Going Under (45 page)

Lila was sure he was trying hard not to cry. "I want Zal."

The imp winced.

"We haven't got any zals," the monkey said. "Just what you see."

"I don't want anything," she said dully.

The monkey rolled its eyes. "Pick something. Anything. You have to or I can't send you on to your just deserts."

"Is that really it?" Lila said to Thingamajig, ignoring the monkey completely.

He nodded. "Might have been a few other things. I was something of a fundamentalist revolutionary." He twitched and quivered. "Please go ... I ... I'm starting to remember a lot and I don't want you to see me as I was ... I think ... please just go now. All the best. Don't let that Crow Queen screw you over when you tell her that the freakshow mage elf is still alive and kicking ass so's even major demons don't see past his tricks. She's scared of him because of some prophecy and she never could deal with fear. You know, it's been fun. Yes, fun. Take something like the monkey says."

The pleading in his tone was much greater than anything the words said. Lila felt her heart twisting, trying to avoid the surprising ache she felt. There'd been a hundred times she'd gladly have dropkicked the imp into tomorrow.

She put her hand out and picked up the nearest object she could lift, then looked to see what she'd got: a small dagger with a ragged leather handle and a tarnished, dull blade, unmarked. It looked like it had once been great, and could have been polished up nicely, but was now distinctly unspectacular. She felt no vibration on it, unlike that radiating from many of the objects around her. It was a kind of glorified dinner knife. She stuck it in the sash that went around the corseted waist of her armour.

"Hurry!" the imp said. He was looking like he was about to burst. "Monkey, do your thing!"

The monkey snapped his fingers irritably.

"But," Lila began, wanting to ask Thingamajig what his real name was, to see him in his true form ... but it was too late. The last thing she heard and saw was the imp's eyes starting to widen and his finger pointing at the dagger, his mouth opening as he turned to the monkey with a burst of objection. "Hey, you blind little fleabit banana-eater, that used to be mi ..."

This time the sleep lasted a shorter time. The forest they woke up in was nothing like the previous ones. Full of cloud, its trees were more than two metres in diameter at the base and rose straight and tall into the invisible fog almost without a single branch. Thick undergrowth dripped with water. It was warm and there was a rich buzz of insect life and the drip of millions of leaves gently shedding condensation. In the distance they could hear the muted roar of a substantial waterfall. There was also a feeling of impending dread so enormous and overpowering that Lila immediately backed into Teazle.

Shapes moved just beyond the limit of the fog. Vapour curled without any apparent change in the air. In the rushing noise that was this forest's only silence every telltale sound was hidden. The presence around them, which watched them with such an intensity they could feel it as a point on their skin, moved constantly, unpredictably-a random scatter.

Finally Lila sat down again, where she'd begun, and stopped trying to look, or to move after it. Teazle sat behind her. She sat in the play-dead state of every animal that feels itself stalked without hope of escape. Only one thought dogged Lila now-what if she couldn't talk to it? And almost immediately she said, "I need to make a bargain with you."

The flittering movement slowed down and at the same instant she felt the odd sensation of something metal touching her throat. She put her hand up automatically and there was the silver spiral, slightly wet with dew, its cord fastened securely around her neck.

Teazle's breath moved against her skin as he bent closer to look.

"In my world the Mothkin are a plague. They say you can bring them back to Faery."

She had come rather of a mind that she would offer this creature a fight-whoever wins gets their wish. She wanted to fight something and it seemed like a good idea. Now she knew there could be no fight with something that was as immaterial as this. She felt robbed, cheated. Because the key was there she said, "I'll let you out." It was her only possible offer, but a release to travel through Feary had already come. She had to do better.

She didn't know if this thing wanted to be let out or if that even made sense.

"For a year and a day," she said, the words coming to her mind in a sudden burst. She wished it were her inspiration but she knew it wasn't so. The symbols on her armour fizzed, like champagne. It was because of that borrowed magic. "You can roam Otopia for a year and a day and you have to take me back there too." She held up the key as far as it would reach. The moving thing stopped entirely. It was slightly to her left and low down, just beyond the veil of the fog. She moved the key to that position. "If you clear up the moths straight away, all of them."

She felt a tap on her side, at her waist, quick as thought itself. Too late her hand moved to the spot where the pocket was, the flimsy pocket that had held Madame's Eye. The eye was gone.

"I'm not a spy," she said. "I just want to go home. The monkey from the hall sent me here when I asked to see ... Moguskul."

Another tap and the eye was back. She saw nothing at all, felt nothing, heard nothing. She was watched intently by an unblinking thing. Then came a rustle of leaves, very close.

Teazle was gone.

Then he was back.

"Uff," he said, rather haughtily and sighed. When Lila stared at him wildly he shook his head-Don't Know and No Chance, said his gaze.

She felt hot breath on her face, from the side, so close that whatever breathed it was able just to brush the tips of her hair but when she looked it had gone.

They were studied this way for some time. At one point there was a tap on the key but it didn't go anywhere. A tiny piece of the skirt of her armour went missing. Just after that she heard something like a pleased hum but it lasted only a split second.

Then, "Tat tat tat," said a voice from the fog, moving with the gaze that touched them with the power of an invisible sun. It was an inhuman voice, made up of the sounds of nature around them shaped by a mouth. "Tat tat tatter. Yes."

She woke up on the beach. The sun was going down. It was afternoon. People were out on the shoreline, but they were far from her and she was concealed by the rise of low dunes and the start of the grasses. She was alone, and deeply uncomfortable. She rolled and the dagger stopped digging into her. In the sand before her lay the silver spiral of the necklace and the burnt remnants of its cord. Her neck hurt.

She got into a sitting position and saw that the black leather look had gone. Quite human skin was left in its place, the same off white cream that she'd always been naturally, with the light tea-coloured tan of her childhood set over it, temporarily browning her as if she'd had all summer in the sun. The armour was also changed, its skirts lengthened into a dress. She had bare feet. This of all she stared at a long time before reaching down to touch her toes in wonder. Her toes. She had never had toes since she'd had the prosthetics fitted. They'd always been boots with, she'd assumed, the illusion of feet inside them. Her own softness was overwhelming. She felt like a crab without its shell and horribly vulnerable, although when she dug her toes through the sand it was a heavenly feeling, so real, so familiar.

A dog came running up to her, surrounding her suddenly with panting and snuffling and licks. She pushed it away, shielding her face for a minute, and then got a good look at it's rangy wolfhound form and absolutely white thick fur, its blue-white husky eyes. "Teazle?"

Teazle barked and panted at her, his blue tongue lolling. He seemed anxious. She expected him to change form and speak to her but he didn't. She stroked his head and scratched his ruff and then got to her feet. She signalled the World Tree, seeking to make connections with the Agency server.

An alert ran through her, prompting her to pause. Once these things would all have been readouts, interfaces that kept a clear line between her and the machines. Now there was only what she knew, what she felt, nothing more. Her login effort had been rejected and classified as an intrusion attempt. For a minute she stood there, staring at the ocean, unable to figure out what might have caused it until she realised it was possible the Agency had changed while she was gone, unlikely as that seemed, and maybe something had happened to cause her to be seen as hostile or at least unwelcome. No, unwelcome agents were liabilities and liabilities weren't something left to run around. There was no way to find out now.

Teazle whined unhappily and ran in a small circle.

She knew that they'd be sending agents to locate her. Imagining meeting them, what they might say or do, felt very bad to her. The dress ruffled against her legs as if in the breeze, though the breeze was blowing the other way.

She began walking, quickly, making her way past the familiar shape of the headland towards home. Anxiety began to creep through her emotional numbness. She moved faster, starting to jog. Teazle trotted at her side.

As she came to the more common areas of the beach she noticed the houses had changed their frontages, glass replacing a lot of old wood and new fresh-looking timbers creating arches and circles where rectangles used to be. A rash of circular, elf-style doors were everywhere, and the fences that used to stand, bent or upright, to mark property lines and footpaths had been removed. She passed a couple walking who gave her the smile you give to an eccentric woman running along the beach barefoot in an evening dress with a large dog at her side. She didn't care but their own clothes looked strange to her; too short, too long, odd colours.

She reached the road and stopped dead. All the cars were soft, bubble-shaped lozenges of bright colour, the people inside visible through big shaded windows reading, watching, staring, none of them driving. Strangest of all, they glided in silence. The gulls overhead were the loudest thing nearby. She looked more closely and didn't recognise half the homes in sight, though they stood on the same plots as before, and her path took the same course it had had when she was a child. She began to run. She saw the house at last and felt a surge of relief that it was still there, still the same, but then she noticed as she got closer that it had somehow become terribly dilapidated. Paint peeled off its boards and the windows were all different, the glass curiously matted. And there, on the back porch where the dogs should be, a stranger was sitting.

Lila slowed down and took a longer route, concealing herself behind bits of shrub. She stopped dead on the corner, staring at the tree that was between her and her own driveway. It was huge, tall enough to shade right across the street, its canopy broad and majestic. She remembered it being almost invisible, tied to a stake in a little earth plot of its own. The neighbour used to water it every day. Now it was rucking the pavement with its roots.

She walked around it and up the path, seeing change everywhere, not wanting to know what it meant, though she already did.

She knocked on the new, half-round door.

It was answered by the person she had seen on the porch. She recognised the face of one of Malachi's friends, a cookery and housebound domestic brownie whose name she'd forgotten.

"Hello, Tatty dear. He said you'd come back one day," the faery said, stepping back to let Lila in.

Lila stared at her gentle old lady form, the unassuming way she led through the old house, up to Lila's bedroom, and showed her in.

Nothing had been moved since she left-no, it had, because it was spotless, but otherwise no different. The imprint where she last lay on her old mattress was still there, crushed into the springs by her heavy weight. She turned around, her sense of unreality peaking. "Where am I?"

"You're home," the faery said kindly, patting her arm. "Shall I make you something to eat?"

Lila looked at her, completely bewildered. "But everything's changed."

The faery glanced down modestly. "Yes, of course. It's been a while since you've been gone. We looked after everything as best we could ..