The Palace of Laughter (5 page)

“You must have been very sad,” said Little.

“I was rather angry really,” said Lady Partridge, “but it had to be done.”

“I mean when he died,” said Little.

The question took Lady Partridge by surprise. She was quiet for a moment, gazing at something beyond the tree house and many years ago. Then she took off her glasses and dropped them into a pocket in her dressing gown. “Well, we don't talk about that,” she said briskly, tipping the orange cat from her book and placing it on top of a teetering pile that conveniently reached her left elbow.

“Who doesn't?” asked Little.

“Well…people in general, I suppose.”

“Then how do people make each other feel better?”

Lady Partridge seemed completely stumped. Little put the photograph back in its place and walked over to where she sat on the edge of her hammock. She climbed the precarious stack of books, put her arms around Lady Partridge's neck and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. Lady Partridge hugged her back, then lifted her down gently.

“Well, here I am wittering on, and I'm sure you're both hungry,” she said, dabbing her eyes quickly with a silk sleeve. “Sit down…um…somewhere, and I'll make you some soup.”

Miles shifted a plump cat or two, to make space for Little and himself. His damp jacket steamed in the warmth of the fire. Little hopped gingerly over to where he sat.

“You're limping, my dear,” said Lady Partridge.

“She twisted her ankle,” said Miles.

“Well why didn't you tell me?” said Lady Partridge. “We must get you bandaged up at once.” She stepped down from the hammock into a pair of worn purple slippers and produced a rolled bandage from a wooden box on the shelf behind her. She knelt down on the Persian carpet with a great deal of huffing and sighing, and began to bandage Little's ankle with a practiced hand.

“Why did you leave your house to live in a tree?” asked Little, wincing a little.

“Oh, I built this tree house over the years, with the help of my gardeners, from old furniture we no longer used in the house. Dartforth was forever ordering newer and grander furniture for the manor, but I hated to part with the old stuff. In the days before those dreadful Pinchbuckets took over the orphanage I used to have all the children around for picnics on Saturday afternoons. It was nice and cool in the tree house, and they could play up here when the sun became too high. The Pinchbuckets stopped all that many years ago. I don't think they ever let the poor things out nowadays, except for their annual trip to the cement quarry. After Dartforth died I began to spend more
and more time up here myself. It was a good place to sit and think. All the staff had long gone, and I had sold almost everything in the house. It became too big and lonely, and I simply couldn't bear to be there anymore, so I moved my last few things out here where it was small and cozy. The grocer's boy comes once a week and the coal man delivers too, so I hardly need to venture out at all. Anyhow, it's rather appropriate that I should live in a tree with two trunks. That makes me a Partridge in a pair tree!”

Lady Partridge bellowed with laughter at her own joke, causing a fat tabby to wake with a start and fall off the shelf where he had been perched.

“And now, my dears,” said Lady Partridge when she had calmed down, “I had better stop rambling on and see about that soup I promised you. A good tale never fares well on an empty stomach, and I can see that you both have a story to tell.”

L
ady Partridge, book-bound, dragon-gowned, and mistress of a hundred cats, rummaged among the tins and jars on the dresser by the stove. As she did so she muttered to herself, or perhaps to her cats. She filled the belly of the stove with a shovelful of glowing coals from the fireplace, and placed a pot of soup on top.

While the soup bubbled in the pot, Miles told her a story that you and I have heard already. He told her of the strange circus and the mysterious tiger, of how he had seen Little fall, and later rescued her from her locked trailer under the nose of the Great Cortado. Over bowls of steaming soup he
spoke of the nameless beast that had pursued him through the night, and how it had reduced to splinters the barrel that had kept him warm and dry for three winters under the pine tree on the side of the hill. Lady Partridge listened, and her cats listened too.

“Well well,” said Lady Partridge at length, when his story had taken them up the ladder and into her tree house. “You must both stay here for the night, and in the morning we'll see what's to be done.” She peered thoughtfully at Little. “Would you mind, my dear, if we took a look at those wings of yours?”

“She doesn't have them on now,” said Miles. “They're back at the circus.”

But Little had slipped off the heavy overcoat. The thin straps of her glittery costume left her shoulders almost bare, and as she turned her back to Lady Partridge Miles saw to his astonishment a pattern of gracefully curving lines traced faintly across her shoulder blades. As he looked closer he could see in the pattern the outline of a pair of neatly folded wings. Little gave her shoulders a shake, and the wings opened out. They were a little longer, from the bend to the tips of the primaries, than her upper arm from shoulder to elbow. They looked even more magnificent in the cluttered tree
house than when he had seen them in the circus. The firelight gave a pearly glow to their fine, closely fitting feathers.

It took Miles a moment to find his voice. “They're
real
?” he croaked. “Where…where did they come from?”

“I think the real question,” said Lady Partridge, “is where did Little come from?” She smiled at Little, who had folded her wings so neatly against her back that they seemed almost to melt back into her skin. “We should very much like to hear your story, my dear,” she said. “I'm sure it would make the time fly!” She was overcome by a fit of laughter. Little and Miles smiled politely as she dabbed her eye with the corner of her dressing gown.

“I'm not really supposed to tell,” said Little hesitantly.

“You can trust us, dear,” said Lady Partridge. “We won't breathe a word to anyone.”

Little chewed her lip thoughtfully for a moment. “Well…,” she began slowly, “I suppose the trouble started when I followed Silverpoint down through a cloud tunnel.”

“Silverpoint?” echoed Lady Partridge.

“Silverpoint is a Storm Angel,” said Little. “He's older than me, perhaps a thousand winters old. I
used to watch him and the other longfeathers rolling thunderballs across the cloud fields and dodging one another's lightning. It was fun to watch, and a bit scary too. They were as quick as thought when they played, and the sound of their thunder made my head shake. Sometimes my hair would all stand up on end and you could hear it crackle, when they got too close.”

“Did you say a
thousand
years old?” interrupted Lady Partridge.

“That's what he told me.”

“Good gracious! Then how old are you, my child, if that's not a rude question?”

“I'm not sure,” said Little. “Silverpoint once said I had lived more than four hundred years, but the seasons come and go, and I've never had much time for counting.”

“Well,” said Lady Partridge, pushing her spectacles up on her nose. “I certainly hope I'm as sprightly as you when I'm four hundred years old,” and she chuckled to herself while Little continued her story.

“Silverpoint is the quickest of them all, and his lightning is strong and blue and always finds its mark. He would get angry if he saw me watching, because I wasn't supposed to be there. He told me
that someday I would get fried, and my song would never be heard, but I still used to watch whenever I could find a hiding place.

“One day I saw Silverpoint and Rumblejack heading for the cloud fields, so I followed them at a distance. They gathered up some thunderballs, and I hid myself to watch, but they didn't play in the usual way. Rumblejack began rolling the thunderballs in a circle. Round and round he rolled them, faster and faster, and a sort of whirlpool began to form in the clouds underneath. The noise was like a thousand giants roaring. The center of the cloud sank lower and lower, like a tunnel heading downward. All at once Rumblejack shouted something to Silverpoint, and flew off back the way he had come. I saw Silverpoint look around to see if anyone was watching, so I sank down lower. He didn't see me. Then all of a sudden, he took a long run and dived into the hole. Just like that.

“Without thinking for a moment I got up and ran after him. It was a silly thing to do, but I just wanted to see where he had gone, to see that he was all right. But as I got near to the tunnel the wind began to pull me. I tried to stop then, but the pull was too strong, and the tunnel swallowed me like a huge mouth.”

The coals shifted in the fireplace, sending a shower of sparks up the dark chimney. The ginger cat had returned to Lady Partridge's ample lap, and sat licking its paws among the red dragons on her dressing gown.

“What was it like in the tunnel?” asked Miles.

“It was white, and cold,” said Little. “I was sliding very fast, twisting and turning, until I didn't know up from down. I tried to slow myself, but there was nothing I could hold on to. The tunnel became darker, purply gray, and darker again until it was almost black, and I was going faster still. I couldn't see Silverpoint anymore. My shouts were lost in the sound of the thunder, and the wind was racing through the clouds and spinning me around as it passed. Then suddenly there was no cloud, and I was falling from the sky in a rain of hailstones. When lightning flashed I thought I saw Silverpoint far below me, but the hailstones were so thick I couldn't be sure.”

“Why didn't you use your wings, like in the circus?” asked Miles.

“I did!” said Little. “I opened my wings before I even left the tunnel, but the storm was too strong. I'm only a softwing, and in a hailstorm like that even a longfeather needs all his strength and skill.
The wind took me and threw me this way and that, and though I did slow my fall I couldn't control where I was going, not even if I could have seen what was below me.

“Just when I thought I would never stop falling, I saw the shapes of trees rushing up to meet me, and other shapes—a huge striped tent and a circle of trailers. I flapped with all my strength to slow myself down, then I fell into a big pile of hay in the back of a wagon. Right into the center I dived, and the hay covered me up completely. I didn't know whether anyone had seen me, so I lay as still as I could for a while, waiting to get my breath back. That hay was really itchy!” She wriggled her shoulders at the memory.

“The stalks of hay poked up my nose and in my ears, and the little seeds tickled me all over. I wriggled over to the side of the wagon and looked through the wooden slats to see if there was anyone around.” Little giggled. “To tell the truth, I didn't know what kind of monsters I might see. I'd never been to the Hard World before, but I had heard all sorts of stories.”

“Really? What kind of stories, my dear?” asked Lady Partridge. Her precariously piled hair had been gradually undoing itself, and looped in gray coils
over her ears and down her neck, but she didn't seem to notice. The ginger cat played with a long strand, biting the end and swatting it with his paws.

“Oh, all sorts. I heard that people have no wings, which was true, and that they might have two heads, or hairy faces. Bluehart, the Sleep Angel, told me that some people eat without stopping until their insides explode, and others walk like skeletons and eat seeds from cracks in the earth. The first man I saw, looking out from the hay, had a white face and a round red nose like a ball. His hair was purple and it stood up on end. He was beating a pig with a long stick.

“I couldn't understand what was going on. The pig was on four legs and had no hands to hold a stick of his own. He was covered with big green spots, but they were washing off in the rain. He was tied to the wheel of a wagon, and could do nothing but stand there and squeal. I could hardly even make out what he was saying.”

“Do you mean you can understand animals?” exclaimed Lady Partridge.

“Of course,” said Little. “I am a Song Angel, and every language is an echo of the One Song, even the sigh of the wind and the groan of the mountains. Everything speaks. You just have to know how to listen.

“Anyway, the poor pig was crying as the man beat him. I thought I heard him saying ‘not again,' then he said some things about the man that were so rude I would have laughed, if it wasn't so horrible. Nobody came to his help, so I had to do it myself. I climbed out of the hay (and anyway, I couldn't have stayed in there a second longer), and I told purple-head to stop at once.”

“That was very brave of you, my dear,” said Lady Partridge. “What did the man do?”

“He turned around and stared at me. He had one real eye. The other was made of glass and could see nothing. He turned back and gave the pig an extra-hard whack, then he walked over to me and raised his stick high in the air.

“Just at that moment there was a loud crack, and the man's purple hair burst into flames. He dropped the stick then, and he let out a yell. He began to run around in circles, flapping his hands at his head and shrieking. The pig was shouting, “My turn gone, your turn now! My turn gone, your turn now!” For a moment I thought the pig had somehow done it to him, then I saw Silverpoint standing there with his hands on his hips and thunder in his face, and I understood. The man with the flaming head tripped over an iron peg and fell straight into a big
bucket of paint. That put the fire out all right, but when he stood up his whole head was white and dripping, and he stepped straight into something the elephants had left behind. It was really very funny.” Little giggled at the memory.

“Silverpoint was angrier than I had ever seen him. I didn't know if he was more angry with me or with purple-head. He grabbed my arm, and there were sparks still coming from his fingertips that made my skin hurt. He said, ‘Come!' But before we could leave, a man stepped out of the shadow of the tent.”

“He was a small man, no taller than Silverpoint himself. You have met him, Miles, I think. He is called the Great Cortado. He spoke to us from behind his great mustache, and his words were kind. ‘That was a very impressive trick, and funny too' was what he said to Silverpoint. The purple-haired man had wiped the paint from his eyes, and he bent to pick up his stick, but then he met the Great Cortado's eye and he dropped it again, and slunk off with his head down.

“Silverpoint thanked the Great Cortado politely and told him that we really must be leaving, but Cortado insisted that we go into his trailer to have some supper and to dry off. Silverpoint tried to
refuse, but Cortado wouldn't take no for an answer. While he went to have supper made for us, we sat in his wagon and Silverpoint told me off for following him. He said that it was very foolish, but now that I was here, there were things that I must remember. He said that humans could not be trusted. I mean
he
said…” She hesitated.

“Don't worry, my dear,” said Lady Partridge. “In some cases I'm afraid he's right, but we're not all bad! What else did he say to you?”

“He said that people must never find out who we really were. He told me never to let anyone see my wings, and above all never ever to sing my real name.”

“Isn't Little your real name?” asked Miles.

Little laughed, and her laugh itself was like music. “Of course not,” she said. “Little is just the name that Silverpoint gave to me, when the Great Cortado asked who we were. It's far too short a name for a Song Angel!”

“You must excuse our ignorance, my dear, but what exactly is a Song Angel?” asked Lady Partridge.

“Song Angels are the voices of the One Song,” said Little.

“And what is the One Song?” asked Lady Partridge.

“It's hard to put into words,” said Little. “I've never had to explain it before.” She stared into the fire for a minute, a small frown on her face.

“The One Song is the music that runs at the heart of everything. It keeps the world spinning and the stars shining. Everything that exists, every insect and rock and river and flower, has a name in the One Song. Love and Sorrow, Laughter and Anger and Courage all have their places too, and they must be kept in harmony. When one of these strands is taken out from the rest, that is when bad things happen, like a rope beginning to unravel. Each Song Angel must learn a part of that song. We keep it alive and guard it, and in the end we must each add our own name to it so that the Song keeps growing and the world keeps moving along its path.”