Wormwood Gate (4 page)

Aisling's glare grew sharper. ‘Don't even joke about that!'

‘Ooh, did I touch a nerve? Are you a closet Belieber? Is that your dark secret?'

‘You know, I take it back. I think I prefer –'

‘Or One Direction, maybe?'

‘Ugh, God, no. I'd prefer that vapid electropop you were singing to that.'

‘Lady Gaga is not vapid!'

‘The fact that you can even say that with a straight face says terrible things about your experience of music.'

‘Oh, stop being such a snob. Anyway, I have lots of experience of music!'

‘Sure you do.'

‘I take requests! Name a song. Go on, name one!'

Aisling sighed heavily and crossed her arms across her chest. Julie stopped dancing and walked quietly at Aisling's side for a few paces before blurting out, ‘I just feel like singing, that's all.'

Aisling uncrossed her arms, and for a few more paces they walked in silence. Aisling wordlessly handed Julie back her phone, and Julie muttered ‘Thanks.'

‘Do you know anything by The Gossip?' said Aisling after a while. ‘Or Fall Out Boy? Or Dimmu Borgir?'

‘Who?'

‘Yeah, didn't think so.'

‘Well, obviously I have to know the song if I'm going to sing it. Come on, name a band I've heard of!'

Aisling gave her a look that, if it had been anyone else, Julie would have called “fond”. ‘It doesn't matter as long as you don't torture my eardrums.'

‘You're too closed-minded. You need to –' Julie fell silent. Something had occurred to her, and she grabbed Aisling's elbow.

‘Shh! Listen a minute.'

Aisling gave her a puzzled look but cocked her head to listen anyway. They stood like that, as still as statues, until Aisling pulled her elbow from Julie's hand and shrugged expansively.

‘What did you hear?' Aisling asked.

‘Nothing. Isn't it spooky?'

‘What do you …? Oh!'

Aisling glanced around, and Julie could tell she was noticing what she herself had noticed a moment before: that there were no people on the quays, either on their side of the river or the other side, either walking or in cars or on bikes. There were no sounds of traffic or conversation – no sounds at all except a faint crackling from the lamps and a fainter
zssh zssh
sound as the river lapped against the stone of the banks.

‘No boats on the river either,' Julie murmured, suddenly conscious of the silence surrounding them.

Aisling swallowed. ‘What say we put off going to the tower and see if we can find some people?' she whispered.

‘How do you suggest we do that?' Julie replied, also whispering. ‘The only living things we've seen so far have been the seals and the whatchamacallit … merhorse. And it said m-mortals –' Her tongue tripped on the word as if her brain had only just caught up to the implications it carried. She took a slow breath and carried on, ‘– it said mortals don't usually stay long here.'

‘Well, but … there've got to be other people around, right? Not “mortals”, whatever that means. We could knock on some doors. Those buildings can't all be empty, can they?'

Julie turned her back to the river and swept her gaze up and down the strip of buildings along the quay. They didn't have many windows, and the windows they had were mostly pretty small, but some of them were lit up, and there was smoke coming from a few of the chimneys.

‘All right,' she whispered. ‘But let's be prepared to … I don't know what … to run like mad if anything happens, OK?'

‘I'm prepared,' Aisling whispered. ‘I'm not going to let any kind of ghoulie or ghostie or long-leggedy beastie get me. And by the way, why are we whispering?'

‘I don't know,' said Julie in a normal voice. ‘It just seemed appropriate.'

Aisling grinned. ‘I'm glad you have a sense of atmosphere. That's going to make this adventure a lot more colourful.'

Julie turned her head to hide a smile; at the word ‘adventure', she had felt warmth blooming in her belly.

She strode out for the nearest building she could see with a lit window, not bothering to check whether Aisling was following, and stared long and hard at the door. It was large, wooden, dark with age and reinforced with strips of metal, like something from a medieval castle. It had a big black lock and what looked like a giant peephole. It also had a knocker in the shape of a merhorse. ‘Look, it's our friend,' she said and reached for the knocker.

‘I'm not your friend,' said the knocker before she could knock. ‘I've never even met yous.'

Julie jumped and let out a squeak.

‘Beg your pardon,' said Aisling gravely. ‘What my … companion here meant was that you resemble someone we spoke to recently.'

‘Ah, that'll be The Lungs. Though he doesn't like it when we call him that.'

‘Why not?' said Julie.

The merhorse-knocker laughed, a rattling, wheezy laugh that sounded like a handful of stones being tossed around in a metal bucket. ‘Says it's not right to call a craythur by a derogatory make-name. And I says to him, “Sure, what's derogatory about that? And isn't it true, besides, that you've a pair of lungs on you to beat the band?” Sure, he's the only one out of the lot of them that can be in the River and talking to someone on the quays. That's how I knew who yous meant.'

‘I see,' said Aisling. ‘Well, perhaps you can help us, if you're free?'

‘If I'm free? If I'm free, she says. I'm only a bleedin' door-knocker. What would I be doing if I wasn't free?'

‘You make an excellent point,' said Aisling, ‘but I didn't want to impose. Will you help us, then?'

‘If I can,' said the knocker, ‘but if yous want someone to carry your shopping, yous are out of luck.'

Aisling nodded, her face perfectly serious, and said, ‘I'll bear that in mind.'

Julie turned away and bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing.

‘Really,' Aisling went on, ‘all we wanted was to know – it's so quiet. There are no people around, apart from yourself, of course, and … em … “The Lungs”. Is something going on? Where is everybody?'

The knocker was quiet for a long moment. Julie felt the suppressed laughter fading away and she turned to face the door. The knocker's expression hadn't changed much – perhaps it couldn't change much, being made of metal – but she thought it looked a little sterner than before.

‘Yous are new,' it said at last. ‘Blow-ins! I should have guessed before. Well, no help for it now. The gates are closed and yous are stuck here until they open again, and that won't be soon.'

‘That's what The Lungs said,' said Julie. ‘But why isn't there anyone on the streets?'

‘Same reason the gates are closed,' said the knocker. ‘Because the queen said so. There's a curfew, see? And yous are out well past it, so it's as well that the likes of me don't give a tinker's cuss what the queen says, or yous'd feel the long arm of the law on yeer shoulders.'

‘The law?' said Aisling. ‘Would we be arrested?'

‘Arrested! Sure, that's not the half of it. Yous'd be sent to the Tower and chained up until the queen said to let yous go.' The knocker sniffed, a lengthy and very wet-sounding sniff that made Julie want to blow her nose. ‘This queen isn't like the Queen-that-was. She's a feckin' dragon if ever I saw one. Not a hair out of place, not a step out of line – all bite and no bark.'

Julie and Aisling exchanged a worried glance.

‘Do you think we could come in, then?' said Julie. ‘You wouldn't want us to get into trouble.'

The knocker gave them both a considering look. ‘If it was up to me, I'd have yous warming yereselves by the fire as soon as look at yous, but I'm only the knocker, you understand? I'll do me best, but it's the head of the house that opens this door and it's she'll close it – whichever side yous are on when she does. You follow me?'

Julie and Aisling nodded.

‘Well, as long as that's understood.' The knocker took a deep breath and lifted itself up into the air. ‘Mind yeer ears!' it cried and banged itself down on the door once, twice, three times, louder than any doorknocker Julie had ever heard.

Before the clang of the third knock had died down, the little door that Julie had thought of as a giant peephole had opened, and a grumpy wrinkled face had appeared at it.

‘What?' said the face.

‘Forgive us for intruding,' said Aisling, ‘but we're new to the City and we didn't realise there was a curfew. Would you be so kind as to shelter us so that we don't get in trouble?'

The face looked at her oddly. ‘Did you swallow a dictionary or what? There's no call to be talking like a nob round these parts. You want to come in?'

‘Um. Yes.'

‘Can yous pay rent?'

‘Eeeehm …'

Julie tugged at Aisling's coat-sleeve and whispered in her ear, ‘Say yes, for God's sake!'

‘But rent? Do you have enough money for that?'

‘We only need to stay for one night. And anyway, the important thing is to get indoors before we get caught.'

‘Good point.' Aisling smiled at the unsmiling face and said at a normal volume, ‘Of course we can pay rent! No problem whatsoever!'

The face snorted. ‘Well, yous might as well come in, then.'

The door to the peephole slammed shut and there was a tooth-clenching shriek and groan of metal scraping over metal, and then the door opened, revealing a dim entrance hall with a rush-strewn floor and a high cobwebby ceiling.

Julie swallowed at the sight of it. ‘After you,' she said, nudging Aisling.

Aisling rolled her eyes and strode in as if it were her own front door, and Julie followed meekly after.

There was no sign of the person who'd opened the door to them, but Julie could hear a low buzz of conversation coming from somewhere near. Aisling opened the nearest door and peered around it.

‘Staircase,' she said, closing it after her. ‘Maybe this one –'

A wave of delicious warmth rushed out of the room as she opened the next door, and Julie shivered; she'd got so used to being cold that she'd forgotten what warm felt like. The room beyond the door looked like a kitchen – an ancient kitchen, with a huge stone chimney and a fire roaring in the hearth and a great big oak table in the middle of the floor. There was a shelf above the hearth that had pots and pans hanging from it, and a small television perched incongruously on the kitchen table. The ceiling and walls were painted white, but all the corners were grey with cobwebs.

A gruff voice said, ‘Shut the door,' and Julie started and shut the door firmly behind her.

There were three men sitting by the hearth – two white and one black, all of them big and beefy looking. The black man was dressed in a dashiki and was sitting so close to the fire as to be almost on top of it, while the other two were further away, one of them (who had a greasy little moustache) reading a newspaper, and the other (who had heavy eyebrows and a low forehead) staring intently at the television, which seemed to be showing an episode of
Fair City
.

‘Hello,' said Julie.

‘Howaya,' said the man with the moustache, glancing up from his newspaper briefly. The heavy-browed man grunted and gave a little wave. The black man nodded distractedly, not looking away from the fire.

Aisling stood quite still, staring at the room and the three men. Julie rather liked the baffled look on her face. It wasn't a look she often wore in normal circumstances – not even in class, since she was one of those irritating people who always seemed to know everything about everything and got As without having to study.

Julie didn't know any more about their current situation than Aisling did, but Julie hadn't made a vocation out of knowing more than everyone around her, so it didn't bother her as much.

She walked up to the hearth and sat down beside the man with the moustache. ‘Mind if I join you?' she said.

‘Do as you like,' said the man, still not looking up from his paper. Julie tried to read as much of it as she could without drawing attention to herself. It didn't seem to be any of the papers she knew. It wasn't the
Metro Herald
or the
Evening Herald
; it wasn't the
Independent
or the
Times
or the
Examiner
, and it didn't look like a British paper either. She caught sight of a headline that read CURFEW EXTENDED TO DAYLIGHT HOURS – QUEEN ‘ADAMANT', and when the man turned to a new page she saw another one that seemed to say THREE FINAL GATES TO MORTAL LANDS CLOSED. She was just on the verge of asking the man if she could read the paper when he was finished with it when he did finish and immediately tossed it into the fire.

‘Same ould shite,' he muttered, spitting into the fire as it swallowed the paper, the blue flames licking along the front page and darkening the photograph of the grim-looking woman Julie took to be the queen.

The black man stirred, frowning. ‘There is no need to use bad language, Jo Maxi,' he said.

‘And you can go and shite yourself,' said Jo Maxi. ‘There's every need when the gates are closed and the streets are empty. Even if we were let go out, there'd be no point, with no fares looking for a scooch. Isn't that right?' he said, turning to Julie.

‘Em. Isn't what right?' she said.

‘That the streets are empty. Not a soul to be seen.'

‘Oh! Yes,' she said, wondering what a ‘scooch' was, and why these three were so unsurprised that she and Aisling had come in, and so incurious about who they were. ‘We just came from –'

‘Ssh!' said the man with the eyebrows, lifting a finger to his mouth. ‘Two minutes, please! Is nearly over!'

Jo Maxi and the black man exchanged long-suffering glances, and Julie looked up at the television. Now that she was up closer, she could see that the programme it was showing wasn't
Fair City
after all; it had the same kind of music and some of the actors looked familiar, but there was something different about it, though she couldn't put her finger on what until one of the characters drew a sword, kneeled down in front of another, and solemnly (and rather hammily) declared, ‘I pledge myself to you, and only you!'