Weaveworld

3

It was the end of the world, and the beginning of worlds.

First, a column of dervish cloud rose from the middle of the Gyre, flying up towards the ceiling. As it struck, wide cracks opened, bringing an avalanche of plaster onto the heads of all beneath. It momentarily occurred to Cal that what Suzanna and he had unleashed was now beyond their jurisdiction. Then the wonders began, and all such concerns were forgotten.

There was lightning in the cloud, throwing arcs out to the walls and across the floor. As they sprang forth, knots from one border of the carpet to the other slipped their configurations, and the strands grew like grain in mid-summer, spilling colour as they rose. It was much as Cal and Suzanna had dreamt several nights before, only multiplied a hundredfold; ambitious threads climbing and proliferating across the room.

The pressure of growth beneath Cal was enough to throw him off the carpet as the strands sprang from their bondage, spreading the seeds of a thousand forms to right and left. Some were swifter to rise than others, reaching the ceiling in seconds. Others chose instead to make for the windows, trailing streamers of colour as they broke the glass and raced out to meet the night.

Everywhere the eye went there were new and extraordinary displays. At first the explosion of forms was too chaotic to be made sense of, but no sooner was the air awash with colour than the strands began to shape finer details, distinguishing plant from stone, and stone from wood, and wood from flesh. One surging thread exploded against the roof in a shower of motes, each of which, upon contact with the humus of the decaying Weave, threw out tiny shoots. Another was laying zig-zag paths of blue-grey mist across the room; a third and a fourth were intertwining, and fire-flies were leaping from their marriage, sketching in their motion bird and beast, which their companions clothed with light.

In seconds the Fugue had filled the room, its growth so fast that Shearman’s house could not contain it. Boards were uprooted as the strands sought new territories; the rafters were thrown aside. Nor were bricks and mortar any better defence against the threads. What they couldn’t coax, they bullied; what they couldn’t bully, they simply overturned.

Cal had no intention of being buried. Bewitching as these birth-pangs were, it could not be long before the house collapsed. He peered through the fireworks towards the place where Suzanna had been standing, but she’d already gone. The buyers were also making their escape, fighting like street dogs in their panic.

Scrambling to his feet, Cal started to make his way to the door, but he’d got no more than two steps when he saw Shadwell moving towards him.

‘Bastard!’ the Salesman was screeching. ‘Interfering bastard!’

He reached into his jacket pocket, drew out a gun, and took aim at Cal.

‘Nobody crosses me, Mooney!’ he screamed; then fired.

But even as he pulled the trigger somebody leapt at him. He fell sideways. The bullet flew wide of its target.

Cal’s saviour was Nimrod. He raced towards Cal now, his expression all urgency. He had reason. The entire house had begun to shake; there were roars of capitulation from above and below. The Fugue had reached the foundations, and its enthusiasm was about to pitch the house over.

Nimrod seized hold of Cal’s arm, and pulled him not towards the door but towards the window. Or rather, the wall that had once contained the window, for the burgeoning Weave had torn them all out. Beyond the wreckage, the Fugue was telling its long-silenced story hither and thither, filling the darkness with further magic.

Nimrod glanced behind him.

‘Are we going to jump?’ said Cal.

Nimrod grinned, and held on even tighter to Cal’s arm. One backward glance told Cal that Shadwell had found his gun, and was aiming it at their backs.

‘Look out!’ he yelled.

Nimrod’s face brightened, and he pressed his hand on the nape of Cal’s neck, to make him tuck his head down. An instant later Cal understood why, as a wave of colour sprang from the Weave, and Nimrod threw them both before it. The force carried them out through the window, and for a panicky moment they trod thin air. Then the brightness seemed to solidify and spread beneath them, and they were riding down it like surfers on a tide of light.

The ride was over all too soon. Mere seconds later they were rudely deposited in a field some distance from the house, and the wave was off into the night, parenting all manner of flora and fauna as it went.

Dizzied but exhilarated, Cal got to his feet, and was delighted to hear Nimrod exclaim:

‘Ha!’

‘You can speak?’

‘It appears so,’ said Nimrod, his grin wider than ever. I’m out of her reach here –’

‘Immacolata.’

‘Of course. She undid my rapture, to tempt the Cuckoos. And tempting I was. Did you see the woman in the blue dress?’

‘Briefly.’

‘She fell for me on sight,’ said Nimrod. ‘Perhaps I should find her. She’s going to need some tenderness, things being what they are –’ and without another word he turned back towards the house, which was well on its way to rubble. Only as he disappeared in the confusion of light and dust did Cal notice that in his true shape Nimrod possessed a tail.

Doubtless he could look after himself, but there were others Cal was still concerned for. Suzanna, for one, and Apolline, whom he’d last seen lying beside Freddy in the ante-chamber to the Auction Room. All was din and destruction, but he started back towards the house nevertheless, to see if he could find them.

It was like swimming against a technicolour tide. Strands, late-born, flew and burst about him, some breaking against his body. They were kinder by far to living tissue than they were to brick. Their touch didn’t wound him, but lent him fresh energy. His body tingled as though he’d stepped from an ice-water shower. His head sang.

There was no sign of the enemy. He hoped Shadwell had been buried in the house, but he knew too much of the luck of the wicked to believe this likely. He did however glimpse several of the buyers wandering in the brightness. They didn’t aid each other, but made their way as solitaries, either gazing at the ground for fear it open beneath their feet, or stumbling, hands masking their tears.

As he came within thirty yards of the house there was a further burst of activity from within, as the great cloud of the Gyre, spitting lightning, shrugged off the walls that had confined it, and blossomed in all directions.

He had time enough to see the figure of one of the buyers consumed by the cloud, then he turned and ran.

A wave of dust threw him on his way; filaments of brightness flew to left and right of him like ribbons in a hurricane. A second wave followed, this time of brick-shards and furniture. His breath was snatched from his lips, and his legs from beneath him. Then he was performing acrobatics, head over heels, no longer knowing Heaven from Earth.

He didn’t try to resist, even if resistance had been possible, but let the fast train take him wherever it chose to go.