Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse
Date: 1989-08-01 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy
Description: When Marianne's parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America - and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . . Until the Magus came to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world - for there is magic in Marianne's blood, and magic in her soul. And in a battle fought in an everchanging world of warped time and wicked magic, it is the souls of Marianne and her family that are the
Publisher: Ace

MARIANNE, THE MATCHBOX, AND THE MALACHITE MOUSE

Sheri S. Tepper

www.sf-gateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

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Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Website

Also By Sheri S. Tepper

Author Bio

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Marianne, well ensconced in the Prime Minister’s Residence in Alphenlicht, half a world away from the state of Virginia, had no idea that her Great-aunt Dagma was dying until she received a letter from her saying so. ‘Not long to go,’ it said. ‘Possibly two or three months, and don’t upset yourself about it, my dear, because I’m not in any pain at all …’

Marianne’s first reaction was not to believe it. Aunt Dagma was immortal! She had been living with Marianne’s parents for as long as Marianne could remember, as long as her father could remember – small, slender, dark-haired, with eyes that snapped. In recent years the hair had not been as black as formerly, true. And the eyes were possibly, though only slightly, less hawklike. But Dagma dying? Surely not!

‘I need your help, my dear,’ Dagma’s letter went on. ‘A little matter that I think should be taken care of and one that neither of your dear parents would have adequate skills to cope with. It is a matter requiring someone with your rather – shall we say – individual abilities.’

Which was as close as Aunt Dagma would care to come to guessing at Marianne’s abilities, though there were other words which might have described them better. Peculiar? Odd? Weird? Supernatural? Uncanny? Eldtrich? Or perhaps merely bizarre?

‘Makr Avehl,’ Marianne said to her husband, the Prime Minister of Alphenlicht, ‘I’ve had this sad, strange letter from Great-aunt Dagma.’

Makr Avehl, who was trying to eat his breakfast egg while going through a pile of documents, merely grunted at her.

‘Prime Minister,’ Marianne tried again. ‘I have this matter of state …’

He looked up at her, focusing vaguely. ‘Ah. Sorry, love. What was it you said?’

She handed him the letter and watched him read it while the egg was eaten, while the coffee was drained, while the last bite of toast was munched. Though Makr Avehl was Alphenlichtian to his fingernails, he did prefer an American-style breakfast to broiled lamb, flat bread, and yoghurt of the peculiarly sour variety which suited most Alphenlichtians. ‘I’m fond of Dagma,’ he said at last. ‘There are other people I would be less sorry to hear this news from.’

Marianne got up and went around the table to give him a hug, a difficult matter to manage as her melon-shaped self kept getting in the way. ‘I’ll be very glad when this child is born,’ she said. ‘She keeps coming between us. What do you think, Makr Avehl? Should I go?’

‘I don’t see why not. If you want to. The daughter and heir isn’t due for almost two months. Virginia is lovely this time of year. It would give you a chance to visit with your parents.’

‘But … what if the baby decides to be born while I’m in the States? Would that upset you?’

He shook her gently. ‘You were born there, Marianne. If our first girlchild gets born there, too, I’m sure all Alphenlicht will be able to accept that fact.’

Marianne, who had spent the last year getting to know the country and people of Alphenlicht, wasn’t that sure. She walked to the wall of French doors which opened from the small breakfast room onto the area of the Residence known as the ‘summer terrace.’ The other, larger, breakfast room opened onto the knot garden; the various dining rooms, of assorted sizes and degrees of formality, opened onto the rose garden, the water garden, and the sculpture terrace. This, the summer terrace, was much the nicest of the lot, she thought, with its own small fountain and reflecting pool, surrounded by shade-loving flowers and sheltered from the summer sun by the branches of an enormous oak.

A low balustrade separated the terrace from the sloping grounds of the Residence. The orchard bloomed at the bottom of the slope, where the road ran off through fields and woods to what passed, in Alphenlicht, for a city. It was there that the House of Delegates met, there that Makr Avehl served as Hereditary Prime Minister for the Council of Kavi, made up of largely hereditary religious dignitaries. Makr Avehl called the form of government a democratic parliamentary theocracy. Or a theocratic parliamentary democracy, or, sometimes, ‘that stubborn bunch of reactionaries,’ depending upon how he was feeling about it at the time.

‘I’m not sure I want to leave right now,’ Marianne said.

He came up behind her and put his arms around her. ‘You’ll get no argument from me, love. The only real question is whether you want to write to your great-aunt and tell her that.’

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I really can’t do that.’

‘I didn’t think you could.’

‘She wants me to do something weird, you know. Otherwise she’d ask Father.’

‘I rather guessed that from the letter.’

‘Perhaps it will be something I’d rather not do while I’m pregnant.’

‘Then you’ll do it later, when you’re not pregnant. The point is that Great-aunt Dagma won’t be around later to tell you whatever it is she wants done. She has to do that now, while she has time.’

‘You’re so sensible,’ she told him, burrowing into his chest. ‘Such a sensible, practical man.’

He, remembering certain wildly impractical and totally unsensible things from their separate and collective pasts, chose to say nothing at all about that. ‘Remember,’ he whispered. ‘If there’s anything troublesome, you’re to let me know at once. And there’s always the Cave of Light.’

There was indeed the Cave of Light, the heartstone of the Alphenlicht theocratic system, a kind of national soothsaying machine, a natural source of augury. ‘Do you think I should go there before I make the trip?’ she asked. ‘Would it be a good idea?’

‘It’s always a good idea. Call up whats-her-name …’

‘You know perfectly well what her name is. Her name is Therat. Why don’t you ever call her by her name, Makr Avehl?’

‘The name doesn’t suit her.’

‘It’s a little wildflower, isn’t it? A therat?’

‘There’s nothing flowery about her. The woman galls me. She’s never surprised at anything. Just once I’d like to take her totally unaware.’

‘You should be glad she foresees things.’

‘I suppose I should. Well, call Therat. Ask her to arrange a reading for you.’

‘I’ll do that if someone in your office will make plane reservations for me. Through Turkey, I suppose.’ Alphenlicht lay in a hidden twist of mountains at a place where the border of Turkey, Iran, and the USSR approached one another to the point of virtual overlap.

‘Not through Iran,’ he said. ‘It’s regimes like that that give theocracy a bad name.’ He rose, stretching, putting his papers together. It was difficult at the best of times for a small country – no, a tiny country – to maintain its neutrality or even its existence when surrounded by larger and far less sensible nations. However, Alphenlicht had been doing it for something over 1700 years, and Makr Avehl swore that with the help of the Cave, they would do it for 1700 more. Luckily, the mountainous little nation did not lie on any direct invasion route from any one of its neighbors to any other one. Isolated and serene – more or less – it continued in its own timeless fashion while turmoil boiled around it.

‘I’ll have one of the choppers readied. You’ll want Aghrehond as pilot, won’t you?’

‘Amazing,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t think he’d really ever learn to fly those things.’

‘Took to it like a bird,’ he murmured. ‘He can fly you down to the airport at Van whenever you’re ready. And I want him to go with you, Marianne. No! Not a word. I can’t go just now, as you well know, but I’d rather you weren’t alone. Aghrehond will go, and that’s that. Besides, he’d be hurt if you didn’t ask him.

‘Now! I really must get myself to work …’

‘What are you working on?’

‘Well, the thing this morning is a meeting concerning disappearances!’

‘Disappearances? Who?’

‘People,’ he said vaguely. ‘They do, you know. Disappear. All the time. Young people run away from home, and older people get disgusted with life and go off to start over. It’s a well-known phenomenon, and no one in authority gets overly concerned about it.’

‘So?’

‘So this: lately a great many people seem to have been disappearing in ways no one can seem to explain! Threes and fours of them at a time. The disappearance rate has almost doubled.’

‘Here? In Alphenlicht?’

‘No. Not here. Not that I know of, at least. But in quite a lot of places. In the eastern part of the United States, particularly. And in England. And, funnily enough, in Japan. Some other places, too. None of the underdeveloped countries, however, which is rather interesting. At any rate, it’s become worrying enough that the United Nations is attempting to gather some data. I have a great, complicated questionnaire which a group of the Kavi are going to fill out this morning, and afternoon, from the look of the thing. Then, when that’s finished, we have a religious holiday to plan for.’

‘You always have at least one of those.’

‘Quite right. Every good theocracy should have at least one religious holiday looming on every horizon, and I’d better get to it or I’ll find myself supplanted by someone else …’

He kissed her and bustled out, and a moment later Marianne saw the long, silver car slide effortlessly down the drive and away behind the apple trees of the distant orchard.

‘Would you care for anything else, ma’am?’ The serving maid was standing politely by the buffet, her hand on the silver coffeepot.

‘Thank you, Bella, no. You can clear. And would you find Aghrehond for me. And my secretary.’

‘My secretary.’ The words sounded slightly pretentious. It would have been better to say, ‘Janice,’ or ‘Thomas,’ or some other name. Except that she didn’t know what her secretary’s name was today. It would be one of the Kavi, one of the ruling class of Alphenlicht, probably a young one, though, on occasion, it had been someone old enough to be her grandparent. It was their way of getting to know her; their way of influencing her, giving her Alphenlichtian values.

‘You asked for me?’ said Therat, her slender young form poised gracefully in the doorway.

‘Therat! Don’t tell me you’re playing amanuensis!’

‘Um, well, I had a premonition.’

‘I wasn’t counting on a premonition.’ Marianne smiled warily at her, feeling more than slightly uncomfortable. Even though she had teased Makr Avehl about his attitude toward Therat, Marianne knew just how he felt. Therat might well have had a premonition; she was that kind of person. ‘But since you had one, what did it say?’

‘That you’d be taking a trip, that you’d want to visit the Cave first, and that you’d be somewhat troubled about it.’

Wordlessly Marianne picked Great-aunt Dagma’s letter from the table and held it out. Therat took it, turning her piercing eyes upon it and letting Marianne off the hook of scrutiny she had felt herself hanging on ever since Therat came into the room. No, Therat was not surprised. Makr Avehl was quite right: Therat was never surprised at anything. Just once, Marianne would like to surprise her. Somehow Marianne could not imagine Therat being astonished. She couldn’t imagine Therat in love, or Therat pregnant, or Therat shaving her legs, or Therat taking a bath. She had tried, without success, to imagine Therat doing anything personal and intimate. One only saw the eyes, felt the mind, and was vaguely aware of the body that carried these around, like a kind of vehicle.

‘Do you care greatly for her?’ Therat asked. It was typical of her that her voice contained no sympathetic tones whatsoever.

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Then I grieve for you.’ And it was equally typical that one knew she did, in her own way. ‘You’re going? When? Tomorrow?’

‘Whenever my “secretary” can call the Prime Minister’s office and check on the travel arrangements.’ Marianne smiled.

‘I’ll take care of it. However – Marianne …’

‘Yes, Therat.’

‘This tone in your great-aunt’s letter. Is she possibly involving you in something tha … in your present condition …’

‘Makr Avehl says to find out what she needs. I can always take care of it later, after I’m not in my present condition.’

‘Ah.’ Therat didn’t sound convinced. ‘Well, we’ll see what the Cave has to say.’

‘Will you ask someone to send a message, please, telling my great-aunt that I am coming.’

And after that she took the time to speak to her maid Renee about packing. She did not want to make a major production of it. It was not to be a very social visit, after all. She would need something flowing and pretty for dinners. She would need several practical things – equally flowing, considering her shape – for daytime. Despite Renee’s expostulations, Marianne insisted that she keep the luggage to a minimum: one case and a makeup kit.

In midafternoon, Marianne went with Therat to the Cave, driven by Aghrehond the first part of the way, walking up the last bit of winding path to the tunnel mouth. As she always did when she came here, Marianne stood for a moment on the doorstep of the mountain, looking up and around her at the prominence beneath which the Cave lay. A hill, large and pleasantly wooded, full of little valleys and gullies, decked with clearings and copses, wandered over by deer and goats and occasional hunters. Beneath the hill, far beneath, was a cavern, and winding down to that cavern were hundreds of twisting worm holes lined with mica which reflected the surface light deep into the cave that lay at the center of the mountain. Holes that reflected light, here and there. Now and then. On this spot and on that.

And there, far underground, every square inch of the cavern was carved and painted with symbols and pictures and words and numbers, so that the light fell, inevitably, on some sign or omen. Never twice the same, so said the canon of the Kavi.

And certainly Marianne had never seen it twice the same. She shook her head at the sunlit foliage and followed Therat into the lamplit tunnel and down it into the lantern-spotted darkness.

‘Ah, pretty lady,’ said Aghrehond, ‘it makes a spookiness, does it not, a kind of ghosty feeling to come into this darkness.’

‘Reverence,’ said Therat in a no-nonsense-now kind of voice. ‘That would be a more proper emotion.’

‘Perhaps proper, for members of the priesthood, for those worshipful ones who guide and protect us, but for me, a driver of vehicles, a mere carrier from place to place, for me it makes a genuine shiver, Therat.’ His large form quivered beside Marianne and he grinned at her as he put one great hand beneath her elbow, guiding her. To hear Aghrehond, he was the worst coward in the country. To recall what he actually did – that was another matter.

A simple stone altar stood at the center of the cave. They set their lanterns upon it and turned them off. Marianne, with only partial success, tried to assume the vacant, waiting frame of mind which the Kavi asserted was appropriate for visits to the Cave. Aghrehond, beside her, seemed under no such stricture. He was humming, very softly, under his breath. From Therat, not a sound. The darkness was full of darting spots of light, false impressions of light left when the lantern was turned off. Gradually the darkness took their place.

Marianne breathed deeply, folded her hands, and went through the formula silently. ‘I seek guidance. I seek knowledge. I seek that which will avoid harm to living things. I seek not for selfish purposes but for the good of all …’

‘A roadway,’ said Therat in her emotionless voice. Marianne searched through the darkness, finding the beam of light at last where it swam with dust motes. The cave wall where it made a tiny, irregular circle was carved with something. Marianne would have said it was a snake, but Therat knew every symbol. If she said it was a road, it was a road!

Marianne breathed deeply again. A usual reading was considered to be three or four signs.

‘A leopard,’ said Therat, sounding puzzled. ‘No, a demon, no, a leopard.’ There was something in her voice that made Marianne think Therat would have used an obscenity if they were somewhere else. Then she said, ‘I don’t understand this one at all …’

There was silence for a moment. ‘And finally a rope,’ said Therat finally, leaning forward to turn on the lantern once more.

‘Was it a cat thing or a demon thing, Highmost Kavi,’ asked Aghrehond in his bantering tone. ‘You seemed unable to make up your mind.’

‘Look for yourself,’ said Therat. ‘Here,’ she pointed to a place on the wall where a carved leopard – one assumed it was a leopard, as it had a spotted coat – was surrounded on three sides by devil faces. ‘The light overlapped. First on the cat, then on the face, then back again, wavering. Most unusual. Not the most unusual thing about this particular reading, however. Look over here. The light lit this place.’ She pointed.

‘There’s nothing there,’ said Marianne in surprise.

‘Exactly. There’s nothing there. There was something there until last week. There was a carving of a flowerpot there. But the man who came in to clean the floors knocked over his little cart, and it bumped just there, knocking the carving to bits. So! Does this reading mean that the flowerpot was supposed to be there? Or that nothing was supposed to be there? And if nothing, then what does that mean?’ Therat sounded excessively annoyed.

‘A road and a rope, a cat demon, and a vacancy?’ asked Marianne, trying not to sound amused.

‘The meaning may be something quite different,’ Therat answered her stiffly. ‘As you know, Your Excellency.’

‘Oh, Therat, don’t Excellency me. I’ve told you I hate it. The signs meant nothing to me, I’m sorry. I will rely on you to figure it out and let me know.’

‘The journey should be postponed until I have accomplished that,’ said Therat.

‘The journey can’t be postponed,’ Marianne answered. ‘You read the letter. You know. I know enough about the Cave to know there were no omens of destruction, Therat. I’ve at least skimmed through the great lectionary, so I do know that. And from what I’ve gathered from the lectionary, spotted cats and roads and ropes do not constitute serious warnings.’

‘Perhaps,’ the Kavi assented grudgingly. ‘I’ll study the implications. If I come up with anything, I’ll let you know.’

Marianne barely had time to get back to the Residence and dress for dinner before the arrival of four visiting dignitaries from neighboring countries. She spent the evening being a polite and accomplished hostess, and then, at last, was able to retire to the quiet of the master suite.

‘So you’re leaving tomorrow morning?’ Makr Avehl said, holding her close. ‘What did the Cave say?’

‘Something about roads and ropes and a spotted cat. Not even a black cat. Even I could have interpreted that.’

‘Call me if you need me,’ he said. ‘You know.’

She did know. She could call Makr Avehl without using any technological assistance. This was one of the individual abilities Great-aunt had been referring to in her letter. Marianne had several of them, and Makr Avehl had others.

‘Are you taking the … you know?’ He was referring to the timetwister, a device which Marianne had obtained on a former quite dangerous and mystical adventure.

From her pillow, she shook her head. No. No mystical devices. She might be tempted to use it if she had it, and using such things could be dangerous. She yawned.

He nodded his satisfaction with that. ‘Just find out what’s needed, love. Don’t get yourself involved in anything right now, but assure Dagma we’ll take care of it at the earliest opportunity.’

‘Mmmm,’ she assured him, drowsily.

He, hearing her sleepy breathing, did not insist that she promise him. Later, of course, he was very much to wish that he had. Though it might not have made any difference at all.

At Heathrow Airport, Marianne and Aghrehond had over an hour to spend between flights, and they wandered about, stretching their legs, shopping for magazines and Marianne’s favorite type of fruit gumdrop, which she couldn’t find.

‘Damn,’ she fussed. ‘You’d think any country with a confectionary industry could make nice, soft, fruit-flavored gumdrops instead of these rubbery awful things.’

‘Ah, pretty lady,’ sighed Aghrehond. ‘I know a place in Boston they may be had.’

‘I know that place, too. They import them from England! So why aren’t there any here?’

‘Possibly because the confectionary has been supplanted by that,’ he said, waving his hand at a brightly festooned store, obviously newly opened.

‘Cattermune’s,’ she read. ‘Now what in heaven’s name is that.’

‘We shall go see,’ he said ponderously, tucking her hand beneath his arm.

She started off obediently enough, but then the annunciator began its thunderous chatter, among which she heard the flight number and airline name she had half been listening for.

‘Our plane,’ she said definitely, turning about with Aghrehond tugged behind. ‘Come on, my friend, or we’ll miss it and be stuck in England overnight.’

Staring over his shoulder, Aghrehond complied. Cattermune’s. A very bright, festive store which seemed given over to games and amusements. Pity they didn’t have time to see it. Perhaps they could take time on the way back.

CHAPTER TWO

Arti and Haurvatat Zahmani, Marianne’s mother and father, met the plane and talked Marianne’s ear off most of the way back to the estate while Aghrehond sat placidly beaming. Marianne peered out at the green countryside and asked questions about all her friends and neighbors and her horse.

‘Rustam is getting terribly fat,’ her father said. ‘You’re in no shape to ride, Marianne, but you should arrange to ship Rustam to Alphenlicht as soon as the baby comes. I hired a stable boy, but he … well, Rustam just isn’t getting enough exercise.’

‘I didn’t write to tell you,’ her mother said, ‘but there’ve been a rash of disappearances, Marianne. The boy your father hired was one of them.’

‘Disappearances, Mama? Here? Do you know, almost the last thing Makr Avehl was talking to me about was disappearances.’

‘Don’t trouble your head about it, Mist Princess,’ her father said heavily with a disapproving glance at her mother. Haurvatat Zahmani was of that school which believed that no woman should be bothered with troublesome or unpleasant facts, particularly not when pregnant, as their fragile minds could easily be overstressed by any burden at that time. How he equated this with his usual demanding attitude toward all the female servants at the estate or his female employees, Marianne had never asked. She didn’t really need to. He would say that Arti and Marianne were different. They were family. Therefore fragile, and lovely, and to be treasured. Never mind that it didn’t make any sense, Haurvatat Zahmani would believe it anyhow. Who should know that better than Marianne, who had had to fight over and over again for the right to be something other than an unwilling bird in a luxuriously gilded cage.

Now she indicated that independence of spirit which he deplored. ‘I certainly will pay attention, Daddy. Who has disappeared, Mother?’

‘People. Just people. The postman, for one. A very happily married man with a new baby he absolutely doted on. And the butcher’s wife. You remember her, Marianne. The big, jolly woman with the laugh that sounded like it started down around her knees somewhere. People do vanish, of course. Children run away. Husbands get fed up and leave home. And so do wives. Old people decide to see the world. It’s just there’ve been so many disappearances lately, and most of them such very unlikely people.’

‘Police think they’ve found an anomaly,’ snorted Haurvatat.

‘A statistical anomaly,’ explained Arti. ‘Evidently there have been more people disappearing in our part of the United States than the statistical average.’

‘How long has this been going on?’ Marianne asked in wonder.

‘Well, one man at the capital says the anomaly started at least fifty years ago,’ her mother offered. ‘Of course, the governor says the man is mistaken.’

‘Governor says he’s a stupid ass,’ muttered Haurvatat. ‘I think the man has a glitch in his software somewhere.’

‘It does seem odd that if something has been going on for fifty years, it should only be noticed now,’ Marianne commented.

‘Oh, no, pretty lady,’ Aghrehond interjected cheerfully. ‘Many things go on for centuries occasioning no remark whatsoever, then, suddenly, someone will notice they are quite remarkable. Planets, you know. They did what they did for many centuries and no one thought much of it until someone said they did not do what people imagined at all. Then, of course, everyone paid attention to them. And genetics. Pink blossoms and white ones and no one having any idea what caused the one or the other. I, for example, had never noticed this place called Cattermune’s, but we have seen now four of them since leaving Alphenlicht.’

Four, Aghrehond?’

‘The one in England, pretty lady, and one at the airport here, and two more since, in shopping centers we have driven by.’

‘It’s a chain operation,’ said Haurvatat. ‘Games, I think, and hobby supplies, and toys for children.’

‘Ah,’ said Aghrehond. ‘I had not seen them before.’

‘I don’t think it’s a new company,’ Marianne’s father mused. ‘Seems to me there was one in New York City ten or twelve years ago. They must have just recently expanded.’

‘Another thing I have just noticed,’ Aghrehond went on irrepressibly, ‘is how like your mother you look, Marianne, though I have seen you both many times, but now I see it and remark upon it. Very much alike, are they not, Mr Zahmani, sir.’

‘Entirely too much,’ Haurvatat blustered. ‘Both as stubborn as mules. Still, I’m rather fond of them.’

‘And we of you, dear,’ murmured Arti with a wink at Marianne. ‘We’ll stop talking about disappearances if you think we should, if it upsets you.’

‘Doesn’t upset me,’ he mumbled, flushing a little. ‘Don’t want it upsetting you.’

‘Nonetheless, it is upsetting, isn’t it,’ said Marianne. ‘All very mysterious.’

‘Let’s get back to the subject of that horse of yours,’ said her father with ponderous cheer.

CHAPTER THREE

Great-aunt Dagma, who had always seemed to fill any room she happened to be in, was shrunken to the capacity of one narrow bed. When she opened her eyes, however, they were almost as snappingly black as ever, with the old ‘I will have no nonsense’ expression which Marianne remembered and treasured.

‘Great-aunt,’ she said, leaning forward to kiss her aged relative. ‘You were asleep when I got here.’

‘Marianne,’ Dagma said in return, her voice quite calm though not as strong as Marianne would have liked. ‘Thank you for coming. I’ve left this matter foolishly late. To tell you the truth, I’d totally forgotten about it. If it hadn’t been for that man, coming to ask about Father … Well, I am so thankful that you were within reach, that you responded, that you are here – though, even now, I’m not certain I should have bothered you with …’

‘I’m here, Aunt Dagma. You knew I’d come, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Oh, I knew you’d want to, child. Of course. I didn’t know if that husband of yours would want you to, not so close to the time for the baby, you know.’

‘Well, he did. Now why don’t you tell me what all this is about.’

The old woman didn’t respond at once. Instead, she shifted her eyes from Marianne’s face to the window across the room, looking out onto the green meadows and billowing trees of the Virginia countryside. The window stretched from the floor almost to the ceiling. Before it, muslin curtains blew gently into the room across polished walnut floors. There was the smell of lemon oil and pot pourri, and Marianne breathed it deeply, relishing it, the smell of home, ignoring the other smell that lay under it, the scent of mortality, age, and dissolution.

‘My father,’ Dagma said at last, ‘whom you never knew, my dear, was a very foolish man.’

Not knowing what else to do, Marianne merely looked sympathetic, cocking her head to acknowledge that there must be more to it than that. ‘You said a man came to ask about him?’

‘Just last week. So strange. If my father were still alive, he would be one hundred thirty years old, and he certainly wouldn’t be here, living with your dear papa, and yet this very strange person came to ask for him. “Does anyone here know of Staurbat Zahmani?” He had a very furry, portentous voice, quite loud. Even from my room here, I heard him myself, down in the front hall.’

‘That is strange,’ murmured Marianne. ‘Maybe he was thinking of someone else.’

‘No. He said Staurbat Zahmani, and then he said, “He had a daughter, Dagma.” Well, then I heard your father say something about his uncle having been dead for fifty years and his daughter being very ill, “Not expected to get better, I’m afraid,” is what your dear papa said. Haurvatat has always been quite diplomatic. He could just as well have told the man I’m dying.’

‘What happened then, Great-aunt?’

‘The man went away. Haurvatat came up to tell me about it. It made no sense to either of us, but it did start me thinking about my father. When he was young he was foolish, Marianne, and he matured into a very silly man. When he was well along in years, younger than I am now but still what one would think of as having attained the age of wisdom, he got himself into a good deal of difficulty with a … well, with the supernatural.’

Without meaning to, Marianne exclaimed a non-word of shock and dismay.

‘Oh, I know. You’ve had your troubles with such things, too. Witches, and warlocks, and shamans, I have no doubt. I’ve put two and two together, my dear. I’m not entirely unschooled in some of the things you’ve – well, what shall we say – “happened upon.” I spent my youth in Alphenlicht. I learned of, well … the things one does learn about in Alphenlicht. Everyone there takes the supernatural very seriously. Your dear parents don’t know anything about those things, of course. They love to talk about their Alphenlichtian heritage, but they’re fully acculturated here. They certainly have no idea about what you really are – or what your half brother really was before he died. I was speaking of you the other day to your dear mother, and I called you “Marianne Three,” and your mother gave me this very odd look. You are the third Marianne, though, aren’t you?’

Marianne did not answer. She merely gave her great-aunt a slightly questioning look as though to say, ‘Dear one, what are you talking about.’

‘Never mind. If you are what I think you are, you have lived your life over at least three times and have learned things that other people could not even imagine. However, I wouldn’t expect you to tell me about it. If you aren’t what I think you are, you possibly can’t help me at all. So, I’m going to assume that you are …’ She cocked her head at Marianne, but Marianne made no response. Her silence came partly from surprise and partly from shock – she had thought no one but Makr Avehl and Aghrehond and Makr Avehl’s sister Ellat and certain of the Kavi could possibly have known about … well, about all that. Though if any member of her family could have understood about it all, it would probably have been Great-aunt Dagma.

The old woman went on. ‘Be that as it may. That’s your business and I won’t try to intrude on it, certainly not at this late date. Getting back to my problem …

‘My foolish father was an inveterate gambler. In these days we know it can be a kind of illness, like alcoholism, but in his day he was regarded by his family and friends merely as having a defective moral nature. He would gamble on anything, with anyone. And he did so, more than once, at times and in places which were not at all appropriate to say nothing of being sensible! Or safe! On one such occasion my father made a bet with, well, with a supernatural being, and my father lost.’ She paused, as though uncertain how to go on.

‘He couldn’t pay?’ prompted Marianne.

The old woman shook her head. ‘Well he could, of course, but he very much wished to avoid it. He had bet his life and his soul, Marianne. He had been what we would say in this country, “set up.” The bet had not been a fair one, but nonetheless, his life and his soul had been lost. By “soul” was meant, I believe, whatever essential nature it is that we humans persist in believing exists. His life was merely his life, but his soul was his “selfhood.” To give him credit, he was a good deal more worried about that than he was about his life. Father took ridiculous risks with his life from time to time, and it never seemed to concern him at all. Now, I don’t know whether souls really exist. When I was younger, I shrugged the question off, but at my age, of course, one wonders. If they do exist, there are certain conditions under which it would be quite terrible for one to be lost …’

‘I should imagine so,’ Marianne interjected, appalled.

‘… such as losing one’s identity to some malignant being for all eternity.’

‘What being?’ Marianne asked, having had some experience with malignant beings in the past.

‘My father never said. I had the impression it was … well. Do you believe in demons, Marianne?’

‘Makr Avehl tells me there are … such things.’

‘I think so, too. Well, when my father had lost his bet and became fully aware of the implications of what he had done, he was in sheer desperation and he went to someone for help. An expatriate Lubovoskan living here in the United States, a shaman named Grutch. Not his real name, of course, which is or was unpronounceable, but Father called him Grutch.’

This was bad news for Marianne. Lubovosk was infamous for its shamans, and she, herself, had reason to know how well deserved that reputation was. ‘Your father felt this Grutch was very powerful?’ suggested Marianne.

‘There would have been little point in going to someone who wasn’t,’ Dagma snapped. ‘And, believe me, whatever you are thinking at this moment concerning my father’s sanity, I thought at the time and said, at some length, to Father. I expatiated on foolishness and irresponsibility and so forth, so we needn’t go over all that again …’ Dagma panted a little, raising herself in the bed. Marianne helped her, then smoothed down the pillow and coverlet.

‘Now, my dear, this is all very muddled because though my father did tell me about it, he told me a slightly different story each time – trying to make himself appear in a more flattering light, I should think. Putting two and two together, I pieced out what had happened. This shaman, Grutch, obtained for my father a very powerful talisman that belonged to a creature named Cattermune. Grutch told my father that this talisman was from some Other Place.’

‘Cattermune! Other Place?’

‘Well, when one hears that phrase, one thinks of hell, doesn’t one? But it was not hell, my dear. I really don’t think so. No, just an Other Place. At any rate, Grutch told my father how he could use this talisman – and I have no idea myself how it was done – and when the supernatural being came to collect my father’s life and soul, the talisman protected my father and the being went away in a fury.’

‘Had this Cattermune set a price for this talisman?’

‘My father said not, and each time he told the story he was consistent in this particular detail, which made me believe it was more or less true. Grutch told my father that this being, Cattermune, simply liked helping people. That though Cattermune – let me see, what were Papa’s exact words – “That though Cattermune expected any grateful person would return the talisman by the indicated date, he was happy to lend it out of the goodness of his heart.” Cattermune’s heart, that is.’

‘What was this talisman that your father borrowed?’

‘It was … is … appears to be a matchbox.’

‘A matchbox,’ Marianne repeated expressionlessly.

‘It’s over there, on the table by the window. A gold matchbox. There may have been matches in it at one time. Perhaps they were ensorcelled matches. Or if not matches, something else.’

‘I see.’

Great-aunt Dagma turned restlessly upon the pillow and gave Marianne a grumpy look. ‘Well, you know that you don’t “see,” and neither do I, because the entire matter made very little sense. However, I do remember very distinctly that the matchbox was supposed to be returned. My father said, in this infuriatingly casual way he had when he was skating along the very edge of disaster, “He wants it back, of course.” And I said, “Who does, Father?” and he replied, “This fellow Cattermune, from the Other Place, of course. He wants it back by his birthday.” And then Father laughed and told me when the birthday was. “If I don’t get it back to him by then, I’ll be overdue,” he said.’

‘Did you ask him what “overdue” meant?’

‘I did. He didn’t seem greatly concerned. And the date it was to be returned was so very far in the future that, quite frankly, I didn’t take it seriously.’

‘Umm. Perhaps your father thought it would be like an overdue book at the library.’

‘Well, that’s about what I thought originally. Nothing serious. Something rather casual. Twenty cents a day fine. Something like that. But I’m afraid it was really rather more than that. Dagma pushed herself up on her pillows, an angry flush making her cheeks red and hectic-looking. ‘Father talked to me a lot. He told me stories about himself even when I wished very much he would not, because he seldom told them completely or with any accuracy and I found his tales confusing. In addition to which they deprived me of something every daughter should be allowed to have: respect for her father! It was as though by telling me of his failings, even though he minimized everything when he did so, he had somehow exculpated himself from any responsibility for them. In this case, he actually did free himself of any responsibility …’ Her voice faded away and her eyes closed.

Marianne waited for a moment and then prompted gently, ‘Dagma, what happened?’

The aged woman opened her eyes, shook her head from side to side, very gently, as though she were afraid it might come off at the neck, then said, ‘At the time of the initial incident, Father spoke to me about the matchbox half a dozen times, over a period of three or four months. Then, after that, he didn’t mention it for years. I quite forgot about it. Much later – I think it must have been at least ten or eleven years later – Father made a trip to Alphenlicht. I’m quite sure he made a visit to the Cave of Light. Father was entirely capable of going to the Cave of Light for a tip on a horse race.’

‘Not very respectful,’ murmured Marianne, wondering how Therat would have reacted to a petitioner taking advantage of Alphenlicht’s national religious shrine to get a gambling tip.

‘Father was not a respectful kind of person. Well, in any event, he returned from Alphenlicht very gray in the face. I recall it well. I had a dinner engagement the night he returned, a man I loved very much, a man I believed would have asked me to marry him on that evening. I was tired of being a spinster. I was, quite frankly, middle-aged. Father asked me to break the date. He said he had something he had to tell me, and then when I had done what he asked – which offended my friend greatly, by the way. Though we saw one another after that, he never did … well, that night was the end of all my hopes – when I sat down with father, he trembled and rambled and contradicted himself and it was very difficult to make any sense whatsoever of it. The gist of the matter was that the matchbox, which he had always treated as a kind of joke, had to be returned. He had to return it! He had forgotten about it, he told me, he had not thought it was important, but it had to be returned.’

‘Well then,’ Marianne said impatiently, ‘why didn’t he?’

‘I’m telling you, child. By the time he got to the point it was rather late in the evening. He said, “In the morning. First thing in the morning. You’ll find the things in my second desk drawer on the left, Dagma. Bring them up when you bring my tea.” I always used to take him tea in the morning. He treasured my doing so, and it was little enough in the way of filial duty. Mind you, he said all this in a very serious voice, quite a frightened voice, a tone which transfixed me because it was so unlike him. Father always treated disaster as though it were some kind of minor inconvenience, and to hear him actually frightened …’

‘Yes?’ Marianne prompted once more.

‘Well, when I took up his tea along with the paper and other things from his desk drawer, I found he had died in his sleep, smiling quite peacefully. He had died very conveniently. I’m afraid I have always felt that he knew the heart attack was coming, that he had passed on his responsibilities purposely, merely to avoid cleaning up the messy details of his life. They were many, and some of them were quite unpleasant. His relationships with women after my poor mother died were convoluted in the extreme. He had made certain representations to at least six ladies, representations which he had no way at all of making good even if he had lived for some time longer.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Marianne inadequately.

‘So was I, and so, needless to say, were they. Ah, well, it’s long ago. I was very angry and hurt at the time, but it is far in the past. I did get everything take care of, bit by bit, except for this matter …’

‘I should have thought you would have seen to this at once, especially since he had mentioned it just before he died.’

‘When Papa died, Marianne, there were things that seemed of more immediate concern, believe me. The date he had mentioned as the deadline for the return of the matchbox was ludicrously far in the future. Fifty years in the future. Even though he had said he intended to take care of it immediately, there were more urgent things that had to be done right then. I did not really forget about it, Marianne. From time to time I would remind myself …’

‘Dagma.’

‘Yes, child.’

‘If your father was dead, surely the responsibility to return the thing died with him.’

‘Well, of course it did, if we were speaking only of responsibility and not of consequences. When I went through Father’s things, I found a letter which he had written on the plane on his way back from Alphenlicht. He had written it to me, perhaps intending to post it and then disappear, leaving it to me to take care of. That would have been a bit much, however, even for Father, and he hadn’t sent it.’

‘And it said?’

‘That if the matchbox was not returned, there would be terrible consequences. His exact words were, “To me, and to my nearest and dearest and to theirs …” How could one interpret this? I judged it to mean there were dreadful consequences to him, and if not to him, to his nearest kin.’

‘You?’

‘Me. And failing me, my nearest kin, my nephew – your dear papa. And failing him, his nearest kin, which would be you, Marianne. Or your baby.’

‘Oh, my God,’ Marianne said feelingly.

‘Precisely. Well, finding the letter was more or less the last straw. My love had abandoned me. Father had died. There was all his mess and confusion. I had what in those days was called a “nervous breakdown” and spent several months in hospital. When I came out, I fully intended to take care of it but didn’t. I should have taken care of it years ago. I didn’t. Funk, probably. Not knowing how to go about it.’ The dark eyes fixed on the garden shifted around the room. ‘And anger at him, of course, for leaving me with all his unfinished business. And then, he had told me that it didn’t need to be done until fifty years in the future! It’s so unlikely. Perhaps I thought I would die and someone else would have to … No. I hope I was not that craven! I simply postponed the matter. Over and over again, postponed it. Half the time I didn’t even believe it.’

‘And the other half …’

‘I did, and it frightened me. So I didn’t think about it. I must have inherited that ability from Father, the ability to conveniently forget …’

‘When does it have to be returned by, Aunt Dagma.’

‘Next Thursday, dear. Six days from now …’

Marianne felt a tumbling wave of panic. She had assumed it would be something she could take care of after the baby came. This had to be done at once.

‘Perhaps Makr Avehl …’ she began.

‘Father’s letter said the matchbox had to be returned by a blood member of the family,’ Great-aunt Dagma concluded. ‘So you see, it’s no good our asking Makr Avehl to help.’

‘How, where …’ she stuttered.

‘Well, that’s really the problem, how and where. If I had known how and where, I would likely have taken care of the matter long ago. The whole thing is rather mysterious. I still have the original paper and things that I took from his desk drawer the morning I found him dead,’ said Dagma, pulling out the drawer in the nightstand beside her bed and removing a folded sheet of parchment. Her fingers trembled as she unfolded it and went on trembling as Marianne leaned closer. ‘I did look at them at the time. I can’t say they made sense to me.’ She whispered this last, leaning over the parchment.

Marianne turned the sheet, examining it closely. Printed or drawn on it was a twining line of squares, with various offshoots from the main line. Some of the squares were printed with meaningless words, others were squiggles. It reminded Marianne of something, but for a time she could not think what it was. Then it came to her.

‘It’s like a board game, isn’t it?’ Marianne cried. ‘Snakes and ladders. I used to play that with my English cousins. What’s this? It says, “Start Here,” then there’s a square reading “Space to let,” then the next one reads, “Buttercup, Birth to Eight Years.”’

Dagma pulled herself into a half sitting position. ‘After that one comes a square reading “Forever,” then one that says “The Shoe,” then one that reads, “G’nop, 3 Minutes.”’

‘A game? Some kind of game.’ Marianne stared at it, trying to force it to make sense. ‘Dagma, do you have any idea what the consequences are if we don’t get the matchbox back to its owner?’

‘I have no idea, except that Father described them as horrible.’

‘Loss of one’s … um … soul?’

‘I suppose that’s possible.’

‘You? And then my father? And then me, and the baby?’

Dagma nodded slowly, her eyes suddenly ancient and no longer bright. ‘I would play the game myself, right now, if I only knew how …’

Marianne went to the table by the window where the matchbox lay and took it into her hand. A simple thing, but heavy, clearly made of gold, with a slide-out drawer to hold matches or whatever it had held or did hold. Around the outside were lines of deeply engraved characters, not in any written language Marianne had ever seen before, and on the top and bottom of the matchbox was the deeply etched design of an anchor attached to a chain. The chain curled up, over the edge of the box, and disappeared into the crack where the drawer went. The carved inscription was probably a spell, she thought, source of the power of the box. She shook it. Something inside rattled harshly. Not matches. Something harder than that. She tried to open the box, unsuccessfully.

‘I don’t think you can open it except when you have to,’ Dagma said.

‘I find it very strange. That is, the name of the creature who lent this to your father.’

‘Is that any stranger than any other part of it? Someone named Cattermune? From some Other Place? Here, on this parchment, there are several references to Cattermune. One square is labeled “Cattermune’s House,” and another is “Cattermune’s Pique.” An odd name, yes, and yet there is a shop of that name in the city. I saw an advertisement in the paper only last week, just after the man had been here. I took it as another reminder …’

‘That name has popped up half a dozen times in the last few days,’ Marianne replied. ‘If it is a reminder, it seems to be reminding the whole world! Aghrehond and I saw a shop with that name in London. And at the airport here. And twice more, in shopping centers …’

‘It could be only coincidence,’ Dagma murmured. ‘Couldn’t it?’

‘You said your father left the original paper “and things.” What “things,” Dagma?’ Marianne returned to the bed, absentmindedly dropping the matchbox into her pocket.

Dagma reached into the drawer beside her once more, bringing out a thick envelope which she spilled onto the bedcover – a pair of dice and several inch-long figures which appeared to have been carved from semi-precious jewels. Marianne picked them up and examined them one by one. A turquoise tortoise. A rhodolite rhinoceros. An amethyst ape. A malachite mouse. Marianne stared at them, childhood memories stirring. ‘Game pieces,’ she said. ‘That’s what they are. And, that tells us how to play, Dagma.’ She spread the parchment on the bedside table and placed the malachite mouse on the square lettered ‘Start Here.’

‘Now,’ she said without thinking about it, utterly unaware of what she was saying. ‘I think we can assume it would be played this way. The first thing to do would be roll the dice …’

She threw them out upon the game and they came to rest, one, and one.

‘Snake eyes,’ said Marianne, just before she vanished.

CHAPTER FOUR

Buttercup saw nothing. Mouse saw everything. To Buttercup, sounds were only sensations, some pleasurable, some not. To Mouse they were voices and tocsins and occasions for fear or reassurance. To Buttercup, the world went by in a haze of milky unconsciousness, but to Mouse, it germinated, grew, assumed proportions of threat and vengeance – and opportunity.

The worst part of it was, from Mouse’s point of view, that she could do nothing about anything except perceive it. In the beginning, she could not even stop Buttercup’s aimless armwaving and thumb-sucking. Later on, when it would have been possible for her to stop the thumb-sucking or the howling or anything else she pleased, Mouse had settled down into her observer’s role and was, if not content, at least reconciled to letting time pass.

There was the physical anomaly, of course. Certain parts of Buttercup’s anatomy were not what Mouse was accustomed to, particularly certain parts of the face and feet. For a time this half-familiar, half-strange feeling made her feel panicky, almost hysterical, but then some recollection of other, similar, occurrences soothed her. Time, she told herself. Time would work things out. She settled herself into the mostly milky nothingness to wait it out. There was plenty of time.

And with every passing day, it became easier, she had to admit that. As Buttercup acquired understanding and volition and even a limited ability to communicate, it became easier for Mouse to bear. Sheer tedium gave way to matters of at least transitory interest.

Time passed. The milky unconsciousness turned into perception, into sounds and smells and sights, into the feel of hands on her skin. Single things, at first, and then sequences. And, finally, a full perception of something actually happening: the arrival with her wet nurse at the house of Mr Thrumm.

It was her first clear memory. Before that she might have heard people in some other and previous location speculating as to whether it was yet safe for her to travel, and she did recall a thin and insinuating voice saying something about her safety – ‘The Van Hoost rogue’s safety!’ – being of no possible concern to anyone. She remembered very little of the journey. Perhaps it had been brief. Perhaps she had slept through it. Perhaps, and it was not impossible, she had been drugged. Much later, recollecting Nursey’s predeliction for saving trouble by any and every means at hand, she thought it not unlikely that Nursey had simply given her something to keep her quiet until they arrived. By that time, she had stopped distinguishing between herself, Mouse, and her other self, Buttercup. It was futile. One could only watch and listen and wait for the time when things would straighten themselves out again.

Arrival at Mr Thrumm’s house, however, she perceived in all its details.

‘Here you are,’ burbled Mr Thrumm, peering at her through his thick glasses. ‘From the Palace of the Old Queen, as promised, one article. A sweet one, Nurse, yes she is. But I do see what they meant, indeed I do. She has the Van Hoost chin, doesn’t she?’

‘So they say, sir,’ boomed Nurse. ‘Though I can’t think why. It seems a very babylike chin to me. Not unlike most babies. And if it is a bit Van Hoosty, what of it?’

‘Well,’ he replied, opening the door and beckoning them in (part of her remembered the wheels of a carriage leaving just then, the grating sound of gravel underlying his voice). ‘Well, now, what of it? My dear Nurse, during the reign of one of the aunts of the current Queen – was it during Grislda’s time or Hermione’s? Or could it have been Euthasia? I can never recall – it was determined that the fall in the fortunes of the Royal House had come about because of the admixture of the tainted Van Hoost blood.’

‘Van Hoost was only a young rooster, for heaven’s sake,’ said Nursey. ‘And it was all of a long time ago.’

‘Be that as it may, Nurse. This charge of yours is only the latest in a long line of Van Hoost chins, elbows, and heels – the Van Hoost heel is unmistakable even at an early age – to be sent into banishment – that is, into the care of the Thrumms.’

The three of them, Thrumm, Nursey, and infant went in, taking Mouse along perforce, unseen, unregarded, unsuspected. Buttercup, the infant, had no means of knowing that it was impossible for a child of her tender age to understand, much less remember this occasion. She, the infant, Buttercup, had no means of knowing that such perception was beyond one of her extreme youth and that she must, therefore, be possessed in some very strange way. The urgency and uniqueness of that arrival faded into memory as time went by. There had been only the one arrival, and Buttercup – or Mouse – remembered that distinctly, but subsequently there were many days and seasons of living in Thrumm House, all much alike. They tended to fade together into one endless montage, though the infant still retained very clear and detailed memories of her early months, phrasing these memories to herself in language. The infant had not, as yet, any understanding of language. She did not recognize language, much less speak it, but Mouse did, and Mouse remembered it for her.

Thrumm House was remarkable neither for its size nor for its rather undistinguished exterior architecture, a style referred to in some quarters as Nuvo Obfuscian. It was a dwelling of some fifteen or twenty major rooms, interesting mainly in the extent of its internal drawering. The number and variety of drawers was uncommon, if not unique. They covered every wall from floor to ceiling: the bathing chambers, the stairways, the kitchens – even the little porch where Nursey sat on rainy days singing nursery songs and rubbing thube shrinking salve into her charge’s Van Hoost chin – all the rooms were lined with drawers. There were large ones, including those in which the inhabitants slept, medium-sized and smallish ones for the storage of a multitude of necessary things, and then hundreds of very tiny ones along the floor or up beneath the coving of the stained and cracked ceilings. Some had heavy, ornamental castings as handles. Others had simple knobs of porcelain or simulacre or gold.

In the child’s own room there were one thousand six hundred and forty-three drawers. She learned this as soon as she was able to count though she had known it before. She learned at the same time that most of the drawers were quite empty. Only one of them had anything in it that she had previously put there. As soon as she could walk, she had taken the jar of thube salve which Nursey was wont to rub into her chin and emptied it into one of the tiniest drawers, refilling the jar with tallow from the kitchen. What moved her to this effort, Buttercup the infant could not have said. Mouse would have said that the thube salve smelled abominably and, more to the point, it itched. The kitchen grease did not smell quite the same, but Nursey, who had very little sense of smell, never noticed the difference and went on tallowing her charge’s chin every afternoon for years.

A tribe of small waltzing mice lived in several of the medium-sized drawers, drawers which Mouse, though not Buttercup, thought were probably connected to the kitchen because of the smell of toasted cheese which emanated each time she opened them. The mice were companions, not useful for conversation but infinitely amusing in the long, dusky holiday hours when the shutters were closed and there was nothing to do. Some of the drawers in the orangery had lizards living in them, and there were bright, glistening snakes in the drawers of the small porch. All in all, she preferred the mice for the bedroom.

When Buttercup was still quite young, after she had learned to walk and count but before she was weaned or could talk with clarity, Mr Thrumm began to object to the name ‘Buttercup.’

‘Not a name which will do,’ opined Mr Thrumm. ‘Not one which will be acceptable on the occasion.’

‘Well, for heaven’s sake, I’ve got to call her something!’ Nursey objected with that stubborn intransigence which was natural to all Nurseys. ‘I can’t go on saying “her” all the time.’

Mr Thrumm grumbled, but did not insist. Acceptable or not, it was the name by which the infant became known to those around her. As herself, she accepted the name, thinking nothing of it. The mouse part thought to itself that it was a ridiculous name for anyone, but most especially a ridiculous name for this – this being that she was inhabiting.

Mr Thrumm, in whose house they dwelt, was not the only Mr Thrumm. Buttercup was to meet three Mr Thrumms, virtually identical in appearance though somewhat varied in habit. Each of them, seemingly, had been awarded the care and custody of Van Hoost rogues since the time, approximately, of Hermione. Buttercup’s own Mr Thrumm was named Raphael. The others, who visited from time to time, were Jonas and Cadmon. Buttercup came to understand that there had always been three Mr Thrumms, always so named. Whether these were the original or successor ones, she was never able to establish, and in fact she – including her separate inhabitant self – grew to feel that it did not really matter.

Mr Thrumm, whether the current Mr Thrumm or a predecessor, had to have collected everything stored away in the drawers of Thrumm House. The current Mr Thrumm, however, passed his time looking for things he or his predecessors had hidden. In the evenings he would sit in a half-open drawer staring into the fire while he made lists of things he hoped to find on the following day. Then, on the morrow, he would look for these things, always finding others which were not on his list. Exclamations of interest and amusement followed these discoveries, though he never actually laughed, and the fact that he seldom if ever found what he sought did not dissuade him from making another interminable list on the following evening. He was not in the least disheartened. He would say to Buttercup, ‘Well, lass, try again, what? Got to be there somewhere, that’s what I say. Those memorabilia of the Great Grisl-Threepian War, for example. Couldn’t have been thrown away, could they? Keep looking, and eventually they’ll turn up.’

Perhaps it was the constant repetition of these words, or perhaps it was that Mouse finally managed to get through to her, that caused Buttercup to hear a reverberation of his words in her own mind, an almost echo instructing her in a firm and not unfamiliar voice, ‘There’s something in this house that I need. Something I had with me when I left. It isn’t in here, where I am, so it must be out there, in the house. You’ll have to find it for me. Don’t forget it, now. It’s important.’

Buttercup could not imagine what this something might be, but the reminder irritated her, causing her to lose sleep, making her lie awake in the closely shuttered dark wondering what might possibly be in any of the drawers that was important to her. Mouse saw this restlessness with satisfaction. She knew she had had the matchbox with her when she left … left wherever she had been. Where had she been? Sometimes it was almost on the tip of her tongue. She had been in … She had been on … Never mind. Wherever it had been, she knew it had not simply been ‘lost in transit.’ The matchbox could not be lost in that way. Intrinsic to its nature or structure was an inviolability of direction. If she, Mouse, had come here, then it, matchbox, had come here as well. It was nearby, and it was up to Buttercup to find it.

In the course of time, Buttercup was weaned, toilet-trained, and taught proper speech and elementary deportment. She achieved her third birthday. It was time for Nursey to depart and for the tutor to arrive. Buttercup did not weep when Nursey went. There was a feeling almost of relief to smell the last of that thube-reeking, deep-uddered being. When night came, however, grief came with it bringing shuddering sobs which Buttercup could in no wise understand. It was as though the very foundation of her life had been torn away without her realizing it. That night she experienced a strong, almost imperative dream in which the unknown voice reminded her to search for something – something very important to her. She wakened from it half terrified.

She sought no comfort from Mr Thrumm. Even in the midst of her grief, she was cognizant that Mr Thrumm would offer her no consolation, even if he had known how.

The tutor was a tall, pale individual who wore tight trousers and short, many-pocketed jackets worked with scenes of forests and glades in tapestry stitch. He carried a slender cane with which he switched the heads off of grasses and wildflowers while on walks. His name was John Henry Sneeth. He confessed in an embarrassed whisper that he did not like the names John and Henry and would prefer to be called simply ‘Sneeth.’ Buttercup had had no intercourse with the outer world and therefore did not at the time think this a ridiculous request, though Mr Thrumm rolled his eyes and pinched his mouth as though to keep back laughter and Mouse rolled about in amusement, figuratively speaking, since Mouse, being disembodied, had no ability to roll about in actuality.

Ribble the cook also quivered with merriment for days after first meeting Sneeth. There were, in addition to Thrumm and Sneeth, two other older persons in Thrumm House, the Ribble couple: cadaverous Ribble who tended the gardens and fat Ribble who cooked. Cook Ribble made up for all the laughter no one else used. Cook was always aquiver: chins, belly, bosom, tiny jiggly bits and pieces around the elbows and knees moving in a constant delirium of motion. Cook’s laughter was as without end as without cause. Cook simply moved in it, like a fish in water, unconscious of its being a medium of transport.

Cadaverous Gardener Ribble was as dry and brittle as a burnt bird’s bone. Gardener Ribble seldom spoke and was never amused.

Sneeth took up the Buttercup’s tutelage with something approaching enthusiasm, at least he did so at first. Simple reading, writing, arithmetic, basic history – though Buttercup had the feeling that he left things out of history, either through carelessness or ignorance, or from some other motive she could not discern – and, of course, deportment. Mr Thrumm recurrently suggested the importance of deportment. Why it should be important for someone virtually expunged from the memory of the Royal Family to be instructed in the minutia of aristocratic customs and behavior made no sense at all. According to Mr Thrumm, it was important. Sneeth always complied with Mr Thrumm’s suggestions, however gently they might be phrased, and deportment became important to Sneeth.

It was Sneeth’s inclination, however, no less than Buttercup’s own, to ignore the curriculum laid down as much as possible, that is, at any point at which the basics were well in hand. Once the subject matter was reasonably well understood, Sneeth found no reason to continue with the dull texts prescribed by custom (or Thrumm) when there were other, more interesting – even though forbidden – books available.

And there were. The drawers in the library were packed with volumes. Others filled the lower stairway drawers and those in the back pantry. In the root cellar, where no one would expect to find books at all, Buttercup found a collection of what were possibly the most interesting volumes on the property. These included books of wonder stories, some purely fanciful and others based in fact, concerning other worlds and peoples. There was also a collection of the Palace Newspapers, a rich trove of mystery and intrigue beside which mere history (however truncated to eliminate boring detail) paled to nothing. From them, and without Sneeth’s knowledge, Buttercup learned many things she was not supposed to know. She learned, for example, what had happened to the Van Hoost consorts. She learned the ritual of Royal Challenge, during which the Heiress Presumptive, challenged by at least one other Grisl of Royal Blood, must prove herself able to emerge victorious from combat. She read with interest accounts of current and bygone fads and fashions at the Palace, who and what was in and who and what was out, and why. Though all these matters were but dimly understood, scarcely more relevant than if they had recounted the customs of savage Earthians or Jambanders, they had a certain fascination and served to fill up the vacant corners of an eager young mind.

It was in one of these same drawers that she found a small gold box, greeting this discovery with a wash of grateful emotion so ecstatic that it left her limp. Under Mouse’s direction, Buttercup took the box to her room and secreted it in one of the tiny drawers, where she, guided by Mouse, could take it out and fondle it from time to time, though she had no idea why. ‘Never mind why,’ Mouse said within her mind. ‘It’s important, that’s all.’

Sneeth and Buttercup were largely unsupervised, so long as the examiners, who arrived once each year, were satisfied with the progress of Mr Thrumm’s protégée. A Van Hoost chin, taken alone, was not sufficient to warrant actual execution, but such a chin coupled with intransigent ignorance of deportment and protocol might well be. Mr Thrumm was at some pains to point this out. As a result of this threat, the latter part of each winter was spent in a feverish attempt to master all the information which had been largely ignored since the previous spring. Buttercup rather liked these intellectual sprints. She quite enjoyed the haunted expression which Sneeth came to wear on these occasions, realizing full well that his own destiny was tied to hers. If Buttercup failed, so did Sneeth. For Buttercup, contemplation of this fact lent piquancy to what might have been an otherwise tedious span of years.

In the spring the examiners came. In company with one or two who changed from visit to visit there was always one named Fribberle who came again and again. He had a dour and reproving countenance. He sat with the others at one end of the table in the formal dining room while Buttercup stood at the other end of the table, hands folded in front of her, face composed. This was elementary deportment. One did not twitch. And, despite Cook’s example, one did not laugh. And one did not show interest beyond mere politeness. One answered briefly, accurately, demonstrating if requested. The bow direct. The bow deferential. The bow obsequious. The challenge Royal. The challenge covert. The nod of dismissal. The nod of repudiation. She learned them all and practiced them in front of her mirror. There was never any trouble with the examinations. Buttercup always passed.

And each time the examiners left, Sneeth and Buttercup were left to their own devices once more. There were weeks and months during which they could amuse themselves, weeks and months in which Buttercup experienced virtual contentment – except for the internal voice of Mouse which sometimes wakened her in the night trying to give her unwanted advice.

Thrumm House was situated on a pleasant prominence overlooking the Welling Valley and the village of Lesser Wellingford. Greater Wellingford had been widely distributed by flood some years before and was no longer sufficiently aggregate to merit attention. Lesser Wellingford offered plentiful amusements, however. Sneeth and Buttercup could shop in the main street, or visit the parrot market or buy hot seed pies from the piemonger, and do all these things without offending against what Sneeth was pleased to call Buttercup’s ‘dignity.’ Certain other pleasures, such as watching a grisling show, were forbidden lest they result in this offense.

‘I don’t know what you mean by “dignity,” Sneeth,’ she complained when he refused for the third time to allow her to see the grisling show. The two of them were standing on the midway of a traveling circus that came frequently to the Welling Valley during the summer, and Buttercup was staring up at the banners that advertised this event. ‘I am a rogue daughter of the ruling house. I’ve been banished. I don’t know what dignity I’ve got.’

‘More than me,’ he mumbled.

‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, ‘but then I am female. That means I have more dignity that you or Thrumm or Cook and more than all the villagers, too, because you and they are all males, but that doesn’t signify much. I don’t know what it has to do with watching a grisling show.’

‘Mr Thrumm would have a fit if he found out.’

‘How in the world would he find out! He doesn’t come down to the village. None of these oafs are going to go up to Thrumm House and tell him.’

‘You won’t tell him?’

‘Of course I won’t tell him. Don’t be silly. I don’t want to get into trouble.’

Sneeth bought tickets, insisting that they enter the show through the rear tent flap and set themselves well toward the back, where they would not make themselves a part of the spectacle.

The stage was small. Grislings themselves were small. Buttercup watched, entranced, as the little females decked themselves in their finery – they had been trained to do this, of course, it was no part of the wild behavior – and then went through the classic motions of challenge and attack. A cage of males was surreptitiously placed near the platform to provoke this behavior. The little females looked almost Grisllike, almost human with their cocky little heads and delicate arms. Their ivory spurs had been replaced with false, flexible ones so they could not hurt one another, and the growth of their paralyzing fangs had been suppressed with thube. They had been cleaned and groomed until they were very pretty, and Buttercup thought that she preferred them even to the waltzing mice. They looked so very human. Almost as though they might speak at any moment, demanding access to the cage of males which had been hastily taken away as soon as battle was joined.

‘That’s not fair,’ Buttercup protested. ‘Taking the males away from the little pink one. She won the fight.’

‘Well – but,’ Sneeth stuttered, turning quite red. ‘That’s not a nice thing to say! If they had left the males there, she would have … well, it’s not something we could watch. Not good deportment, at all. Not civilized!’

She subsided, still thinking it had been quite unfair, but distracting herself with the thought of hot seed pie. She and Sneeth usually bought pies for themselves plus two to carry back, one for Gardener Ribble and one for the gardener’s boy. Ribble always had a boy, someone from the village or the surrounding area who was willing to work for three meals a day, a drawer to sleep in, and a seed pie now and again.

They wandered munchingly along the valley, licking syrup from their chins, climbing over a stile to ascend the hill toward Thrumm House, then stopping as they heard a sound in the underbrush nearby, a kind of stifled snigger.

Sneeth dithered, turning toward and then away from the noise.

‘Come on,’ instructed Buttercup. ‘I want to see what that is.’ She streaked away through the grasses, Sneeth tiptoeing guiltily behind, and threw herself at the top of an embankment to peer between two shrubs.

Below her in a tiny clearing was the latest gardener’s boy, and on the earth before him were two wild grislings engaged in battle. They were in no wise as lovely as the groomed ones Buttercup had seen so recently upon the stage but no less human-looking for that. Buttercup drew in her breath, letting it out in one long shriek of fury. The boy, the filthy boy, had cut the spurs from one of the grislings leaving her helpless before the paralyzing attack of the other. She had already been cut to ribbons while the boy sat there sniggering and playing with himself.

Buttercup was about to launch herself at him, with no clear idea of what she might accomplish – he outweighed her by half – when Sneeth came down the embankment, lashing away with his cane, catching the boy full across his face and sending him screaming away across the fields, blood streaming down his neck.

Buttercup cradled the maimed grisling, but it was far too late. As she held the little creature it sighed and expired in her arms.

She turned, hiding tears with difficulty. Only her long study of deportment let her continue the journey home without showing her feelings on her face. When they arrived there, she went up the stairs, intending to shut herself into her room, but was stopped halfway down the hall by the sound of conversation in the foyer below.

‘… whipped him and he ran off, but she had already seen it. Never should have been done where she could see it!’

Where she could see it? What had Sneeth meant by that? The rigged battle had been something no one should ever have to see. A fair fight in nature is one thing, she told herself. Nature is bloody and violent, as many of the books she had read had made quite clear. A battle during which one opponent is rendered helpless, however, was simply not to be thought of without disgust, even a battle between creatures as tiny as wild grislings. Where she could see it, indeed. Buttercup was angry all over again, and it took a long evening alone with the mice – feeding them the seed pie which had been destined for the gardener’s boy – before she could show herself with an unperturbed face.

That night she had particularly violent dreams in which a previously indulgent voice directed her with some hostility to quit fooling around and pay attention to what was going on. The dream, like most dreams, bothered her on first awaking and was forgotten by breakfast time. Inside Buttercup, Mouse was in a state.

Since it was a holiday, breakfast was served in the gloomy kitchen. On holidays the shutters were left closed all day. Those civilized beings so foolish as to leave secure shelter on holidays were said to deserve whatever happened to them, as those were the days when the tribes of wild Grisls moved down out of the mountains seeking – well – seeking whatever they sought. What they sought was never specified in Buttercup’s presence, and she had imagined several things which they might be after, some of which brought shivers of revulsion.

When Nursey had been present, she had insisted upon spending all of every holiday in the kitchen, as it had the fewest windows. Sneeth, however, considered it appropriate to sit in the schoolroom and do whatever work was needed, and he repaired there with Buttercup as soon as Cook cleared the table. Sneeth, unaccountably sleepy-looking, as though he had spent a wakeful night, managed to maintain an instructive manner for only about an hour, after which repeated yawns turned into a breathy snore and he laid his head upon his desk and slept.

Buttercup, at a loss for anything interesting to do, went to a shutter which was tightly closed across one of the classroom windows and found a knot at which she had been working for some time. A bit more prying and the knot popped into her hand, leaving behind a large, slanted knothole through which she could examine the hidden outer world of holiday-time.

And how strange an outer world it proved to be! Thrumm House had been invaded by wild Grisls. At least three camps of them huddled beneath the trees at the edge of the meadow. On the meadow itself, half a dozen robed females engaged in a stately dance. Observing them from the shelter of the trees were a number of males including a number whom Buttercup recognized from the village.

The tempo of the dance increased. Buttercup cast a quick glance at Sneeth, but he was quite unconscious of her misbehavior. She applied her eye to the knothole once more.

One by one the Grisls removed their robes until all six of them were standing quite naked except for their rather tawdry veils and gems. They began to display, rumps flushing crimson, eyes flashing, venom tooth gleaming, spurs positively glittering in the sun. Oh, the lovely length of those spurs, as white and unsullied as peeled wood, gently curved, sharp as needles. Here was no pretense! No flexible spurs to save wounding!

The females paired off and began to battle. Out of the shade of the woods the males crept, hypnotized by the scent of combat, fascinated by the sight of it, until a ring of them surrounded the combatants. Two battles were swiftly concluded, and while the losers lay bleeding and paralyzed upon the sward, the winners engaged one another. The males crept closer, showing obvious signs of arousal.

The third couple concluded its fight, a winner emerged from the second battle, and the two successful fighters now poised before one another, heads back, crowing, casting flirtatious glances at the circle of males …

And then the Grisls decided, simultaneously, that they need not fight one another, that there were plenty of males to go around. They turned, instead, to prance before the circle of wide-eyed, hypnotized males, selecting this one and that one to receive a love bite from their dripping fangs until each had three or four laid out on the meadow grasses.

As the rejected males slunk away, those accepted were used repeatedly by the successful females while Buttercup watched, entranced. When the females had finished, which took some time, they packed up their wagons and tents and went off down the valley, leaving the paralyzed males lying on the meadow.

Sneeth sighed dreamily.

Buttercup slipped the knot back into the hole and turned back to her books.

‘… reign of Euthasia,’ said Sneeth, completing a thought he had begun some hours before.

‘I’m tired,’ said Buttercup, much aroused. ‘I think I’ll go to my room and take a nap.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Sneeth. ‘It probably wouldn’t hurt either of us.’

Buttercup left, only to return to the vacant schoolroom and put her eye to the knothole once more. Men from the village had come to the dusky meadow to pile the paralyzed lovers in barrows and carts, preparatory to hauling them back to the village, Buttercup supposed.

‘So that’s what it all meant,’ she murmured to herself, thinking on all the references to sex she had seen in this book and that. ‘That’s how it’s done.’ There were still things that were quite unclear to her, but she would not ask either Sneeth or Mr Thrumm. It was not something one wanted to discuss with a male. Not for the first time, Buttercup wished for Nursey. If she wanted to know something about sex and had no member of her own sex to ask, the next best thing would be to have a Nursey to inquire from.

Not, she reminded herself, that she would necessarily get a truthful answer.

It was shortly after the knothole experience that Buttercup began to experience certain bodily manifestations. The hard, callused lumps on her heels began to itch, and it was not long before two ivory spikes showed there, glistening against the pinkness of her skin. A similar itchiness attacked her chin, and another ivory spike emerged from its tip to grow both upward toward her upper lip and downward into a hollow point. These protuberances grew very rapidly, and soon Buttercup herself could see her spurs and venom tooth emerging from the chrysalis of her childhood. When she looked in the mirror, it was with a sense of recurrent wonder, as though she expected to see someone else reflected there, someone without a venom tooth, someone without spurs on her heels. Someone with round ears. Someone green. And behind that someone, still another someone, a vaguely bipedal form which came and vanished like a windblown ghost.

Someone, Sneeth or Mr Thrumm or even one of the Ribbles, first commented on the change in her. Cook began giggling about it, making sly remarks. Mr Thrumm announced his intention of ‘sending word to the Palace.’ Sneeth merely looked more uncomfortable than usual, which, since the incident of the gardener’s boy, had been quite uncomfortable indeed.

Buttercup had naively supposed that the Van Hoostness which had caused her banishment had also disqualified her for consideration by the Palace. In this, she was quite mistaken. The punctilious arrival of the examiners should have informed her otherwise. Of course the Palace considered her. Why else would the examiners have bothered?

This insight came to her with some force when a personage arrived from the Palace in response to Mr Thrumm’s report. It was Fribberle, the perennial examiner, now arrived to take up residence at Thrumm House. Not to give lessons. Not to visit with Mr Thrumm. Merely to occupy a room from which he emerged at intervals to stare at Buttercup and make some remark apropos of nothing. On one occasion he said, ‘You need not think you will become a femme fatale just because you are growing up.’ Though Buttercup kept an imperturbable face, the remark disturbed her. She had never thought of becoming any such thing. She had never known there was any such thing. None of the books had mentioned such a creature, not even the ones in the root cellar.

Breaking one of her own rules, she asked Sneeth to define a ‘femme fatale.’ Sneeth flushed, stuttered, and fled. Obviously, she had entered upon a subject which was taboo. This irritated her. She was already irritated at the dream voice which was becoming a nightly presence, abjuring her to pay attention because something inimical was going on. Her conscious mind and that strange, inhabiting mind were washing at her like the flow of the Welling River, telling her again and again that she, Buttercup, was in danger and that there were things she must do about it. Even the composure resulting from seven years study of deportment could not hold back such a flow, and Buttercup acceded to it at last. She accepted that neither Mr Thrumm nor Sneeth nor Fribberle had been forthcoming in telling her what was going on. Somewhere there had to be information she needed, information which had been withheld from her, information she assumed could be found in Thrumm House, somewhere, which meant it had to be in one of the thousands of drawers.

Her search began with a systematic mental review of the contents of every drawer she had seen opened in Thrumm House. Her own room could be ignored. She had been through all of her own drawers repeatedly, even the ones near the ceiling, borrowing Gardener Ribble’s ladder for the process. She felt that some walls of drawers could probably be ignored as she had closely observed Mr Thrumm rummaging through them. These included virtually all those in the library, the salon, the dining room, and the three major suites, not including Mr Thrumm’s own room. Therefore, her search would concentrate on other areas than these. Every night, when the house was quiet, she would rise from her bed, take a lantern and begin her quest, retiring only at dawn. Since Sneeth, with the advent of Fribberle, had virtually abdicated his responsibility to educate her, there was no impediment to her napping in the daytime.

At length, only the upper drawers in the great hall remained unsearched. The ladder was too short to reach more than halfway up the wall. Making a stairway out of half opened drawers proved impossible as many of them were stuck. She resorted, finally, to a knotted rope let down from the balcony which let her reach a drawer she could open enough to stand upon. From this vantage place, other drawers could be opened, some of the drawers containing things evidently unseen since the time of Hermione.

She searched one drawer, then another, and another. And another still …

In which she found, wrapped in tissue paper, some white as though recently cut, others yellow with age, a dozen pairs of ivory spurs.

Grisl spurs.

They were not prostheses. Their bases bore the clear marks of the saw. They had been cut from the heels of Grisls – probably living Grisls. They had probably been cut here, in Thrumm House.

The sight of the amputated spurs brought back memories of the gardener’s boy and the wild grislings, and she heard Sneeth’s voice saying, ‘… never should have been done where she could see it!’

He had meant that she should not have seen a rigged battle between grislings, where one of them had had her spurs amputated. She remembered Sneeth’s discomfort with the grisling show. She should not really have been allowed to see the grisling show either, and only Sneeth’s desire for amusement had moved him to permit it. There had been something in both those spectacles she was supposed to be unaware of.

Buttercup had asked Mr Thrumm at one time why there were no other Grisls in residence. He had replied with his usual, vague insouciance, ‘There aren’t many needed, lass. Only a few. They come and they go.’

Inside her, Mouse’s voice spoke clearly. ‘Smarten up, dumdum. You’ve got all the pieces. Put them together.’

And in response to that voice, she saw what they had been hiding from her. It was evident to her at last and all at once that the Grisls who came into Thrumm House did indeed go – go as the pathetic wild grisling had gone before the gardener’s boy – to a prearranged and ugly defeat, despurred, and with their fangs undoubtedly suppressed with thube salve. Defenseless. Offenseless. Unable to do battle.

But why? Why? Why had this been done in the past? Was it being planned again? Why had an employee from the Palace been sent to … to observe.

‘Nitwit,’ said the voice from inside her somewhere. ‘Are you not a Grisl of Royal Blood? And do not Heiresses Presumptive have to emerge victorious from open combat with at least one heiress of Royal Blood?’ The voice had more than a hint of annoyance in it, as of an elder chastising a child guilty of an ignorance almost insolent in its totality.

Nonetheless, the voice was right. It all came back to her now. Those forbidden books in the root cellar. The system of Royal Challenge. And everyone knew, even Buttercup – for it was talked about constantly, by everyone – that the Old Queen was coming very close to the end of her reign, the end of her very long life.

So, Buttercup hissed to herself, feeling a coldness on one foot, raising it to find it wet with something … wet with venom dripping from the slender, hollow fang growing on her Van Hoost chin. So, they intended her to be a victim, did they. They intended to cut off her spurs. They thought the thube salve had suppressed the venom sacks in her chin. They thought she would be helpless. Incapable. They intended her to challenge the Heiress Presumptive, and they intended for the heiress to kill her.

She could imagine how they planned to do it. They would transport her to the Palace, fit her out with a pair of flexible false spurs, drug her into some kind of hypnotized trance, and then let the heiress make away with her.

Buttercup shut the various drawers she had opened, unknotted the rope from the balcony, and went back to her bed. No matter when they planned, they would do nothing until the Old Queen died or was very close to death. She was sure of it. When the time came for the Heiress Presumptive to confront a challenger, they would want the challenger to look as normal as possible. This could only be achieved if they let the challenger alone until the last possible moment.

Well then, they had taught her deportment and imperturbability. Now was certainly the time to use it.

Some months passed. Occasionally, Buttercup would take the matchbox from the small drawer and look at it, wondering why it was important. Several times she tried to open it, but found it proof against her curiosity. Occasionally she would query that intrusive inner voice to learn whether some other intelligence knew something that would help her. The voice was stubbornly silent.

And then, in the middle of the night, in springtime, as the year was wakening from chill, everyone in Thrumm House was roused by the tolling of the village bell. From a distance, across a fold of hills, another bell gave answer, and from other valleys far and near, more bells rang out. There could be only one reason for such a clamor. The Old Queen was dead.

Buttercup had barely time to get out of bed and hide herself behind the door. Fribberle entered with the sound of the final knell, Mr Thrumm close behind him. Fribberle carried a saw in one hand and a hypodermic syringe in the other. Buttercup did not bother to ask him what it contained. That he carried a saw was evidence enough of his evil intent.

She had been practicing the leap and jab she had seen the Grisls using when she watched through the knothole. Fribberle, who was the larger of the two males, caught the first dose, impeccably delivered at the juncture of neck and shoulder. Her fang slid into and out of his flesh like a skewer into and out of a succulent roast. Thrumm saw it, but he did not react swiftly enough to save himself. Though she missed the exact location with her second bite, it did well enough. By the time she had caught her breath, both of them were quite paralyzed, staring at the wall, awaiting her instructions. She appreciated that. She had not wanted anything messy. She had given them little more than a love bite, as she wanted them ambulatory and cooperative.

There was a small, virtually unused sun porch on the second floor. She took them there and sat them comfortably in chairs where they could look out onto the Welling Valley. There were things she wanted to know which she inquired of Fribberle. He gave the information freely, and she sighed with relief. In the room he had used, there was a device to communicate with the Palace. It was simple to operate, one simply picked up the speaking disk and announced one’s message. She felt that Fribberle’s voice would not be difficult to counterfeit.

As a precaution, once they were seated, she nipped them again. Grisl venom could be reversed by antidote or, if given in small enough doses, it did wear off in time. Larger doses, of course, could be fatal. Buttercup assured herself that neither Mr Thrumm nor Fribberle was dead. She had not decided yet whether she wanted them dead.

Sneeth was next, then Ribble the Cook and Gardener Ribble. Unfortunately, there was a new gardener’s boy, and he had to be included. After which Buttercup took herself to the communication device and, speaking in an approximation of Fribberle’s haughty voice, asked when the Van Hoost Grisl would be wanted at the Palace. How much of this was her own idea and how much had come from Mouse’s prompting it never occurred to her to inquire.

A barely intelligible quacking and gargling ensued. Translated into the closest approximation of recognizable words, the sense of it seemed to be that nothing needed to be done for a few weeks. Obsequies were underway. There would be a state funeral. Only then would the heiress need her properly prepared opponent.

Buttercup went to her room, stripped, and examined herself with care. Her spurs were longer than some she had seen through the knothole. Her fang was well developed, thanks no doubt to those years of careful rubbing with tallow. While she was unpracticed in actual combat, she was young and better fed than most of the wild Grisls she had seen.

‘Risk not, gain not,’ the internal voice advised. ‘I hate to be involved, kid, but I think you’d better get some practice.’ Buttercup could not but agree. It would certainly not do to meet the Heiress Presumptive without any practical experience at all.

Since she could not very well simply go out into the countryside looking for experience, she felt it would be well to take advantage of the opportunity brought to her gate, as it were. On the next holiday, when the wild Grisls assembled in the meadow, Buttercup emerged from the house to take part in the combat. She was, quite frankly, frightened half to death. The inner voice which had plagued her for years was mercifully silent, as though holding its tongue, but she was afraid she might not be able to concentrate.

The preliminaries to challenge took care of that. As she told herself later, one needed only to get to a certain point by determination. After that, the hormones took over.

When the bout had concluded, Buttercup selected one of the young males who had been aroused to erotic suppliance by the battle and took him back to the house with her. Not to have done so would have caused antagonism and violence, even though she had previously decided that she could not, must not risk actual dalliance. The conclusion was inescapable that untrammeled eroticism led inevitably to egg-maturation. A Grisl’s chances of winning a challenge would undoubtedly be lessened if one was swollen and lethargic with egg. Therefore, once the young male had been given the love bite, she ensconced him in a chair next to the gardener’s boy. That much was easy. The harder part was to leave him there. He was remarkably attractive.

On successive holidays she engaged in battle, emerging victorious each time. The number of young males in the sun porch swelled to seven, and Buttercup had to fetch more chairs. She felt actual pity as she realized that unless someone carrying the antidote arrived at the house – one of the other Mr Thrumms, perhaps – or unless the house fell down around them, they would sit there for years while the seasons passed and Thrumm House was given over to mice and lizards.

Came a morning when the communication device quacked and gargled once more. The Van Hoost rogue was to be brought to the Palace in ten days time. Mimicking Fribberle’s voice, Buttercup assented.

Fribberle would undoubtedly have procured a conveyance. Buttercup did not wish to have a conveyance. She wished to explore the world and see something of its ways. She spent the last evening in Thrumm House in nostalgic reminiscences of her peaceful and unsuspecting childhood and in searching the only drawers she had been unable to search before, those in Mr Thrumm’s own room. Aside from stacks of pictures which intrigued her inasmuch as she had not known that males did that with one another, she found nothing of interest.

On the following morning, just before she left, she paused before the portraits of the recent Queens – Hermiones I, II and III; Euthasias I through IV; Grislda, surnamed ‘the only.’ None of them had the Van Hoost chin, but she resolved that the next Queen would have that attribute, Heiress Presumptive or no Heiress Presumptive. When the time came, she would rule under her own name, or under some new name, something original, perhaps something she would pick for herself. Grisls were not given formal names, as a general rule, until they had challenged and won at least once. What would be the point, after all? ‘Short, anonymous lives,’ the poet had said of early losers. ‘Short, anonymous lives.’ Nurseys, being uniformly sentimental, often attached some baby name to their Grisl charges just as they did their male ones. The males kept their baby names, but Grisls did not.

Therefore it must be as Buttercup that she emerged into the world. It was, she thought, quite fitting. As Buttercup she had come. As Buttercup she would go.

‘Quite right, too,’ said Mouse. Buttercup, of course, did not know it was Mouse. She accepted the reinforcement as though it had come from some alter ego of her own.

CHAPTER FIVE

In order to avoid challenges, which would have slowed the trip to an interminable crawl, Buttercup wore the so-called ‘quiet garb,’ a light though opaque garment, a head to spur dust-gown with a flap to cover the lower face and fang. She had not gone over five miles before she realized that if it had not been for the garment, she would not have been able to keep her resolution about the males. Every group that passed seemed to have half a dozen of them, burgeoning with health and juices, tippy-toeing along with their cute little behinds twitching, not at all like the placid villagers she had been used to seeing. Not for the first, or last, time, she regretted the seven sitting there on the sun porch, nipped into impotent insensibility.

Except for this, there seemed to be no impediment to a swift and pleasant journey. Buttercup found the weather delightful, warm and yet airy, with light breezes from the fragrant forests, cooled from the heat of the day with gentle showers, dry by evening so that one could sleep in comfort. She was glad not to be confined in a conveyance. Those that passed on the road looked hot and uncomfortable, like ovens on wheels. This was not quite her own thought, but it was not so unfamiliar as to seem disturbing. As she walked, she rehearsed what she would do and say at the Palace, how she would get by the guard Nurseys to emerge into the arena at the proper time. She spent some time considering whether the Heiress Presumptive would have been well trained in combat, deciding probably not. All this conjecture was so compelling that she failed to keep her attention on the road. As the sun dropped behind the trees she looked up in sudden confusion, realizing that for some time she had not seen another person and that the trail she was on had, at some point behind her, departed from the route she should have been following.

‘Oh, fine,’ snarled Mouse. Buttercup ignored this interpolation since it was very close to her own feelings.

There was nothing around her but forest and the path which meandered through it, seemingly without destination, certainly without observable direction.

She was not frightened. That is, at that time, she did not identify her feelings as fright. She was distinctly uncomfortable, disliking the idea of being quite so surrounded by woods with the night coming on and annoyed with herself for having allowed the predicament to occur. It was while she was working through this feeling of annoyance that she heard the sound. Someone or something was blundering about in the underbrush at no great distance from the path and making a noise which was, perhaps, a whuffling. Or a hruff. Perhaps both, she thought, in sequence. An ungrislish sound.

At a greater distance a person was shouting, words which made no sense at all to her though she was pleased that someone else was abroad in the falling dark. ‘Hiya, wurfle, wurfle, heah, heah,’ the voice called unintelligibly. ‘Heah, heah.’

The underbrush quaked, shivered, rattled with leaves and twigs as a monstrous form erupted onto the path to turn toward Buttercup with an expression of brutish ferocity. Without knowing how she got there, Buttercup found herself with her back against a tree and her robe hiked high so that her spurs could be brought into play. The creature crouched, ready to spring, then began a series of stiff-legged hops in her direction, all the while making wuffling and hruffing noises. An inner voice was saying, ‘Just a minute, here. I seem to remember that animal,’ to which Buttercup was paying no attention whatsoever.

Just as she was about to leap, fang fully extended, a person moved out of the trees behind the creature and called plaintively, ‘Damn it, Whurfle, down I say, let the Grisl alone.’ The person, a young male of a slight build and pallid aspect, came toward her, saying in an apologetic tone, ‘Damn dog! Please accept my apologies, Grisl. This animal of mine keeps running off and making a nuisance of itself. It really only wants to be friends, and I’m sorry if it frightened you.’

Buttercup adjusted her clothing in a mood of frosty hauteur, remarking that she had not been in the least frightened. The ‘dog,’ meantime, continued its stiff-legged gambol, obviously overjoyed to be the center of attention. Buttercup thought briefly of nipping him, only slightly, to teach him a lesson, but decided that this would undoubtedly offend the young male who was, after all, the only person she had seen for hours and likely her only guide back to the road. Besides, now that she was calmer, she recalled reading of dogs, a rare animal imported from the planet of the barbarian Earthians with whom the creature was said to have a symbiotic or perhaps parasitic relationship. She had not seen a dog before, however, and could not, quite frankly, find any charm in the one before her.

The young male, who introduced himself as Honsl, a printer from the nearby village of Rivvelford, continued his apologetic expostulations, ending with, ‘And now I seem to be lost. Can you direct me?’

Sternly quelling a response to this question which would have directed him to depart in an unmentionable direction, Buttercup replied that she, too, was lost, having misplaced the road in her abstraction. He, in a manner which Buttercup considered to be very considerate, offered to accompany her back down the path in the hope they would come upon some more commodious and better traveled way. She found him a pleasant-looking young person, interesting in that he seemed unconscious of her as a Grisl. He quietly accepted her as a thinking being, or so it seemed, without any of that coy shyness which so many males used on all occasions of converse with Grisls of any age or condition. He was relaxing, somewhat as she had often found Sneeth to be.

They returned along the path, stopping in bewilderment at a fork in the way. Buttercup had not noticed it on the way, and she had no idea which of the two paths before them had been her original one. They chose the left-hand path, which seemed a bit less overgrown, only to confront still another fork before they had wound their way another five hundred paces. Again choosing the left-hand way – for Buttercup seemed to remember that the forest had been on her left as she came up the river and therefore the road should lie to the left if she was faced in the opposite direction – they went on until darkness made it impossible to go farther. It was obvious to both of them that they would have to wait until morning when the sun would give them direction.

Honsl settled himself against a tree with his animal and spoke in a desultory way about the weather, happenings at the Palace, the funeral observances conducted in the village for the Old Queen, and other such trivial conversation. He spoke of the state of agriculture in the province (it had been a wet spring) and of how he had acquired the dog. It had been part of the stock in trade of an importer who had gone bankrupt, owing Honsl a large printing bill. Honsl had taken the dog, so he said, ‘for company,’ in settlement of the debt. He had no knowledge of where the creature originated or what system it may have been native to, and Buttercup told him what she had read of dogs, also mentioning that she found the example before her in every way inferior to the native fauna. It had no grace. It made no attractive noises. It smelled.

Honsl admitted that it did smell but said that one grew attached to the noises the thing made and to its affectionate nature. Buttercup reflected that males were notoriously whimsical in their desires; that many of them made collections of useless and trivial things – witness Mr Thrumm! – and that it was no part of her duty to educate this village printer in matters esthetic. She congratulated him on his acquisition and settled herself to rest.

It was at this moment that the dog, who had been quiet for some time, hruffed. He was standing, muzzle pointed at a spark of light which flickered among the windblown branches. Honsl saw it as well, and Buttercup suggested that they walk toward it, slowly, in order not to fall into any holes or ditches. As they grew closer, the light was seen to come from a cottage window. The dog went ahead, uttering a brusque ‘harf, harf, harf sound. Considering the unpleasantness of the sound, Buttercup was not surprised when the occupant of the cottage, an aged and unattractive Grisl of forbidding aspect, came out to see who was approaching, light streaming from the doorway behind her to fill the dooryard with shadows.

The dwelling was small, done up in a style popular during the reign of Hermione, called variously ‘Marple Cookie’ or ‘Marple Bread,’ after the spicy and highly ornamented cakes which it much resembled. Buttercup was hungry enough that the idea made her mouth water. The Grisl beckoned them forward, identifying herself as Mother Marple, at which Buttercup could not suppress a giggle. It was exactly like something out of a children’s story. What followed was precisely as might have been foretold. Mother Marple offered them marple bread. At that, Buttercup did laugh, though the old Grisl patted her head very kindly, searching her face, or that of it which could be seen, with serious concentration. Buttercup chose not to take offense. There would be time for that in daylight.

The old Grisl pointed the direction and told them they could find the road easily in the morning, then offered them two pallets before the fire on which to sleep. The dog had, for some reason known best to dogs, either decided not to come in or had not been invited, which was more likely. Feeling particularly drowsy, Buttercup did not worry over the animal. Seemingly, neither did Honsl, for in a moment, lulled by the heat of the fire and the warmth in their bellies of the freshly baked marple cake, they were both asleep.

Buttercup had very odd dreams. The nagging voice which had not lately bothered her had returned to tease at her with nebulous commands and comments. ‘I hope to hell you can get out of this’ was one, as well as, ‘You never learn, do you?’ When she woke it was with an ominous sense of something very wrong. When she came fully awake, she found herself in a stout cage behind the marple-bread cottage. Honsl was sitting disconsolately beside a tree, his ankle chained to a nearby post. The dog was nowhere to be seen, but Buttercup could hear his atrocious harf, harf, harf off somewhere in the woods. Though she was somewhat disoriented, she pulled herself together enough to address the pale young male before her.

‘Honsl! What has happened?’

‘The old witch caught us, is what.’

‘Not a nice way to refer to an elderly Grisl, Honsl.’

‘Don’t care,’ he sulked. ‘She is.’

‘Why in the world are we confined in this way?’

‘Got the – for us,’ he mumbled, the mid-part of the information lost in mid-mutter. Nor would he repeat what he had said.

Buttercup was at first inclined to think it was some kind of joke. Perhaps the old Grisl had taken offense at the dog. Perhaps she was merely a bit scattered, as the very old sometimes become. As the day wore on, however, she began to believe that it was the old Grisl’s intention to starve her to death.

During the day Honsl received several plates of cakes with tea. Buttercup was given only water. All attempts to communicate with the aged Grisl met with a sly smile and complete silence. By evening, Buttercup was beginning to feel slightly dizzy from hunger, and it was at that time that the dog, crawling on its belly through the tall grasses, brought to the cage the bodies of several small, juicy examples of the local fauna.

Buttercup had been schooled to avoid raw meat. As she was about to turn from the still warm bodies in disgust, however, her interior voice said so loudly and so very clearly that it should have been audible across the clearing, ‘For the sake of good sense, Buttercup, eat the damn things. You must. If you can’t see the plot outline emerging here, I can!’

Buttercup had no idea what was meant by this, but as things stood, she was both ravenous and had little choice of menu. Calling softly to Honsl, she offered to share the meat and was met with a shudder of rejection. An obscure impulse (Mouse, who wished to guarantee a continued source of sustenance) moved her to say, ‘Good dog,’ and she watched with interest as it wagged its posterior appendage to and fro in response to each utterance of this phrase. ‘Good dog.’

When Buttercup had finished her meal, she tossed the bones away into the shrubbery, licked her bloody fingers clean, and lay down to sleep, aware of Honsl’s reproachful eyes upon her. She would like to have cheered him, but since he would not share the provender furnished by his own dog, there was little she could do. Now that she had eaten the raw and bloody meat, she felt much better – well enough, in fact, that she wondered why she had been taught not to eat it.

Some days went by. The aged Grisl offered her nothing but water, but the dog brought dead animals at evening and at dawn. On the fifth day, the old Grisl began to approach the cage frequently, peering at Buttercup with wicked old eyes, totally ignoring all attempts at conversation. She was looking for something. Toward evening, when dog brought the catch of the day, Buttercup realized what the old Grisl was looking for. Mother Marple expected Buttercup to show signs of weakness! Five days of starvation would normally be enough to reduce even a well-conditioned Grisl to semi-consciousness.

Buttercup (encouraged by Mouse) resolved that, when morning came, she would play the part just to see what happened. During the night she was disturbed, as on the previous two nights, by erotic dreams. Such dreaming, she had been told, was a well-known consequence of eating raw meat, especially in the quantities Buttercup had recently been consuming. She had not been told, however, how amusing such dreams were. When morning came, she found herself looking at Honsl in a frankly lubricious way which should, in most circumstances, have stirred some signs of appreciation. Honsl, however, merely went on looking depressed and rather constipated.

Buttercup preened. He paid no attention. Irritated, she began a full display, only to catch a glimmer of motion at the corner of the house. Hastily she pulled her robe together and, as she had rehearsed in her mind the previous evening, dropped to the ground in feigned weakness, tongue lolling unattractively. The aged Grisl approached the cage, peered at her captive for long moments before beginning to jig about in an obscene way, grinning widely. Then, to Buttercup’s complete amazement, the witch dropped her garments and began a pre-challenge display as she jogged her unlovely self around the clearing. The scent of her had its inevitable effect upon Buttercup. Her spurs twitched. Seeing this, Mother Marple unlocked the cage.

Honsl’s head came up sharply, eyes wide with surprise. He was no more surprised than Buttercup herself. Grisls of the age of Mother Marple and in that stage of decrepitude were commonly supposed to be neither interested in sex nor capable of instigating it, since no one in such a state of decay would be able to withstand combat.

Unless – Mouse shrieked at her – unless such an old hen had starved an opponent into terminal weakness, as this one had planned to do.

If that had been the plan, it went sadly awry for Mother Marple. Buttercup dropped her robe and emerged from the cage in one giant leap, in full possession of her faculties, of gleaming spurs, of a dripping fang, and of hands still red from breakfast.

The old witch, as Honsl called her, might have been a worthy opponent at one time. The old movements were all there, though weakly and unsatisfactorily executed. At one point, she so far forgot herself as to screech, though Buttercup, intent upon the battle, hardly heard it. All that raw meat had had its effect. Though she admitted to herself that it was unmaidenly to do so, Buttercup was drawing out the battle in order to maximize its erotic effect upon Honsl. Eggmaturation or not, she felt she had been celibate long enough! As she fought, she thought of Honsl, of his arousal, of the expression on his pretty face when she turned to him at last, triumphant, spurs dripping, fang flirtatiously extended.

He would greet her with welcoming, tremulous expectation, she thought as she finally tired of the play and pierced Mother Marple’s throat with a nicely judged side slash.

She turned to the chained male, flushed with anticipation.

Staring at her across the carcass of Mother Marple with his usual constipated expression, Honsl held the ankle chain out toward Buttercup. He showed no signs of arousal whatsoever. He showed no signs of interest.

There was a lengthy and uncomfortable silence, broken when he said, finally, in a rather self-conscious whine, ‘She would have been most awfully disappointed, wouldn’t she?’

She would have been? thought Buttercup.

‘I don’t know why it is,’ he went on plaintively, ‘that Grisls always assume males like being – well, you know – wanted in that way. Sought after. Lots of them don’t. I never have. It’s just not all that amusing.’ He held out the ankle chain once more, obviously expecting her to find the key and let him loose.

She could not stop herself. Later, she could not recall that she had even tried. She nipped him firmly, rather more than a love bite, and glared at him as she snarled, ‘Not all that amusing, indeed!’

The faithful dog came out of the underbrush to sniff at Honsl a time or two, raising his hind leg at the paralyzed figure in a gesture unfamiliar to Buttercup. She wondered what it signified as the creature left his erstwhile master and came bounding toward her. He smelled no better than he had at first, rather worse, in fact, but she saw the animal through clearer eyes. Clever, clever boy. Nice dog. Large enough to be useful in many ways – to carry baggage, or even to ride upon if one chose.

With the sun moving toward noon, it would be easy for her to find her way back to the road. She left Honsl where he was, striking off through the forest in the direction Mother Marple had indicated on the night they had arrived, Whurfle in close pursuit. She thought that in future she would pay more attention to where she was going. She thought she would find a way to show gratitude to the dog. She thought that when she grew weary, she might ride upon him. She hoped she would reach the nearest village well before dark.

‘Whurfle is a clever animal, true,’ said a voice in her head. ‘But you wouldn’t really want to spend the night out on a dog like this.’

CHAPTER SIX

By sundown, Buttercup reached the village of Rivvelford. She thought that perhaps it should be called a town, inasmuch as it was the seat of government for the surrounding area and had not one but two excellent inns. Whatever one might choose to call it, she was glad to reach it. Though she had not suffered malnutrition under Mother Marple’s care, she had suffered emotional exhaustion and wanted nothing more than a quiet room, a warm bath, cooked food, and escape, however temporarily, from dog. She stabled him appropriately though he howled dismally after her as she left him to the tender care of the stable boy and the enjoyment of a large dish of bones and table scraps. She drew the line at sharing quarters with anything that smelled quite so much like wet winter-wear. The stable boys seemed to find Whurfle irresistible, which was congruent with thoughts she had already expressed about the essential triviality of the male mind.

She had brought with her from Thrumm House a quantity of coin, sufficient, she had estimated, for a journey much longer than the one contemplated, so there was no problem in obtaining a pleasant dinner of baked moor-hen, fresh vegetables, and a wine of the area which, while young, had a certain foolhardy insouciance which she found intriguing. Mr Thrumm had been quite a connoisseur of wines, and some of his snobbish delight seemed to have rubbed off on her. Well, she thought (Mouse thought) after all, if one must travel, one might as well travel with enjoyments appropriate to one’s station. One was, after all, a daughter of the Royal House, Van Hoost or not. Not that she intended to say anything about that.

The inn specialized in elaborate confections, but she had smelled enough marple bread recently to make anything sweet seem abhorrent. She contented herself with the wine, sitting late in the dining room as she watched the fire flicker low and the moon peer through the mullioned window over the branches of the sorbish grove. It was while she was so pleasantly occupied that she overheard the conversation of a group of males at a nearby table who, warmed overmuch by spiritous indulgence, had so far forgotten themselves as to become loud.

One was exhorting to another to attend a ‘revival’ which was to be held in the village square on the following evening at which time the populace would be addressed by a traveling preacher. Though it was unclear what was to be revived, Buttercup had never heard a preacher and was curious enough to spend an additional day in Rivvelford. She was, at this point, only two days journey from the Palace and did not want to arrive too early.

‘Early to bed and early to rise,’ said a hectoring voice from inside. ‘Get a head start to make you wise. Better early than never!’ Buttercup, as was her habit, ignored it. The days spent at Mother Marple’s had already delayed her. Surely one or two days more would not matter.

On the following evening, Buttercup, soberly clad in her quiet robe, joined a crowd made up almost entirely of males with only three of four constabulary Nurseys standing about looking bored. Besides herself, there were not half a dozen robed Grisls in the square. Of unrobed Grisls there were none, as the presence of such a one would have been provocative, inappropriate, and uncivil. In good time the preacher was introduced: Sensalee, a young, slim, serious-looking male, not unlike Sneeth in general appearance and demeanor though far, far better looking. He was well spoken and made an excellent impression upon the crowd.

That impression, so far as the Grisls were concerned, was quickly dissipated when they began to understand what he had to say. He was speaking for a cause he called ‘Male Rights,’ by which they understood him to mean that he wished males to be allowed Grisl privileges or, conversely, that he wished Grisl privileges in connection with males to be curtailed. Most of his remarks were concerned with his disapproval of the Grisl habit of what he called ‘casual sex.’

Casual indeed, scowled Buttercup beneath her robe. It seemed ridiculous that a matter so urgent could be called ‘casual’ by anyone!

The preacher, however, called it casual again and again, spoke of the male being a mere ‘plaything,’ and went on at painful length about the pathetic fortunes of males ‘casually used’ by Grisls and then ‘casually’ disposed of. By which he meant, if Buttercup understood what he was attempting to say, that males should not be left precisely as she had left Honsl. Or, as she had also left Fribberle and Thrumm, Sneeth, two Ribbles, a gardener’s boy, and seven suitors. That is, in some remote or infrequented place to be found or not, as chance dictated.

Buttercup felt that she had never heard quite such unmitigated rubbish. Even Sneeth had never uttered such blather. If males were casually disposed of, it is because they were not pleasing to the Grisl involved. This taught them and others to be more pleasing in future, and in doing so they achieved the epitome of masculine virtue and charm. No male worth displaying for would want anything more than to be regarded with that indulgent delight of which the romantic ardor of a satisfied Grisl is capable. Males were most delightful when they knew their place and did not attempt to leave it. So the books in the root cellar had said, and so Buttercup thought as well.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ said the internal voice. ‘Really, Buttercup. You’re getting involved!’

Buttercup didn’t listen. The preacher, unconscious of the effect his words were having upon her, went on to say that males ought to be allowed careers in the constabulary, opportunities as administrators, even, heaven help the Queen-dom, consideration as rulers. Buttercup noted that she was not the only Grisl fighting down laughter. Poor little males. So silly and misguided. She was torn from her amusement, however, when she looked at the face and stance of the preacher once more. He was lean, sweet in an unprepossessing way. Almost delicate. Virginal. Was it really his fault he had been led into the pernicious philosophy he avowed? Perhaps no one had taken the time or trouble to talk with him. It was likely that no Grisl had taken the time or trouble to tell him why his reasoning was so far astray from reality and natural law. She felt almost ashamed for her sex. Well, though it had not been done before, certainly it could be done now.

Several Grisls were murmuring dangerously. Others approached the constabulary Nurseys. There was a confabulatory mutter and the Nurseys strode throughout the crowd, loudly demanding that the meeting be brought to an end before arrests for sedition and disloyalty to the crown were brought against those in the assembly. The preacher stood with bowed head, shaking it again and again in pitiful dismay. Buttercup almost wept for him.

‘Please …’ begged the internal voice.

‘Shut up,’ Buttercup told herself.

When he left, she followed him to the quiet district where he was evidently lodged. He entered an inn and sat down in the common room. She approached him and asked, as gently as possible, if she might speak with him. He responded modestly, with a pretty air of confusion, and the two of them chatted in a general way about the town and his audience for the evening. He explained that he went from place to place speaking for his ‘cause,’ living on donations. He also confessed, in a slightly elevated manner, that he had been hatched at the Palace and was of the Royal line – as though that were of any consideration where males were concerned. She did not chide him for this little conceit. He seemed to set so much store by his ‘Royal’ pretentions that it would have seemed discourteous to attack them.

They talked thus for over an hour, Buttercup listening as he conveyed his winsome dreams and desires, his simple opinions about the world and the nature of things. She was moved to murmur sympathetically from time to time, reaching to stroke his hand where it lay on the table. At this, he blushed, casting his eyes downward to peer at her through the fringing lashes. She found this adorable.

‘I shouldn’t say this,’ he murmured. ‘But I must. If all Grisls were like you, we wouldn’t feel as we do about being males. You are so sympathetic, so strong. You understand so much of what I’m trying to say.’

Buttercup dropped the hood of her robe and preened, only so much as was acceptable in a public place. If she had learned nothing else in the custody of Mr Thrumm, she had learned what acceptable behavior was. Under the table she touched his leg with the side of her spur, sliding it sensuously along his calf. He blushed again, murmuring, ‘I wonder if I might have a little wine.’

Might he have a little wine! The sweet creature, obviously inexperienced, obviously attracted to Buttercup, not quite knowing how to handle the experience. Display and challenge were not the only way of sex among Grisls. There were tenderer styles of wooing. If the truth were known, Buttercup was almost as inexperienced as he, but her wide reading in the root cellar had prepared her for moments such as this – or so she fondly assumed. Her blood warmed to think of it. This was no pasty Honsl with chilled and torpid blood. This was a male she could respect, one whose every word showed him to be of impeccable judgment and discrimination.

‘You even look different from most of them,’ he said with acute perception. ‘Your face is more refined, somehow. You don’t pant at one and insist on pawing all the time.’

Buttercup removed her hand from his in order to summon the waiter. Examining the wine card with care, she ordered a light Themsafel, delicate and unobtrusive, but lingering on the palate like the aftertaste of love. Or so Mr Thrumm’s dictionary of wine had said. Buttercup explained this to Sensalee in a manner which was, unfortunately, rather pedantic. Occasionally, she felt, one had to sacrifice the affectionate tone in order to maintain an authoritative position. They drank, savoring the vintage, which seemed to Buttercup to have an odd, almost acrid taste beneath its unequaled fragrance.

Sensalee sighed.

‘What is it?’ Buttercup asked.

‘It’s just that – oh, I don’t know how to say it …’

She encouraged him.

‘You’re so … perceptive. You make me feel so protected. All that … you know, the male-rights thing, it seems so unnecessary when I’m with you.’

Gently Buttercup suggested that perhaps he would like to remain with her for some indeterminate time. She saw a suspicious glint in the corners of his eyes as he hastily excused himself to go to the little males’ room. She leaned back in her chair, feeling expansive and pleased. The room was warm, comfortable. Her little companion was proving more than amenable to her suggestions and hopes. The room was warm, comfortable, and the ceiling swam above her. The room was warm…

When she awoke, she was under the table. A nagging voice somewhere was saying, ‘… tried to tell you, but no, you had to go chasing after … after whatever you call it. Honestly, Buttercup, young or not, you have absolutely no sense …’

The common room was quite empty and there was no sign of Sensalee. Her clothing was somewhat disarranged, and when she felt for her purse, which contained almost all her coin, she found that it was gone. Back at her own inn she would find a modest sum which she had left with her spare clothing. She tried to clear her head of the wavering vapors in which it swam. Only a few scattered embers gleamed on the hearth. Obviously time had passed. How much? It was difficult to say. Probably several watches of the night.

Nothing was to be gained by sitting stupidly on the floor. She staggered to her feet, realizing for the first time that she had been drugged. In the wine, undoubtedly. By Sensalee, undoubtedly.

She was enraged.

As she staggered from the room, something she had read of the habits and abilities of dogs entered her mind. Propping the inn door ajar, she made her way to her own inn and to the stable where the dog slept, twitching and panting in some dreamed escapade. Returning with him to the inn of misadventure, she directed the animal’s attention to the chair where Sensalee had sat and to the floor. With one of those atrocious ‘harfs,’ the animal sniffed his way out of the inn and down one of the twisting streets of Rivvelford, out of the city, into the wooded lands, and down a well-worn trail to the edge of an encampment centered upon an open area where great steaming cookpots hung above the fire. There, on the lap of an enormous wild Grisl, basking in the warmth of her embrace, was Sensalee.

‘You’re a dear marvel you are,’ the huge Grisl said. ‘A veritable marvel, Sensy my sweet. It never fails, do it? A little preachering, and some silly Grisl or other must see to your enlightenment. Well, this one that came after you this time was better gilded than most, I’ll say that.’ She clinked coin, Buttercup’s coin, with one hand while stroking Sensalee with the other. He quivered, actually quivered with delight.

‘Ooh, Grendy, you’re so mistressful,’ he cooed. ‘Your hands just send shivers all up and down me, I swear they do.’

Behind the screening bushes, Buttercup seethed with nauseated fury. The male didn’t even sound like Sensalee. He oozed with sycophantic smarm. Buttercup prepared herself for challenge.

‘She’ll kill you,’ said her internal voice calmly. ‘She’ll kill you quite easily. You’ll never get to the capital. You’ll never fight in the arena. One more Van Hoost idiot down the drain!’

The voice was even more infuriating than Sensalee’s presence.

‘I wonder,’ the huge Grisl went on, ‘whether there is any more gilt where this came from? You might go back, tomorrow say, and tell her you were set on by thieves? Make up some other tale? Ah, well, it would stretch luck a bit.’

‘It would,’ agreed Sensalee as he patted the pendulous cheek of the Grisl. ‘It really would, Grendy. It was touch and go as it was. The innkeeper wanted half, you know. I had to hide how much there really was and give him only a little.’

Everything in Buttercup screamed ‘Challenge!’ except for a nagging voice which went on and on and on …

‘She outweighs you three to one. She outreaches you by your arm’s length. Remember what Sneeth used to say. “Out-weighed may be outplayed, but outreached is unbreeched.” She’s huge, Buttercup, absolutely huge. Which means, of course, that you will do whatever is most stupid and childish. You’ve forgotten the Palace. You’ve forgotten the Old Queen!’

‘Smiss,’ whispered Buttercup. It was the dirtiest word she knew, naming an act she could not even conceive of committing, but she said it several more times. ‘Smiss, smiss, smiss.’ Reason should have told her this could happen, but reason had never described a Grisl like this to her. Huge. Implacable. Probably almost impossible to defeat. What if the Heiress Presumptive at the Palace was like this …

‘Not at all,’ the inner voice suggested. ‘At the Palace they care for grace, elegance, beauty, charm. Would they be content to be ruled by a hulk like this?’

It was true. The Palace would not be ruled by a slovenly, obese monster, no matter how forceful. Still, it was something to think on before Buttercup went plummeting into Royal society.

Slowly, reluctantly, she tugged dog back onto the trail and led him away, not without one or two muffled and longing ‘whurfs’ from him. He wanted to attack, but Buttercup pulled him firmly along. The voice, whatever it was, had some truth in it. Her concern had to be for other things at the moment, such things as repairing her fortune. Sensalee had taken the greater part of her funds. There was not enough left to get to the Palace in even moderate comfort, much less to keep herself in the town while awaiting time for the challenge.

Her need was answered when she arrived at the inn, as though by some benevolent spirit. Posted on the wall of the courtyard was a flyer issued by the Male Protective League offering a reward, no questions asked, for the whereabouts of several listed males. Among them was Honsl, printer of the village of Rivvelford, missing seven days, last seen … and so on and so on. Buttercup sent a message by a sulky stable boy, giving Honsl’s location. The promised reward arrived by noon. While it was not exorbitant, Buttercup felt it was a good deal more than Honsl was worth.

She went up to her room, recounting to herself that she had learned a valuable lesson. She had learned that duplicity and treachery could be hidden behind a pretty face. She had learned that what had been read in books was not adequate preparation for reality. Most valuable, though most horrifying, she had learned that some males felt Grisls to be fair game though she could not comprehend why this should be so.

‘The Palace,’ whispered her internal voice impatiently.

‘What are you?’ snarled Grisl. ‘Who asked you?’

‘The Palace,’ the voice said again imperturbably. ‘Never mind who I am. I will leave you at the Palace and you won’t be bothered with me anymore.’

Buttercup left the room in a mood of seething frustration. It had all been almost enough to make her doubt the fundamental rationality of natural law which assigns each sex to its place in the vast scheme of things. She felt … she felt as she had felt when she was only three and Nursey had told her there was not, in fact, a Fang Fairy.

Disillusionment is hard for the young, she told herself. Very hard for the young.

‘No harder than for anyone else,’ the voice snorted. ‘The trouble with you, Buttercup, is that you take yourself entirely too seriously.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

Buttercup arrived at the Palace – or, more precisely, in the vicinity of the Palace – on the day before the Heiress Presumptive was to accept challenge in the Royal arena. Placards were posted throughout the town announcing the event, though only ticket holders would be allowed to attend and only Grisls of the aristocracy and certain males of the bureaucracy had been furnished with tickets. Certain preselected males would, of course, be in the arena itself. To the victor would go the spoils. Public consummation was part of the ritual, after all.

The sound of a familiar voice drew Buttercup’s attention to a small group of males on a street corner, and she was surprised to see the Misters Jonas and Cadmon Thrumm talking with a male who looked, dressed, and acted very much like Fribberle. Had the other two Thrumms also brought Van Hoost challengers to the city? Had they, too, prepared young Grisls to die in the arena, helpless before the assault of the Heiress Presumptive? Or were they merely there for the festivities?

Buttercup, thankful that she had left the dog at her place of lodging, drew her quiet garment about her and approached closely enough to hear what they were saying.

‘I simply can’t imagine what’s keeping him,’ muttered Jonas Thrumm. ‘He said he’d meet us here yesterday, with the candidate – the only candidate! A policy which I continue to maintain is shortsighted and parsimonious – and no one has seen him.’

‘It’s unlike Raphael to be late,’ said Cadmon Thrumm. ‘Of the set of us, he is the most punctilious.’

‘The same with Fribberle,’ said the man who looked like Fribberle, sounding quite put out and distressed. ‘Where was Raphael to meet you?’

‘We have rooms at the Insensitive Galosh,’ said Cadmon. ‘A suite. Raphael was to have joined us there yesterday.’

Buttercup moved away from them into the crowd. Well and well. Perhaps something could be done with this.

‘Be careful,’ said the voice inside her. ‘Your birthday isn’t until tomorrow.’

‘My birthday?’ Buttercup said aloud, drawing curious glances from passersby. ‘My birthday?’

‘You will be eight tomorrow.’

‘How do you know? Who are you?’ Buttercup demanded, half angrily. ‘What are you doing sneaking about in my mind?’

‘Not sneaking,’ the voice replied. ‘Merely hitchhiking. Just wanted to warn you to be especially careful …’

Buttercup chose to ignore the voice, birthday or no birthday. She inquired as to the location of the Insensitive Galosh and went there, walking up the stairs hidden in her all-concealing robe and finding the suite with no difficulty at all. It was not even locked.

There was notepaper in the desk. She wrote, scratched out, wrote again, then took time to copy it all over in the clear, anonymous script which Mr Thrumm had advocated for cultivated personal use.

‘My dear Cadmon and Jonas,’ she had written. ‘I have run into a slight contretemps which will keep me occupied with the candidate until challenge time tomorrow. Would you be kind enough to advise the officials of our arrival. Tell them please that one of us will bring the candidate to the arena only slightly before challenge time. As ever, Raphael.’

Buttercup, in her searching through the drawers of Thrumm House had had occasion to read various pieces of Thrumm correspondence. She felt she had Raphael’s style, or lack of it, very clearly in mind and had reproduced it fairly.

She left the suite only moments before the Thrumms returned to it.

‘Now what?’ asked the voice in her head.

‘Supper,’ replied Buttercup. ‘Rare roast, lots of it, and no wine.’

‘Very sensible of you,’ said the voice in her head.

Buttercup spent some time wondering about the voice, particularly inasmuch as it had become more and more obtrusive during the past several days, advising her for and against various courses of action with increasing fervor. Undoubtedly it was the same voice which had been with her since childhood. Certainly it had never harmed her. On occasion, as in the case of Sensalee, it had probably helped her to some extent. Perhaps it was an aberration of some kind. Perhaps it was a guardian spirit.

At the moment, it didn’t matter which or whether. Buttercup returned to her lodgings, ordered a plentiful supper, and consumed it with good appetite. Various of the placards about the town had carried pictures of the Heiress Presumptive. She was portrayed as being quite young. Very slender. Almost, one might say, unformed. Buttercup was more sanguine about her chances of success than at any time since seeing Sensalee in the lap of the giant wild Grisl.

She slept the sleep of the just.

On the morrow, slightly before challenge time, she presented herself at the Insensitive Galosh and asked for Mr Cadmon Thrumm. When he appeared, she greeted him in a dreamy manner, her eyes wide, her voice monotonous, her gait slightly staggering.

‘Mr Thrumm has sent me, Mr Thrumm. He has been unavoidably delayed. He says you must take me to the … to the arena. We are to watch the battle. Won’t that be exciting?’

Mr Thrumm regarded her with deep suspicion. ‘Where is Raphael?’

‘With … with his … with a male,’ she murmured. ‘I will tell you his name if I can whisper it.’

Mr Thrumm turned quite pink. ‘At it again, is he! Tell me,’ and leaned forward to receive the tip of her fang just below his ear.

‘Take me to the Palace,’ said Buttercup. ‘I believe they are expecting us.’

The whole town was expecting them! There were banners across the streets, balloons clustered on lampposts, drifts of confetti, and small wandering bands making frenzied music. There were platoons of uniformed Nurseys marching to and fro with a rat-a-tat of drums. There were booths selling roast fleeb nuts and seed pies and ice cream. There were vendors of illustrated books of the adventures of Great Grisl among the savage Earthians. There were salesmen of mugs with a picture of the Heiress Presumptive upon them and pillows with a picture of the Heiress Presumptive upon them and toilet seats which played the national anthem when one sat down. Indeed, the Heiress Presumptive stared at the merrymakers from every conceivable surface, including some which were in questionable taste.

Cadmon Thrumm led Buttercup among crowds which grew ever thicker as they approached the arena walls. On the higher roofs surrounding the arena were crowds of males and Nurseys who had paid dearly for the privilege of watching the challenge ceremony through telescopes from these lofty vantage points.

Once at the arena itself, they found their way to a small side door guarded by two monstrous Nurseys. ‘Cadmon Thrumm,’ her putative escort announced. ‘Bringing the candidate as arranged.’

‘Supposed to be Raphael this time, Thrumm,’ opined one of the Nurseys, giving him a keen glance. ‘Where is he?’

‘Indisposed,’ said Cadmon. ‘A digestive upset of some kind. Jonas and I decided I should bring her on ahead. We were afraid Raphael might not recover soon enough.’

‘The candidate all prepared, is she?’

Cadmon nodded. ‘She’s been at Thrumm House almost since birth.’

‘Fribberle get there in good time, did he?’

Cadmon nodded again. One of the Nurseys reached out and lifted Buttercup’s veil away from her face, remarking, ‘That’s the Van Hoost chin, all right. Can’t mistake it. Did his usual good job with the spurs, did he?’

Buttercup remained passive with enormous effort. When this was over, she was going to bite whole battalions of Nurseys!

‘Well, go on in. Third room to the right. The garb’s all laid out.’

They went through the gate. The third room on the right had a grated window which looked out on the arena itself, a sand-floored circular space surrounded by a head-high wall. Above the wall were rows on rows of seats, filled for the most part with robed Grisls and soberly dressed functionaries.

Buttercup disposed of Cadmon in a closet, instructing him not to move until she told him to and resolving never to tell him to move in a million years. This room probably wouldn’t be used until the next challenge, and he could sit there and rot until then, reward or no reward.

The caparison she was to wear was, indeed, laid out. Delicate, silken veils for head and shoulders. Glittering jewels for neck, wrists, and ankles. Even in this they had played false. The necklace was so tight that it would cut off her breathing if she wore it. The bracelets were loose and jangling and would prove to be a distraction. The gemmed footlets would have fouled her spurs in moments. With her face set, Buttercup removed the robe, laid it on the bed, and then dressed herself in the abbreviated veils, leaving the ornaments where they were.

Through the window she could hear the band. A roar from the crowd as the Heiress Presumptive arrived in the Royal box, then again as she left the box to descend to the arena floor. Buttercup peeked out. The heiress was there, seated at the far end of the arena, bowing, left, right, lifting her hands to wave, left, right. Fanfare.

Fanfare.

The entry of the challenger. Her entry.

Buttercup turned to the mirror to check her appearance one last time, feeling as she did so a shiver as though something had torn loose within her, as though something had ripped away, as though half her being was being amputated from her.

Suddenly beside her in the mirror was a small green creature with whiskers and round ears. Buttercup whirled.

‘You look very nice,’ said the familiar voice as the green creature looked up at her, wrinkling its nose. ‘Happy Birthday, and go give ’em hell. But I need my matchbox first.’

Another, irritated-sounding, fanfare.

‘Who are you!’ Buttercup demanded.

‘You don’t have time to find out,’ the green creature whispered between its two huge front teeth. It cocked its round ears toward the window. ‘That’s your entry, Buttercup. Let me have the box, quickly, then you’d better get cracking!’

Hypnotized, Buttercup fished the box from the pocket of her robe where she had carried it. The green creature opened the gold box, took two cubes out of it, then knelt and rattled the cubes in its paw – cubes with dots on them …

Fanfare once more. An impatient roar from the crowd.

Buttercup opened the arena door. On a low dais across the arena the Heiress Presumptive sat waiting, rising now to a roar of acclamation and excitement. She was about Buttercup’s size. Maybe even a little larger. She had an excellent set of spurs. And her fang was even longer than Buttercup’s fang.

With a stagger which was not altogether feigned, Buttercup went forth …

Behind her the dice tumbled and came up two and one.

‘Three,’ said Marianne, the malachite mouse.

‘You will forgive me, won’t you?’ pled Great-aunt Dagma from her bed. ‘I wasn’t thinking. I never intended it to happen that way.’

‘I will forgive you, of course,’ said Aghrehond. ‘Though what my forgiveness might mean to you, madam, or what currency it might have in the world at large, I am at some difficulty to identify. And as for my master, Makr Avehl, whether he will forgive you is another matter yet. Still, from what you tell me, she didn’t mean to do it …’

‘She didn’t. I know she didn’t. She was simply going to demonstrate how the game should be played. It was a matter of here one moment, gone the next, and she didn’t plan it, I’m sure.’

‘There is a young Kavi who attends upon the Cave of Light, in my home in Alphenlicht, you understand? Ah, I was sure you did. Her name is Therat, this Kavi, an innocuously floral name for someone so omniscient, and she has eyes like a hawk, all seeing, far seeing, only sometimes they do not see what one wants them to look at. So, before I left with my master’s wife, it was Therat who told me something awkward would probably happen. She spent all night consulting the lectionaries, and when she could not find what she sought – well, she was surprised and then upset. Still, what was there to do about it? We could not say, Therat or I, that Marianne should stay in Alphenlicht and let her loved relative die! Who could say such a thing. So, one comes and one hopes, only to have one’s hopes dashed and the danger comes anyway. Alas.’ Aghrehond rubbed his large head, shaking it to and fro. ‘I should have come up here with her to visit you instead of staying below in the kitchens.’

‘I doubt you would have moved fast enough even if you’d been standing right beside her,’ whispered Dagma from her bed. She was desperately tired and worried, and her voice was feeble. ‘She just did it, suddenly, all at once.’

Tell me, Madame Zahmani, how long has Marianne been gone?’

‘Only about fifteen minutes, Aghrehond. I haven’t said anything to Arti, that is Marianne’s mother, yet. She would be sure to have hysterics. She would think Marianne had fallen victim to the local epidemic of vanishment.’

‘An epidemic? Ah, so it is happening here, as well? I had not known that. It is possible Marianne is a victim of it.’

‘Well, don’t tell Arti. She would not be able to hold herself together.’

‘I have told no one yet except Makr Avehl himself, and for him I have had to leave a message because he is not near a phone. Now we must decide what to do, Madame Zahmani.’

‘Please don’t call me “Madame Zahmani,” Aghrehond, or I shall have to call you “Mr Aghrehond,” which is too formal for the occasion. “Madame” is a courtesy title, in any case. I was never married.’

‘Very well, Great-aunt. Tell me about this epidemic.’

Dagma did so, as much as she knew. ‘According to the statistician, it’s been going on for decades. According to the governor’s office, the whole thing is a computational error!’

‘For decades, ah?’ Aghrehond sighed. ‘And when Marianne threw the dice, how did they come up?’

‘I heard her say “snake eyes,” and I blinked. When I opened my eyes she was gone. And so was the malachite mouse. And the matchbox, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Aghrehond brooded over the game diagram. ‘It could only be that, could it not? Everything that happens has purpose, or so I have always felt, and when one is caught in a net such as this, things happen as they must. Ah, well. It would do no good at all to play in behind her. We must try to get ahead of her, then wait for her. But, she could leapfrog right over us. What was on the second square?’

‘Before Marianne threw the dice, it said, “Buttercup, Birth to Eight Years.” Now it says, “Queen Buttercup, the first month of her reign.”’

‘So it does,’ said Aghrehond. ‘Which means Marianne must have done something in that square to change things there. She has that quality, does she not? Always busy, upsetting apple carts, turning over kettles. I have seen her – well, of no matter. That was in another time and place. She will have gone past the Buttercup point by now, so there is no point in discussing it. And that raises the point of how she got past that point. The dice are still here.’

‘There was something rattly in the matchbox,’ Dagma offered.

‘Rattly. Well, of course. Game makers must provide for those who play. Dice available here to start the game. And if there are none in there to continue playing with – then perhaps one is trapped? Who knows. Let us suppose she had two dice with her. Using two dice, she could not throw a one, which is fortunate. The square after the Buttercup square is labeled “Forever.”’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It probably means exactly what it says. If she had thrown a three, she would have landed in Forever and no matter all our machinations, Great-aunt, there is no doubt we would not have seen our Marianne again, weep though we might and wait at the horrors of fate.’

‘I … I didn’t have any idea …’

‘No. Well. She would have thought of it if she hadn’t been overtaken by events. Now, by my great, wobbly belly, if one wanted to get to the end of the game quickly, how could it be done? What do the rules say?’

‘Rules?’

‘I make the assumption that verbiage printed at the bottom of the game must be the rules of play. It has that aspect, has it not? That solidity imparted by black ink on a lighter surface which says, “I am official. Pay attention.”’ He turned the printed parchment toward him and read, ‘“Players may pass through previously occupied spaces but may not occupy any space twice in the same game.” If one has been to Buttercup once, one may not go back to Buttercup again.’

‘But it’s not the same Buttercup,’ objected Dagma. ‘It says something else now.’

‘Leaving that aside for the moment, which we must do since we have no one to interpret the rules for us, and returning to my question: How would one get to the end of the game most quickly?’ He mused, ticking off the squares with his fingertip. ‘One would throw a nine, which would take one to the Down Line Express. From there, presumably though not surely, one would reach Frab Junction without another throw. At that point, if one could achieve any combination of throws resulting in fourteen – except for one totaling five or nine if we wished to avoid these other Forevers – one would reach the point labeled “The End.” Of course, it’s unlikely one could throw exactly the right number. One might end up at The Library or Usable Chasm.’ He mused for some time longer. ‘Or even at Seldom Siding, which has a certain feeling of non-quotidian misadventure about it. Since there is no way to know where she is in the game, we must hope that she reaches the end of it and attempt to meet her there. What is the end of the game, after all?’ he asked. ‘Here, in the last square – though it isn’t precisely a square, is it? – where it says, “The End.” So, if we can’t intercept her, then we need to play to get there? Don’t we?’

‘Do we?’ faltered Dagma.

‘Yes, because if she doesn’t show up, we might be able to go backward, or come out and start over. We do. We must. Time wastes and we dally.’

‘We?’ she faltered again.

‘We,’ said Aghrehond with a glance of forbearance which was almost cruel in its charity. ‘Accepting that it was really your father’s responsibility, still, when he died without fulfilling it, it became your task, Great-aunt. Even if you had only a week, or a day, or even an hour, you should have tried to complete it to spare our Marianne. Ah, but then, you know that already.’

‘I knew that,’ she wept. ‘There seemed to be so little time left.’

‘Time enough to try,’ he said. ‘Who will you be? The rhodolite rhinoceros? The amethyst ape?’

‘The turquoise tortoise,’ she said in a slightly firmer voice. ‘I’ve been so slow about it.’

‘Of course. Stupid of me not to have thought of that. In case there are no dice in the game, we’ll need dice to carry with us. Are there any in the house?’

‘Over in the drawer by the window. I used to sit at that table with my nephew – Marianne’s father – and beat him at backgammon.’

He fetched them, putting one pair in his pocket, another pair in the pocket of her bed jacket. ‘You first then.’

‘Shouldn’t I change into clothing a little more suitable for travel?’

‘The tortoise won’t know the difference,’ he told her.

In the face of his quiet stare she could delay no longer. She rolled the dice. Nine. Perhaps she said something, perhaps not. She was gone, the tortoise was gone.

‘All or nothing,’ said Aghrehond, putting the amethyst ape on the space that said, ‘Start Here.’

And rolled nine again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Malachite Mouse clung to a root, a root which bulged like an enormous bulwark against the unimaginable hulk of the trunk looming upward through a layer of gray and oozing clouds.

‘G’nop,’ said something. It was a combination of inquiry and swallow, as though a very large being had asked for sustenance and had been given it all in one instant, satisfaction following hunger instantaneously, only to be immediately succeeded by hunger once more. ‘G’nop.’

The source of the sound moved among the roots with a monstrous squelching, a flatulent bubbling, like mud dropped into mud, the one only slightly more solid than the other so that the two surfaces sucked at one another, stopping only one degree short of mingling.

‘G’nop.’

A long thing darted across the root above the malachite mouse, being at one moment not there and at the next there, then gone once more as though it had solidified out of nothing only long enough to be perceived before vanishing, a kind of solid and rubbery-looking horizontal lightning. And yet there had been time to identify the thing as ‘darting,’ that is coming from somewhere.

‘G’nop,’ the thing went again. The mouse saw it this time, from right to left, then back to the right again, a mighty hawser of viscous stuff with a sticky sheen to it and something fluttery at the end of it. Something fluttery when it withdrew, though not, so far as Mouse could tell, when it had emerged.

If one could say emerged.

‘G’nop.’ The squelching repeated itself, a sodden movement, as of a wet sponge being manipulated in a pot of hot oatmeal.

Mouse turned her head very quietly, very slowly, peering along the side of the great buttress of root to the place it edged into the shadow filling the spaces between roots. There was nothing here but shadow and wet, blotches of filthy duns and ochres, deep feculent smells of bog. The wall edge of the root made a long diagonal line running upward from right to left. Mouse clung flat against it, all claws extended to bite into tiny fissures in the bark. Below was the glug of water; above, layers of discolored light in a viridescent collage, deepening toward the trunk.

Mouse began to move, very slowly, toward a hole in the root, a fissure deeper than most, almost a cave.

‘G’nop.’

Above the edge of the root an orb began to emerge.

Mouse did not wait for it but leapt, all at once, into the fissure to cower there, panting silently, nose turned outward, and all whiskers atremble. It had been an eye, she told herself, an eye as large as a dome, a glowing dirigible of eye rising over the root wall like a pallid and hungry moon.

‘Zup,’ went the hawser, returning with something screaming at the end of it, then ‘Zup’ again, returning empty.

‘Roawrrr,’ howled the swamp in fury. ‘Roawrrr.’

The mouse shook the dice out of the matchbox and threw them, very carefully, on the tiny level patch at the bottom of the fissure.

‘Eleven,’ it sighed, grabbing up the dice and disappearing from the fissure just as the great tongue entered it.

CHAPTER NINE

At the home of Marianne’s parents, in Virginia, where Dagma lived, where Marianne and Aghrehond were supposed to be visiting, the phone rang.

A maid answered it and then went in search of Aghrehond. Not finding him, she reported with some discomfiture to Marianne’s father that the visiting gentleman seemed to have gone out.

‘Out, Briggs?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But he was with Dagma and Marianne.’

‘Your daughter and the old ma’am’s gone out, too, sir.’

‘Don’t be silly, Briggs. Dagma is far too ill to have gone out.’

‘Well, sir, she’s gone. I don’t know out or where, but she’s not there. Not in her bathroom or her bedroom or the little sitting room, neither.’

‘Either, Briggs,’ Marianne’s father corrected as he gave this matter some thought. ‘Is my wife still napping?’ Arti had not been sleeping well, and she had announced her intention of taking a pill and a long nap.

‘Yes, sir. I peeked in on her just a little while ago.’

‘Who is it calling for Aghrehond?’

‘Overseas phone, sir.’

‘I’ll speak to them.’

Which he did. ‘Makr Avehl? How nice to hear your voice again. It seems an enormous time since the wedding.’

‘________.’

‘What was that about the Cave of Light?’

‘________!’

‘I’m to tell Aghrehond that Makr Avehl is on his way?’

‘________?’

‘He seems to have stepped out, Makr Avehl. Dagma and Marianne as well. They can’t have gone far. Dagma was far too unwell … Yes, I understand. If I see Aghrehond, I’m to tell him to wait for you.’ The connection broke, and Haurvatat was left holding the buzzing instrument, a feeling of sick vacancy deep inside him. Until this moment he had not taken seriously the fact that Briggs had been unable to find Marianne or Dagma or Aghrehond. Until this moment he had not believed there was, really, an epidemic of vanishment. Until this moment – but when one of the Kavi called to warn his daughter about a reading from the Cave of Light …

Shaking, Haurvatat went upstairs, first to search Dagma’s room, then to sit by his wife’s bed and keep an eye on her. He was determined not to leave her until she woke.

CHAPTER TEN

‘To the departure area for the Down Line Express,’ the amethyst ape directed the cabdriver, grasping the shell of the turquoise tortoise more tightly under his arm to prevent its falling into the street.

‘Right-ee-oh,’ the cabman assented, hardly waiting until the ape was seated before flicking his whip over the backs of the matched pair of umble-geese which set off at once with a loud clacking complaint. ‘Where’s yer destination, guvner?’ he asked. ‘You goin’ far?’

‘Ah,’ the ape considered, ‘Frab Junction? There should be a good deal going on in Frab Junction, shouldn’t there?’

‘Depends,’ the cabman said, unfolding an atrophied wing and scratching beneath it with every evidence of enjoyment. ‘On whatcher mean by goin’ on. There’s things doin’ here, too, y’know. People comin’ and goin’ orf again. Stuff comin’ through all the time on its way to Cattermune’s ’Ouse.’

‘I’m very curious about Cattermune’s House,’ said the ape. ‘What can you tell me about it?’

‘Well, not much, and that’s the truth,’ the driver replied, snapping his whip at an intrusive squozzle lizard drawing a heavy dray in the opposing lane. ‘Everybody’s been there, don’t you know, but nobody talks much about it. Oh, they’ll say this and that ’appened to ’em, or this or that occurred, if you take my meanin’, but they’ll not say where, and then you ask ’em and they’ll whisper it at you without seemin’ real sure of it, like as if they didn’t remember it much. “Cattermune’s ’Ouse,” they’ll say. “I think it was Cattermune’s ’Ouse.”’

‘Who or what is Cattermune?’ asked the tortoise in a leisurely tone. The tortoise was incapable of any tone except a leisurely one or of any locomotory speed except slow forward.

‘It’s a he,’ the cabdriver asserted darkly, ‘and that says ’alf of what I know about ’im.’

‘What’s the other half?’ asked the ape.

‘You wouldn’t want to end up in ’is Worm Pits is the other half,’ the driver retorted. ‘That’s a ’undred years is Worm Pits. That’s a long time stay. Illusion Fields is ten thousand years, and that’s a long time, too, but you don’t feel it so much, if you take my meanin’. Worm Pits you’d feel every second, and a ‘undred years’d seem like a few thousand, so they say.’

‘I’ll try to stay away from the Worm Pits,’ the ape agreed.

‘Throw a three at Frab Junction and likely you’ll meet Cattermune. Can’t go back three on the Down Line. Three left takes you to the Administrative Offices, which leads right into the Moebius Siding. Nobody in ’is right mind wants to go there. Three forward takes you to Banjog’s Mooring. Give me a choice like that, prob’ly I’d go on to Cattermune’s ’Ouse, Worm Pits or no Worm Pits.’

‘Besides,’ opined the tortoise, ‘you wouldn’t get to the Worm Pits from Cattermune’s House. There’s no way to throw a one.’

‘That’s as may be,’ the driver agreed. ‘But there’s ways and there’s ways. Here’s the terminal. Mind your step.’

‘How much?’ asked the ape.

‘’Ow much what?’ the driver asked in return. ‘No charge, guvner. We’re all in the game together, ain’t we.’ He flicked the whip over the backs of the umble-geese and went clacking back into the surge of wagons and cabs which filled the streets of Down Line Express.

The terminal was typical of railway buildings of the period, a spider’s web of steel clad with high, dirty windows through which a dusty effulgence fell sadly into an echoing cavern, making puddles of melancholy light on the enormous paved floor. Creatures moved into and out of the light to the accompaniment of a continuous barrage of sound, the rattle of wheels, the roar of great locomotives in tunnels, the unintelligible quack and babble of someone announcing departures and arrivals.

At a central kiosk labeled ‘Information,’ the ape asked, ‘When does the next Down Line Express leave?’

‘As soon as it’s full.’ The Information creature smiled vaguely, looking up from its crossword puzzle with one pair of eyes. ‘Be a while, I should think. One left yesterday.’

‘Where are all the other trains going?’

‘Other trains?’ Another vague smile.

‘The ones we hear coming in and going out?’

‘Oh,’ the creature pointed at a shelf near its feet where a tape player hummed. ‘That’s all just for atmosphere, don’t you know. Actually, the Down Line is a gravity train. Very quiet.’

‘We could use a little quiet in here,’ the tortoise said. ‘This racket is giving me a headache.’

‘Would you like it turned off?’ The creature reached down and switched the player off and silence fell into the enormous room like snow into a bucket. Only a few reverberating hoof-falls broke the peace. High above, in the web of steel, a flock of winged creatures argued melodically over a scrap of food. Somewhere someone asked, ‘Can I arrange a throw for Usable Chasm from there?’ the voice falling away into hush.

‘I rather like that,’ said the Information creature. ‘It makes a nice change. Perhaps we’ll just leave it like that until the train fills up.’

‘You said it might take a while?’

‘Several days, perhaps.’

‘But it’s supposed to be an express!’

‘Oh, it is. Expressly for Frab Junction. And very fast. When it leaves.’

‘Which is when it’s full.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Is there somewhere we can get food? Perhaps a bed for the night?’

‘Food booths are all along that wall,’ the creature pointed. ‘Medium of exchange is information about the game. New-comers are allowed to use imaginative assumptions and valid extrapolations from known data against future redemption.’

The ape thought this one over. ‘Like IOUs?’

‘Hmm, rather. There’s a dormitory up on the balcony. Better sleep in relays. They don’t announce departure, you know, and if you’re not there when it leaves, you may miss it.’

‘Thank you,’ said the tortoise weakly. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

They wandered off toward the food wall, selecting a booth which provided sandwiches and beverages as well as fresh fruit of both familiar and exotic types.

‘So, what have you got to tell?’ the tentacled vendor asked them.

‘I have an imaginative assumption,’ said the ape.

‘First-timer, humph. The assumptions never come to anything, you now. Still, I’m required to accept them, so you might as well spit it out.’

‘I assume,’ said the ape, ‘that this game is played in many worlds, and that the creatures inhabiting the game are those who are currently playing it and haven’t yet found their way out.’

The creature barked with laughter, waving three tentacles and jittering on the remaining four. ‘That’s what I call an assumption. Now I’ll tell you one. If that’s true, what you just said, how come this place is getting more and more crowded all the time. You tell me that?’

‘Hmmm,’ mused the ape as he read the menu posted on the wall above the counter. ‘Do I need to answer in order to get two butterfilk sandwiches and a couple of pints of bitter?’

‘Not at all,’ the vendor replied, filling their order with alacrity. ‘I thought it might amuse you, that’s all. He who laughs last.’

‘Well, it does. If the place is getting more and more populated all the time, it would mean A) that more and more people are playing the game or B) that more and more people are unable to complete the game or C) that more and more people have no desire to complete the game. If the former is true, there are so many implications it would be difficult to list them all. If the latter is true, it could be because A) they enjoy the ambience of this particular place more than wherever they are from or B) the act of completing the game is, for some reason, unacceptable to them.’

The vendor twinkled in their direction as it provided woe cones in various flavors to an ill-assorted group of travelers. ‘Unacceptable is mild, stranger, mild, but clever of you, nonetheless. Easy come isn’t always easy go. For that little exercise in extrapolation there, I can offer you dessert. Cheese cake? Hot mud sundae? A nice piece of ripe squap?’

‘Melon,’ said the ape.

‘Perhaps an apple,’ said the tortoise, her head in the bottom of the bitter glass where she was attempting to sup up the last few drops.

‘Don’t you want your sandwich?’ asked the ape.

‘Not really,’ sighed the tortoise. ‘What I’d really like is a bowl of earthworms and some lettuce.’

The vendor removed the sandwich and supplied the requested articles, from which the ape averted his eyes. Only when he heard the first crunch of the apple did he look back again. The worm bowl was empty and the vendor was staring at the tortoise with contemplative eyes.

‘One man’s meat,’ he murmured to himself or to them. ‘You’d love Cattermune’s Worm Pits. You really would.’

The ape shuddered, delicately, as the tortoise nodded. ‘We’re together,’ she said. ‘Though I might relish a visit to the pits, I’m afraid the ape wouldn’t like it.’

‘Strange bedfellows,’ sighed the vendor, wrapping each of their empty glasses in a tentacle and dousing them in a bucket of soapy water.

‘Speaking of bed,’ said the ape. ‘I’m suffering from jet lag.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘I can’t remember,’ said the ape, ‘except that I’ve got it.’ He turned and climbed the stairs to the balcony, carrying the tortoise under one arm, where he found two adjacent cots. ‘Half an hour’s nap,’ the ape said. ‘Then we’ll go wait on the platform.’

They slept longer than half an hour, but the train was still there when they gained the platform. Thereafter, it was not as long a wait as they had feared. The train, consisting of a number of open cars like those on a roller coaster, stood at the platform untended, gradually filling up as this one and that one sat down and strapped itself in with every indication of staying until the device moved. Behind each seat was hinged a clear bubble, obviously designed to protect the bodies of the passengers from the lash of air or from something falling from above. The train was held back by a barricade of heavy wooden planks. When the last seat had been filled, the barricade pivoted outward and up, and the train slowly began to roll beneath it. When the last car had passed, the barricade rotated into place once more with a sonorous clang. The Down Line Express was under way.

It was not unlike a roller-coaster ride, except that there were long stretches of virtually level track and the few major inclines were brief. There was an initial drop to pick up speed, and from that point on, the cars rolled silently forward into what appeared to be limitless space. Ahead and behind the tracks ran into infinity, slender lines extending into forever, crosshatched by ties which were tied, thought the ape, to nothing at all.

Far away to the left was a tumbled glory of clouds and precipices, interspersed with rays of many colored lights. The aspect of this area changed from moment to moment, at one instant lending itself to interpretation as a landscape and at the next seeming to be an enormous garden of moving flowers.

‘The Illusion Fields,’ cried the scaled being behind them, reaching forward to point with a lengthy talon. ‘I was there once.’

‘Only once, though, isn’t that right?’ asked the ape. ‘You can’t go back again?’

‘True,’ said the being sadly. ‘The time for the Illusion Fields is ten thousand years. It was a very long time, but not bad. Better than ending the game, that’s for sure.’

‘What is this business about ending the game,’ drawled the tortoise. ‘I don’t like it at all, Ape.’

‘It does give one pause,’ replied the ape. ‘As I recall, it was our intention to get to the end of the game and await our friend there. We may have to change that intention.’

‘Our friend,’ mused Tortoise. ‘That would have been Mouse, would it not?’

‘It would indeed. Mouse. Malachite mouse. Who is now either behind us or ahead of us. Who could be anywhere at all. Who could be in the Illusion Fields, where she would stay for ten thousand years.’ The ape chewed a knuckle gloomily. ‘I have the feeling that all is not what it seems to be in this place.’

Some time passed. Ahead of them and still to the left they made out a mass, extending from illimitable space below to endless space above, vaguely man-shaped, the feet dwindling away into a bottomless chasm, the head lost in mist. ‘Gerald,’ commented their co-traveler. ‘I’ve never been there.’

‘Never been to Gerald?’

‘On Gerald. Or perhaps in. I’ve never been to George, either, but I suppose I’ll have to go sometime soon. I’ve been almost everywhere else. As we go past Gerald, take a good look off to the left, slightly up, and you’ll catch a glimpse of the Dinosaur Zoo. Sometimes the express stops for a while on a siding so the passengers can enjoy the view.’

‘A whole zoo of dinosaurs,’ marveled the tortoise.

‘For dinosaurs,’ corrected their guide.

The tortoise started to say something, then thought better of it.

Gerald grew larger and larger on their left until he filled the entire sky, the top button of his striped trousers even with the tracks on which they ran. Far below, dwarfed to baby bootees by the distance, were Gerald’s shoes, which even from this height could be seen to need polishing. As the train ran on, Gerald grew smaller once more behind them.

Another structure evidenced itself before them, also to the left, a clutter, a ragtag of color and movement, a confettilike swirl, suspended as though it were cloud, except that its edges were definite and unchanging. It came closer, growing larger in their view. The train slowed and ran off on a platformed siding on which were mounted a number of coinoperated telescopes. A conductor with a change dispenser moved along the cars, passing out coins in various denominations. The company apologizes for a brief delay,’ it intoned in a funereal voice. ‘The company offers free viewing of the Dinosaur Zoo while you are waiting.’ It dropped coins into the ape’s hand and moved on. The company apologizes …’

‘Would you like to see the zoo?’ Ape asked the tortoise.

‘Go ahead,’ said the tortoise faintly. ‘I’ll wait here.’

The ape put a coin in one of the telescopes and stared through it at the distant zoo, surprised at how close and immediate it appeared. It was a rather old-fashioned zoo, with rows of cages rather than ‘habitats,’ and strolling viewers dressed mostly in striped jackets and straw hats or shawls and bonnets, depending, he supposed, upon sex. They were all of the upright type of dinosaur with heavy hind legs and kangaroolike tails which served as props when groups of them stopped, as they frequently did, to chat together or share refreshments.

After gaping at the dinosaurs for a moment, the ape turned his attention to the inhabitants of the few cages he could see clearly. One was occupied by a large furry pig and its family; another by a very large bird with legs like an elephant; two more by several dozen serpents of various colors and diameters; and finally a malachite mouse in a cage by itself.

The ape left the platform hastily, returning in moments with the tortoise. ‘Is that her?’ he asked. ‘I never saw the mouse. It looks like a malachite mouse, but there might be more than one. Or perhaps not …’

‘It does look like her,’ replied the tortoise somewhat doubtfully. ‘If she has the matchbox, we’d be sure.’

The mouse took a golden matchbox from her pocket, removed something from it, and made the unmistakable motion of throwing dice. The mouse had only time to seize the dice before she vanished.

‘That was her,’ said the tortoise slowly. ‘That was her.’

‘I don’t suppose you could see how the dice fell,’ asked the ape plaintively.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t,’ answered the tortoise.

This is madness,’ responded the ape in a fretful tone. ‘A kind of madness which has no equal in any world I have yet contemplated. Complete madness. It’s like trying to go up on a down escalator.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a descalator?’ Tortoise asked. ‘From the word “descend.”’

‘All on board,’ cried the conductor. ‘Close the noiseproof hoods over your seats, please. We will be passing under the Puce Polemic. All on board!’

They hastily strapped themselves back in, lowered the clear, noiseproof hoods over their heads, watched as the conductor gave the train a small push to get it started, then reconciled themselves to the dubious pleasure of the Puce Polemic and what could not but be an interesting arrival in Frab Junction.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When Mouse arrived at the Dinosaur Zoo, she was relieved to find herself behind bars. An onlooker peered at her with a large and saurian eye, one which inevitably reminded her of that vast, moonlike orb which had been about to spy her as she so precipitously left G’nop, and she cowered timorously for a moment until she realized both that the bars were stout and that the creature staring at her was a civilized being. The first observer turned away to be replaced by two bonneted saurians, and when they noticed her discomfort, they politely averted their gaze and moved on. The dinosaurs were certainly courteous. A sign just inside her own cage made it clear that the zoo cages were occupied by transients. The sign read, ‘Time of transit, Dinosaur Zoo, from three to twenty-two hours.’ Next to this notice was a map of the game with a red arrow marked, ‘You are here,’ pointing to the zoo and a number of cards which Marianne did not bother to examine.

A large, furry pig in the next cage asked, rather breathlessly, ‘Where from, dearie?’

‘G’nop, most recently,’ replied the mouse.

‘Oh, by my own blessed piglets,’ the pig cried. ‘I spent the worst three minutes of my entire existence at G’nop. Lost three out of the litter and would have been gone, myself, if the time hadn’t run out.’

‘Do you know the game well?’ Marianne asked politely.

‘As well as anyone. They change it from time to time, but I’ve been around three times, including all the sidings except Moebius, thank the Alltime Boar, and take my word for it, avoid Banjog’s Mooring if you possibly can.’

Mouse nodded thoughtfully. ‘Let’s suppose I hadn’t thrown the dice, there at G’nop. What would have happened?’

‘Why, you’d have had another three minutes, dearie. I thought everyone knew that.’

‘And, if I were in the Illusion Fields, and ten thousand years passed, and I didn’t throw?’

‘You’d be in for another ten millennia. You want to watch your step there. Along about nine thousand and eight hundred years, you want to start paying very close attention to the passage of time! If you want out, that is.’

‘And if you throw a square where you’ve already been?’

‘Automatic skip over to the next square where you haven’t. Unless it’s a junction, of course. It’s all very simple, really.’

‘What if that square’s a Forever?’

‘If you land on a Forever, we all say ta-ta. Ta-ta, dearie, and it’s been nice to play with you. Forever’s pretty well gone and lost forever, dreadful sorry, pal of mine.’

‘It sounds to me as though the safest bet is just to stay in the Illusion Fields time after time,’ the mouse remarked in a depressed voice.

‘Oh, but so dull! I hate to say it about my own kind, but piggishly dull, dearie. Somnolent, slovenly, sluggardly, lie-about, do-nothing, dreadfully dull. One gets so sick of special effects! Along about the seven thousandth year, one gets absolutely fed up!’

The mouse sighed. ‘I didn’t intend to play this game just now. You see, I’m pregnant.’

‘Well so was I, dearie, when I began. And here you see me with what’s left of the litter, still getting along. Don’t fret. Everything will happen in its own time.’

‘Which is what?’

The pig shrugged, a most expressive gesture when done with furry shoulders, furry hips, furry ears and snout. ‘You mean time inside versus time outside? But, dearie, who knows? Who knows?’

‘Some think they know,’ said a ponderous voice from the cage on the other side. Mouse turned to meet the scrutiny of round, golden eyes in a vast, owllike head that was perched on a dumpy feathered body supported by elephantine legs. ‘Some think they know how long in-here is how long out-there, but then the question arises, doesn’t it, which out-there one is speaking of and which in-here one is speaking of also.’

‘There would be that,’ agreed the mouse.

‘Feeding time here at the zoo is in about an hour,’ the bird advised. ‘You still have time to fill out your menu selection and put it on the outside of the door.’

‘Thank you very much,’ breathed the mouse, suddenly aware of hunger. ‘I don’t think I’ve eaten in a very long time.’

‘Exactly,’ said the bird. ‘That’s how some people think they know.’ He or she then turned its back on the mouse and settled into a squat, as though sleeping.

‘That’s the aepyowl. Been here for simply ages,’ the pig whispered. ‘Refuses to throw the dice. Says it likes the food. And the food is very good, dearie. Do what it said. Fill out your menu card.’

Mouse settled on a seafood bisque, a green salad, and hot buttered rolls, with coffee to follow. The meal was delivered by a short, liveried staurikosaurus who wheeled in a low, rolling table, chatted about the weather, ‘Unusually fine for this part of the game,’ and poured the coffee before leaving. When the mouse had eaten, she felt much better. As she sipped the last of the coffee, she saw something far off in the sky, rather like a contrail. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, attracting the pig’s attention and pointing upward.

‘Hmmm?’ The pig ambled over to get a better look. ‘Down Line Express, dearie. It goes right by here on its way to Frab Junction. Everybody in the game gets to Frab Junction sooner or later. You’ll find if you try, you can throw any number you really want to. Also, you need to have the direction you’re going in mind before you throw. Try real hard to throw a seven from here and concentrate on a left turn at Cattermune’s House. You’ll end up at the junction, sure as sure. Interesting places, junctions.’

‘What makes them interesting?’

‘There are nine junction squares – not counting the Forever one – and they aren’t like anyplace else in the game. You can go there twice or three times or a dozen. You can meet people you’ve met before. Catch up on what’s happening in all the squares. Find out who the current Grisl Queen is, and who G’nop’s swallowed recently. Hear the latest on Gerald and George. Find out what’s going on at Cattermune’s House.’ The pig shuddered delicately. ‘It’s just interesting.’

The mouse patted its whiskers on the napkin which had been provided with dinner and watched the Down Line Express come nearer. It seemed to be running on a dim tracery, like the faintest cobweb stretched across the sky. When it was at its closest point it stopped. Various creatures, dwarfed by distance, got off the train and stared toward the zoo. There was something about one or two of them that tickled at Mouse, worrying her. Where had she seen those shapes before? She stared and stared, almost but not quite recognizing them.

With an exclamation of impatience, Mouse got the dice out of her matchbox. Surely at least three hours had passed since she first entered the zoo! Remembering the advice of pig, she concentrated on what she was doing and threw a seven.

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘I can’t understand how you got here so quickly,’ exclaimed the tortoise. ‘We passed you, way back there, behind the Polemic.’ Tortoise still had shreds of Polemic caught on her back claws, and she shuffled them on the pavement. The stuff was like chewing gum!

‘I know you did,’ answered the mouse, who had remembered them the minute she had seen them up close.

‘Mouse threw the dice when she saw us go by,’ said the amethyst ape, thoughtfully, stroking the malachite mouse with both hands. ‘Oh, lovely Mouse, are you well, are you coherent, are you in one piece, are you all right?’

‘Perfectly all right,’ the mouse said with a tiny catch in the voice, like the smallest possible sob. ‘I spent eight interminable years in Buttercup. I was almost eaten in G’nop. I did, however, have an excellent supper in the Dinosaur Zoo, and I am here, so, yes, I’m all right.’

They were sitting on a bench just outside the terminus of the Down Line Express, among a fuming welter of passersby, hawkers, mongers, and kiosk-holders, all greeting one another or calling out their wares in loud and uninhibited voices. Beyond this hubbub were streets full of wanderers and windows full of watchers. A streetcar clanged busily up a hill, striking sparks from the wires strung above the street, its bell ringing frantically. Food carts offered roast nuts, ethnic dishes, and brightly colored galoshes for those traveling to the Puce Polemic, the Worm Pits, or the Six Howlers. A newsmonger was doing a brisk business and the ape went to fetch one of the red lettered tabloids. ‘NEW GRISL QUEEN REIGNS AS BUTTERCUP I,’ headlined the front page, subheaded by ‘DOGS ARE LATEST ROYAL FAD,’ and ‘DOG IMPORTERS DO BRISK BUSINESS.’ Other front page headlines included, ‘SELDOM SIDING TRANSIENTS IN RIOT DEMAND MORE FREQUENT SERVICE,’ and ‘PUCE POLEMIC SEEN AS HEALTH HAZARD.’

On page two was a lengthy list of names headed, ‘G’NOP VICTIMS INCREASE IN RECENT,’ followed by an even longer list headed, ‘VACATIONERS RETURNING TO GAME FROM ILLUSION FIELDS.’ Ape read these lists almost compulsively, wondering if he would recognize anyone, realizing that he could not recognize anyone under the guise of carnelian cocks or emerald emus. On page three was a brief interview in which George confided that he hadn’t really meant what he said about Gerald, and another putatively conducted in the Dinosaur Zoo with a short-time visitor, a malachite mouse, in which the mouse was quoted as saying, ‘I didn’t plan to make this trip just now as I’m pregnant.’

‘That pig,’ breathed Mouse.

‘Never mind,’ said the ape. ‘It would seem the item to which our attention must inevitably be drawn is this one, here.’ He pointed to a feature article on the back page, ‘CATTERMUNE’S HOUSE HOSTS CELEBRITIES FOR BIRTHDAY FETE.’ ‘It is the only mention of a birthday I can find, and didn’t someone say that something had to be done by someone’s birthday?’

‘I wonder if it’s the same Cattermune?’ asked Mouse.

‘Surely there wouldn’t be more than one,’ commented Tortoise.

‘What Cattermune is that?’ asked the ape. ‘The name does sound familiar. Do you know this Cattermune?’

‘The Cattermune who lent a certain matchbox to the father of a certain person,’ said Mouse. ‘If you know who I mean.’

The tortoise sighed. ‘You don’t need to try to spare my feelings. It was my father who borrowed the matchbox from Cattermune. Presumably, if we are to avoid disaster, it must be returned to Cattermune, at Cattermune’s House, in time for Cattermune’s birthday.’

‘You didn’t mention the name Cattermune,’ said the ape. ‘When we discussed doing … coming … proceeding after Mouse, you didn’t so much as hint at Cattermune. We could have gone right past Cattermune’s and missed Mouse completely.’

‘You don’t need to be testy,’ said Tortoise. ‘It had slipped my mind, that’s all. In all this flurry and haste, the reason for the whole matter had simply slipped my mind.’

‘The matchbox,’ Mouse told Ape vehemently. ‘That’s what it’s all about. The return of the matchbox to Cattermune!’

‘A matchbox?’ the ape asked. ‘Do you have it?’

In answer the mouse took the box from her pocket and rattled it. ‘It was in one of the drawers at Buttercup’s house, that is, at Thrumm House. I was inhabiting Buttercup herself …’

‘Which is what the game square said,’ the tortoise interrupted. ‘It said Buttercup.’

‘Well, I was in Buttercup, and there was no room in there for anything but me and her, but at least the matchbox didn’t end up far away.’

‘Thank heaven you didn’t mislay it,’ said the tortoise fervently.

‘I had some trouble getting Buttercup to find it, but I certainly wouldn’t have mislaid it,’ replied the mouse. ‘That’s what I came for. Or what I would have come for if I had intended to come at all.’

‘Oh, most sweet and excellent companions, I am correct in thinking that a birthday was mentioned, am I not?’ Ape received two solemn nods in confirmation of this. ‘And since this paper indicates that a birthday is imminent, and since we have no idea how much time goes by within the game as compared to our customary world, hadn’t we better get ourselves to Cattermune’s House at once?’

‘If we’re in a hurry, we will need to throw a three,’ said Mouse plaintively.

‘But what if we don’t. Or one of us doesn’t?’ Tortoise asked.

The ape laid his hands on Tortoise’s shell, patting her gently. ‘Come, come, now. Let us not give way to hysteria or melancholy. I seem to have noticed that when we really concentrate, we can throw any number we really desire to throw.’

‘It did seem that was what’s been going on, but it makes no sense. If one can throw any number one wishes, then …’

‘Oh, most excellent Tortoise, then there are a finite number of choices,’ said the ape. ‘And that number gets smaller and smaller the longer one stays in the game.’

‘Until, at last, there is nothing left but junctions, Forevers, and The End,’ said Mouse, examining the huge game map mounted on the wall behind them. ‘Players can gyrate back and forth between junctions for a long, long time. From Buttercup to Cattermune to Frab, from there to Snivel’s Island – and Mother’s Smithy. Over to Seldom and Last Chance What? and Usable Chasm. And then you’d throw two elevens and be back at the Down Line again. It could go on and on and on and on …’ Her voice dwindled away.

‘Shh,’ comforted the ape. ‘We must not allow ourselves to be disheartened. Someone I once knew well always told me that a stout heart is the only true requisite in the game of life. I am not at all sure what he meant, but it sounds exemplary, doesn’t it? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The most important thing right now is to return the matchbox, don’t you agree?’

‘It’s certainly a place to start,’ the mouse assented. ‘If Tortoise thinks so.’

‘I think so,’ said Tortoise slowly. ‘I really do think so.’

‘I’d been looking forward to sight-seeing here for a while,’ Mouse sighed. She looked tired. The malachite around her eyes had faded to a limey green and her whiskers were limp.

‘Every moment we spend here might be the last moment for return,’ remarked the tortoise.

‘Of course.’ Mouse sighed again, getting out her dice as she saw the other two doing so. ‘Three, from here, didn’t you say?’ Listlessly she rolled the dice. ‘To Cattermune’s House.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The man turned around and saw her, putting out his hands to hold hers, very tightly. As for the young woman, she cried, her tears running down her face to make a salty wetness.

‘So here we are,’ he said.

‘I didn’t, didn’t,’ she gulped.

‘Oh, but my dear young woman, you didn’t mean to, I know.’

‘I told him you didn’t,’ the old woman said, peering down at her nightgown. ‘Didn’t whatever it was, though I seem to have forgotten what you didn’t do. I knew I should have changed my clothes! I told someone so!’ She pulled her shawl more firmly around herself, thankful for the thickness of the flannel gown and the solid support of the slippers on her feet.

‘Where are we?’ the large man asked, swiveling his belly before him as he examined their surroundings.

‘Who are we?’ asked the young woman.

‘Why are we here?’ concluded the old woman. ‘And how did we get here?’

They stood very closely together, looking first at themselves in the high mirrors before them, then at each other, and finally around themselves at the room they were in, an enormous, rectangular ballroom, one not used recently, for the floor was thick with dust and the crystal chandeliers above them hung like dirty icicles from a vast, vaulted ceiling painted with gloomy scenes of the hunt – a chase through immemorial forests and across vast, edgeless moors in the gloom of an autumn dusk for an illusive and dangerous prey whose painted eyes and gleaming teeth menaced them fiercely from behind painted bracken.

To one side opened a row of tall arched windows draped with begrimed dark velvet and curtained with webs of torn fabric. Opposite the windows an equal number of high, round topped doors stood, enigmatically closed except for the farthest one which moved silently to and fro as if blown by opposing breezes. The curved tops of the windows and doors were like the arches of great trunked trees; the tattered fabric of the curtains hung in the windows like dangling moss. Gilt chairs with broken legs huddled in corners and staggered along the shorter walls like visitors from a more civilized world, abandoned to die in this darkling glen. On a dais, rusty music stands huddled like skeletal victims of some long-ago hunt above a litter of musical scores, yellowed by time into a forest floor deep piled with autumn’s leaves.

On both short walls were gold-framed portraits, larger than life-size, veiled in cobwebs. Brass plates labeled these as Cattermunes, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, then sons and daughters again, for generations. All of them shared the same heavy eyelids, like the lids on a marble statue, lips slightly parted to reveal sharpened teeth; neat, small ears which lay oddly horizontal on their heads as though tilted backward; nostrils, widely distended, seeming to scent game even through the paint which bound them to their canvases.

Hypnotized by the painted stares of those dozen pairs of eyes, the three travelers drew near enough to read the labels attached to the frames. Amerie Cattermune. Grendla Cattermune. Ostrey Cattermune the Elder. Ostrey Cattermune the Younger and his mate, Sulina. Ostrey Cattermune the Third. And more.

Without exception, the Cattermunes had been painted with weapon in hand or upon shoulder or carried in some other fashion, and with one foot poised upon something dead. Even Sulina smiled around the poniard she carried between her teeth as she glanced with satisfaction at the stripe-hided hulk beneath her tiny boot.

From somewhere a breath of icy air stirred the chandeliers into shrill, tinkling complaint.

‘The door,’ breathed the man, leading the way toward the single door which stood open, swinging soundlessly in and out. They slipped through into a corridor as the breeze caught the door behind them, slamming it, caroming an assault of echoes down the length of the hallway behind and before them with the sound of a shouted word.

‘Hush,’ said the man, holding up one hand, but the word was lost in echoes. He had not needed to hush them. Neither of them had dared say anything at all.

One side of the hallway was taken up with the high arched doors into the long room they had just left. The other side was lined with niches in which lamps burned over great bronze busts, each statue festooned with cobwebs, veloured in dust, labeled in bronze. Evenyl Cattermune the Elder. Evenyl Cattermune the Younger. Starwold Cattermune. Ogfire Cattermune and his mate, Mordinor.

‘One would not doubt,’ said the old woman, ‘that this is the Cattermune’s House.’

‘But what are we doing here?’ asked the young woman. ‘It is not a place I would want to visit. Why are we here?’

The large-bellied man led them on down the corridor, stopping only briefly at each niche to confirm that yet another Cattermune was immortalized there. At the end of the corridor a passageway led to their left, slightly narrower but noticeably cleaner. They turned and followed it. The marble floor gave way to threadbare carpet and this in turn gave way to carpet in a reasonable state of repair. The corridor turned once more, this time to the right.

‘Good, merciful Moomaw,’ a voice said from a suddenly opened door. ‘What are you people doing wandering around back here? You’re half a mile from where you’re supposed to be, and late at that!’

They turned to confront an emaciated old person with flyaway white hair and shoulders so high they appeared to be roughly at ear level. ‘Come along, now. Lost, I suppose? How else end up in the west wing! No one’s used the west wing since the time of Alphia Cattermune. Nothing back there but dust, spiders, and broken furniture. You, Green, are supposed to be down in the butler’s pantry helping polish the silver for the Cattermune’s birthday fete next week, when the new Grisl Queen comes calling. Take the next right, down two flights, then two sharp lefts, got that. You women come along with me …’

The women, young one and old one, trailed after him, turning to catch a last glimpse of the man called Green, now departing down a cross corridor. The old being went on, ‘You, young woman, you’re the wet nurse, right? Mary Ann? Two flights up at this next stairway, then through the green baize door on your right and you’ll find the nurseries. Nanny hasn’t arrived yet, but the nurserymaid is up there. Fanetta, her name is. Poor thing. Yours is the room next to the night nursery.’ He turned to the old woman and gave her a piercing glance. ‘You must be the layette seamstress, Mrs Smani? Your room is right next to the wet nurse’s room. You’ll find everything you need laid out there, including several uniforms. If I may say so, it was hardly sensible of you to come to work in your night clothes.’

‘… very suddenly,’ said the old woman he had named Mrs Smani. ‘Didn’t have time to …’

‘Yes, well, that’s understandable. Blessed event, and all that. New Cattermune heir or heiress? Ah? Lord Cattermune’s young mate fooled us all, she did. Here she is, almost ready to kindle – just as you are, my dear – and no one knew until just now. And aren’t the older children fit to be tied! AND the other wives!’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the young woman, Mary Ann, ‘but could we ask your name?’

‘Me? Oh, I’m Groff. Old Groff. Or Groff the Pensioner. I was butler here once, long ago. Now I just make myself useful. Finding servants who show up in the wrong place. Replacing those who leave at awkward times. Giving information and advice. Speaking of which …’ He folded his hands and gave them a stern look.

‘Staff dining room is down the way I sent Green. Nursery staff won’t have their meals delivered until after the blessed event, or until your baby comes, young woman, but after that you’ll have meals in the nursery dining room. Staff meal times are six, eleven, and five, with tea and snacks laid on after the Cattermunes have finished dinner in the evenings. You must wear uniforms at all times in the house. Nursery staff shouldn’t be wandering about. When you aren’t in the staff dining room or out taking exercise in the servants’ yard, you should be in the nurseries or on your way there. When a Cattermune comes by, or a guest, you stand back at the wall with your hands at your sides and your eyes respectfully down. Other than that, do your work well and no one will bother you …’ He gestured grandly at the staircase beside them and repeated himself, ‘Two flights up, through the green baize door, and you’re in nurseryland.’

Mary Ann started up the stairs, the old woman trailing behind. ‘Seamstress,’ the old woman muttered. ‘Layette seamstress. Somehow that comes as a surprise.’

‘Wet nurse,’ mused Mary Ann. ‘Not too surprising, considering everything. Green is my brother, isn’t he?’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘He looks like me. Come to think of it, we both look like you. Are you our mother?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Smani. ‘I don’t feel like your mother. I certainly don’t feel like that man’s mother.’

‘An aunt, perhaps?’ asked Mary Ann. ‘Then he might be my cousin. It would be nice to have a cousin.’

‘He seemed quite fond of you,’ Mrs Smani opined. ‘Perhaps he’s your husband. I suppose you do have a husband.’

Mary Ann stroked her rounded belly and nodded. ‘It would be appropriate, wouldn’t it? I wonder when the Cattermune blessed event is expected.’

‘Sometime after yours, I should think, if you’re to be wet nurse. Sometime after the layette is sewn. From the looks of you, they’ve left it rather late.’

‘This must be the door.’ Mary Ann pushed her way through the green baize door and found herself in a murky hallway with a strip of blood-red carpet down the center and darkpaneled walls on either side. Iron brackets in the shapes of bats bore red lanterns. Daggers and javelins hung in groups between the doors, which stood open upon the right side. The first door opened into a flagstoned room with toy shelves ranked beneath the windows, the second into a long, low room with cribs lined against one wall, the third into a small bedroom with a rocking chair in one corner, the fourth into a sewing room with a cot. On the other side of the hall the doors were closed, but as they went by, one of them popped open an inch and a pale face peeked at them through the crack.

Mary Ann said in a gentle voice, ‘Fanetta? I’m the … I’m the wet nurse. And this is the seamstress.’

‘Oh, thank Moomaw,’ squeaked the nursery maid. ‘I’ve been up here all alone! I didn’t want the nanny to come, you know what nannies are! Especially Cattermune nannies.’

Mary Ann didn’t know, but she thought it unwise to say so. Mrs Smani was as tight-lipped as she went into the sewing room and lay down on the cot, breathing a deep, weary sigh. ‘My bones feel as though they’d been pinched,’ she said. ‘As though I’d been walking around all bent over.’

The room was lined in shelves piled with folded lengths of fabric in one mud color or another. A sewing machine sat beneath the one narrow window, the cabinet beside it stacked with spools of thread, scissors, binding tape, and buttons of various sizes.

‘Can you sew?’ Mary Ann asked.

‘I suppose so,’ replied the old woman. ‘Sometimes when you get to be my age, you forget what you’ve done. It will come back to me.’

‘I’ll help you,’ the younger woman said. ‘There’s a list here on the sewing machine. It says, “Seven sets of crib linens, including changes of linen, or as needed.” Why seven sets? I wonder.’ She went to the window, drew aside the heavy drapes, and looked outside. Beyond the walls was a dreary and unpleasant landscape of stone and contorted thorn; inside the walls another wing of Cattermune’s House loomed across a plaza where a fountain played, so lit by red lanterns that it appeared to be a fountain of blood.

Mary Ann went through the connecting door into her own room. An armoire of black wood with uniforms in a trying shade of earthy plum hung in a sparse array next to a narrow bed with a single pillow. Against one wall stood a crib like a cage, with a top which could be shut and locked. The batwinged key in the lock had a loop of thong tied through it so that it could be hung up – or put around one’s neck. Shuddering, Mary Ann left it where it was and went through the connecting door. In the night nursery was nothing at all but one straight-backed chair and the cribs, seven of them. These cradles, like the one in her own room, had tops that locked. Next door was the day nursery, with a floor as hard as iron and one small, soft rug before the great deep fireplace. The toys on the surrounding shelves were strange to her. Dolls, of course, and small, soft animals, but also model racks and guillotines and whips and lances and gibbets. From one of these, a teddy bear hung with its head awry, and Mary Ann shuddered again.

She returned to her room, closing the door behind her. She had not liked the looks of the nurseries.

Each room had a clock with a swinging pendulum; each room had its own rhythm of tic and toc, toc-toc, tac-tac, each loud enough that when the connecting doors were open the clocks spoke to one another in a tiny, percussive rustle, as though the rooms were alive with beetles. From every window, the same view presented itself: the bloody fountain and the landscape beyond. They had evidently come at evening, for the light grew dimmer, and Mary Ann turned to look for lamps.

There were no lights of any kind in her room except a candle beside her bed, and an ornate iron tinderbox in the drawer of the table. She rapped at the door to the old woman’s room and went in. Here there was a lamp beside the sewing machine where the treadle clattered and the needle replied as lengths of dirty-colored fabric moved from the old woman’s lap through the machine.

‘Seven sets,’ Mrs Smani hummed. ‘Seven sets.’

‘What time did that old person say dinner was?’

‘Five.’

‘The clocks say nine.’

‘Then we came after dinner.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘Snacks after the Cattermunes have eaten. I wonder what time that is?’

‘Let’s find out.’ She went back into her own room and changed into one of the plum-colored dresses, a garment with buttons down the front from neck to ankle and a dark blue apron and cap. Mrs Smani’s garb was the same, except that hers buttoned in the back and had a cap with cerise ribbons on one side.

‘So they’ll know who we are,’ Mrs Smani murmured. ‘The uniform tells them. Dark blue apron and cap, that’s the wet nurse. Cap with ribbons, that’s the layette seamstress.’ They had just emerged into the hallway and turned toward the green baize door when the door opposite Mary Ann’s popped open again and Fanetta’s head appeared. She was wearing a cap very much like Mrs Smani’s except that the ribbons were deep blue.

‘Where are you going!’ she demanded.

‘Down to see if we can get something to eat,’ Mary Ann replied.

‘Oh, my, no, no. You’d be finished off in a minute. Don’t dare go that way. There’ll be Cattermunes and their cousins all over out there. See!’ She stood back, gesturing them to come through and look out her window. From here they could see another court of Cattermune’s House, far below them, with carriages arriving and departing and a great clutter of figures walking among the formal gardens of clipped yew and black cypresses and peonies as dark as clotted gore.

‘Then they haven’t eaten yet?’

‘Oh, my, no. No, not until ten or eleven, or even midnight. They’re night people, are the Cattermunes. If you want to wander about, the time to do it is very early in the morning, about dawn, and for a few hours after that. Then the Cattermunes are all asleep.’

‘But I am hungry,’ said Mary Ann plaintively. ‘I really am.’

‘So am I,’ confided Fanetta. ‘We can go down. Just not the way you were going.’

She went down the hallway away from the green baize door, leading them around a turn and into a dismal cul-de-sac hung with tapestries. Behind one of these she found a knob, twisted it to reveal a black space, which she entered, calling, ‘Follow me!’

‘What about a light?’ objected Mary Ann.

‘I’ve got one,’ came the answer as a gleam of matchlight showed from the black pit. ‘I keep candles and matches down here on a kind of ledge thing. The housekeeper gives me candles to replace the ones burned in the nursery, and I always bring the stub ends down here …’ The voice drifted away. Mary Ann and Mrs Smani hurried to follow it, the hidden door swinging shut behind them.

There was a seemingly endless flight of stairs, with odd little corridors which corkscrewed away from it through the walls of the place. ‘You can get to almost every room in the Cattermune’s House through the walls,’ murmured Fanetta. ‘Or, at the very least, you can look and listen through spy holes. They’ve forgotten about these ways. Nobody uses them anymore except us.’

‘Us?’

‘Us mouslings. Us little people. If you’re smart, you’ll learn your way around. Sometimes a Cattermune takes after one of us for no reason. If we’re lucky, we can get into the walls before we get caught.’

‘And then?’

‘Then sometimes I get out of Cattermune’s House for a while, you know. Even though I know I’ll probably just come back later. I go to Frab Junction or Mother’s Smithy for a time …’

Mary Ann frowned. Frab Junction. Surely she remembered something about that. And Mother’s Smithy. She rubbed her head, as though the memory only needed stimulation to emerge, fully fledged. She lost it as Fanetta went on.

‘Chances are, the Cattermunes’ll have forgotten about it by the time I get back …’ Her voice faded away and the light flickered on before them, down and down, and around, and down once more. Here and there were spy holes extending through the mighty walls into rooms which were evidently in use for light came through, and the sounds of voices. ‘Kitchens are next level down,’ said Fanetta. ‘Remember that. From the end of the nursery hall, it’s straight down the stairway to the kitchens. Do you know anyone there?’

‘Green,’ replied Mrs Smani. ‘A kind of under-butler, perhaps?’

‘Footman,’ suggested Fanetta. ‘Well, when we go in, stay out of the way of the cooks, that’s all. Most of them have been here a long, long time, and they don’t take to newcomers. They don’t take to anybody much, and that’s the truth.’

She found a knob similar to the one at the top of the stairs and twisted it counterclockwise, making a loud click. The hidden door swung open into a short corridor off an enormous, stone-floored kitchen filled with scurrying people in white coats and flat white caps, others in slightly taller headgear, and a few in towering hats topped with fabric puffs like billows of cream. The room reeked of roasted meats and baking breads, steam from kettles seethed over the monstrous iron stoves, heat beat like a desert wind from the doors of opened ovens where brobdingnagian pies sweltered, their tops bubbling with juices. Everywhere was the scurry and chop of cooklets fleeting like sheep before the advance of the mighty cooks.

‘First course,’ cried a stentorian voice from the doorway. ‘The guests are seated.’

‘Send up the seethed snivel,’ shouted a tall cook, waving an enormous ladle. ‘Go!’ Five cooklets staggered out the doorway under an enormous laden platter, headed toward a barely visible immensity of stairs.

At the foot of the stairs the cooks were surrounded by a crowd of footmen and harried on their way with sharp cries of ‘Mind the step,’ ‘Sharp left here,’ and ‘Hold up your end, you fool.’

‘Quick now,’ bellowed a cook, ‘dabble fish into the poacher. Cravvle and Journ! Start chopping twelve cups of parsley.’

‘I think we can sneak around here to the staff dining room,’ whispered Fanetta. ‘Don’t, for Moomaw’s sake, get in their way.’

The three women, staying as close to the wall as possible, slipped a quarter way round the huge kitchen and through a narrow door into a shabby, low-ceilinged room furnished only with long, scarred tables and dilapidated straight chairs. At one of the tables a group leaned confidentially toward one another in quiet talk. At another, a liveried servant slept, face hidden in pillowing arms. ‘Those’re the staff cooks,’ Fanetta whispered, pointing at the group. ‘They’re the ones that feed us. There’ll be something over there on the buffet. There’s always bread and cheese and something to drink.’ They scurried to the buffet and found not only the promised bread and cheese but also half an enormous meat pie and a bowl of slightly wilted salad.

‘Not that they eat salad,’ Fanetta murmured. ‘The Cattermunes, I mean. But some of their guests fancy it, so there’s usually some about.’

‘Do all these people know about the passages in the walls?’ Mary Ann asked.

‘Oh, no. Well, they know there are passages in the walls, but not where they are. There’s only a few of us know where all of the passages are. Groff. And me. And some of the housemaids. We’re the only ones that’ve been around long enough.’

‘Why have you been here so long?’

‘Because … I’ve been everywhere in the game, at least once, and there’s nothing left for me but junctions. Except The End, of course, but I’m not ready for that yet.’ She jutted her chin at them and glared, a mouse glare. ‘That’s the rules, and even the Cattermune has to obey the rules! Even the Cattermune can’t go anywhere he’s been before except junctions!’

Mary Ann and Mrs Smani shared glances. When Fanetta spoke of junctions, they suddenly remembered something about junctions though they had not thought of them until that moment. ‘Which is the best junction?’

‘Well, for me, this one is. I know my way about. I’m so unimportant, it isn’t likely any of the Cattermunes will get offended at me. Sometimes there isn’t anyone in the nursery but me, the young ones grow up so fast. Even when there aren’t any young ones there, someone has to keep the place clean. I’ve got a fairly comfortable room, and the food isn’t bad. Sometimes it’s kind of interesting, too, what you can see and hear through the walls.’

‘Dear and valuable young woman, tell us about the other junctions,’ said a male voice. They looked up to see that Green, who had been asleep at another table, had joined them, still rubbing his eyes. ‘Now that you speak of junctions, I seem to remember such places. Tell us about Seldom.’

‘There’s not much to tell. There’s a corral for horses and a well for water and a cave with some supplies of food and firewood. There’s a haystack. And a privy. And once in a while a stagecoach comes through. There’s a desert all around, nothing but lizards and cactus.’

‘How about Snivel’s Island?’

‘Oh, the snivels are worse than G’nop. They’ve got such teeth, and they’re everywhere. You can’t lie down without one of them trying to chew on you. You can climb a tree and stay away from the big ones, like the one they had for dinner tonight, but the little ones can climb anything. Oh, no, no, you wouldn’t want to go to Snivel’s Island.’

‘How about Last Chance What?’ asked Mary Ann.

‘It’s in the bottom of a well full of spiders,’ she replied. ‘And Mother’s Smithy is so hot, and such hard work all the time, and no sleep with that hammer going night and day. Then there’s the Forever junction! Be very careful leaving here if you’re going on the main gameline. Don’t throw a two, whatever you do!’

‘Isn’t there any way out of a Forever?’

‘No. Land on a Forever, and you’re gone and that’s it! But, it’s easy enough to stay out of them. Just concentrate on which way you’re going and don’t throw a wrong number!’

‘What about Usable Chasm?’ Mrs Smani asked.

‘If you’ve got wings, that’s just the place. For the rest of us, it’s cling to the side and pray. It’s got no top, at least no top anybody knows about, and I’ve never been to the bottom. Last time I had to chew out a place flat enough to roll the dice!’

‘And Moebius Siding?’ Green asked in a bemused voice. ‘What about that?’

‘Like a roller coaster. Around and around and around, with no end and no beginning to it, every office you go to they send you someplace else, and just when you think you’ve got somewhere, they send you back right where you started. And no place to sit down and nothing to eat, and the drinking fountains don’t work and there’s a line a mile long waiting to get into the rest rooms … if they aren’t out of order.’

‘That reminds me of someplace I’ve been before,’ mused Mary Ann. ‘I wonder if I’ve been to Moebius?’

‘You’d remember if you had.’

A clamor in the corridor made them look up to see the under-cooks struggling back to the kitchen under the weight of the great platter, empty now except for a litter of bones and a broad, toothy skull, its jaws propped open with another skull, one that looked very human.

‘Well, it looks like they’ve finished with the seethed snivel,’ Fanetta remarked. ‘They’ve even eaten the meat off the binker’s head in its jaws.’

‘Binker’s head?’ Mrs Smani faltered.

‘Game. Prey. You know, what the Cattermunes hunt, out there, in the wilds. That’s what they hunt, binkers.’

‘That thing is a human skull.’

‘Shhh!’ hissed Fanetta. ‘Never say that. Never for a minute say that. That was a binker, that was. Never mind what it might have been before. It was a binker, and that’s all there is to it.’ Her face was very white, and she was trembling uncontrollably. ‘Don’t, don’t say that other thing. Don’t ever.’

‘Shhh,’ said Mary Ann. ‘I won’t say it. Calm down.’ She cast a quick glance at Green’s face, seeing there a quiet, calculating look more frightening in its rigorous calm than was Fanetta’s hysteria.

‘Ahh,’ he said softly, ‘if the Cattermunes are … ah … displeased, I presume those they are displeased with are or … shall we say become … binkers?’

Fanetta did not reply, but neither did she contradict him. She merely shivered, glancing the way the cooks had gone. ‘They only eat binkers when it’s just family and cousins,’ she said. ‘When there are guests, like the Grisl Queen, they don’t. At least not whole. In pies, mostly.’

‘You mean …’ Green’s eyes strayed to the leftover pie on the buffet. ‘You mean …’

‘Most likely.’ She shivered again. ‘You don’t see anybody down here eating it, do you?’

‘I did,’ he remarked faintly. ‘I did.’

The others watched his retreating back. ‘I suppose he’ll be sick,’ said Mrs Smani. ‘I would be in his place.’

‘Stick with the bread and cheese,’ recommended Fanetta. ‘It’s safest.’

They waited for Green’s return which happened coincidentally with the conclusion of dessert. Under-cooks, bearing trays of pastries and fruit, stopped off in the staff dining room to offer leftovers to those present. Gratefully, Mary Ann and Mrs Smani stocked up on apples and pears and bunches of red grapes, borrowing a basket from the kitchen to carry the harvest in.

‘Lovely companions, I have a feeling, wrenched up from Moomaw knows what depth of former existence,’ said Green from his huddle at the end of the table, ‘that there is something we should be attending to here at Cattermune’s House.’

‘That’s strange,’ said Mary Ann. ‘So have I.’

‘Well of course,’ remarked Fanetta. ‘You’ll both have plenty to attend to, just getting your jobs done, and I don’t envy either one of you, let me tell you.’

‘More than that,’ the man said, sighing. ‘More than that. Not something I’m supposed to do as part of being here. Something I was supposed to do when I came here.’

‘I’ve had that feeling,’ said Fanetta. ‘It usually goes away if I have a hot bath and some sleep.’

‘Hot bath,’ breathed Mary Ann.

‘Sleep,’ whispered Mrs Smani. ‘Oh, yes, please.’

‘Something we should be doing,’ mused Green. ‘Maybe it will come to me tomorrow.’

The three women made their way back through the kitchen to the hidden door in the paneling, then up the endless stairs to the door behind the tapestry, with Mary Ann carrying Mrs Smani the last few flights. In the nursery hallway, the lanterns were alight. Mary Ann left the hall door ajar as she put the little old woman on her bed, covering her with a blanket, then closed it behind her and opened the door into her own room. The dress she had taken off was lying across the bed. As she went to hang it up, something in the pocket knocked on the door of the armoire. She fished it out. A gold matchbox.

A gold matchbox. Belonging to someone. Now whose matchbox was it?

‘Is this yours?’ she asked Fanetta, who had come to her door.

‘Not mine,’ the maid said. ‘I just came to tell you the bathroom’s across the hall from the night nursery. There’s hot water this time of night or very early in the morning. I put the fruit in my window. It’s cool there.’ She turned to leave. ‘If you don’t want that matchbox, I’ll take it.’

‘No,’ mused Mary Ann. ‘I think I’m supposed to give it to someone.’ She put the matchbox in the pocket of her uniform and lit the candle by her bed, surprised to find that the warm, yellow light made her want to weep with pleasure. There was too much red light in Cattermune’s House, and this warm glow made her remember the yellow sun of some other world.

‘Give the matchbox to Cattermune, for his birthday.’ Fanetta laughed. ‘That’d be a kick.’

‘Why? Why would it be?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Cattermune gets big things for his birthday. Maybe he’d like something little for a change.’ She drifted away, humming to herself. ‘Just don’t put your name on it. That way, if he doesn’t like it, he won’t know who gave it to him.’

Mary Ann, obscurely moved by this suggestion, set it aside for the time. There was a long flannel nightgown among the clothing in the armoire. She put it on and crawled into her bed, forgetting Cattermunes and matchboxes and everything connected with them in a long timeless, lightless slide into sleep.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Green was roused early, dragged from his bed in the footmen’s dormitory and chivvied into a line waiting to take care of sanitary and grooming matters. Half an hour later, a long file of identically dressed figures submitted to inspection by a haughty individual identified as Cribbs, an under-butler, who took pleasure in advising Green that he was not an important figure in the affairs of Cattermune’s House. There were, Cribbs said, a steward, two butlers, four under-butlers, two wine stewards, twenty footmen, a housekeeper, two under-housekeepers, forty housemaids, a kitchen staff of thirty, plus the nursery staff and personal servants and a staff for the stables and gardens comprising several dozen individuals. In addition there were tutors, seamstresses, costume makers, musicians, artists, dancing masters, game keepers, librarians, decorators, carpenters, assorted grooms, and several masters of the hunt. All of these in service to the thirty or forty Cattermunes currently present at Cattermune’s House.

Though there’ll be more, for the fete,’ sniffed Cribbs. ‘There’ll be sixty or seventy of the family here by then.’

‘Where are they now?’ asked Green daringly. His words fell into a ghastly silence.

‘About,’ said Cribbs. ‘Where is none of your business.’ He began to read off assignments for the day. During the morning, Green was to station himself in the gaming rooms, where he was to attend to the needs of any family member who might go in that direction.

The gaming rooms were on a lower floor, underground, without a window or a breath of air. Dice tables and card tables were scattered about, cluttered with the accoutrements of gaming – decks of cards, dice in their cups, chips printed with strange symbols.

Morning wore away to noon. Green was replaced by another footman and went to have his lunch. After lunch, he was assigned to man the small library, and he headed in that direction, fighting sleep.

The small library was in the direction of the abandoned wing in which Green had first found himself. It looked out upon a quiet stretch of sward surrounded by bleak cypresses and centered upon a reflecting pool in which pallid lilies bloomed, ghostlike in the still light. Green stationed himself in a corner, almost hidden behind a bookcase and the fall of drapery from the nearby window.

‘How do you stay awake?’ he had asked another footman at lunch. ‘There’s nothing going on!’

‘Pinch yourself,’ said the other as he left. ‘Or play with yourself. Or imagine what the Cattermunes would do to you if they caught you asleep.’

Green had some difficulty with this, inasmuch as he had not yet even seen or heard a Cattermune – a deficiency which was almost immediately remedied.

A noise in the hallway brought Green’s head up. Someone or something massive entered the room, saying in a heavy, furry voice. ‘Ah, no one here. Come in, Cornutes, come in.’ There was the sound of someone else coming in, the noise of two people moving about, a chair scraping on the floor, then another, before the voice spoke again. ‘I don’t want to miss the gaming, so you must not keep me long. Now, what was it?’

‘Just wanted to reassure you. So far so good, Cattermune,’ said another voice, a lighter voice, though one similar in its furry quality. ‘I checked the placement of the thing, as you suggested. You did brilliantly. The daughter of the man you gave it to is old and dying, and any knowledge of the thing will die with her. Meantime, the supply of immigrants is more than adequate and seems to be increasing. You didn’t need to have been concerned. Nothing’s going to go wrong.’

‘Of course nothing will go wrong,’ said the heavy, furry voice with enormous self-satisfaction. ‘I was never concerned, though I suppose it never hurts to check. I told the family they could trust me in this matter. The sacrifices were heavy, but within hours our waiting will be over. Finality will occur. Cattermune’s House will be immortal!’ There was a gelatinous chuckle in the furry voice.

‘Clever of you! Though there were some …’

‘Ah, well, it was a dreadful risk at the time. And it took the sacrifice of fifty of our family to create the thing. I told them what the benefits would be, but they weren’t what one might call willing. I suggested a lottery, but they’d have none of that, so I ended up picking them out myself. I’m sorry that your mother had to be among them, Cornutes, but she would go on nagging at me. And several of your littermates, too. She’d got to them. And then before we were through, it took the blood of another fifty to break through to the world. And then, finally, it took fifty years to implant, fifty years to become permanent. A long, hard process, but there was no shorter way.’ The heavy voice sighed, again with satisfaction, as a man might who had completed a hard task to his own total satisfaction.

‘What would you have done if it had come back somehow? If the man you gave it to had returned it?’

‘Oh, if it had been returned, I would simply have placed it in the world again. It would have taken another fifty lives, another fifty years, but still, whatever the cost, it would have been well worth it. However, there was little chance of that. The man I gave it to – he wouldn’t have returned it. I read the man well. A fool. An irresponsible fool. The risk was that his daughter would return it, but even there – she delayed.’

‘Yes. She delayed.’

‘And now you say she has grown old and is dying. When she dies, all knowledge of the thing dies. When she is gone, someone will take the anchor and put it away, or sell it, or, better yet, melt it down to make something else, perhaps a dozen other things. That’s why it was made of gold, so that it will be kept, somehow, in some form. There’s no way it can get back here. It will be divided up and scattered about in the world, no one will ever put it together and bring it back! The House of Cattermune will be tied directly into a source of supply and the future of the House will be assured!’

‘Players,’ said the lighter voice. Green could hear the sound of hands being rubbed briskly together, a swish, swish, swish of flesh on flesh, celebrating.

‘Players, yes,’ purred the heavy voice.

‘Binkers,’ said the other, with a kind of bubbling snigger. ‘Binkers unlimited.’

‘That, too,’ replied the other voice with a deeply gelatinous and shivering laugh. ‘Come now, you’ve kept me from the gaming long enough. You uncle Cadermon bilked me at dice last night. Tonight I will have my revenge.’ And he laughed again.

Green, in his hidden corner, for no reason that he could identify, shivered with an uncontrollable aversion at the sound of that voice.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Arti Zahmani answered the door herself, unsurprised to find Makr Avehl on the doorstep since he had called from the airport to say he was on his way. His face under the porch light was drawn and tired-looking. She scarcely noticed.

‘Where are they?’ she blurted. ‘Where is my daughter? Where is Dagma? She was too weak to get out of bed without help. Haurvatat is having an absolute fit. The doctor knocked me out for simply hours. I suppose you know Aghrehond is gone as well! Where are they, Makr Avehl?’ The tears she had been fighting began to run down her cheeks and she made an ugly, gulping noise.

He put his arms around her and patted her back, trying to calm her. ‘At the moment, we don’t know where they are, Arti, and if you distress yourself in this fashion, you can’t help me find them. Try to calm down.’ Even as he said it, he knew how futile and silly he sounded. How could she calm down?

‘You must know something? You were already on the way when I called Alphenlicht!’

‘Aghrehond called me, Arti. He left one of his usual enigmatic messages. And Therat had a feeling. She’d been musing over a strange reading from the Cave of Light, and suddenly it came to her that what was usually interpreted as a harmless set of symbols was in fact rather threatening. She and Ellat insisted that all three of us get here as quickly as possible. Until I talked to you from the airport, we had no idea that Marianne and the others had disappeared, but I am sure that it is somehow connected with whatever it is that your aunt Dagma asked Marianne to do.’ He reached out to take Arti Zahmani by the shoulders, shaking her gently. ‘We can’t do any good by going to pieces, now settle down.’

‘This whole thing is ridiculous,’ Arti cried, barely controlling her hysteria. ‘Dagma was asleep when Marianne got here. Marianne had luncheon with us. We talked about all the plans for the baby. Then Dagma woke up, her nurse came down to tell Marianne, and she went up. After about half an hour, Dagma’s bell rang, and she asked for Aghrehond! Aghrehond! Why? Then you called, and we looked for him, and they were gone. All of them.’ She shivered and began weeping. ‘I don’t understand it! Haurvatat is ready to kill someone, probably me.’

‘Nonsense, Arti. Just because it’s mysterious is no reason to believe it’s necessarily dangerous. Marianne and the others may be perfectly all right. Have you touched anything in Dagma’s room?’

‘You said not to, so we didn’t. Not after we talked to you.’

‘Then let’s start there. Will you show me the way?’

‘Oh,’ she started, coming to herself, the well practiced routines of the hostess for the moment derailing her anxiety. ‘Of course, Makr Avehl. I’m sorry. Up here.’ She turned to lead the way up the curving stairs and down the wide corridor to the door of Dagma’s room.

The room bore evidence of a hasty and cursory search. The covers of the bed were thrown back. The closet doors stood open and hangers were disarrayed, as though someone had looked behind the clothing hanging there. A sheet of thick, creased parchment lay half under the coverlet. On the floor at Makr Avehl’s feet was a tiny carved gem and a pair of dice. He picked them up, inspected the dice, grunted and pocketed them while closely examining the tiny animal he had found: a rhinoceros cut from gleaming rose-colored stone. Rhodolite, he told himself, recognizing the color. A rhodolite rhinoceros. ‘Ah,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Interesting. Alliterative. Accidentally, or as part of something very complex? Therat may know. And very fine work to be trodden underfoot. Now why is that?’

He sat heavily upon the bed and turned over the folded sheet, seeing that it was parchment, believing that it was hand drawn. ‘Personally drawn,’ he corrected himself. ‘Who knows if the one who drew it had hands or not.’ When he had mused over it for some time while Arti stood at the window – alternately staring at him and staring out, as though the missing ones might materialize upon the lawn or at the end of the drive – he folded the parchment and secreted it in his inside jacket pocket, dropping the carved animal in after it before taking Arti by the hand and leading her downstairs.

‘Will you stay to dinner?’ Arti asked him. ‘I was afraid you were going to disappear, right in front of me.’

‘No, no, Arti. Not me. Where’s Haurvatat? In the city? Even as upset as he must be?’

‘Because he’s so upset, Makr Avehl. He was sitting around here driving me mad. I told him to go consult someone, anyone, for heaven’s sake. Marianne and Dagma and Aghrehond have been gone for two days now. Well, one day and part of another one. And you know as well as I do that they aren’t the only ones. This business of mysterious disappearance is gaining epidemic proportions. My neighbor down the road vanished a week ago Wednesday! And her son and daughter at the same time, only teenagers. A man who serves on a charity board with me disappeared last Sunday! I’m beginning to read about it every day in the newspapers! And it’s all around here! Not New York or Chicago or London. No, here, in Virginia! Hundreds of people gone, disappeared, no one knows where.’

‘Shh, Arti. Hold it together, dear. We can’t do any good by falling apart. Do you have a maid who usually cleans Dagma’s room?’

‘Yes, of course. Her name is Briggs.’

‘May I see her, please?’

The maid, when summoned, proved to be stocky and plain-featured, with an open countenance and a confiding smile. Makr Avehl laid the parchment out on the desk in the library and invited her to look at it. ‘Have you seen this before?’

She studied it for the briefest moment. ‘It looks like the game my brother’s got. I think it’s the same. His has little animals to play with. He showed it to me, but I haven’t had a chance to play it with him yet …’

Makr Avehl showed her the rhinoceros, and she nodded. ‘Well, his were that size, but his was a kangaroo, I think, and a bird of some kind and some other things I’d never seen before.’

‘How many game pieces?’

‘Four, I think.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Yes, four.’

‘Where did he get the game, do you know?’

‘There’s a shop that sells them. In the mall. All the kids hang out at the mall. It’s a store where they sell records and tapes and posters and games, and there are video games there for them to play, you know.’

‘And the name of this place?’

She furrowed her forehead in concentration. ‘I’ve never been in there, but I’ve passed it. On the upper level, beside the shoe store … Cat something. Catfields?’

‘Cattermune’s,’ suggested Makr Avehl, who had noticed the name blazoned on several shopping centers on his way from the airport.

‘That’s it,’ said Briggs, leaning forward to inspect the parchment. ‘You know, the one my brother has is on a board, not just paper like this.’

‘A more recent issue, likely,’ agreed Makr Avehl. ‘This may have been the original. I should not be surprised to learn that old Madame Dagma has had it for many years.’

‘Oh, she has,’ Briggs confirmed. ‘I’ve been here eleven years, and all that time she’s kept her handkerchiefs in the top drawer of her bedside table, and whenever she asked me to give her a hanky, I’ve seen this folded paper under it. It’s kind of splotchy, you know. Not exactly all white.’

‘That’s because it isn’t paper.’ Makr Avehl smiled at her, thanking her for her observation. ‘It’s parchment. Skin.’

‘Sheepskin, maybe?’ asked the maid.

‘Something like that,’ he agreed, thinking that it was probably something quite unlike that. ‘Did you by any chance see the game pieces that went with this?’

The maid shook her head. ‘I never did. She had an envelope in that drawer, but I never looked inside it.’

‘Well, it’s still confirmation of a kind. Thank you, Briggs. You’ve been very helpful.’ He smiled, and the maid went out, shaking her head over it all. ‘Now, Arti, forgive me for refusing your kind invitation, but I must tell Ellat and Therat what has happened and then go here and there for the next several hours.’

After a few more tears and protestations, he was allowed to go.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

At the hotel where Makr Avehl had decided they should stay – believing they would have more freedom of action there than at the Zahmanis – he cleared the phone, a lamp, and assorted cardboard advertisements from the top of the table and spread the parchment game upon it. Ellat sat in one chair with Therat across from her, each of them leaning forward, chin in hand, to examine the twisting lines and labeled squares. Makr Avehl placed the dice upon the parchment and the rhinoceros beside it.

‘Notice the dice,’ he said.

Ellat stared at them. ‘I notice them, Makr Avehl, but I don’t know what it is I’m noticing.’

He rolled them over with a finger. ‘Dice are usually made so that opposite sides add to seven. The one dot is opposite the six. The five is opposite the two, and the three opposite the four.’

Therat picked them up. ‘These add to three, seven, and eleven.’

‘Does it mean anything to you?’

‘They are numbers used in conjury. Here, let me hold them.’ She picked them up, closed her fist, her face knotted in concentration. Suddenly she exclaimed, dropped them shaking her hand. ‘By Zurban, Makr Avehl! These are evil things!’

‘And the animal?’

She touched the little rhinoceros with a tentative forefinger, shivering at the touch. ‘This, too. It is not that the things themselves are evil, rather that the intent for which they were made is evil.’

‘They lend themselves?’

‘I would say, yes. It would be hard to bend them to a good purpose.’

‘Let me tell you what I think happened,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Dagma asked Marianne to do something which involved this game. I believe there were originally four game pieces. Animals, probably, or birds. Living things, at any rate. My guess is that they were alliterative, the substance and the shape starting with the same sound …’

‘To lend force to the enchantment.’

‘Yes. I think Marianne, probably without any sense of what would happen, placed a game piece on the parchment and then threw the dice. She vanished.’

‘How do you know that?’ Ellat asked.

‘Because Dagma rang and asked for Aghrehond. If Marianne had wanted him, she would have asked for him herself. If she had been present, she would have asked for him. She didn’t. Dagma did. So – what would Aghrehond do?’

‘He would enter the game, going after Marianne,’ said Ellat definitely. ‘You couldn’t have stopped him with a large piece of machinery.’

‘And Dagma?’ asked Therat.

‘I think he took her along. For reasons of his own, which, probably, were very good ones. I wish I knew what the three missing game pieces had looked like, but I don’t.’

‘But you wouldn’t want to …’ mused Ellat.

‘I would not want to use Cattermune’s game pieces. I don’t think.’

‘Cattermune?’

‘Look, there on the parchment. Cattermune’s House. Cattermune’s Pique. Cattermune’s Worm Pits. Then think. How many “Cattermune’s” did we see on our way here.’

‘The London airport,’ said Ellat.

‘The Washington airport,’ said Therat. ‘And there were those two shopping centers we passed.’ The three of them stared at one another, puzzled. ‘A connection, Makr Avehl?’

‘Have you ever heard the name before this week?’

‘No.’

‘And now, everywhere?’

‘It does seem unlikely.’

‘It seems unlikely by accident, yes. It is not at all unlikely as part of a plan. Besides which, the maid, Briggs, says her little brother purchased a similar game at Cattermune’s. I would say a plan. A conspiracy.’

‘A plan to what?’

‘To disappear a great many people. And don’t ask me for what reason, Ellat. I don’t know.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to do what Aghrehond did, go in after them.’

‘I don’t think you can,’ said Therat, running her fingers over the parchment. ‘I don’t think anyone can.’

‘What do you mean?’ Makr Avehl put his own hands on the parchment, trying to feel whatever it was she was feeling. There was nothing.

‘It feels dead,’ she said. ‘Turned off. Not like the dice or the little animal.’

‘Turned off?’ asked Ellat. ‘Therat, what are you talking about.’

Therat flushed. ‘I can feel – connections. I’ve always been able to. If I put my hand on a woman’s shoulder and she is in love with someone, I can feel a kind of current running out of her toward the person she loves. Like a pulse. A vibration. If you hand me a letter someone has written, even though it’s in a sealed envelope, if that person is anywhere near, I can feel the connection. It feels like a circuit, like something flowing. If the person who wrote the letter is dead, the letter feels dead.’

‘And this parchment feels dead?’

‘It feels like its connections have been turned off.’

‘Hmph,’ growled Makr Avehl. ‘Since when? Therat, will you call the papers and the police and ask if anyone has disappeared in this strange fashion since – what is today?’

‘Wednesday.’

‘Since … since Monday afternoon.’

‘When Marianne disappeared?’

‘When Marianne and Dagma and Aghrehond disappeared.’ He got up and stalked about the room, scowling, eyes squinted almost shut. ‘Connections. Maybe that was what it was about. What did the Cave of Light say again, Therat? Roads? Ropes? Something like that?’

‘Exactly like that.’

‘Something had established a connection. And something that Marianne did broke it.’

‘Not at once,’ said Therat. ‘Not if your theory about what happened is true, because Dagma and Aghrehond still went.’

‘Maybe what Marianne did to break it didn’t happen all at once,’ he said. ‘Maybe it happened after she disappeared. Maybe it happened when she moved to a certain … to a certain place in the game.’ He turned, stared at the parchment, and put his right forefinger on the square marked ‘Cattermune’s House.’ ‘When she got there,’ he said. ‘I can feel it.’

‘Which means?’

‘Which means I’ll have to get in there on my own. Using my own dice. And my own game piece, too. Which is fortunate. I really didn’t fancy being a rhinoceros.’

‘They’re quite short-sighted, aren’t they?’ asked Ellat in an annoyingly meaningful voice.

‘Quite,’ he snarled, ‘Not that I’ve been exactly clairvoyant about this whole thing.’

‘Don’t blame yourself, Makr Avehl,’ said Therat. ‘If anyone’s to blame, it’s I. I should have …’

‘We all should have. But we didn’t. So let’s remedy the situation now. Ellat, will you go get a taxi and go to that Cattermune’s place we passed on the way here. Buy one of these games and bring it back. I think we already know what we will find, but it won’t hurt to double check. Meantime – I need to find a jeweler.’

Makr Avehl needed go no farther than the lobby of the hotel to find a most prestigious shop, a name he recognized as being identified anywhere in the world with fabulous objects of great value.

The jeweler peered at the tiny rhinoceros through his loupe, making admiring noises. ‘Beautifully done. The detail! Almost miscroscopic.’

‘Is there anyone you know who can …’

‘Duplicate this?’ He put down the loupe and thought, pulling on one earlobe to assist the process of thought. ‘One man, possibly. Actually, he does most of his carving in jade, and the pieces I’ve seen are a good deal larger than this. Some of the details he does on the large carvings – blossoms, or insects on a branch – are no larger than this, though, and they’re equally well done.’

‘Is he local?’

‘Well, yes, in a way. He’s Chinese, but he’s lived here for a decade or more. Won Sin is his name. He has a shop in the fourteen hundred block of Cleveland Street.’ When Makr Avehl left, rather hurriedly, the merchant was still exclaiming about the little rhinoceros.

Makr Avehl found the Precious Stone Tree, a tiny shop in a quiet neighborhood of no particular distinction. He found the owner, the owner’s wife, and the owner’s eleven half-grown and fully grown children occupied in various craftish endeavors concerned with carving stone and gems and what looked suspiciously like illegal ivory but was said, by Mrs Won, to be an artificial substance.

Makr Avehl put the rhinoceros on the counter. Thirteen pairs of eyes fastened upon it.

‘Quite remarkable,’ said Won Sin, with no accent at all.

‘I need …’ began Makr Avehl, then stopped, for the moment uncertain.

‘Yes,’ prompted the carver.

‘I need a carving, of about this size, of the fiercest animal in the universe.’

‘Oh, my,’ said Mrs Won. ‘A tiger, do you think?’

‘Is that the fiercest?’

‘Mythological animals are acceptable?’ asked Won Sin. ‘If so, what about a chimera.’

‘Not, I think, a chimera,’ said Makr Avehl with a reminiscent smile. ‘No. Not nearly fierce enough. Too given to committee decisions and involuntary introspection.’

‘Ah.’ The carver smiled a secret smile. ‘So, you have had experiences with chimerae.’

‘One, at least. A manticore won’t do, either.’ He frowned, remembering a manticore.

‘Griffin? Wyvern? Rok?’

‘A dragon,’ said one of the younger children. ‘A Chinese dragon.’

‘Not fierce enough,’ commented another. ‘You would need a Western dragon, one with wings, who spouts fire out of his nose.’

‘A dragon might do,’ said Makr Avehl in sudden thought. ‘I happen to have something with me that might make a dragon a good choice. A particularly fierce dragon. I like the idea of fire coming out of the nose, too. How long would it take you to make one?’

‘Out of what?’

‘Out of something I have in my pocket that starts with a D. I have here a rhodolite rhinoceros. I imagine elsewhere in these games there are emerald emus and sapphire serpents. I am assuming alliteracy, on the basis of … well, magical requirements.’

‘Diamond is too hard,’ offered Won Sin.

‘I have the stone,’ said Makr Avehl. He reached deep into one pocket and pulled it out, a roughly oval black stone, gleaming as with an internal light.

‘What is it?’ the carver asked. ‘It looks like obsidian. Except that the light in it is red instead of gold.’

‘It is a demon’s gall stone,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Demons are frequently afflicted with a surfeit of gall, more often with that complaint than with any other. It is why, in many cases, they are so demonic.’

‘How did you get it?’ asked one of the little ones.

‘I had need of a demon, then I had need to send him away. When the demon went, this was left,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘And since I need something starting with a D, a demon’s gall stone will do well enough. How long will it take?’

‘A day,’ said the carver. ‘Using my power tools. If I do nothing else.’

‘Please,’ said Makr Avehl, piling money on the counter. ‘I would be deeply grateful if you would do nothing else.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘I wish we were doing something,’ Ellat fumed. ‘Marianne is gone, heaven knows what is happening to her, and here we sit, dillying.’

‘I am not dillying,’ said Makr Avehl in as patient a voice as he could manage. ‘Listen, Ellat, there is a villain out there. A most horribly noxious but subtle villain. His name, for lack of a better and because it has become ubiquitous, is Cattermune. I think it is no coincidence that this chain of game stores springs up and at the same time people begin to disappear. It is no coincidence that we find this game in a place where Marianne and Dagma and the faithful Aghrehond have just vanished from. You’ve been to a Cattermune store. You brought back a game, the same game, and Therat says it, too, is dead. The dice that came with it are those strange dice. The game pieces are all alliterative little animals. Ruby rats and chalcedony chickens. Bloodstone bats and garnet geese. Little animals which disappear when their players do. So, and so, Ellat, I, too, will disappear …’

‘Makr Avehl,’ she wailed. ‘I wish you didn’t have to do it, not again.’

‘What can I do when my beloved has gone off in this mysterious way? Can I leave her there, wherever she may be? At the mercy of this Cattermune. Can I leave this Cattermune in peace, to continue his depredations? No, of course not. I must go. But I will not use this game piece which was made by Cattermune. No. I will use another, made of something violent and strange which belongs to me. I will go in a guise that suits myself. Besides, you were right about rhinoceri being very shortsighted with disablingly bad tempers. I will need to be far more subtle than that.’

‘And I will help you,’ said Therat. ‘I am ashamed of myself. I should have caught the strangeness of the reading in the Cave of Light. The vacancy. It meant nothing to me then. Now, well …’

‘You’ve blamed yourself quite enough,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Who knows what higher purpose may be achieved through your failure.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Therat through gritted teeth. ‘Failure! I don’t like it at all.’

‘Bear up, Therat,’ rumbled Makr Avehl. ‘Bear up and turn your considerable talents to making our dragon invincible.’

‘How would you suggest?’ asked Ellat.

‘I would suggest a few spells and invocations,’ Makr Avehl responded. ‘I would suggest asking a few of Marianne’s friends from among the momentary gods for assistance. I would suggest a guidance reading from the Cave of Light, conducted by you, Therat, by long-distance phone. See whether it tells us the same thing now that it told you before. I would suggest some protection spells done by you, Ellat. Does this give you any ideas?’

Both of the women flushed, admitting that it did.

‘Then get with it,’ Makr Avehl suggested. ‘While I do some thinking of my own.’

Thereafter, Makr Avehl meditated. Ellat burned incense and spoke persuasively to the powers and confusions. Therat called her fellow Kavi in Alphenlicht and asked for a reading. Some hours went by. Evening came. They ate and slept and began doing the same things again.

‘Have the Kavi any help to offer?’ Makr Avehl asked of Therat as he unwrapped the tiny package which had just been delivered.

‘There have been confirming readings twice in succession. An anchor, a rope, a road on the first session. A bridge, a chain, a gateway on the second. There can be only one interpretation.’

‘A way to travel between two points,’ said Ellat promptly.

‘A tie between two points,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘The anchor, the chains, the bridge, the line. Things that fasten two places together.’

‘Things that permit passage between two places,’ amended Therat. ‘During the last reading the gateway was marked with a death’s head; the road went by a cemetery.’

‘Oof,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Passage between two places, this place and some other not-so-nice place? What kind of creature will this Cattermune be?’

‘I’d like to know what Marianne’s great-aunt Dagma could have done that got her involved with this Cattermune.’

‘Involved she was, whether purposely or by accident. And not happy about it, I should think. That was what Dagma wanted. She wanted Marianne to do something about this linkage, whatever it is,’ Ellat sighed.

‘Which Marianne either tried to do or not. If not, she was simply caught and vanished, as hundreds of others seem to have been caught and vanished. Which changes nothing, so far as I can see. I still have to go, and here is my game piece.’

He unfolded the last piece of tissue paper and disclosed what had been wrapped in it. A dragon, neck curved and front claw raised, tail stretched behind into a sinuous line, wings half unfurled. The red glow within the stone made it appear to be on fire, and Makr Avehl nodded his head.

A note had been enclosed with the dragon. ‘My family has taken the liberty of invoking some help for you,’ it said. It was signed by Won Sin in a splash of ideographs which looked very much like dragon tracks. Makr Avehl read it, half smiling, then put it away with a sigh.

‘There’s no point in delay is there? Do you have the dice, Therat?’

‘Two to use here, and eight identical-looking ones to take with you, Makr Avehl. All ten of them loaded as you asked. You can throw any number you need to.’

He took them from her, threw each one to see how it rolled, then carefully separated two from the eight others, which he pocketed, remarking as he did so, ‘I will go to Cattermune’s House. I will see if I can find Marianne. If I cannot, I will find out anything I can about Marianne, then go elsewhere as needs must.’ He spread the parchment out on the table in front of him and placed the dragon in the space marked ‘Start Here.’ ‘Is there anything else you can think of?’

‘Watch out for Cattermune,’ said Therat.

Makr Avehl sighed. ‘I had intended to do so.’

‘What do we tell Marianne’s parents?’ asked Ellat.

‘As little as possible,’ Therat answered. ‘He’ll either have her back very soon or …’

She didn’t finish the statement but all three of them knew what she meant. Makr Avehl would either have the vanished ones back fairly soon, or he wouldn’t bring them – or himself – back at all. Makr Avehl nodded once and swallowed rather hard, then muttering the opening enchantment which he hoped would get him into the game and concentrating very hard on Cattermune’s House, he threw a six.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

And found himself rolling into a vast, funereal courtyard in a capacious gilded coach which swayed and thumped with every turn of its wheels. Out one side window he could see red-lit fountains, out of the other, black cypresses and hedges of dark yew and tree peonies laden with darkly scarlet bloom. The pavement beneath the carriage wheels was black, polished to a leaden glimmer, over which the wind chased red petals as though toying with drops of blood.

‘Cattermune’s,’ said the driver, climbing down from his high perch to open the door. ‘You here for his birthday fete tonight or for the celebratory hunt tomorrow?’

‘Both,’ said Mondragon, wiping traces of road dust from his lips and returning his handkerchief to his cuff. ‘‘I have an invitation somewhere …’

‘No matter. Here come the footmen now, so it looks as though you’re expected.’

Indeed, a flurry of footmen had come out of the door and were scurrying across the pavement to gather Mondragon’s luggage, of which he seemed to have an exorbitant quantity.

‘Careful, oaf!’ he demanded, as one of the pallid footmen allowed the stacked cases to totter. ‘Cattermune’s birthday gift is in there. He won’t thank you if it’s broken!’

The footman turned, if anything, slightly paler.

‘What’s your name, my man?’ said Mondragon in a more friendly tone.

‘Green, sir.’

‘Green, eh. Something familiar about you, Green. Do you remember seeing me before?’

‘You have a very distinctive face, sir. It does seem familiar, but I couldn’t say where we might have encountered one another.’

‘I know we have, Green. Would you by any chance have a friend named Marianne?’

‘Mary Ann? The wet nurse? Funny you should mention her, sir. Why, I saw her just today.’

‘And Dagma?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know any Dagma, sir.’

‘Hmm. Mrs Zahmani?’

‘Mrs Smani? The layette seamstress. Now how would you have known about her?’

Mondragon intercepted an angry and suspicious look from a liveried supervisor who was hovering in the background. ‘She was in service with my family. They both were. Come, now. Gather up my bags. Can’t stand here all night.’ Folding the great, winglike panels of his cape around him, Mondragon followed the footman into the great hall. So, Aghrehond didn’t know him. Which meant that Marianne wouldn’t know him either. Difficult to make contact under those circumstances, he thought. He thought so even more after several members of the Cattermune family had introduced themselves to him, taking his long, agile hand in their own short, fat ones, tickling his palm with their curved fingernails, smiling with sharp teeth at his polite greetings, their whiskers twitching, only slightly. The women couldn’t really be said to have whiskers. Only the tiniest hint of whiskers. Freckles at the corners of their mouths from which the finest gossamer protruded, visible only in certain lights. But they all had the Cattermune teeth. Mondragon smiled and nodded, bowed and murmured, before escaping to follow the footman up the wide sweep of stairs to an upper hall.

‘Your room is just down here, sir,’ said Green. He and another footman had carried up the baggage. Now the other footman bowed himself away as Green opened the door and began carrying the cases inside to dispose them about the room. ‘Will you be wanting me to unpack for you, sir?’

‘Just those two,’ Mondragon said, indicating two cases. ‘The others are for …’ What in heaven’s name was all this luggage for? ‘For later journeys and eventualities.’ He went to the window and looked out across the courtyard, letting his eyes drift up the façade which confronted him. Story after story, window after window. A movement at one of the third-floor windows caught his eye. Pale faces there. He turned and fumbled in one of the open cases, returning to the window with a pair of binoculars.

‘Green,’ he said. ‘Tell me who that is.’

Green came to stand beside him at the window. Mondragon passed him the glasses, pointing.

‘Oh, that’s Mary Ann, sir. The wet nurse for the Cattermune infants.’

‘She had a child of her own, then?’ Mondragon growled in his throat, thinking of the threat to the child, of not being there when the child was born.

‘Oh, not yet, sir. No. Soon, probably. We are all assured the Cattermune’s young wife will be having her own very soon. The woman with Mary Ann is Mrs Smani, the layette seamstress.’

‘There are three women there.’

Green put the glasses back to his eyes. ‘The other one is the nursery maid, sir. Fanetta. They would be in the nursery maid’s room. When we had … when we had supper together last night, she mentioned having a room which faced the courtyard.’

‘She is pregnant,’ said Mondragon.

‘The Cattermune’s young wife? She is indeed, sir, to the consternation of some members of the family, I’m told.’

‘I don’t mean Cattermune’s anybody. I mean that girl, Mary Ann.’

‘Oh, yes, sir. Unmistakably. Quite, ah, rotund.’

‘I would like to meet her,’ whispered Mondragon.

‘Oh, sir. Quite improper.’ Green’s words were belied by his expression, which was full of unconscious surmise.

‘I know that. Therefore, we won’t do anything precipitant, will we, Green. No. I know I can trust you. Meet me here, tonight, after the birthday dinner. We’ll talk about it then.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

From the high window in Fanetta’s room, Mary Ann continued to stare down at the window in which she had just seen a face. Not only a face, but a face looking at her – a face which had used glasses to look at her more closely.

She was interrupted in this pastime by sounds from the nursery hallway, thumpings and loud expostulations issued in a hard, baritone voice with unmistakably metallic tones in it. Fanetta opened her door, peeked out, then shut it, leaned against it, and said in a terrified voice, ‘It’s the nanny. The Cattermune nanny has arrived.’

The door vibrated to a thunderous knocking and the sound of the metallic voice. ‘Fanetta! Fanetta, I know you’re in there, so don’t play silly games. Come out here at once and bring the others with you.’

Gulping, smoothing her apron, wiping away tears which had appeared at the corners of her eyes, Fanetta complied. Waiting for them in the hall was an enormous woman of uncertain age clad in the ritual garb of nannies: a dark suit, impeccably brushed, with a watch-pin upon the lapel; a snowy white shirtwaist; sensible dark shoes and stockings; and a flat straw hat set squarely upon her head. She carried an umbrella with which she now poked the terrified nursery maid, making her squeak in fear.

‘So, Fanetta! What have you been up to, eh? Sedition and sneakery, no doubt. Crawling about through the walls?’

‘Only down to kitchen and back, Nanny.’

‘Well, there’ll be no more of that! You,’ she fixed Mary Ann with a cruel, hard stare. ‘When is your baby coming?’

‘I’m not exactly sure,’ whispered Mary Ann, as terrified as Fanetta obviously was. ‘Soon.’

‘It had better be soon. Cattermune’s young wife is due to kindle anytime now. Could be tomorrow.’

‘I don’t think that soon,’ Mary Ann cried in panic. ‘Not nearly that soon.’

‘You,’ the nanny said, poking Mrs Smani in her turn. ‘How many layettes are finished?’

‘All the crib sheets, Nanny. I did them yesterday. I’m working on the nightgowns now.’

‘You are not,’ said the nanny. ‘You are lolly-gagging about in Fanetta’s room, doing nothing. Watching your betters, no doubt. Wishing you were Cattermunes so you could ride about in carriages, going to birthday parties.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘No, ma’am,’ said Mary Ann and Mrs Smani simultaneously.

‘I suggest you get on with your work. You’ – she poked Mary Ann once more – ‘since you have nothing to do at the moment, could assist Fanetta in cleaning the nursery. She slacks. I know she slacks.’ The enormous woman turned and stalked away, entering a room down the hall, as Fanetta whimpered slightly.

Mary Ann, musing, was reminded of someone else. ‘Nurseys,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Constabulary Nurseys.’

‘What did you say?’ begged Fanetta. ‘What about Nurseys?’

‘I don’t quite know,’ remarked Mary Ann. ‘Except that the nanny reminds me of them. I must have encountered them somewhere. Before. Before I came here. It’s hard to remember.’

‘I know,’ sobbed Fanetta. ‘It’s always hard to remember in Cattermune’s House. Lots of people can’t, or don’t. I remember because I’ve been back and forth so many times, you see, and I wrote it all down on the bottom of my bureau drawers, so all I have to think of when I come to Cattermune’s is to read the bottom of my bureau drawers, and I have that written on my knee. Once you remember, everything is much clearer.’

‘What did you write? Where?’ begged Mary Ann.

‘All about the game, and the game squares, and where everything is, and where the junctions are from here.’

‘But how did you remember that first time?’ asked Mrs Smani eagerly. ‘We’re here for the first time, and we don’t remember. How did you remember?’

‘Groff has a rememberer. Every now and then they use it on somebody, to find out who they really are, you know? Every now and then the Cattermune will tell Groff to use it on somebody. All I did was, I was cleaning his room – there weren’t any babies in the nursery that time, so they had me working upstairs – so I used it on myself.’

‘And who are you?’ asked Mrs Smani.

‘Fanny Farroway of Seattle, Washington,’ said Fanetta with a faraway look. ‘Caught into the game on the fifth of April, 1982. I was a dental technician. It’s all written down on the bottom of my underwear drawers. And on my knee, in indelible ink, I’ve written, “Read the bottom of your drawers.” I have to keep renewing that, of course, because it wears off.’

‘I wonder who I am,’ murmured Mary Ann. ‘I wonder who you are, Mrs Smani, and who Green is and who that man is who looked at me in such a strange way.’

‘He’s probably a Cattermune,’ said Fanetta. ‘If he’s a guest, he’s probably a Cattermune.’

‘Buttercup is going to be a guest, and she’s not a Cattermune, is she?’

‘Next thing to it,’ murmured Fanetta.

‘You there!’ came the imperious voice. ‘I told you to get busy.’ The nanny stood in her doorway, glaring through rimless spectacles and threatening them with her umbrella.

The three of them fled, Mrs Smani to her sewing machine and Mary Ann with Fanetta to the nursery, where they began to dust and sweep the already spotless furniture and floors.

‘Why do these cribs have tops on them?’ whispered Mary Ann.

‘To keep the Cattermune children from eating one another,’ whispered Fanetta in return.

‘Why does the crib in my room have a top on it?’ cried Mary Ann, with a half-suppressed shriek.

‘To keep them from eating your baby,’ Fanetta replied. ‘Which they will do, if they get the chance. Last time I was here, the wet nurse had twins, and the Cattermunes ate them both. The wet nurse dried up from grief and they made a binker of her.’

‘Oh, by blessed Moomaw,’ said Mary Ann, holding her bulging stomach. ‘What dreadful place have I got myself into.’

‘Cattermune’s House, is all,’ said Fanetta. ‘And if you think that’s bad, you ought to see some of the other places I’ve been.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

A manservant, not Green, arrived to help Mondragon dress for dinner. Cocktails, he said, would be served at the first bell. The second bell would be struck ten minutes before dinner was served, just time to get down to the drawing rooms. If Mondragon had brought a gift, it could be put with the others in the library.

‘Green asked me to tell you, sir. It would be wise to avoid the meat pie.’

‘Thank Green for me. I always avoid meat pie. So anonymous, don’t you think? Meat pie and mince meat and paté. So subject to abuse.’

‘Exactly Green’s thought, my lord.’

‘Not “my lord,”’ said Mondragon abstractedly. ‘I may be addressed as “Your Excellency.”’

The manservant, a lean and pallid creature given to sudden twitches and starts, bowed. ‘Green also said, Your Excellency, that he would see to that small matter of yours following dinner.’ The speaker did not look precisely human, Mondragon thought. Not precisely. Something about the face was odd. Also, there was something repellently obsequious in his tone.

Still, he replied politely. ‘Thank Green again.’

‘May I say, Your Excellency, that if Green is ever unavailable to take care of Your Excellency’s needs, you have only to ask for me. I would be happy to …’

‘And what is your name?’

‘Sneeth, sir. John Henry Sneeth. I was at one time in service to Her Majesty, Queen Buttercup the First.’ A strange expression, half terror, half pride, flitted across the creature’s face. ‘The Guest of Honor at Cattermune’s fete. She arrived just moments ago.’

‘So we are to see Her Majesty at this celebration?’

The expression again, this time with terror predominating. ‘She came down the highway through the Moomaw Incisive and the Inquisitive Galosh, crossing Cattermune’s Pique on the causeway, which he had fenced off for the occasion.’

‘Cattermune’s Pique?’

‘Where the hunt takes place, sir. Where they … where they always release the binkers. For the hunt. The Queen will take part in the hunt. Of course. Tomorrow.’

Mondragon started to ask, ‘Binkers?’ then changed his mind. Something in Sneeth’s voice indicated that it might be better not to ask. Still, he tucked the word away, waiting to hear it again in a context which might explain it.

Mondragon’s partner for dinner was a Cattermune cousin, Eulalienne Cattermune, she told him, of the highland Cattermunes. She was inquisitive and predacious, but Mondragon managed to keep her talking about herself rather than inquiring about him, though her curiosity was evident. Looking about, Mondragon could understand why. He was one of very few non-Cattermunes, and none of the others looked precisely human. They, like the creature Sneeth, seemed to have something wrong with them.

‘So this is the big banquet,’ he smiled. ‘Cattermune’s birthday.’

‘At last,’ she grinned, pointed teeth showing at the corner of her mouth. ‘No more worries about supplies. Plenty of good hunting from now on.’

‘Binkers,’ he smiled.

She gave him a glance of startled attention.

‘One hears things,’ he shook his head.

‘You’re no Cattermune, so I wouldn’t talk of binkers,’ she purred, pointed teeth showing at the corners of her mouth.

‘Inappropriate of me,’ he said.

‘Rather. Yes.’

‘But still, such a very elegant affair. And Queen Buttercup is here!’

‘Grisls,’ she sneered. ‘I claim we’re not related at all, though the Cattermune says we are a kind of cousin to that line. Still, she’s seated down there on the Cattermune’s right. The man on Cattermune’s left is the surviving son and heir – not counting what the wife will produce. Rather throws a rock into the machinery, that.’

‘Um,’ nodded Mondragon, around a mouthful of something safely vegetable. There was a good deal of cheerful laughter at the table, resulting at least partly from much drinking of wine. ‘Will we have an opportunity to meet her?’

‘After dinner. Or tomorrow, at the hunt.’ Eulalienne seemed to have lost interest in him, turning to her neighbor on the other side with some laughing remark.

Mondragon became inconspicuous, taking every opportunity to examine the features of Queen Buttercup and those of the Cattermune.

The Grisl Queen had a triangular face, mouth and chin coming to a point in front from which a long, ivory fang depended. The fang moved with the jaw. She looked much less human than Sneeth, and yet not precisely inhuman. No less than the Cattermunes, who also looked rather human. Bipedal, bimanual, eyes, ears, noses, and mouths in the right places, facial expressions quite readable. The Queen was delighted to be here. One could see it in every gesture.

The brooding hulk which was the Cattermune was not so obviously pleased. Furry brows curled over dark eyes which seemed to see everyone, everything. As though aware of Mondragon’s scrutiny, the Cattermune darted a glance down the table and Mondragon dropped his eyes to his plate, pretending to say something to his neighbor. The Cattermune’s glance went by him like a laser, visibly hot.

A chinkling of glassware brought his attention back to the head of the table where the Cattermune’s eldest son stood up and grinned voraciously at the other guests. ‘Honored guests!’ he cried. ‘Friends! Family! A toast to my father – our Cattermune!’

‘Hear, hear,’ thundered the Cattermunes.

‘Tonight at midnight, he will have successfully concluded a coup which has been a generation in the making.’

‘Hooray,’ yowled the Cattermunes, striking their wine glasses with their spoons.

‘It was a generation ago that our Cattermune, braving dangers which we cannot even conceive of, traveled to the World Outside and established there – The Connection!’

‘Hooraw for The Connection,’ the diners cried, echoed by their guests and the servants lined along the walls.

‘The only Connection,’ continued the toastmaster. ‘The One Connection. Purchased at a terrible price and totally irreplaceable.’

The large figure at the head of the table smiled grimly, nodding in agreement.

‘And since that time, how many hundreds – nay – thousands of participants have traveled The Connection and become part of Cattermune’s Game!’

‘Binkers,’ cried a drunken young Cattermune male, possibly a feckless nephew. ‘Binkers and the hunt!’

The toastmaster lifted his glass in acknowledgement. ‘And binkers, of course. Now, you all know what great occasions tonight and tomorrow are.’

‘’Ray! Wonderful night. Whoopee,’ cried the diners.

Tonight, The Connection becomes permanent!’

Wild cheers and outcries. Mondragon, paying close attention, waved his hands with the rest as he adopted an expression of feigned delight.

‘Thereafter, it may not be dislodged. The location of The Connection has been checked by yours truly. I went there a week ago. The anchor is in place. Nothing threatens it. I invite you all to rise and drink to – the Cattermune!’

Chairs scraped. Some fell over backward, propelled by the enthusiasm of those who rose, waving their wine glasses, caterwauling, ‘The Cattermune.’ ‘Long live the Cattermune,’ and other such sentiments. Out of the corner of his right eye, Mondragon saw that Eulalienne Cattermune was watching him closely over the rim of her glass. He gave her a drunkenly lecherous grin and appeared to gulp deeply from his own glass. She returned his lecherous expression with one of her own. Well, no help for it. He counterfeited drunkenness, then increasing physical distress, and between the next two courses he excused himself hastily and slipped away as inconspicuously as possible while Eulalienne stared sullenly after him.

As he went through the reception hall, he saw a gray-haired Cattermune arguing hotly with one of the butlers.

‘I must see him now! It’s an emergency.’

‘You must be quite mad. They’re in the middle of the birthday dinner!’

‘I must see him. I’m the immigration master. It’s my responsibility. The Cattermune must be told what’s happened.’

‘After dessert,’ sniffed the butler. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’

Mondragon didn’t linger. Green would be waiting for him. Probably. If Green had not attracted some suspicion. If Green could get away.

And Green had somehow managed it.

‘The under-butler kept watching me,’ he murmured from his place behind Mondragon’s door, taken, so he said, so that he could hide in a moment if necessary. ‘There’s a sneak down there in the servant’s quarters. A sneak named Sneeth, I’ll warrant. A slimy sort.’

‘Not human,’ suggested Mondragon.

‘Why, no,’ Green agreed with surprise. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t believe he is.’

‘And no more are the Cattermunes,’ Mondragon suggested again. ‘Are they?’

‘I’d never thought of it,’ said the large-bellied man, shaking his head in amazement. ‘Isn’t that strange. I remember arriving here among them, with Mary Ann and Mrs Smani, but until this moment, I never considered where here was or what they were. How very strange.’

‘Your real name is Aghrehond,’ said Mondragon. ‘My real name is Makr Avehl. Mary Ann’s name is, indeed, Marianne, and Mrs Smani is Dagma Zahmani, Marianne’s great-aunt. Does any of that mean anything at all to you?’

Green-Aghrehond’s face wrinkled in concentration. ‘I have no sense of disbelief,’ he said at last. ‘Though nothing going on in my head at this moment confirms that what you say is true.’

‘Damn,’ said Mondragon-Makr Avehl. ‘And I suppose Marianne will know no more than you?’

‘I consider it unlikely, sir.’

‘Please, don’t sir me. Simply be quiet for a moment and let me think.’ Which Mondragon did, furiously, considering alternatives of action. Suspicion had already been aroused. He could not wait any longer to act. ‘Can you take me to Marianne? Or, better yet, can you bring her and Mrs Smani here?’

Green shook his head worriedly. ‘They’re in the nursery. It’s another wing of the house altogether. There are ways through the walls, but I don’t know how to get there from here and there’s no one I could ask. Fanetta knows the way, of course. She may be in the kitchen this time of night, and I do know the way to the kitchen. Come to think of it, I’ve seen the entrance from the kitchen that they use when they return to the nursery. Perhaps I could find my way from there.’

There would be no reason for a guest to go to the kitchens, would there?’

‘You could be a footman. A new footman. They come and go all the time. With most of the Cattermunes still at dinner, we might make it if we hurry.’

‘We would need the livery.’

‘That Sneeth is about your size.’

‘True. And did offer his services.’

Mondragon turned to the bellpull, and when a maid tapped at his door a moment later, he asked her to find Sneeth. Green was, meantime, busy tearing up pillow cases.

Sneeth arrived with suspicious promptness. He was indeed about Mondragon’s size, though less robust. Still, in a pinch, the clothing would do. Green sat upon him while Mondragon gagged him, stripped him of his livery, tied him securely, and deposited him in the wardrobe. When Mondragon put the clothing on, Sneeth’s inhumanness became even more apparent. The proportions of the trousers and coat were subtly wrong, and Mondragon found himself walking in a high-crotched spidery sidle that was totally unlike his usual stride.

They went down a back staircase and through a network of hallways, standing aside, politely heads down, whenever any of the upper servants came by. There was another staircase, narrower halls, then a doorway opening into a shabby, low-ceilinged room with long tables and battered chairs. ‘The staff dining room,’ said Green, eyes darting from side to side. Except for a huge woman who was loudly slurping soup at one of the tables, the room was empty.

‘She’s not here?’ murmured Mondragon. The woman at the table could not be the Fanetta he had seen through his glasses. ‘Who’s that?’

‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Green in return. ‘I’ve never seen her before. As I said, they come and go. Sometimes one doesn’t see the same faces twice!’

‘Where’s the door you mentioned?’

‘Out along the kitchen wall, in a little side corridor.’

‘We’d be noticed if we went now.’ It was true. The kitchen was having a momentary hiatus. The next course stood upon a side table, ready to go up. Washers were scrubbing pans in desultory fashion. Chief cooks sat on high stools, chatting together. ‘Wait until the next course leaves the kitchen, and we’ll try it then.’

Mondragon sat down, leaning casually on the table while Green fetched two cups of tea from the buffet. The large woman fixed them with an incredulous stare and sniffed audibly before saying, ‘You are on your legitimate break time, I presume.’

Mondragon gave her a haughty look. ‘Who are you, madam?’

‘I am the Cattermune nanny. And you?’

‘Green, ma’am. And Sneeth. Yes, ma’am. On our break. We’ll be only a few moments.’

As they sipped the tepid tea, a burst of noise came from the kitchen, cries of disbelief, the crash of broken crockery. The nanny darted to the door with Mondragon and Green close behind. ‘It’s true,’ an under-butler was exclaiming. ‘I was in the dining room when the immigration manager came to tell the Cattermune! There’ve been no immigrants for some time.’

‘What does it mean?’ cried a cook, his high, puffy hat flopping to and fro as he twisted his head about, seeking information. ‘That there have been no immigrants?’

‘There’s talk the anchor has come loose,’ the under-butler mumbled, casting a hasty look behind him as though afraid to be heard uttering this heresy. ‘That The Connection is broken.’

‘Surely not?’

‘It couldn’t be!’

‘The Cattermune put it there personally.’

‘I thought it was permanently in place.’

‘Not until midnight tonight. Midnight it would have been permanent. If it had still been there.’

‘The Cattermune will be furious.’

‘They’ll be binkering everyone …’

‘Now,’ whispered Mondragon. ‘In all the confusion.’ He followed Green along the wall of the kitchen and into the side corridor. A little door opened upon darkness and they slipped within, though not before Mondragon cast a look behind him to find the Cattermune nanny staring after them, her mouth half open.

‘Hurry,’ cried Mondragon. ‘The nanny saw us.’

‘I am hurrying, sir, but it’s pitch-dark in here.’

‘I had thought it might be,’ said Mondragon, taking a flashlight from his pocket. ‘I seem to have come very well prepared. Ellat’s doing, no doubt. Or Therat’s. I have no doubt that if we needed an inflatable boat or a pair of trained yaks, we would find them in the luggage. Which way?’

‘I haven’t the slightest notion,’ said Green, peering at the stairs that split into three before him.

‘Hello?’ came a tentative hail from above. ‘Who’s down there?’

‘Fanetta?’ cried Green. ‘Is that you?’

‘Green? Who’s with you?’

‘Somebody who wants to see Mary Ann.’

‘She’s here, with me. So’s Mrs Smani.’

‘Thank whatever,’ said Mondragon, climbing steadily toward the voice. He found the three women huddled on a narrow landing.

‘Have you heard?’ begged Fanetta. ‘One of the maids came to tell me. The Cattermune will be furious. He’ll be making binkers right and left. I told Mary Ann we had to get out of the nursery and hide.’

‘The nanny saw us come in here,’ said Mondragon.

‘Oh, by the Galosh’s pet plaice! We’ll have to get off these stairs or she’ll find us sure. Come along after me,’ and Fanetta dashed off down a winding mouse tunnel, so narrow and low that Mondragon had to stoop and Green grunted as he squeezed himself around and through the corners and turns. They climbed, descended, then made several turns to arrive at last in a small roomlike space with a bench along one wall.

‘Be very quiet,’ murmured Fanetta. ‘We’re just outside the dining room.’

‘Is there a hole?’ whispered Mondragon. ‘We need to know what’s going on.’

Laying her fingers across her lips, Fanetta held her candle to the wall to disclose two eyeholes with a shutter latch to one side. ‘Slide that and they’ll open,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll be looking right out of the eyes of the portrait of Gormdab Cattermune.’

He slid the latch to one side. Dim light came through the two holes before he pressed his eyes to them and peered down into the dining room he had left less than an hour before. No one seemed to be present except Cattermunes. Some stood on chairs, yowling. Others scratched the walls in a fury, leaving long claw marks in the silk brocade.

‘How!’ howled the Cattermune. ‘I ask you, how?’

The person of whom this question was asked was the gray-haired Cattermune that Mondragon had seen in the entry hall. He had a long, lugubrious face and a large, bumpy head which he shook slowly from side to side. ‘I don’t know and it isn’t my doing and not my fault. I’ve said and I’ve said. Nobody came through for a long time, and I thought it was just – oh, maybe a war or something happening there to keep them from playing the game, you know. Not that it would stop them for long. But then, time went on and nobody came, so I ran a test on The Connection. Closed. Shut tight. No way through. They couldn’t get into the game if they tried.’

‘With the anchor in the World Outside, it couldn’t happen!’ screamed the Cattermune.

‘Then the anchor isn’t there anymore, and that’s all there is to it,’ said the lugubrious one.

Mondragon slid the shutter closed and turned to Marianne. ‘Marianne, my dearest, did you bring anything with you when you came?’

‘Dearest?’ she faltered. ‘Have we met?’

‘Damn,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘I am Mondr – I am Makr Avehl, your husband. You are Marianne, my wife. This lady is Dagma Zahmani, your great-aunt. And we desperately need to know if you brought anything with you when you came.’

‘She wouldn’t remember,’ said Fanetta. ‘None of us do. I don’t know how you do, but none of us do. Except for me, of course, but that was just once.’

‘Ah.’ Mondragon ground his teeth together. ‘Tell me about the once, dear girl. How did you manage it?’

‘Old Groff has a rememberer,’ she said. ‘I sneaked it once and used it on me.’

‘And where is Old Groff now?’

‘In the butler’s pantry. Listening to what’s going on in the dining room.’

‘And his rememberer is where?’

‘In his room.’

‘And, lovely maiden, can you get us there?’

She stared at him, mouth open, then nodded slowly. ‘You’re something else, aren’t you? Something different from these other ones.’

‘I do hope so, maiden, since the situation desperately calls for something of the kind. Lead the way.’

As they went, they heard a consternation of sound off in the wallways, a bellowing and cursing, a sound of hammering. ‘They’re looking for us,’ whispered Fanetta. ‘They’ll never find us. Not in a million years.’

‘We don’t have a million years,’ suggested Mondragon. ‘Quickly, girl. Find this thing you mentioned.’

She found Groff’s room with only a few false trails. The room did not yield the thing she called the rememberer, however.

‘What did it look like?’ begged Green.

‘Was it bigger than a breadbox?’ asked Mrs Smani.

‘Could he have put it elsewhere?’ asked Mondragon.

‘It looks like a hat. It isn’t bigger than a breadbox. He could have put it anywhere, but why would he?’

‘Look for a hat,’ said Mondragon. ‘Spread out.’

The closet was stripped, the wardrobe laid bare. Every drawer was pulled out and emptied. At last, to the accompaniment of furious noise in the corridor outside, Mary Ann looked up at the chandelier and cried out, ‘There!’

It was hanging on an iron branch, obviously tossed there in a moment of carelessness. Green lifted Mondragon, and he fished the thing down. It did look like a very curious hat. ‘Now’ – he thrust them back toward the open panel through which they had entered the room – ‘Get back into hiding!’

They were no sooner behind the wall than they heard the door to the room they had left banged open and a huge voice shouting. ‘Groff! Groff! Where is that fool?’

‘How does it work?’ asked Mondragon, retreating down the hidden corridor.

‘Just put it on. You’ll remember.’

‘Not me, her,’ he said, fitting the hat onto Marianne’s head. ‘Darling? Sweetheart? Did you bring anything in here with you?’

‘Makr Avehl,’ she cried, breaking into tears. ‘Oh, thank God you’re here.’

There was a rustle of patting and hugging and tear drying while the others tried to look elsewhere. ‘Dear one, please. Concentrate. Did you bring anything in here with you?’

‘I …’ she said. ‘We … Let me think. I did. Yes. Of course I did. I brought – ah, what was it. The matchbox. I brought the matchbox!’ She fished in the pocket of her uniform and brought it out for them all to see. ‘This matchbox!’

‘Ah!’ He took it, turned it in his hands, shut his eyes and felt of it. ‘Yes. Well. So that’s why no one can come into the game anymore. Clever girl. You’ve broken his Connection. Not that he can’t restore it, if he gets his hands on this, though I imagine it would take another generation to make it permanent. Well. We must make sure he doesn’t. We really must think of a way to get out of here! Nothing obvious.’

Fanetta burbled, ‘They’ll never find us. We can stay right here until the whole thing blows over. I’ve done it. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Late at night we can steal food from the kitchen. It’s easy. I’ve done it.’

‘My dear young woman,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Believe me. If we stay anywhere within reach, they will find us. If they have to tear Cattermune’s House down stone by stone, they will find us. I know that as surely as I know my own name.’ He kissed Marianne again, removing the rememberer from her head and setting it firmly upon Green-Aghrehond’s. ‘The only chance we have is to take this thing somewhere else – somewhere where the Cattermune quite simply will not think to look!’

‘But the Cattermune goes everywhere,’ Fanetta said. ‘That is, everywhere he can. To all the junctions. And he has spies everywhere else. Where could you go where he wouldn’t suspect you’d be?’

‘To Cattermune’s Pique,’ said Mondragon. ‘All of us.’

‘To the Pique?’ she screamed. ‘But that’s where …’

‘Exactly. That is where,’ asserted Mondragon. ‘Precisely why he won’t look for us there.’

‘You can’t throw a one,’ Fanetta objected. ‘You just can’t.’

‘They’re my dice,’ said Mondragon, fishing a particular die from his pocket. ‘I can throw anything I please. Hold on to me, please. We’re about to go elsewhere.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The dragon soared above the forests and moors of Cattermune’s Pique holding a turquoise tortoise firmly in his left foretalon. On his shoulders sat an amethyst ape wearing a peculiar hat and holding a malachite mouse firmly on his lap. From the dragon’s rear talons dangled a gneissic gnu which had not ceased bleating since they had begun the flight.

‘Where are we going?’ asked the mouse plaintively. ‘Where are we from?’

‘Down,’ cried the ape to the dragon. ‘She doesn’t remember where we are.’

‘In a moment,’ bellowed the dragon. ‘I’ve spotted a likely lair.’ They slanted through the darkling air toward a many forked peak with a cloud of bats circling it. ‘Bats mean caves.’

‘So they do,’ said the ape. He stared at the mouse for a moment, then removed his peculiar hat and placed the mouse in it.

‘How are you managing, Marianne?’ he asked.

‘Aghrehond?’ the mouse said plaintively. ‘Is that you?’

‘I believe so,’ he said.

‘Where’s Dagma?’

‘Dangling, at the moment. As is Fanetta. I believe Makr Avehl has found us a lair.’

‘These changes of shape are unsettling,’ she complained. ‘I feel very peculiar.’

The dragon’s wings cupped the air and he settled toward a stony step beside a dark cavity in the mountain. Laden as he was, the landing was not smooth, and the ape clutched the mouse in the hat to keep her from being thrown into the chasm beside them.

‘A likely place,’ said the dragon. ‘Feels like home.’

‘Not to me,’ said the tortoise.

‘Nor me,’ bleated the gnu. ‘A nice veldt. A bit of grass. A few hundred thousand close friends. Now that would be home.’

‘Put the hat on them both,’ said the mouse. ‘They’re silly.’

The ape complied, applying Groff’s rememberer first to the gnu and then to the tortoise. Both made noises of astonishment and then settled into a meditative mood, staring down on the stretching moors from their high roost.

‘What’s going to happen now?’ asked the tortoise.

‘It will depend,’ said the dragon. ‘It will depend on how clever the Cattermune is. On how well he can put two and two together. On whether the immigration manager noticed who came into the game last.’

The mouse nodded. ‘You mean, it all depends on who they’re looking for.’

‘Exactly. It won’t take them long to figure out that one of the last players to enter the game brought the anchor – that is, the matchbox – back to Cattermune’s House. The arrival of the matchbox at Cattermune’s House is what shut down the entry port. Now, if Marianne and Dagma and you, Aghrehond, have attracted no notice whatsoever …’

‘I’m afraid she has,’ said the tortoise. ‘She was in the paper. At Frab Junction. A pig interviewed her in the Dinosaur Zoo. A lot of stuff about being pregnant. It was obvious from what she said that she hadn’t been in the game long …’

‘And there was Buttercup,’ said the mouse in a rueful voice. ‘She saw me when I left Buttercup for G’nop. Buttercup is still very early in her reign, so she’d know that it wasn’t long ago. Though by that time I had been in Buttercup for eight years.’

‘Game time,’ mused the dragon. ‘Game time hardly counts. Eight years,’ he snapped his talons. ‘No time at all. Now, the Illusion Fields, that might be a bit of time.’

‘Ten thousand years,’ said the mouse. ‘But that’s no time, either. The pig I met at the zoo had been there for a whole ten thousand, but this game has only been going for fifty!’

‘But a Forever …’ mused the gnu. ‘A Forever is a Forever, no matter what. Everyone says so. A Forever really is.’

‘That’s what the pig said, too. Ta-ta, she said. Good-bye and gone forever.’ The mouse sighed, scratching behind an ear with one hind foot. ‘Gone forever.’

‘Right,’ said the dragon. ‘I think you may safely say that a Forever is a Forever. Though at the moment I’m not sure that’s relevant to anything. Ape, do you see something over there on the causeway?’

The lands of Cattermune’s Pique were bisected by a dike, mounted high above the surrounding moors and copses, topped by a wide road. At the far end of this road, almost at the limit of their vision, there seemed to be something going on.

‘All I can see is movement,’ said the ape. ‘Your eyes should be better than mine.’

‘I would have thought so,’ said the dragon. ‘And yet, I can’t make it out with any clarity.’

‘You don’t need to make it out,’ whined the gnu. ‘You know what it is. It’s the hunt. Cattermunes out of their clothes, running naked on all fours, their teeth showing. Cattermunes and their “guests.” Queen Buttercup – she’ll be right in with the rest of them, though they’ll have to give her a wagon to ride in.’

‘What are they hunting?’ asked the dragon, sucking a fang. ‘I thought it was binkers.’

‘We’re binkers, stupid,’ cried the gnu. ‘Out here we’re whatever we are, good sport, good hunting, but when they take our carcasses back to Cattermune’s House, we’re binkers. Meat for the table and guts for the Worm Pits, that’s what we are.’ She began sobbing. ‘I should have just stayed in the walls where I was.’

‘Do you think they’ll see us up here? If we go in the cave?’

‘Cattermunes? Don’t be silly! They can smell an ant from a mile away, see a flea at the bottom of a chasm. They’ve already seen you, Dragon. And me, most likely.’

‘But they can’t know that we …’

‘Doesn’t matter do they know, don’t they know. They’re hunting. Everything that moves. Anything that lives.’

‘It does matter,’ said the mouse firmly. ‘We’ve got the matchbox, and we’ve got to keep them from getting it. Even if they get us, they mustn’t get the matchbox.’

‘True,’ the ape remarked. ‘The Cattermune would simply put it in place again, even though it would take fifty years and the blood of fifty Cattermunes to do it.’

‘Ah,’ mused the dragon. ‘I’d wondered about that.’

‘What will we do?’ cried the gnu.

‘Hide, for starters,’ said the dragon, eyes firmly fixed on the distant causeway. He could see them now, Cattermunes in their striped hided hundreds, packs of them running along the roadway on their padded feet, teeth gleaming like diamonds. Behind them rolled a light carriage with Buttercup driving a team of four matched Cattermunes, young ones, yowling as they raced after their unburdened elders.

‘No weapons,’ remarked the dragon.

‘Claws. Fangs. Speed. Strength. Endurance,’ murmured the gnu. ‘Who needs more than that.’

‘In their portraits, they all had weapons,’ said the ape. ‘I remember it distinctly.’

‘Convention,’ said the tortoise. ‘Mere convention. In order to appear civilized.’

‘All aboard,’ said the dragon. ‘Let’s get out of sight.’ He waited until the ape was seated, grasped the other two in the nearest available talons, and launched himself off the mountain peak, down into the canyon, dropping below the level of the treetops as he sailed downward.

‘It won’t do any good,’ muttered the gnu. ‘They’ll smell you.’

‘A delaying action,’ murmured the dragon through his teeth. ‘While I’m thinking.’

‘What are you thinking?’ begged the mouse.

‘Where to hide that matchbox so that Cattermune will never find it.’

‘In a Forever, obviously,’ grunted the gnu.

‘And who’s going to take it there,’ snorted the tortoise. ‘Did I hear you volunteering?’

The gnu was silent.

The dragon landed among some towering trees at one side of the canyon. ‘Explain it to me,’ he demanded of the gnu. ‘How do you get from one square to another?’

‘Concentrate on where you intend to go, then throw the right number,’ said the gnu.

‘Let’s say you intended to go to – oh – Mother’s Smithy,’ the dragon mused. ‘And you needed a six but somehow threw a four. What would happen?’

‘You’d go toward Mother’s Smithy,’ said the gnu, ‘but you’d stop two squares short. Except if you’d been on that square before, you’d skip to the next one. Unless it was a junction, of course. If it was a junction, you’d stop there.’

‘Ah,’ said the dragon.

‘Ah,’ said the mouse.

‘Um,’ said the ape.

‘I’ve caused you all a great deal of trouble,’ said the tortoise sadly. ‘We may never get out of here.’

‘True,’ said the dragon. ‘Perfectly true. Though – there may be a way.’

The sound of yowling brought their heads up. Somewhere on the slopes behind them were Cattermunes, coming closer.

‘Tell me,’ the dragon said to the ape in a conversational tone of voice while examining the talons of his left forefoot, ‘do the Cattermunes gamble?’

‘There are gaming rooms,’ the ape said in an uncertain voice. ‘I’ve seen the rooms, but never with anyone in them.’

‘Of course they gamble,’ said the gnu. ‘There’s no bad habit the Cattermunes don’t have. Can we get out of here. They’re coming very close.’

‘Does the Cattermune himself play dice …?’

‘He plays dice with his brothers, after dinner usually.’ The gnu shifted restlessly. ‘Those hunting Cattermunes are really coming quite close.’

‘Is the Cattermune hunting with the ones who are after us?’

‘He never leaves Cattermune’s House. I heard him say once that leaving Cattermune’s House was just an invitation to sedition. He likes to keep an eye on things. Ah. Oh. I just saw four Cattermunes coming over the ridge.’ The gnu sounded rather hopeless, as though she believed they were done for.

‘Just leaving,’ said the dragon, picking her up and bearing down on both wings, throwing dust in the approaching Cattermunes’ eyes.

He darted away down the canyon like a swallow, slipping behind standing pillars of stone and through tall-trunked trees, bearing toward the causeway entrance to Cattermune’s Pique. ‘I’m going to drop you all close to the border,’ he said softly, barely audible over the sound of his own wings. ‘Ape, I want you to hide Mouse, Tortoise, and yourself and stay hidden. Mouse, I will need the matchbox. Gnu, you’re coming back with me, back to Cattermune’s House.’

‘Thank Moomaw,’ bleated the gnu. ‘If I have to die, I’d rather die as Fanetta in the walls than out here like some poor beast.’

The dragon dropped to the ground and relieved himself of his passengers. ‘Quickly,’ he steamed. ‘A hiding place.’

‘Nothing much except a hollow tree here,’ suggested the ape. ‘We’d fit nicely, except that the hollow is quite visible.’

‘Give me the matchbox,’ the dragon demanded. He took it, tucking it into a corner of his mouth, behind the dagger-shaped teeth. ‘Now get yourselves in,’ and he thrust them toward the tree hollow with buffets of great wings. ‘There will be some flame out here, deodorizing, so to speak, so they don’t smell you. Then I’m going to lead them away. You are to stay put. I don’t care what you hear, stay where you are.’

They crawled into the tree hollow, a tall cylinder of punky brown wood with beetles crawling up and down the cracks and light slanting down on them from places where branches had rotted out. Fine dust sifted in the beams of light. Mouse sneezed. Ape sat down, putting Tortoise beside him and Mouse on his shoulder. Through a small hole she could see the dragon picking up stones and placing them in front of the hole through which they had crawled. The hollow grew dim. There was a vast roaring, as of some great furnace. Wisps of smoke crept into the hollow. Mouse sneezed again, her eyes watering. When she looked out once more the dragon was aloft and the clearing behind him was blackened by flame and veiled with smoke.

‘I can’t smell anything but burning,’ sniffed the tortoise.

‘I think that was the idea,’ said the ape. ‘He’ll let them see him and the gnu. He’ll lead them away. And then what?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Mouse sadly. ‘I don’t know anything with any certainty except that I’m almost sure I just had a labor pain.’

‘We’d better be silent,’ said the tortoise. ‘Cattermunes will probably come to investigate the smoke.’

Which they did only moments later, in howling groups, sniffing and yowling, standing on their hind legs to claw at the trees around the hollow, jumping high to catch a glimpse of the fleeing dragon, then leaping away in the direction the dragon had gone.

‘Somehow, when they have their clothes on, they don’t look exactly like that,’ said the mouse.

‘Sweet Marianne,’ said the ape. ‘They look feral in any guise. How could I have accepted service in such a beastly hole as that?’

‘Because you didn’t remember anything,’ said the tortoise plaintively. ‘One can accept almost anything if one doesn’t remember anything. Do you suppose one remembers anything in a Forever? Or is it just day on day, with everything new.’

‘Madame Dagma, I have no idea,’ returned the ape with a sudden access of dignity. ‘How would anyone know?’

The tortoise was quiet for a time, then she said, ‘Do you have the dice, Aghrehond? May I see them for a moment?’ When Aghrehond had given them to her, she stared at them, her clawed, webbed front feet moving over them again and again, as though to cast some enchantment upon them.

‘What are you doing?’ asked the mouse.

‘Thinking,’ said the tortoise. ‘Just thinking.’

Meantime, the dragon had skimmed along the canyon, making great, furious roars, crisping a tree from time to time or making an acre of ash among lower growing things, attracting the attention of the Cattermunes and causing the gnu though she was firmly gripped in the front talons, to bleat pitifully now and again at the speed, the height, the risk.

‘Oh, do be quiet,’ muttered the dragon impatiently. ‘Everything I’m doing is absolutely necessary. We have to decoy the Cattermunes away from the others.’

‘I know,’ grunted the gnu. ‘It’s just that I can’t help myself. I’ve always been afraid of heights.’

‘Try to forget that,’ urged the dragon.

‘Now that I’ve remembered, it would be quite impossible to forget,’ the gnu replied with some dignity. ‘Quite impossible.’

‘I’m going to commit some carnage,’ said the dragon. ‘I’ll have to leave you alone for a time. Try not to attract attention.’ He dropped into another narrow arroyo, flew down it with dizzying speed, hastily dropped the gnu into a small copse at the mouth of the canyon, then ascended into clear view as he darted toward a prowl of Cattermunes with his ears back and flame belching from his nose.

Concealed in the copse, the cowering gnu heard the screeches of scalded cats.

‘We’ll get you.’ ‘You have to come down sometime.’ ‘You can’t fly forever.’ ‘Thief!’ ‘Assassin!’ ‘Cheat!’ Those Cattermunes remaining – though there were several of whom talons, fangs, and flame had made broiled mince – yowled themselves away after the dragon.

The dragon darted here and there over the moor, disappearing from the gnu’s sight. Sometime later she heard his voice from behind her. ‘I lost them up a canyon and then walked,’ he said. ‘It’s getting dark. I wondered if it would get dark at all here in Cattermune’s Pique, but evidently the place has day and night.’

‘To let the Cattermunes know when it’s dinnertime,’ she replied. ‘They do love to eat, the Cattermunes.’

‘Lucky for us,’ said the dragon. ‘Come back into this canyon with me. As soon as it’s a bit darker, we’re going to go back to Cattermune’s House.’

In the hollow tree, time wore on. Mouse’s labor pains came and then went, leaving only an empty ache behind. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said.

‘So sorry, pretty lady,’ said ape-Aghrehond. ‘If there were anything edible about, I would fetch it for you. Truly I would.’

‘There are raspberries growing at the edge of the clearing,’ said the mouse. ‘I can smell them.’

‘Surely not over that charred smell. Surely not at this time of year,’ said the tortoise.

‘What time of year?’ asked the mouse in an annoyed tone. ‘Dagma, it could be anytime of year at all. Spring. Fall. High summer. Maybe some season we don’t even have a name for. It could be Clunch, for all we know, and Clunch may be raspberry season here in the Pique. All I know is that I’m tired and I ache and I’m hungry and I’m worried about us and about Makr Avehl and I smell raspberries.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to pick a few raspberries,’ said the ape doubtfully. ‘The Cattermunes have gone far away by now.’

‘I recommend against it,’ said the tortoise in a remote voice. ‘Not a good idea.’

‘Please,’ urged the mouse, feeling naughty but unable to control herself. She really did smell raspberries. She really was terribly hungry.

Ape pushed the stones away and crawled out of the tree, the mouse close behind him. He picked his way gingerly across the clearing, trying to avoid places where tiny wisps of smoke were still rising. At the edge of the clearing there were indeed raspberry canes, short ones, laden with berries.

Mouse began to nibble. Ape reached out with both hands.

‘Aha,’ said a voice.

They turned in panic to confront the figure which stood half hidden among the trees at the edge of the clearing. ‘I thought this much fire would hardly have been lit for no reason at all,’ said the voice.

‘Buttercup!’ said Mouse in a shocked voice. ‘Queen Buttercup.’

‘Fool Cattermunes,’ said the Queen in a delighted voice. ‘I made a bet with the Cattermune himself that I’d be the one to kill. A little silence, I told him. A little tracking and sneaking instead of all this yowling and chasing. He laughed. Well, we’ll see who laughs when I bring you two back. Binkers! Aha.’

Ape shivered at the tone which was lusty, predatory, and quite merciless.

‘That would be very dishonorable,’ said the mouse firmly. ‘You would be forever dishonored as a Queen.’

The Grisl regarded her with a sneer. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You were living with Mr Thrumm,’ said the mouse. ‘They meant to kill you. They meant to cut off your spurs and put you into the arena helpless, didn’t they?’

‘Aragh,’ growled the Grisl.

‘A voice told you to find out what they were up to. A little voice. A mouse voice!’

‘You?’ Buttercup was incredulous.

‘Who else would know what you did. I know. You found the spurs. You bit Thrumm and Fribberle. And Sneeth, too, though I suppose he got away later.’

‘Sneeth,’ the Grisl sneered. ‘When I became Queen, I felt sorry for him so I sent someone to give him the antidote. I should have let him die.’

‘He was very useful to us,’ said the ape in a conciliatory tone. ‘Really very useful.’

‘At any rate,’ continued Mouse. ‘Since I saved your life, it would be quite dishonorable for you to kill me. It would cast a pall over your reign.’

The Grisl snarled again. ‘So. So. Well then, I’ll leave you and kill it!’ She bared her fang in the direction of the ape. ‘He’ll be binker enough.’

‘No,’ said the mouse firmly. ‘He belongs to me, and that would be stealing. That would also be dishonorable. As bad as being sent into the arena without spurs.’

The Grisl seemed to be thinking it over. Twice she bared her fang. Twice she nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s like dog,’ she said at last. ‘Faithful dog. Though I am not fond of him, he does me nothing but good, therefore I owe him consideration. It took me some time to ascertain this, but I feel it is a truth. This would be the same thing.’ She sounded slightly aggrieved.

‘Exactly the same thing,’ said Mouse. ‘I did you nothing but good. A certain amount of goodwill is appropriate among – ah – well-intentioned beings.’

‘Unusual,’ said the Grisl. ‘In my square, everybody is always doing everybody else. It’s only you – you outside creatures, like you and dog, who do this other thing.’

Mouse nodded, still firmly. ‘It’s part of our religion.’

Queen Buttercup shrugged. ‘So, I’ll lose my bet with the Cattermune. It wasn’t a very big bet anyhow. He bet me a free trip on the Down Line Express against some of my males for binkers, and I’ve got lots of them.’ Sighing, she turned away. ‘Oh, Mouse!’

‘Yes?’

‘It was, well, it was interesting to see you again. Or see you, I should say, since I never really … We shared certain … experiences …’ The Grisl gave Mouse a strange look, one might almost have said a pleading look. ‘There really isn’t anyone who knows me.’

Mouse gulped. It was true. ‘Yes, Your Majesty. You were not allowed to have … well, friends.’

‘Were you … that is … would you call yourself my friend?’

Mouse gulped again. ‘Ah, yes. I think I would say that I am the closest thing you have to a friend, Queen Buttercup.’

‘It wasn’t exactly easy,’ whined the Queen.

‘They were distressing times,’ said Mouse bravely. ‘I was most sympathetic with Your Majesty’s distress.’

‘I wish you could stop at my square again, but I know that’s not possible. I’d like it very much if you would have dinner with me at Frab Junction. We’ll go to the Marveling Galosh. They have the most wonderful … Oh, say that you will!’

‘I’d be most pleased,’ said the mouse, bowing.

‘Promise!’

‘I promise,’ said Mouse, feeling as though she had just signed away her soul.

‘Do send word with any player who is coming my way,’ the Queen said. She shook her head, as though astonished at herself and then went up and over the hill, continuing to shake her head as she thoughtfully twonged the end of her fang with one finger.

Mouse sighed and went limp.

Ape made a wordless noise and went behind a bush. The encounter had been a stressful one.

After a time they returned to the hollow tree to get Tortoise. There was nothing in the hollow except the pair of dice. Tortoise had thrown a nine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Mondragon, who had managed to get both to his own room and to the gaming rooms with Fanetta’s assistance in guiding him through the walls, stood with Eulalienne Cattermune near the dicing table, one hand in his pocket, the other resting casually on the edge of the table where the Cattermune and his brothers were gambling.

‘Any word, Cattermune?’ an elderly member of the family asked, offering a cigar to the head of the family. ‘Any word at all?’

‘It got dark in the Pique,’ the Cattermune rumbled. ‘So they’ve called it off until morning. They’ll catch them, though. Immigration manager says the last three through were a mouse, an ape, and a tortoise kind of thing. Somebody on the Down Line Express saw the mouse thing with the matchbox. They’ve got to be the ones. Have to. Never fear. We’ll get The Connection back and we’ll start over, that’s all.’

‘That’s the spirit! Never say die!’

Several nearby Cattermunes, remembering the blood price which would be needed to start over, blanched at these words, but the Cattermune did not seem to notice. ‘Never too late to start over,’ he growled to himself. ‘Never too late.’

Mondragon sighed deeply and inwardly. It was his intention to keep the Cattermune from starting anything over. The time to act was now, at once, before any suspicion could attach to him, and yet the whole matter was so dangerous, so fraught with dreadful consequence. The nanny had seen him in company with Green. Of course, the nanny thought his name was Sneeth. Perhaps the nanny had seen only the livery. ‘Bear up,’ he told himself. ‘Now or never.’

Moving smoothly, quietly, his expression one of unruffled calm, Mondragon moved toward a waiter who held a tray of champagne glasses. His route took him immediately behind the Cattermune, and he delayed, timing his nearest approach to the moment when Cattermune threw the dice.

At which moment he was leaning forward, across the table, his jacket open with the pocket exposed.

Mondragon slipped the matchbox into the Cattermune’s pocket and continued toward the waiter, returning in a moment with two glasses, one of which he handed to Eulalienne. She took it, purring. He returned her smile, squeezed her paw-like hand, and turned back to the table. Now he stood at the center of the table, nearest the place where the dice usually rebounded.

‘What is it they’re looking for?’ murmured Mondragon sotto voce to the nearest gambler, another elderly Cattermune. Evidently all the younger members of the family had been taking part in the hunt and had not yet rejoined the party. ‘What is it that the Cattermune says they will find?’

‘The Connection,’ murmured his neighbor in return. ‘The anchor. Everyone knows that.’

‘Well of course,’ agreed Mondragon. ‘But what is it? An actual anchor? Not that it matters, of course, merely my curiosity plaguing me.’

‘Now that’s interesting,’ replied the elderly Cattermune. ‘You know, I’ve never asked.’ He moved toward the Cattermune, elbowing his way among the gamblers. ‘I say, Cattermune, what did the thing look like? The Anchor. The Connection. What was it actually?’

The Cattermune looked up with a snarl.

Timing, thought Mondragon. Now it had to be entirely a matter of timing.

‘It was a matchbox,’ the Cattermune growled. ‘A golden matchbox. Valuable enough not to destroy! Small enough to be easily hidden.’ He threw the dice. They rebounded far down the table, out of Mondragon’s reach, and the Cattermune grunted in satisfaction. He had made his point. Someone handed him the dice and he gathered them into the leather dice cup again.

‘You know,’ said Mondragon in a clear carrying voice just as the dice were being thrown. ‘I saw a golden matchbox just the other day. Now where was that?’

The Cattermune looked up from the dice, letting them lie as he searched for the person who had spoken. His golden eyes came to rest upon Mondragon. ‘You saw what?’ His voice was a deep and phlegmy growl.

Mondragon reached down onto the table, gathered up the dice, half holding them toward the Cattermune. ‘A golden matchbox. It was about so big. It had an anchor on it. And some writing.’

‘Where?’ howled the Cattermune. ‘Where did you see it?’

Mondragon held out the dice, dropped them into the Cattermune’s cup. ‘Why – at Mother’s Smithy! That’s where I saw it. On a shelf beside the door …’

‘Mother’s Smithy!’ yowled the Cattermune. ‘They’re going to melt it down! Not if I get there first!’ And he threw the dice, crying, ‘Eight squares to Mother’s Smithy …’

The dice rolled, rebounded, bounced and jounced and came to rest on the table. Everyone around the table was looking at the place the Cattermune had been. Only Mondragon’s eyes were on the dice, his dice, Makr Avehl’s loaded dice. He picked them up, dropped them in his pocket and waited, holding his breath.

A moment went by.

The Cattermune next to him became misty, indistinct, shadowed. The table turned into smoke, into mist, then vanished. Someone said, ‘So I told the Cattermune …’ the voice fading away into a reverberating silence. The outlines of the room began to quiver and shake, like a mirage. Darkness approached, enveloped everything, and was gone in its turn. He felt himself falling, endlessly, through absolute nothingness.

‘Marianne,’ he cried, wondering for a hopeless moment if he had miscalculated.

‘Makr Avehl,’ said Ellat in a sharp, imperative tone. ‘Answer me!’

He opened his eyes. The hotel room swam before him.

‘What’s wrong?’ she cried again. ‘When are you going to go?’

He took the dice which the Cattermune had used from his pocket and threw them onto the table, watching with satisfaction as they turned up one, and one. Snake eyes.

‘I’ve been,’ he said.

‘Where’s Marianne!’ asked Therat. ‘Where is she?’

‘Call the Zahmanis,’ he yawned. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, Marianne will be in Dagma’s room. Dagma and Aghrehond are probably there as well.’ He threw the dice again, smiling when they came up snake eyes again.

‘What are you playing with those dice for?’ Ellat asked in exasperation as she dialed the phone.

‘Admiring them,’ he said. ‘Admiring a one-way ticket to a Forever.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘I would have thought,’ Haurvatat Zahmani said with an expression of acute annoyance, ‘that your great-aunt would have come back with you.’

‘She …’ Marianne hesitated, wondering just how to say it. ‘I think she felt that if Makr Avehl managed to get us back at all, she had very little to come back for. She said pretty much that to me before I … well, before I left. Evidently while Aghrehond and I were busy with Buttercup, Dagma simply concentrated on where she wanted to go and threw a nine.’

‘At the time,’ said Aghrehond gloomily, ‘I could not recall precisely where a nine might take her. Now, of course, it is obvious that she went to the Illusion Fields …’

‘Or to Mother’s Smithy. Or some other place,’ said Marianne. ‘We really don’t know.’

‘And you think she’s there still?’ Arti wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, whether from joy over Marianne’s return or from sorrow over Dagma, she herself could not have said.

‘I doubt it,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Haven’t vanished people been showing up in droves? I know Fanetta did, because I called Seattle to find out. Your postman, Arti? I’ll wager he’s back. Your butcher’s wife. The man who sits on that charity board with you? Your neighbor and her children. I imagine all of them are back unless they happened to get into a Forever.’

‘Or,’ said Aghrehond ominously. ‘Or …’

‘Well, yes. Or the ones who were hunted down in Cattermune’s Pique.’

‘Dagma wasn’t hunted down. But she hasn’t come back, either,’ said Arti.

Marianne sighed. ‘Mother, there was one Forever nine squares from Cattermune’s Pique. Not an obvious one, to be sure, but then Dagma seldom did the obvious …’

‘Dagma is not the only one in this family of whom that can be said,’ grumped Haurvatat. ‘And here you are within weeks, within days, of having a baby. What if it had been born there?’

Marianne shuddered delicately. ‘I’d rather not think about that.’

‘I should hope not. Think of something else. Something cheerful. Such as, what are you going to name the baby?’ He looked at her triumphantly, sure, from what he was pleased to think of as his intimate knowledge of feminine psychology, that this subject would drive all others from her mind.

‘Ah,’ sighed Marianne. ‘Well, Daddy, it’s going to be a girl, you know. Makr Avehl and I have considered many names. Family names. Historic names. Old Alphenlichtian names. Kavi names, even. Considering everything – and I do mean everything – I really think there’s only one thing I can call her. It will be my way, at least in part, of making up for a broken promise.’ Her tone was rather stiff as she said this, and she avoided meeting Makr Avehl’s eyes.

He shook his head in dismay. Her bearing, her tone, everything told him he was not going to like what she would say next. He swore silently to himself that he would not say one thing, not one thing.

‘But I’ve never known you to break a promise, Marianne,’ said her mother. ‘Never once.’

‘You taught me not to, Mama. But this is one I’m going to have to break. There is no way that I can go to Frab Junction, to the Marveling Galosh, and have lunch with the Queen. That’s why I’m going to name the baby Buttercup.’

‘Buttercup!’ roared Haurvatat. ‘Of all the …’

‘Shhh,’ said Makr Avehl, shaking his head at Marianne with a fondly rueful expression. ‘Father-in-law, don’t upset the mother-to-be. In English it does sound rather silly. We could do it in Latin, of course. Ranunculus.’

‘I won’t have a granddaughter named Ranunculus!’

‘No. I couldn’t take that seriously myself. There is one – a buttercup – that grows in our mountains, however. Ranunculus asiaticus. A rather charming flower, actually. It has a common name, of course. An Alphenlichtian name.’

‘What is it in Alphenlichtian?’ asked Haurvatat suspiciously.

‘Therat,’ said Marianne. ‘This time I think she really will be surprised.’

THE END

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Also By Sheri S. Tepper

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2. Necromancer Nine (1983)

3. Wizard's Eleven (1984)

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1. Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore (1985)

2. Marianne, the Madame and the Momentary Gods (1988)

3. Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse (1989)

Mavin Manyshaped

1. The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

2. The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

3. The Search of Mavin Manyshaped (1985)

Jinian

1. Jinian Footseer (1985)

2. Dervish Daughter (1986)

3. Jinian Star-Eye (1986)

Ettison

1. Blood Heritage (1986)

2. The Bones (1987)

Awakeners

1. Northshore (1987)

2. Southshore (1987)

Other Novels

The Revenants (1984)

After Long Silence (1987)

The Gate to Women's Country (1988)

The Enigma Score (1989)

Grass (1989)

Beauty (1991)

Sideshow (1992)

A Plague of Angels (1993)

Shadow's End (1994)

Gibbon's Decline and Fall (1996)

The Family Tree (1997)

Six Moon Dance (1998)

Singer from the Sea (1999)

Raising the Stones (1990)

The Fresco (2000)

The Visitor (2002)

The Companions (2003)

The Margarets (2007)

Sheri S. Tepper (1929 – )

Sheri Stewart Tepper was born in Colorado in 1929 and is the author of a larger number of novels in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery, and is particularly respected for her works of feminist science fiction. Her many acclaimed novels include The Margarets and Gibbon's Decline And Fall, both shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, A Plague Of Angels, Sideshow and Beauty, which was voted Best Fantasy Novel Of The Year by readers of Locus magazine. Her versatility is illustrated by the fact that she is one of very few writers to have titles in both the Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks lists. Sheri S. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Copyright

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Sheri S Tepper 1989

All rights reserved.

The right of Sheri S Tepper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11607 8

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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