Quick! I need to make a sound like a . . . a horse!
Neverfell had no idea what a horse really sounded like, only what they looked like they would sound like. Her panic-stricken effort came out as a cross between a yawn and a screech, and was soon echoing down the tunnel. The two girls screamed.
The pony-boy, with admirable presence of mind, threw a pebble down the corridor to strike a large, sleeping trap sprouting just behind Neverfell. It flared into a vivid and irritable glow, snapping its combs of fine teeth in search of food. Suddenly she was back-lit, and her long, tapering shadow was extending down the tunnel before her.
‘There! Look – there it ish!’
‘It’s got no face!’
‘Aaaaaah! Red wormsh for hair!’
The pit pony and cart took off with unprecedented speed, the lantern bouncing and jolting before it.
‘Wait! Please! Don’t go!’ Neverfell’s words were lost amid the muffing of the mask and the echoes of the screams and pounding hoofs. She broke into a sprint, struggling as the rocks beneath her feet rolled, crumbled and barked her shins. She saw both girls twisting around in their seats, mouths stretched in screams as a faceless monster pursued them in a lolloping run, one hand clawing out to take hold of the rear of the cart. Zouelle’s features still held the remnants of her smile, and Borcas wore her lopsided ‘exercise’ Face. The shock had been so great they had forgotten to change their expressions.
As Neverfell tried to take hold of the back of the cart and clamber on to the luggage trolley, she felt a blow to her neck. In panic, Zouelle had snatched up a horsewhip by the wrong end and swung it, so that the handle had hit Neverfell below the chin. Out of surprise and hurt Neverfell lost her grip, and then her footing, and tumbled to the ground, jarring her jaw. She could only watch, winded, as the cart rattled away and the light of the lantern faded.
‘Please . . . please don’t run away from me . . .’
As the cart receded, the newly woken trap decided there was no food to catch after all and slowly dimmed its light. Darkness descended, and the dripping water covered the sound of one solitary figure snuffing into her mask.
The Great Outside that had filled Neverfell’s thoughts had noticed her and judged her. It had found her wanting. No, worse than that, it had screamed in horror and disgust and fled from her. Her neck was bruised, but far more painful was the thought of kind-big-sister Zouelle hitting out at her.
Wincing a little, she picked herself up and felt herself over for lumps and cuts. Then, still snuffing with misery and pain, she limped off after the cart. Neverfell had never taken rejection well. In fact, despite plenty of practice, she had never learned how to take it at all. Aside from anything else, she still had a rabbit to retrieve.
A few minutes later, her persistence was rewarded by the sound of a deafening crash.
Neverfell ran towards the noise as quickly as her bruises and the near-absence of light would allow. Peering round a corner at last she glimpsed her quarries’ lantern and discovered the reason for the cacophony.
There had been very good reasons for the cart’s previous sedate pace. The way was scattered with fallen rocks large and small, and occasional foot-deep potholes just waiting for a careless wheel. To judge by the tilt of the cart, its pell-mell flight had run its left-hand wheel straight into one of these holes.
Both girls had dismounted. The pony-boy, with some hushed verbal instruction from Zouelle, seemed to be trying to heft the cart out of the hole again. Borcas was acting as lookout, which appeared to involve a lot of whimpering and hand-wringing as she gazed back the way they had come.
When Neverfell stepped out, legs trembling, hands raised to show that she was harmless, Borcas gave a wail and pointed at her.
‘The demon! It followed ush! It’sh come after ush!’
‘Argh!’
A shower of inexpertly thrown rocks clattered around Neverfell, chipping pieces off the walls.
‘I . . . stop it! You nearly – ow! Stop it! I won’t hurt you! I don’t want to—’
She might have explained in more detail, but at this point the rabbit decided that it had had quite enough of all the screaming, and made a break for a fissure in the wall. Neverfell promptly abandoned her placatory pose and sprinted towards the cart to the terror of its passengers, and then past it, ending her run with a pounce at full stretch. Her body hit rock, her hands met fur, and she had it, flattened to the ground, terrified, maddened, tensed for action but still. She scrambled to a crouch, held it between her knees, ripped off her doublet, and a few moments later was cuddling a kicking, wild-eyed rabbit bundle.
‘I’m sorry,’ she babbled helplessly, ‘I’m sorry, I had to get my . . . It kicked the bucket and ran and I squeezed out after it and I’m here . . .’
Her voice sounded so ugly and unused next to theirs, and the welling of tears was making everything worse.
‘I won’t hurt you.’ She rose unsteadily, and took a few limping steps back towards the cart.
‘What do you want?’ Zouelle’s voice was strident but tremulous. She was holding the whip out towards Neverfell in a very shaky hand.
‘I just . . . I just . . . needed some cheese . . .’ In spite of herself Neverfell started to sob.
The three strangers observed her rigidly, then exchanged brief sideways glances.
‘Does anybody have any cheese?’ whispered Zouelle to the others. ‘If we give it cheese, will it go away?’
‘No . . . it’s not just any cheese. The . . .’ Neverfell collapsed to her knees, hugging the rabbit while it tried to bite her. The conversation had gone wrong. She tried to explain everything, her mistake in sending the cheese to Madame Appeline, her desperate need to recover it, but the words sounded clumsy and stupid even in her ears. When she finished, she was scarcely sure that the others were still there listening. She was in a hell of self-hate, and barely heard the whispers from the cart.
‘No,’ Zouelle was hissing, ‘listen to me. This fits. This fits. This girl wants to go and find Madame Appeline. We want somebody to present the Wine to her. So you help smuggle her in, by stealing her an invitation or something, and she helps us out. Stop whimpering, now. Put on a clean Face. I’m going to talk to her.’
Neverfell only started paying attention again when she heard the crackle of gravel underfoot. She looked up and found that Zouelle was walking towards her, carefully, as if afraid of startling a wild animal. The blonde girl was wearing her amused smile, her eyes twinkling and expectant.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, in much the same tone Neverfell had used on the rabbit. ‘It’s all going to be all right. We’re going to help you.’
Neverfell looked up into her smiling face and thought that she looked like an angel.
The Imposter
After all the blows and upheavals of the day, Neverfell was very glad to have found somebody who could make a plan for her. She was even happier to have somebody to understand the plan for her, since try as she might she could not follow the musical fluting of Zouelle’s explanation. There was something to do with an audition, and a misunderstanding, and something that had happened to the two girls the day before, but it was explained so rapidly that the details slipped sand-like through the clutches of her dazzled brain.
‘Do you understand?’ the older girl asked again, yet more slowly and patiently. Once more Neverfell answered by moving her head in a joggle that started in a nod and ended in a shake.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the older girl in the kindest voice in the world. ‘Just remember the bits you have to do, and it’ll all be fine.’ She gave a brief but significant glance at her portlier companion before returning her gaze to Neverfell. ‘So . . . we’re going to put you in a new dress. All right? Can you take off that mask?’
Neverfell responded with a muffled screech, and a panic-stricken clutch at her mask to hold it to her face. If these girls saw how hideous she was, they would flee again, and she would be back where she started.
&nbs
p; ‘Don’t worry,’ Zouelle cooed soothingly. ‘That’s fine . . . leave it on. Are you burnt or something under there? It doesn’t matter – you don’t have to tell me. If anybody asks you why you’re wearing it, just say that you’re protecting your complexion. Now, you will be going up to Madame Appeline’s door, and when somebody answers you say that you’ve been sent by the Beaumoreau Academy, and you’re there to audition as a Putty Girl. Can you remember that?’
Neverfell nodded.
‘That’s really good.’ A beautiful smile. ‘That should get you inside Madame Appeline’s domain. Now, you see this?’ A little cut-glass bottle full of seething purple liquid was waved in front of her face for the tenth time. ‘Do you remember what you do with this?’
‘I . . . give it to the servants?’
‘That’s right. You tell them that it’s a gift for Madame Appeline, to thank her for the audition. That’s all we need you to do. After that, if you want, you can slip away from the other girls attending the audition, and find your way to the storerooms or wherever she keeps her new deliveries, and take back your cheese. It’s not stealing after all, is it?’
‘Shouldn’t I just talk to Madame Appeline?’ This was the part of the plan that Neverfell was less comfortable about. ‘She had a nice Face—’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Zouelle said gently. ‘If you do, the plan won’t work. She won’t give you back your cheese, Neverfell. Why would she? It’s useful to her. And if she knows you’re not a real candidate she won’t drink the Wine.’
Neverfell gazed down at the little bottle. ‘It won’t do anything bad to her?’
‘Oh no, of course not!’ exclaimed Zouelle. ‘It’s just Wine. Madame Appeline often orders Wine to help her forget something – you know how people do. This will just help her forget an extra memory, that’s all. One that might be upsetting to her.’
When Zouelle put it like that, it all sounded quite straightforward. Neverfell knew that special Wines could be blended that allowed you to forget specific things or times, and that they were popular among the rich and bored who felt they had seen everything. They cleared out useless or ugly memories the way some threw out cracked china, so that their minds creaked less under the burden of the years.
‘Anyway, once you have your cheese back, you sneak back to the other girls and leave with them. Can you do that?’
Neverfell’s eye kept straying to the frosted glitter of the taller girl’s brooch. It looked like sugar, and Neverfell wondered what it tasted like. Thoughts tried to crowd out of her mouth, but there were too many of them and they jammed in the door. Of course I will, she wanted to answer. You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met and you’re calm and wonderful and any minute now I’m going to say something really stupid . . .
‘Your gloves have stripes on!’ was what she actually said.
‘Ye-e-es. Yes, they do.’ Zouelle wet her lips. ‘But you understand what you have to do, don’t you?’ Neverfell hesitated, then gave a slow, firm nod, and Zouelle’s shoulders relaxed a little.
‘What are we going to do about . . .’ The shorter girl glanced at Neverfell and tapped meaningfully at her own nose. ‘Everybody will notice.’
‘Cloves,’ her friend answered promptly. ‘Oil of cloves, so everybody thinks she’s trying to treat herself for pimples. That should have a strong enough fragrance to mask the . . . problem.
‘Now, the most important bit.’ The taller girl leaned forward, holding Neverfell’s gaze. ‘The most important bit is that if you see either of us you have to pretend you don’t know us. Whatever happens, you don’t know us. Otherwise . . . everything will go badly for everyone. Understand?’
Right at that moment, Neverfell would have given her two new friends the world. She wanted to give them her buttons, or Master Grandible’s rabbit, or iridescent ballrooms, or mountains of figs. But what they seemed to want was a nod, so she gave them that instead.
Tucked between the luggage on the back of the cart, Neverfell knew that she was supposed to be completely covered by the blanket, but she could not resist lifting it just enough to give herself an arrow-slit of vision out between the great trunks. Passage by passage, lane by lane, the boundaries of her world were pushing back.
After a time, the wheels of the pony cart ceased to bounce and jolt, and she noticed that the tunnels were floored in smooth flagstones. At a glance, she could see that these tunnels were not part of a natural cave system, but had been carefully excavated. The walls were regular and square-cornered, and wooden struts helped reinforce the ceiling. Black iron trap-lanterns blazed from brackets, and along the tops of the walls ran hefty, shuddering hot- and cold-water pipes.
Then they entered busier thoroughfares, filled with voices, wheel judders, whinnies and footfalls that echoed and mingled until they roared like rapids. She glimpsed swift messenger boys teetering past on unicycles, arms spread for balance. Dusty miners’ carts trundled by, filled with rubble. Muscled men heaved on great wheels to haul pearl-coloured flying sedans up through shafts in the ceiling. In one of the larger caverns, pony carts for hire clustered greyly around a vast clock set in the rocky wall, so old that it wore a crust of limestone and a frail fringe of stalactites. Stiff-faced pannier-bearers flounced past in dun-coloured linen, and she could smell the grease in their hair, the dirt under their fingernails.
The cart headed off down a quieter, green-lit lane after this, and at last came to a halt before a gilt-handled door with a panel above it that showed a silver heron on a blue background.
A whispered argument ensued.
‘Why do I have to steal the invitation?’ hissed Borcas.
‘Because you already have one of your own,’ Zouelle responded with an air of patience, ‘so nobody will suspect you, and you know the other candidates better than I do so you can get closer to them. Come on – we do not have much time!’
Borcas vanished through the door just long enough for Neverfell to reach a fever-pitch of anxiety, and for the rabbit to deposit a heap of soft, distressed droppings on her knee. At last Borcas returned, rather flushed, with a bundle under one arm and a card in one hand.
‘Good,’ smiled Zouelle. ‘Marden – go!’ The cart rattled away again. ‘Head to the Twirl Stair.’
When the rumble of wheels stopped again, Neverfell’s blanket was pulled away, and she found that the cart stood in a small cavern some ten feet across, in the ceiling of which was set a broad, rough-hewn shaft. Up the middle of this shaft rose a spiralling stair of black iron.
Borcas’s bundle was opened, and, the next thing Neverfell knew, a white muslin gown was being pulled down over her ordinary clothes. Round her waist was tied a blue sash with a silver heron embroidered on it, very much like the one she had seen above the door. Beneath the heron was stitched the words ‘Beaumoreau Academy’. Neverfell’s rough pigtails were tucked under a gauzy cap, and an ointment smeared across her neck, hands and wrists, filling the air with the bitterly piquant smell of cloves.
The card Borcas had brought out was placed in Neverfell’s hand, and proved to be a gilt-edged invitation to attend an ‘Audition in Facial Athletics and Artistry’.
‘There.’ Zouelle smoothed Neverfell’s cap, tucking in a few stray wisps. ‘Now, is everybody ready? Take the stair, and when you reach the top the door will be twenty yards to your left. Good luck, both of you!’
‘Wha– aren’t you coming?’ Borcas sounded as horrified as Neverfell felt.
‘Me? Of course not! I can hardly show my face there after yesterday, can I?’ Zouelle was climbing back on to the cart. ‘But I shall be right here waiting for you and looking after the rabbit – and if you two do exactly what I told you to do then everything should go perfectly.’
Somewhat crestfallen, Neverfell accompanied Borcas to the foot of the stairway. Borcas was still wearing her strange, lopsided Face, but she smelt a bit like Grandible’s rabbit had when it felt cornered.
‘You smell like my rabbit,’ Neverfell whispered.
‘Well, you smell like a dead man’s pantry,’ snapped Borcas, ‘but some of us are too polite to comment.’
‘Now, Borcas,’ called Zouelle, ‘you should go first, and, Neverfell – climb up a few minutes after her. You don’t want to arrive together, do you?’
Neverfell obediently let Borcas start climbing first, and only began her own ascent once the other girl was nothing but a dark blot against the skeletal whorls of the staircase above. Neverfell was naturally nimble, but was not used to long skirts, and found that her legs were trembling from excitement. The shaft itself was full of strange gusts and gasps of air, and occasionally solitary bright droplets winked down past her and then vanished into darkness below.
At the top of the stair, she found herself in a long corridor that stretched from left to right. There was no sign of Borcas. To her left, she could see a heavy-looking door set deep in the wall. It was intricately decorated in a tracery of green vines in which gold and purple birds nestled. At the sight of this, the clamp of excitement in Neverfell’s stomach tightened and became terror. Her mind was a mad moth, and she could barely keep Zouelle’s instructions straight in her head as she reached the door and pulled at the red rope bell pull.
One of the birds painted on to the door was a large owl, staring directly out towards Neverfell. She jumped when, without warning, the owl’s painted eyes receded with a shunk, leaving two round holes, through which a pair of more human eyes could be seen peering a few seconds later.
‘Your business?’
‘I was sent here . . . by . . . by the Bomo school. For an . . . audition for Putty Girls.’ Neverfell hesitantly waved her stolen invitation before the gaze of the owl-eye spyholes.
‘Name?’
Neverfell goldfished helplessly behind her mask as she fell off the edge of her briefing.
‘Name? I . . . I . . . can’t remember!’ It was an idiotic, panic-stricken thing to say, and escaped Neverfell in a sort of incoherent chirrup.