Grim Tuesday

Chapter Nine

Arthur had barely hit the ground, with Suzy and Japeth on either side, when there was a sudden flash of light so intense that he had to shut his eyes even though he was looking at the ground and his hood was pulled over his face.

Strangely, there was no heat or shock wave, though Arthur had flinched in expectation. There was only the initial flash, then a slowly lessening but still brilliant light.

A few seconds later, a faint but piercing whistle echoed down through the Pit, like the cry of a distant bird. The all-clear whistle, Arthur presumed. Scrunching up his left eye and keeping the right completely closed, Arthur risked a look.

What he saw astounded him. A giant glowing ball the size of a hundred hot-air balloons hung in the air about a mile up and eight or nine miles away, like a small, comfortably bright sun. It had banished all the rain clouds, the rain and the smog, and its slowly fading light illuminated the upper reaches of the Pit in all its vastness, a hole so big the far side was just a blurry smudge at least twenty miles distant and so deep that even the sunburst's light could not penetrate its depths.

"So that's a sunburst," said Suzy, with a sniff. "Thought it'd be better than that. More like a big firework, you know, knock the dust out of yer ears with a bang."

"It's bigger than I thought? could have thought," whispered Arthur. He'd been to the Grand Canyon and was thinking of the Pit on the same sort of scale. But it was much, much wider than the Grand Canyon and much, much deeper. "The Pit, I mean."

"It's still just a big rotten hole in the ground," said Suzy. "We'd better hurry and get these wings on. Take advantage of the sunburst. Might not be another one for months."

"What is that sunburst thing?" asked Arthur, pointing to the huge glowing ball. It was much less bright than it had been, and the shadows from the Pit were steadily climbing upwards, and faint wisps of rain cloud were re-forming high above. "What does it do?"

"I dunno exactly," replied Suzy. "Ned told me it kind of clears up the Nothing, gets rid of the rain for a while and so on. Grim Tuesday does it to different parts of the Pit every few months. Like clearing out a drain with vitroleum, I 'spect. But it's handy for us. Better to fly in the light. If we ever get around to it."

"Ah, I heard an Overseer say to another something similar to 'need a sunburst soon, for track-checking,'" said Japeth hesitantly. "Which suggests that the track is inspected during the season or interval of this sunburst, and as the sunburst's light falls or descends upon us, we may soon be, ah, inspected?"

Arthur looked back up the railway. He had gone at least thirty miles along the service road, around the edge of the Pit while slowly descending. Up Station had to be roughly a third of the way anti-clockwise back around the side - about ten miles - and about half a mile up. He peered in that direction, narrowing his eyes against the sunburst, which was now only as bright as a highway streetlight. But it had done its work, and, though beginning to darken and cloud over, the air was still clear.

Japeth and Suzy looked too. At first no one could see anything, then everyone spoke at once.

"Smoke -"

"Train -"

"Grim's train!"

They could all see the signs that revealed the presence of the train, though it was too far away to see the train itself. The glitter of the sunburst's light on polished metal, a tall spray of sparks, and a smudged column of black smoke rising straight up. It had to be Grim Tuesday's train, starting down the railway.

"It'll take a few hours to get here," said Arthur rather doubtfully. "Or an hour, at least. Won't it?"

"Right, we have to get the Ascension Wings on," said Suzy. She added, "And they're called that because they only go up. You can lean to change direction, but they only go up. They're a very weak magic, much weaker than regular wings. Easier to smuggle in."

"What about Japeth?" asked Arthur.

"Sorry." Suzy shrugged. "Nothing I can do."

"Perhaps I could take your wheel, Miss Suzy, and catch up with my gang," suggested Japeth. "Then, when you defeat Grim Tuesday, sir, you might take the trouble to release me from my indenture? And perhaps find employment suitable for a former Thesaurus?"

"More like if than when," muttered Arthur. "And I can't just fly out on you. You didn't run out on me."

"Nor will you run out on me, I'm sure," said Japeth, bowing again. "This is merely a delay, postponement, deferment, or recess. I am sure you will be successful and my release, rescue, deliverance, redemption, saving of my bacon -" "You said it," said Suzy. "Nice to meet you, Japeth. Don't worry. Arthur's smarter than he looks. I reckon he'll see you right. Tuesday'll be a pushover compared to Monday."

"Really?" asked Japeth.

"Nah, don't be soft," said Suzy. "I just said that to cheer you up. Shouldn't have asked. Now, Artie, we need to get the wings and stickit fingers on. I'll have to cut some holes in your coat and shirt."

"Don't call me Artie! And why do I need holes in my clothes?"

"Because the wings are stuck on with sealing wax to your shoulders," explained Suzy, indicating the stick of red wax. "With a string through the wax, so when it's time to drop the wings, you pull the string, break the seal, and down you drop, nice as ninepence. Come on."

Still Arthur hesitated. He felt that he was once more being pushed into something that he had no control over. But was there any real choice?

"That train is remarkably fleet, fast, light-footed," said Japeth, who was watching the smoke plume from the Grim's train. "If I am to take the wheel, I perhaps should set forth, depart, leave, or absent myself immediately."

"You're right," said Arthur. He forced a deep breath into his tired lungs and stood up straighten He owed it to Japeth - and Suzy and everyone else - to do his absolute best and then some more. Giving up was not an option. "I will defeat Grim Tuesday and I will release you and all the other indentured workers. No one should be a slave. Here, or anywhere else."

"That's more like the old Arthur," said Suzy. "There I was thinking this Pit had sucked the guts out of you. In a manner of speaking."

"Thanks a lot," muttered Arthur. He held out his hand to Japeth. "Good luck. I'll do my best to help you."

This time, there were fewer sparks when Japeth shook his hand. But Arthur felt a surge of energy come out of his palm and travel up through his arm, and Japeth's arm trembled as if he felt something similar. Then Arthur noticed that Japeth had grown several inches, and his ragged shirt had restitched itself, even the string holding together his cuffs transforming into mother-of-pearl links.

"I will serve you too, Arthur, when I can," said Japeth, letting go of his hand.

"Farewell for now, Master. Miss Suzy, if I may trouble you to explain, elucidate, or illuminate the workings of this wheel?"

He hurried over to the wheel and climbed in. Suzy showed him the lever that controlled its speed and the locked access hatch to the gearbox that could only be opened by Grim Tuesday or one of the Grotesques, to allow the wheel to use its stored clockwork power to go up the railway rather than down.

Japeth gently pushed the lever forward and the wheel moved off. The Denizen waved as he passed Arthur, then pushed the lever as far as it would go. The wheel accelerated away, and was soon lost in the rising shadows.

The rain had also just started again. Spotting drops, so far without the Nothing taint. The clouds were spreading out from the edges of the Pit, drawing closer to the fading sunburst.

Arthur stood still as Suzy sliced through his cape and shirt with a short, sharp knife - the knife she'd picked up in Monday's antechamber. Standing still while Suzy cut behind him reminded Arthur unpleasantly of being in the hospital, about to be injected in the upper arm.

After cutting the slits in his clothes, Suzy picked up one of the pieces of paper and quickly folded and tore it into two separate wings. The paper became fluffier and more feathery as she worked.

"Lie down," she instructed Arthur. He lay down but craned his head to see what she was doing.

Suzy put the wings on the ground and weighted them with a piece of ballast. She unrolled two pieces of twine and set them next to the wings. Then she picked up the stick of sealing wax and the matches.

"This'll sting a bit," she said as she struck a match against the ground. It flared with a loud whoompah, and a flame about three feet long shot up out of the match.

"Down," said Suzy. The flame receded. "Down some more. That's it."

Arthur couldn't see what she did next, but he felt it. A blob of hot sealing wax went straight onto his shoulder blade, then he felt the paper wing brushing his back and the string dangling past his neck. Suzy's thumb pressed hard into the wax.

"Don't move!" she warned. "Got to do the next one quickly or they'll grow unbalanced."

Arthur bit his lip to suppress a yelp as the wax dripped on the other side. It was worse when he expected it, but it was only a momentary pain.

"Done!" exclaimed Suzy with satisfaction. "They take about ten minutes to grow. I'll make mine, then you can stick them on for me."

"I don't know how!" Arthur protested.

"It's easy," replied Suzy as she quickly folded and tore the remaining paper into wings. "Just heat the wax, drop a bit on my shoulder, whack the wing and the string on, drop a bit more wax, then seal it with your thumb. There's already holes in my clothes from my regular wings."

"OK," said Arthur doubtfully. He took the wings and weighted them down with the same piece of ballast, and put the string next to them. Then he picked up the matches. They looked normal enough apart from the cover of the box.

"Hurry up," said Suzy, who was lying on the floor scratching her back through the holes in her clothes. "This stone is cold."

Arthur struck the match on the ground, flinching as it roared into life. The flame was even longer than the one Suzy had struck, and dancing around in an excited fashion that had nothing to do with any wind. It even seemed to have a tiny, grinning face.

"Down," said Arthur. "Down a lot."

The flame slowly ebbed, the face losing its grin and becoming sad. When it was only an inch or so high, Arthur picked up the sealing wax and quickly melted the end to drop a dollop on Suzy's back. Being nervous, he got it a bit wrong, so some wax fell on her coat and ran onto the skin. Arthur dripped a bit more on.

"What's the holdup?" asked Suzy. "It's not like it's a complicated spell or anything."

Arthur frowned and dripped a whole lot more wax, then he carefully pressed the wing and the string down, melted more wax on top, and pressed it down with his thumb. He expected that this would leave a thumbprint in the wax, but it didn't. Instead it made the wax glow in rainbow colors, followed by a perfect round seal, with a profile of his own head wearing a crown of laurel, and words around the outside in some weird alphabet that slowly changed into regular letters that read dominus Arthur magister domus inferior and then changed again to lord Arthur master of the lower house.

"What are you waiting for?" asked Suzy in an exasperated tone. "Grim Tuesday to come and ask you to tea?"

"Sorry," said Arthur. He'd been briefly mesmerized by his own seal. Quickly he put on the second wing. It had already grown a bit on the ground, and was much more like feathers than paper. Clean, glowing white feathers, totally in contrast to the soot-stained stone and the gathering darkness.

Arthur felt his own wings begin to flap, sending a draft around his ankles. But they were still too small to lift him off the ground.

Suzy handed Arthur one of the jars of what looked like woolen frog fingerpuppets, stuck the other in her apron pocket, then busied herself putting everything else back in the satchel. She hung it over her neck at the front so it didn't get in the way of her wings.

"There's six stickit fingers in the jar. Bung them on now, thumb and every second finger," she instructed, unscrewing her own jar. "They won't stick till you speak the spell, which is 'Stick by day and stick by night, stick for a minute each, left and right.' Only one of your hands will stick at a time, so you can move about. Just remember which is sticky and which is about to unstick. I'll tell you how to take them off when we need to."

Arthur repeated the spell in his head to make sure he got it right, then put the six stickit fingers on his thumbs and alternate fingers. They were just like little woolen finger-puppets, only they wriggled and squeaked like little live mice as he put them on, which made it quite difficult.

He was concentrating very hard on that task, so he got an awful shock when Suzy suddenly picked up the copper rod he'd almost used as a weapon and swung it at something that came flying in like a pitched baseball. It was about the size of a baseball too, but black and fuzzy, almost like a lump of tar.

Suzy hit it. The end of the copper rod puffed into metallic mist as it struck, but whatever it was batted over the edge of the Pit and went straight down.

"A gobbet of Nothing," said Suzy with a frown. "Trying to find other gobbets to join to make a Nithling."

She looked up at the sunburst, which was very faint now. The clouds were practically solid again all around it, and she and Arthur were in twilight that was rapidly turning into darkest night. "I thought the sunburst would keep that sort of thing down for longer. You'd better grab some kind of club. Copper's better than steel, though neither's much use really against unformed Nothing. Need silver or something special like one of them blades made from frozen moonlight or burning with architectural fire, like Noon's. How're your wings? Can you reach your strings? Don't pull 'em yet."

Arthur craned his neck to look. His wings now stretched from his shoulder blades to his knees and were magnificently feathered and shining. They were beating slowly, as if they were warming up. The air they washed around him was cleaner, faintly orange-scented, and very refreshing. He felt for the strings, which were hanging down his chest on either side of his neck.

"I can reach them," he confirmed. He looked around and saw another piece of copper pipe, this one thicker and longer than the tube Suzy had appropriated. He started for it, was lifted off his feet, and overshot by several yards.

"Be ready," warned Suzy. "They'll flap proper-like in a minute."

Arthur bent down and half-crawled, half-pulled himself to the copper pipe. Just as his hand closed around it, his wings gave an almighty beat, lifting him ten feet off the railway.

Suzy was still on the ground, her wings warming up.

"You can lean to change direction!" she shouted. "Aim for the center of the Pit to start with. Harder to get shot at from the train or the road. If you get to the ceiling before me, you have to somersault just before you hit. That'll confuse the wings for a bit and they'll slow down. Use your stickit fingers to stick to the ceiling. It'll be easy!"

Arthur's wings increased the depth and the speed of their beat again, and he began to accelerate upwards. He looked down and saw a huge, only vaguely human figure that had long, wet dragonfly-like wings trailing down its back. As Arthur watched, it climbed up over the lip of the Pit and began to stalk towards Suzy.

She was looking up at Arthur, and obviously could neither hear nor see the Nithling.

"Suzy!" Arthur screamed. "Look out! A Nith -"