She took a breath and climbed down. It was a tight squeeze and she grazed her hip as she twisted around, but then she was in. Leaf sighed and crawled to the hole. As she’d hoped, it led farther into the stony ground-it was impossible to say how far, as the purple sunlight only lit up the first part of the hole and it clearly went much deeper. Deep into darkness.
She was about to crawl in anyway when she smelled something familiar. Familiar yet repulsive, an odor that made her instantly flinch, even though she didn’t immediately recognize it. It was a damp, rotten kind of smell and it made the gorge rise in her throat, and that was what made her remember when she’d smelled it before.
The mind-control mold she’d thrown up had smelled just like what she was smelling now ....
Leaf recoiled, this time scraping the skin off her elbows as she tried to squirm out of the narrow crack even faster than she’d gone in. As she hoisted herself up, a thin tendril of gray fungus came quivering out of the dark and slowly felt around the spot where her feet had been only a few seconds before.
Leaf threw herself back and landed badly, hurting herself. But she didn’t stop, scuttling back with a sobbing cry to find herself at the feet of Harrison. He helped her up as she cried out.
“Fungus! The mind-control fungus!”
“The gray creeper?” said Harrison. “The spores do get in occasionally and root in the cracks. It’s not so bad, that one. It’ll only give you nightmares. Still, I’ll report it. One of the guards will burn it out. Come on-we have to get back a safe distance.”
Leaf followed him meekly. The smell of the gray fungus was still everywhere in her nose and mouth. She could taste it and she could remember the terrible pressure in her head when it was establishing itself
She stopped to dry retch for a moment, but Harrison came back and pulled her along by her wrist.
“Come on! They’ve put the chair down. She’ll fly down any minute and we have to be back almost to the door or we might get caught up too!”
The two of them scrambled back to the door and Leaf collapsed, coughing. Her legs ached and her mouth felt horrible, made no better by the loose threads that stuck to her tongue as she dragged the sleeve of her robe across her face. Leaf spat them out, in the process looking up and out across the lake.
The silver chair was on the pillar of dark stone. The four Denizens hovered in formation around it; the lake roiled underneath from the downbeat of their wings.
High on the balcony, a star flashed into being, or so it seemed to Leaf. A light too bright to look at, that leaped into the air and then slowly descended towards the pillar and the chair.
The light dimmed as the star fell, and through scrunched-up eyes Leaf saw that it was Lady Friday, her long, radiantly yellow wings stretched out for ten feet to either side, tip feathers ruffling as she glided down to alight on the silver chair. The radiance came from something she held in her hand, the same bright object she’d held before when leading the sleepers to the hospital pool.
The twelve sleepers raised their arms as Lady Friday settled on the chair. Leaf heard Harrison suck in air and hold it with a kind of choking noise, and she felt her own breath catch. Lady Friday languidly lifted the shining object in her hand and the light from it dimmed, then suddenly flashed, lighting up everything in the crater as if it were a giant camera flash. In that instant, the lake turned silver, like reflective glass, as did the dome above.
It felt like time stopped. Leaf was motionless, held in that light, as if caught in a still photograph. Nothing moved and she could hear no sound, not even her own beating heart. Then, very slowly, in the slowest of slow motions, she saw something coming out of the mouths and eyes of the sleepers. Tendrils of many colors, twining and twisting as they stretched across the water to the bright star in Friday’s hand.
It was as if the Trustee was drawing colored threads out of their bodies. As the tendrils reached her, the light in her hand changed, the white giving way to a rainbow cluster of red, blue, green, and violet.
Then the tendrils snapped off at the sleepers’ end and the trailing pieces whipped and curled as they crossed the lake into Friday’s hand. The sleepers slowly crumpled to the ground, so slowly that Leaf felt as if it took seconds for them to fall.
Friday raised the glowing rainbow concoction to her mouth, tipped her head back, and drank it down. Most of the brilliant, multicolored threads went in, but she was a careless drinker and some short fragments fell and splashed on the rock before trickling down to the lake.
As Friday drank, the world returned to its normal state. Leaf heard her heartbeat come back, felt her breath rush in through nose and mouth, saw the purple sunlight wash down through the dome.
Lady Friday flexed her wings and launched into the air. Her cohorts descended to lift the chair by its straps.
“What did she do?” asked Leaf, very quietly. The sleepers were lying on the stone. Whether they still lived or not, they were still.
“She experienced them,” said Harrison. His tone was flat and hollow as if he too was shocked by what he had seen, though he had seen it many times before. “Absorbed their lives, their memories and experience. The best parts, that’s what she wants. To feel how they lived, how they loved, all their excitements, triumphs, and joys.”
“What happens to the sleepers after ... afterward?”
“They never really wake up,” whispered Harrison. “They used to be returned to Earth. Now, with so many, I don’t know ... oh, no! She’s coming over here ....”
Harrison bowed his head and knelt down. Leaf stood up and tried to look at the Trustee who was flying towards her, but once again the object in Lady Friday’s hand was shining, and it was too bright. Leaf had to look down and then shield her eyes with her hand as Lady Friday landed in front of her, the rush of air from her wings cool on Leaf’s face.
“So, you’re the small troublemaker who foiled Saturday’s Cocigrue,” said Lady Friday. Her voice was soft but very penetrating, and it demanded attention. “Leaf, friend of the so-called Rightful Heir, this Arthur Penhaligon. How kind of you to visit.”
Chapter Ten
“The wight looked askance at me,” said Ugham, referring to his brief conversation with Saturday’s Dusk. “I hazard he feared some ploy or contrivance, and it is certain he is wary of your power. He has agreed to wait upon you, Lord Arthur, at the appointed half-hour-yet I misdoubt it is an honest answer. More likely he awaits the arrival of more doughty warriors before ordering the assault.”
“Like more of whatever was making that noise before,” said Fred with a shudder.
“I just hope the Fetchers-or something worse-aren’t watching the canal side,” said Arthur. He pushed the shutters open wide and shivered as the wind blew in, spraying him with wet snow. “Wait till I’m down safe, then follow me one at a time.”
“Hey!” Suzy protested. “I should go first, so when you fall in the canal I can get you out.”
“Or me,” said Fred. “I should go first. You’re too important.”
“I’m going first,” said Arthur. “Remember what Sergeant Helve said about leading. Follow me!”
With that shout, he leaped across the gap between the window and the huge wheel, timing it so he would land on the spoke as it was almost level with the building. But he was a second off, and the ice-sheathed spoke was already tilting down. Arthur landed on it but he immediately started to slide, his fingers clutching frantically at the frozen timber as his legs went over the far side. The canal side.
His fingers slipped, unable to get a hold. Arthur swung his legs as he fell and managed to get his knee back on the spoke. Then with an effort that felt as if he might have wrenched every muscle he possessed, he hurled himself up, slithering across the spoke to the other side just in time to half-roll and half-fall off onto the snowy bank of the canal. Behind him the lower end of the spoke he’d been on entered the water with the crackle of broken ice and a threatening gurgle.