Arthur nodded warily. If there was a trick, it didn’t look like Suzy was anywhere near figuring it out. He went back to reading the Will’s letter.
By means of the Improbable Stair, come to Monday’s Antechamber. I have done a small sketch so that you may visualize your destination. Remember that the Stair is contrary and will stop in many places. Do not let it leave you before Monday’s Antechamber!
Arthur looked at the sketch. It was about the size of his thumbnail, but was incredibly fine and detailed, like a really old engraving. It showed the inside of a room, or rather, a tent, because the walls were obviously cloth and there was a pole in the middle. Other than that, there were piles of cushions and a small table with a very tall, thin jug and several wineglasses on it.
Strange-looking antechamber,
thought Arthur. He shrugged and went back to the letter.
If all goes as I expect, I will await you there, with whatever allies I can muster. I shall reveal the next stage of my plan when we meet again.
Until then, I remain your obedient and respectful servant.
May the Will be done.
Arthur folded the letter and put it in his trouser pocket. Suzy was still grappling with the wings.
“What did the Will tell you to do?” Arthur asked. “Now that I’ve got the message?”
“I dunno,” said Suzy. She stopped trying to tug her wings off, let her hands fall, and thrust her fingers under the armholes of her waistcoat instead. “It didn’t say. I suppose I’ll go along with you.”
“I don’t know if you can come with me,” said Arthur.
Suzy stared at him angrily. “Oh, fine! I fly all the way down here and then you can’t be bothered taking me along for whatever happens next!”
“I’ll take you if I can,” said Arthur patiently. “I have to go on something called the Improbable Stair, and I just don’t know if both of us can go along it, that’s all. I’m surprised the Will didn’t tell you.”
“That Will only thinks of itself,” muttered Suzy darkly. “Do this, do that, we must carry out the intentions of the Architect…drove me crazy, it did. Well, let’s get on with it then, before Noon’s goons catch up with me.”
“What?”
“This Improbable Stair. Let’s get on it. Where does it start?”
“No, what’s this about Noon’s goons?”
“Oh, well, it was easy enough to give the slip to the first lot Noon set to follow us from the Efficiencer General’s office. But when I came down to the Upper Cellar, there was a whole bunch of Commissionaires on watch around the edge of the pit. I got past ‘em, but I guess some of them will have gone and gotten wings by now. So we’d better get a move on. They might not be able to do anything to you, but they can sure hurt me.”
As she spoke, Arthur looked up. At first he couldn’t see anything, until he moved the Key aside so its light wasn’t in his eyes. Sure enough, there were faint lights up above that had not been there before. Lights that grew brighter and larger as he watched.
“Watch lanterns,” said Suzy. “Commissionaire Sergeants, I guess. Half a dozen of them.”
Arthur was about to say something when an angry roar echoed out behind them, a roar so loud that Suzy instinctively clutched her hat, even though it was wedged on her head so securely no wind could blow it off. The Old One had also noticed the Commissionaires.
“Take my hand,” Arthur instructed Suzy. He held his left hand out, the Key still in his right. Suzy took it reluctantly, holding it as she might a dead rat, with only two fingers.
“No, hold on hard!” said Arthur. “Otherwise you’ll get left behind for sure.”
Suzy’s grip tightened. Arthur hoped that he was telling her the truth. He had no idea whether he could take her along or not. He didn’t even know if he could find the stair, let alone use it himself.
What had both the Old One and the Will said? Imagine a stair where there isn’t one. Focus on something that resembles steps and believe the Stair will be there.
There in the darkness above that slightly slumped pyramid,
Arthur thought.
That’s where the Stair will be. It will just continue on from the natural steps of coal that have formed where the side of the pyramid has slipped.
Yes,
he thought.
A broad stair, leading straight up. Steps of white marble, gleaming in the darkness.
He could see it clearly in his head, but was it there in that dark space?
“Halt! Stop where you are!” came a shout from above, but it was faint and still some distance away. It was answered by a bolt of blue lightning that flashed up from the clock, but that too fell short, rebounding as if it had hit a glass ceiling only a hundred yards above the Old One’s unusual prison.
Arthur ignored both the shout and the lightning. He could see the Stair now, the marble steps. They were shining there, above the pyramid. All he had to do was jump to that first step—
“Ow!” Suzy exclaimed as Arthur leaped forward without warning. Her wings flapped with the effort to keep up as the boy jumped into the air near the pyramid. But his feet didn’t land on the coal. They hit something that Suzy couldn’t see, and he jumped again. Suzy’s wings beat hard to stay with Arthur, and she shut her eyes. She felt him jump again and shut her eyes even harder, in anticipation of being dragged painfully back to earth, wings or not.
But they weren’t. Suzy’s feet touched something, but not with the impact of a heavy fall.
Suzy opened her eyes and looked down. White marble gleamed under her dirty boots. She looked to the left and the right, and up. Apart from the steps climbing straight ahead, she could see only light, blazing white light, everywhere else around.
“Look down, at the steps,” shouted Arthur. “And come on! We mustn’t stop!”
“S
o how does this work, then?” puffed Suzy after she had dutifully kept up with Arthur for at least two hundred steps, still holding on to his hand. “We keep on climbing steps till we fall over and roll all the way back down?”
“I don’t know,” replied Arthur. He was tired, but also felt weirdly exhilarated. There was no way he could have climbed so many steps so quickly in the normal world, at least not without the Key. He relished the way the air flowed easily in and out of his lungs, even if his muscles were protesting at the continual effort. “But we have to keep on going. There are Landings every now and then, but I’m not sure what they are. If we get to one, we have to quickly find the Stair again, or we’ll be stuck on the Landing. Forever, I suppose.”
“Nothing but trouble,” grumbled Suzy. “I should have stuck to my inkpots. Never volunteer for nothing, my old man used to say.”
She almost stopped, dragging Arthur back.
“What is it?” he asked sharply, tugging at Suzy’s hand to keep her going.
“I remembered!” exclaimed Suzy. “I remembered my old dad, just for a second! Haven’t done that for years! Too much washing between the ears. What’s that?!”
Arthur had half-turned his head to look at her. Now he almost got whiplash as he looked up the steps again. There was something ahead, something colorful emerging from the white glow that surrounded them. At the same time, he had the uneasy sensation that the steps were moving beneath their feet like an escalator. Whatever lay ahead, they were approaching it far faster than walking speed.
“Look out!” cried Suzy, and then the steps were gone and so was the white light. They were standing in knee-deep water, amid lush green plants that looked like house-sized cabbages, and the sun was above them in a clear blue sky.
“A Landing!” exclaimed Arthur. “Quick! We have to find the Stair again!”
A deep bellow answered him and, from behind one of the giant cabbages, a huge reptilian head slowly rose upon an ever-extending neck.
“More dinosaurs!” groaned Arthur. This one looked like a plant eater, fortunately, but it was as big as a semitrailer and could easily crush a couple of kids without even meaning to. It was also a sort of swampy blue color, with mottled patches of a deep purple. Arthur stared at the purple patches and felt an urge to break into hysterical laughter. But he couldn’t do that. He had to find something that looked like steps—
The dinosaur bellowed again and moved forward, completely crushing the giant cabbage plant with its chest. Even if it was only curious, it still represented a major danger. They had to get out of its way and back on the Stair.
Arthur looked frantically around, almost swinging Suzy as he turned. Her grip relaxed a little, but Arthur tightened his.
“Don’t let go! You’ll be left behind! Ah!”
He’d seen something that might be useful. A bunch of tall reeds. Arthur ran over to them, dragging Suzy, who wasn’t ready for the sudden rush. If he could bend one of the reeds into the shape of steps, that might be enough. Without thinking further, he thrust the Key through his belt—and his lungs stopped on half a breath and he felt the familiar tightness in his chest.
He’d forgotten. He wasn’t in the House anymore. They were out in the Secondary Realms. Perhaps even in the distant past of his own world, and he needed to hold the Key to be able to get his breathing a hundred percent. But there wasn’t time!
Arthur quickly bent the reed at half a dozen regular points, let the whole thing hang out at an angle, and snatched the Key out again. He stared fiercely at the bent reed. There, there were the steps, coming off the top of the reed towards the sky. Arthur stared at the thin outline of reed steps and imagined them merging into much more three-dimensional marble ones.
A wave splashed against his back, thrown up as the dinosaur plunged closer. Suzy gasped or stifled a scream, and then Arthur jumped, her wings flapped, and they were on the Improbable Stair again, dripping wet.
Arthur’s breath came whistling back in. He felt like collapsing in relief, but he knew he couldn’t. Wearily he pulled Suzy’s hand and started up the stairs once again.
“How many of these Landing places do we have to put up with?” asked Suzy. She was flapping her wings a little in an effort to dry them. At least some of the coal dust had come off, and they were looking a little whiter. Or at least off-white, rather than gray. “And where are we going anyhow?”
“I don’t know,” replied Arthur. As he said that, he felt the step under his feet go sort of soft, like butter just out of the fridge, and for a moment he feared he might fall through.
“I mean I know where we’re going,” he said as quickly and as confidently as he could, at the same time bringing the Will’s drawing of Mister Monday’s Antechamber clearly into his mind. “I mean I don’t know how many Landings there’ll be. We’re going to Mister Monday’s Antechamber, to meet the Will.”
The step hardened up as he spoke, feeling like marble once again and not like marshmallow.
“Oh, that’s all right, then,” said Suzy sarcastically. “My friend the Will. I hope you sticks by your promise, Artie.”
“Don’t call me Artie,” snapped Arthur. “I’ll do whatever I can to get you and the other children home.”
The steps ahead did a sort of shimmy as he spoke and seemed to curve a little to one side. But it only lasted a second and Arthur wasn’t sure what it meant, if anything. Perhaps it was just part of the weirdness of the whole thing.
“Something up ahead!” warned Suzy. “Another one of—”
Once again they came to the Landing far faster than they expected. One moment they were lifting their feet to take a step, in the next moment they were on level ground.
It was dark and cool. Arthur raised the Key, but all he could see were stone walls. Wet stone walls. They were in a cave.
A slight noise made Arthur turn with the Key held high to shed more light. There, in one corner, a group of people groveled in abject fear. They were naked but covered in thick pelts of hair, and their heads were ridged and bony.
Neanderthals
, thought Arthur.
Or Cro-Magnons or something.
He wanted to tell them not to be afraid, but there was no time and they wouldn’t understand anyway.
Arthur turned to the wall and quickly scratched some zigzag and very uneven steps with the point of the Key. But before he could start visualizing the Stair, Suzy spoke.
“Don’t look much like steps to me.”
“Shhh!” hissed Arthur. Now he couldn’t visualize the Stair at all. He started to panic.
We’re going to be trapped in the Stone Age forever…no! No!
Arthur took a deep breath and scratched some more steps, taking it a little slower, making the lines more geometric.
They did look like steps. They were steps. He was going to jump at them, dragging the ungrateful Suzy with him—
He jumped at the wall with his eyes open, half expecting to hurt himself and end up on the floor of a cave. But he didn’t. The white light exploded around him, welcoming them in. They were back on the Improbable Stair.
They climbed in silence for a while. Then Suzy spoke. “Sorry about wot I said. I’ll keep my lips pegged shut now.”
Arthur didn’t reply at first. Then he said, “It wasn’t your fault. I don’t think the drawing would have worked anyway. I doubted it before you said a word.”
“You won’t let go of me?” asked Suzy in a much smaller voice than her usual loud tones. “Leave me behind?”
“No! Of course I won’t!” said Arthur. He almost stopped climbing, he was so shocked that Suzy thought he might abandon her.
“Only, I’ve been remembering things,” said Suzy softly. “I remember when I first saw the Piper. I remember my mam taking me out into the country and…and leaving me there. Me a city girl, and I didn’t know what to do, and then the Piper came along, with all the children dancing behind…”
Arthur gripped her hand even more tightly. He knew there was nothing he could say.
“Funny how it’s all coming back,” continued Suzy. She sniffed a little and produced a not-very-clean handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her nose. “Must be the air or somefing.”
“Must be,” said Arthur. “Hang on—there’s something coming up—”
They were standing by the side of a road, under a hot sun and clear sky, bordered on the horizon by the slightest of clouds. The road was hardly more than a track. It wasn’t even cobbled, but simply dirt with occasional patches where irregular paving stones had been laid down. Short, gnarly trees planted in irregular rows ran along one side of the road. The other side, where Arthur and Suzy stood, was a field of short grass, kept down by the goats that were staring at them from the hillside a few hundred yards away.
“Stones!” said Arthur, pointing to a stack piled up under the trees back along the road. “We can make steps out of them.”
He pulled Suzy across the road and they ran towards the pile of stones. They had almost reached it when Arthur saw a man running along the road towards them. He was running fast, but with a steady rhythm that proclaimed he would keep up the speed for a long time. The man was thin and sinewy and wore only a loincloth and sandals, the sweat shining on his bare smooth chest.
The runner checked for a moment as he first saw them, then checked again as Suzy absently flapped her wings. He stared at her and made a formal gesture, as if to shield his eyes from the sun and salute at the same time.
“Victory at Marathon!” he shouted. “The Persians are defeated! We thank Nike for the victory!”
He didn’t stop, but averted his eyes as he passed, almost stumbling over a flagstone. Arthur and Suzy didn’t stop either. They kept on to the pile of stones, then Suzy helped Arthur stack them up into steps and he brandished the Key and imagined the Stair and stepped up on the rocking stones and for once it was easy, and they were immediately on the marble steps and the white light shone all around them.
“I think I know where that was,” said Arthur. “I mean, when that was. In our world. In history. I did a project on where some famous trademark names came from. He thought you were Nike, the winged goddess of victory.”
“Me!” snorted Suzy. “If I could get these stupid wings off there’d be no confusion, I reckon.”
“I wonder if it’s possible not to stop at the Landings,” mused Arthur. “I bet the Architect never stopped off all over the place without wanting to. Come on!”
They did.