Children of Chough were told that if they misbehaved they would be hung upside down by their ankles beneath the drip, drip of a waterfall, so that in the morning they would be stone children, their mouths still making whistle- shapes from spitting out the water.
There was no escaping the sound of water. It had many voices. The clearest sounded like someone shaking glass beads in a sieve. The waterfall spray beat the leaves with a noise like paper children applauding. From the ravines rose a sound like the chuckle of granite-throated goblins.
The goblins chuckled at Mosca as she scrambled down the slicked roof of Twence the Potter’s hut. She realized that she would never hear the sound of their chuckle again, and to her surprise felt a tiny sting of regret. There was no time for hesitation, however.
The next house down the slope belonged to the Widow Wagginsaw. Mosca misjudged the leap on to the domed roof, and landed heavily. Her bootsoles slithered, and she fell to her knees.
Below, a sleep-choked voice quavered a question, and a tinderbox hissed and spluttered into life. Here and there across the cracked surface of the roof, Mosca saw veins of dim, reddish light appear. Someone was moving slowly towards the door with a candle.
Mosca hugged herself close to the chill, wet stone, and started to wail. The wail started deep in her throat, soared like an off-key violin, then dropped into a guttural note. She repeated it, and to her intense relief it was answered by a choir of similar wails below, all tuned to different pitches.
The Widow kept cats – thin, bedraggled creatures that looked like weasels and wailed at anything.
The Widow would often wail as well, and because she was the richest person in Chough no one ever told her to stop. If the Widow thought there was a thief on the roof, Mosca knew that her wails would be heard all over Chough. But the Widow had been wailing all afternoon, ever since she had learned the truth about Clent, and perhaps that had worn her out. After a few minutes the veins of light dimmed and vanished. The Widow thought it was one of her own cats on the roof, and had gone back to bed.
A clamber down the waterwheel of Dogger’s Mill, a scramble across the roof of the Chide household, and then Mosca was wriggling through the fence that separated Lower Chough from the Whitewater plain. The fence was little more than a row of spiked iron railings driven into the rock, to let out the water and keep in the children and chickens, both of whom had a way of falling into the rapids, given half a chance. The metal spokes bled rust-trails across the white stone around them, and pointed outwards like spikes around a fort. They were spiked to discourage wild dogs and poachers.
Emerging from the fence, Mosca rubbed the rust from her cheek. There was thistledown fear in her throat, her chest and the centre of her palms. The spikes were also meant to keep out Brackle and Grabspite.
Brackle had a chest like a barrel and skin that looked as if it might have belonged to an even bigger dog, with great black jowls that wobbled when he barked.
Grabspite had a long, low lope, as if he had learned it from watching the wolves. He had a wolfish look about his narrow muzzle and he could outrun a deer.
The two dogs belonged to the magistrate, as far as they belonged to anyone, and protected the lower border of Chough during the hours of the night. Mosca had seen them by daylight any number of times, but somehow it was very different to know that one or another might suddenly bound out of the woods and bear her down in a flash of teeth.
What was that? A bush dipping a curtsey, or an animal crouching low to watch her? Was that a lean, pointed face with a long jaw?
Mosca cupped her hands under Saracen’s weight, and lifted the goose up above her head. Startled, he cycled with his feet, the rough but clammy webs chafing against her arms. His great wings spread wide as he tried to find his balance. When Mosca lowered him again, the wolfish face among the trees was gone.
In Chough, Brackle and Grabspite were regarded with superstitious terror. The villagers feared the bullying of the blacksmith, who feared the wailing of the Widow, who feared the might of the magistrate, who, in his own dry- as-parchment heart, feared his two terrible dogs.
Even Brackle and Grabspite, however, were afraid of Saracen.
The throaty roar of distant waterfalls was now audible. Another faint trickle of sound could also be heard, a dismal, whimpering string of words.
‘… starved, robbed of my dignity and laid bare to the ravages of the elements…’
The greatest boulder on the shingle plain was known as the Chiding Stone. It stood ten feet high and was shaped somewhat like a saddle. Over the centuries, countless nagging wives and wilful daughters had been chained there and mocked. Their names were etched into the stone by the magistrate of the time, along with a description of their crime. ‘Mayfly Haxfeather, for Reducing Her Husband to Shreds with the Lashings of her Tongue’, and, near the main dip of the saddle, where centuries of bottoms had worn a rounded hollow, ‘Sop Snatchell, for Most Wilful and Continual Gainsaying’.
The Stone’s sides were pockmarked with strange dimples and bulges, and easy for Mosca to clamber up. From the top of the Chiding Stone the moonlight showed her a clear view of the rocky pedestal five yards beyond, and the man sprawled upon it.
He was plump, in a soft, self-important way. His puffed-out chest strained the buttons of his waistcoat. They were fine buttons, though, and much polished, as if he took a pride in his appearance. His coat was a little crumpled and disarranged, but this was hardly surprising since he was suspended upside down, with his feet locked into a set of moss-covered stocks. A beaver hat and periwig lay sadly in the stream below, sodden and weed-strewn.
Since there was little he could do about his situation, he seemed determined to strike as picturesque and dramatic a pose as possible. The back of one hand rested despairingly across his forehead, while his other arm was thrown wide in a flamboyant attitude. The only part of his face visible, therefore, was his mouth, which was pursed and plump, as if the world was too hot and coarse for his palate and he felt the need to blow it cool. The mouth was moving, spilling out long, languorous sentences in a way which suggested that, despite his predicament, the speaker rather enjoyed the sound of his own voice.
‘… before even the Travesty in Three Acts had seen print…’ The speaker sighed deeply, and combed his fingers through his dishevelled hair before placing his hand back across his eyes. ‘… and this is to be the end of Eponymous Clent, left out in the wilderness to be devoured by the savage geese and weaselly faced imps of the forest…’ The flow of words stopped abruptly. Cautiously he uncovered his eyes once more. ‘Are you human?’
It was a fair question. Rust, grime and lichen covered Mosca’s face like warpaint, and dove feathers still clung to her hair and arms. The unlit pipe in her mouth also gave her an other-worldly, young-old look.
She nodded.
‘What do you want?’
Mosca swung her legs over to sit in the ‘saddle’ more comfortably, and took the pipe out of her mouth.
‘I want a job.’
‘I fear that adverse circumstances have deprived me of all monetary advantages and simple luxuries and… did you say a job?’
‘Yes.’ Mosca pointed to the stocks. ‘I got the keys to those, but if I let you out, you got to give me a job and take me with you.’
‘Fancy,’ Clent said with a faint, desolate laugh. ‘The child wishes to leave all this.’ He glanced around at the dripping trees, the bone-white stones and the cold colours of the distant village.
‘I want to travel,’ Mosca declared. ‘The sooner the better,’ she added, with an apprehensive look over her shoulder.
‘Do you even have the first idea of what my profession entails?’
‘Yes,’ said Mosca. ‘You tell lies for money.’
‘Ah. Aha. My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.’
‘I hear you told theWidow a story ’bout how you was the son of a duke and was going to marry her when you came into your lands, but how you needed to borrow money so you could hire a lawyer and make your claim.’
‘Ah. A very… emotional woman. Tended to take, ah, figures of speech very literally.’
