The Sturton had to be brushed with rabbit milk. How did you milk rabbits? Neverfell knew something of the way cows, sheep and goats were milked. How different could it be?
‘Don’t – Hold still – Oh, you dratted, pink-eyed . . . Oh, come back, sweetheart! I didn’t mean it!’
Neverfell knelt on the stone floor, peering under the long wooden shelf affixed to the wall of the passage. Along the top of the shelf a row of crimson-veined Pulp Cheddars gently perspired. Underneath the shelf, a pale shape flattened itself to the floor like a slumped souffé, long ears flush to its back, pink eyes dark and empty with fear.
She was not much wiser about how one went about milking a rabbit, but she was considerably wiser when it came to ways not to do it. For example, she was now aware that even though rabbit-bellies hung very close to the ground, they were very resistant to being lifted into a croquet-hoop shape so that one could slip a bucket under them. Furthermore, she was now better educated about the power of a rabbit’s jump, the sharpness of its claws and the sheer speed of its mismatched legs.
Unfortunately, as a result of these lessons, the rabbit was loose in the cheese tunnels, probably leaving an invisible trail of shed hair, fleas and rodent-fear in its wake to startle and spoil the delicately reared truckles.
‘Here . . . it’s all right . . .’
She impulsively reached out towards the rabbit, in spite of the tufted hole that its teeth had ravaged in the shoulder of her doublet. The rabbit scrambled away from her with a chitter of claws, and Neverfell flinched backwards, grazing her knuckles on the coarse wood of the shelf.
‘Don’t . . .’ Somehow she had to calm and capture the rabbit again, before the cheesemaker found out. ‘Is it my face? Look – it’s all right, I’m covering it.’ She tied her velvet mask over her features. ‘There! Look! Bad face gone away now.’ The rabbit simply broke into a round-backed bobbing run, and took off down the corridor. ‘Oh, you little . . .’ Neverfell scrambled to her feet and sprinted after it, the tiny pail rattling on her arm.
The rabbit took the first left into the Whistleplatch corridor. It squeezed between the vats as if it were boneless, and lurked behind them until Neverfell poked it out with a broom handle. It kicked a bucket of standing cream and for a time Neverfell could track the long pale prints left by its back legs. By throwing herself full length she managed to place a hand upon it, pushing it to the ground, so that it flattened itself again into a quivering, docile dollop of rabbit. Then she tried to pick it up and it transformed into a wild white halo of fur, claw and tooth. Cursing and bleeding from a dozen scratches, Neverfell set off in pursuit once more.
Every time the rabbit had a choice between two corridors, it chose the one that sloped upward. Up, up, up, its frantic unthinking heart was chanting. Up means out. Somehow Neverfell could almost hear it, and as she pursued her heart began the same chant.
At last it found a dead end, a parade of mighty cheese presses crushing the whey out of great Gravelhide truckles as rough as a cow’s tongue.
‘Ha!’ Neverfell swung the door shut behind her and fastened it, then gazed up and down the Gravelhide passage. There – a pair of white ears. The rabbit had squeezed behind one of the presses.
‘Oh . . . don’t make me do this.’ There was a scrabbling. Silence. Scrabbling. Silence. Silence. ‘All right, all right!’ Neverfell pushed back her hair, then began slowly dragging the nearest press forward.
First press, grindingly, painfully dragged away from the wall. No rabbit.
Second press. No rabbit.
Third press. No rabbit. And . . . no wall.
Down through the part of the wall that had been hidden by the great presses, there ran a vertical crack some four feet high. At the bottom, the crack opened into a triangular hole, half-filled with rubble. At some long-forgotten time, the rock’s great mass must have shifted, so that it cracked and created this narrow fissure. The rows of great presses had concealed it.
There were distinct rabbit tracks in the surrounding mortar dust, leading to the hole. Neverfell stared. Lay flat. Clawed the chunks of loose masonry out of the way. Peered.
With her cheek pressed against the ground, Neverfell could see that the aperture continued into the rock for about three yards, and then opened out into a larger space. What was more, there seemed to be a hint of light beyond. With a rush of the blood, she realized that she was on the edge of Master Grandible’s district. If that was another tunnel beyond the hole, it was one that she had never seen before. Her well-trained cheesemaker’s nose twitched as a thousand delicate and unfamiliar smells assailed it.
As an obedient apprentice, she knew she had to warn Master Grandible of the breach in his defences. If she did that straight away and in person, however, he would find ways to block this beautiful hole, and she was not ready for that. For the first time that she could remember, the way was open, and the locks on Grandible’s door could not hold her in.
She scampered furtively back to Grandible’s study, found paper and pen and dashed out a quick note.
RABBIT ESCAPED THROUGH HOLE IN WALL BEHIND GRAVELHIDE PRESSES. GONE TO FIND IT.
Leaving this note on her master’s desk, Neverfell scuttled back to the fissure. It was true that she did have an escapee rabbit to retrieve, of course, but that was not her main reason for wriggling through the hole.
I can find Madame Appeline. I can ask her to give back the Stackfalter Sturton. I can make it all better.
She had no solid reason for believing that Madame Appeline would listen to her, and yet she did believe it. Neverfell could not shake the memory of that sad and strangely familiar Face the woman had worn. It was as if there were an invisible cord between them, pulling her along.
With difficulty she dragged herself through the hole and out to the other side, shaking stone dust from her pigtails, almost sick with excitement and terror. The scene before her was only a dusty corridor, but it was a new corridor, with dust that tasted different, and walls that had never known the warmth of her hand. It was fascinating, and she was shaking as she scrambled over the debris towards the light of a distant cavern.
Out, was the beat in her heart. Out, out, out.
A Crossing of Paths
Every inch of Neverfell seemed to be throbbing with life. Everything was new, and new was a drug.
She piled some of the rubble back into the hole to conceal it, then ventured slowly forward, trailing her calloused fingers over the corrugated surface of the wall. New rock, cleanly chipped, not rough with age or lichen. Split rocks rolled under her shoe soles. Somewhere in the distance there were sounds, jumbled by echo, and she realized that these had been the background music of her world, until this moment muffled to cloud-murmurs by the thick stone wall in between. Now she felt as if plugs had been pulled from her ears.
Most confused of all, however, was her nose. Over seven years it had become finely attuned to the overpowering odour of cheese, so that she could have found her way blindfolded through Grandible’s tunnels by recognizing each great truckle she passed from its familiar soft, sleeping reek.
Now, there was an eerie nose-silence, followed by a giddy awareness of . . . not-cheese smells. Cold, washed chalk smells of freshly cracked rock, the dank fragrance of unseen plants clinging slickly to life. Warm smells, animal smells. People smells. Feet, sweat, hair grease, fatty soap . . . and yet each fragrance different, personal. It was so overwhelming that Neverfell was glad of her mask, with its familiar scent of musty velvet.
Behind all these, she detected the aroma of scared rabbit. Neverfell followed the scent and found a tiny pyramid of moist, brown droppings a little further up the tunnel. The fugitive had clearly come that way.
She tiptoed to the end of her tiny passage, then crouched and peered out on to the largest cavern she ever remembered seeing.
It was some fifty feet high, well-lit and shaped like half a dome. The rounded walls were ridged with natural ledges and balconies, from which cascaded peach-coloured stalactites
, and on these nestled great wild flytraps as big as her head, freckled like orchids and glowing creamily as they gaped their finely toothed maws. Neverfell realized this must be a cavern through which many people passed, if the traps were thriving. These glowed brightly, which meant that not long ago they had sensed motion or a released breath.
Opposite the tunnel entrance was a large and ruggedly sheer wall with a number of broad rock shelves, along each of which a thoroughfare seemed to run. The uppermost bore metal tracks, and occasionally man-high trolleys of black steel would rear out of black tunnel mouths, rattle along the rails with their wheels sparking at the corners and their stunted chimneys shuddering with invisible fumes, then plummet into the shadows once more. Other narrower ledges appeared to be for foot traffic, to judge by the railings, and the rope ladders that dangled to allow passage between them. The dusty cavern floor itself was striped with wheel ruts. Sheltered as she was, even Neverfell could see that this cavern was a great junction for passageways.
Halfway between Neverfell’s hiding place and this wall of thoroughfares was a ten-foot crater with a raised lip that had filled to become a pool. A series of rusty rings was driven into the rock nearby, and to one of these rings was tethered a grey, four-legged, long-muzzled beast as high as Neverfell herself. From Erstwhile’s descriptions, she realized that this must be one of the blind pit-ponies that did most of the drag-work in the tunnels. Its muzzle was dipped into the cool of the water, and Neverfell watched with hypnotic fascination the soft puckering and quivering of its nose as it drank, the fine grey hairs and mottle-spots between its nostrils, the ripples that raced across the water, the silver bells that festooned its bridle.
Then a strong pale arm reached round to slap at the pony’s dusty flank, and Neverfell realized that there was somebody standing behind it. To judge by the shadow thrown on the wall, somebody small and slight. Somebody her size, perhaps her age.
Her heart leaped, but her body did exactly the opposite. Suddenly she found herself flat on the ground, her arms wrapped protectively around her head. She would be seen. The Great Outside would notice her. She was not ready. She had thought she was ready, but she was not.
‘Hey!’
Neverfell made about six feet in a backwards scuffle-crawl before she heard an answering yell, and realized that the first had not been directed at her. Gingerly, she advanced again, and peered into the cavern.
There were no less than three people. The nearest was a brown-haired boy of about her own age, tugging at the pony’s thick coat with a heavy brush, his blunt features frozen and alert, as if listening to an order. Even when he looked away, the expression hung as if the rocks, the horse, the lanterns were all there to instruct him. It was the sort of Face all drudge-class servants were encouraged to wear.
In a narrow, unpainted wooden cart some small distance beyond were seated two girls, one tall, one short. The pair were talking, but it took a little time for Neverfell to be sure that it was words she was hearing. They prattled the way brooks ran, talking over each other with a speed and ease that left the poor eavesdropper grasping at stray syllables as they flew by. It was a far cry from Grandible and his curt, gravelly utterances. It was even faster than Erstwhile.
‘. . . well, we have to do something about it quickly, or we are both down the well without a rope. I would love to take care of it all myself, but this time it just isn’t possible. I really need you to help with this.’
The older girl’s high confident tones were louder than those of her companion. She looked about fifteen, a long, blonde plait gleaming down the shoulder of her grey muslin gown. She had three favourite smiles and was clearly proud of them. On the occasions when she was not speaking, she slid smoothly between them, as regularly as a rota. Warm confidential smile. Narrow speculative smile. Amused expectant smile with a tilt of the head. The drudge-workers and errand boys who called on Grandible’s domain usually had only one smile. This was clearly a better class of person.
The other girl was shorter, rounder, more hesitant in gesture, her hair tucked under a white coif. When she turned to look over her shoulder, Neverfell caught a glimpse of her rounded baby features. The corner of her mouth was dragged down unnaturally, and one of her eyebrows was raised high, as though the muscles of her face were playing tug-of-war.
The boy meanwhile tethered the horse to the cart once more, and began leading it at a gentle amble towards Neverfell’s passage . . . only to pass it and disappear into the next passage along.
Close, so close! Neverfell had seen enough to be fascinated. The blonde girl had star-shaped spangles on her sleeves. The pony-boy had a toffee-coloured mole on his neck. The little fat girl had short, pink, bitten nails. They were all new and large and real, and Neverfell felt sick at the idea of letting them pass out of her life and vanish.
Peering round the corner after the little cart, however, Neverfell noticed one other detail that made her feel yet more sick. At the back of the cart was a low-lipped trolley put aside for luggage, and poking up among the chests and boxes she could just make out the tips of two white rabbit ears.
She had a mission, of course, but sooner or later she had to return to Master Grandible. She did not think she could face him without the rabbit.
The three travellers did not notice as a dark-clad figure emerged from the shadowy rubble, and edged down the path after them, nothing visible behind its black mask but a fog of red pigtails.
The little cart rumbled down a series of broad passageways, and at last vanished into a narrow, rough-hewn tunnel, where the only light was the trap-lantern dangling from the boy’s staff. Here the cart’s progress slowed, and Neverfell could just see the pony-boy stooping now and then to clear fallen rocks so that the cart could pass. Under cover of the darkness, Neverfell dared draw closer, and despite the echo was able to make out some of the travellers’ conversation.
‘Borcas, do you have to keep making those strange Faces while we talk?’ the older girl was asking. ‘It’s very distracting.’
‘Yes – I have an audition today, remember? I have to exercise my muscles!’ exclaimed the smaller girl. At least, that was what Neverfell guessed she was trying to say. Her words were a little too slurred and misshapen to be certain, perhaps because of the way one corner of her mouth was tugged down. It sounded a lot more like: ‘Yesh – I ha’ un ardishun today, renenber? I ha’ to eckshershishe ny nushulsh.’
‘Right now, dear, it’s your brain you should be exercising!’ retorted the taller girl. Somehow, her expression and tone remained kindly, if impatient. ‘Have you forgotten how much trouble we will be in if nothing is done? Madame Appeline caught me looking through her case. Once she finds out that we are close friends she will work out who smuggled me into that party in the first place. Borcas, Madame Appeline only picks one girl a year from the academy to train as a Putty Girl, and it is hardly likely to be you if she decides she cannot trust you, is it? It won’t matter how well you do in the audition.’
Borcas, the younger girl, gave a small snuffle of what sounded like concern.
‘You ’romished you ’ould take care o’ it,’ she answered reproachfully. ‘You shaid you could nake her ’orget it all—’
‘And I would have done,’ the blonde girl interrupted smoothly. ‘I had just the Wine for it and everything. But that plan only works if she is ordering Wine from my family, and she isn’t so I can’t. So you have to give it to her when you do the audition. All the girls give presents to the Facesmith judging, don’t they?’
By now Neverfell was listening intently. She knew that every Facesmith employed a number of ‘Putty Girls’ whom they used to display Faces to potential customers. They were so called because they were trained to keep their faces flexible, like modelling clay. The lucky ones eventually became Facesmiths themselves.
More importantly, it was clear that the two girls knew Madame Appeline. Perhaps they could help her, show her where the Facesmith could be found. Of course, that would mean actually havin
g to talk to the two girls.
Heart in mouth, Neverfell crept closer to the cart. She tried to think of something calming and cheery to say to them, but her mind was a mass of scribbles. Soon she was close enough to make out the silhouettes of the girls’ heads against the light of the lantern, which touched the older girl’s long and elegant neck with alabaster, and set the stray wisps of Borcas’s hair agleam. It made the pair of them look warm, angelic and fragile.
‘Stop trembling.’ The older girl was wearing her warm, confiding smile, and her voice sounded kind and infinitely sensible. ‘It’ll all be all right as long as you stick with the plan. You don’t need to worry about anything. You don’t ever need to worry about making decisions. I’ll do that for you. I’ll always look after you.’
She sounded wonderful and big-sisterly, and Neverfell felt a flood of hope. Unguarded as ever, her heart galloped into a sudden wild liking for the two girls, with their scrubbed skin and clever voices. Perhaps everything was going to be all right after all. She could talk to them – they would be kind. They were her friends. Of course they did not know that yet, but if she followed them and listened to them and found out all their likings and habits and secrets and if she told them so, they would have to like her . . .
These excited thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Borcas stiffening slightly.
‘Zouelle! ’ot’sh ’hat?’ The younger girl’s voice was hushed with fear.
‘What?’
Have I been heard? Have I been seen?
‘I . . . I can shnell shun’hing.’
‘What? Wait . . . oh yes, so can I. It smells like rot, or maybe . . . cheese?’
Neverfell sniffed, perplexed, for this tunnel smelt less like cheese than anywhere she had ever been. It took a moment for the real explanation to strike her.
‘Borcas . . .’ Zouelle, the older girl, sounded less than confident for the first time. ‘I . . . I think you’re right. There’s something down there behind us. I heard . . . I heard it snuffing.’