Eldritch glared at him, clutching her wrist, her face rigid with fury. “Your throat, actually.”
For some reason, this made Knucklemeat laugh. “Just goes to show you: There’s no keeping secrets from a man who sees all.” He tapped his eye patch with the tip of the horn. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a march to lead.” He tossed the horn into the air and caught it as he returned to the front of the caravan.
Madame Eldritch clasped the bars, staring at the man who had just stripped away her chance at escape.
“Tell me, Madame,” Sir Tode said as their wagon lurched forward, resuming its journey. “What’s the point of living forever if it’s in a world controlled by men like that?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE LIGHTHOUSE at the END of the WORLD
The following morning, Sophie awoke to find their camp enveloped in a shroud of gray mist. “What’s happened?” she said. “Where are we?”
“It’s the fog,” Peter said. She had not noticed him standing right beside her. “It should burn off in the afternoon sun.”
Sophie wasn’t so sure. The fog was so thick that it was difficult to see more than ten feet in front of her. “Can you still find your way?” She rubbed the back of her neck, which was sore from sleeping on The Book of Who, which she had tried unsuccessfully to use as a pillow.
Peter nodded. “I can still hear and smell things. But it’s harder to tell where they’re coming from.” Sophie looked at his hand. She wondered if she should take it in hers and help guide him. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do to help a blind person? She reached toward him . . .
“You are awake,” Akrasia said, sliding out from the fog.
Sophie pulled her hand back from Peter. “I—I—I just woke up,” she stammered. She wondered how long Akrasia had been watching them. The tigress had blood on her mouth, and Sophie knew she must have been off hunting. Sophie stood and slung her book harness over her shoulder. She picked up her cloak, which had been her blanket, and shook out the twigs.
“We need to keep moving,” Akrasia said. “The Inquisitor’s caravan is but half a day’s ride from us.”
“Then let’s get moving.” Sophie turned around, searching the bushes. “Where’s Taro?”
There was a sound of movement in the trees above her. A moment later, Taro dropped to the ground. He was holding a sort of globe-shaped cage woven from reeds and vines. Inside the cage were at least twenty sprites, all spinning and fluttering and blinking inside. “It’s a sprite-lantern,” Sophie said. She recalled with a brief flash of dread how similar lamps had adorned the walls of Madame Eldritch’s oubliette.
Taro offered the lantern to Sophie. She took it and noticed that the fog around her seemed to lessen. “The sprites keep the fog at bay,” she said. “Did you learn this from Madame Eldritch?”
Taro nodded.
She peered more closely at the lamp and saw that the sprites inside were not trapped, as they had been in Eldritch’s lamps; rather, they were able to move in and out of the cage at will. The thing that kept them together was a single white mushroom that Taro had placed in the middle of the cage, which the creatures were eating with a great deal of zeal. “It’s brilliant,” she said. “Everyone, stay close to me. If we get separated, just look for the light.”
Akrasia crouched down and studied the ground where the fog had cleared. Unlike the previous day, she seemed a little less sure of herself. “This way,” she said after a moment.
Sophie raised the lantern and led the group into the fog.
As the hours wore on, the fog grew even thicker. The group continued moving slowly over the lush terrain, stopping every few minutes for Akrasia to study the trail. The sounds of chittering wildlife, which had filled the forest the day before, were now completely gone. There remained only the sound of their own footsteps and the ripple of the river in the distance.
Though she would never admit it, Sophie was in a great deal of pain. A life of reading prepares one for many trials—but none of them physical. Her shoulders had been rubbed raw from where the harness chafed against the skin. Her feet were wet and blistered. Her hands and legs had cuts all along them from the nixies. She had not slept in an actual bed for over a week. Even the task of holding a small lantern out in front of the group was taxing her strength.
“Oh!” she cried out as she tripped on a root.
Peter caught her. “Careful now,” he said as he helped right her. “I’ve got you.”
At last, they reached a flat bed of moss-covered rock where the fog was so thick that Sophie could barely see the end of her own arm. She slipped on the moss and, in an effort to break her fall, dropped the lantern to the ground. “No!” she cried as she watched the lantern tumble into the fog and splash into what she assumed was the river. The sprites scattered into the air, their tiny lights getting smaller and smaller until they had disappeared altogether.
Now they were completely unable to see.
Sophie felt Akrasia move beside her. “You should all take hold of my chain,” the tigress said.
Sophie knelt down and grabbed the links, which felt so small in her hand. She could feel Peter’s hand next to hers. “Akrasia, do you know where Scrivener Behn went from here?”
“I do not,” Akrasia said after a moment. “The fog makes it difficult to focus.”
Sophie thought she knew what the tigress meant. The air felt heavy against her skin, her hair, her eyes. It was difficult to breathe, and she felt shaky all over. “I don’t think it’s good for us to be here,” she said. “We have to find shelter. Or maybe more sprites.” She wondered if The Book of What could somehow guide them to safety, but that presumed she could actually read the book through all this haze.
She felt a nudging against her shoulder and turned to see the vague outline of Taro’s arm. He was pointing into the distance.
“What is it?” Sophie said, looking in the direction of his finger. She squinted into the swirling fog. A gentle breeze swept across the ground, and for a brief moment, she could see a light shining above the trees. “There’s something out there,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Slowly, Sophie and the others moved toward the light, all of them holding tightly to Akrasia’s chain. The going was slow, as even Peter tripped over roots and rocks. Sophie could hear rushing water, and she realized that they were moving downstream. Above that, she could hear a creaking sound that seemed to be coming from just ahead. It reminded her of the ships that docked along the canal in Bustleburgh. The fog thinned out as they neared the light, and soon Sophie was able to let go of Akrasia’s chain. “We’re almost there,” Sophie said, climbing toward the glowing beacon just beyond the trees.
She stepped over the ridge and stopped. The fog had cleared enough for her to see that she was on a bank overlooking the farthest reaches of the Wassail. The river was broad and flat and moving very quickly toward the edge of a steep ridge. Beyond the ridge was not more land but a swath of darkness that seemed to stretch out into infinity. “What is that?” she whispered, inching back from the black abyss.
“Congratulations, my cub,” Akrasia said. “I believe we have reached the end of the world.”
Sophie stared at the vast, dark expanse. Just looking at it filled her with a dread she could not quite describe. She didn’t know if she wanted to run screaming from it or plunge headlong into it. Unlike a waterfall, whose roar could be heard for miles, this water was completely silent as it slipped over the edge of the chasm—as if sound itself could not even escape from such darkness.
“I don’t understand,” Sophie said. “Is that where Scrivener Behn went?”
“It’s difficult to tell,” Akrasia said. “I could sense Behn’s fear—it was very strong—and then . . . nothing.” She inched backward from the canyon. “Whatever he found in this place, it was enough to distract him from mortal fear.”
Peter seemed unperturbed, perhaps owing to his blindfold. He raised his head. “What’s that creaking sound?” He point
ed off to one side. “Over there.”
Sophie turned and peered through the fog. At the very end of the river, just before the water plunged into the canyon, floated a large structure with a light at the top. “I think . . . it’s a lighthouse,” she said.
“What’s a lighthouse doing here?” Akrasia asked. There was a quavering sound in her voice, and Sophie thought that Akrasia might be more frightened than she let on.
Sophie started down the ridge toward the river. The rickety structure groaned and creaked on the surface of the water. “It looks like some kind of floating city,” she said. City was a generous word. The lighthouse seemed to be cobbled from a mass of wagons and schooners and rafts and galleys and docks and gangplanks that had all been lashed together with ropes—thus saving it from falling over the edge. The top of the structure was a sort of ramshackle lighthouse, which shone with a steady greenish light.
Sophie and the others approached the edge of the river. Enormous moorings had been looped around rocks along the riverbank to prevent the structure from being swept over the edge and into the darkness beyond. A rope-bridge stretched from the bank to the structure on the other side.
Sophie slowly walked along the bridge, which swayed perilously from side to side with each step. The water rushed beneath her. One slip, and she would find herself swept into the river—carried right into the abyss. She reached the dock on the other side and peered at the assortment of buildings, which creaked and swayed above the current.
“Who do you think lives there?” Peter whispered behind her. Sophie heard an uncertain quality to his voice, which was unusual.
They approached a ramshackle building; it looked like a tavern, from which music and voices could be heard. A sign above the swinging doors read:
THE LAST RESORT
“Let’s find out,” Sophie said, and pushed through the doorway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
VESPERS
Sophie stepped into the Last Resort, which looked very much like an ordinary tavern and not at all like an ordinary tavern. The entire structure bobbed and tipped with the motion of the river, creaking loudly. A thick cloud of smoke filled the air, making the already dim atmosphere even dimmer. The people here apparently knew the effects of sprite-light, because the creatures were visible in the rafters, eating from little feeders filled with what looked like silver moss; their spectral light shone down through the haze to illuminate tables of men and women hunched together, talking in low voices and laughing. Some people were eating, others were playing games of cards or draughts, and still more were reading books. In one corner, two women with dark blue skin played a single instrument that looked and sounded like a hurdy-gurdy. It took a moment for Sophie to realize that the women were joined together at the spine.
“Who’s making that music?” said Peter, who had come in behind her. “I can hear four hands but only one heartbeat.”
“It’s a cyanese twin,” Sophie whispered. Most people in Bustleburgh had heard tales of cyanese twins, but they had been taught to believe that they were a sham, that their bodies were not actually joined together. But watching those four indigo hands darting along the fretboard, it was clear that these women could think and move as one.
The twin was not the only magical being in this place. As Sophie’s eyes adjusted to the light, she could make out more strange figures. There was a pack of she-boars sipping tea, a sleeping kobold, a centaur talking with three winged old men she suspected were wampires, a fat man covered with feathers clutching a silver egg, a bespectacled worm smoking a gourd hookah, two trolls eating dandelion stems, and what appeared to be a child playing a game of mumblety-peg with a corpse. Several people in the room had stopped talking and were now watching the new arrivals with expressions somewhere between amusement and alarm. Sophie stared back at them, her heart racing.
“What do you see?” asked Peter, who must have been able to sense Sophie’s discomfort.
Sophie swallowed, her eyes darting from face to face. “It’s like every magical creature I’ve ever read about—come alive.” With each face, she could recall stories that went with them: “The Sombre Child,” “Little Tomkin,” “Heinrich and the Silver Egg.”
“Tread lightly, my child.” Akrasia pressed her soft head against Sophie’s hand. “Stories are not so tame when encountered outside the page.”
“Welcome to the Last Resort, missy,” said a brawny woman at the bar. She wore an old turban and had yellow scales along her neck and arms. “You’re free to hitch your ship or wagon to whatever post you can find along the docks—just make sure you tie it tight, ’less you wanna lose it to the Uncannyon.”
“We haven’t any ship or wagon.” Sophie eyed the steaming bowls of stew on the counter behind the woman. “But we are very hungry. What would it cost for a meal and a place to stay?”
“We don’t take dulcets or any other coin at the Last Resort. Everyone here pays the same way.” She pointed a webbed finger at a sign on the wall. Sophie knew that Peter could not see the sign, and so she read it aloud:
LAST RESORT
FOOD & SLIP
One Story / Day
Payable at Vespers
“I don’t understand,” Peter said. “We pay her in stories?”
The woman snorted. “Not me, dearie. I wouldn’t know what to do with ’em. You pay Scrivener Behn. He’ll be by within the hour to collect his fee.”
Sophie smiled, turning to her companions. “Scrivener Behn!” She saw that Akrasia was also smiling, but in an altogether more tigerly way. Sophie felt a wave of worry about what would happen when Akrasia saw the man who had imprisoned her for twelve long years. She turned back to the bartender. “So the scrivener is really here?”
“Not at the moment,” the woman said. “He’ll be around shortly for Vespers.”
Sophie wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but it didn’t matter. They had found Scrivener Behn, which meant they were that much closer to finding The Book of Where and learning the truth about her mother. “There’s four of us,” she said. “Do we each have to tell a story?”
“That depends on how many of you hope to eat.” The woman scratched some marks on her neck that looked very much like gills. “It’s one story per plate—no splitting.”
“If only Sir Tode were here,” Peter muttered. “He could feed the whole room.”
The barmaid stacked some empty mugs and bowls on a tray. “Pick a table, and I’ll bring some stew,” she called. “You’ll want to fill up before the scrivener gets here. Vespers can take a while—especially when there’s newcomers.”
Sophie and the others found a table in a dimly lit corner where the sprite-feeder must have been empty. Sophie looked at the other patrons, who she sensed were trying very hard not to look like they were looking at her. She found herself very grateful to be seated next to a mandrake, a tigress, and a legendary thief.
The dimness turned out not to be a problem, for as soon as Taro was seated, several dozen sprites settled on his head and shoulders, apparently drawn to him as they might be to a tree.
True to her word, the barmaid (whose name was Liesel) returned a few minutes later with mugs of hot wassail and bowls of stew. “Fresh wolpertinger,” she said. “Our own Saint Marty caught it this morning on the shore. Watch out for antler bits—they’ll cut your tongue up real good.”
“Now, this is food,” Peter said, slurping up a spoonful. “You can actually taste where it came from.”
Akrasia sniffed at her bowl before taking a tentative lap. “I prefer my meat uncooked,” she said, and pushed the bowl away with her snout. Taro did not eat. But he did dip his finger into the mug of wassail and kept it there for the duration of the meal.
Sophie had to agree with Peter that the stew did taste different from what they had been subsisting on, but she wasn’t sure it was better. There were tentacle-shaped vegetables and bitter spices and what, indeed, looked to be chunks of antler. The wolpertinger—a sort of horned rabbit that Sophie had
been forced to look up in The Book of What—had a gamy flavor and took a long time to chew. At any moment it felt as if the contents of the bowl might spring to life and start trying to eat her. Still, as it has often been said, hunger is the best seasoning, and she soon found herself finishing her bowl and asking for another.
It was some time later when the barkeep rang a small bell for Vespers. All the people in the tavern stopped their business and pulled their stools away from their respective tables to form a large circle. Sophie and the others did the same.
The room grew quiet as a tall man walked into the room. He wore a long monk’s robe and carried a sheaf of blank paper. His skin was dark—darker than Sophie’s. He had a bald head, and his face was salted with white stubble that formed a long goat’s beard at the end of his chin. A pair of thick magnifying spectacles hung around his neck, the sort used by people who had ruined their eyesight from years of reading or writing in poor light. Tucked behind his ear was a feather quill, though plucked from what strange bird she could not say. The long feather shone silver in the glow of the sprites around him.
“It is he,” said Akrasia. She was emitting a low growl, and her entire body had gone tense.
Sophie put a hand on Akrasia’s collar, trying to soothe her. “Promise you won’t do anything rash,” she whispered. “Not until we’ve talked to him.”
The tigress did not answer, but she did stop growling. Sophie turned back to Scrivener Behn. The man was not old, but he carried a weightiness about him that felt somehow timeless. He took a seat at a table and set out his inkwell and paper. He put on his spectacles and dipped his pen. “Who will begin?” His voice was deep but very gentle.
The first volunteer was the cyanese twin, who spoke with two voices in a tongue that Sophie did not recognize. From the uncomfortable expressions of some of the others in the room, it was clear that they did not understand, either. Judging from the gestures made, Sophie thought the twin’s story might be about some kind of very large worm—or perhaps a snake—that bore a hole through the sun. The scrivener, for his part, listened attentively, copying down every word as quickly as it was spoken. “Thank you,” he said softly when the twin had concluded her story. “The world may have forgotten your tale, but we shall not.” He took a new sheet of paper and asked for another volunteer.