Argul told me something about stars, the way some of them are suns of distant worlds, and some are nearer and are planets, worlds like ours, that wander through the skies by night. I’ve never quite understood, although I loved to hear him talk about it.
Is this a star, then? A planet? What? I don’t know. Only that it’s enormous. I mean I actually sort of measured it later. Holding up my hand, the Star up there, by then even higher, neatly vanished behind my thumb nail – but for its glow.
It’s blue-white. It gushes light, dazzles. Stark shadows fall away from it over the ground, as if from a nearly-full moon.
Zand named it, in his own tongue. But I know what it’s called now. I asked Dolly its name.
It’s called the Wolf Star.
Well, that’s all.
I mean, I’ve finished writing down the story of my kidnapping. Nothing else has happened.
We’ve been here three days and two nights. I’ve marked them on the top of a page in this book.
I stay in my room as much as I can. Some monkeys sometimes come and play in the fig tree, and I can watch them. They’re noisy and funny. They throw fruit at each other, but sometimes they get violent, scream and beat their chests.
Every night, if I look (I do look), the lights are lit in that cliff-palace over there, or whatever it is. And the great Star rises, gets higher, circles round somehow, is gone, comes back, and sinks. Did I ever see a star behave quite like that?
The Wolf Star.
The name isn’t lost on me. No coincidence, it can’t be. I don’t know the link, though, Wolf Star and Wolf Tower.
Y and H are getting impatient, I can tell. Little things like the way they curse and stamp about and throw fruit all the time. (Though no screams or chest-beating.)
Everything has something to do with over There, probably.
Zand left the day after we arrived. I didn’t see him go. Why was he so polite that time he spoke to me?
I’m a prisoner.
Yes, I suppose I know something else will happen, to do with the cliff, the ‘Rise’. But why should I think about it? I’m here, it’s there. I can’t see any way to cross, unless they or we fly.
Did think about running away again. Getting food from Dolly and putting it by, sneaking out by night. Surely cranky Whirr and Bow couldn’t stop me? And if there are tigers and tigapards growling and roaring in the jungle and … ‘other things’, well, so what?
Maybe I will.
Tonight, maybe.
But anyway, I’ve done what I said I’d do, put all this down. I’ve written all I’m going to.
I have nothing else to say.
THERE
Today, I was sent over there. There is now where I am.
That other window was high. This one is AIGA.
The morning started with a bang. Literally. A monkey jumped in through the fig tree window, which I’d unluckily left open.
It landed on the tiled floor, day-edged and furry looking, but its eyes were like angry red coins.
Then its mouth pursed up and it kept going Hwouphwoup at me.
Obviously, I hadn’t left in the night. I’d felt too tired, not ready – I was confused. (Cowardly.) Now I stood by the bed and the monkey stood about ten feet away going hwoup at me and showing its teeth in between, which I recalled Hrald had said, and even the Hulta had said, meant a monkey wasn’t in a relaxed mood.
‘Lovely monkey,’ I gooed, creeping towards the door. ‘Look, tasty mango in dishy. Have delishy mango-yum—’
But the monkey made a sudden leap and bounded up one of the curtains. I said they were thin, and the material tore and the monkey fell out of it, hit one of the paper screens, and screen and monkey went rolling about and now it was going AargruffOOR! at the top of its voice.
I ran out of the door and slammed it, and rushed up the steps to the terrace.
Dawn had happened about an hour ago behind the Rise. The sky was tall and full of birds.
Something was wrong with the terrace.
The table had been laid for breakfast, which looked started on, and Yazkool and Hrald’s usual chairs were pulled out. But another chair lay on its side with a broken back. And there were three broken plates, and one of Yazkool’s enamel beetle boxes – just lying there too, on the ground, open, with beetles and tobacco spilling out.
Monkeys were yammering from all the trees by the house.
Something had happened.
I yelled ‘Dolly! Bow!’
Odd, really. H and Y were hardly my best friends, but I felt panicky.
For ages no one came. I heard the monkeys bashing about, and thought they might come up on the terrace and perhaps I should go back into the house. Then Dolly appeared and limped across to me.
‘What’s happened? Where are they? I mean Hrald, Yaz—’
‘Clickups, clankit.’
‘Oh Dolly—’
‘Gone,’ said Dolly.
‘Yes, Dolly, but where – why?’
‘Cluck: Duty done. Now you go to Glack!’
I nearly howled – and now here was Bow lurching up bowing and saying ‘More juice, more toast!’ And Whirr going ‘Whirr’ and I could hear the monkey in my room breaking more screens—
Then I saw the bridge.
I said we’d have to fly to reach the Rise. It wasn’t necessary after all.
It was like a long white tongue that had licked out, a frog’s or lizard’s, from a little black mouth in the distant cliff-side. It had slid across the drop, through the spray of the fall, slid on and on until it touched and somehow attached itself into the rock on this side, and stiffened to stillness. By craning over the terrace, I could see the bridge’s end, just by the courtyard wall.
‘Someone came from over there,’ I brilliantly guessed. ‘By the bridge. And Yazkool and Hrald—’
‘Away,’ said Bow, bowing over his tray of excess toast.
‘Do you mean killed?’
‘Whirr,’ said Whirr, thoughtfully.
This was useless. It would have been simple,
