“So?” she asked impatiently. “Are you gonna shake hands with me this year, or the next? But take a decade or so to think about it first; I wouldn’t want to rush you.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Benjamin, clasping her outstretched hand with one of his own and shaking it as asked. Her palm was cool and very soft; her grasp gentle but firm.
“Thank you,” said Lilac Zhenrei, unclenching her hand and then flapping it as if something nasty had been left on the fingers. “Though if I’d wanted kelp, I’d have asked for it,” she continued, pulling an exaggerated frown.
“Kelp?” asked Benjamin, still as confused - as unbelieving - as ever.
“Your shake,” she said, pointing sharply at Benjamin’s offending hand - which, embarrassingly enough, he was still holding out. “It’s flaccid. Like seaweed. Hence kelp. See?”
Benjamin hastily drew his arm back to his side. “Oh. Another joke,” he said, hoping it didn’t sound too sarcastic. Thankfully, it seemed to go unnoticed by the lady, who, with her arms now folded, was quietly regarding him by means of a slightly sidelong gaze.
“Well, child,” she finally said. “Have I got some questions for you! Tell me - have you ever crossed the Amar Imaga? Or been to Niamago? Ever met with an atulphi before?”
Ammar-what? Benjamin thought; Niya-who? “Um - no,” he said.
“Right,” she said. “Do you know of the dream-depths? Or the land of sweet visions? Anything?”
Benjamin shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Hm. What about the tulphic silfs? Know what they are? We call them silfs for short.”
“No.”
Lilac Zhenrei sighed, and with a finger tapping at her lips she considered for a moment. “Okay,” she said at last. “Do you know what you are?”
The question threw him utterly. Was it a supposed to be a trick? Or was it proof, by virtue of its sheer absurdity, that all this was a dream? Benjamin didn’t know, and, more confused than ever, he could only reply with: “A boy, I suppose.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know you’re a boy. Okay -” she paused again “- I’ll ask you what I should have asked in the first place, then: what is your name?”
Benjamin hesitated. Despite being a child whose years could now be counted in double figures, he was still young enough to feel distinctly uncomfortable when it came to giving out more information than seemed necessary to an unrelated grown-up. Yet at the same time he felt sure that if the woman really meant him harm, then he would have already picked up on it. Therefore, in the true spirit of encroaching maturity, he decided upon a supremely adult compromise: “Benjamin,” he replied, and said nothing else.
“Benjamin what?”
Well, she’d caught him there. “Crosskeys,” he mumbled, feeling a little defeated. As ever, he’d proven powerless in the face of adult authority; it was too much like talking to a teacher.
“Benjamin Crosskeys,” the woman repeated, frowning. “No, I haven’t heard it.”
“Sorry,” said Benjamin.
“Pah,” spluttered Lilac, dismissing the completely unwarranted apology with a sharp flick of her hand. “Doesn’t matter. I know what you are, even if you don’t; and an artist is still an artist even if he never picks up a brush. But I have to ask: what brings a boy like you out here when boys like you are normally asleep?”
Benjamin puffed out his cheeks. What was she going on about? “Dunno,” he replied, as much to himself as to the woman. Then, as his thoughts caught up with what she’d asked, he said, “Oh - yeah. There was this thing. I found it in my sister’s room. I was out here following it when you -”
“Aha!” Lilac Zhenrei’s eyes sparkled. “This thing - what did it look like?”
“A big ribbon.” Benjamin briefly held his hands wide apart, like a boastful angler. “This big, maybe. And all shiny and floating around.”
“Colour?”
“Oh. Silver.”
“Silver,” said Lilac, gazing upwards for a second. “Interesting. Did you touch it?”
“Yes,” said Benjamin.
“Well?”
“Oh,” said Benjamin again. “I saw - I think I saw my sister’s dream.”
“Of course you did,” said Lilac, taking hold of the rod that was tucked under her arm. When it was free, and held upright, she wound at the reel for a moment, lowering both the line and the small dark object that hung from it. “What did it mean to you?”
“Mean?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at the device rather than Benjamin. “How did it make you feel.”
Benjamin rubbed at his brow. “I don't know,” he said. “Like I’d seen it before. But when I touched it - it was different.”
“How?” said Lilac, averting her gaze from the fishing rod. She looked at Benjamin intently.
Benjamin shook his head. “I - really, I don’t know,” he said, sighing. “This is all so weird. I’m very tired, and - and I think I need to go back to bed.”
Lilac Zhenrei flicked a finger against the small pendulum, which immediately came alight with a subdued, fiery glow. “You felt wise, didn’t you? Like you’d learned something.”
“Yes,” said Benjamin, before fully realising that the woman had pinned it down exactly. He had felt like he’d learned something; but it was something elusive, as if it was not really meant for him. “And no,” he continued, his face downcast. “Not completely.”
Lilac walked closer and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Too much for one so young to take in, I think,” she said, smiling again. “And too much yet to say for a night so near to its end. Pity. You have the eyes, Benjamin. You have the gift.”
“The gift?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Listen. I’m going to ask one more thing of you. Then you can go home.”
“Okay,” said Benjamin, with some relief ... and just a little sadness, too. As baffling as the whole adventure had turned out to be, he was sure that he’d miss it when it was all over. Not only that, but the idea that it could all turn out to be a dream had suddenly become dreadful to contemplate. The world at large, he thought, deserved magic such as this; it would add so much to its meagre stock of promises. And it was no use pinching himself in order to find out for sure, either; he’d tried it many times before, in many other dreams, and it had always proved useless.
“Now, those trees,” said Lilac, pointing to Wandringham wood. “The silf - the ribbon, as you say - it went that way, right?”
“Yes,” said Benjamin, turning back to look at the dark, forbidding woodland. He hoped sincerely that the lady wasn’t going to ask that he go there; the place was still out of bounds as far as he was concerned, and her presence, bold and commanding though it was, had done nothing to change the situation in that respect.
“Good, good,” she muttered, as if thinking out loud. “And I would expect that the proximity of my emberquick -” She glanced at the luminous object at the end of the fishing line “- has caused it to dawdle. In which case, Benjamin, you must call out to our silf, so we can see and be sure, yes?”
“Call it?” said Benjamin. It was an odd request - but better than what he was expecting.
“Yes. Call it. Use your mouth or your head. Anything. Just use your gift, boy.”
He was about to ask her about this ‘gift’, but the set look on Lilac’s face soon put paid to that idea. So he gave the tiniest of shrugs, the barest example of a sigh, and brought as much attention as he could muster to the matter at hand.
But only for a moment.
“Um, miss?” he asked, turning back to the lady, his right hand raised slightly. “What do you want me to say to it?”
“Summon it,” she said, glaring with exasperation. “Like a - like a lost dog, you know? You throw your stick too far, and the dog chases it too far; so what do you say? What do you think?”
“Oh. I get you,” said Benjamin, resigned to the lunacy of it all. He returned his gaze to the woods ahead, trying to see if the ribbon was still visible. It wasn’t -
but he had the feeling that it was of little consequence anyway. “Ribbon?” he shouted, instantly embarrassed by what he’d just uttered. “Ribbon?” he called again, even more embarrassed. “Come back, will you? Come on. Come back,” he cried, half-certain by now that Lilac was playing some sort of crazy joke on him.
But she wasn’t. In fact, she appeared to be taking the whole event extremely seriously. Crouched down a few steps ahead of him, she peered at the trees with all the intensity of a front line soldier. While she watched, she kept the rod and line aloft, the luminous bait - the emberquick, as she’d called it - swinging gently in the air before her. “Carry on,” she whispered loudly, once she realised that Benjamin wasn’t calling any more. “Keep at it, boy. If you don't want to speak, then use your mind. Just don’t let it go!”
“Right,” said Benjamin, and he renewed his efforts at summoning the ribbon. As per the lady’s advice, he called with his thoughts this time, and immediately felt much more comfortable doing so. It didn't last long, though; soon, enough fruitless seconds had passed to make Benjamin wonder if the constant mental recital of come back, come here, hey ribbon, come back was really worth the bother. But before he could ask if there was any point in continuing, something happened: Lilac, drawing the rod upwards, reached over with her free hand and carefully, cautiously, pulled the trumpet-like object from the large case that was slung across her back.
“What is it?” Benjamin said, when he saw that the trumpet-like thing was actually a blunderbuss - an ornate rifle whose barrel funnelled out into a cone. The lady didn’t reply, but then again, she didn’t need to. The answer came with the sudden outbreak of movement within the outlying coppices of Wandringham wood.
Benjamin made a noise of startled surprise, a combination of cough and hiccup that would have been laughable in any other situation. As for Lilac, she was already galvanised; it was almost as if she’d been expecting it. Tucking the rod under her arm (which would have ordinarily been an awkward task for anyone else, yet she accomplished it in the blink of an eye) she brought her weapon to bear on the area of the woods that seemed most afflicted by the disturbance, and shouted, “Run, boy! Now!”
Benjamin should have needed no second encouragement; it would have been a perfect opportunity to put all this madness behind him. But when he saw the ribbon swoop out of the woods he was instead struck by a sudden elation. It’s worked, he thought, jubilant; I summoned it, and it came. He did not, however, get the chance to call out to the lady and tell her that there was nothing to be afraid of, because the lady herself was too quick in yelling first: “It’s too late!" she cried, the sight of the ribbon doing nothing to assuage her alarm. "We’re seen. Get away, boy - GO!”
“I don’t underst-” he said - and stopped, when he realised that although the ribbon had attained a fair distance from the woods, the rustling agitation in the trees behind it was still continuing. “What is it?” he mumbled, unaware that he had taken a few steps backwards. Whatever it was that was causing the commotion, it couldn’t be good; the birds roosting on top of the cage squawked madly, flapping and jostling in manifest panic; Lilac Zhenrei was already retreating, her gaze and the weapon resolved upon the source of the disturbance - resolved, that was, until the rod slipped from her arm and became caught up in her legs. She stumbled, still gripping the blunderbuss, and fell with a sharp and murderous cry of “NO!”
The noise of their mistress’ distress seemed the breaking point for the birds: screeching, they began to rise, making a tangle of the threads as they pulled the rocking, shuddering cage upwards. Benjamin, distraught at the idea of leaving Lilac without her only means of escape, instantly ran for the cage, in the hope that he might catch hold of it before it was beyond reach. Admittedly, if the birds were strong enough to carry both her and the cage, then they’d find little trial in spiriting Benjamin clean from the ground also; but then again, his extra weight could be just what was needed to slow them down, and so give Lilac some time to catch up. With only another stride to go before the rapidly rising cage was within his grasp, Benjamin looked behind, back towards the woods.
Where the horror, crashing through the last outgrowths of foliage, was at last made abundantly, hideously clear.
4
It was twisted and lumbering - but fast; it loped out of the woods, hissing, and immediately made for both Benjamin and the struggling Lilac.
The boy, frozen with alarm, could hardly bear to look at it, despite the fact that his gaze seemed unable to fall on anything else. When first glimpsed, he’d thought it was just a clown that he’d not seen quite right; a second later, and he saw differently. This was no trick of tired eyes and poor light. Far from it, in fact.
It was indeed a clown - but a clown taken to new levels of bizarrerie and nastiness. Its body - mottled by a pattern of harlequin diamonds that seemed more akin to the scales of an adder-snake than anything else - was long and oddly distended, as were its limbs; the overall impression was that of a huge, flailing marionette which had somehow come to life. As with all clowns, the face was painted; but here, with the head so thin and elongated, the effect of the makeup was truly monstrous: the slit eyes - uncomprehending, blind almost - appeared evil under the garish scrawls of colour that caked the brow; the red bulb of a nose fungus-like against the corpse-belly pallor of its skin. Surrounding the mouth was a scarlet crescent that only served to make the vast, idiot grin within appear even more vast and idiotic, and it bore its array of appalling fence-row teeth with the all simple-minded purpose of the unflinching lunatic.
The size of perhaps two men in length, it scrambled towards them on all fours - though not in the way that an animal or a crouching human might. Instead, it seemed to flow into the step ahead, as if there were something distressingly liquid, or unset, about its form. In shape, it was spiky, grotesquely spiderish; in its demeanour, much the same. And just in front of it there sailed the ribbon - sinuous, graceful - and it took only a moment for Benjamin to register that it was this very item that the clown was after.
He would have called out to Lilac then, but for the cage; before he even fully realised it, the edge of the lower deck met his palm, and he grasped instinctively. Immediately, he was pulled skyward, and not wishing to lose his grip, he swung his other hand up and caught hold of one of the bars. Surprised by this new addition to their payload, the birds screeched in protest; the cage dipped a little, but remained aloft. Soon, Benjamin was equally aloft, and rising. The birds, as suspected, had found it easy to accommodate the extra weight; within seconds, there was close to half a metre of air between the ground and the dangling feet of the boy above.
Benjamin, already aware of how fast he was ascending, should have wasted no time in alerting Lilac - who was now back on her feet and taking aim at the monster - but instead he paused, suddenly distracted. A peculiar sensation had forced its way through his fear, a sensation not entirely unlike the one which had occurred when in contact with the ribbon. He was overcome, once again, with a feeling of understanding; he became aware of peculiar new sights and insights, just at the rim of his imagination. Preferring to dismiss it all as the effects of panic, Benjamin shook the feelings off as best he could, and hauled himself further into the cage. As he struggled to bring his left knee to bear upon the deck, he turned back to Lilac and, without any further thought, shouted:
“Hurry! The birds are going up. There’s no-”
But it was at precisely the wrong moment. Lilac fired the blunderbuss - which discharged in a storm of electric-blue sparks - just as he issued the warning, and the interruption startled her. The report was deafening; the birds tumbled into one another, squawking, and the cage lurched brutally, the door swinging to and fro. Lilac, knowing at the instant that she’d missed, retreated with a sound of spluttered frustration and made for Benjamin with her head bowed and her fingers at work on the rifle. The clown had dodged the attack easily; with terrifying speed, it had leapt to the height of a house, flipped, and then come back down to earth
with all the agility and ambush-ready precision of a panther. Benjamin’s cry of alarm, it seemed, had achieved nothing except offer a smidgen of extra distance between himself, Lilac and the monster.
To the boy’s relief, the lady did not offer any form of rebuke. As if realising that she’d forgotten both her emberquick and the silf - which was now busy coiling itself about the tangle of line and rod just a few yards away - she instead hastened back a few paces, tucked the blunderbuss under her arm, and with no undue ceremony snatched the bundle up from the ground. Sprinting back, she pulled the ribbon free from the tangle and began the labour of stuffing it into her satchel with the only hand available. The clown, bounding ever nearer, hissed again, as if suddenly enraged. Lilac did not look behind.
Benjamin, at last attaining a foothold in the cage, stood up breathlessly. The door was still swinging wildly, the cage itself turning on its axis, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right. Seeing how close Lilac now was - and seeing also that it would take only seconds before the cage was beyond her reach - he tottered forwards, pushed the door aside, and kept his hand there. The lady, seeing this, shrugged the satchel free and threw it the boy. Her aim, in this instance, was true; it hit him in the stomach, and though the weight was light and the force behind it minimal, he still couldn’t prevent himself from doubling up. Automatically, his free arm curled round to take hold of his belly, and in the process it managed to snag the satchel by its strap. A moment later, and the rod hit the cage also - but failed to find purchase. Only about a quarter of its length made it onto the deck; after that, it slipped away, falling back down to the ground to a dismayed “Gah!” from Lilac.
Hauling the satchel over his own shoulder, Benjamin stole a glance at the clown and saw that it had gained enormously. A few more lunges, perhaps, and it would be upon them. And then? He dared not wonder. Instead, he focused all his attention on Lilac; she was only a step or so away by now, and preparing to throw the blunderbuss. “Don't miss this one, boy,” she cried, panting. “Get ready!”