And at last we came out on what felt like the flat top of a hill. For a few blissful seconds, we thought we had got where we were going. There were what seemed ruined buildings all round us. Then Rob held his candle up beside the nearest ruin, and we saw it was really a weird pinnacle of rock. Very black rock. Some of them were low – knee-high – and some towered like church spires. And each one was a peculiar shape. Every so often, the path seemed to stop, and we all thought we had arrived at last, but then one of our candles lit a white gleam of it winding away between more of the pinnacles.

“Rob had trouble squeezing through. Maree got down to make it easier for him. She said she was rested, but she looked pretty weak to me. But she went marching ahead, holding her candle high, with the wind gusting the flame to show new black spires each side. The wind made strange sounds in these rocks. At first we thought that was all it was. Then the sounds were definitely voices.

“Most of it was just murmuring and mumbling. That was creepy enough. Some of it sounded to be in strange languages. But I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone said, just by my shoulder, ‘You won’t get away. I’ll be waiting for you outside after school.’ It seemed like a real threat. But there was no one there.

“After that, we were all hearing voices, but I don’t think we heard the same things. Whatever Rob was hearing, it made him try to cover his ears. Candle-grease ran into his hair and his hair sizzled sometimes, but I could see he preferred that to listening. Maree was going along with tears running out from under her glasses. I mostly got more and more annoyed after that first scare. There was one v

oice that kept saying in a bored, self-satisfied way, ‘No need to worry. Consider it done.’ It really got up my nose. The worst of it was, it sounded like my own voice. I yelled back once or twice. I yelled, ‘Oh shut up! I do say nice things sometimes!’ But it didn’t stop. In the end, I was so fed up, I shouted at Rob to tell me what the voices were saying to him.

“He turned round as if I was salvation. He shouted back that they were telling him his looks would be ruined if he went on. ‘They keep saying I’ve only got to squeeze between the next gap this side and I’ll be home,’ he said. At least, I think that was what he said, but my voices kept drowning him out and muddling everything else.

“And it went on, like bedlam, until we wormed between two last pinnacles of rock and the voices, and the wind, just stopped.

“Then there was a long, long straight stretch. Rob and Maree were fine in this bit and they walked side by side, talking. Rob didn’t know what to ask for in Babylon, would you believe! He said that Will had made him see he badly needed to ask for something, but he couldn’t see what. He told Maree some of the things Will had said.

“While they talked, things got to me again. It was the way there was only darkness in front and behind and to the sides. Particularly at the sides. I felt as if I was walking on a tiny ribbon of land with a void all round. That cold, hungry void with sharp points in it that was under the bridge. While Maree was saying to Rob, ‘You sound as if you ought to be asking for a new soul,’ I went to the side of the road and held my candle out to see what was there.

“There was nothing there. Truly. There was just an enormous precipice. Like a fool, I went scuttling over to the other side of the road and held my candle out there. And it was just the same. Another precipice. We really were walking along a ribbon in the middle of nothing.

“After that I didn’t hear a word Rob and Maree said. They walked along, seriously discussing Rob’s soul, and I shuffled after and had the purple shaking-cold nadgers of sheer terror. I was so scared I wanted to get down on my hands and knees and crawl – I did crawl coming back – but I was ashamed to crawl in front of Rob and Maree when they didn’t mind at all. I didn’t feel better until we got to the hanging gardens.

“We called them the hanging gardens almost at once, and I think that is what they were, but they were not at all like you’d expect. The first we knew of them was that we were walking on spongy, tufty stuff that gave off a lemony smell and seemed to sway a little under our feet.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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