Witch Crag (9 page)

Hearts hammering with terror, they followed Geegaw in his crazy harlequin costume through the wreckage of the city. At first sight, first sense, it seemed deserted. Shattered buildings, heaps of rubble, piles of rusted and jagged metal. But Kita's quick eyes caught a movement here, a rustle there; glimpses of people disappearing like rats into their holes. A kind of miasma of horror lay over everything; of despair and bleak, rotting depravity.

Nature was absent. There was no plant life at all, no fresh-growing green to lift the bleak, bleached deadness of it all. No birds or insects flew above them – even the hungry crows were absent. The sterility of the place made Kita's skin crawl. The hill fort was bare, the sheep people quick to hack down creepers and plants that encroached on their living space. But here it seemed that nothing could grow.

Geegaw turned round and grinned at them, his plait and earring swinging. “Nearly there!” he announced.

“That gang,” said Raff, “are there lots of gangs like that here?”

“Oh, boy gangs, girl gangs, yes, lots of them. But stay with me and you'll be safe.”

Kita exchanged anxious glances with her friends. It seemed they had no option but to keep following Geegaw, who continued, “They fight and skirmish, the gangs. Over food, usually. There's never enough food. That's why we have to take the farmers' taters and squash. But the farmers are getting better at fighting us off.”

From somewhere close by, a terrified scream severed the air; the three stopped, frozen, as a horrible bumping and scuffling followed; then silence.

“Hard times, hard times,” muttered Geegaw, shaking his head. “Something will have to be done. The Manager says he has a plan. Maybe you can be part of that plan?
Hoop
-la! Here we are!”

They'd reached another wall of junk metal, with a gateway in it. But unlike the gap in the outer wall, this gateway had a design. On top of a pile of oil drums either side of the gap, two dragons with saw teeth perched, their spiky steel wings half-folded. Raff was staring at them, mouth open. “Is that . . . is that
art
?” he breathed.

“Indeedy,” said Geegaw. “Real art. Made from the tools and debris and bobs and bits from before the Great Havoc. Steel, tin, nuts, bolts, screws, rivets . . . all the old stuff. The Manager is a very cultured man. He had a fine sculptor who would weld them all together. But the sculptor's recently been wasted.” Thoughtfully, Geegaw twirled his earring round a long forefinger nail, adding, “Shame, really.”

“They're awesome,” said Raff.

“More inside!” said Geegaw, and he went through the gap, beckoning to the three to follow. As they reluctantly went through, two thin dark shapes on either side uncoiled threateningly from the floor.

“Search them!” Geegaw barked.

“
Search
us?” cried Raff. “What – are we your prisoners now?”

“Just a precaution, silly boy,” said Geegaw. “I'm responsible for the Manager's life.” The two guards seized hold of Raff and Quainy, and he turned to Kita, saying, “Permit me, my dear. What do you have in that bag?” He peered inside, scraped a fingernail along the honeycomb, tasted it, and said, “Mmmm!” But then he gave the bag back to her, contents intact.

The guard searching Raff seized his knife and fire-making kit and handed them to Geegaw. Raff and Kita locked anguished eyes for a moment, but there was no point in protesting. Geegaw tutted, and tucked the knife into his multicoloured robes. Then he handed the stick, string and stone back to Raff, and flapped his hand at the guards, who subsided on to the floor once more.

“Now. What skills do you have?” Geegaw asked, as he led them through a ramshackle courtyard. More fantastic sculptures were all about them: louring monsters, a huge bird with a beak made from an ancient machine gun, insects with nail legs crawling the walls. . . “You must have skills, or the Manager may not . . . take to you.” There was a silence. Geegaw turned, and his skull eyes raked into them.

“I'm a sculptor,” said Raff, firmly. “I can make stuff like this.”

“Amazing! Really? Well – you will be tested. And you, blonde girl?”

“I can. . . I can weave,” said Quainy, faintly.

Geegaw sneered.

“And . . .
dance
.”

“Ah,” he said, approvingly. “The Manager likes a party, now and then.”

Kita's mind raced. What could she say? Sheep tending? Child minding? That wouldn't impress anyone here, where no resistance was made to children being carried off as slaves.

But Geegaw had come up close to her, and was looking yearningly into her eyes, murmuring, “I think I know what your skill is.” Then he turned back and stalked on round a corner, where a curtain of chains all of different sizes and lengths hung. He stopped, and in a wheedling sing-song voice that made Kita's flesh crawl he called, “Man-a-
ger
! Man-a-
ger
!”

There followed a wheezing, flubbering noise, like six sheep rolling over in unison. Then a gurgling voice said, “Enter!”

The three friends followed Geegaw through the clanking curtain, and stopped, aghast. In the centre of the room, surrounded by yet more scrap-metal sculptures, illuminated by four oil lamps on spindly stands, an immensely fat man sprawled on a wide, cushion-laden bed. He was dressed in a purple and red kaftan, and his long greasy hair was wound into a knot on the top of his head.

Geegaw pranced forward, shadows from the lamps prancing eerily with him, and said, “How are we this evening, Manager? No more bad dreams, I hope?”

“A few,” the Manager grumbled. “Daytime dreams are bad.” Thick rolls of flesh around his face undulated as he spoke.

Geegaw dropped on to his hunkers beside the bed, then reached out and stroked the side of the Manager's face, who gazed at him like a fat, trusting baby. “Fewer tonight,” he soothed. “Promise.”

“You promised before,” groaned the Manager, then he turned and gazed at the three friends. “Who have you brought me?”

“A sculptor. A dancer. And. . .” Geegaw leaned forward, and whispered something into the Manager's fleshy ear.

Kita, straining her ears, caught only one word, and could not be sure she'd heard right, because the word was
vision
, and how could that belong to the violent, depraved world they'd entered?

Geegaw continued to whisper for a while, while the Manager nodded. Then Geegaw sprang to his feet and clapped his hands three times, calling, “Hoop-la! Food! A feast! Bring it in, bring it in!”

Almost immediately, the chains parted, and a thin boy all in black carried a tray inside, which he laid reverently on the end of the bed, then withdrew. On the tray were three ancient battered cans, five tin plates and five spoons. Kita, Quainy and Raff stared in bemusement as Geegaw hooked a spindly finger through the can rings and deftly decapped them. Then they watched in fascination as he tipped them up and a white, creamy gunk flopped on to the plates.

“Delicious,” Geegaw simpered, handing the largest plate to the Manager. “Chunky Chicken. Whoever would have thought it would have lasted quite this long, quite these many, many years, beyond its sell-by date? A testament to food science, I call it. Our glorious Manager has a whole warehouse of this kind of stuff. Although it's getting emptier and emptier – you're privileged to taste this. Baked beans, sardines . . . flavour's mostly gone but it feels good on the tongue and it never poisons you.”

The three friends exchanged a glance. The Manager was already gorging himself on the creamy mess, and they were salivating with hunger, despite their great fear. Kita picked up a spoon and took a taste. It was bland, tasteless, but she felt her body craving its nourishment.

Soon all three of them were eating fast.

“Look at the weight of him, hey?” murmured Geegaw, nodding towards the Manager admiringly. The huge man had cleared his plate and was now licking it with a vast, pale tongue. “Look at the flesh on him! What a successful, devouring man, hey?”

“Certainly is,” choked out Kita.

Geegaw clapped his hands again, and the boy re-entered, this time with water in a tall clear bottle and a bowl full of apples.

The three eyed the apples covetously. At the hill fort, apples were gathered in the wild in the autumn – but there was only enough to have two or three each every year, and never enough to store, as these had been. At a nod from Geegaw, they fell on them, sinking their teeth into the wrinkled, sweet flesh. Then they passed the water bottle around.

“Now,” gurgled the Manager. “You've eaten my food, drunk my water – time to sleep. Take them to a side room. Then tomorrow – time to work.”

“The Manager relies on me,” Geegaw confided, as he escorted them early next morning through a warren of derelict walls and filthy spaces. Kita tried not to look too closely at the piles of rubble they passed. She'd spotted a thick hank of hair sticking out from under one of them. “He needs me to calm him.”

The three had slept surprisingly well for prisoners in a place of horror, curled up on piles of rags with their sheepskins for covers in a small room with no windows, just holes in the ceiling for air. Throughout the night, two young guards were slumped in the doorway, but their presence was a comfort rather than a threat, because it meant none of the hungry citizens of the city could creep up on them while they slept.

“Only I have the skill,” Geegaw went on. “For the Manager's nightmares, for his terrible depressions and rages. Rages that sweep over him like a black storm, when he'd waste you soon as look at you. My skill . . . is a
mind
skill.” His eyes slid sideways to Kita as he said those last two words, but she was looking at her two friends, trying to assess how they were. Quainy was pale, she seemed anxious and scared, but Raff looked determined and focused. When Quainy stumbled on some of the rubbish that was everywhere on the ground, he took her hand to help her, and they walked close. Jealousy flicked at Kita like a snake.

“
Mmmm
,” sighed Geegaw, and this time Kita did meet his eyes. He had a knowing, sympathetic smirk on his face, as though he understood what she was feeling. She glared down at the ground again.

Geegaw stopped in front of a large metal door leaning against two collapsing walls, and rapped on it three times. Almost immediately, the door quivered and rattled, then it was lifted bodily aside, and two more boys dressed in black appeared. When they saw Geegaw, they stepped subserviently aside, and he strutted through the gap, beckoning the three to follow.

They were in a long ruin of a room, crammed as a junkyard with disintegrating machines and chaotic heaps of scrap metal. Geegaw led them through the wreckage into a space in the centre. Light from a great gash in the ceiling shone down on a large sculpture of a strange creature – copper coloured, with four very long, oddly bent legs, and a crude, blunt head. Nearby, a long, scoured table had an arrangement of tools, like the ones the original sheep people had brought with them to the hill fort, but finer. Raff stared at them hungrily.

“The tools of our last sculptor's trade!” Geegaw announced, with a theatrical gesture towards the table. “He was making, as you see, a horse.”

“A
horse
?” scoffed Raff. “It looks nothing like a horse.”

“The Manager agrees with you,” said Geegaw, grimly. “Which is why the sculptor no longer works for him.”

Quainy went paler still. “But you said . . . you said he'd been
wasted
. Did the Manager—”

“The Manager threw him out into the city,” said Geegaw loftily. “Withdrew his protection. The wretch could still be alive – but it's doubtful.”

Kita cleared her throat. “How do the city people know if someone is under the Manager's protection?”

Slowly, Geegaw turned to face Kita, a menacing smile on his face. “Oh, clever,” he breathed. “Clever, clever, clever. You're still thinking of making a run for it, and wondering if there's some token, some badge, that will keep you safe? No, my dear. Alas, no. Word gets around, that's all. Gossip spreads like wildfire. Within a few hours, the whole city knew that the sculptor was disgraced. Very, very soon, the whole city will know about you. The Manager's new employees. So you're safe. While you work for him.” He clapped his hands, three times, and one of the black-clad boys came running over. “Hoop-la! Breakfast. Breakfast for our guests.”

Soon the boy was back with water, apples and a large green tin with orange marks on the side. “
Baked Beans
,” spelt out Geegaw. “I can read, you know. I've taught myself.”

The three stared at him, impressed, as he preened and smirked. They'd heard about reading from the oldies, but never expected to witness it being done. Then the four sat on the floor, and as they ate, Geegaw talked, often with his mouth full.

“I want
you
, boy sculptor, to finish that horse. The Manager's latest fad, his latest love, is the horse. Ever since the farmers have taken to riding through our city gates on the backs of them, demanding their food back, taking our offspring, he's admired the horse. Do you think you can do it?”

“Yes!” said Raff, firmly. “But I'll need to dismantle it first. It's all wrong. Everything about it is wrong.”

“H'm. That will take time. The Manager isn't patient. He—”

“But I have two assistants,” said Raff. “That means I can go a lot faster.”

“Assistants? You mean the girls? Oh, no, you can't keep the girls. I have plans for them. The blonde girl says she can dance, and my little dark-haired one and I, we need to have some conversation, we need to—”

“I can't work without my trained assistants,” interrupted Raff, loudly. “It's impossible, especially with a sculpture of that size.”

Geegaw lowered his head, and his mouth moved fast and ugly, little growling noises coming from it. Kita drew back from him in distaste.

“Think how pleased the Manager will be if I fix the horse quickly,” Raff went on. “And how
mad
he'd be if he knew I was prevented from working as fast as I can.”

Geegaw threw down a half-eaten apple and scrambled to his feet. “You're right,” he snarled. “Of course you're right. Get to work. I'll be back tonight to see your progress.” Then, in a multicoloured flurry, he sped out of the door, and the two guards wrestled it shut behind him.

The three drew together over the empty tin of beans. “Brilliant fast thinking, Raff,” said Quainy, fervently. “You kept us together. But can you do it? Can you improve the horse?”

“Look at it!” said Raff. “
Anything
I do will improve it. You know what, I'm itching to begin. See those thin strips of metal over there? I can make a mane from them. It'd be stunning—”

“Oh, yes,” enthused Quainy. “And you need to shorten the legs. . .”

“You
amaze
me,” snapped Kita. “We're here in this
hell
, this
sewer
, and you're chatting about legs and a mane—”

Raff turned to her. “You've forgotten our training, Kita,” he said. “
Survive
,
survive
,
survive?
My sculpting will help us do that. No virtue in not enjoying it too, is there?”

Kita sat back, impressed by the new note of strength in his voice. “OK,” she muttered. “But let's not forget our main purpose, ay?” She glanced behind, at the two guards lounging by the door, and lowered her voice. “We need to work out how to get out of here.”

“I know,” murmured Raff. “But I can buy us some time. And in the meantime, we're safe and we'll get fed.”

“Anyone want the rest of Geegaw's apple?” asked Quainy, nodding towards it as it lay on the floor.

“
No!
” said Kita and Raff, in unison, and they all laughed.

For the next few hours (Kita said to herself silently and somewhat sourly) an onlooker would have thought that improving the metal horse was all that mattered to the three of them. Raff examined the horse, then the tools – then like a magician, he seemed to know just what to do. He discovered that it was relatively simple to unbolt the legs, shorten them, hammer them out to look more horse-like, then reattach them. Simple it may have been, but it was also very hard work, needing both girls to lift and hold while Raff adjusted the bolts or shaped the metal with a heavy hammer. Even the two guards got involved, holding up the body while the legs were reattached.

But the muscle-straining work was a success. By the time another meal was brought in on a tray, the sculpture looked far more like a horse.

“It's amazing,” breathed Quainy, as they sat down to eat. “You've made it look like it's
running
. Geegaw will be thrilled. The
Manager
will be thrilled.”

“So thrilled they'll guard you even closer, to make sure you don't escape,” grumbled Kita.

“Those guards are to keep people out, not us in,” said Quainy. “They think we'd be mad to escape from the Manager's protection.”

“But that said, it will be easier to make a bolt for it if they're not expecting us to,” said Raff. “Try to look more grateful, Kita – smile more! Now come on – tuck in.”

The food in front of them was fresh, raw vegetables, stolen no doubt from the farmers, with a handful of nuts. They ate it with relish. When they'd finished the water, Kita slid the bottle into the woollen food bag. She'd held the bag close to her the whole time they'd been in the city.

“Won't that get us into trouble?” Quainy asked, nervously.

“They have thousands of them, they won't care,” said Kita. “I asked one of the guards when he was helping with the horse. They're made of something called plastic – from before the Great Havoc. Plastic lasts for ever, he said.”

“Brilliant, mad one!” said Raff. “A water carrier at last!”

Kita felt a spurt of happiness at Raff's praise, the use of his old nickname for her. Then she told herself not to be soft. “We need to get our bearings in the city,” she muttered, “find out the fastest way out of here. I hope we're taken off somewhere else to sleep, not just left here – then we can get a look around.”

“Yes,” said Raff, quietly, glancing at the guards. “We need to find out if there are any exits not watched. The guard you spoke to – he liked you, Kita. You were good at pulling the wool over Arc's eyes. Maybe you can chat the guard up, and—”

“I'll do my best,” she snapped. She didn't like being reminded of what had happened with Arc. She felt she wanted to run away from it.

“Shhhh,” hissed Quainy. “They're looking this way.”

They got back to work soon after that, perfecting the angle of the horse's legs, then making a start on the mane, cutting and straightening the thin strips of metal and attaching them to a single band. Raff kept considering the horse's head, wondering how he could improve it, running his ideas past the girls. Kita knew it was part of being convincing as the Manager's new protégé, but it was also obvious how much Raff loved the work just for itself. He was more energized, more alive than she'd ever seen him.

When she was working alongside him she muttered, “How strange that that huge evil lump of lard likes sculpture. How can you be so ugly and full of rage and in such a hideous place and want this
art
?”

Raff shrugged. “Maybe that's exactly why,” he said.