Stoneheart (6 page)
“Don’t be sorry for me. Don’t treat me like I’m soft. And don’t like me.”
He felt the red handprint on his face. “I don’t like you. Don’t hit me again.”
“Good. Then we’ll get along fine. You better hurry up.
George looked up the ramp. The Gunner was gone. He didn’t stop to think. He just raced up the wet incline, shouting, “Wait!”
T
here are steep roofs on the north side of London’s Euston Road, roofs pierced with clock towers and turrets and spires and chimneys. They are so high, and the sweep of the building is so fiercely decorated that no one looking up at its gothic exuberance really notices the watchers looking back at them. But above the sixty million bricks that make up St. Pancras station and the hotel attached to it, there is one of the largest rookeries of gargoyles in London.
On the north side of the building, its stone eyes staring out over the sweep of wet rails heading out of London beneath it, a cat-gargoyle arched over the gulf of air between it and the glass train shed below, as water spouted from the copper pipe jutting from between its snarling teeth. It was the same as all the other gargoyles on the roof, except for one thing. It was steaming, like a racehorse after a long hard race.
It didn’t know much, but what it did know was this: it had failed. The other gargoyles of St. Pancras knew this. Next time, perhaps more than one would have to take to the air, and hunt in a pack. And next time they would not fail.
P
erhaps because it was still raining, the Gunner no longer ran. Instead he walked fast and purposefully down Park Lane, keeping the well-lit massif of Mayfair’s western edge on his left shoulder, and the tree-filled void of the park on his right. Even though he wasn’t running, George had to trot to keep up. George didn’t say anything as they pressed on through two more underpasses and into Green Park. He had a head full of questions, but perhaps because he felt bad about leaving the girl behind, he said nothing. He knew if he asked another question right now, it would lead back to her in some way. So he left well enough alone. What he did do was glance back when he thought the Gunner wasn’t looking, and saw that she was trailing them, about forty feet behind.
Edie watched the boy as she trailed them. She noticed him looking back, then turning away in case he was caught looking. He was only a couple of inches taller than she was, but then she was tall for her age and he seemed sort of hunched apologetically in on himself. His hair was longer than most boys his age, and it wasn’t spiked or gelled or anything. His jacket flapped as he hurried along, too big for him—bought to grow into, no doubt—and as if to compensate, his ankles poked out below trousers that had clearly failed to keep up with a growth spurt. She remembered the look on his face as he’d said sorry. It had been an honest face, and he’d looked her right in the eye as he said it. He seemed kind underneath the sadness and fear. Which is why she had hit him.
She followed them into an underpass—only to find the fork in the tunnel, and that she suddenly had no idea which way they’d gone. She headed left, running, deciding if they had gone right she’d sprint back and catch them up.
In the right-hand tunnel, the Gunner had broken into a run of his own. George didn’t catch him until they’d burst back out into the air.
“Why are we running?”
The Gunner jerked his head back.
“We’re losing the baggage. Come on.”
He pulled George through a hedge and ran on.
Under their feet, Edie realized she had taken the wrong turn. She doubled back and took the other tunnel. By the time she made it back out into the evening air, there was no sign of them.
She kicked savagely at the gravel. She did it again. Then she started running, cutting a wide arc through the trees, heading toward St James’s Park and the river beyond. The Gunner had said they were going to the river. Maybe she’d catch them there. As she felt gravel spit under her running feet, she thought of the beach. And why she was running.
Edie knew the Gunner was right about one thing: she was bad luck. The thought caught at her like a riptide, sucking her back and down into a dark place where she found it harder and harder to breathe. The more she tried to run her mind away from the thought, the stronger the feeling grew. She knew the feeling was panic, and she knew giving in to panic was dangerous, because she’d stop thinking clearly. And thinking clearly was how Edie survived. Trying to escape the panic wasn’t easy. It was like running in pebbles, like trying to scramble up a steep shingle beach, when every step forward slides back in a scrabble of unstable stones, and the faster you try and move, the more tired you get.
Edie had got very tired once, running up a shingle beach. Someone had been chasing her. She had run from the water across the sand and up the steep shelving wall of pebbles, hearing him behind her. The pebbles close to the sea started small, and got bigger as the slope rose toward the railway line at the top. Her feet made a crunching noise as she ran up the gravel-size stones; as they got bigger the noise changed to a scrabble, then a clacking as bigger stones cracked against each other, dislodged by her bare feet scrambling toward the top of the mound.
She had heard no noise behind her, so she risked a look. For a moment she could see nothing but the shingle and the gray sand beyond, and in the distance the wind blowing whitecaps across the rollers coming in from the Channel. Then she saw a flash of red as he came over the wooden beach divider, and she turned and ran faster. In panic.
She didn’t see the half-buried tire that caught her foot and sent her sprawling on the very lip of the slope. It sent her crashing to the ground, smacking her cheek on a sea-flattened piece of flint; but it saved her. She found herself looking down into a deep trench, maybe six meters deep. On her side of the trench the pebbles sloped sharply down until they met a wooden wall that rose even higher than where she was. It was new wood, massively cut beams—three times as thick as a railway sleeper bolted together—to make a new beach defense. In the distance she saw yellow bulldozers and a construction shed, but it was too far away and on the wrong side of the wind for anyone to hear her even if she screamed, and there was no one there that she could see anyway.
It was Saturday afternoon, after all, and nobody works on a Saturday if they can help it. She was alone, and behind her she could hear crunching footsteps changing to clacking. She got to her feet, took one step forward—and fell again. Her ankle had turned. In the distance she heard a train approaching. She looked behind her. He was puffing up the last part of the slope, face as red as his anorak, almost as red as the blood staining the handkerchief he held to his cheek. His eyes were hot and angry but he was smiling. He wasn’t smiling like a villain in a film; his smile wasn’t saying “Gotcha.” It was much more frightening than that, given what he’d said and what he’d tried to do, and what she’d done to stop him. It was a smile that said “I’m your friend—we’re pals.”
She knew the smile well. Out of that smile came lies and promises and threats and the smell of The Red Lion and the rank stale reek of rolling tobacco. Out of that smile came the sounds and smells of pain and betrayal and fear.
He stopped, and puffed and sucked air. He looked at the blood on his handkerchief. He scowled briefly around at the empty beach and the railway line beyond the deep trench and the beach defense.
“I’m going to have a heart attack, you carry on like this.”
He smiled at her.
“Come on. Stop this nonsense. It’ll be all right.”
Edie would have been a lot more likely to believe him if he hadn’t still been carrying the open lock knife in his other hand.
“Come on. It’s just you and me. Don’t be silly.”
Edie heard the train approaching. It was coming fast. It would pass quickly and be gone, and she would still be here alone with him and the knife and nothing but the wind and the sea and the big heavy stones under her hand.
He spat and put the handkerchief away in his pocket. It’s just us.
The train boomed around the curve and into sight, suddenly upon them. The wire mesh on the rusting fence posts rattled in protest. Edie lurched to her feet and waved at the train—her cries for help drowned by the noise. The train was empty. The only pair of eyes belonged to the driver at the front. He misunderstood, smiled and waved at what he took to be a happy girl and her father on the beach, and was gone. Edie watched the empty windows flash past like hollow sprockets, with no human shape breaking their rectangular uniformity.
With another boom and the thump of empty air closing in behind it, the train was gone—and suddenly she was looking at the sea marsh beyond the rails, and the farewell flash of yellow as the last carriage pulled away, headed for the small town where nobody was expecting her home for tea.
And then she felt three distinct things all at once. She felt his hand grip her hair. She felt panic. And she felt the heavy smoothness of the rounded flint in her hand.
She knew she was bad luck. And she knew all about panic. That’s why she would always do whatever she could to steel herself against it. She would always stare at her fears rather than ever turn and run without thinking again.
She stopped running. She
hadn’t
been thinking. She’d been remembering. She’d been looking back. She needed to look forward. She stood in the dark and tried to calm her mind enough to think ahead. Her right hand reached unconsciously for the sea-glass in her pocket. It closed tightly around it as she steadied her mind, eyes closed, concentrating on getting her breathing steady and her mind clear. And then her eyes opened as it came to her: before they had seen her, she had seen them, while she was creeping up on them in the underground parking garage; she’d heard them talking.
She’d heard the Gunner say they needed to talk to sphinxes. She hadn’t walked all of the streets of the city, but she knew a lot of them. And she could think of only one place where there were sphinxes.
And it was by the river.
T
he rain was easing off when they turned off the Strand and headed downhill toward the Embankment. As they slowed a little, George asked a question that had been troubling him.
“What happens to statues when you shoot them—like you did—and they sort of go to dust and blow away?”
The Gunner spared him half a glance and less of a smile and kept on walking.
“You don’t kill all statues like that. Not spits, anyway. But you kill a taint, they do go to pieces, and the wind or something takes them and winnows them off. I mean, they’re gone from the walking world. They do end up reconstituted back on their perch or their plinth after turn o’day, but they never walk again. They’re just lumps of rock or metal.”
“And spits are different?”
“Chalk and cheese, mate. We don’t go to pieces like taints do. It’s like we got more to hold us together—the spirit part. At least that’s how I see it. It’s like a sense of who we are is just enough glue to stop us getting blown away like a taint. We can get hurt, mind, and if we’re hurt too far from home, same thing happens to us. But if we get back on our plinth or whatever before turn o’day—that’s midnight to you—we get better.”
“You get better?”
“It’s like we wake up next day mended. Recharged, like a … like a …”
“Like an electric toothbrush,” said George, getting it.
“A what?” said the Gunner, almost offended.
“Like an electric toothbrush,” said George.
“Electric toothbrush, my Aunt Fanny!” snorted the Gunner. “No such thing. What kind of banana would put electricity in their mouth? Stress is getting to you, mate.”
“No—” began George.
“Adam Street.” The Gunner jerked a thumb at the street sign as they passed. “That’s a good omen, if you believe in ‘em.”
George didn’t know what to say.
“Not really sure what to believe in after today.”
The Gunner jumped over the railings into Victoria Embankment Gardens and lifted George after him.
“Well, believe in good luck, then. Got to be good luck coming to the Sphinxes down Adam Street. Adam being the first man, and all. I mean, this is man’s business you’re on now, young ‘un, so a good sign don’t do any harm. There they are.”
He hunkered down behind the railing and pointed with his chin. George crouched next to him and looked across the traffic to the edge of the Thames. A tall stone obelisk soared up into the night sky, and on either side of it, looking in opposite directions up and down the river, lay two crouched figures with the massive bodies of lions and the smooth faces and ribbed headdresses of ancient Egyptian royalty.
“It’s Cleopatra’s Needle,” whispered George.
“’Course it is,” said the Gunner. “I said we needed to talk to the Sphinxes. Though don’t call it Cleopatra’s whatsit if it comes up in conversation. They’re a bit touchy on the subject.”
“Why are they touchy?”
“Because they’re Sphinxes and they’re stuck in London and it’s a lot bloody colder than Egypt—how do I know? Anyway. They don’t like the rain, one of them really doesn’t like people, and they get really narked if you call it Cleopatra’s Needle.”
George remembered walking past this place with his dad and mum when things were great and he was smaller.
“Right. It’s
not
Cleopatra’s Needle. It’s an obelisk to Thutmoses or Tutmosis or someone. …”
The Gunner dropped his head and watched the last of the dwindling rain pour off it and splash on his boots.
“Probably shouldn’t have said that. I mean you’re right, but… you probably shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why?” George asked.
The Gunner stood up and swept his cape back over his shoulder, staring across the road.
Edie’s voice came from behind them.
“Because they heard. And now they’re looking at you.”
The Gunner’s eyes flicked at Edie and then dismissed her. “Both of them. And we only wanted to talk to the nice one. Enough trouble getting a straight answer out of her as it is. Come on …”
He stepped over the railings and hoisted George over after him. Edie stood there with her hands on her hips.
“What about me?”
The Gunner shrugged.
“Not my problem. You got in there, you get out. But I’m telling you for real this time. Stay away. I won’t harm you. I’m a spit. Them Sphinxes, half-human, half-animal? … well, they’re something in between: half-taint, half-spit. Get on the wrong side of them, it could go either way.”
He pulled George across the traffic, oblivious to the cars and buses swishing past, but avoiding them as if by magic or blind luck. He spoke quietly into George’s ear.
“It’s because they’re half-spit, half-taint that we’re talking to them. If you’ve stirred up the taints, they’ll know what’s to be done—if anything’s to be done.”
As he got closer, George realized the Sphinxes were really as big as small elephants, and they both had their heads turned toward him. The faces were women’s faces, as alike as identical twins, but not, somehow, the same. The Sphinx on the right had a kind, amused smile on her lips. The Sphinx on the left had the same smile, but something wasn’t right about it. It wasn’t kind. It was pained. George found himself edging toward the kinder-looking Sphinx. He heard the Gunner whisper under his breath.
“Good choice.”
And then the Sphinx spoke.
“Thutmose
the Second
—to be exact.”
“Not that we like to be exact,” purred the other Sphinx. “We like to be enigmatic. Do you know what ‘enigmatic’ means, clever little boy?”
The Gunner nudged George.
“It means mysterious,” he croaked. It really was very difficult having a conversation with a mythological creature the size of a minibus. You didn’t know where to look.
“It means much more than mysterious. It means obscure, it means questionable, it means unreliable.”
George couldn’t help thinking they probably weren’t the best things to come to for advice then, but he knew instinctively that it would be a really bad idea to mention it.
“You’re probably not the best people to come to for advice then,” said a tough little voice behind him.
“Who is she?” purred what George was beginning to think of as the nice Sphinx.
“I’m Edie Laemmel,” said Edie before the Gunner could answer for her.
“She’s a glint,” hissed the other Sphinx.
And now even the nice Sphinx didn’t look so friendly either. They both tensed and drew back, like cats seeing a terrier approaching.
“Why did you bring a
glint?”
she asked the Gunner, using the word like it was something dirty. “We thought there were no more glints. We thought the gift had died out.”
“She’s not with us. She’s just following us. She won’t leave us alone.”
“Of course not. She’s a glint. They make pain for everyone. You shouldn’t have brought her.”
The Gunner spun and pointed at Edie.
“Back away. Double-time. Across the street. Now.”
Edie stood her ground. Her lower jaw came forward and a strand of hair dropped in front of her eyes as she lowered her head, never breaking eye contact with the Gunner. George watched her nostrils flare and her lips whiten as she pressed them together.
“Look—”
The Gunner waved her off. “Go away.”
“Listen—”
The Gunner stepped toward her suddenly. “Go away—please.”
“I don’t even know what a glint is.”
The Gunner stopped. His head came back as if he hadn’t thought of this possibility, as if he needed a beat to consider it. Edie stuffed her bunched hands into her pockets and looked at George.
“I’ll go, if you tell me what a glint is.”
It was George’s turn to shrug helplessly. The Sphinxes hissed behind the Gunner. It was a cat noise, but coming from bodies their size it had the effect of a steam valve opening. The Gunner shook his head.
“No. You go. We ask these ladies our question. Then I’ll tell you.”
Edie’s lips thinned down into an ever tighter line. Then she gritted out one word. Fine.
George watched her walk off down the pavement and lean against the wall, looking across the river as if she suddenly wasn’t interested in them anymore. The Gunner put a hand on his shoulder and turned him back to the Sphinxes. They looked more relaxed—although, as they spoke he noticed one or the other of them was always looking over his shoulder, keeping an eye on the small girl silhouetted against the Thames. The Gunner edged him closer to the statues. George’s head craned back as they loomed above him.
“We have a question.”
The not-nice Sphinx spat an answer without taking her eyes off Edie.
“Everyone has a question. That’s why they come to us.”
“The boy, he’s done something to stir up the taints. They’re after him.”
The other Sphinx, who wasn’t looking so nice anymore, stared at him.
“So what?”
“So the question is, how can we stop them—”
“Killing him?” finished the Sphinx.
“That’d do for a start, yeah,” said the Gunner.
“And that’s your question?”
The Gunner looked at George. George nodded.
The Sphinx on Edie-watch suddenly turned her huge eyes on George. Her movement was so fast, and the headdress so like a cobra’s hood fanned out on each side of her face, that George could only think of the three stone serpents rearing back to strike just before the Gunner had stepped off the monument. He could suddenly see exactly how half of her, at least, was a taint. The impression was reinforced as she hissed her question.
“You’re sure? You’re sure that is the question you want answered?”
Since George couldn’t think of anything more important than not getting killed, he nodded again.
“Ask it, then.”
He cleared his throat.
“How can I stop these things killing me?”
They looked at him expectantly.
“Oh,
please.”
The Sphinxes leaned against one another with a sinuous feline familiarity.
“Anyone can ask us a question, and we must answer, but only if the questioner first answers a riddle or a question we ask them. That is the way of the Sphinx.”
George looked at the Gunner. The Gunner nodded.
“That’s how things work with them.”
“But I’m terrible at riddles.”
The not-nice Sphinx smiled. At least, George thought it was the not-nice Sphinx. Since Edie arrived, it really was becoming harder and harder to tell them apart.
“Then you won’t get an answer; and you can go away and take your glint with you.”
“She’s not
my
glint.”
“You can take her away anyway.”
George saw a look in her face, a flash of malice, a spark of the same bored unpleasantness he’d seen in Killingbeck’s eyes. It made him angry. The anger flickered awake in his belly, like a flame in a woodstove when a log has been lying smoldering all night without flames, waiting for someone to open the door and let enough air in to reignite the blaze. It wasn’t a blaze, it was just a cat’s tongue of flame, but it was the first time George had felt anything except fear and confusion since the pterodactyl had unpeeled from the frieze, so he held on to it. It felt familiar, and comforting. He faced up to the Sphinx.
“Ask your riddle.”
The Sphinx lowered its head to the pavement. George could see its shoulders hunched high behind it. He knew he was getting the mouse’s eye-view of a big cat. And he knew cats liked playing with mice.
Before they ripped them apart.
The Sphinx’s head began to move in a small serpentine zigzag as it spoke. George wondered if it was trying to hypnotize him.
“I am a suit no men may wear, neither peasants nor kings,
Yet no man goes without me.
What’s got by me shall be well known.
What lies at me is the reason for things.
All may touch me when I am soft, none when I am stone.
Lose me and you will falter—yet if I am taken, you will find courage anew.”
The other Sphinx purred the question over the first one’s shoulder.
“What am I?”
George stood there. Traffic hammered past on the road behind him. He could hear the hiss of tires on the wet tarmac. He knew the real world was right there, a world where boys didn’t have to answer impossible questions asked by even more impossible creatures like giant bronze cat-people. But he also knew that answering this question was the only way he could get back to that other safe world. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. And because he knew this, and couldn’t begin to think what the answer to the riddle was, he let that flicker of anger build. Frustration hit the anger like pure oxygen hitting a flame, and the flicker turned into a blaze and a roar that blocked everything out. He clenched his fists and turned to the Gunner.
“It’s not fair! I don’t know the answer! It’s stupid!”
He felt the rain on his face trickling down the side of his nose. Then he realized it wasn’t raining, and that the rain on his nose was tears, and that made him angrier still. He swiped his hand across his face, wiping it off.
“It’s not fair, it’s just—”
The Gunner crouched down. Gripped his shoulders. Looked into his face. Shook him twice, hard.
“You’re angry. Sometimes angry gets things done. This isn’t one of those times, right? Angry stops you thinking. And this is one time you need to do exactly that.”
George breathed in through his mouth, out through his nose. He did it again, trying to slow things down. It was something his dad had showed him how to do. Sometimes it worked. He looked up at the Sphinx.
“Can you say it again?” he asked.
“I don’t have to.”
George felt the flame flare. He tried to shut the oxygen off by controlling his breathing again.
“You must be scared I’ll guess it, then.”
The bronze eyes held steady. “Must I?”
George tried not to blink. The Sphinx shuddered and stretched.
“I am a suit no men may wear, neither peasants nor kings,
Yet no man goes without me.
What’s got by me shall be well known.
What lies at me is the reason for things.
