Every so often, the rat would stop abruptly, remove a cracked pocket mirror from her lunch box, and stare at her own reflection, while Liza danced impatiently behind her and bit back the urge to tell her to move on.
Once the rat produced a tube of lipstick, which she slathered liberally over her pink lips, whispering, “Just a little more color …” Another time she removed a small makeup compact—Liza would have sworn it was one her mother had lost only a few weeks earlier—and patted and pouffed her face until she looked as though she had gone face-first into a snowdrift.
With every minute that passed, Liza had a harder time controlling her impatience. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but—but—”
The rat blinked at her expectantly. Her black eyes looked even darker above her powder-white nose.
Liza faltered under the rat’s stare. “I mean it hardly seems necessary—when we’re on an urgent mission …”
“What hardly seems necessary?” the rat asked coldly.
“What I mean is …” Liza gestured helplessly at the rat’s outfit.
“Is there something the matter,” the rat asked, her gaze growing fiercer, “with the way that I am dressed?”
“I just … well, it isn’t natural, is it?” Liza sputtered.
Instantly she knew that the rat had been offended. The animal drew herself up to her full height.
“Natural!” the rat exploded, with such volume that Liza drew back, and several butterflies flitted nervously away from the path. “And what, little miss, do you know about natural? Is it natural to be forced to sneak and slither in the corners, and skulk in the shadows, and dig for your meals in Dumpsters?”
“Um …”
“And is it natural for people to hurl shoes at your head, and try to snap you in traps, and stomp on your tail?”
“I—I guess not....”
“And is it natural,” the rat thundered, quivering with rage, “for some to be cuddled and coddled and hugged, while others are hated and hunted and hurt, because of differences in fur, and tail, and whisker length? I ask you—is that natural?”
“I’m sorry,” Liza said, desperate for the rat to calm down. They needed to keep moving, and above all, she did not want the rat to abandon her. “I only meant that—you know—I’ve never seen a rat dressed up before.”
“Oh, yes? Is that so? And when was the last time you looked?” Now, alarmingly, the rat’s eyes began to fill with tears. She withdrew her white handkerchief from her lunch box and began blotting her eyes. But it was no use: Globs of mascara began running down her cheeks, matting her fur and making her look even more hideous than ever. “When was the last time you actually spoke to a rat, instead of shrieking and jumping on a chair, or poking it with your horrible broom?” And with a final sob, the rat spun on her heel and started to move off.
“Hey,” Liza said. It was now her turn to become offended. “It’s not all my fault. Rats never speak to me, either.”
“And why should they?” The rat whirled around to face her again. “Why should they come near you at all, when you are only going to poke them with your broom?”
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Liza snapped, finally losing her temper. “I’ve never poked a rat with a broom in my whole life.”
“But you’ve thought about it, haven’t you?” the rat pressed.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Not even once?”
“No!”
“Not for a second? Just a quick bop over the head?”
“No—never—not once!” Liza dug her nails into the handle of the broom.
“Aha!” the rat crowed triumphantly. “You’re thinking about it now!”
“Fine!” she burst out. “Fine, yes! I could bop you over the head; I could poke you in the eyes; but only because you’re the worst, most irritating, most impossible rat I have ever met in my entire life!”
Just then, and all at once, the glowing lanterns went out, plunging them into perfect darkness.
Instantly Liza’s irritation was transformed to fear. “What happened?” she cried. “What’s going on?”
The rat clucked her tongue. “Dear, dear. Now you’ve gone and upset the lumpen.”
“The what?” Liza’s heart thudded hard in her chest. She was not exactly afraid of the dark—but then, she had never been in dark this dark before. She couldn’t make out her hand in front of her face, or even the shape of the rat, who she knew must be standing only a few feet away from her.
“The lumer-lumpen. The light-bearers. They’re very sensitive—don’t like a lot of mussing and fussing.” The rat sighed. “I suppose we’ll have to apologize. We can’t very well go on like this. Not with those useless eyes of yours—just like a pair of stones, aren’t they?”
“My eyes aren’t useless,” Liza protested.
“How many claws am I holding up?” the rat said. Of course Liza had no idea, so she gripped the broom and remained silent. The rat tittered. “See? I told you. All human eyes are useless. You see only what you expect to see, and nothing more; and what is the use of sight like that?”
Liza thought about saying that up until thirty seconds ago, she had been staring directly at a giant rat in a newspaper skirt, which was assuredly a sight she had not wished to see. But she needed the rat’s help, infuriating though the animal was. And Liza was used to squashing down her feelings. So she said nothing at all.
“But it is too dark in here—far too dark, yes,” the rat continued gaily. Then she turned and called out, into the long tunnel of darkness, “Can we get some light, please?” Her strange voice echoed and rolled into the blackness. “We’ll be as quiet as church mice and as grateful as gidgets!” Then the rat whispered to Liza, “Although, of course, church mice aren’t really quiet at all. They’re the most awful gossips.”
For a moment they stood there.
“Is something supposed to happen?” Liza asked after a short pause.
The rat sighed again. “Infuriating creatures—truly. Overly sensitive, if you ask me, and with no sense of the changing times. The formality they require …” Then the rat trumpeted out, “Illuminate, elucidate, bring forth the light; for friends, or strangers, and those seeking sight.” She added, in a murmur, “I always feel so silly saying that.”
Suddenly the lanterns began to glow again, and Liza exhaled. Unconsciously, she had been holding her breath.
“Better?” the rat asked, watching Liza with her black eyes narrowed.
“Much better.” Liza was immensely relieved.
The rat spoke to her once again in a whisper: “For all their airs and demands, they really are extremely useful. Yes; yes; very useful.”
“Who’re they?” Liza asked. She was by this time convinced that the rat was—despite seeming friendly enough—quite deranged.
The rat blinked at her. “The keepers of the light, of course. The lumpen.” And she pointed to one of the small, glowing lanterns suspended directly above their heads.
For the first time, Liza noticed that curled at the very bottom of the glass dome was a tiny, pale, crescent-shaped thing, faintly glowing.
“Oh!” she cried out, delighted, because she saw that this tiny figure was the source of the soft, pale white light. “A glowworm!”
The lights above them flickered dangerously.
“Shhh!” the rat hissed. “The light-bearers go only by their official name—the lumer-lumpen. They’re extremely sensitive about titles,” she added in an undertone.
“I didn’t know that glo—um, lumpen were sensitive about anything.” Liza strained onto her tiptoes to get a better look. The glowworm certainly didn’t look sensitive, or easy to offend. In fact, it didn’t look as if it would feel much of anything at all: It was a small, pale lump, totally inert.
The rat scoffed. “That is a common misunderstanding about the lumpen. They are supposed to be very unfeeling—some would even say cold. But believe me—they are extr
emely sensitive. All geniuses are, of course.”
“Geniuses?” Liza repeated doubtfully, still staring at the whitish lump.
“Prodigies! Geniuses! Artists! The lumer-lumpen are some of the most sensitive, the most brilliant, the wisest creatures on the earth or inside of it. There is more wisdom in the head of a lumpen than you will find in all the libraries of the world.”
Liza refrained from pointing out that from what she could tell, the glowworm did not even have a head. Its head and bottom appeared to be entirely indistinguishable. She wondered whether this would affect the quality of its thoughts—if, in fact, it had any.
“If they could only speak,” the rat continued, and Liza was alarmed to see that tears welled up in her eyes again, “the secrets they might disclose to us! The wisdom they might impart! The stories they might convey! That is the source of their light, you know. Excess brainpower.” The rat shook her head wonderingly.
Liza’s head was spinning; she did not know what to believe. On the one hand it seemed incredible that such a tiny, ugly, bulgy little grub could possess any power of thought or feeling; on the other hand, she was standing in a dark tunnel with a rat wearing a skirt and lipstick, so she supposed that really, anything was possible.
She advanced several paces down the tunnel, craning her neck so that she could stare up at the glass domes nestled in the canopy of mossy green branches above them. In each of them, she now saw, was nestled another tiny glowworm, a crescent no bigger than a fingernail clipping, glowing and pulsing with light.
“How many are there?” Liza asked. “How far do they go?”
“Oh dear. Dear me. There are ever so many lumpen, thousands and thousands. You can always count on them to light the way, remember that. These tunnels are full of twists and turns, and it is easy to get lost. But the lumer-lumpen always light the path. They know all the ins and outs. Yes, thousands of them. In fact, they go almost all the way.”
“Almost all the way where?” Liza said. She was having trouble keeping up with the rat’s excited babble.
“To the spindlers’ nests, of course,” the rat said, dropping her voice reverentially on the word spindlers. For a moment, as she passed directly underneath one of the lumpen’s lanterns, her eyes glittered a brilliant violet color. “Hip-hop and top-tip and look smart about it. We’ve still a very long way to go. And I expect we’ll want to be in and out before the Feast begins, won’t we?”
Liza’s heart stopped. “The … the Feast?” she repeated.
The rat looked nervously from side to side. “The Feast of the Souls. Surely, you’ve heard …?”
Liza was filled suddenly with a coldness that froze her voice completely. She could only shake her head.
The rat lowered her voice to a whisper. “Well, they need to eat, don’t they? Hungry, that’s what they are. They want control—power over everything Below.”
“But—” Liza found her voice. “But that’s terrible. We have to stop them.”
“Ah.” Once again, the rat’s eyes flashed momentarily violet, and for a second a look of sadness passed across her face. “But there will be no stopping them once they feast, my dear. No stopping them at all. All the world Below—everything you see—will be theirs for the taking.”
Now she understood why Anna had always been so terrified when Liza asked her about the spindlers and what they did with the souls of the children they took.
They feasted. They grew fat and powerful.
Liza’s fear turned to resolve. “Don’t you know any shortcuts?” she asked desperately.
The rat paused, seeming to consider it. “I suppose we could cut through the palace grounds.... Although the nids won’t like it.... It’s nearly time for the nightly ball, and these days it’s invitation only.”
“The nids?” Liza repeated uncertainly. She was not at all sure she wanted to meet any more underground creatures.
“Silly creatures, if you ask me.” The rat sniffed. “Still, I suppose they have a right to their fun.” Then she paused, cocked her head to one side, and listened. “What did I tell you? Just on time! You can hear the music now.”
It was true: Suddenly Liza could hear music. Faintly, delicately, like the sound of bells and wind through the grass and distant flutes, all woven together. It seemed to be coming from somewhere on their right, and before Liza could protest, the rat had plunged into the mossy forest and started toward it.
Chapter 7
THE PALACE GATE
As they pushed farther into the dense forest, Liza had more and more trouble keeping up. The vines seemed to snake around her feet, and the branches to snatch greedily at her vest. She tried to use the broom to clear a path, but even so she found herself stumbling, and whiplashed by thorny bushes.
The rat chanted, “Slowpoke, slowpoke,” over her shoulder, for the fifteenth time in two minutes.
Finally Liza couldn’t stand it anymore, especially since she was moving as fast as she could. “Excuse me,” she said as she dodged a low-hanging branch, which was encased in a thick green shag of mildew. “I have a name, you know, and it isn’t slowpoke.” Her courage faltered somewhat as the rat turned around and stared at her beadily. “You can call me Liza.”
The rat stopped walking. “Oh, pardon me, Miss Liza. I didn’t mean to offend,” the rodent cooed, giving a quick curtsy. “And I suppose it has never occurred to you to ask me for my name, even though here I am, scuttling around to lead you to where you are going?”
“I—I—I—” Liza stuttered.
“I suppose you didn’t even think I might have a name?” the rat huffed.
“Well, I—I mean—” The truth was that it had not occurred to her that the rat would have a name.
“Hmph. I thought so.” The rat regathered her tail around one dainty wrist before flouncing off.
“I’m sorry,” Liza said. The rat only sniffed. She was scampering more quickly than ever; Liza had to jog to keep up. “I’d like to know your name. Really, truly,” Liza said. “Cross my heart and hope to die and stick a needle in my eye.” She made a little X over her heart, and felt a small pulse of pain as she thought of Patrick.
She remembered how he had once said to her, after a bad nightmare, You won’t let the spindlers get me, will you, Liza? And she had said, Cross my heart …
The rat abruptly stopped walking. Liza stopped too, panting a bit.
“Mirabella,” the rat said, in her throaty, squeaky way. “My name is Mirabella.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” Liza said grandly, even though she thought it was a very odd name for an overgrown rat in a straggly skirt, wearing a grubby wig on her head.
The rat leaned in a little closer. Her breath smelled of wetness and dirt, and Liza tried not to wince. “I came up with it myself. I had to; the other rats don’t believe in names. Everything is so uncivilized down here.”
Liza curtsied deeply, staking the handle of the broom in the ground to balance herself. “Very pleased to meet you, Mirabella,” she said. “Liza Flavia Elston, at your service.”
The rat looked almost ecstatic. She pinched two strips of newspaper carefully between two long, yellowed claws and mimicked Liza’s gesture. “The pleasure is all mine, Miss Liza.”
“There.” Liza straightened up, laughing. “That’s all right, then. You don’t have to call me ‘miss,’ though. No one ever does Above.”
“Above …” A look of deep longing came over Mirabella’s face. She leaned forward, until her whiskers were nearly poking into Liza’s cheeks. “Tell me,” she said. “What is it like to live Above?”
Liza was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“The sun,” Mirabella said, clenching and unclenching her paws. “What is it like to bathe for hours in the sun?”
“Um …” Liza had never really thought about this before. “I’m not really sure how to describe …”
“Is it as hot as the space between a wall and a furnace?” Mirabella asked. In her excitement, her tail had once agai
n become unraveled from her arm and lashed wildly against the ground. “As steamy as a sulfur pit? As warm as a slop pot?”
“Um …” Liza struggled for words. It was funny, she realized, how she had never thought about it before. “It’s like being wrapped in a nice blanket,” she finally said.
“Ahhh, a blanket,” Mirabella said wistfully. “I once had a blanket—found it in the Dumpster behind St. Mary’s School. It was very nice, almost like new, except for the big burn hole in its center and the smell of sardines. Yes—a very good blanket. I lost it, though, in a bet with a badger.” Mirabella frowned. “You mustn’t think I’m a gambler, of course, not regularly. But sometimes when the worm races are on … And I suppose your mother tucks you up all nice and neat every night when you go to sleep, doesn’t she?”
Liza was having trouble following the dizzying twists and turns of the rat’s conversation. “I—well—I mean, not really. She used to. She doesn’t so much anymore.” Liza remembered that when she was very little, her mother had liked to sit on her bed at night and tell her stories, and even sing her little songs. That was Before: Before the exclamation point made its permanent home between her eyebrows, Before she had become so tired all the time, Before the stacks and stacks of bills. Liza was not sure what had changed, but something had, and she thought it was very unfair.
People were not supposed to become different. Things were supposed to stay As They Were.
Mirabella leaned forward once more and whispered conspiratorially, “I have always dreamed of having a mother.”
“But surely you have a mother,” Liza said, extremely surprised. “Everybody does.”
The rat rocked back on her heels and waved a paw. “Oh, yes, in name I have a mother, of course. Rat 2,037. That’s what they call her, among the Tribe. But with seventy sisters and brothers, you can hardly expect that she’d have time for me, oh no. Besides, the thirty-seventh is her favorite; all because he was born with a perfect nose for sniffing out rare steak.”