Brightling (15 page)

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The drum roll boomed round the tent so loudly that the lanterns wobbled and vibrations ran through the wooden seats. The audience jumped and then tittered and looked around nervously; Sparrow and Hilda glanced at each other and grinned.

The drums heralded Zippo again, who came twirling into the centre of the ring, bowing and waving. He was flanked by ten littles, wearing brightly-coloured costumes and carrying buckets of water. They began sprinkling the water over the sawdust floor.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!' Zippo cried. ‘This dampening down is just a precaution, as you'll see.' He pointed to the littles hurrying around the ring. ‘We don't want to dampen
your
spirits, but there must be no chance of the arena going up in flames  …  These animals can be very sparky  … ' He rubbed his hands together gleefully. ‘And now, the moment you've all been waiting for!' He had to raise his voice as a thrilled murmur of excitement rippled round the ring. ‘Let me present to you Stormy and Maud, Academy Directors, and their miraculous, fantastical, super-splendiferous, extraordinary spitfyres!'

Zippo went out, leaving the arena empty. The littles had doused some of the lights so now the tent was darker.

Nothing happened.

The crowd, which had fallen silent, waiting, now began whispering and looking around, wondering what was going to happen.

Suddenly the top of the tent was drawn back and through the opening came a blast of orange and golden light; and a shower of sparkling ash fell through the air over the ring like fireworks.

‘Oooh!' the crowd cried. ‘Look! Look!'

Two horse shapes seemed to drop heavily through the opening and fall into the tent. Spitfyres!

Sparrow caught her breath, her hands to her mouth in amazement. Astride each flying horse sat a sky-rider, dressed in close-fitting, dark clothes.

Just when it looked as if the spitfyres would plunge to the ground, they flashed open their great wings. There was a loud swooshing sound, like an umbrella unfurling, and the spitfyres halted their fall, swooped up and began to fly.

The audience clapped and cheered.

Everyone was looking upwards as the flying horses spun round and round the tent. The spitfyres' leathery wings blew up a huge draught, making the people in the top seats cry out and clutch their hats and scarves. As the metal-tipped hooves floated above their heads they ducked and shrieked, half in horror, half in fun.

The sky-riders waved as they circled the tent. They threw down a cascade of yellow-coloured pamphlets that everyone grabbed greedily.

The spitfyres flew around and rose up and circled about the apex of the tent once more before plunging down to the arena and skidding through the sawdust to a halt.

The crowd was on its feet, applauding and shouting.

The two sky-riders slipped off their spitfyres and bowed.

‘I am Stormy,' the young man said, ‘and this is Maud. We are the Directors of the Academy.'

Stormy was tall, slender and about twenty years old. His eyes sparkled with fun and energy; he looked lively enough to ignite a pile of wood all on his own, thought Sparrow. He was wearing a plain, dark suit, narrow boots and a high-necked white shirt. His shoulder-length hair was brown. Maud had long, very dark hair piled up on her head and tied with white ribbons, and she couldn't stop smiling. Sparrow thought her very pretty. She began to wonder how she might join them up at the Academy  …  with Scaramouch, of course.

The spitfyres were much bigger than ordinary horses, and quite extraordinary animals. They pulsated with energy and sparkiness; they were bursting with life.

The spitfyre that Maud had ridden had a coat of dark red, black and purple that seemed to have the texture of velvet. Her hooves were speckled with violet-coloured scales. When she tossed her head, her long mane flowed like water, cascading down over her neck, sparkling with gold and silver. Her wings were huge and scaly in places; dark, dark red spread over black sinews, running through the wings in a fine network of veins.

‘Hello, everyone!' Maud called. ‘Let me introduce my wonderful spitfyre to you. This is Kopernicus!'

Kopernicus tossed her purple-black mane. She pranced in a circle around Maud then stopped in front of her, puffing out blue smoke from her nostrils. The smoke rose up and hung like a blue halo above them both.

The crowd roared with amazement.

‘Despite being so beautiful, our wonderful spitfyres are in constant danger,' Maud said, patting the spitfyre's neck. ‘People want to steal their fire-power, their Brightling!'

Stormy stepped forward. ‘This is Seraphina,' he said, introducing his own spitfyre.

She shone purple or silver or sometimes turquoise or even gold, depending on how the light hit her. Her wings were the palest purple and silver. And when she moved, she shimmered like a fish under water. She huffed out and breathed a stream of small balls of fire that went bowling over the sawdust, skipping and rolling until they died out with a little hiss and wisp of smoke. At a signal from Stormy, she spun round, reared up on her hind legs and blew out a stream of spinning, multi-coloured sparks and a jet of orange flame, which shot over the ground, jumping and sparking until it fizzled out on the wet sawdust.

‘Isn't she beautiful?' Hilda whispered dreamily to Sparrow. ‘What a lovely, lovely thing.'

‘As Maud told you, we're here today because these rare and precious animals are being stolen for their sparking fluid, for Brightling. Brightling should not be taken from them, it is part of them, it is their essence. Without it, they die.'

Sparrow sat up and listened intently.

‘We must stop this terrible trade,' Maud cried. ‘Look at these lovely creatures! How could anyone harm them?'

‘Brightling is absolutely worthless!' Stormy said, his voice rising. ‘It has no value to you. None.'

‘It cured my grandma's lumbago!' someone shouted from the stalls.

A few members of the audience laughed and others cried, ‘For shame!' and ‘It's rubbish!' and ‘No, it doesn't work!'

‘I assure you it did
not
cure your grandma's lumbago,' Stormy said. ‘How could it? It is –'

‘My daughter waited five years for a baby,' a woman interrupted. ‘Took a dose of Brightling and had one straight away.'

‘No, no,' Maud said, spinning round to face the speaker. ‘That wasn't Brightling! It was just luck.'

Stormy quietened the audience. Half of them seemed to believe Brightling worked, and the other half was on his side, not wishing to hurt the spitfyres.

‘If you take their Brightling from them, they die,' Maud said. ‘And if
you
take Brightling
you
may well die!'

‘That can't be true!' someone called. ‘My brother –'

Suddenly there was a shout from the back of the crowd.

‘Fire! Fire!'

At first Sparrow thought the call of ‘fire' was all part of the spitfyres' show. She looked round, expecting the flying horses to do something dramatic, but then, when she saw the smoke billowing into the tent from all sides in great black, thick clouds, she realised it was a
real
fire.

The cry was taken up in earnest all around.

‘
Fire!
'

Smoke filled the tent so quickly no one had a chance to move before, suddenly, they were plunged into the dark as the smoke draped over them. The ring of lanterns around the arena could only glow faintly through the darkness.

‘Keep calm!' Stormy called out, but he was already invisible. ‘Keep ca—' His voice was cut off suddenly. A spitfyre whinnied and briefly puffed out a yellow haze of fire. Then that went out too.

The audience was already up on its feet and pushing, struggling to escape.

Sparrow turned to Hilda, who was standing up but looking dazed, and grabbed her coat for her. ‘Come on,' she said. ‘We must move quickly.'

‘Mayra?' Hilda said in a disjointed, worried way. ‘She died here, in an accident. Oh Sparrow, Bruno, what's going on?'

Bruno put his arm around her and tried to move her out ahead of him, but people blocked their path. They couldn't see where to go. Hilda's anxiety was catching – but Sparrow wasn't worried about Mayra, she was thinking about Tapper. She was sure he was here. She hadn't seen him, but why else did she have this familiar feeling of dread? What else could cause this cold, creeping sensation of impending doom?

A dot of light pierced through the smoke, darting up and down as if searching for something. It was the same brightness she'd seen at the market when Kate sold the Brightling. Before she could work it out, the lantern beside her went out and, as it died, she felt someone dash past, and the bright dot went with them.

Kate? Agnes? she wondered, nervously.

One by one, all the lanterns in the arena went out. Blackness descended, dense with smoke. All around, people shouted and pushed.

Sparrow couldn't see anything and she could hardly breathe now, as the smoke thickened and caught in her throat and eyes.

‘Get those lanterns back on!' someone yelled.

‘Quickly, quickly now!' That was Bruno. Where was Hilda? Sparrow tried to move towards the Butterworths. Her eyes were watering. She couldn't move at all; Gerta squeezed her from the other side; she was coughing, bent over, struggling. Desperate to get free, Sparrow was forced to clamber over the low rail and she toppled into the ring.

How could it be so dark? She coughed and coughed. ‘Hilda! I'm just here!' she called.

She felt someone suddenly beside her; not someone trying to get out, not someone panicking and struggling, but someone who was bearing down on her, a black, empty, nothingness, dread and loathing  …  Again the tiny dot of light! Right up by her face. A spark. A star.

‘Got ya!' a man said.

Glori held her tiny phial of Brightling out at arm's length; it shone like a miniscule star. When she closed her fingers round it, it vanished.
Magic
.

The blindfolded spitfyre she was leading out of the ring had come willingly; she found it dreadfully sad that it trusted her. ‘Don't, don't,' she'd murmured. ‘Don't let me take you like this. Fight me, can't you?'

But Miss Minter's accomplice, Brittel, that nasty, sloping-shouldered greaseball, had got to them first and fed them something to hush them up. Now the creature followed her as meekly as a lamb. She'd only to whisper its name – ‘Seraphina, Seraphina' – and it came.

She led the spitfyre outside into the fresh air. All around her there were screams and shouts and bodies scrambling and shoving, but the lovely Seraphina was docile, gently puffing warm air over Glori's head and shoulders in a comforting way.

No one stopped her. No one saw them go at all.

Glori hoped Sparrow hadn't been too scared when the smoke whooshed into the ring and the lights went out. She hoped she'd got out quickly and was on her way back to her cosy home, wherever that might be. She didn't know that Miss Minter had spotted her and she hadn't seen Tapper running out with a bulky canvas bundle over his shoulder.

Moments later, Brittel and Kopernicus appeared alongside her in the cold, fresh air, and then they ran from the tent, over the field to the distant cluster of trees, leading the two spitfyres with them.

Glori felt no elation, only an enormous sadness. Seraphina had lost her sparkle; Glori had lost Sparrow. A gloom settled over her.

‘Here! Here!' Brittel shouted to the match-girls, waiting in the trees beside a wagon and two horses. Brittel and Glori led the spitfyres into the darkest shadows. ‘Get those buckets!'

How Brittel loved ordering them about, Glori thought. He was in his element tonight, stealing the two spitfyres, bossing everyone. Miss Minter had told her that he'd worked with spitfyres once, at the Academy; that was how he knew so much about them.

The girls had been told what they had to do and carried the lidded buckets containing a thick brown liquid out from the back of the wagon.

Connie and Agnes began to slosh the brown stuff over Seraphina. Beattie and Kate covered Kopernicus's red hide with the dye. No one spoke. They had to work fast; the alarm would be raised any minute. Their breath billowed out around them in the icy air.

‘What happened to the Director?' Kate asked, rubbing the brown colouring over Kopernicus's haunches.

‘Got a knock on the head,' Brittel said.

‘And that Maud?'

‘Same.'

Tapper brought rolls of old fabric from the wagon and dropped them on the grass. ‘Here, Glori, help me, can't you? You in a daze?'

Glori shook her head; she was. She dragged one of the rolls and laid it down alongside Seraphina, glancing back at the tent as she did so. Black smoke billowed from it. Why didn't someone come and stop them? She'd heard what Stormy had said, the spitfyres would die – surely someone must come!

Dolly and Billie rushed up from the direction of the tent. ‘Did we get them? Oh that's them!' Dolly cried, staring at the spitfyres. ‘They are big next to the ordinary ones, aren't they?'

‘Big, and they've got wings!' Billie said.

‘It's the wings we got to strap down and hide. Let's do it!' Brittel said.

‘Why don't they attack us and breathe fire and all that?' someone asked.

‘Fizzled out,' Brittel said with a laugh. ‘My potion.' He took off the blindfolds from the two spitfyres. ‘I'll give them some more in a minute.'

Quickly the girls began to bandage the spitfyres' wings to their sides with the fabric.

‘No flying for you, poor thing,' Glori whispered to Seraphina as she gently tucked down her wings. ‘Sorry.'

‘Lucky they're the smaller ones,' Brittel told the girls. ‘If it'd been Sparkit or Bluey, them from the old days, them Elite spitfyres  …  Whoa, different matter then – we'd be fighting them right now. Huge, they were, and strong! Here, we must give them some of this.' He looked round anxiously, pulling a brown paper bag from his pocket. ‘Before they start  … '