Suzy was nearby, soot cascading down all around her. Her and Arthur’s impact had started an avalanche of soot. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of accumulated soot had been loosened. Arthur could see it raining down close by, and could hear it farther afield. It made a sound like ice cubes being cracked out of a tray.
‘Ow!’ Suzy exclaimed as her balance slipped and her wings drove her face-first into the ceiling. She got herself braced again, with her knees and elbows firmly against the ceiling, while her wings beat madly on her back.
‘Stickit spell!’ called Suzy. ‘Make sure you have your active hand stuck to the ceiling before you undo your wings. And remember, your sticky hand will change every minute!’
Arthur spat out a mouthful of soot and rubbed his mouth on his shoulder, a very difficult manoeuvre. But he only got more soot on his face. It was everywhere, billowing in clouds and sticking to every part of Arthur’s body, except for his wings.
‘This isn’t going to work!’Arthur called out.He’d been too tired and too pleased to have any chance of escape from the Pit to think it through before. But with just one hand sticking to the ceiling, he’d be hanging from it and would have to swing his other hand, get it on the ceiling, and then wait till it stuck. He wouldn’t be able to do that for very long before he misjudged the timing or got too exhausted and couldn’t even raise his arms. Or worse . . .
‘Our arms will get pulled out of their sockets!’ he yelled.
‘No they won’t,’ scoffed Suzy. But then she frowned and said, ‘Actually, maybe yours will. Dame Primus didn’t think of that!’
Arthur groaned. It took all his strength to stop his wings from smacking him into the ceiling again and again like a demented moth. Every time they beat, he was pushed into the ceiling and slid around a bit in the soot, bashing his knees and hands and, if he was unlucky, his face or chest.
Slid around in the soot . . .
‘What if we try to crawl with the wings keeping us pressed against the . . . oof . . . ceiling?’ Arthur cried. ‘The soot makes it kind of slippery, so we can slide our hands and knees along.’
He demonstrated, timing it so he slid on his hands and knees as his wings readied for the downstroke, bracing himself just as they flapped. He managed to get about four feet away from Suzy in that slide and was no more bruised than if he’d stayed still. And no more sooty. He was just about as caked in soot as it was possible to be.Only his teeth, the whites of his eyes and his wings weren’t totally black.
‘It works!’ he proclaimed.
‘Very slowly,’ said Suzy dubiously. ‘I think I’ll lose my wings and go hand over hand.’
‘No!’ said Arthur. He had an image of Suzy forgetting to change hands quickly enough, or being distracted. There would be that moment where she would hang in the air, and then, with a despairing scream, fall into the endless darkness . . .
‘No,’ said Arthur again. ‘Try moving with the wings, like I did.’
Suzy made an indistinct grumbling noise, but slid across the ceiling as her wings flexed up, barely bracing herself in time for the next wingbeat down.
‘I s’pose it does work,’ she said. ‘But we’ll be black and blue on the knees and elbows by the time we get there.’
‘I seem to be healing quickly,’ said Arthur, thinking about the Scoucher cut back in his own world. A slight current of fear ran through his mind as he wondered if he was being transformed into a Denizen. Then his wings flapped, he almost smacked his nose into the ceiling, and that brought his attention back to the task at hand. ‘Your bruises won’t last long, will they?’
‘No, but they still hurt while they’re around,’ said Suzy. ‘Let’s get going, then.’
‘But which direction?’ asked Arthur. ‘Where is the Treasure Tower?’
‘It’s in the north-west corner of the Far Reaches,’ said Suzy. ‘That’s . . . uh, curse these wings . . . all I know.’
‘Which way is north – ouch, that really hurt – northwest?’ asked Arthur. In the darkness, with smog and falling soot all around, there could be no hope of spying any landmarks.
‘The opposite – oof - of south – ow – east.’
Arthur didn’t answer for a moment, as he waited for his wings to beat and begin to fold.
‘You have no idea, do you?’
‘I have one id –’
Whatever Suzy was going to say was lost as she slipped and her wings pushed her face-first into the sooty ceiling. She pushed herself off again immediately, spitting and cursing, resisted the next beat of her wings, then added, ‘One idea. Ask the Atlas!’
‘Oh, yeah. That’ll be . . . ah . . . really easy, won’t it? Opening a book when I need both hands to brace –’
Arthur’s knee slipped, and he was violently twisted and thrust against the ceiling, the wind knocked out of him.
‘It may not have to open!’ called out Suzy. ‘Just put one hand on it and ask . . .’
Arthur nodded carefully. His mouth was so full of soot he couldn’t speak. He was sure the Lieutenant Keeper’s spell was the only thing preventing him from choking to death.
Slowly, he drew his elbows in towards his chest, so he could still brace against the ceiling and resist his wings but also touch the Atlas in his pocket with his index finger. Which didn’t have a stickit on it.
‘Atlas –’ Arthur started to say, but he slipped again, his elbows splaying out as the right side of his face smashed into the ceiling. He had a black eye for sure now, Arthur thought as he struggled to get back into a good position. Not that anyone could tell under the cloaking soot. This time he managed to lock his elbows tighter and he waited till just after the downbeat of his wings.
‘Atlas! Don’t open! Show me which way is northwest.’
Arthur felt the Atlas shiver under his hand, lost his concentration, and once more went face-first into the sooty ceiling. This time, when he pried himself off and braced again, his nose was bleeding and it felt like it might be broken, sending a savage pain lancing up between his eyes.
‘Did it work?’ called out Suzy.
Arthur didn’t answer. He had his forehead balanced on the ceiling, every muscle straining to resist the next wingbeat, and all his attention on resisting the pain of a broken nose. Or maybe just a bruised one, as the throbbing began to fade. In the next second it stopped bleeding of its own accord – or had so much soot stuffed up it, no blood could get out.
‘Did it work?’ called out Suzy again.
Arthur steadied himself and looked back at his pocket.
‘No,’ he said.
Then, ‘Or actually, yes, I think it has!’
A small compass made of four crossed golden arrows had materialised on his pocket and was slowly spinning around as if it were mounted on his shirt. Arthur stared down at it, grunted as his wings flapped, then pointed and slid at the same time.
‘North-West is that way! Come on!’
Suzy followed, the two of them developing a rhythm where they slid when their wings folded up, and braced when their wings flapped. Though they could only slide four or five feet at a time, Arthur somehow found it easier to hold himself against the ceiling.
More importantly, he finally felt more optimistic. He might be pressed against the ceiling of the Far Reaches, but he was moving.
And he had escaped the Pit!
TWELVE
THEY HAD BEEN crawling across the ceiling for several hours when Arthur suddenly slid out of the smog and found himself buffeted by a strong breeze that ruffled the feathers of his wings and upset his sliding rhythm.
The breeze also took off the loose layer of soot onArthur. He suddenly felt lighter and cleaner, even though there was still plenty of soot ingrained into his skin and clothes.
But it was neither the sudden disappearance of the smog nor the fresh breeze that made his mouth hang open and his jaw almost get broken on the ceiling when his wings flapped. Ahead of him, part of the ceiling the size of a football field shone as if there were hidden lights within it, sending down a shaft of clear golden light like late afternoon sunshine.
The light fell squarely on Grim Tuesday’s Treasure Tower. It was a simple round stone tower without visible windows, about fifty storeys high and maybe two hundred feet in diameter. It had a steeply pitched, tiled roof, surmounted, as Suzy had said, by a windvane in the shape of a cockerel.
What Suzy hadn’t mentioned was that the tower and the green lawns that surrounded it were entirely encased within a pyramid of sparkling glass, its apex just above the cockerel windvane and fifty feet below the lit-up ceiling.
‘That’s new,’ said Suzy. ‘Guess old Grimbly didn’t like his tower getting as scummy and sooted-up as the rest of the Far Reaches. Dame Primus definitely didn’t know about this.’
‘Or much else,’ said Arthur wearily. He was severely battered and bruised, and did not welcome another setback. He’d been looking forward to getting his wings off and standing up like a normal person. On the ground. Not to mention washing his hands and face. He knew a full-on bath or shower was an impossible dream.
‘There doesn’t seem to be any heat coming off the lit-up area,’ he added. ‘So we can get closer, I guess. But it’s still a long way down. And how do we get through the glass?’
Suzy looked across at the tower and the pyramid. She had become much better than Arthur at letting her wings push her almost into the ceiling, resisting only to lessen the impact, rather than trying not to hit the ceiling at all.
‘I guess we’ll have to get as close as we can . . . Drat these wings, the sooner they’re paper again, the better . . . Drop the wings, jump to the face of the pyramid, stick with our stickit fingers, then climb down and find another way in.’
‘But even at the closest, the pyramid will be forty or fifty feet below!’
‘We can make that. You did almost as big a jump back in the Atrium, remember?’
‘I had the . . . arrggh . . . rotten . . . Key then!’
Suzy thought for a while, white lines appearing on her forehead where the soot came off as the skin wrinkled up.
‘How about you undo one wing, then jump,’ she suggested. ‘You’ll corkscrew . . . but . . . one wing will still be lifting you up, so it won’t be that bad.’
Arthur looked down at the pyramid.
Jump sixty feet, corkscrewing around, maybe hit really hard, then have to climb down with hands that alternated between sticky and nonsticky?
‘I should never have gone on that cross-country run,’ he muttered.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ said Arthur. He couldn’t think of any other alternative, and he was tired of being a fly on the ceiling, particularly one that couldn’t control its wings. And he was able to do a lot of things in the House that would be impossible or too dangerous back home. Hopefully this jump would be one of them.
‘Let’s get as close as we can,’ he told Suzy. ‘Then . . . then I suppose I’ll have to jump.’
It was more difficult sliding as soon as they left the sooty part of the ceiling, and Arthur developed even more bruises. He was a bit tentative about crossing the lit-up section, but it wasn’t so bad. The light was quite soft and there was no noticeable heat. As long as he kept his eyes half-shut it was bearable. And on the plus side, the light made a bit more of the soot fall off.
At last they came to a point about twenty feet short of the point of the pyramid and fifty feet above it. Since he had to face the ceiling or be pulverised by his wings, Arthur could only glance down from side to side. But it looked as if this was as close as they could get. There was no way he was going to jump too close to the point of a glass pyramid, particularly with a single wing spinning him around.
‘Ready?’ asked Suzy. ‘Remember the stickit finger spell?’
‘Yeah, I remember,’ said Arthur. ‘Just give me a second.’
It was a long way down. Back in his own world he’d be sure to die from a fall that far. And what if the glass broke?
‘What if the glass breaks?’
‘The glass won’t break,’ said a voice that wasn’t Suzy’s. Arthur almost tore his neck muscles whipping his head around to see who’d spoken and, for the thousandth time, got mashed into the ceiling by his wings.
Suzy shouted something, but Arthur missed it. He was partially stunned by the impact and still busy trying to crawl around so he could see who was talking.
He finally managed, only to see what looked like a black, soot-covered hairball the size of his head on the otherwise pristine, shining ceiling. But the winds were too strong for it to be a lump of soot. Besides, the blob had two deep-set silver eyes, eyes like bigger versions of the silver balls used in cake decorations. They flickered from side to side as Arthur met the thing’s gaze.
It had a mouth as well, under the silver eyes. A mouth that also glinted silver, either from teeth or whatever lined the thing’s throat.
‘A Nithling!’ exclaimed Suzy. She tried to draw her copper tube out of her belt while still bracing against her wings, but had to give up when she was mashed against the ceiling.
‘I’m not a Nithling!’ protested the blob. ‘I can help you!’
‘I’ll help you,’ muttered Suzy. She had braced herself on her elbows and was struggling to get something out from under the top of her apron. Probably her knife.
Arthur didn’t know what she was going to do, but he was curious about this soot-encrusted hairy blob.
‘Suzy, wait!’
He paused for a moment as his wings beat, then spoke to the thing.
‘If you’re not a Nithling, what are you?’