“And may I,” Lilac returned, “who am representative of none and unafraid to show it, express my unappreciation at your attendance here and my absolute disinterest in whatever notions, ideas and conclusions that you may hold, now or retrospectively, pertaining to the proceedings. And as for you -” she shot her gaze at another member of gathering, a plasticky-looking bald headed man whose smile seemed to be moulded into place “- what you are doing here, I cannot guess.”
This plasticky-looking man, Benjamin observed, was not alone; huddled just behind him were three imposing figures, all of whom were clad in long, hooded overcoats that obscured every feature apart from their glowering eyes. They would have been identical had it not been for the fact that each individual was carrying some discrete accoutrement. The figure on the left, for example, was holding a large carpet-bag at his side, while the one on the right cradled a huge book in the crook of his arm. The last of these three, the one in the middle, was clutching a set of strings which appeared to lead - alarmingly enough - into the back of the plasticky-looking man’s head. As if restraining a heedless dog, this figure abruptly tugged at the strings, at which point the plasticky-looking man, utterly unperturbed at having his cranium jerked back so, proffered his reply to Lilac.
“We are here,” he said, the smile still fixed, “to ensure that propriety is observed; that our holy law is not transgressed; that the proceeds of this becoming are not wholly recorded by secular observers.”
“Which means what, exactly?” said Lilac, enunciating what Benjamin had also been thinking.
The figure with the book heaved the tome before him, opened it, and leafed through a number of pages before settling on one which he pointed out to his accomplices. After a brief whispered conferral between all three, the figure holding the strings again pulled at the head of his plasticky-looking representative, and in so doing brought forth another reply: “Stanza one-one-seven,” the plasticky-looking man said. “Where we are told that the least of our laity may have dominion over the bondless, or those who refuse to believe. To us is trusted the recording of what passes; for through us must the ages be seen, when the bondless are gone, and the hierarchies of Jah-Way are established.”
Well that helps, thought Benjamin, as the fat floating man - Toft Sofferine Adi - embarked upon another flurry of incomprehensible chatter, which his associate, Eriddy Card, deciphered thus: “We feel it necessary to inform you that the Congregation of the Apt -” he indicated the plasticky-looking man and his aloof cohorts “- is not officially recognised by ourselves, nor any of the major parties, in whose lieu we stand here today. And furthermore -”
“That’s rich,” countered Lilac. “Coming as it does from a bunch of nommocks who claim a non-existent mandate from a non-existent electorate. Tell me, Toft Sofferine -” she glared at the buoyant atulphi “- why are you here, my friend? Afraid that your lucrative holdings in all those archimy concerns might be jeopardised by this boy beside me?”
“All my interests are declared,” said Eriddy Card, on behalf of his spluttering patron. “And in the public domain. Your insinuations -”
Lilac again cut him off. “Just because you’ve declared it doesn’t make it right.”
And then the plasticky-looking man interjected. “Hypocrite,” he said, prior to another tug of his strings. “Stanza four-twenty-three: ever will some decry their equal, to the end of becoming alone in their estate; for many would rather rule an empty household than be humble amongst hosts.”
“Oh?” said Lilac. “And how many do you represent?”
Once his strings were again pulled, the plasticky-looking man held up a finger. “If only one should believe, then it is enough.”
“That is an untenable position,” ventured Eriddy Card, over the voice of his fulminating companion. “If a mandate is not to become the design of tyranny, then it must require the consent of a significant majority.”
“At least the Aptists are honest about it,” said Lilac, turning the focus of her ire back on to the two men from the Considerate League. “Since when did you ever have the public on your side?”
“There is every good reason to act in lieu of government when there is none,” replied Eriddy Card, translating still. “That we do not, as yet, have an official mandate is immaterial; there is no harm in practising government for the sake of attaining it.”
“Please,” said Lilac, holding out the palm of her hand. “Can’t any of you ever stop proclaiming, and just talk?” - at which a cry of ‘hear, hear’ sailed down from someone overhead. Looking up, Benjamin saw that a number of airborne atulphi had drawn close to the rooftop, and were circling it in a way that made him think of seagulls on a hot day. His audience, he realised, was growing; and if the unappreciative catcalls of the crowd below were anything to go by , then it was obvious that it was growing bored, too. He recalled how he had felt when Lilac had hinted at the cruelties of her kinsfolk, and pondered as to what a crowd of those selfsame kinfolk might be capable of if something didn’t happen soon.
As for Lilac’s plea, it had gone unheeded; the Considerate Leaguers and the religious people continued to argue with each other in that peculiar stilted way, only now they had Beyno between them, attempting to mediate. Naranarra, as per usual, was doing nothing. “I’m sorry about this,” said Lilac, turning to the boy. Her expression bore both a frown and a half-smile; she was, it seemed, both wearied and amused by this turn of events. “I should have let you do what you needed to do. It’s just - they get my back up, you know? These people -” she gestured towards the squabbling assemblage “- they make me see the pleasure in having to count all the pebbles in the world.”
“Who are they?” asked Benjamin, who was at a loss as to what they were actually arguing about.
“I could well ask the same. You see now, don't you, of why there was no reason to be afraid of looking like an idiot.”
“Yeah,” replied the boy, who was not quite so nervous that he couldn’t allow some hint of a smirk to surface. “You know, I think we should surprise them.”
“Oh?” said Lilac, in a tone that told him she knew precisely what he was thinking of.
Benjamin took a deep breath. “I reckon it’s time,” he said. “To do that thing with the silf.”
Lilac began to unbuckle the straps of her satchel. “I think so too,” she said.
***
Benjamin was never able to fully appreciate what happened after the silf drifted out of the satchel and entwined itself about his arms. All he can clearly remember is that the argument ceased, to be replaced by a rapt silence on the part of everyone around him, and then everything became hazy. He again saw his sister’s dream - the cats, the gossip, her oddly-timbred voice - but did not know if he only imagined telling the assembly about it. He heard someone say ‘make it dance’, but then he heard a bout of laughter which seemed to have no cause. A burst of applause sounded out from the throng below, but if it was before or after the event he could not say. Someone in the gathering decried Toft Sofferine Adi for farting, yet Benjamin had no recollection of who it was who spoke, nor of the offending act itself. From somewhere, Lilac rested a hand on his shoulder and told him not to worry.
In his transfiguration of the silf, he found himself - as expected - confused as to what, exactly, he needed to do. At some point, he was sure he commanded it to transform; and when it did not transform, he asked it to tell him how he should make it transform. But the silf only continued to swirl and curl between his arms, cool and silvery and adamant to his appeals, while the dream it brought to him remained as unfathomable as a Chinese puzzle.
What should I do? he asked himself, with a calmness he found surprising. The cats chattered on, waiting for their trains or reading their papers. He tried asking them, but they were completely aloof. The scene was utterly immutable; he could see and hear, but play no part. Undeterred, he decided that if all he was able to do was observe, then he would observe. He thought about the subtle meaning of the dream, how it se
emed to be saying this is what you are not; you are different, and realised that Maddie would never again see herself as the equivalent to any animal. Just a day ago, she would have accepted a cat as a friend or a partner, but not a pet. A day onwards, and she would probably consider it all three.
But what was the connection between the message of the dream, the details of the dream itself, and the prize that he was supposed to produce from it? What was the link? The message of the dream was about the recognition of distinction; the substance constituted cats that talked, read papers, and waited for trains on windowsills. He pondered upon each, trying to tally the two. He watched the cats talk; this is what you are not; you are different; he watched a cat flick a page of its newspaper; this is what you are not; you are different; he heard Maddie calling to a pretty cat; this is what you are not; you are different. And then, finally, the breakthrough came: the dream had a shape. How it occurred to him he didn’t know, only that it had happened when he’d found himself thinking of both - the details and the message - at the same time. The dream had a shape, like a maze of curves, though much of it was nebulous and undefined ... and yet it was within those undefined areas that the essential clue resided, for whenever he tried to make sense of them he became awash with dizzying insights, and the silf would tighten against his arms, as rigid as a frightened animal. These are the potentials, he thought, recalling Lilac’s words on the matter; all the things I can draw from the silf. And there are thousands of them.
There were many ways he could make the shape of the dream complete, and each one conferred some new concept of what could be distilled from the silf: a thread, tabby-striped in silver and black, from which exquisite garments might be woven; a liquor, rare, that tasted of ginger and caused its imbiber to see the route home when lost; an ore that could be forged into a ring that kinked the fingers of liars. Of these three - which were themselves only a small example of many - it was the last that Benjamin decided upon, simply because a ring that kinked the fingers of liars was funny. And when the decision was made, the rest was easy: the silf fell away from his arms and began to thrash wildly on the ground; it spat sparks; it squirmed, convulsed; and then it exploded, leaving a mess of small, dark smoky stones and nothing of the sublime ribbon from which they had been wrought.
“It’s catshadow!” he heard someone cry. There was a cheer from the crowd below, and an assortment of hurrahs from the atulphi circling above. “Felicitine!” said someone else. “He drawn out felicitine. Oh the joy!”
Benjamin felt a powerful surge of elation when the silf transformed, the kind of joy he would later liken to having drawn a truly amazing picture, even though he had never picked up a pencil before. Unfortunately it did not last, as immediately afterwards a kind of lethargy sloshed through him, and his legs buckled. He fell, but someone, probably Lilac, caught him, and the next thing he can remember is that he was lying on the floor, feeling strangely sad that the silf was now gone. He watched as Eriddy Card - directed, as ever, by an excitable Toft Sofferine Adi - scrabbled about on all fours, feverishly collecting the stones, and thought of the morning, the dawn, and how he’d chased the silf in the twilight. He saw that two of the overcoated personages were also hastily gathering the stones to themselves, with both their plasticky spokesman and the one with the carpet-bag looking on impassively, and he recalled how friendly the silf had been, like a pet that truly treasured its owner. “Please,” he might have mumbled somewhere; “That was my sister’s.” Then he closed his eyes, and time seemed to slip him by. When he looked again, he was disturbed to see the plasticky-looking man being stuffed into the carpet-bag by one of his overcoated companions; even more disturbing was the fact that there appeared to be a taut but bendy looseness to the plasticky-looking man, as if he were not a man at all but a man-shaped balloon. He must have been alive, though, as he giggled at one point. Benjamin, not liking what he saw, closed his eyes again, and gave in to his exhaustion. I didn’t see it, he told himself as he drifted into sleep; it was just a trick of my eyes. But in truth he was too tired to care much, and before long, he was oblivious to both it and everything.
18
Benjamin slept dreamlessly, though when he awoke he initially thought otherwise; there was a moment, just before his eyes were open and his ears alert, when he believed that his adventure here had all been a dream, and that it would only require one bleary look to see that he was back in his world, curled up in his bed, with nothing so wonderful as the muted music of his mother’s voice in the kitchen downstairs.
The idea had some merit, too: with the peculiar clarity that comes with impending wakefulness, he was able to see, quite easily, how being immersed in his Homeric homework could have led him to dream of so fantastic a voyage, and how Pete’s suggestion pertaining to Chinese food might have inspired such oriental flourishes as Lilac, her pagoda-like cage, and the dragon-gabled pavilion on the pier. He’d watched a programme about birds, and had thus dreamed of being carried away by them; he’d written of how it feels to be a stranger amid curiosities, and so had become that very stranger. Finally, lucidity stole upon him, and he at last let his eyes open to Niamago. He was back in Lilac’s flat, in the same room and upon the same chair as earlier, and looking out through the window to see a sunset he would never see on earth, where the opaline clouds, prismatic to the lowering light, had turned the sky into a vast and breathtaking vault of shifting, rippling rainbows.
Earlier, perhaps, his heart would have leapt at the sight. But now it made him feel afraid. This world was real, not a dream, and he was very, very far from home.
***
“You’re awake, then,” said Lilac, who was too involved in the radio on the sideboard to look up. From Benjamin’s perspective she appeared to be tuning the thing, albeit somewhat unsuccessfully; whenever some strain of music or talk managed to filter through, it was invariably overlaid by the hiss and whine of interference. The clearest broadcast she could find was one involving a curiously breezy, seasidey sort of tune, and it was this that Lilac finally settled upon. “I’ve been looking out for news on you,” she said, as she crossed over to the chair opposite. “But the squalls are pretty bad today. That’s the best I can get.”
“News?” asked the boy, rubbing his eyes.
“Oh yes,” said Lilac. “You’re the cake of the hour right now. On everybody’s lips.” She nodded towards the window. “There’s still a fair lot outside. Can’t you hear them?”
Benjamin listened. “Yeah,” he murmured, before pausing to look thoughtfully at the window. “Have they been here all the time?”
“What, while you were asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“They’ve been there for a while,” she said, following Benjamin’s lead and taking a little time herself to stare at the dimming realm outside. The music in the background, jaunty as ever, played on without interruption.
“It’s getting dark, isn’t it,” said Benjamin, finally.
“It is.”
“Will it be getting dark in my world, too?”
“If by that you mean Britain, then yes,” said Lilac, after a moment. “Niamago is almost concurrent with your meridian, so our days are shared.”
“Funny,” said the boy, in a tone that spoke the opposite. “I thought that time would be different here. I thought I might stay here a year, and have only a second, or something, pass in my world.”
“Thought?” said Lilac, smiling a little. “Or hoped?”
“I dunno,” said the boy wearily. “I just think ... that it’s time I went home.”
“Don't you want to stay a while longer, and tell me how extraordinary it is to be a dreamshader?”
“I could tell you on the way back.”
“Of course you could.” Lilac’s smile was broad now. “But what of my wonderful city? Are there no more sights you would wish to see?”
“I could return. Couldn’t I?”
“I think so.”
So what’s the problem, then? Benjamin tho
ught of asking. But he did not. “You can get me back home, can’t you?” he asked instead.
“I can. There’s just one thing, though.”
“What?”
“Who’s going to compensate me for the loss of my silf?”
Benjamin was on the verge of issuing a surprised ‘What do you mean?’, when he saw the look in Lilac’s eyes and stopped himself. “You’re just winding me up,” he said, deadpan.
Lilac gave a honking, hearty laugh. “But I made you wonder, eh? Dear boy, dear child - I shall miss you.”
Benjamin nodded, his gaze downcast, his face self-absorbed. “I will see you again, though,” he said - and said it in such a way that it did not emerge as a question, but as a statement of intent.
***
Lilac decided that they would walk back to pier, on the assumption that the spectators below might follow if they saw their dreamshader cycling away on the tandem. “They won’t expect us to go on foot,” she had said as she packed her satchel and shouldered her blunderbuss. “They’ll think you’re far too grand for that.”
“But won’t they see us outside?” Benjamin asked.
Lilac tapped the side of her nose. “Not if we take the side door at the back, the one which - oh! - no one but the tenants of this fine mansion know about.”
But Benjamin’s fandom was not entirely confined to the streets; upon exiting Lilac’s quarters, he found that a few had gained entry to the communal hallway and staircase of the tenement, though the lady prevented too much of a hubbub by levelling ‘Mr. Personality’ at the closest atulphi - a dwarfish creature whose hair was like an array of peacock feathers - and made it clear, by means of a sweeping gaze, that her warning was to be taken by all.