As Rosie turned away from the doors, she saw something in the corner of her eye, and saw Narl’s head begin to turn just as she snapped her own round. Movement.
Someone was staggering to his feet. Not two feet, but four. Hroc. And then Sunflower, the spaniel bitch. Then a lower, lurching, drunken shadow: Flinx.
“Flinx!” said Rosie. “What are you doing here? Did you come with Kat? Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”
But Flinx sat down at some distance from Rosie, with his back to her, and tried to wash a front paw; and promptly fell over. He hissed, furiously, and his hair bushed out; but that didn’t work right either, and some of his hair stood on end and some didn’t, giving him a look both rakish and clownish. He hated it, and hissed again, ears flat back and eyes like midsummer bonfires.
“Flinx, I’m sorry,” said Rosie. “I’d stroke you, but you’d only bite me, wouldn’t you? In the temper you’re in. And if you missed, you’d only be angrier.” She spoke aloud, for she knew her words were more for her comfort than for Flinx’s; but she knew, by the angle of his back-turning, that he was listening to her, and that her placatory tone would be registered.
Several more sighthounds had woken up: Milo, and Tash, and Froo. Tash had lain by Rosie’s chair every evening since she had come to Woodwold and, when the draughts were bad, across her feet. Froo was a romantic, and loved Rosie because she was the princess; he reminded her a little of Ikor.
And Spear: she hadn’t known Spear had come to the ball, nor how he might have done so; he did not stray far from his pub any more. He appeared out of the darkness in the back of the Hall, his wiry half-long coat, dark during Rosie’s childhood, now almost as white as the merrel. He placed each foot with utter deliberation. He of them all walked the most steadily, as if he were habituated to overseeing mere physical unreliabilities, and the aftereffects of poisoned sleep were no worse than the standard infirmities of old age. He came straight up to Rosie and with no apparent hesitation, reared himself (a little stiffly) on his hind legs and put his front paws on her shoulders, which had been his standard greeting since she was ten years old and strong enough to bear his weight. He did this with no other human; but then no other human had taken her first steps clinging to his tail.
When he dropped back to the floor again, Rosie saw one more approaching shadow over his shoulder. This one was very small and low to the floor—less than half the size of Flinx. Throstle.
Throstle was moving slowly, but he did not stagger. He walked up to Rosie and put his head on her foot. He weighed so little she wouldn’t have known it was there if he hadn’t caught her eye first; but he hadn’t been a sleeve dog most of his life without learning a good deal about how to make his presence felt, even among people who couldn’t talk to him as Rosie could.
She and Narl and their ragged, wombly, teetery crew stood still in the middle of the scene of desolation and tried to think about what came next. The dogs, without seeming to organise themselves, had meandered round till they were all facing more or less in the same direction. There was a tiny bump against Rosie’s ankle, a meek plucking at the floppy top edge of her boot, and she leaned down (carefully, on account of Eskwa) to scoop up Throstle: and discovered two mice looking at her beseechingly. Us too, they said. Uss tooo.
Their silent voices were familiar. You’re from Foggy Bottom, said Rosie. How did you get here? Where are your brothers and sisters and cousins?
They are still in Foggy Bottom, they replied. We came in your—your box. (There was at this point a vivid mouse-eye view of the inside of a box full of not-very-well-packed bits and pieces moving at speed on the back of a coach.) When you came here.
Why?
To be near you, Princess, they said, surprised that so obvious an answer needed to be supplied. We all wanted to come. But we thought it would not . . . do you a service with the humans here if there were . . . suddenly many more of us in this other place. So we . . . chose.
Throstle wagged his tail. “Oh well,” said Rosie, “if they’re friends of yours. I wonder if Lady Pren knows?” And she dropped Throstle into her biggest pocket, offered the palm of her hand to the mice, and, when they had ticklingly climbed onto it, dropped them on top of Throstle.
Flinx had already set out, toward the stairs at the back of the Great Hall, making a determined, if still slightly unsteady, way through the sleepers. “That way?” said Rosie.
“I don’t know any reason why not,” Narl said.
Flinx led the procession through the corridors away from the formal parlours, and down wide, worn stairs into the kitchens, where the fire slept with the cooks and the men and the maid and the spit boy. And the cat. Flinx looked at the sleeping kitchen cat with disdain. Rosie paused long enough to shift the spit boy, who, if the fire woke up before he did, was going to be himself roasted, as Narl saved the cook from drowning slowly in her bowl of batter. “I don’t suppose we dare touch any of the food?” said Rosie; Narl shook his head. Then they went on.
Flinx led them steadily, walking more strongly, and Spear walked beside him through the kitchens. But as they went down another flight of stairs, they descended into darkness, darkness so heavy that Eskwa faded to a ghostly crescent shape, and cast no light. There would have been torches on the walls, but they had no fire to kindle them with. “Oh, but—” began Rosie.
Narl, a step below her, reached up and took her hand. “I can lead you through the dark,” he said. “This dark, anyway.” She curled her fingers round his wide palm and followed. The animals all moved together, close enough to touch their neighbours, so as not to lose each other. Just before the darkness became absolute, Hroc dropped back from Spear’s heels to insinuate his head under her other hand. They reached the bottom of the stairs and went on. The flooring was rough stone, and Rosie picked up her feet like a carriage pony. Her nose and ears and skin could sense the openings of other passages; she wondered if Flinx and Spear were still at the head of the procession, and if Narl was following them.
She felt, strangely, perfectly safe, her feet taking slow, careful, blind steps into the dark of an unknown tunnel underground. She felt wistful about all the other underground ways she would have liked to learn more about. Here were the roots of Woodwold, here were the first founding places; she might have been able to hear . . . to hear some buried, secret language telling her what she needed to know, some old but mortal trick she might use against Pernicia, some trick so ancient Pernicia would have forgotten it: some trick Narl’s fore-bear might have left for their aid, eleven hundred years ago.
By now the pitchy blackness was thick and tangible enough to prove a fifth element, unjustly omitted from the usual list: not air or water, not earth or fire, but dark. She stopped, and listened, and her companions stopped, too, and, with the sharpening of the other senses blindness provokes, she could feel them turning their heads, searching for what had disturbed her.
But all was silence. Woodwold was asleep, too; down here Rosie was sure she could have heard what she had had only echoes of in the walls upstairs. Pernicia had sent even Woodwold to sleep. But Narl was awake, and had woken her. And Hroc was awake, and Milo and Tash and Froo, and Flinx and Spear, and Sunflower and Throstle and two mice from Foggy Bottom. And what about the rose hedge?
She stood a minute longer, listening, waiting; the others stood patiently, for she was their princess.
The dogs picked it up first, of course; she felt the ears pricking, the heads—and the hackles—rising; and she could feel the buzz of an inaudible growl through the top of Hroc’s head. Then she and Narl, too, could hear the soft pat-pat of small feet in the silence of the corridor.
Fox. Even human noses can recognise that smell. It stopped at some little distance from them, and said, I have come to be near the princess. Will you let me pass?
The dogs made no move as it approached, neither making way for it nor barring it. Rosie felt soft padded forefeet touch her knee, and a cold nose her wrist. Zel, she said. You jumped into Peony’s arms, that nigh
t. Ikor looked at you and . . . But where have you come from?
I don’t know, he said. I have just woken up. It was dark. And then I heard your company. May I come with you?
Yes, said Rosie, but do you know where we are going?
Pernicia, sighed all the silent dog-voices around them. Pernicia.
Zel was silent for a moment, and then he said, I am here. I will come.
They went on, and then the dark began to grow a little less, and Rosie could see dog-heads and dog-backs, and then a smaller puff of darkness became Flinx, still in the lead; and then there were stairs again, and they went up. The smell told them where they were before they reached ground level: the smell of very well-kept horses, and of the bins of corn in the storage room the stairs led to.
The long stable was in twilight, rose stems growing over the windows. The door to the courtyard at the end of the central corridor stood open, but there was little more light through it; although the immediate way was unblocked, there were thorny branches hanging down from the lintel and curling round the side posts, and a tangly greeny-grey of hedge not far beyond.
The horses, too, were asleep, and grooms lay in the aisles, some of them fallen down on the harness or horse rugs they were carrying. Rosie looked anxiously at the row of pitch-forks hanging on the wall, but the only one missing was found slid harmlessly from the lax hand that had held it.
All the horses were asleep. She had no reason to expect otherwise. Nor had she led the little party here; Flinx had, or Spear, or Narl. Perhaps this was merely the shortest way back to the surface from the kitchen cellars. Perhaps they would have to go back down into the darkness and try the other tunnels. Try them for what? A way out? She doubted that Woodwold’s underground maze ran any farther than Woodwold’s hedge of briar roses.
There was a quick scrambling noise not far from them, and then a long elegant blood-bay head with straw in its forelock was thrust out over a half door: Fast. Rosie broke into a run—thus finding out she could again do so—to open his door, and put her arms round his neck; and then they went to find Gorse. He had just finished opening his own door when they came to him: A useful skill, he said, but one I have been careful not to overuse for fear of someone finding out I can do it. That is how I came to you that night, a season ago.
And Fast?
A prance from Fast: not a very good one, for the sleep still lay on him, but neither of the horses seemed as sick from it as those who had fallen in the Hall had been.
Fast merely jumped his fence. He is young, and impetuous, and he loves you, Princess.
Fast bit her shoulder, lovingly, and not very hard, but Rosie looked at her friends in the striped twilight and thought: one reluctant princess who is really a horse-leech, two horses, a few hounds, a spaniel, a very small terrier, a fox, two mice, and a cat. And a fairy smith who says he’s better at smithing. And we are seeking to confront a wicked fairy who is planning to destroy our entire country, and the only people who might help us are asleep. I suppose it is a confrontation we want. I don’t know. This was what Katriona was supposed to do. Oh dear. I don’t suppose there’s any point in finding our way to the dairies or the poultry houses, and picking up a cow and a few chickens. I wonder what happened to Pernicia’s spindle when—when Woodwold threw her out of the Hall? Without her conscious volition, Rosie’s hand felt for the friendly wooden spindle end in her pocket.
She looked at Narl and saw he knew the shape of her thoughts. “Do you have any idea what we do now?”
Narl shook his head. After a moment’s silence he said: “I’m afraid it’s your call. In spite of the iron I’m carrying, the pressure of the magic here is making me stupid. Of the magics. That’s part of the problem. They strain against each other like the parts of a badly made tool you’re being forced to use—you don’t know which bit is going to fly to pieces first but you know something will. I should be able to give you a little warning if the balances shift dangerously, but that’s about all. I told you you would have been better off with Kat. But . . . there must be some way out even if I can’t think of it. Magic can’t do everything.”
Right, thought Rosie. It can only kill you or ruin your life or destroy everything that means anything to you. Fine.
It took them the rest of what might have been the morning, although the light did not change as on an ordinary day, to test the immediate boundaries of the briar hedge. Neither Narl nor Rosie believed there would be a way through, but, like trying the front doors in the Great Hall first, the venture had to be made. They asked the horses to stay where they were, just outside the stable doors, where there was a little rose-roofed clearing about the size of the Foggy Bottom wrights’ yard; the other, smaller, animals, and the two humans, pursued the inner circumference of the hedge.
There was indeed no way through. There were places a thin determined body could slide carefully along for some little distance—when it was between some wall of Woodwold and the hedge, the ancient and pitted stone facing of Woodwold was only slightly less cruel to human skin and clothing than the thorns of wild roses—but these never led anywhere. Even the mice said they could find no path that lasted more than a few dozen mouse-lengths. There’s a stretchy feeling about this hedge, said Hroc. Like a leash made of green leather. There’s a give to it that makes you think it’s not serious, but it won’t let you go very far. It’s there to hold you in.
Several times Rosie tried to speak to Woodwold, but there was never any answer. She might, in the tension and anxiety of present circumstances, have begun to believe that she had never heard Woodwold saying Rosie. Princess, never felt the eerie awareness of the house watching her; but the quality of Woodwold’s silence now was not that of something that does not speak but of something that has been shut away, trapped, barricaded. Rosie stared at the impassable hedge and thought of herself during the last three months.
Then she thought: I wonder what a bird might find, flying above this—prison? Perhaps there is some answer in the fact that we have seen no birds. She sighed. It was beginning to be difficult to ignore how hungry she was, and thirsty; they would not be able to go very much longer without risking a drink of water. Her eyes went longingly to the water butt outside the stable door.
She tried to remember some of Aunt and Katriona’s conversations about spell breaking. This didn’t come up very often in a place like the Gig, but it did occasionally. “Never attack a spell head-on,” Aunt had said. “That’s where it’s strongest. You need to sniff out where the weak places are. All spells have them; it’s just a matter of finding them . . . and, of course, being able to use them. If a spell has been very powerfully made, the likes of you or I won’t be able to.”
Magic can’t do everything. Think! We cannot get out through the doors—the house doors, nor the stable doors. We cannot get through the hedge. The tunnels again? I don’t think so—none of those other passages felt more—more— Pernicia must want to find me; she must know she’s been cheated. She must know—because Peony must be still alive. Rosie’s thought faltered here. Peony is still alive, and we must find her. Pernicia—never mind Pernicia now.
But she flung the sleep over us as Woodwold threw up the hedge. We’re deadlocked.
Magic can’t do everything.
I wonder what a bird might find.
We haven’t tried up yet.
She looked at the low snaggy ceiling, at the cracks of glarey grey light; and then she looked down at Eskwa. Eskwa both binds and cuts. She did not want to cut Woodwold’s guard of roses; but could a gardener not bind back stems that were growing where she did not want them? She looked at the massive, formidable weave above and round her and shook her head; but she laid her hand on Eskwa nonetheless and felt it once again slide into her hand.
Bind, she said to it. Can you bind back a space for us to look through?
She held the blade over her head, so the tip of it slipped through the twining branches, and she felt it quiver, like a hunting dog on point. And there was a creaking noise,
and a scraping, grinding noise, and the rose branches shook; and then there was a tiny hole, just over Rosie’s head, and it grew, the branches now writhing back like snakes, curling up on themselves like rope. Eskwa drew her on, tugging at her hand, its blade pressing against the hedge like a hand drawing back a fold of cloth. Rosie began to walk round in an ever-increasing circle as the space she had asked for grew larger and larger; till the courtyard in front of the stables was almost completely clear. . . .
And then Eskwa faltered, wavering in her hand, its tip falling from the circle of the hedge; and she saw that its blade was almost entirely eaten away, the crescent of it now barely wider than a tapestry needle. In astonishment she looked again at the pulled-back rose stems and saw that they were, indeed, bound, by a fine gleaming network of silver like a spiderweb. Oh, said Rosie. Oh. Thank you. I’m sorry. I—I think I needed to ask. I didn’t know what else to do. I—I hope Ikor can make you fat again. She stroked a gentle finger down the back of the long curved tapestry needle that had been a sabre, and then she went into the stables and hung it in the scabbard loop of Gorse’s parade saddle, which was the most honourable place she could think of for it.
And then she came back out to the courtyard again and stared at the sky, as everyone else was doing already; as everyone else had been doing since the gap first opened. There was a high thin cloud cover that seemed only to intensify the glare as it hid the position of the sun; and the sky itself was a funny colour, almost violet. Up is still up, she thought. And I don’t know what we might do for a ladder.
She felt small padded feet at her knee again, and Zel’s nose in her hand. She looked down at him, and he raised his nose, telling her to where to look; and then Narl’s hand was over her shoulder, pointing at a particular bit of sky, a particular odd swirl of cloud, an angular swirl, rather like a tall narrow castle with too few windows standing in a wide barren landscape. The funny colour was very noticeable just there, as if this were the place where the violet—lavender—purple—was leaking through to taint the sky.