Deep Secret (50 page)

“The birds swooped down on it at once and began fighting one another for it. They behaved as if they were really starving. I was trying to get my grain back out of my pocket when Rob took hold of the plastic bag with the spare grain in it and poured the lot out in front of him. The birds dived on that too. The black ones – they were mottled brown in the candle-light really – threw the grains aside and went for the salt, but the pale birds gobbled down the grain.

“‘Run away. Now, while they’re busy,’ Maree told the three children. They looked at her as if they didn’t understand, but after a bit they backed off into the darkness. They didn’t seem with it at all.

“We went on before the birds could get interested in us again. Maree said, ‘But we ought to stay and help those poor stupid kids!’

“Rob said, ‘There’s nothing any of us can do to help them.’ He sounded so wretched about it that Maree didn’t say any more.

“Beyond that was what felt like half a century of climbing and slithering. At least the wind had died down a bit, but it was still blowing, cold, sudden gusts. None of us got too hot. And at last we came out on what felt like the flat top of a hill. For a few blissful seconds, we thought we had got where we were going. There were what seemed ruined buildings all round us. Then Rob held his candle up beside the nearest ruin, and we saw it was really a weird pinnacle of rock. Very black rock. Some of them were low – knee-high – and some towered like church spires. And each one was a peculiar shape. Every so often, the path seemed to stop, and we all thought we had arrived at last, but then one of our candles lit a white gleam of it winding away between more of the pinnacles.

“Rob had trouble squeezing through. Maree got down to make it easier for him. She said she was rested, but she looked pretty weak to me. But she went marching ahead, holding her candle high, with the wind gusting the flame to show new black spires each side. The wind made strange sounds in these rocks. At first we thought that was
all
it was. Then the sounds were definitely voices.

“Most of it was just murmuring and mumbling. That was creepy enough. Some of it sounded to be in strange languages. But I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone said, just by my shoulder, ‘You won’t get away. I’ll be waiting for you outside after school.’ It seemed like a real threat. But there was no one there.

“After that, we were all hearing voices, but I don’t think we heard the same things. Whatever Rob was hearing, it made him try to cover his ears. Candle-grease ran into his hair and his hair sizzled sometimes, but I could see he preferred that to listening. Maree was going along with tears running out from under her glasses. I mostly got more and more annoyed after that first scare. There was one voice that kept saying in a bored, self-satisfied way, ‘No need to worry. Consider it done.’ It really got up my nose. The worst of it was, it sounded like my own voice. I yelled back once or twice. I yelled, ‘Oh shut up! I do say nice things sometimes!’ But it didn’t stop. In the end, I was so fed up, I shouted at Rob to tell me what the voices were saying to
him
.

“He turned round as if I was salvation. He shouted back that they were telling him his looks would be ruined if he went on. ‘They keep saying I’ve only got to squeeze between the next gap this side and I’ll be home,’ he said. At least, I think that was what he said, but my voices kept drowning him out and muddling everything else.

“And it went on, like bedlam, until we wormed between two last pinnacles of rock and the voices, and the wind, just stopped.

“Then there was a long, long straight stretch. Rob and Maree were fine in this bit and they walked side by side, talking. Rob didn’t know what to ask for in Babylon, would you believe! He said that Will had made him see he badly needed to ask for
something
, but he couldn’t see what. He told Maree some of the things Will had said.

“While they talked, things got to me again. It was the way there was only darkness in front and behind and to the sides. Particularly at the sides. I felt as if I was walking on a tiny ribbon of land with a void all round. That cold, hungry void with sharp points in it that was under the bridge. While Maree was saying to Rob, ‘You sound as if you ought to be asking for a new soul,’ I went to the side of the road and held my candle out to see what was there.

“There was nothing there. Truly. There was just an enormous precipice. Like a fool, I went scuttling over to the other side of the road and held my candle out there. And it was just the same. Another precipice. We really were walking along a ribbon in the middle of nothing.

“After that I didn’t hear a word Rob and Maree said. They walked along, seriously discussing Rob’s soul, and I shuffled after and had the purple shaking-cold nadgers of sheer terror. I was so scared I wanted to get down on my hands and knees and crawl – I
did
crawl coming back – but I was ashamed to crawl in front of Rob and Maree when they didn’t mind at all. I didn’t feel better until we got to the hanging gardens.

“We called them the hanging gardens almost at once, and I think that is what they were, but they were not at all like you’d expect. The first we knew of them was that we were walking on spongy, tufty stuff that gave off a lemony smell and seemed to sway a little under our feet.

“Maree said, ‘Lemon verbena! Nice!’

“The tufty surface went up quite steeply, swaying more and more as we went, and after a bit our candles picked out a tower half buried in growing things. It looked like the rook from a chess set, only easily house-sized. After another bit, there was another tower on the other side, and this one looked like a pagoda made of china. The growing things draped everywhere. The candles lit up flowers and the smell was too sweet, worse than a Body Shop. Then there was a tower on the near side again, like a pyramid with too many steps – or maybe that was one of the later ones. Anyway, after the first three towers, the path was going up nearly vertically and the flowery, scented ground was not just swaying, it was swinging about. By then it was quite obvious somehow that all the towers were tall as lighthouses, with their bottom way, way down in an abyss, and that the gardens were hung from the towers high in the air. As soon as you realised that, the swinging ground felt really
flimsy
.

“Maree panicked and froze. From then on I had to drag and haul her along. Rob couldn’t help me. If he hadn’t had hands to pull himself up with, he would have been really stuck. As it was, there were times when his front hooves were on one swinging bit and his back hooves were on another, and he was just helplessly spreading apart. Before long, I was having to help Rob as well as Maree. I took my shawl off and tied it round my waist. Then I hauled Maree up as high as she would go before she started crying and begging me to stop. I tried to park her near one of the towers most times, where the ground didn’t swing so much, and then I went back down for Rob. I did that over and over again, one-handed, holding the candle up to see my footing and Rob’s. The flower scents kept changing, to sweet, to spicy, to herbal. They made me hot and annoyed. I crunched flowers underfoot to get a purchase while I heaved at Rob, and I lost count of all the towers and the different pretty shapes they were. I just climbed grimly up and down, hauling Maree, parking her, going back down for Rob, until I was exhausted.

“We got to a part that was more open because it was made of thousands of hummocks and pale moss. It was so pale, you could actually see it ahead and to the sides, looking as if it went on for ever. It swung about here worse than any part we’d been through. Maree was happier there in spite of the swinging, but Rob was in real trouble. Some of the trouble was that he could see better here and see his hooves being swung apart. Most of it was just the swinging.

“He was dong a really bad spread, with his front hooves almost under my chin while I hung on to his hand, and his hind hooves right down below, so that he was more or less rearing up, when the whole hillside began swaying, hard.

“‘
What’s doing it?
’ he screamed.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have told him. But I was panicked too. I looked down past Rob and I saw a candle lighting the leaves below us into that bright green you get when the colour’s too bright on your telly. Whoever was down there was coming up fast, with great leaps, pulling on the plants to help himself up, and that was what was making the swaying. ‘Someone else is coming,’ I told Rob.

“Rob swore and struggled. We were both sure it had to be an enemy. Rob glanced down over his shoulder and saw the light too. ‘I’m no help to you like
this
!’ he said, and he tried to jump. His back parts sort of bunched and pushed, but he was sore and stiff from his wound and the bunching just spread him worse than ever. Then his hind hooves slipped on the moss and the entire horse-end of him went right through into the space underneath. In no time he was frantically dangling. He dropped his candle and grabbed for a clump of moss. I saw the candle falling, under the moss, and falling and falling and falling. That was when I knew I had better not let go of his other hand. I sat on his front hooves to anchor them, even though that hurt him, and I hung on like mad to his hand. It was awful. I was so tired anyway that my arms felt like string.

“Maree was a house-height above us. She screamed and came scrambling down. And the person below shouted out, ‘What’s the matter?’

“‘He’s falling
through
!’ Maree screamed. ‘
Help!
’

“‘Hang on!’ the man shouted. And he came up like a train, making the mosses surge about worse than ever. By then I didn’t care who he was or whether he was friendly, or anything. Rob and I stared at one another by the light of my candle that I’d stuck in the moss so as to hang on with both hands, and I just willed the man to
hurry
.

“Then he arrived and he was the strange man who had worn different clothes in the mirror. I didn’t even care about that. I was just glad he was strong. He took one look at Rob, stuck his candle in beside mine and knelt down to grab Rob under the arms. ‘You pull too,’ he said to me. ‘One, two,
three
!’ I almost couldn’t pull. The man did it all himself really, hauling backwards until he was more or less lying up the slope, while Rob came slowly, slowly, up through the moss, then scrambled and found a purchase with a back hoof and pushed himself. And finally he was out on top.

“For a bit, we were all folded up beside the two candles, panting. Tears were running down Rob’s face and Maree was sitting up above us saying, ‘Thank you. Oh, thank you,’ over and over again.

“‘I won’t say “Think nothing of it”. It was hard work,’ the man said, when he’d got his breath. ‘But I’m glad I was here. This is a vile spot for a centaur.’

“‘Worse than some,’ Rob agreed. He found the spare candle Zinka had given us and lit it with Rupert’s spare lighter.

“I said, ‘I saw you. In the Hotel Babylon.’

“Maree said, ‘So did I.’ I remembered then that she thought he was fabulous and I looked up in case she was fainting or anything. She wasn’t. She was looking at the man in a way that was puzzled but sort of understanding as well. ‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘Rupert Venables knows you.’

“‘I’m not sure who I am yet,’ he said, rather ashamed about it. ‘But I used to be the next-door neighbour of Rupert Venables. You know him, do you?’

“‘Met him six weeks ago. Hated him. Met him again at the hotel and feel as if I’d known him for years,’ Maree said.

“I said, ‘Yes, we all know him quite well.’

“‘Then,’ the man said, ‘if you see him before I do, tell him I’ll be in touch.’ He stood up and looked ruefully at the palm of one of his hands. ‘Three grains left,’ he said. ‘The rest went down the way you nearly went, centaur.’ He put the grains carefully in his pocket.

“‘We can give you a few more,’ Rob said.

“‘Three should be enough,’ he said, and he held the hand out to Rob. ‘Come on. I’ll help you up the rest of the way, and these two can help one another.’

“So we set off like that. Rob did much better with somebody helping him all the time, saying things like, ‘Don’t stretch. Use this tuft, it’s bigger. Now jump up to here, but steadily.’ But Maree was really tired and I felt weak as a kitten. Rob and the man got further and further ahead. At last, when their candles were just little twinkles high above, they shouted down that they would wait for us at the top.

“That was the last we saw of them. At the time, it was upsetting. But Koryfos explained to me, back at the hotel, inside the troop carrier, that they
had
tried to wait, but the place at the top wasn’t arranged for that. Whether they stood still or whether they walked, they went where they were going. And coming back, they found they were going a different way. ‘And believe me,’ he said, ‘it was much worse than the way we came. Rob was lucky to survive it.’

“This was because it really was Babylon at the top of the hanging gardens. As soon as we got to it, Maree and I, we knew. But I don’t think I can describe it. Partly this was because it was so many things at once, somehow. I can remember it as just the dark flat top to the mountain, or I can remember it as an absolutely huge tower – that we were inside
and
outside of, both at once – or I can remember it as just standing in an incredibly bright light. But when I think of it as the light, I think, No, there were
colours
in it, and some of the colours were ones you don’t see anywhere else and don’t have words for, and they were in ripples like the Northern Lights, except they were like moving signs too. Then I think, No, again, they weren’t ripples, they were pillars. And I simply don’t know. And the oddest thing, which makes it even harder to remember than not knowing the colours, is the way everything had at least twice as many directions it was in as normal. I mean, when I think of Babylon as the tower, I know it went through ten or twelve right-angles, up and down as well as round, just like the hotel, only in this tower I could
see
all the different directions and it was really
strange
. And there were other things.