The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books (33 page)

‘In hexameters compose!

Better them than flaccid prose!’

‘Write of heroes of the past,

lines heroic loud reciting,

boldly slaying dragons vast

and performing deeds exciting.

Paragons of manliness,

they save maidens in distress!’

‘No! Of death and devastation write,

morbid readers to delight!

Vampire bats and hounds of hell

are the themes that really sell!’

Finally, when the self-opinionated old tomes had harangued the Yarnspinner puppet into a state of total bewilderment – it was merely staggering around and uttering histrionic ‘Oh!’s and ‘Ah!’s – another curtain rose, enlarging the panorama of the dripstone cave. Into view came more stalagmites, more shelves filled with picturesquely mouldering volumes, and in the centre an outsize book that appeared to consist entirely of metal! It was standing on end, had a silver cover with gold and brass fittings and ornamentation, and glittered in the artificial lighting like the entrance to a treasure chamber. On the cover, where the title would normally have been inscribed, was a golden frame enclosing a curtain of beaten copper. It resembled the proscenium of a puppet theatre.

‘Goldenbeard’s
Book Trap
!’
²
I gasped. It really did look the way I’d described it, except that this one was the size of a coffin!

‘Ignore that obsolete advice!’

the metal book suddenly commanded in a robotic voice.

‘The classics will far from suffice

to guide you. Better come with me

and you will many marvels see!

I am the future, no decay

will ever eat my flesh away.

Time’s insignificant to me,

I’ll live for all eternity!’

While he was speaking, parts of his ornamentation began to revolve and became enmeshed with each other, ticking like parts of a clockwork motor.

‘Decay? To me that word’s unknown,

my heart is harder than a stone.

Maggots and insects from me flee,

of bookworms I am wholly free.

You want these caverns to forsake?

I will you to the exit take.

The route to freedom I can show,

so climb aboard me and let’s go!’

‘Don’t listen to that book of steel!’

the old books protested in unison.

‘It cannot love or pity feel!

It has no soul, no mind, no heart!

Ignore its urgings to depart!

It only wants to do you ill

and bend you to its evil will!’

But the big book overrode these admonitions in a metallic voice:

‘Those warnings are a waste of breath.

They’ll only lead you to your death.

I am your guide, so come away

and marvel at my puppet play.

See the puppets, how they dance,

how they fight with sword and lance!

Hark to the music, feast your ears

on strains that come from heavenly spheres …’

Seductive, silvery bell notes rang out, playing a tune that reminded me once again of one of Evubeth van Goldwine’s immortal melodies, in this case his famous piano piece in A minor dedicated to a girl with a
charming
name. The copper curtain rose to reveal some Bookhunters made of silver, like the two-dimensional puppets of a shadow theatre. They proceeded to dance and thrust at each other with their spears. At the same time, the cover of the huge book opened and the Yarnspinner puppet climbed inside like the unresisting victim of a fairground hypnotist.

Stop, stop, that wasn’t what happened – you know that only too well, my friends! I neither climbed into a gigantic book nor did it address me or swallow me up. Goldenbeard’s
Book Trap
, which I discovered in the Labyrinth, was made of precious metals and emitted mysterious music, admittedly, but it was of average size. It activated a complicated mechanism that set off a veritable avalanche of books and sluiced me straight into the rubbish dump of Unholm. However, the way in which the whole incident had been presented onstage – as a fight between good Zamonian literature and the cunning traps set by the Bookhunters – was naturally far more interesting from the dramatic standpoint, so I accepted it with amusement.

Scarcely had the cover closed over the puppet when the book descended into the ground and the stage went dark. The sound effects technicians must have used every available drum and thunder sheet to create the cacophony of rumbling and banging and rattling that ensued. But what was the matter with my chair? I suddenly had the utmost difficulty in keeping my seat, it was juddering around so violently.

‘Is this an earthquake?’ I exclaimed in dismay.

‘It’s all included in the price of the ticket,’ Inazia told me with a grin. She was being thrown around like me. ‘It gives you quite a shock the first time. The whole theatre is one big machine. Just wait, though. This is only the start, my friend!’

Now I understood: every member of the audience was intended to experience in person my slither through the catacombs’ dark digestive system, which was why the ingenious theatre machinery was shaking all the seats. What an elaborate set-up! One or two theatregoers
screamed
, but before any real panic could break out among the children in the audience, the frenetic music and the rumbling and thundering and shaking ceased. It grew lighter, the biggest curtain rose with a swishing sound and we were confronted by a sea. A stormy sea composed entirely of mouldering books.

‘The rubbish dump of Unholm,’ I whispered. Yes, dear readers, it was just as I remembered it: a frozen sea of old, mouldering paper, billows and troughs of book dust with foaming crests of tattered leather. And in the midst of it, with a dark void overhead: myself, now a tiny puppet once more. The audience had hardly absorbed this impressive spectacle when another menacing sound was heard. At first no more than a dull but gradually swelling roar, it seemed to be rising inexorably from the bottom of the sea of books. And then, from the midst of the rubbish dump, something gigantic emerged: the huge bookworm, the subterranean ruler of Unholm! In an explosion of book dust and fragments of paper, the massive body broke surface like a whale. With a bestial roar, it reared up until, within a moment or two, its head brushed the ceiling of the theatre. But it, too, was a puppet suspended on invisible ropes and operated by internal machinery. I had no idea how this was done, nor – at that moment – did I want to know. Gaping at the upper extremity of the monstrous bookworm was a fleshy, circular mouth armed with whole clusters of yellow teeth as long and sharp as sabres. Magnify a plump maggot a thousandfold, my friends, and furnish it with the poisonous fangs of a hundred snakes and the warts of a thousand toads, and you’ll get a rough idea of the gigantic creature that was now looming over the audience. It remained poised like that – for an eternity, it seemed – as though waiting for the right moment to hurl itself at the auditorium and crush and devour its occupants. The whole theatre was filled with a pestilential stench of putrefaction.

The puppet that represented me in this infernal scene was lost from my view in billowing dust. However, another curtain rose beside this stage to reveal an enlarged detail of the same scene – a
simple
but highly effective theatrical device! There, a considerably larger Yarnspinner could be seen in close-up, desperately struggling through a sea of rubbish from which frightful denizens of the catacombs were emerging. I squirmed in my seat and drew my cloak more tightly around me.

Let us be honest, dear friends: any reasonably sane individual is scared of creepy-crawlies, no? Only anteaters, entomologists and totally insensitive lumberjacks are unafraid of creatures with more than four legs. When the outsize bloodsuckers infesting the rubbish dump of Unholm awoke and crawled out of the literary detritus with their groping antennae, scrabbling legs and lashing probosces – when their glossy black chitinous armour, clattering pincers and iridescent, faceted eyes came into view – pandemonium broke out in the theatre even though they were really just puppets. Children wept, mothers soothed their frightened offspring, and adult males squealed and climbed on their seats. I saw raw-boned Turnipheads quit the auditorium in tears! Meanwhile, my puppet bravely continued to fight his way through hordes of outsize beetles, spiders, millipedes and earwigs. I could feel sweat oozing from every pore of my body. That was just how it had been. I even saw the gigantic, white-haired spider that had haunted my nightmares ever since.

‘This is the part where I always look away,’ Inazia confessed, covering her eyes with her spindly fingers. ‘Tell me when it’s over.’

Personally, I devoted my full attention to the horrific scene. At its mercy but avid at the same time, I followed it with my eyes, ears and nose, utterly overwhelmed by the sight and my own memories. The music had now attained a wholly independent quality free from any form of plagiarism. It was like the background music to a nightmare created by the dreaming brain of a brilliant musician exempt from all the usual laws of composition. I heard harmonies and dissonances every note of which captured the essence of the horror but lent it a fascination that rendered it bearable. Frisson after
frisson
ran down my spine, but in an agreeable and wonderful way. It was the same as in my childhood, when my godfather Dancelot used to read me bedtime stories. Although tightly swathed in my bedclothes, I would shiver like a patient with fever when Dancelot, in his booming bass voice, read me tales of monsters and hair-raising feats of heroism. As I gradually drifted from the world of wakefulness into the world of dreams, I began to spin out what I’d heard, further and further, and continue it in my dreams. To me, that state is the epitome of my childhood, the early seed from which my literary activities grew. I was reminded of some lines from a poem by Perla la Gadeon:

All that we see or seem

is but a dream within a dream
.

That was just how I felt at this moment: like a ghostly visitor inside my own head. Like a dreamer in a dream witnessing his worst nightmares. How often since then, during the little sleep still granted me, had I already been haunted by the frightful memory of that sea of books in Unholm? It was as if the whole theatre had been transformed into a monstrous version of my skull, into which the audience could see as if peering into a bell jar. I shared the feverish excitement of the little puppet wading through the loathsome rubbish, even though I knew the story had a happy ending. But, like a dreamer, I’d forgotten that this was a dream. Yes, it all had enthralled me so much, I’d forgotten that
I myself was the figure on the stage
!

The harassed audience emitted a collective sound of relief – a mixture of gasps and sighs – when the Yarnspinner puppet finally reached terra firma on the edge of the stage. With an ear-splitting roar, the gigantic bookworm reared up once more, then collapsed with a crash reminiscent of a mammoth tree being felled. Boom! Dense clouds of book dust billowed into the air and the clicking, crepitating insects vanished into the gloom.

It was a relief when the curtain fell and the music died away. There was no applause this time. Nonsensically, I patted my cloak as if it were infested with cockroaches.

‘It’s over,’ I said, genuinely relieved.

‘Not bad for a puppet theatre, eh?’ the Uggly said with a grin. She also brushed some non-existent insects off her clothing.

‘No,’ I replied in a daze, ‘that was … not bad at all.’