The Dark Flight Down (16 page)

They watched, terrified, as if they’d been caught trying to kill someone. The book sat in the flames, and they grew more afraid.

“It won’t burn!” cried Willow, again.

“No,” Boy said. “Look!”

He was right.

The book hissed, like green birch logs. It crackled, and seethed, and spat spots of flame at them, but it was catching.

“Burn!” Boy shouted. “Burn!”

The spitting got worse and Boy and Willow backed away as finally the ancient, stained, grimy, ink-littered pages began to burn. Page by page caught, a lovely orange flame spreading across it, running the paper into blackness, before vaporizing as hot carbon dust.

With each page that went Boy and Willow felt their hearts grow lighter, and their fears recede.

The cover had caught now, and the leather was giving off noxious curls of stinking smoke that made their eyes water.

“Die,” Boy whispered. “Go.”

Willow held Boy’s hand.

“It’s time we went too,” she said.

So they did.

3

Boy and Willow walked through the City streets. It felt to them both as if they had been away for years, although it was only a matter of days. So much had happened.

The snow was falling still, but it seemed possible that it was easing. Rumors of food shortages were spreading, though, and people wore grim expressions as they went about their business on the bitter January morning.

They’d risked spending the night at Kepler’s house, having fled the palace. It had been easier to escape than they might have imagined, with chaos still spreading from the court, people dead or wounded by the Phantom, guards searching for Maxim, and Frederick barking away atop his throne. In all this madness, they had been able to leave the South Tower unobserved. They’d run along through the various palace courtyards until they found themselves by one of the outer walls.

They still had to get out somehow, but it was the snow that had saved them, after all, the irony of which was not lost on Boy. He had yearned for forgetting all through the snowfall, and in the end it
was
the snow that had saved them, though in a much more mundane way. From the top of the palace wall they saw that a huge drift of snow had formed between the outer wall and the bank from which it rose. Holding hands, they had dared to jump, and tumbled down the thick, sloping snowdrift as gently as if they had landed on a goose-feather quilt.

As they left the palace behind, and crossed the river, they saw that the Old South Tower was alight, flames shooting up into the snow-speckled night sky around them, sparks dancing upward as the snowflakes fluttered down.

“That’s the end of the book,” Willow said.

“Yes,” Boy replied. “It will cause no more suffering.”

Willow smiled and held Boy’s hand. She looked into his eyes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“People were wrong about him,” Boy said. “Maybe he wasn’t just a monster. Maybe if someone had looked after him . . .”

“Your brother?”

Boy nodded.

Willow thought of something else.

“He tried to save you, you know. Perhaps he did genuinely care for you.”

She meant Kepler.

“No,” said Boy, shaking his head. “He only wanted me, needed me alive, to get what he wanted.”

“Oh!” cried Willow, and turned, grabbing Boy’s hands.

“What?” asked Boy. “What is it?”

“The book!” said Willow. “There was something else I saw.”

A look of alarm crossed Boy’s face.

“What?” he asked. “What did you see?”

“Your name!”

“No!” cried Boy. “No! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know.”

“But, Boy . . . ,” Willow said.

“No! I don’t want to know. I am Boy, that’s all. That’s all I want to be.”

“But, Boy, you don’t understand. What I saw. In the book, I saw Sophia, your mother, escaping with you. It was all so quick. She knew she had to escape with you, so she fled the castle, and headed out to the countryside. But she hadn’t even had time to give you a name.”

“So I never had a name at all?” said Boy. He seemed calm; there was no anger, no pain in him now.

“No,” said Willow. “No. Except, in the book, I heard your mother talking to you, all the time, as she hurried along with you in her arms. Talking to you, talking, talking, hushing your cries, blessing you with love, and all she called you was Boy, my lovely Boy, my darling little Boy. Boy.”

Boy moved closer to Willow. She pulled him toward her, looked deep into his eyes.

“Boy. That’s what she called you,” she said. “That’s your real name after all. Boy.”

She put her arms round him, and held him fast until his tears were gone.

Now, in the dim light of the following morning, they were leaving. They’d found a decent stash of money in Kepler’s study, and had packed clothes and blankets and some other valuables into two large bags. It was all they had, but it was more than either of them had ever owned before, and they knew it would be enough.

“They probably will never come looking for you,” Willow said. “There’s too much confusion there.”

“I know,” said Boy, “but that’s not the only reason we’re leaving.”

“To think, Frederick was so desperate for an heir, and there you were, right under his nose. Now there’s only you and me who know.”

She laughed.

“What?” asked Boy.

“Just think. You’re the heir to the empire. And if we ever tried to tell anyone, no one would believe us!”

She stopped.

“Are you sure, Boy? Are you sure? You’d be very rich. Powerful!”

Boy looked at her.

“In that madhouse? With those lunatics? No, Willow, we don’t need that kind of money or power. We just need enough to get by, and each other. And I think we’ll do that best somewhere else.”

They walked on, heading for the City gates.

Their route took them past St. Valentine’s Fountain. They both smiled, but remained silent until it was far behind them.

“But where are we going to go?” Willow asked, not for the first time, as they reached the Northern Gate.

They stood on the threshold.

Behind them lay the huge, rambling, decrepit, awful, wonderful City, more or less all they had ever known. Their whole past lay in its maw. Ahead of them lay nothing they could see, but the emptiness and whiteness of a snow-laden, unknown future.

“I don’t know,” said Boy.

“We could go to Linden. After all, you’re a Beebe, sort of.”

“After what we did to their church? I don’t think so. Anyway, I think I’ve got it wrong all these years. Wanting to have a past. To go back to Linden would be to make the same mistake. So let’s go and find a future, shall we?”

They pulled their coats around them, and walked out into the pure white countryside, and as they did so, the snow began to ease. A small break opened in the clouds above them, and a weak but warming winter sun shone down on their path.

Epilogue

Midnight in the Imperial Court of Emperor Frederick III. The court is empty.

The emperor sits on his throne, brooding.

“Maxim!” he calls, in his high, pathetic voice. “Dammit, Maxim, where are you?”

He waves a hand in the darkness, and flakes of his ancient skin drift up into the gloom.

“Maxim, I need your help! I don’t think you understand. Sometimes I really think you’re trying to kill me! Do you hear me? You have no idea how difficult it is for me. You should help me more, Maxim. You really should understand. I need a solution, Maxim. Yes! And you’re going to find it for me.

“Maxim, are you listening? Maxim! Maxim!”

The emperor calls out in the darkness, in his madness, forgetting, forgetting.

Forgetting that things have changed, forgetting what has happened, forgetting what he’s decreed.

And far beneath the emperor, chained to a rough stone wall at the bottom of the dark flight of stairs where the emperor’s sad son used to lurk, lies Maxim, blinking in the darkness.

So dance, my dears, dance,
Before you take the dark flight down.

About the Author

MARCUS SEDGWICK’s first book,
Floodland,
was hailed as “a dazzling debut from a new writer of exceptional talent” and won the Branford Boase Award for a best first novel. Since then, he has written
Witch Hill,
which was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel;
The Dark Horse,
which was short-listed for the Guardian Award for Children’s Fiction, the Carnegie Medal and the Blue Peter Book Award and was a
School
Library Journal
Best Book of the Year; and
The Book of
Dead Days,
the prequel to
The Dark Flight Down.

Marcus Sedgwick has worked in children’s publishing in England for ten years; before that, he was a bookseller. In addition to writing, he does stone carvings, etchings and woodcuts. He lives in Sussex and has a young daughter, Alice.

Also by Marcus Sedguick

THE BOOK OF DEAD DAYS
THE DARK HORSE
WITCH HILL
FLOODLAND

Published by
Wendy Lamb Books
an imprint of
Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

Copyright © 2005 by Marcus Sedgwick

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eISBN: 978-0-307-43386-2

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