The Palace of Laughter (17 page)

The music of a hurdy-gurdy spilled out from between the stone teeth, mixing with the chaotic sounds the clowns were making. Silver tickets were waved in the air, but no one seemed to be collecting them, and the crowd surged into the mysterious hill without a backward glance, until the last few stragglers were swallowed up and the mighty doors began slowly to swing shut.

B
aumella the giantess, straight-boned and tree-tall, began to swing the great oak doors shut after the last few people had entered the Palace of Laughter. She had spotted the two little maggots hiding in the ticket booth, yes she had, but she said nothing to anyone. She saw that one of them was the tiny girl she had looked after at the circus, and she guessed that the other might have had a hand in her disappearance. She was surprised to see them here, skulking around the Palace, and rather impressed that they had made it this far. Had they run all the way on their tiny legs? The great doors creaked as they swung closer to each other, and
through the narrowing gap she could see the two little ones break cover and run for the drawbridge. They were persistent wee creatures!

She knew they could not see her in the gloom behind the doors, and she chuckled quietly. “I won't turn you in, little maggots, but I won't make it easy for you either,” she thought. As they reached the drawbridge, she closed the doors—
kerlunk!
—and smiled to herself. “Let's see what you do now, little ones.” She turned to the tall pillars, as cool and unbending as herself, and hauling a large chair from the shadows between them, sat herself down with her back to the great wooden doors.

Miles and Little almost ran full tilt into the hobnail-studded doors. They appeared to have been closing slowly by themselves, and Miles had timed his run to get in at the last possible moment. But they had shut more quickly at the end, or he had misjudged the distance, and now it was too late. He stood with his hands flat on the doors and pushed them with all his strength, but he may as well have been pushing at solid rock. A few flakes of yellowing paint drifted down from the huge stone teeth that lined the top of the doorway. Above the teeth stretched the faded blue lip of the laughing mouth, and above the lip a nose, with its two enormous
nostrils like bear caves, jutted out into the sky. Ragged clouds raced over the clown's head, making it look as though the hill were gradually toppling forward. Miles felt dizzy. He became aware of a deep rumbling sound that seemed to be coming from inside the hill.

“There's thunder trapped in the hill,” said Little. She pressed her ear to the doors, and Miles did the same. He could hear the sound more clearly now, a grinding of gears with a regular squeak running through it. Now the ground beneath their feet seemed to be tilting upward. For a moment he thought it was just the dizziness, then he realized what was happening.

“The drawbridge,” he shouted. They turned and began to scramble up the wooden tongue, which was rising rapidly, getting steeper by the second. The surface was worn smooth by years of shuffling feet, making it hard to get a grip. By the time they made it to the top, the drawbridge was almost upright. Miles could see that Little was trying to shake her jacket and shirt off her shoulders when the drawbridge stopped with a mighty jolt. He barely managed to keep his balance, but Little, with one wing partly freed, tumbled from the top of the wooden tongue, down into the murky green water of the moat.

Miles hung on for a few seconds, expecting to see Little's head appear above the water. He could see a faint whiteness moving in the moat, caught in the tangled reflection of the big wheel, but she did not surface. He took a deep breath, and jumped in after her.

If you've ever been thrown into a river or a pool by someone bigger and meaner than you, you will know how it feels to be plunged into water against your will. There is the shock of the cold, and the muffled rumble of water in your ears, and a feeling that you should have had the right to choose for yourself when you are dunked into water and when you would rather remain on dry land.

This was exactly how Miles felt as he somersaulted slowly in the moat. His ears were filled with muffled sounds, and he could not tell which way was up. He forced his eyes to open. He was in a swaying underwater forest, and he could just make out the white of Little's skin among the weeds. He righted himself and swam toward her. The oversized jacket that she had been trying to shrug off when she fell had wrapped itself around her at the elbows, and her left foot was tangled in the thick stems of the weeds. She stopped struggling when she saw Miles, and looked at him with wide eyes.
He felt that his lungs would burst with the air he was trying to keep in, but there was no time to get to the surface to take a breath. He reached for his knife, then remembered that he had given it to the small boy at the Pigball match. He grabbed the weeds that were wrapped around Little's ankle as near to the roots as he could, and pulled.

The roots of the weeds were tough and the stems slimy, and they seemed to wriggle out of his grasp as though they had a life of their own. He managed to uproot some of them, and grabbed at the remaining handful. He looked up at Little's face, half afraid that he was too late. He knew that he would have to get to the surface within the next few seconds himself, or take in a lungful of murky moat water. Snowflake patterns were fizzing at the corners of his vision, and through them he could see Little, her mouth slightly open, and her stare becoming fixed. Without stopping his frantic tugging, he glanced over his shoulder in the direction of her stare, and immediately wished he hadn't.

An ugly gray-green face was staring at him from among the weeds, a face with bulging eyes, fat lips and a miserable mouthful of sharp nails. It was an enormous pike, barely an arm's length away. Now a pike is a fish best seen at the end of a long fishing
line, or not at all, and certainly not when you are trying to unwrap river weeds from the ankle of a drowning friend and your next breath is long overdue. This particular fish was enormous, mean and constantly hungry. He had spent many years fattening himself on the other citizens of the moat, and he was not used to meeting anything in the water that he could not bite in half with ease. The struggling Little had caught his eye as a particularly tasty dinner, and he was not pleased that Miles had got in his way. The shock of seeing him made Miles lose his lungful of stale air in a rush of bubbles. “I've got to get to the surface now,” he thought desperately, and at that moment the stubborn weeds gave way and he grabbed a handful of Little's shirt and kicked hard against the slimy floor of the moat, up toward the light.

 

Miles Wednesday, weed-wrapped and waterlogged, held on to a ledge of rock at the edge of the moat. As he choked and spat, he felt Little pull free from his grasp and hoist herself onto the rock. He was afraid that the pike would take a chunk out of his leg, but he did not have the strength to pull himself up beside her. When he had cleared out all the moat water from his mouth and nose, he realized that
Little was smiling down at him as though nothing had happened. She reached out a hand and helped him climb out of the water.

“You can't breathe when you're underwater, can you?” asked Little.

“Of course not!” coughed Miles. “Can you?”

“Yes, but it's not very nice. It's a bit like being in the middle of a cloud, but much thicker.”

“You mean I nearly drowned getting you free and you could breathe all along?”

“Yes, I could breathe. But if you hadn't freed me from the weeds that big fish would have bitten me in half before I could find his name, and anyway I'm not sure if I could sing it underwater.”

Miles leaned back against the rock face and spat out more scummy water. Now that he had recovered he could see that they had come up on the inside bank of the moat and were leaning against the gigantic cheek of the clown-shaped hill. They were on a narrow ledge, barely wide enough to lie down on, which was exactly what he wanted to do. There was still no sign of the Stinkers.

“Do you think they're gone?” asked Little, following his gaze.

“I can't see them,” said Miles. “Maybe they think we drowned.” He lay back and looked up at the
twilit sky. “I just need to rest for a minute, then we'll figure out a way to get back across the moat.”

“I could fly over, since there's no one in sight,” said Little. “But my wings wouldn't carry you. Besides, why do we need to cross the moat when we want to get inside the hill, and not back on the Stinkers' side?”

“Because we can't get to the door from here,” said Miles. “The ledge doesn't go around far enough.” He watched the small black shapes of a number of bats darting about in erratic circles against the sky, feeding on the insects swarming around the trees that fringed the clown's giant ear. Some of the bats seemed to be flying in and out of the ear itself. “It must be where they roost,” he thought. There seemed to be more of them coming out than going in. A sudden thought struck him, and he sat up. “On the other hand,” he said, “maybe we should have a word in this clown's ear.”

Little looked up at the ear for a minute. “It's a long way up,” she said.

“It is, but it might be a way in. If it is, it will be better than trying to get through the doors unnoticed.”

He stood up and examined the sheer wall of rock in front of him. The rock was relatively smooth, but
here and there were small cracks and fissures, and in places tufts of heather grew from them, as though the clown were not very good at shaving. Little took a careful look around, then she removed her jacket and shirt, and tied them by their sleeves around her waist. She still wore the sparkly circus costume underneath. “You never know when it might come in handy, my dear,” Lady Partridge had said.

“I'll fly up ahead of you and find the best way to climb,” said Little.

Miles looked doubtful. “I'm not sure that's a good idea. Someone might see you.” His eyes scanned the sagging stalls and the boarded buildings of the old fun park, but it seemed that the Stinkers had vanished into thin air. “I can't see anyone,” he said at length, “but you'd better be careful.”

Little nodded. She gave her shoulders a little shake, and her wings unfolded with a flutter. They were a beautiful pearly pink in the sunset, and to his surprise Miles felt his heart leap at the sight of them. He had not seen her fly since that night in the circus, and he watched with fascination, and a little envy, as she lifted from the ledge like thistledown and rose above his head. It must have felt good to be flying once again, and she let out a musical laugh as
she soared up toward the giant ear, scanning the rock for a path that Miles could take.

Miles sighed, and began to climb. “Come on, slowcloud,” said Little, swooping back down toward him. “Go to the right here—there's a place for your feet, and those plants just above you will hold your weight.” He grabbed the tuft of heather and hauled himself up. There were not many toeholds, and for some time he inched his way up the rock with his clawed fingers and the tips of his boots. The moat was a long way below him now, but as he neared the top of the clown's fat cheek, it began to slope inward a little more. He could see the huge earlobe almost level with him, and he edged slowly to his right until he could reach it. As he scrambled into the ear's hollow one of his bootlaces snapped and the boot made a break for freedom, bouncing off the stone cheek as it tumbled downward, and finally kicking off a sharp point of rock and splashing into the dark waters of the moat below.

Miles sat in the huge ear, which was smooth and hollow and comfortable, waiting for his breath to return. He unlaced his other boot with his bleeding fingers, and tossed it after its twin. He was about level with the hub of the big wheel. A small knot of figures was inching up one of the spokes. It looked
like two of the Stinkers, carrying Henry between them as they climbed. They were too far away for him to see clearly, and with their backs turned, it was not likely they would see Little. He called to her urgently nonetheless, and she fluttered down beside him and tucked her wings away.

“That was good,” she said. “I'm sorry you had to climb.”

Miles shrugged casually, “It wasn't that difficult,” he lied.

He stood up and looked into the dark cave of the ear. The ceiling of the cave was alive with bats, crawling over one another and squeaking like pram wheels. Miles clicked his tongue to listen to the echo. It sounded like the cave went back a long way. He took a few steps into the darkness, the smooth stone cold under his bare feet. His outstretched hands touched nothing.

“I don't suppose you can see in the dark as well?” he said over his shoulder to Little.

“Not very well. I once got lost in a stormcloud, and everyone laughed at me for days.” She followed a few paces and bumped into Miles's back.

“I believe you,” he laughed. He wondered how they could make a light. The wick of his brass lighter would be soaked with moat water. “We'll just
have to go slowly. It can't be dark everywhere in this hill.”

They moved cautiously onward through the pitch darkness, Miles in front with his hands out, and Little hanging on to the tail of his jacket—possibly the only two people in history ever to have been swallowed by an ear.