'This is it,' he whispered as he opened the cover. With trembling fingers, he turned the pages, impatient to know what the book would show him.
Nothing. The pages were blank — apart from the patch of darkness in the middle of the book, where the Person in Shadow's warning still haunted him with its three terrifying words.
'I am watching,' read Duck disappointedly. She sat back on her heels and sighed. 'Nothing's changed. What are we going to do now?'
Blake shook his head, but remained silent. Something else had appeared on the page in front of him, something his sister couldn't see. He nearly dropped the book.
The Sun must look the Shadow in the Eye
The forfeit the Book lest one Half die.
The Lesion of Darkness cannot be healed
Until, with Child's Blood, the Whole is sealed.
These are the Words of Endymion Spring.
Bring only the Insight the Inside brings.
Two words, in particular, grabbed his attention and refused to let go. They clutched at his throat and echoed in his mind like a horrible refrain: child's blood, child's blood, child's blood…
Either he or Duck was going to die; he knew it instinctively, as though Endymion Spring had entered the room and whispered it in his ear.
'What's wrong?' asked Duck. 'You're sweating.'
'It's nothing,' he lied, and shook his head again to dismiss the terrible thought. 'We'd better go to bed.'
Some things, he felt, were better left unsaid.
Without warning, a devil sprinted past the window and performed a grotesque, gyrating dance in the middle of the street. Peter and I ran to the front of the house to watch. The fiend made lewd gestures with its tail and mocked all those who came near.
Before long a gang of children had encircled it and started heckling. In a bid to escape, the devil dashed beneath their outstretched arms and raced towards the cathedral, pursued by a chorus of catcalls and whistles.
Almost immediately after, a procession of unsightly skeletons — faces powdered, eyes blackened and ribs painted across their chests — started walking along the straw-strewn streets, knocking on the walls of the surrounding houses, summoning the living to join the dead.
'Come one, come all!' they sang, beating their sticks together and prancing from door to door. 'The time has come! All will be judged!'
Like obedient sheep, the citizens of Mainz emerged from their timbered houses to join the parade, all heading in the same direction: the graveyard beyond the city walls. Some were dressed in the false finery of kings and queens, which they had sewn specifically for the occasion, while others donned masks to disguise their faces and wore their normal clothes back to front. The more outlandish tied cowbells to their breeches and lowed like cattle, while younger children banged pots and pans together and cheered — or cried. Half-naked tumblers somersaulted up and down the length of the street, waving flags of multicolored cloth and adding their laughter to the general chaos and confusion.
Meanwhile, the players struck up their instruments. Bladder pipes, viols, lutes and lyres all belched and thrummed as madrigals began to weave in and out of the crowd, singing at the top of their voices.
'King or Queen, Pope or Knight,
Each lies equal in God's Sight;
Judge, Lawyer, Doctor, Fool,
None escapes Death's final Rule;
Merchant, Pauper, Friar, Thief,
Rich and Poor both come to Grief;
The Time has come to make Amends,
Judgment Day for all ye Men.'
Hundreds of footsteps thundered in reply, as the congregation shuffled slowly towards the grave, forming its own relentless march through the city.
The Last Judgment had begun.
Herr Gutenberg sneaked up behind me.
'Aren't you going to join in the festivities?' he asked, laying a hand on my shoulder. 'It's considered bad luck, you know, not to participate in the Dance of Death.'
I turned round. Ordinarily, I would have laughed at his mismatched clothes — he was covered from head to toe in red and yellow squares, like a harlequin — but my heart was heavy. I shrugged. I knew that my time in Mainz was swiftly coming to an end and there would be no turning back. The day of my reckoning had indeed come.
Outside in the street a butcher with a pig's snout strapped to his brow jostled with a maid as the Dance of Death continued.
'Do not dawdle, do not labor,' sang the madrigals. 'Join hands — now — with your nearest neighbor…'
The people in the street linked hands and began to wind like a serpent through the crowded city. It was one of the spring's most festive occasions. The windows and doors were festooned with bright garlands of flowers, mixing their hopeful scent with the richer smells of meat roasting in the distance. Herr Gutenberg was stepping back and forth in a little jig of his own invention, completely out of time with the music, preparing to join in; but I held out a hand to detain him.
He glanced at me. 'You look as though the end is near,' he said, his worried voice full of compassion. 'What's wrong?'
Crouching down beside me, he gestured towards the cheerful faces of the crowd. 'This is a celebration, Endymion. You ought to be happy. The Dance of Death is merely a reminder of all we have to be thankful for. There is nothing to fear.'
He patted me affectionately on the head. Almost immediately, my lips started to tremble, as if they would speak.
'Don't mind him,' said Peter suddenly, grabbing me by the elbow and dragging me back into the house. 'His costume isn't finished yet, that's all. There are a few minor adjustments we need to make. I'll take care of them.' His hand gripped me like a vise.
Herr Gutenberg looked up. 'Well, hurry,' he said. 'You especially, Peter, must not be late.'
Peter nodded, a certain satisfaction on his face. He and Christina had been given pride of place in this year's festivities: the most important roles of Adam and Eve, whose job it was to lead the dead into the graveyard and then sing to them about their mortality. Once the bodies of all the citizens in Mainz were lined up in a symbolic death, God would descend and resurrect the crowd. Then the real merriment would begin: dancing and feasting to continue long into the night.
And I wouldn't be there to enjoy it…
'Don't worry about us,' said Peter. 'We'll meet you at the city gates.'
I watched helplessly as Herr Gutenberg nodded and left. Almost immediately, his long bearded face was lost in a surge of bobbing, dancing heads. He had no idea that I would not be returning from the grave. I had to harden my
