Attack of the Cupids (18 page)

Different degrees of movement were discernible on the next four, which read:

The last but one moved steadily as Muddlespot watched,

like that.

The final counter was a blur.

Windleberry had gone. Muddlespot followed, squeezing through the crowd, trying to look as small as possible. He certainly
felt
small. Everything around him was different from anything he had ever known. Where he came from, new arrivals didn't get to answer back. That was for sure.

And yet there was something strangely familiar about what he had just seen. Especially about giving the new man the worst job going. He could almost hear the voice of that angel's older colleague saying,
Mind this table for me, would you? I won't be long, honest. And if any of them get difficult, just keep asking them if they're sure. They soon won't be.

He hurried on down a crowded corridor, threading between bands of penitent souls, clumps of choristers and some very intimidating-looking wielders of fiery swords. Where was Windleberry? Up ahead? All these Fluffies looked the same!

If they saw who he was . . .

Just keep going, he told himself. In some ways this place
is
like being Down Below. When you get sent someplace where they don't know you and you want to come out alive. The rules are: (1) don't go there; (2) if you really have to go there, then
look busy
. Look as if you know what you are doing. Look, above all, as if messing with you will bring trouble from someone very big and very powerful.

It worked – some of the time anyway. Maybe it would work here too.

‘Sorry,' he said, bumping against someone. He hurried on before whoever it was looked down and wondered why they had a smear of flesh-coloured paint on their arm. ‘Sorry.'

As he went he repeated over to himself the directions Windleberry had given him in case of
separation. The thirteenth hall. The Stair of a Thousand Steps. The Chamber of Stars. The Gallery of Green Sunsets . . .

Had he got it in the right order?

What if he got lost here?

Exactly how long was he going to get away with this, sweating up and down these corridors, dripping paint and with his tail all knotted up and literally between his legs? And dodging round Fluffies at every turn?

But Windleberry had been right about one thing.

They were all averting their eyes.

‘All right,' said Miss Ogle, Form Tutor to 9c. ‘Who has seen Imogen's oboe?'

9c sat before her in four rows and silence.

‘This is
important
,' said Miss Ogle. ‘She has an exam this afternoon. We don't want her to miss it, do we?'

Silence.

Silence, but the sort of silence you could read if you knew how. Sally, sitting at the back (and still smarting from getting her first ‘Late'
ever
) could read it like a book.

Eva and Holly were sitting bolt upright at the table
before her. It wasn't us, the set of their shoulders said. Though we might have done it if we'd thought of it.

Cassie and Viola were one table to the left of them. Sally couldn't see their faces either, but she could just catch the look that Viola threw sideways at Holly.
It ***** well was you
, that look said.
And when we're through with you you'll be wishing you'd gone to hospital in the ambulance yesterday too.

The boys were glancing at each other. Girl stuff, their eyes said. Stay out. Less fun than putting your hand in a hornets' nest, definitely.

Imogen's head was bowed, weighed down with the thought that everyone in the class hated her. This couldn't be happening. She was Public Enemy Number One. She was going to miss her exam. Her parents were going to—

And Janey, at the table by the door, was looking Miss Ogle innocently in the eye.

Yep, Sally could read it like a book.

Miss Ogle couldn't.

‘I'm waiting,' she said.

Silence.

Half the class was thinking: Why couldn't she have played the clarinet? Plenty of clarinets at school she could have borrowed.

Just about everybody else was thinking: Keep quiet. Stay out. She'll soon realize . . .

A hand went up.

‘Yes, Minnie?'

Oh, no.

‘Um. Miss Ogle?' said Minnie (still with her hand in the air) . . .

No, Minnie.
No!

‘. . . I think it's something to do with Billie and Viola.'

Beyond the Chamber of Stars, down the Gallery of Green Sunsets, through the little door behind the one hundred and fifty-fourth pillar in the Hall of Butterfly Wings, there a was a narrow corridor with no name at all. Halfway down it there was a door with a sign:

Cupids
can
spell. They just don't want it known. Inside the Store room was another sign.

The store clerk was a cupid. He looked at the requisition that Muddlespot handed to him.

‘Nope,'
he said.

‘It's in order, isn't it?' said Muddlespot, sidling closer so that as much of him as possible was concealed behind the counter. Cupids, he had noticed, did
not
avert their eyes, and now that he was in close proximity to one his disguise was feeling very thin indeed.

‘Nope,'
said the cupid again.

‘I'm sure it
is
,' said Muddlespot, who had spent a good hour down in Sally's mind watching while Windleberry very carefully wrote out, copied, signed, sealed and resealed the parchment specifying exactly what it was that had to be collected from the cupids' stores.

‘Can't let you have anything on this,'
said the cupid firmly.
‘Not been countersigned, see?'

‘The countersignature is over the page,' said Muddlespot sweetly.

‘Don't make any difference,'
said the cupid
promptly.
‘Still can't let you have that thing.'

Again that feeling! Never mind the constant harp music, the lack of bloodstains on the walls and the air smelling of sunsets rather than seared flesh. If you got sent to the stores Down Below – say for a number five burner or something – this was exactly the conversation you would have there.

‘Stores is for storing,'
said the cupid.
‘You want something issued, you has to go to “Issues”, see?'

There is a certain sort of practical joke that minor officials everywhere play on people they think were born yesterday. They actually find it funny. It brightens their miserable lives.

‘Right . . .'

And by the standards of eternity, Muddlespot had indeed been born yesterday. If not in the last five minutes.

‘. . . I see . . .'

But he had
also
been born in a place where you either learned
very
quickly or you quickly stopped learning altogether.

‘And that's where they keep the left-handed hammers and the stripy paint, is it?' he said, looking the cupid hard in the eye.

‘Could be.'
The cupid shrugged and shifted his
gaze. He sniffed the air. A frown crossed his face.

Muddlespot sidled closer still. Perhaps he shouldn't have said the word ‘paint'. Where was Windleberry?

The door behind him banged open. Another cupid rushed in, carrying a huge sheaf of papers. His cheeks were pink from fluttering at speed. He slammed a requisition down on the counter.

‘Here,'
he said.
‘Need it quick.'

The store-cupid looked at the new demand and frowned again. He shook his head slowly. ‘Can't . . .'

‘It's for the Appeal. Erry says.'
He pointed to the signature at the bottom of the page.

Whoever had signed it hadn't much liked paperwork, thought Muddlespot. They had crossed their signature out, put it in the wrong box and drawn three smiley faces and a load of hearts in the margin. Even so, it seemed to have more effect than Windleberry's carefully correct script. Scowling, the store-cupid turned and disappeared deep among the shelves. There followed the unmistakable sounds of locks being unlocked, traps being tripped and three-headed fire-breathing dogs being muzzled, before the cupid returned (lightly singed and bitten) to the counter.

‘There you go,'
he said sulkily.

He placed it on the board. A cupid arrow, tipped
with a heart-shaped head. Something in Muddlespot's breastbone ached at the sight of it. But unlike the ones he had seen flashing through the chambers of Sally's mind, this one did not glitter. It was dull and grey. It was not even particularly sharp-looking.

‘Hey . . .!' said Muddlespot.

‘Cheers!'
said the pink cupid and flew out of the door.

Muddlespot stared at the store-cupid. ‘But that was exactly what I was—'

‘Yes?'
said the cupid expressionlessly.

‘But
I
wanted—'

Muddlespot checked himself. He looked at the cupid. The cupid looked back. Muddlespot took a deep breath.

‘Uh, never mind,' he said. ‘Issues, you say? I'll go and ask. Sorry to have bothered you . . .'