‘Lord Arthur is a mortal,’ added Scamandros. He got out a small notepad and hastily scrawled something on it with a peacock-feather quill that dripped silver ink. ‘He needs the crab-armour and the ring on his finger for medical reasons. He should be given special consideration.’
Crosshaw took the proffered note, folded it, and tucked it under his cuff.
‘I’m still coming along,’ said Suzy.
‘No room for you in our elevator,’ snapped Crosshaw. ‘I suppose there’s nothing to stop you from petitioning Sir Thursday to re-enlist, if you actually are a reservist. Not something I’d do. But there’s nothing to stop you. Come along, Recruit Penhaligon. By the left, quick march!’
Crosshaw led off with his left foot, boot heels crashing on the marble floor as he marched towards the door. Arthur followed, doing his best to imitate the lieutenant’s marching style and keep in step.
He suddenly felt incredibly alone, abandoned by everyone and extremely uncertain about what the future held.
Was he really going to disappear into the Army for a hundred years?
Six
‘ARE THE CLOTHES satisfactory, Miss Leaf?’ Sneezer asked Leaf as she came out from getting changed behind the central bookshelf in the middle of the library.
‘I guess so,’ she answered. She looked down at the band T-shirt that featured a group she’d never heard of. From the tie-dyed swirl of mythological creatures, she guessed it was from about 1970. She had jeans on below that, but they were not exactly denim, though they looked like it, and the patch on the back pocket was a very sharply focused and impressive hologram featuring an animal that she was sure did not exist on Earth.
‘If you would like to do so, we can try to take a look at your destination before you go through,’ said Sneezer. He walked over to a row of bookshelves and pulled on the hanging rope at the end. A bell rang somewhere above Leaf’s head and the entire wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves rolled back and then slid away to show a seven-sided room of dark walnut paneling. In the centre of the room, seven tall grandfather clocks were arranged in a circle, facing one another.
‘What’s that noise?’ asked Leaf. She could feel as much as hear a weird low humming noise, but there was no ticking sound coming from the clocks.
‘The pendulums of the clocks,’ said Sneezer. ‘The heartbeat of Time. These are the Seven Dials, miss.’
‘I would like to have a look first,’ said Leaf. ‘Can you show me where the Skinless Boy is?’
‘We can but try,’ Sneezer replied. He tapped one long finger against his nose and smiled. In Monday’s service that would have been a ghastly gesture made with a dirty, long-nailed hand against a nose covered in boils, but now Sneezer’s hand was clean and manicured and his nose, though long and hooked, was healthy. Even the long white hair that grew from the back of his head was neat and tied back with a dark-blue velvet bow, matching his long, tailed coat. ‘Please stay out of the circle of clocks until I tell you otherwise, Miss Leaf.’
The butler took a deep breath, then quickly strode in and started moving the hands of the nearest clock. That done, he raced to the next, and then the next, adjusting the time on each face. After changing the seventh clock, he quickly left the circle.
‘We should see something in a moment,’ Sneezer explained. ‘Then I shall tweak the setting a little and send you back. I’m afraid it is clear that I am unable to return you any earlier than twenty-one minutes past ten on the Thursday after the Wednesday you left. Ah – it is beginning.’
A slowly spinning tornado of white fog began to swirl up out of the floor, getting slower and spreading wider as it rose. In a few seconds, it had completely filled the circle between the grandfather clocks. As Leaf watched, a silver sheen spread through the cloud, becoming so bright that she had to squint.
Then the silver paled and the cloud became transparent. Leaf found herself looking down on a hospital room, as if she were a fly on the ceiling. It was a typical hospital room with a single bed. Arthur was in the bed – or rather, Leaf reminded herself hastily, the Skinless Boy was in the bed. It looked exactly like Arthur, and she shivered, thinking that if she hadn’t been told, she would never have known it wasn’t her friend.
The next thing she saw was the clock on the wall. It read 10:25, which was comforting. If it was still only Thursday … The door opened and a doctor came in. Leaf started, because she hadn’t expected to hear anything. But the sound of the door opening and the doctor’s footsteps were as clear as if she really were looking down from the ceiling.