Chapter Seven: The Golden Cage
The black cats came out of the dark like water out of a broken dam.
There was no warning. One moment the night was quiet, and the key was turning in the lock, and the iron gate was swinging open on a slope of cool, silver grass. The next, the whole bridge behind them lit up with torches. Boots drummed on the stone. A hundred green eyes flashed in the firelight. Someone, somewhere, bellowed a single word, “Thieves!” and all at once the air was full of the clang of armor and the whistle of halberds.
“Run!” screamed Tom.
They ran. Codette would never be able to say how far. She remembered the gate slamming shut behind her, and the sudden, desperate scramble across the slope, and Phillip’s small white face tumbling beside her in the torchlight. She remembered a halberd whistling past her ear. She remembered the strangest thing of all: how quiet she felt, inside, as though all the terror had drained out of her and left behind a sort of high, clear, ringing calm.
And then a wall of black fur and gold plate rose up in front of her, and a gloved paw closed on the back of her hood.
She spun. She kicked. She struck something hard, and heard a muffled curse. Beside her, Tom was fighting like a tornado, flinging soldiers left and right, roaring, “Get off! Get off her! Get off!” but there were dozens of them, and they were quick and silent and well trained, and for every one Tom tossed away, two more rose in his place. Phillip had gone down under a pile of them. She could hear him squeaking.
Something hit the back of her knees. She fell. A net came down over her head, heavy and rough, smelling of tar, and a dozen paws seized her arms and wrenched them behind her back.
“Secure them,” said a flat voice. “All three. His Majesty will want to see this.”
His Majesty did want to see it.
He was waiting for them in the throne room, in a nightgown of purple silk, with his crown askew and his face puffed from sleep. A thousand candles had been lit. The great hall flickered like the inside of a lantern. The court had been roused from their beds, and had arranged themselves in long, glittering rows on either side of the aisle, in dressing gowns and nightcaps, murmuring behind their fans. And on a velvet stool at the foot of the dais, in a small scarlet jerkin, with a bell on his cap and a gold chain at his throat, sat a very small, very white cat, staring at his own paws.
He didn’t look up as they were dragged in.
Codette saw him anyway. She saw him, and something twisted in her chest. His face was grey. He sat very still. A single bell trembled on the edge of his cap, jingling faintly, and he put up one paw and caught it and held it quiet.
“Well,” said His Majesty.
He had stood. He descended the golden steps, one by one, with the tread of an executioner, until he stood before the three of them in their chains, towering over them like a great plush mountain. His eyes were wide awake now. They were cold, and bright, and green as poison.
“I confess I’m deeply disappointed,” he said. “I had such hopes. I thought you were the sort of guests who understood a gentlemen’s agreement. I thought, ‘Here are three charming, resourceful young cats. Surely they’ll honor a wager.’ And instead—” He sighed. “You creep out. At night. Through a servants’ gate. Having stolen a key.”
“We were within our rights,” said Phillip.
Everyone turned.
He was standing — or rather kneeling, with his paws bound behind him — at the end of the row, with one lens of his spectacles cracked and a long bruise coming up on his cheek. His whole body was shaking. But his voice, when it came, was clear and level.
“We were within our rights,” he repeated. “The agreement stated three days. To present an answer on the morning of the fourth. It isn’t the fourth. It’s the night of the third. We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Haven’t you?”
“The terms said nothing about confinement. Nothing about remaining on the premises. We were free to — to take the air.”
“By stealing a key?”
“By borrowing it.”
His Majesty stared. A slow, incredulous smile spread over his face. “Borrowing it,” he said. “How exquisitely legal. You really are a scholar, aren’t you?”
“I am,” said Phillip.
“Do you know, I think I might actually enjoy this.” His Majesty sank back, with a creak of velvet, onto his throne. “Very well. Very well. We shall have it by the book. Three days. The morning of the fourth. It is, I believe, about five hours until dawn.” He examined his claws. “Would you like to use them? To tell me your answer?”
“I’d like to tell you now.”
“Phillip,” said Tom hoarsely.
“I’d like to tell you now,” said Phillip.
The court went very still.
“Now?” said His Majesty, delighted. “At this hour? In your nightclothes? With chains on?” He chuckled. “How gallant. Very well, little scholar. Tell me. What can build an entire kingdom without brick or stone, destroy a friendship with a single word, and is the one thing its owner can never see with the naked eye?”
“Trust,” said Phillip.
Silence.
It fell on the great hall like snow. The fans stopped. A candle guttered. His Majesty’s smile didn’t change, exactly. But something behind it shifted, and went still.
“Trust,” he said.
“Trust.” Phillip’s voice shook, but he kept going. “I’ve been working on it for three days. I kept looking for a thing. A quality. A virtue. Honor, reputation, wit. I couldn’t find one that fit all three. And then, tonight, in the kitchens, I realized I was looking at it backward.” He drew a breath. “You can’t build a kingdom out of brick and stone alone. Not really. A kingdom is people. It’s a thousand strangers deciding to live under one roof and believe in each other. The farmer trusts the soldier to guard the wall. The soldier trusts the king to pay his wages. It’s invisible. But it holds every stone in the wall together.”
“Go on,” said His Majesty softly.
“It can be destroyed in a single word. A lie. A betrayal. One sentence. I’ve seen it. I saw it in the desert. I—” His eyes flicked, very briefly, to Codette. “I almost did it myself. And I’ll never forgive myself. A single word, and everything breaks.” He swallowed. “And you can’t see your own. That’s the last clue. It’s the one thing its owner can never see. You don’t know how much trust you’ve earned until you need it. You can’t hold it up to a mirror. You can’t weigh it. You only find out when you step off a ledge, and somebody’s there to catch you.”
His voice broke.
“We found out, in the Marsh,” he said. “That’s all. That’s my answer. I got it from a girl I’d turned away. She was the first one to teach me. It’s trust.”
The hall was perfectly silent.
Then His Majesty began, very slowly, to clap.
“Bravo,” he said. “Bravo. A truly moving speech. I’m almost in tears.” He wiped one eye with a silk handkerchief. “Do you know, in forty-two years on this throne, nobody has ever answered that riddle correctly?”
“Then we’ve won,” said Phillip.
“Have you?”
“The terms were clear. You said we’d walk out of your north gate, unhindered. And that you’d send us on our way with a—”
“Ah,” said His Majesty. “That.”
He leaned forward. His smile widened.
“Do you know,” he said, “I think I’ve changed my mind.”
A shocked murmur rippled through the court.
“I beg your pardon?” said Phillip, faintly.
“The wager. I find I don’t care for it. I find, upon reflection, that I would much rather not.” He laughed, a gentle, bubbling, utterly shameless laugh. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, little scholar. It’s perfectly within my rights. I am the king. A king’s word is what he says it is, at any given moment. That is rather the point.”
“You gave your word,” said Tom.
“I gave it. And now I’ve taken it back. Such is the privilege of power.” He rose from the throne. “You see, my dears, I have rather taken a liking to my new staff. You, big fellow, would make a splendid door-stop. And you, little scholar, I’d put in the library. Though I’m afraid I’ll have to take your spectacles. They’re so dreadfully educated.” He turned. His eyes landed on Codette. They lingered there, bright and cool and amused. “And you, my funny southern girl. With your funny ears.”
Her blood went cold.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” said His Majesty softly, “about those.”
“Majesty,” said Smile.
It was the first thing he’d said all night. He had risen from his stool. He stood at the foot of the dais with his paws clasped, and his face was blank, perfectly blank, the face of a cat who has put every feeling in the world into a box and shut the lid. “Your Majesty. If I may. I’d — I’d advise against anything hasty. They’re only — they’re just a bunch of kids. There’s no need to—”
“Do hush, darling.”
“They’ve done nothing—”
“They’ve lied to me. They’ve stolen from me. And in the case of this little one,” said His Majesty, lifting one claw, with infinite delicacy, toward Codette’s hood, “I rather suspect they’ve been lying rather more than that.”
“Please—”
“I said hush.” His voice was suddenly, terribly, quiet. “You are a jester, Smile. A very good one. I’d hate to see you waste your talent. Sit down.”
Smile sat.
It happened so fast she almost missed it. One moment he stood at the foot of the dais, rigid, a hair’s breadth from speaking. The next he had folded back onto his stool, with his head down, his shoulders shaking, his eyes fixed on the floor.
Something inside Codette, something small and bright and stubborn, went out.
“Take them to the pond,” said His Majesty.
The Royal Pond lay at the bottom of the castle’s south garden, beyond a long, curving, rose-lined walk. It was shaped like a kidney. It was edged in white marble and lined with a hundred bronze lamps. In the midst of it stood a little island with a stone gazebo, where, on summer evenings, the court took tea.
It was also home to eleven crocodiles.
They lay along the bank in a long, sleeping, scaly row, each as thick as a log and twice as long as Codette. The morning sun gleamed on their plated backs. As the guards marched the prisoners down the terrace steps, one great yellow eye cracked open and followed them lazily across the lawn.
“Oh no,” whispered Phillip. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”
“Stay calm,” said Tom, through his teeth.
“I am calm! I’m being extremely calm! I’m — Tom, they’re looking at us!”
“I know.”
“They’re smiling!”
“That’s just how their faces are.”
The soldiers drove them out onto a long wooden jetty that projected over the water. At the end of it, a plank had been laid across two trestles, jutting out like a diving board over the deepest, blackest part of the pond. The guards halted. Someone cut the ropes at their wrists. Someone else, politely, almost kindly, pulled off Codette’s net.
Behind them, up on the broad terrace, the court had assembled.
They had brought chairs. They had brought cushions, and parasols, and silver trays of tea cakes. They sat in long rows along the balustrade, murmuring behind their fans, in their silks and powdered wigs, looking down at the scene below with the bright, expectant faces of people at the theater. In the center, in a great gilded armchair, with a rug over his knees and a footman fanning his face, sat His Majesty. At his feet, on a velvet cushion, with his paws folded in his lap and his eyes on the ground, sat a very small white cat.
Codette looked up at him.
Across forty yards of lawn, over the heads of two hundred courtiers, he lifted his head.
For a second, just a second, their eyes met.
I’m sorry, she mouthed.
His face did something strange.
“Shall we begin?” called His Majesty, in a pleasant voice. “I don’t wish to rush anyone. But the crocodiles have not had their breakfast.”
A ripple of laughter ran along the terrace.
“Last words?” said the captain of the guard, in a flat, bored tone, stepping up behind Tom.
“Yes,” said Tom. He drew himself up. His fur was matted, his ear torn, a long line of scratches ran down his cheek. But his head was high, and his chin was steady, and in his big amber eyes there was an odd, calm, almost peaceful light. “I’d like to say, for the record, that I regret nothing.”
“Very touching.”
“Except the stile.”
“The what?”
“Never mind.” He turned his head. “Phillip?”
“I’d like it noted,” said Phillip, with dignity, “that I got the answer right.”
“Noted,” said the captain.
“I’d also like it noted that this is extremely unfair.”
“Noted.”
“And that I’m terribly, terribly scared.”
“Noted.”
“Codette?” said Tom, gently.
She hadn’t spoken. She stood at the end of the plank with her hands clasped in front of her and her heart going like a trip-hammer in her chest. Below her, the black water lapped quietly against the pilings. Something long and pale slid by under the surface, as lazy as a log.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I got you into this. If I hadn’t — if I’d just — I should have gone around. I should never have—”
“Stop,” said Tom.
“I—”
“Codette. Stop.” He took her hand in one huge, warm paw. “You pulled me out of a bush. You carried my best friend through a storm. You brought us back together. If I had it all to do over—” His voice cracked. “I’d do every second of it again.”
“Me too,” said Phillip, and took her other hand.
She couldn’t speak. She just held on to them, hard, one on each side, three small figures at the end of a plank, over a pond full of crocodiles, with the whole court watching from the terrace and the sun coming up gold across the water.
“Right,” said the captain. “That’s enough. Let’s get on with it.”
A heavy paw settled between her shoulder blades.
And at that moment, somewhere up on the terrace, a small, clear, silvery sound rang out across the lawn: the jingle of a bell.
It was a very small sound.
It was so small, in fact, that almost nobody noticed. It was the kind of sound that, in the hush of a crowd holding its breath, might have been a cat shifting on a cushion. But Codette heard it. She heard it as she’d have heard her own name, calling out across a field.
She turned her head.
Smile had stood up.
He stood in the middle of the terrace, in front of the great gilded chair, facing out over the lawn, with his paws at his sides and his tail hanging motionless. He wasn’t looking at the crowd. He wasn’t looking at the king. He was looking down the long green slope, past the roses, past the guards, at the three small figures on the end of the plank. And on his face, as she watched, a strange stillness came: the stillness of a cat who has finally made up his mind.
Don’t, she thought. Don’t, don’t, please don’t—
Smile reached up and took off his cap.
He set it carefully on the cushion. He unfastened the little gold chain at his throat, and laid that down beside it. The sun caught the links and sent a flash of light across the stones. He undid the buttons of his scarlet jerkin, one by one, and slid it from his shoulders, and folded it. And then, with great care, he reached inside the lining, and drew out two small, plump, grey-green cloth bags, each about the size of a hen’s egg.
“Smile?” said His Majesty, mildly. “What are you doing, my dear?”
“Resigning,” said Smile.
He opened the neck of the first bag.
“I’d like to thank you for the position,” he said. “The pay was excellent. The cake was marvelous. I’ve never slept so well in my life. But I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m—” He paused, as if searching for the right word. “Not cut out for it.”
“Smile,” said His Majesty, rising slowly from the chair. “Put that down.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“Guards.”
“I wouldn’t breathe in,” said Smile, very pleasantly, “if I were you.”
He threw both bags into the air.
They burst. Of course they burst, thought Codette, dazed. She’d seen the powder once, in a dim corner of a windmill, a pinch of dried green dust in a pouch at his belt. But she hadn’t understood. She’d never seen it done right. The bags exploded in a great, billowing, silver-green cloud that rolled across the terrace like a wave. It hit the front row of courtiers. It hit the guards. It hit His Majesty full in the face.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, from somewhere to the left, a single, tiny, high-pitched sound:
“Ah — ah — ah — choooo!”
It was a very small sneeze. It was swiftly answered by a larger one. And then a third, and a fourth, and then, all at once, from every side of the terrace, a thunderous, rolling, helpless chorus of sneezes: ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO! Wigs flew. Fans spun. A footman dropped a tray of cakes. The captain of the guard doubled over, streaming at the eyes, clutching his halberd like a crutch. Two of his lieutenants collided, bounced off one another, and tumbled together down the steps.
“Seize — ach — seize them! ACHOO! Seize — seize — oh, bother — ACHOO!”
“Catnip dust,” said Smile cheerfully, to nobody in particular. “With a pinch of pepper-moss. Sneezing powder. A little nomad’s trick. I’d advise everyone to cover their faces.” He tugged his red scarf up over his own. “Bit late now, of course.”
And he began to run.
He ran down the steps three at a time. He leapt a flower bed. He vaulted a stone bench, tore across the lawn, and plowed through a pair of dazed black guards like a ball through skittles. He had unslung a coil of thick braided rope from somewhere around his waist, and as he ran he swung it, in great, whistling circles, around his head.
“Codette!” he shouted. “Tom! Phillip! DOWN!”
They dropped.
The rope sailed over their heads, hissed through the air, and wrapped itself around the nearest bronze lamp-post with a clang. Smile hit the jetty at a full sprint, ran the length of it in six long bounds, and slid into the three of them in a skid of fur. Without breaking his stride, he seized Codette by the wrist.
“Come on!”
“Smile—”
“Move!”
She moved.
The captain was recovering. He staggered upright, one eye streaming, bellowing orders through a muffled, honking, sneeze-choked snarl. A dozen black cats were already staggering toward them down the jetty. Smile’s paw closed on her hand, hard and warm and slightly rough. He dragged her up off the plank, and spun, and kicked backward at a looming black shape, and she felt the whole length of the dock tilt under their feet.
“Tom!” he yelled. “Phillip! Behind me! Stay low!”
“We’re coming!” Tom bellowed. He had the captain by the scruff of the neck, and was holding him at arm’s length, like a naughty kitten. “I’m just — hold on — sorry!” He tossed the captain, quite gently, into the pond. A mighty splash, a chorus of hungry grunts, and a very rapid, very wet scramble for the bank. “Not sorry!”
“That’s very much a thing you can’t do!” shrieked Phillip.
“I just did!”
“Move!”
The soldiers were almost on them.
Smile skidded to a halt at the end of the jetty. Ahead, the pond lay black and glassy. To the left, a long line of crocodiles had begun to stir, a heave and rumble of green backs, a sudden churning of the water. To the right, at the very edge of the bank, stood a large stone urn on a plinth, three feet across, overflowing with pale white blossoms.
Moon-bells. Hundreds of them. They shimmered faintly in the morning light.
“Phillip!” shouted Smile. “Flowers!”
“What?!”
“Glow-flowers! The big pot! Do you remember the Marsh?!”
Phillip’s face lit up. “Oh! Oh, you clever—”
“Help me push!”
They pushed. Tom threw his massive shoulder against the urn. Smile and Phillip and Codette threw theirs beside him. For a second, it didn’t budge. Then it groaned, and rocked, and tipped, and toppled, in a long, slow, majestic arc, off its plinth and into the pond.
It hit the water with a tremendous splash.
The blossoms burst.
They exploded, all at once, like a hundred camera flashes going off underwater, in a blinding, silver-white, unearthly flare that lit up the pond from bank to bank. For a split second, every crocodile in the water was frozen in the glare, with mouths open and eyes stretched wide, a long row of shocked and startled reptiles caught in the act. Then, as one, they gave a great, bubbling squeal of alarm, spun, and dived. The water churned. A dozen long tails slapped the surface. And the whole pond, a moment ago a pit of teeth, was suddenly, utterly, perfectly empty.
“Now,” said Smile.
“What?” said Codette.
“Now! Jump!”
“Into the pond?!”
“Do you want to get caught?!”
“I want to— but—”
“Trust me!”
She did.
It was the strangest feeling. It rose in her chest, bright and sudden and sure, like the answer to a riddle. She took a breath and let go of everything: her fear, her doubt, her whole careful, anxious, fragile idea of herself. She leapt. Smile leapt beside her. Tom came after, with a roar, and Phillip with a squeak, and the four of them hit the dark water in a spray of white foam, and it closed over her head, warm and green and silent as a hand.
They surfaced in the shallows on the far side.
“Go! Go! Go! Run!” roared Tom, hauling Phillip out by the scruff. “Through the reeds! Move!”
They ran.
They ran through the reeds. They ran through a stand of dripping willows and a field of tall wet grass. They ran up a long, steep, wooded slope behind the castle, with the sounds of pursuit rising and falling behind them, the shouts, the clatter of armor, the long, mournful, cavernous boom of the great bell. Codette’s lungs were on fire. Her sodden hoodie dragged at her shoulders. Her bandaged ankle had begun, very faintly, to scream. But there was a hand in hers, small and wet and rough, pulling her on, and she didn’t let go.
At the top of the slope, the trees fell away.
Ahead of them lay a narrow green clearing, perhaps a hundred feet across. And at the far side of it stood a door.
It was a very small door. It was set into a high, ancient, ivy-choked wall of grey stone, at the end of a rough footpath, and it stood slightly ajar. Beyond it lay only mist: a thick, silver, drifting haze, in which Codette could just make out the shapes of dark pines, and the long, rising curve of a mountainside, vanishing upward into cloud.
“There!” gasped Smile. “There! That’s the boundary! Get through! Get through the door!”
“What happens—”
“Nobody follows!” He was dragging her toward it, half-staggering, half-flying. “They can’t! Not the soldiers, not His Majesty, not any of them! The Valley ends at that door! Everyone knows! Nobody goes past it! Nobody!”
“Why not?!”
“Because they’re afraid!”
They hit the door in a tangle of limbs. Tom got there first and hurled himself through, followed by Phillip, rolling. Smile shoved Codette after them, hard, and then turned, in the very mouth of the doorway, and looked back.
The soldiers had come out of the trees.
There were fifty of them. A hundred. They poured across the clearing in a great black river, with halberds raised and plumes streaming, and at their head, running with a heavy, ponderous, panting tread, in a nightgown and one slipper, with his crown in his hand, came His Majesty himself.
“Stop them!” he screamed. “Stop them! Stop them! Stop them at once! I order it! I command it!”
They didn’t stop.
But they slowed.
Twenty yards from the door, the captain put up a hand, and the whole river of black fur came to a ragged, shuddering halt. It was a strange sight. A hundred cats in a line, shoulder to shoulder, with their weapons lifted and their breath steaming, staring at a thin line of white pebbles that ran across the grass in front of the wall. They stood there, trembling. Nobody put a foot across it. Nobody said a word.
“Go on!” screamed His Majesty. “Go on, you cowards! What are you waiting for?!”
“Sire,” said the captain, in a hoarse, rough voice. “Sire, we can’t.”
“You can!”
“No one’s ever come back.”
“I don’t care!”
“Sire — it’s the mountain.”
His Majesty stopped.
For a long, strange moment, he stood there at the edge of the white line, with his great belly heaving and his jowls quivering, staring at the silver mist beyond the door. His face was working. A hundred feelings crossed it, rage, and greed, and something else, something older. Codette caught her breath. In the cold gray light, for just a heartbeat, he didn’t look like a king at all. He looked like a very large, very frightened, very old cat who had spent his whole life piling up gold, and had never once dared to go and see what was on the other side of the wall.
“Smile!” he cried.
It was a ragged, strangled, extraordinary sound. It was nothing like the rich, rolling, honey-sweet voice of the throne room.
“Come back! Smile! My darling! My dearest boy! I’ll give you everything! The gold! The gems! The — the—” His voice broke. “I’ll make you Chancellor! I’ll make you Prince! I’ll give you the whole Valley! Please! You can have the — the crown! Everything! Just come back!”
Smile stood very still in the doorway.
The mist drifted around him. His tail hung low. A long, thin, glittering strand of pond-weed was caught in one ear. He was soaked to the skin, bareheaded, jerkinless, empty-pawed, shivering a little in the cold. Everything he owned in the world was on his back, and in a pouch at his belt, and it wasn’t very much.
He looked at the king for a long moment.
“No, thank you, Majesty,” he said gently.
“But why?”
“Because I’d never really have had it,” said Smile. “Not the real thing. You can’t buy that. You know you can’t. You’ve tried.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I truly am. You were very kind to me, in your way. I’ll remember the cake.”
“I — I’ll — I’ll—”
“Goodbye, Your Majesty.”
He turned his back, and closed the little gray door.
The silence on the other side was enormous.
They stood in a narrow, mossy, mist-hung glade at the foot of the mountain, in a ring of dark pines. Water dripped. Somewhere far above them, a single bird called, and fell silent. It was bitterly cold. Codette’s teeth were chattering. Tom and Phillip had collapsed against a boulder, panting, half-laughing, half-sobbing, clinging to one another like survivors of a shipwreck.
Smile stood with his back to the door, and his head bowed, and his paws hanging loose.
“You left them,” said Phillip, in a thin, wondering voice. “You left it. All of it. The gold chain. The bed. The forty—”
“Forty-one,” said Smile, faintly. “He rounded up.”
“You gave up forty-one coins!”
“I gave up a great deal more than that,” said Smile. “It was a lot of cake.”
“But why?”
He didn’t answer straight away. He raised his head, slowly, and looked at the three of them: a tall, battered, bleeding tabby with a torn ear; a tiny, shivering, black-and-white scholar with one cracked lens; and a girl in a ruined yellow hoodie, with wet golden curls plastered across her forehead and her ears bare to the cold, staring at him with an expression he couldn’t have named if he’d tried.
He smiled. It was not the old smile. It wasn’t the bright, brittle, charming one he used on kings and creditors. It was something smaller, and stranger, and much warmer, a smile with no edges at all.
“Coins,” he said, “can always be earned.”
Nobody spoke.
“I’ve earned them before. I’ll earn them again. I’m quite good at it. I’ve been scrabbling for scraps my whole life, and I’m not ashamed of it, and one day, I daresay, I’ll have a mountain.” He drew a long breath. “But friends like you — lunatics, the lot of you, with your stiles and your riddles and your ridiculous notions about trust — I’ll only ever get one of.”
“Smile,” said Codette.
“I’d rather be poor,” said Smile, “on the road to Mount Banana, with three idiots and a limp, than rich in a golden cage with a crown on my head and nobody who’d come back for me.” His voice cracked. “I’ve had the cage. It’s very pretty. It’s a terrible place to be alone.”
Codette crossed the clearing in four strides.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. She just put her arms around his neck, and he put his around hers, and they stood there in the cold, in the silver mist, wet and shaking and breathless, holding each other as tightly as two people can.
“You came back,” she whispered.
“Of course I came back.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I know.” His chin was against her shoulder. His voice was muffled in her scarf. “But I wanted to. That’s the whole point. I wanted to.”
Behind them, with great tact, Tom coughed.
“Right,” he said, loudly. “Well. I think I’ll just — check the perimeter. Phillip. Come and check the perimeter.”
“The perimeter’s fine,” said Phillip.
“I think it needs checking.”
“I’m very comfortable.”
“Phillip.”
“Oh,” said Phillip. “Oh. Yes. Perimeter. Quite right.”
They shuffled off between the trees. Codette didn’t let go. Smile didn’t either. It occurred to her, dimly, that his hand was still wrapped around hers: a hand she’d been holding, without quite noticing, ever since the pond. She ought to have let go by now. She knew she should. She could feel his heartbeat in his fingers, quick and light, like a bird’s.
Neither of them moved.
“You’re still—” said Smile, at last.
“I know.”
“We’re not being chased.”
“I know.”
“I think we’re supposed to let go.”
“I know,” said Codette. She tightened her grip. “I don’t want to.”
He made a small, strangled noise.
“Right,” he said hoarsely. “Good. That’s — that’s also acceptable. That’s within the terms.”
They camped that night at the foot of the mountain.
It was a quiet camp. There was no fire; Phillip said it was unwise. They lay in a ring on a bed of pine needles, wrapped in whatever they had, listening to the silence. Above the black trees, far away, a thin, pale, glittering light shone down through a gap in the mist. It lit the whole slope of Mount Banana like a ghost.
It was bigger than she’d imagined. It rose up and up and up, a vast, dark, crooked mountain, rimmed with cloud, with a crown of silver at the very top. Strange fruits hung glowing on its flanks, pale yellow, curved, faintly luminous. On the still air, she thought she could hear, very faintly, a sound that might have been laughter.
Smile sat beside her at the edge of the glade, with his knees drawn up and his chin on his arms.
“It’s a long way,” he said.
“It is.”
“Nobody’s ever come back.”
“I know.”
“We could still turn around.”
“We could.”
“Would you?”
“No.”
“No,” said Smile. He smiled to himself, a little crookedly. “I didn’t think so.”
For a while, neither of them spoke. The wind sighed through the pines. Somewhere in the dark, Tom was snoring, and Phillip was murmuring in his sleep, something that sounded suspiciously like trust, trust, trust.
“Codette,” said Smile.
“Mm?”
“If you get back.”
She went still.
“If you do. If you get home. If the Witch is real, and she opens the door, and you go through it, and it’s — it’s all just a place you remember.” He was looking at the mountain, not at her. His voice was very quiet. “I’d like you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“Don’t forget me.”
The wind stilled. A single pale blossom drifted down from the branches overhead, and landed in her lap.
“I’m not going to forget you,” said Codette.
“People do. It’s very natural. You go back to your own life, and your family, and your school, and you think, what a strange dream, and a year goes by, and then five, and then you’re old, and one day you see a white cat in the street, and you think, hang on, wasn’t there—”
“Smile.”
“—and you can’t quite remember the name.”
“Smile.”
He stopped.
She turned. She took his face in both her hands, gently, and turned it toward her, and looked straight into his eyes, those wide, golden, uncertain eyes, so full of old, silent, patient fear.
“I will never forget you,” said Codette. “Not as long as I live. Not if I’m a hundred years old. Not if I go home and never come back.” She said it slowly, and clearly, as if she were setting it in stone. “I’ll remember the windmill. I’ll remember the scarf. I’ll remember a stupid, wonderful, brave cat who carried me through a swamp and gave up a golden palace and never once let go of my hand. I’ll remember all of it. Every single day.”
His eyes were wet.
“Promise?” he said, in a voice like a child’s.
“I promise.”
He let out a long, shaky breath. He closed his eyes. And then, very slowly, as though he’d been waiting his whole life to do it, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.
They stayed like that for a long time, under the dark pines, beneath the silver light of the mountain.
At last Smile drew back. He wiped his eyes. He gave a small, damp, wobbly laugh, and said, in something very like his old voice, “Well. That’s settled. Now. I think we ought to get some sleep. We’ve got a mountain to climb tomorrow, and I’m told the stairs are dreadful.”
“I’ll bet,” said Codette.
She lay down beside him in the pine needles. After a moment, so softly she could almost have imagined it, she felt a warm, light, familiar weight settle over her wrist.
His tail.
She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She just closed her eyes, and let it stay, and listened to the silence of the great dark mountain rising above them, vast and strange and shining, with the whole of its mystery still waiting at the top.
Far, far above, in the clouds, someone began to laugh.
END OF PART ONE
Next: Mount Banana.