“Where have you come from?” asked the blond one, as she helped Liza pile her plate with biscuits, bacon, and sticky toffee.
“From Abuff,” Liza said, as she swallowed a biscuit practically whole, washing it down with a swig of chocolate milk from the stone mug the red-haired sister placed in front of her.
Strangely, the more she ate, the more a pit seemed to open inside of her: pain, agony, a terrible, shredding hunger.
She could tell that Mirabella felt the same way. The rat had forgotten all her manners. She was perched on her hind legs on the bench, bent over the enormous turkey, working away with her two sharp teeth, clawing frantically at its flesh. Bits of browned skin dangled from the rat’s fingernails. Liza began to feel nauseous, though it did nothing to quell the hunger.
“Eat, eat,” the sisters chanted softly, encouragingly. The music continued to play: The tambourine beat out a soft rhythm, and the notes of the guitar seemed to wrap Liza’s mind in a soft, enveloping cloud, making other thoughts difficult. She could feel the music, stretching inside her, like long, soft fingers; the perfume of the food and the flowers made her feel very sleepy. She and the rat had been on their way somewhere, she was sure of it.... There was something she was supposed to do … someone she was looking for …
She frowned. The memory was just out of reach, an irritating twinge among all that soft loveliness of the music. It would be better, far better, to stay here and eat, to put all other ideas out of her mind. She would eat and eat; she could eat forever here, and never be full.
She reached for a piece of fried chicken and tore at a leg with her teeth. Surprisingly, the chicken and the toffee tasted quite good together. She would have to remember to tell Patrick.
Patrick. The name sent a much-needed jolt through Liza’s body. Of course! She was on her way to find the spindlers. She was on her way to rescue Patrick.
Wait, Liza tried to say, but the word wouldn’t rise up from the thick fog in her brain. She reached out to pour herself a glass of water and was surprised to see that her arm seemed to be wobbly, like a mirage on the horizon fading in and out. Her eyes felt heavy. She felt her arm drop to her side.
“Sleep, sleep,” the sisters chanted.
No, Liza tried to say.
Across from her, Mirabella was asleep, drooling, snout-down in a pile of creamy mashed potatoes. Liza fought the fog, and the sensation of heaviness all through her. She fought her way out of the music; it was like swimming upward through a thick, murky pond. She gathered her strength and pushed forcefully away from the table, stumbling to her feet. In the process she knocked over one of the enormous flowers around the table.
A horrible, piercing whine filled the air, and to Liza’s horror, the flower began to writhe and thrash, as though in pain. All the sisters were shouting now, and Liza saw that when angry they were not beautiful at all; their faces appeared to be melting. They were growing old in front of her; their skin was lined and gray, almost rotten-looking.
Terror carved a little clear space in Liza’s mind. “What’s happening? What are they?” she cried.
“Come here, you disgusting little worm.” The black-haired sister stood, lunging for her, and in that moment Liza’s blood froze, and she saw that the woman was not a woman at all, but some other thing. The bottom half of her body was covered in thick, green-and-black scales, and she had an enormous tail that tapered to a razor-sharp point. And as the thing—the ugly, terrible thing—revealed itself fully, Liza was hit with a terrible, choking smell, an overwhelming stench that made her gag reflexively.
Everything was confusion; broken images. Liza’s body was still clumsy, heavy. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. The red-haired one was screaming and shrieking, mouth wide open to reveal an awful coal-black tongue, clapping her hands with glee. The brown-haired monster had sprung onto the table—landing directly in a bowl of chocolate pudding and shattering it—and, with tail lashing, was binding the still-sleeping Mirabella’s paws with heavy rope.
Liza tried to run. She got no more than a few steps before the red-haired thing intercepted her, catching her by the shoulders.
“Not so fast, dearie,” the thing hissed.
Liza fought the urge to gag. The smell brought tears to her eyes.
“Let me go!” she screamed, flailing. But the monster was strong, and easily wrestled her down to the ground. Liza was brought cheek-first against the hard stone; her arms were wrenched behind her painfully, and she felt thick cords of rope digging into the skin of her wrists.
A word rose up through the fog in Liza’s brain, as though her nocturna was speaking to her from very far away.
Scawgs, the voice said.
Then a curtain came down over Liza’s mind, and all was blackness.
Chapter 15
THE RIVER OF KNOWLEDGE
When Liza woke, her first impression was that she was at home, in her bed, and had somehow gotten squished up against one of her stuffed animals. Perhaps she had accidentally rolled toward the wall, as she sometimes did, and had her face buried in Mr. Ted, the stuffed bear she had had since she was very young....
Except that Mr. Ted was very dirty, and smelled of cheese.... And her bed was very bumpy, and lumpy, and hard.
Then she snapped into awareness and realized that she was in the back of a wooden cart no bigger than a wheelbarrow, sandwiched next to Mirabella; and in her sleep she had rolled over and was pressed face-first into the rat’s fur. She rolled onto her back, sputtering and coughing out the disgusting rat taste, and wondered whether her mother would make her go to the doctor for a special round of shots, and if so, whether Patrick would be impressed by how calmly she could bear the needles.
That is, if she ever saw Patrick again. Or her mother, for that matter.
At this point, Liza wouldn’t have minded going to the doctor every single day for the rest of her life, and getting multiple shots, if only she could be safely Above again.
They were being bumped down the mountainside by the scawg with the yellow hair: hair, Liza now saw, that was dirty and full of insects. Ahead of them, the other scawgs were prancing merrily down the steep path. One of the scawgs was dancing; the other two were still playing the guitar and the tambourine, although now the music was horrible, loud and clashing like car horns and brakes squealing and fingers on chalkboards, all at once.
Mirabella was just waking up. The rat yawned and opened her eyes.
“Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear. I must have dozed for a minute or two,” she said.
“You didn’t doze,” Liza whispered. “You were drugged, and we’ve been captured by scawgs.”
“Scawgs?” Mirabella’s eyes widened in alarm. “Where?”
“See for yourself.” Liza indicated to their captors with her chin.
Mirabella let out a squeak of fear and tried to sit up. Then, realizing her paws were tied, she started thrashing, and in the process elbowed Liza in the stomach.
“Stop writhing,” Liza said. “You’re bumping me.”
“Oh, this is bad. Very, very bad.”
“Will you be quiet? I’m trying to think.” The rat’s grating voice, in combination with a loud, rushing sound that filled the air around them—Liza could not tell where it came from—made her head hurt. Her brain was still a bit fuzzy, and the noise wasn’t helping.
The cart came jerkily and suddenly to a stop. When Liza managed to wriggle into a seated position, she saw that the rushing sound came from the river; they had worked their way all the way down the other side of the Twin Mountains and were at the very edge of the water. Here the river was enormously wide, and a very dark purple. There was a flat wooden boat sitting on its rocky banks. Liza saw immediately that the scawgs were intending to float them down the river.
“Up and at ’em, my pretties.” This was the black-haired scawg, who loomed over them, grinning, with filthy and rotten teeth. Liza held her breath against the stench. “Ready for a little boat ride?”
She heaved Liza easily
over one shoulder, and Mirabella over the other, as though neither weighed anything at all, and carried them down to the boat, where she dropped them roughly. Once again Liza found herself with a mouth full of rat fur.
She pulled away, making a face. “Do you ever bathe, Mirabella?”
Mirabella appeared offended. “Twice a week, regular as pie. In the sewers next to the water treatment plant.”
Perhaps, Liza thought, when this was all over she would have her mother make an appointment at the dentist’s; for the first time in her life, she thought she wouldn’t mind having her teeth scrubbed.
Three of the scawgs joined them in the boat, two of them still playing their terrible music and shrieking merrily. The fourth pushed them off into the river and then sprang into the boat herself, with surprising agility for such a huge, ugly creature. Liza noticed that all four scawgs were very careful to avoid touching the water. The black-haired scawg stood at the prow of the long boat, using a twisted black pole to push away from the banks.
As they moved toward the center of the river, they were caught up in a swift current. Even though the black-haired scawg did not need to punt anymore with the pole, she remained standing at the front of the boat, wind whipping her filthy mane behind her, cackling happily, like a child at the front of a roller coaster. The scawgs’ merriment made Liza deeply uneasy. Anything pleasant to the scawgs must surely be very, very unpleasant for her and Mirabella.
“Mirabella,” Liza whispered. “Did you mean what you said earlier? About the river being deadly for all but the nocturni?”
“Oh, the river,” Mirabella moaned as the boat rocked in the water. She was nearly in agony; Liza hoped the rat would not get seasick. The last thing she needed was to be coated in rodent vomit. “The river is very deadly. Very dangerous. Oh yes. Stay away from the river. Stay away from—eek!” The boat lurched, and tears sprang up in Mirabella’s eyes. Liza could tell she was too frightened to be useful.
“Where are you taking us?” she called out to the scawgs, over the clamorous noise of their music.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” said the blond-haired one, sticking out a mottled green tongue in Liza’s direction.
Liza pretended to be unimpressed. “I bet you don’t even know,” she said, feigning a yawn. “I bet you’re lost.”
“Lost!” the red-haired one scoffed. “Impossible. We know every twist and tunneled turn between the Twin Mountains and the Black Pit.”
The Black Pit: So that was where they were headed. Liza did not like the sound of it.
“What are you planning to do with us?” she demanded, trying to keep the quiver from her voice.
The scawgs began to chuckle humorlessly. The red-haired scawg continued strumming on her guitar, picking at the strings with her blackened fingernails. “Oh dear. What a terribly difficult question. It’s so hard to say, isn’t it, sisters?”
“Very hard.”
“So many choices!”
“So many recipes.”
“We could boil you, of course.” She grinned, and Liza saw a hungry white light burning in her eyes. “Or bake you, baste you, stuff you, and roll you. Fry you in oil—”
“But grilling is a healthier alternative,” the blond one put in, pouting. “And you know I’m on a diet.”
“We could cream you, steam you, and stuff you in a pie!”
Liza shivered.
“You feasted at our table,” the brown-haired one said, running her tongue over her teeth. “So, you see, it’s only fair. Now you must be the feast.”
“That’s not fair at all!” Liza cried out above the scawgs’ cackling laughter, though she knew it would do no good.
The boat continued to speed down the river, rocking slightly, and Mirabella continued to moan, and the scawgs continued to laugh and play their music, and Liza thought furiously. She would not be boiled or stuffed—or even grilled. It was, in fact, out of the question.
She remembered, suddenly, the time that she and Patrick had been playing cop and criminal and she had been the criminal, and he had tied her up with an old jump rope in the backyard. But then instead of releasing her as he was supposed to, he had gotten bored and wandered back into the house to play a video game (and, as she later discovered, eat the very last of the Froot Loops).
And Liza had screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was not until almost two hours later that her mother had returned from grocery shopping and heard her. And Patrick had been punished, and Liza smothered in kisses and given ice cream before and after dinner, and so it had not ended badly at all.
But no one would come to the rescue here, no matter how long and loud Liza screamed.
No. She would have to escape the scawgs herself.
Liza groped along the bottom of the boat. It was a very old boat, and uncomfortable to lie on: The wood was warped and full of splinters. Liza despised splinters. One time, in the tree house, she had gotten her new soft sweater—the one in the perfect cream color, which she had had to beg and beg for—caught on a splinter and it had ripped a hole …
It had ripped a hole …
Straight through the fabric!
That was it!
Liza felt with her fingers until she located a particularly large and nasty splinter of wood, which was digging mercilessly into her lower back. She squirmed and wriggled until the rope binding her wrists was positioned just above its jagged edges; then she sawed her wrists back and forth and prayed. After only a minute, she began to feel a gradual loosening around her wrists. A feeling of joy swelled inside her. It was working.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Mirabella groaned, keeping her eyes squeezed tightly shut, as the boat continued whipping downriver. “All that rocking. Terrible. I think I’ll be sick.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Liza whispered. “Now hush. I’m trying to concentrate.”
Back and forth, back and forth: The tension around her wrists let up a little more, and then a little more, and then—snap!—she was free. Liza contained a cry of excitement. She was far from safe.
“Mirabella.” She leaned over and pressed her mouth directly against the rat’s fuzzy ear. “I’ve managed to get my hands free.”
“You what?” Mirabella’s eyes flew open.
“Shh.” Liza reached over and clamped a hand over the rat’s snout. Fortunately the Scawgs were engrossed in a heated argument about whether human went better with buttered potatoes or roasted squash, and were paying no attention to their captives. “We must be very quiet and very careful. I’m going to untie you, okay?”
Mirabella nodded, eyes wide.
Liza helped the rat roll over onto her side, so that her paws, and the rope tied tightly around them, were visible; then Liza began working slowly and carefully at the knots, keeping one eye on the scawgs at the front of the boat. The work was made even more difficult because the boat kept tipping and dipping, and sending Mirabella rolling back into Liza, squeaking with fear, so that it seemed she almost wanted the scawgs to hear her. And as soon as Liza did get Mirabella onto her side again, the rat’s tail—released from underneath her—would begin whipping excitedly in Liza’s face.
“For goodness’ sake,” Liza said, “can’t you control that thing?”
“I can’t help it,” Mirabella whispered back miserably. “Nervous habit.”
But at last Liza was successful, and when the ropes came off Mirabella’s paws, Liza once again leaned in to whisper to her. Her stomach was full of a thick, coiled fear; she was not looking forward to this bit, not at all.
“Mirabella,” she said. “We must swim for it.”
Mirabella looked even more frightened than when she had first woken up in the boat with the scawgs. She grabbed Liza’s shirt frantically. “We can’t! Oh no! That is a very, very bad idea.”
“We have no choice,” Liza insisted. And she knew it was true. “I am not going to be baked into a pie and eaten.”
Mirabella looked as though she thought that might be preferable. “But the riv
er …”
“You’ve warned me about the river. But it’s our only hope. I, for one, am going to swim for it.”
Liza sucked in a deep breath and sat up. At that moment a few things happened in very rapid succession:
One of the flowers began lashing its long stem crazily back and forth, whipping Liza in the face and sending her tumbling onto her back.
The scawgs, seeing the commotion, began to scream, and two of them rushed toward Liza and Mirabella.
The boat tipped dangerously to one side, and Liza rolled toward its edge.
Mirabella shouted, “I won’t let you!” and made a dive for Liza, managing to get a claw around the second of Liza’s sneakers.
The boat tipped;
The flower twisted;
Liza’s foot came free of the sneaker;
And Liza went tumbling, suddenly, into the roaring, rushing River of Knowledge.
Chapter 16
THE REWARD
Everything was noise and confusion—so much noise it made Liza feel as though her head was about to explode.
Liza fought desperately to reach the surface of the river, but she was so confused and terrified she did not know which way was up or down. This was unlike any water she had ever known. The river was full of swirling images, mixed together, jumbled up: dark stone that flowed like a river across the surface of a pale blue planet; a single drop of dew trembling at the edge of an enormous purple petal; stars racing across a pink sky; a child running through a luscious green field.
But there were terrible things too: faces that leered at her; galloping, snorting horses that reared above her and brought their enormous hooves driving toward her face; green creatures, covered in dark green algae, that grabbed at her ankles and tugged her downward.
Her chest was collapsing. She couldn’t breathe. Her mouth was full of choking red dust: a tornado, in the center of the river, spiraling toward her. A baby was crying. A woman and a man, both wearing starched white gloves, danced in a room made entirely of gold, while an orchestra played. Then a bull, snorting, massive; she could feel its heat, she would be trampled, she would die.