A Peculiar Peril, page 41
Oh, how he hated the All-Seeing Puddle.
Yet now there was an odd moony reflection in it, coming rapidly closer. And—coincidence?—a whistling sound in the air.
Crowley frowned, leaned in closer to the All-Seeing Puddle. A rather large object. A … piano? A grand piano?
Where in all the blazes was this report coming in from? Far afield or Paris?
At the last second, he realized it really was a reflection, and looked up at an object crashing down on him.
“Abandon ship!” Crowley screamed. “Abandon ship!”
He lunged for the side of the platform. The huge whistling weight smashed into the top of the elephant.
A moist squashing sound that must be Charlemagne.
A sharp bone-snapping sound and intense agony. His agony. Of all the holy hells!
Crowley screamed and could not stop screaming.
O take me darkness as thy own.
Chapter Forty-Eight
THE ALPINE MEADOWS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
It was a funny sort of place, up close, Jonathan thought, this marmot paradise. So fresh and clean. Even the Institute, which shared the same ridiculous dimensions as the flowers and grasses in the meadows. Up close, though, it resembled less a classic Victorian mansion, due to ad hoc burrows collapsing the original rooms, these excavations evident even through the ample cross-framed windows. Jonathan could not make sense of the layout with all the extra marmot-sized holes in the walls. Although perhaps the building in its gnawed-upon state had even more character. Brick and wood, chewed around the edges by the marmots who apparently liked pulp as a digestive.
Tatty yet homey. The marmots had made it their own.
But, then, Jonathan had realized that the entire meadow was in a way a facade, the remains of the Institute included. The real Institute, or the true land of marmots, must exist buried underground. A vast network of tunnels and burrows that no human would be allowed to see. That was where the marmot young would be found, too. For none had appeared in the meadow while they’d walked through it. Unless these particular marmots reproduced by budding.
Stacks of antique chairs were piled outside the huge stained-glass front doors, waiting to be carted around back to to be burned in the huge firepit behind the Institute building.
“It’s a new development, rubbishing the chairs, but a long time coming,” Crikey said. “We don’t use chairs, you see. Some among us feel we were becoming too … gentrified when we tried to do as Swedenborg suggested and adapt to human customs. So now we only take those that make sense for us.”
Inside, the foyer had a high ceiling of inlaid sky-blue tile, but they had to walk around a gigantic hole in the floor.
“Apologies,” Crikey said. “But we needed another entrance to the home burrows. We have guest burrows, I mean rooms, for humans—and don’t worry, they aren’t filled with dirt and vegetables. Luxurious. Even by human standards.”
“I doubt that,” Rack muttered, staring with suspicion at the mess, and clearly expecting Danny to punch him in the shoulder. But instead she hugged him.
“Get off me!”
“I have a delightful room, yeah? Even Tee-Tee likes it. You’ll see. Yours is next to mine.”
“Excellent! So Tee-Tee doesn’t have to be inconvenienced if he wants to murder me in my sleep.”
Jonathan sighed. He rather hoped the spat between Rack and Tee-Tee would be short-lived. He was finding it as tiresome as Rack versus Danny.
Waiting inside, beyond the foyer, were two more enormous marmots.
“Crikey,” Jonathan managed, startled. They’d emerged from shadows.
“No, I’m Crikey,” their guide said. “He’s Wallow and that’s Sprogg. Wallow’s the old chief of security and Sprogg’s stepping in very soon.”
Wallow had the demeanor, in marmot form, of an old warrior, with white fur and numerous scars from bites and other wounds. Sprogg lived up to the name, with a kind of spring to their step, a much more youthful marmot, with brown fur and large, gorgeous eyes.
“Guests pests,” Wallow said. “Guests pests. Guest pests.”
“Wallow’s never been much for English. He means guests are always welcome.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jonathan said. Although he wasn’t sure, even if it was true he also thought of guests as pests most of the time. Never much cared for them while living in Florida. Wallow, he’d noticed, had spikes for claws, honed sharp, and two of Sprogg’s buckteeth had been narrowed to points. Marmot military fashion, then?
Sprogg spat to the side, said, “You could call us all Circus Meat and it wouldn’t much matter. None of our names translate into your crude human tongue that well. My true name would be______” And there followed a long series of clicks and whistles. “How would you handle that?”
Rack scowled at Sprogg, and Sprogg scowled at Rack. Jonathan fought the temptation to tell them how much they resembled each other in their demeanor.
“Now, now, Sprogg and Wallow, I know you have much on your minds. We will leave you here while I guide our guests to sanctuary.” Crikey gestured to the library, ahead through an enormous archway covered in surreal Boschian detail … except featuring marmots. “Just while your rooms are made ready.”
Jonathan stared in amazement at the archway as they passed through. The Garden of Eden … full of wildflowers and populated by marmots … on one side, and on the other side, hell, with only a handful of marmots (who must be criminals) and much more congestion, fire, smoke, and humans.
Dim-lit by lamps filled with fireflies, the library was full of comfy seating, but also faintly luminous ground squirrels that zipped to and fro just above the ground, upending books and stopping to nibble at already much-abused lounge chairs and leather sofas.
They were the size of jovial springer spaniels. Floating and zipping about. Taking up space. Jostling one another.
“Only about twenty in here, so you’re lucky. You can sit on some of them. They don’t mind. When they cluster, they can be quite comfortable if you need a nap. But beware the group smother.”
“Marpots?” Jonathan guessed. The odor was rich, but thankfully more like peat moss than pee or poo. Although something about their aspect made him think most of their names were variations on Pee or Poo.
“Marpots,” Crikey confirmed. “Bit of an experiment back in the day by a magician visitor. Now we can’t get rid of them. Invasive species. Just ignore them and they will ignore you. Probably. They feed on insects, dust, and ash, which is at least convenient.”
“Do the rooms come with marpots, too?” Rack asked.
“Everything in the Institute comes with marpots!” Danny said. “Isn’t that great!”
“Bloody hell,” Rack said.
Jonathan was, himself, conflicted on the subject of marpots, which had begun to ring a distant bell. Could they be the same as Sarah’s potmarps? The potmarps that had figured in a brace of cute fairy tales she’d told as bedtime stories.
“Yes,” Crikey said. “They love the Institute but tend to wilt and die in the sun for some reason. So you only see them in the meadows after dark. The nectar deer tend to feast on them, and yet they keep multiplying.”
The great cycle of life, according to Sarah. “The potmarps hovering excitable over the magic swamp at dusk, their chirps met by frog song.” Wait. Did that mean “frog” was code as well? He could hurt his head overthinking it.
“I was able to put on a production of Hamlet for Tee-Tee last night using marpots,” Danny said.
“Really?” Jonathan asked.
“No, of course not!” Danny said, laughing. “Don’t be ridiculous, yeah?”
Ridiculous seemed the only option, when it came to marpot potmarps.
* * *
Soon enough, the marmots left them to the library and the marpots. Sitting on the chairs there, they could all look out the grand glass windows to the back of the Institute, where lay a small cemetery to the left and in the center the great firepit full of ash … and some odd random bones. Around the firepit was a sunken amphitheater of stone seating. Which gave the whole rather the appearance of a place for performance as much as for feasting.
Once they’d cleared marpots out of the way to properly appreciate the view, that is.
“If this were a movie,” Rack said, “I couldn’t imagine a creature more cynically created to sell stuffies of.”
“You’re a stuffie, Rack,” Danny said. “You’re a stuffie. And very cruel.”
“At least I don’t eat dust and ash and melt in the sunlight.”
“Yet,” Mamoud said.
Crikey had promised a feast at that very pit that night, and bade them to rest up once their rooms were ready. Beyond the pit was a steep drop-off, and Jonathan could see by the configuration of peaks all around that the Institute was situated with such cleverness and guile that only the most experienced mountaineer would ever catch the slightest glimpse of this marmot Shangri-la.
Jonathan swiveled in his chair to face R & D.
“Right,” he said. “So, our mission is in shambles. We’re reduced to just hoofing it for the first door that will get us home. This entire expedition has been a disaster from the beginning. And I have no idea what to do when we get home. If Crowley’s creatures will pop up again. And what to do if so. Are we going home to ‘regroup’ and return, or are we just abandoning ship?”
He should have expected it, but his words had the effect of a bomb going off. Or not going off. The others just stared at him like he’d said something rude.
Finally, Rack spoke. “Listen, mate, we’re here because of you, true. But my nitpicking aside, this is a whole other world. I can’t unsee it or what’s happening here just because we’ve made a mess of things. Or Crowley’s made us make a mess of them. So I’m for the regroup. Which should surprise no one.”
Which surprised everyone. Even Mamoud was looking at Rack as if he were a new and different person.
“Well, I’m doing it for the fame,” Danny said, “and so is Tee-Tee. So we’re up for the regroup.”
“We still don’t know what we’re really in for. We’ve just gotten a taste.” Jonathan said it with a warning underneath.
“And yet still we’re going to do it,” Rack said.
What they were going to do still seemed unclear to Jonathan. Weren’t quests supposed to be simple and easy and there might be difficulties, but in the end you were victorious and everyone lived happily ever after? Except Aurora didn’t like to play by those rules, apparently.
“We still need Prague just to get you home,” Mamoud said. “That seems clear.” Ever practical.
“I would very much like to get home,” Rack said. “And by home, I’m not even sure I mean the mansion, but home-home.”
“Prague doesn’t mean as much without the Wobble,” Jonathan said. “We just need to get back to Earth for now. We don’t need to get to Prague.”
“It’s all the same,” Mamoud said, “if the only doors from here lead to Prague.”
Jonathan was struck by how none of them mentioned the fade, as if to mention it was as bad as calling a Wobble a Black Bauble. Well, maybe it was. Maybe that was how you let it in, even more than what the fade took on its own.
“And what of Alice?” Danny said, facing Mamoud. “She’s your friend, yeah? Hasn’t she betrayed you, too?”
Fair question, and it clearly made Mamoud uncomfortable as he sat back in his chair. Like all the chairs, it had been brutally gnawed at. A marpot hovered by Mamoud’s head, then two. Trying to ignore the marpots was like trying to ignore, well, really, Jonathan had nothing to compare it to. But it was difficult.
“Ally of convenience. I have no claim over her actions. If I’m less concerned about what she’s done, it is because in all things she puts Britain first and England’s goals are the same, for now, as the Republic’s.”
“But that’s not true, is it, General ?” Jonathan asked, pushing away a legion of marpots gently burbling at his elbow. Their fur was plush and their eyes so large and curious.
Mamoud frowned. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a general.”
“It’s what Crikey called you.”
“His information is … out of date.”
“So you were. What are you now?”
“A member of the Order expressing Republic interests.”
“Is that so?” Rack asked. “Then why—”
“By the way, you’ve all grown such magnificent beards, yeah?” Danny said, interrupting.
So clearly a way of changing the subject, and yet … it was an impossible thing to ignore, too.
Jonathan, Rack, and Mamoud all looked at one another in confusion. And then Rack burst out laughing. But Jonathan felt mostly consternation. What was this sorcery?
Because it was true—they’d all the beginnings of quite amazing beards, even Jonathan, despite being the youngest. The itchiness of five-o’clock shadow had long ago given way to a rich smoothness that he hadn’t questioned. Nor had he been looking in mirrors much since entering Aurora. Not that he did back on Earth, either.
“Well, I already had a beard, or a bit of one …,” Mamoud said.
“Which is why yours is so much longer now.”
Truly, for Mamoud’s beard now reached almost to his waist. Rack’s was only down to his collarbone. and Jonathan’s had hardly reached the middle of his neck.
Danny couldn’t stop giggling, and Tee-Tee was emitting high-pitched squeaks that suggested hilarity.
“How is this possible?” Jonathan asked. “And I can feel it growing now. I mean, it is growing on my face as we speak like … like some kind of air plant.”
“Jonathan, you’re beginning to look like a young version of your grandfather,” Rack said.
“It’s true I can’t remember a photo of him without a beard,” Jonathan said. It was doubly disconcerting to stroke his chin and realize he might look much older.
“You should set your pocketknife to the problem,” Rack said.
Jonathan shuddered. “Seems the wrong task. I’d like to lose the beard, but keep the face.”
“Always an old soul, always cautious, yeah?” Danny said. “Crikey did mention that there might be side effects to the magical meadow air.”
“Is that it? How long does it last?”
Danny shrugged. “Maybe it will never end, and you will be continually cutting your beards and forget all about any kind of quest. Maybe you will learn how to braid, yeah? Tee-Tee thinks you’d all look good with braids.”
“How well you present horror as hilarity, sister-blister.”
“It’s scratchy and itchy at the same time,” Jonathan marveled. “Shall we vow to grow our beards until the Golden Sphere is banished from Aurora?” he asked.
“Do we have a choice?” Rack asked. “I don’t remember asking Santa Claus for a beard, and yet here we are.”
Mamoud said grudgingly, “I rarely shave. And banishing the Golden Sphere is just the beginning, not the end.”
“Oh-ho-ho!” This from Rack, who was pointing at Danny’s face.
“What?” Danny asked.
“I think I see a five-o’clock shadow on your face, Danny.”
“And what of it? Are you going to make something of it, bro-blister? Look to your own facial hair before you judge mine. I am totally fine with mine, yeah?” Good natured, but a little bit of an edge to it.
“Bro-blister is not working, sister-blister. Choose. Something. Else.”
“It works just fine,” Jonathan said.
“Shut up,” R & D said at the same time, but not in anger.
Danny sat back in her comfortable lounge chair, whereupon the marpots descended upon her lap, with Tee-Tee nipping at them to keep them off her shoulders.
“Very nice beards, I say again, gentlemen,” Danny said smugly, folding her arms. “On all three of you.”
Bearded Jonathan stared at bearded Rack and Mamoud, and vice versa. Such full beards in such a short time. And Jonathan noticed that Danny’s five-o’clock shadow was becoming more intense by the moment. It was hard to believe some dark magic wasn’t involved.
“We look like we’ve been shipwrecked for ages,” Jonathan said.
“In a way we have,” Mamoud replied.
Which sobered them all up straightaway.
* * *
Crikey showed Jonathan personally to his room a little while later. It was upstairs, a shipshape if spartan space with a bed and an empty bookcase plus a closet and a marmot portrait on the wall over the bed. The tile floor had been swept recently and led to a small balcony looking out on the meadow. The place smelled like floor cleaner and, well, marmot.
No holes here; Crikey and his companions, including a white-furred marmot named Stockton, whom Jonathan thought of as Crikey’s lieutenant, had made that very clear—the visitor rooms in the Institute did not connect. Not to one another, and not to the rest of what must be the larger marmot community. A kind of quarantine that made sense to Jonathan. Even if he’d recently had his brains jumbled falling into a chasm for far too long.
Crikey had to bend over a bit to get through the doorway, straightening up into the higher-ceilinged room within. Jonathan noticed a fan above, circled by some pesky nectar deer. Good luck sleeping with all that buzzing. To be honest, Jonathan was rather losing track of whether he was seeing lesser or greater nectar deer, given the size of the flowers.
“This used to be Dr. Lambshead’s when he needed some time away,” Crikey said. “But mostly, it was Sarah’s room. I thought you might like that.”
But did Jonathan “like” that, though? And did he like hearing the words from a giant marmot who may have known his relatives better than he did?
Nothing in the room to tell him anything about his grandfather or his mother. Stripped down on purpose? Then it struck him: Sarah had emptied it. Careful as always.
And it wasn’t that it was a surprise to hear those names. It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected some connection. But, still, Jonathan’s heart leapt a bit and he struggled to keep his composure. To hide this, he walked out onto the balcony, looked down on the meadow.
Yet now there was an odd moony reflection in it, coming rapidly closer. And—coincidence?—a whistling sound in the air.
Crowley frowned, leaned in closer to the All-Seeing Puddle. A rather large object. A … piano? A grand piano?
Where in all the blazes was this report coming in from? Far afield or Paris?
At the last second, he realized it really was a reflection, and looked up at an object crashing down on him.
“Abandon ship!” Crowley screamed. “Abandon ship!”
He lunged for the side of the platform. The huge whistling weight smashed into the top of the elephant.
A moist squashing sound that must be Charlemagne.
A sharp bone-snapping sound and intense agony. His agony. Of all the holy hells!
Crowley screamed and could not stop screaming.
O take me darkness as thy own.
Chapter Forty-Eight
THE ALPINE MEADOWS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
It was a funny sort of place, up close, Jonathan thought, this marmot paradise. So fresh and clean. Even the Institute, which shared the same ridiculous dimensions as the flowers and grasses in the meadows. Up close, though, it resembled less a classic Victorian mansion, due to ad hoc burrows collapsing the original rooms, these excavations evident even through the ample cross-framed windows. Jonathan could not make sense of the layout with all the extra marmot-sized holes in the walls. Although perhaps the building in its gnawed-upon state had even more character. Brick and wood, chewed around the edges by the marmots who apparently liked pulp as a digestive.
Tatty yet homey. The marmots had made it their own.
But, then, Jonathan had realized that the entire meadow was in a way a facade, the remains of the Institute included. The real Institute, or the true land of marmots, must exist buried underground. A vast network of tunnels and burrows that no human would be allowed to see. That was where the marmot young would be found, too. For none had appeared in the meadow while they’d walked through it. Unless these particular marmots reproduced by budding.
Stacks of antique chairs were piled outside the huge stained-glass front doors, waiting to be carted around back to to be burned in the huge firepit behind the Institute building.
“It’s a new development, rubbishing the chairs, but a long time coming,” Crikey said. “We don’t use chairs, you see. Some among us feel we were becoming too … gentrified when we tried to do as Swedenborg suggested and adapt to human customs. So now we only take those that make sense for us.”
Inside, the foyer had a high ceiling of inlaid sky-blue tile, but they had to walk around a gigantic hole in the floor.
“Apologies,” Crikey said. “But we needed another entrance to the home burrows. We have guest burrows, I mean rooms, for humans—and don’t worry, they aren’t filled with dirt and vegetables. Luxurious. Even by human standards.”
“I doubt that,” Rack muttered, staring with suspicion at the mess, and clearly expecting Danny to punch him in the shoulder. But instead she hugged him.
“Get off me!”
“I have a delightful room, yeah? Even Tee-Tee likes it. You’ll see. Yours is next to mine.”
“Excellent! So Tee-Tee doesn’t have to be inconvenienced if he wants to murder me in my sleep.”
Jonathan sighed. He rather hoped the spat between Rack and Tee-Tee would be short-lived. He was finding it as tiresome as Rack versus Danny.
Waiting inside, beyond the foyer, were two more enormous marmots.
“Crikey,” Jonathan managed, startled. They’d emerged from shadows.
“No, I’m Crikey,” their guide said. “He’s Wallow and that’s Sprogg. Wallow’s the old chief of security and Sprogg’s stepping in very soon.”
Wallow had the demeanor, in marmot form, of an old warrior, with white fur and numerous scars from bites and other wounds. Sprogg lived up to the name, with a kind of spring to their step, a much more youthful marmot, with brown fur and large, gorgeous eyes.
“Guests pests,” Wallow said. “Guests pests. Guest pests.”
“Wallow’s never been much for English. He means guests are always welcome.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jonathan said. Although he wasn’t sure, even if it was true he also thought of guests as pests most of the time. Never much cared for them while living in Florida. Wallow, he’d noticed, had spikes for claws, honed sharp, and two of Sprogg’s buckteeth had been narrowed to points. Marmot military fashion, then?
Sprogg spat to the side, said, “You could call us all Circus Meat and it wouldn’t much matter. None of our names translate into your crude human tongue that well. My true name would be______” And there followed a long series of clicks and whistles. “How would you handle that?”
Rack scowled at Sprogg, and Sprogg scowled at Rack. Jonathan fought the temptation to tell them how much they resembled each other in their demeanor.
“Now, now, Sprogg and Wallow, I know you have much on your minds. We will leave you here while I guide our guests to sanctuary.” Crikey gestured to the library, ahead through an enormous archway covered in surreal Boschian detail … except featuring marmots. “Just while your rooms are made ready.”
Jonathan stared in amazement at the archway as they passed through. The Garden of Eden … full of wildflowers and populated by marmots … on one side, and on the other side, hell, with only a handful of marmots (who must be criminals) and much more congestion, fire, smoke, and humans.
Dim-lit by lamps filled with fireflies, the library was full of comfy seating, but also faintly luminous ground squirrels that zipped to and fro just above the ground, upending books and stopping to nibble at already much-abused lounge chairs and leather sofas.
They were the size of jovial springer spaniels. Floating and zipping about. Taking up space. Jostling one another.
“Only about twenty in here, so you’re lucky. You can sit on some of them. They don’t mind. When they cluster, they can be quite comfortable if you need a nap. But beware the group smother.”
“Marpots?” Jonathan guessed. The odor was rich, but thankfully more like peat moss than pee or poo. Although something about their aspect made him think most of their names were variations on Pee or Poo.
“Marpots,” Crikey confirmed. “Bit of an experiment back in the day by a magician visitor. Now we can’t get rid of them. Invasive species. Just ignore them and they will ignore you. Probably. They feed on insects, dust, and ash, which is at least convenient.”
“Do the rooms come with marpots, too?” Rack asked.
“Everything in the Institute comes with marpots!” Danny said. “Isn’t that great!”
“Bloody hell,” Rack said.
Jonathan was, himself, conflicted on the subject of marpots, which had begun to ring a distant bell. Could they be the same as Sarah’s potmarps? The potmarps that had figured in a brace of cute fairy tales she’d told as bedtime stories.
“Yes,” Crikey said. “They love the Institute but tend to wilt and die in the sun for some reason. So you only see them in the meadows after dark. The nectar deer tend to feast on them, and yet they keep multiplying.”
The great cycle of life, according to Sarah. “The potmarps hovering excitable over the magic swamp at dusk, their chirps met by frog song.” Wait. Did that mean “frog” was code as well? He could hurt his head overthinking it.
“I was able to put on a production of Hamlet for Tee-Tee last night using marpots,” Danny said.
“Really?” Jonathan asked.
“No, of course not!” Danny said, laughing. “Don’t be ridiculous, yeah?”
Ridiculous seemed the only option, when it came to marpot potmarps.
* * *
Soon enough, the marmots left them to the library and the marpots. Sitting on the chairs there, they could all look out the grand glass windows to the back of the Institute, where lay a small cemetery to the left and in the center the great firepit full of ash … and some odd random bones. Around the firepit was a sunken amphitheater of stone seating. Which gave the whole rather the appearance of a place for performance as much as for feasting.
Once they’d cleared marpots out of the way to properly appreciate the view, that is.
“If this were a movie,” Rack said, “I couldn’t imagine a creature more cynically created to sell stuffies of.”
“You’re a stuffie, Rack,” Danny said. “You’re a stuffie. And very cruel.”
“At least I don’t eat dust and ash and melt in the sunlight.”
“Yet,” Mamoud said.
Crikey had promised a feast at that very pit that night, and bade them to rest up once their rooms were ready. Beyond the pit was a steep drop-off, and Jonathan could see by the configuration of peaks all around that the Institute was situated with such cleverness and guile that only the most experienced mountaineer would ever catch the slightest glimpse of this marmot Shangri-la.
Jonathan swiveled in his chair to face R & D.
“Right,” he said. “So, our mission is in shambles. We’re reduced to just hoofing it for the first door that will get us home. This entire expedition has been a disaster from the beginning. And I have no idea what to do when we get home. If Crowley’s creatures will pop up again. And what to do if so. Are we going home to ‘regroup’ and return, or are we just abandoning ship?”
He should have expected it, but his words had the effect of a bomb going off. Or not going off. The others just stared at him like he’d said something rude.
Finally, Rack spoke. “Listen, mate, we’re here because of you, true. But my nitpicking aside, this is a whole other world. I can’t unsee it or what’s happening here just because we’ve made a mess of things. Or Crowley’s made us make a mess of them. So I’m for the regroup. Which should surprise no one.”
Which surprised everyone. Even Mamoud was looking at Rack as if he were a new and different person.
“Well, I’m doing it for the fame,” Danny said, “and so is Tee-Tee. So we’re up for the regroup.”
“We still don’t know what we’re really in for. We’ve just gotten a taste.” Jonathan said it with a warning underneath.
“And yet still we’re going to do it,” Rack said.
What they were going to do still seemed unclear to Jonathan. Weren’t quests supposed to be simple and easy and there might be difficulties, but in the end you were victorious and everyone lived happily ever after? Except Aurora didn’t like to play by those rules, apparently.
“We still need Prague just to get you home,” Mamoud said. “That seems clear.” Ever practical.
“I would very much like to get home,” Rack said. “And by home, I’m not even sure I mean the mansion, but home-home.”
“Prague doesn’t mean as much without the Wobble,” Jonathan said. “We just need to get back to Earth for now. We don’t need to get to Prague.”
“It’s all the same,” Mamoud said, “if the only doors from here lead to Prague.”
Jonathan was struck by how none of them mentioned the fade, as if to mention it was as bad as calling a Wobble a Black Bauble. Well, maybe it was. Maybe that was how you let it in, even more than what the fade took on its own.
“And what of Alice?” Danny said, facing Mamoud. “She’s your friend, yeah? Hasn’t she betrayed you, too?”
Fair question, and it clearly made Mamoud uncomfortable as he sat back in his chair. Like all the chairs, it had been brutally gnawed at. A marpot hovered by Mamoud’s head, then two. Trying to ignore the marpots was like trying to ignore, well, really, Jonathan had nothing to compare it to. But it was difficult.
“Ally of convenience. I have no claim over her actions. If I’m less concerned about what she’s done, it is because in all things she puts Britain first and England’s goals are the same, for now, as the Republic’s.”
“But that’s not true, is it, General ?” Jonathan asked, pushing away a legion of marpots gently burbling at his elbow. Their fur was plush and their eyes so large and curious.
Mamoud frowned. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a general.”
“It’s what Crikey called you.”
“His information is … out of date.”
“So you were. What are you now?”
“A member of the Order expressing Republic interests.”
“Is that so?” Rack asked. “Then why—”
“By the way, you’ve all grown such magnificent beards, yeah?” Danny said, interrupting.
So clearly a way of changing the subject, and yet … it was an impossible thing to ignore, too.
Jonathan, Rack, and Mamoud all looked at one another in confusion. And then Rack burst out laughing. But Jonathan felt mostly consternation. What was this sorcery?
Because it was true—they’d all the beginnings of quite amazing beards, even Jonathan, despite being the youngest. The itchiness of five-o’clock shadow had long ago given way to a rich smoothness that he hadn’t questioned. Nor had he been looking in mirrors much since entering Aurora. Not that he did back on Earth, either.
“Well, I already had a beard, or a bit of one …,” Mamoud said.
“Which is why yours is so much longer now.”
Truly, for Mamoud’s beard now reached almost to his waist. Rack’s was only down to his collarbone. and Jonathan’s had hardly reached the middle of his neck.
Danny couldn’t stop giggling, and Tee-Tee was emitting high-pitched squeaks that suggested hilarity.
“How is this possible?” Jonathan asked. “And I can feel it growing now. I mean, it is growing on my face as we speak like … like some kind of air plant.”
“Jonathan, you’re beginning to look like a young version of your grandfather,” Rack said.
“It’s true I can’t remember a photo of him without a beard,” Jonathan said. It was doubly disconcerting to stroke his chin and realize he might look much older.
“You should set your pocketknife to the problem,” Rack said.
Jonathan shuddered. “Seems the wrong task. I’d like to lose the beard, but keep the face.”
“Always an old soul, always cautious, yeah?” Danny said. “Crikey did mention that there might be side effects to the magical meadow air.”
“Is that it? How long does it last?”
Danny shrugged. “Maybe it will never end, and you will be continually cutting your beards and forget all about any kind of quest. Maybe you will learn how to braid, yeah? Tee-Tee thinks you’d all look good with braids.”
“How well you present horror as hilarity, sister-blister.”
“It’s scratchy and itchy at the same time,” Jonathan marveled. “Shall we vow to grow our beards until the Golden Sphere is banished from Aurora?” he asked.
“Do we have a choice?” Rack asked. “I don’t remember asking Santa Claus for a beard, and yet here we are.”
Mamoud said grudgingly, “I rarely shave. And banishing the Golden Sphere is just the beginning, not the end.”
“Oh-ho-ho!” This from Rack, who was pointing at Danny’s face.
“What?” Danny asked.
“I think I see a five-o’clock shadow on your face, Danny.”
“And what of it? Are you going to make something of it, bro-blister? Look to your own facial hair before you judge mine. I am totally fine with mine, yeah?” Good natured, but a little bit of an edge to it.
“Bro-blister is not working, sister-blister. Choose. Something. Else.”
“It works just fine,” Jonathan said.
“Shut up,” R & D said at the same time, but not in anger.
Danny sat back in her comfortable lounge chair, whereupon the marpots descended upon her lap, with Tee-Tee nipping at them to keep them off her shoulders.
“Very nice beards, I say again, gentlemen,” Danny said smugly, folding her arms. “On all three of you.”
Bearded Jonathan stared at bearded Rack and Mamoud, and vice versa. Such full beards in such a short time. And Jonathan noticed that Danny’s five-o’clock shadow was becoming more intense by the moment. It was hard to believe some dark magic wasn’t involved.
“We look like we’ve been shipwrecked for ages,” Jonathan said.
“In a way we have,” Mamoud replied.
Which sobered them all up straightaway.
* * *
Crikey showed Jonathan personally to his room a little while later. It was upstairs, a shipshape if spartan space with a bed and an empty bookcase plus a closet and a marmot portrait on the wall over the bed. The tile floor had been swept recently and led to a small balcony looking out on the meadow. The place smelled like floor cleaner and, well, marmot.
No holes here; Crikey and his companions, including a white-furred marmot named Stockton, whom Jonathan thought of as Crikey’s lieutenant, had made that very clear—the visitor rooms in the Institute did not connect. Not to one another, and not to the rest of what must be the larger marmot community. A kind of quarantine that made sense to Jonathan. Even if he’d recently had his brains jumbled falling into a chasm for far too long.
Crikey had to bend over a bit to get through the doorway, straightening up into the higher-ceilinged room within. Jonathan noticed a fan above, circled by some pesky nectar deer. Good luck sleeping with all that buzzing. To be honest, Jonathan was rather losing track of whether he was seeing lesser or greater nectar deer, given the size of the flowers.
“This used to be Dr. Lambshead’s when he needed some time away,” Crikey said. “But mostly, it was Sarah’s room. I thought you might like that.”
But did Jonathan “like” that, though? And did he like hearing the words from a giant marmot who may have known his relatives better than he did?
Nothing in the room to tell him anything about his grandfather or his mother. Stripped down on purpose? Then it struck him: Sarah had emptied it. Careful as always.
And it wasn’t that it was a surprise to hear those names. It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected some connection. But, still, Jonathan’s heart leapt a bit and he struggled to keep his composure. To hide this, he walked out onto the balcony, looked down on the meadow.
