Attica (27 page)

Well, I won’t let him, she told herself mentally. He might not care, but I do, and I can be just as determined and selfish about what I want.

And that was true too.

‘Is that it?’ asked Jordy quietly, later. ‘Are we just going to let him do what he wants? I like having the little beggar around. I don’t want him to become a bloody hermit.’

Chloe could have hugged Jordy
for that, but she didn’t, of course.

‘We’ll have to work on him, without him knowing it,’ she said. ‘We’re older, wiser and more cunning than he is, though he thinks he’s the bees’ knees at the moment. We’ll get the old Alex back, don’t you worry, Jordy. I’ll see to that.’

‘What are you two whispering about?’ called Alex. ‘You hatching something?’

‘Listen to Mr Suspicious,’ called back Jordy. ‘Come on over and we’ll tell you.’

‘No chance.’

In fact, Alex was feeling a little crowded, being with the other two for so long.

It didn’t take him long to forget what he’d just promised Chloe about not running away and hiding. He wandered away from the camp. He made sure the other two weren’t looking and went off to see what he could find.

There was something terribly wrong. Every member of the Removal Firm sensed it in the atmosphere. Something very, very bad was in the dust. The whole attic was in danger. A disaster was imminent. Their world as they knew it was about fall down around their ears. The dust sprites sensed it. When they appeared now their brief journeys were frantic affairs. There was panic in them and they knew not the source. Every beetle, every mouse, was waiting in trembling anticipation for something to happen – they knew not what, but they felt disaster coming – and they were full of dread. Hearts beat a thousand times faster. Eyes were everywhere. Today? Perhaps. Tomorrow? Maybe. Soon? Almost certainly.

But who? Who was planning this destruction? The Removal Firm could only think the latest incomers were responsible. Were they not playing with fire, those recent intruders? Had they not caused havoc among the villages? Had not one of them disrupted the underworld by entering the
wrong
trapdoor and disturbed the currents
of time and place? No real harm had been done
yet
, but surely these were they who planned something awful, something so heinous it was hard to believe. The Removal Firm decided to step up their efforts to capture the incomers before this horrible crime was committed and the whole attic was destroyed.

There wasn’t a great deal of junk in that area. Nothing of any significance for Alex, anyway. He found some old vinyl jazz records, but nothing to play them on, and he wasn’t sure he liked jazz anyway. And some golf clubs in a rotting leather bag. And a Chinese screen. He wiped the dust away from the lacquered surface to find some beautiful pictures cut into the wood beneath. But even these did not do a great deal for him.

What he really wanted, what he was really looking for, were model steam engines. Engines like the showman’s traction engine and the others he had in his pack. He wanted more of them. A steam car, for example. He’d like one of those. Or a steam roller. Or even a static traction engine. He told himself there must be more of them in Attica – many more. If he searched long and hard enough, he’d surely find as many as he wanted. He didn’t know how many he wanted, but at the moment there was just a yearning for model steam engines of steel and brass.

Alex continued to search, oblivious of the time it was taking, quite unconcerned that his brother and sister might be looking for him.

‘I know where you can find one.’

Alex was in an area where several shafts of light were coming down from the roof and striking the floor in splashes of golden dust. He stared into the gloomy spaces behind the pillars of light, but could see nothing. There were the ubiquitous piles of clothes
everywhere, but nothing that looked as if it could speak. Then one of the piles began moving. Eventually it stood up and, like a walking haystack, shuffled over to where Alex was standing. Its face looked hideously ugly at first, until Alex realised it was just a painted mask, a clownish face. Unlike his own mask, it was unthreatening.

Alex was not terrified, exactly, but he was afraid.

‘Are you some sort of cloth creature?’ he asked in a shaky voice. ‘Some kind of walking basket of washing?’

‘No,’ said the clothes, ‘I’m flesh and blood. Just like you.’

Alex looked down at himself and then stared at the thing before him, realising they were of the same ilk. Then he saw, deep within the many folds of cloth, behind the ceramic mask, two human eyes. He had to look down a long tunnel of fabric to find those human features. Even then, they didn’t look
that
human. They were small and wizened, shrunken, like walnuts left too long in their shells. It was difficult to tell where this creature began and ended, there were so many ends of cloth: trailing empty sleeves, trouser legs, bits of scarves, shirt tails and socks flopping from pockets.

‘You dress like me,’ Alex cried excitedly.

‘No,’ replied the board-comber, ‘you will be like
me
. But not yet. You’re not quite there. You’ve just started going that way.’

‘Is that a bat hanging from your ear? Will I get one of those?’

‘I’m sure some creature has got you marked out already.’

‘I’ve seen it following me. Are they pets?’

The board-comber shrugged inside its many layers.

‘I suppose you could call them that. Me and my bat, we talk to each other. I think. But,’ the board-comber sighed, ‘now I’ve spoken to you, it’ll be a longish time before my bat speaks to me again. You have to get in
the right frame of mind, you see, to converse with bats. You have to be alone a very long while. You have to be alone so long you start seeing forms that aren’t really there. Figures made of dark shadow that dance in the moonlight. Horses made of sunlight rearing on their hind legs and prancing silently across the attic. These things come after a long time of not speaking with another human, of being alone. Do you understand?’

‘I think so,’ replied Alex, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’

‘No,’ agreed the board-comber, ‘none of this really matters.’

Alex peered hard down that fabric tunnel.

‘Are you a girl or a boy?’

‘I can’t remember, but I think
he
and
him
.’

Alex then said, ‘You called to me.’

‘Ah.’ The board-comber rubbed its many woollen mittens together. ‘Business. Your female companion …’

‘My sister.’

‘Yes, she. She has a carving. A green carving. It’s – it’s a walrus. I collect carvings like that. I want it.’

‘Then you’ll have to ask her.’

‘No – no, you get it for me.’

‘I can’t … wait a minute. You said “I know where you can find one”. What did you mean?’

The board-comber knew he had the boy hooked.

‘I know where there’s another model steam engine.’

‘Where?’ cried Alex. His heart suddenly started beating fast and his blood pulsed rapidly through his veins. ‘I must have it.’

‘It’s a swop. Do you know what a swop is?’

Alex was scornful. ‘Of course I know what a swop is.’

‘That’s what we’ll do. You get the soapstone walrus for me. I’ll get the car for you. Then we’ll swop.’

Alex was cagey. ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth? Maybe you’re saying you’ve got a steam engine, just to get the carving. Show it to me.’

‘I can’t. I haven’t got it at the moment. But
I’ll get it.’

Alex was still not sure. This creature could be lying to him. Or it could be telling the truth. One thing was sure, the urge to get yet another steam engine to go with those in his pack was very great. Alex had never felt anything like it. He would have sold his own grandmother –
both
grandmothers – to get a steam car. It was as if there was a shape inside him which had to be filled. The shape of a model steam engine. He
craved
it. Could not live without it. It was an irrepressible yearning.

‘I’ll get the carving for you,’ he heard himself saying. ‘She doesn’t really want it, I’m sure.’

‘Good. Good.’ A filthy mitten full of holes suddenly projected from one of the many dangling sleeves. ‘Shake on it.’

Alex eyed the mitten with disgust.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, revolted by the dirt. ‘We don’t need to shake.’

Just at that moment Alex heard a rattling of the boards. Some large Atticans were coming, swiftly and seemingly with some definite purpose. They wore khaki dustcoats with brown buttons. Alarm and confusion rushed through him as the board-comber instantly collapsed into a heap of rags on the floor. Alex copied him, crumpling himself from within, falling and folding down to the planks. There they lay, two piles of old clothes, as the trackers advanced.

The board-comber knew it was the Removal Firm.

The board-comber was cursing his carelessness, hoping for a miracle. His dealings with the visitor should have been short and swift, for the board-comber had known there was danger in the air. Instead they had stood there chatting like two old men sat on a
bench. It was not that the Removal Firm would be suspicious of one heap of rags. But two? Why, they were so close together the board-comber could smell the feathers of the human’s boa.

One of the Removal Firm stopped and stood between the two heaps, glancing quickly right and left. Clothes. Piles of them. It sniffed hard. Then it sniffed again. All it could smell was attic. These clothes had been up here a long time. They were steeped, saturated, in attic smells. Layers of dirty lambswool and cotton hid the inner scents. The creature might have picked through the pile, but it didn’t. It sniffed again, hard.

It must have drawn in dust through its nose, for it sneezed right on to the board-comber, showering the rags with spittle. Then, after a terrible few seconds the tracker moved on, scuttling forward to examine a box. For quite a while afterwards their boots could be heard clattering over the boards. Alex kept very still, very quiet, and thought about something else. He made up a shopping list, for Dipa. In his mind he argued with Ben about football: which was the best team and which the worst, as if he cared.

Finally, he felt a tap on his head.

‘They’ve gone,’ said the board-comber. ‘Hey, you did well for a beginner.’

‘Thanks,’ replied Alex, extremely pleased with himself. ‘I’m learning. Who were they?’

‘Hunters,’ replied the board-comber, not wishing to go into time-consuming explanations. ‘Beware of them.’

‘I shall.’

‘By the way,’ said the board-comber, ‘I love the mask.’

‘Thank you,’ murmured Makishi. ‘Yours isn’t bad, either.’

Coming from outside the Mask Country though, Cocalino did not have the power of
speech and therefore did not make comment.

‘How long has he been gone?’ asked Chloe.

Jordy looked at his watch. ‘The last time I saw him, it was six o’clock – it’s now nearly five. About an hour.’ He held up a finger.

Chloe stared at her step-brother for a moment, then said, ‘Oh yes, I forgot – time goes backwards here.’

The finger came down. ‘One hour precisely –
now
.’

CHAPTER 17

Swarming of the Ink Imps

‘The thing is, when he comes back, don’t make a fuss.’

Jordy was anxious not to upset Alex. He didn’t want to give his step-brother an excuse to run off
permanently. If they all started arguing, Alex would definitely go away and hide. He did that when he was upset with anyone at home. He just took himself off somewhere. Jordy called it ‘sulking’ but he didn’t really know what caused Alex’s moods. Jordy admitted to himself, deep down, that the reason Alex annoyed him was because Jordy didn’t understand him. No one really did.

‘No, I agree,’ said Chloe. ‘We’ll play it down, yes?’

So when Alex wandered back into camp, expecting to be shouted at for leaving without telling them, they virtually ignored him. He took Makishi off his face and slung him on the cord over his shoulder.

‘I’m back,’ Alex said.

Chloe looked up from the meal she was making.

‘Oh – are you? Didn’t know you’d gone. I thought that was you over there.’

She pointed to a heap of rags in a dark corner.

Alex pouted. ‘I don’t wear stuff like that.’

‘Yes you do,’ replied Chloe. ‘Worse stuff.’

Alex didn’t take the bait, but eventually asked, ‘Are we moving on today?’

Jordy came over with his backpack already clipped
shut. ‘Yep. I reckon from what the bortrekker told me that we’re very close to the Great Water Tank he talked about. The bureaux are on the edge of the lake, guarded by the ink imps. We’ll get the map—’

‘What about the ink imps?’ interrupted Alex. ‘Won’t they try to stop us?’

Jordy laughed. ‘What can a few imps do to us? Nah, we’ll just walk through them and find the map. We need to find Mr Grantham’s watch.
Frère Jacques
. Then we can start back home again. Now I know how to navigate up here I think I can get us back.’

‘Easy, just like that,’ murmured Alex. ‘Wonder why we didn’t do it before?’

‘Because we haven’t got the watch yet,’ replied Jordy, through gritted teeth.

Nelson loped into camp with a mouse in his jaws.

‘Poor fare that,’ cried Alex. ‘You can do better than that, ginger. Bring us an Attican wild boar.’

Nelson gave Alex a hard stare. He was not a cat who enjoyed being mocked.

‘Yuk,’ Chloe said, ‘I’m glad there are vegetables.’

Nevertheless she stroked her cat until he purred in delight. He flopped over at her feet and began playing with the dead mouse, batting it backwards and forwards. Finally Chloe picked it up by the tail and tossed it away. Nelson stared after it, but decided it wasn’t worth moving for. He was in a nice shaft of sunlight that warmed his fur and it felt very good. The boards were cosy beneath his fur and like all cats he loved a laze.

At that moment six Atticans in dustcoats arrived: the same set that had sniffed around the board-comber and Alex earlier. They were fusty-looking, much taller and broader than the normal villagers that the children had met until now. Their features were stern below their shining bald pates. They also looked stronger than any villager the children had come across. They would not have looked out of place in a hardware store. They had the appearance of harassed counter clerks.