‘Hmmph,’ said Suzy. ‘Back into the cold, in other words.’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Arthur. ‘Back into the cold.’
Nine
LEAF SHIVERED AS the sleepwalkers slid off their beds and formed a line in obedience to Harrison’s orders. There was something awful and creepy about their unseeing, half-open eyes and their floppy movements. Almost as if they were like perfect string puppet representations of humans, only with invisible strings.
‘Follow me!’ called out Harrison, and he walked to the far door. Lowering the silver cone, he added in his own weak voice, ‘You too, Leaf! Bring up the rear.’
‘What if I don’t?’ Leaf asked rebelliously. She tried to project a more aggressive tone than she felt, but she sounded weak and childish, even to herself.
‘I can make the sleepers bring you,’ said Harrison. ‘Though they would hurt themselves in the process. Please, it would be easier for everyone if you just come along.’
‘I’m not helping you take these people to get killed,’ said Leaf.
‘They don’t get killed,’ said Harrison, but he didn’t look at Leaf when he spoke. ‘They’ll still be alive at the end of the day. After She’s finished with them. Come on! We’ll both get punished if we’re late.’
‘I’m not cooperating,’ said Leaf. ‘But I want to see what’s outside, so I guess I’ll come along.’
‘You’ll learn,’ said Harrison sourly. He slid back the two bolts securing the outside door and then wrestled with the long handle, the sound of a large and stiff lock clicking back inside. Then he pushed the door open, using his shoulder and grunting with the effort, as the door was several inches thick and the outer face was lined with steel plate.
Purple light streamed in, casting an unattractive glow over the faces of Harrison and the sleepers. Leaf slitted her eyes, not because it was too bright, just that the colour was too intense, and it made her feel slightly ill.
It was warmer out in the purple sunlight, and a light breeze ruffled Leaf’s hair, bringing with it a strange, slightly earthy scent, reminiscent of forests she’d walked in previously but overlaid with something like an exotic spice.
There was smooth grey rock underfoot, whorled in patterns to show it had once been lava, long cooled. The rock shelved down gently to the lake in the middle, which looked like normal water, though it too was tinged purple by the light.
Leaf looked around and saw that the crater wall reached up three or four hundred feet. It was dotted with windows of various sizes and there were some doors high up as well, with suspended walkways hugging the cliff between them. Farther around the crater, probably where the twelve would be on the notional clock-face scheme, there was a broad iron balcony just below where the dome began. A spiral stair of red wrought iron ran down from the balcony all the way to the crater floor.
‘Hurry up!’ called Harrison. He was leading the sleepers down to the lakeshore and they had got thirty or forty yards ahead while Leaf stared up at the crater walls and the dome.
Leaf ignored him and continued to look around. Apart from the door they had come out, there were at least a dozen crater-level doors spaced around the rim. But they would probably all lead back into Lady Friday’s complex, and so offered nothing useful. Or worse, they might lead to the jungle beyond the mountain. After encountering the walking seedpod, Leaf totally believed Milka that she didn’t want to go there.
She also didn’t want to see what was going to happen to the sleepers, but there didn’t appear to be any alternative. The crater was all featureless grey stone, without an outcrop or anything to hide behind. Unless she could breathe underwater, the lake was out.
‘Come on!’ Harrison was down at the lakeshore now, ordering the sleepers to stand in a line facing the water. Or, as Leaf now saw, facing a slim pillar of darker stone that rose up in the very centre of the lake, and so was also in the very centre of the crater. It was about twenty feet wide at the water and ended in a flat top about four feet wide some fifteen feet above the level of the lake.
Leaf started heading over to Harrison, but she still kept looking for somewhere to hide. As she walked, she noticed movement up on the balcony at the twelve o’clock position. Several Denizens were flexing their wings – wings that were not discoloured by the purple sunlight. They were bright yellow, the colour of daisy heads. Leaf watched four of them launch from the balcony. They carried a chair suspended on ropes beneath them, a silver chair with a high, curving back that looked almost like a throne.
A picnic throne, Leaf thought. And no points for guessing who that’s for …