Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse

  They went down a back staircase and through a network of hallways, standing aside, politely heads down, whenever any of the upper servants came by. There was another staircase, narrower halls, then a doorway opening into a shabby, low-ceilinged room with long tables and battered chairs. ‘The staff dining room,’ said Green, eyes darting from side to side. Except for a huge woman who was loudly slurping soup at one of the tables, the room was empty.

  ‘She’s not here?’ murmured Mondragon. The woman at the table could not be the Fanetta he had seen through his glasses. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Green in return. ‘I’ve never seen her before. As I said, they come and go. Sometimes one doesn’t see the same faces twice!’

  ‘Where’s the door you mentioned?’

  ‘Out along the kitchen wall, in a little side corridor.’

  ‘We’d be noticed if we went now.’ It was true. The kitchen was having a momentary hiatus. The next course stood upon a side table, ready to go up. Washers were scrubbing pans in desultory fashion. Chief cooks sat on high stools, chatting together. ‘Wait until the next course leaves the kitchen, and we’ll try it then.’

  Mondragon sat down, leaning casually on the table while Green fetched two cups of tea from the buffet. The large woman fixed them with an incredulous stare and sniffed audibly before saying, ‘You are on your legitimate break time, I presume.’

  Mondragon gave her a haughty look. ‘Who are you, madam?’

  ‘I am the Cattermune nanny. And you?’

  ‘Green, ma’am. And Sneeth. Yes, ma’am. On our break. We’ll be only a few moments.’

  As they sipped the tepid tea, a burst of noise came from the kitchen, cries of disbelief, the crash of broken crockery. The nanny darted to the door with Mondragon and Green close behind. ‘It’s true,’ an under-butler was exclaiming. ‘I was in the dining room when the immigration manager came to tell the Cattermune! There’ve been no immigrants for some time.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ cried a cook, his high, puffy hat flopping to and fro as he twisted his head about, seeking information. ‘That there have been no immigrants?’

  ‘There’s talk the anchor has come loose,’ the under-butler mumbled, casting a hasty look behind him as though afraid to be heard uttering this heresy. ‘That The Connection is broken.’

  ‘Surely not?’

  ‘It couldn’t be!’

  ‘The Cattermune put it there personally.’

  ‘I thought it was permanently in place.’

  ‘Not until midnight tonight. Midnight it would have been permanent. If it had still been there.’

  ‘The Cattermune will be furious.’

  ‘They’ll be binkering everyone …’

  ‘Now,’ whispered Mondragon. ‘In all the confusion.’ He followed Green along the wall of the kitchen and into the side corridor. A little door opened upon darkness and they slipped within, though not before Mondragon cast a look behind him to find the Cattermune nanny staring after them, her mouth half open.

  ‘Hurry,’ cried Mondragon. ‘The nanny saw us.’

  ‘I am hurrying, sir, but it’s pitch-dark in here.’

  ‘I had thought it might be,’ said Mondragon, taking a flashlight from his pocket. ‘I seem to have come very well prepared. Ellat’s doing, no doubt. Or Therat’s. I have no doubt that if we needed an inflatable boat or a pair of trained yaks, we would find them in the luggage. Which way?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest notion,’ said Green, peering at the stairs that split into three before him.

  ‘Hello?’ came a tentative hail from above. ‘Who’s down there?’

  ‘Fanetta?’ cried Green. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Green? Who’s with you?’

  ‘Somebody who wants to see Mary Ann.’

  ‘She’s here, with me. So’s Mrs Smani.’

  ‘Thank whatever,’ said Mondragon, climbing steadily toward the voice. He found the three women huddled on a narrow landing.

  ‘Have you heard?’ begged Fanetta. ‘One of the maids came to tell me. The Cattermune will be furious. He’ll be making binkers right and left. I told Mary Ann we had to get out of the nursery and hide.’

  ‘The nanny saw us come in here,’ said Mondragon.

  ‘Oh, by the Galosh’s pet plaice! We’ll have to get off these stairs or she’ll find us sure. Come along after me,’ and Fanetta dashed off down a winding mouse tunnel, so narrow and low that Mondragon had to stoop and Green grunted as he squeezed himself around and through the corners and turns. They climbed, descended, then made several turns to arrive at last in a small roomlike space with a bench along one wall.

  ‘Be very quiet,’ murmured Fanetta. ‘We’re just outside the dining room.’

  ‘Is there a hole?’ whispered Mondragon. ‘We need to know what’s going on.’

  Laying her fingers across her lips, Fanetta held her candle to the wall to disclose two eyeholes with a shutter latch to one side. ‘Slide that and they’ll open,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll be looking right out of the eyes of the portrait of Gormdab Cattermune.’

  He slid the latch to one side. Dim light came through the two holes before he pressed his eyes to them and peered down into the dining room he had left less than an hour before. No one seemed to be present except Cattermunes. Some stood on chairs, yowling. Others scratched the walls in a fury, leaving long claw marks in the silk brocade.

  ‘How!’ howled the Cattermune. ‘I ask you, how?’

  The person of whom this question was asked was the gray-haired Cattermune that Mondragon had seen in the entry hall. He had a long, lugubrious face and a large, bumpy head which he shook slowly from side to side. ‘I don’t know and it isn’t my doing and not my fault. I’ve said and I’ve said. Nobody came through for a long time, and I thought it was just – oh, maybe a war or something happening there to keep them from playing the game, you know. Not that it would stop them for long. But then, time went on and nobody came, so I ran a test on The Connection. Closed. Shut tight. No way through. They couldn’t get into the game if they tried.’

  ‘With the anchor in the World Outside, it couldn’t happen!’ screamed the Cattermune.

  ‘Then the anchor isn’t there anymore, and that’s all there is to it,’ said the lugubrious one.

  Mondragon slid the shutter closed and turned to Marianne. ‘Marianne, my dearest, did you bring anything with you when you came?’

  ‘Dearest?’ she faltered. ‘Have we met?’

  ‘Damn,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘I am Mondr – I am Makr Avehl, your husband. You are Marianne, my wife. This lady is Dagma Zahmani, your great-aunt. And we desperately need to know if you brought anything with you when you came.’

  ‘She wouldn’t remember,’ said Fanetta. ‘None of us do. I don’t know how you do, but none of us do. Except for me, of course, but that was just once.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mondragon ground his teeth together. ‘Tell me about the once, dear girl. How did you manage it?’

  ‘Old Groff has a rememberer,’ she said. ‘I sneaked it once and used it on me.’

  ‘And where is Old Groff now?’

  ‘In the butler’s pantry. Listening to what’s going on in the dining room.’

  ‘And his rememberer is where?’

  ‘In his room.’

  ‘And, lovely maiden, can you get us there?’

  She stared at him, mouth open, then nodded slowly. ‘You’re something else, aren’t you? Something different from these other ones.’

  ‘I do hope so, maiden, since the situation desperately calls for something of the kind. Lead the way.’

  As they went, they heard a consternation of sound off in the wallways, a bellowing and cursing, a sound of hammering. ‘They’re looking for us,’ whispered Fanetta. ‘They’ll never find us. Not in a million years.’

  ‘We don’t have a million years,’ suggested Mondragon. ‘Quickly, girl. Find this thing you mentioned.’

  She found Groff’s room with
only a few false trails. The room did not yield the thing she called the rememberer, however.

  ‘What did it look like?’ begged Green.

  ‘Was it bigger than a breadbox?’ asked Mrs Smani.

  ‘Could he have put it elsewhere?’ asked Mondragon.

  ‘It looks like a hat. It isn’t bigger than a breadbox. He could have put it anywhere, but why would he?’

  ‘Look for a hat,’ said Mondragon. ‘Spread out.’

  The closet was stripped, the wardrobe laid bare. Every drawer was pulled out and emptied. At last, to the accompaniment of furious noise in the corridor outside, Mary Ann looked up at the chandelier and cried out, ‘There!’

  It was hanging on an iron branch, obviously tossed there in a moment of carelessness. Green lifted Mondragon, and he fished the thing down. It did look like a very curious hat. ‘Now’ – he thrust them back toward the open panel through which they had entered the room – ‘Get back into hiding!’

  They were no sooner behind the wall than they heard the door to the room they had left banged open and a huge voice shouting. ‘Groff! Groff! Where is that fool?’

  ‘How does it work?’ asked Mondragon, retreating down the hidden corridor.

  ‘Just put it on. You’ll remember.’

  ‘Not me, her,’ he said, fitting the hat onto Marianne’s head. ‘Darling? Sweetheart? Did you bring anything in here with you?’

  ‘Makr Avehl,’ she cried, breaking into tears. ‘Oh, thank God you’re here.’

  There was a rustle of patting and hugging and tear drying while the others tried to look elsewhere. ‘Dear one, please. Concentrate. Did you bring anything in here with you?’

  ‘I …’ she said. ‘We … Let me think. I did. Yes. Of course I did. I brought – ah, what was it. The matchbox. I brought the matchbox!’ She fished in the pocket of her uniform and brought it out for them all to see. ‘This matchbox!’

  ‘Ah!’ He took it, turned it in his hands, shut his eyes and felt of it. ‘Yes. Well. So that’s why no one can come into the game anymore. Clever girl. You’ve broken his Connection. Not that he can’t restore it, if he gets his hands on this, though I imagine it would take another generation to make it permanent. Well. We must make sure he doesn’t. We really must think of a way to get out of here! Nothing obvious.’

  Fanetta burbled, ‘They’ll never find us. We can stay right here until the whole thing blows over. I’ve done it. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Late at night we can steal food from the kitchen. It’s easy. I’ve done it.’

  ‘My dear young woman,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Believe me. If we stay anywhere within reach, they will find us. If they have to tear Cattermune’s House down stone by stone, they will find us. I know that as surely as I know my own name.’ He kissed Marianne again, removing the rememberer from her head and setting it firmly upon Green-Aghrehond’s. ‘The only chance we have is to take this thing somewhere else – somewhere where the Cattermune quite simply will not think to look!’

  ‘But the Cattermune goes everywhere,’ Fanetta said. ‘That is, everywhere he can. To all the junctions. And he has spies everywhere else. Where could you go where he wouldn’t suspect you’d be?’

  ‘To Cattermune’s Pique,’ said Mondragon. ‘All of us.’

  ‘To the Pique?’ she screamed. ‘But that’s where …’

  ‘Exactly. That is where,’ asserted Mondragon. ‘Precisely why he won’t look for us there.’

  ‘You can’t throw a one,’ Fanetta objected. ‘You just can’t.’

  ‘They’re my dice,’ said Mondragon, fishing a particular die from his pocket. ‘I can throw anything I please. Hold on to me, please. We’re about to go elsewhere.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The dragon soared above the forests and moors of Cattermune’s Pique holding a turquoise tortoise firmly in his left foretalon. On his shoulders sat an amethyst ape wearing a peculiar hat and holding a malachite mouse firmly on his lap. From the dragon’s rear talons dangled a gneissic gnu which had not ceased bleating since they had begun the flight.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked the mouse plaintively. ‘Where are we from?’

  ‘Down,’ cried the ape to the dragon. ‘She doesn’t remember where we are.’

  ‘In a moment,’ bellowed the dragon. ‘I’ve spotted a likely lair.’ They slanted through the darkling air toward a many forked peak with a cloud of bats circling it. ‘Bats mean caves.’

  ‘So they do,’ said the ape. He stared at the mouse for a moment, then removed his peculiar hat and placed the mouse in it.

  ‘How are you managing, Marianne?’ he asked.

  ‘Aghrehond?’ the mouse said plaintively. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘I believe so,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Dagma?’

  ‘Dangling, at the moment. As is Fanetta. I believe Makr Avehl has found us a lair.’

  ‘These changes of shape are unsettling,’ she complained. ‘I feel very peculiar.’

  The dragon’s wings cupped the air and he settled toward a stony step beside a dark cavity in the mountain. Laden as he was, the landing was not smooth, and the ape clutched the mouse in the hat to keep her from being thrown into the chasm beside them.

  ‘A likely place,’ said the dragon. ‘Feels like home.’

  ‘Not to me,’ said the tortoise.

  ‘Nor me,’ bleated the gnu. ‘A nice veldt. A bit of grass. A few hundred thousand close friends. Now that would be home.’

  ‘Put the hat on them both,’ said the mouse. ‘They’re silly.’

  The ape complied, applying Groff’s rememberer first to the gnu and then to the tortoise. Both made noises of astonishment and then settled into a meditative mood, staring down on the stretching moors from their high roost.

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’ asked the tortoise.

  ‘It will depend,’ said the dragon. ‘It will depend on how clever the Cattermune is. On how well he can put two and two together. On whether the immigration manager noticed who came into the game last.’

  The mouse nodded. ‘You mean, it all depends on who they’re looking for.’

  ‘Exactly. It won’t take them long to figure out that one of the last players to enter the game brought the anchor – that is, the matchbox – back to Cattermune’s House. The arrival of the matchbox at Cattermune’s House is what shut down the entry port. Now, if Marianne and Dagma and you, Aghrehond, have attracted no notice whatsoever …’

  ‘I’m afraid she has,’ said the tortoise. ‘She was in the paper. At Frab Junction. A pig interviewed her in the Dinosaur Zoo. A lot of stuff about being pregnant. It was obvious from what she said that she hadn’t been in the game long …’

  ‘And there was Buttercup,’ said the mouse in a rueful voice. ‘She saw me when I left Buttercup for G’nop. Buttercup is still very early in her reign, so she’d know that it wasn’t long ago. Though by that time I had been in Buttercup for eight years.’

  ‘Game time,’ mused the dragon. ‘Game time hardly counts. Eight years,’ he snapped his talons. ‘No time at all. Now, the Illusion Fields, that might be a bit of time.’

  ‘Ten thousand years,’ said the mouse. ‘But that’s no time, either. The pig I met at the zoo had been there for a whole ten thousand, but this game has only been going for fifty!’

  ‘But a Forever …’ mused the gnu. ‘A Forever is a Forever, no matter what. Everyone says so. A Forever really is.’

  ‘That’s what the pig said, too. Ta-ta, she said. Good-bye and gone forever.’ The mouse sighed, scratching behind an ear with one hind foot. ‘Gone forever.’

  ‘Right,’ said the dragon. ‘I think you may safely say that a Forever is a Forever. Though at the moment I’m not sure that’s relevant to anything. Ape, do you see something over there on the causeway?’

  The lands of Cattermune’s Pique were bisected by a dike, mounted high above the surrounding moors and copses, topped by a wide road. At the far end of this road, almost at the limit of their vision, there seemed
to be something going on.

  ‘All I can see is movement,’ said the ape. ‘Your eyes should be better than mine.’

  ‘I would have thought so,’ said the dragon. ‘And yet, I can’t make it out with any clarity.’

  ‘You don’t need to make it out,’ whined the gnu. ‘You know what it is. It’s the hunt. Cattermunes out of their clothes, running naked on all fours, their teeth showing. Cattermunes and their “guests.” Queen Buttercup – she’ll be right in with the rest of them, though they’ll have to give her a wagon to ride in.’

  ‘What are they hunting?’ asked the dragon, sucking a fang. ‘I thought it was binkers.’

  ‘We’re binkers, stupid,’ cried the gnu. ‘Out here we’re whatever we are, good sport, good hunting, but when they take our carcasses back to Cattermune’s House, we’re binkers. Meat for the table and guts for the Worm Pits, that’s what we are.’ She began sobbing. ‘I should have just stayed in the walls where I was.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll see us up here? If we go in the cave?’

  ‘Cattermunes? Don’t be silly! They can smell an ant from a mile away, see a flea at the bottom of a chasm. They’ve already seen you, Dragon. And me, most likely.’

  ‘But they can’t know that we …’

  ‘Doesn’t matter do they know, don’t they know. They’re hunting. Everything that moves. Anything that lives.’

  ‘It does matter,’ said the mouse firmly. ‘We’ve got the matchbox, and we’ve got to keep them from getting it. Even if they get us, they mustn’t get the matchbox.’

  ‘True,’ the ape remarked. ‘The Cattermune would simply put it in place again, even though it would take fifty years and the blood of fifty Cattermunes to do it.’