‘The music’s . . . in the stones,’ said Imp. ‘You just have to llet it out. There’s music in everything, if you know how to find it.’
‘Can I try dat riff?’ said Lias. He took the hammers and shuffled around behind the stones again.
A-bam-bop-a-re-bop-a-bim-bam-boom.
‘What did you do to them?’ he said. ‘They sound . . . wild.’
‘Sounded good to me,’ said Glod. ‘Sounded a whole lot better.’
Imp slept that night wedged between Glod’s very small bed and the bulk of Lias. After a while, he snored.
Beside him, the strings hummed gently in harmony.
Lulled by their almost imperceptible sound, he’d completely forgotten about the harp.
Susan awoke. Something was tugging at her ear.
She opened her eyes.
SQUEAK?
‘Oh, nooo-‘
She sat up in bed. The rest of the girls were asleep. The window was open, because the school encouraged fresh air. It was available in large amounts for free.
The skeletal rat leapt on to the window-ledge and then, when it had made sure she was watching, jumped into the night.
As Susan saw it, the world offered two choices. She could go back to bed, or she could follow the rat.
Which would be a stupid thing to do. Soppy people in books did that sort of thing. They ended up in some idiot world with goblins and feeble-minded talking animals. And they were such sad, wet girls. They always let things happen to them, without making any effort. They just went around saying things like ‘My goodness me’, when it was obvious that any sensible human being could soon get the place properly organized.
Actually, when you thought of it like that, it was tempting . . . The world held too much fluffy thinking. She always told herself that it was the job of people like Susan, if there were any more like her, to sort it out.
She pulled on her dressing-gown and climbed over the sill, holding on until the last moment and dropping into a flower-bed.
The rat was a tiny shape scurrying across the moonlit lawn. She followed it around to the stables, where it vanished somewhere in the shadows.
As she stood feeling slightly chilly and more than slightly an idiot, it returned dragging an object rather bigger than itself. It looked like a bundle of old rags.
The skeletal rat walked around the side of it and gave the ragged bundle a good hard kick.
‘All right, all right! ‘
The bundle opened one eye, which swivelled around wildly until it focused on Susan.
‘I warn you,’ said the bundle, ‘I don’t do the N word.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Susan.
The bundle rolled over, staggered upright and extended two scruffy wings. The rat stopped kicking it.
‘I’m a raven, aren’t I?’ it said. ‘One of the few birds who speak. The first thing people say is, oh, you’re a raven, go on, say the N word . . . If I had a penny every time that’s happened, I’d
SQUEAK.
‘All right, all right.’ The raven ruffled its feathers. ‘This thing here is the Death of Rats. Note the scythe and cowl, yes? Death of Rats. Very big in the rat world.’
The Death of Rats bowed.
‘Tends to spend a lot of time under barns and anywhere people have put down a plate of bran laced with strychnine,’ said the raven. ‘Very conscientious.’
SQUEAK.
‘All right. What does it – he want with me?’ said Susan. ‘I’m not a rat.’
‘Very perspicacious of you,’ said the raven. ‘Look, I didn’t ask to do this, you know. I was asleep on my skull, next minute he had a grip on my leg. Being a raven, as I said, I’m naturally an occult bird-‘
‘Sorry,’ said Susan. ‘I know this is all one of those dreams, so I want to make sure I understand it. You said . . . you were asleep on your skull?’
‘Oh, not my personal skull,’ said the raven. ‘It’s someone else’s.’
‘Whose?’
The raven’s eyes spun wildly. It never managed to have both eyes pointing in the same direction. Susan had to resist trying to move around to follow them.
‘How do I know? They don’t come with a label on them,’ it said. ‘It’s just a skull. Look . . . I work for this wizard, right? Down in the town. I sit on this skull all day and go “caw” at people-‘
‘Why?’
‘Because a raven sitting on a skull and going “caw” is as much part of your actual wizarding modus operandi as the big dribbling candles and the old stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling. Don’t you know anything? I should have thought anyone knows that who knows anything about anything. Why, a proper wizard might as well not even have bubbling green stuff in bottles as be without his raven sitting on a skull and going “caw”-‘
SQUEAK.
‘Look, you have to lead up to things with humans,’ said the raven wearily. One eye focused on Susan again. ‘He’s not one for subtleties, him. Rats don’t argue questions of a philosophical nature when they’re dead. Anyway, I’m the only person round here he knows who can talk-‘
‘Humans can talk,’ said Susan.
`Oh, indeed,’ said the raven, ‘but the key point about humans, a crucial distinction you might say, is that they’re not prone to being woken up in the middle of the night by a skeletal rat who needs an interpreter in a hurry. Anyway, humans can’t see him.’
`I can see him.’
‘Ah. I think you’ve put your digit on the nub, crux and gist of it all,’ said the raven. ‘The marrow, as you might say.’
‘Look,’ said Susan, ‘I’d just like you to know that I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe there’s a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe.’
‘He’s standing in front of you.’
‘That’s no reason to believe it.’
‘I can see you’ve certainly had a proper education,’ said the raven sourly.
Susan stared down at the Death of Rats. There was a blue glow deep in its eye sockets.
SQUEAK.
‘The thing is,’ said the raven, ‘that he’s gone again.’
‘Your . . . grandfather.’
‘Grandad Lezek? How can he be gone again? He’s dead!’
‘Your . . . er . . . other grandfather . . . ?’ said the raven.
‘I haven’t got-‘
Images rose from the mud at the bottom of her mind. Something about a horse . . . and there was a room full of whispers. And a bathtub, that seemed to fit in somewhere. And fields of wheat came into it, too.
‘This is what happens when people try to educate their children,’ said the raven, ‘instead of telling them things.’
‘I thought my other grandad was also . . . dead,’ said Susan.
SQUEAK.
‘The rat says you’ve got to come with him. It’s very important.’
The image of Miss Butts rose like a Valkyrie in Susan’s mind. This was silliness.
‘Oh, no,’ said Susan. ‘It must be midnight already. And we’ve got a geography exam tomorrow.’
The raven opened its beak in astonishment.
‘You can’t be saying that,’ it said.
‘You really expect me to take instructions from a . . . a bony rat and a talking raven? I’m going back!’
‘No, you’re not,’ said the raven. ‘No-one with any blood in them’d go back now. You’d never find things out if you went back now. You’d just get educated.’
‘But I haven’t got time,’ Susan wailed.
‘Oh, time,’ said the raven. ‘Time’s mainly habit. Time is not a particular feature of things for you.’
‘How-‘
‘You’ll have to find out, won’t you?’
SQUEAK.
The raven jumped up and down excitedly.
‘Can I tell her? Can I tell her?’ it squawked. It swivelled its eyes towards Susan.
‘Your grandfather,’ it said, ‘is . . . (dah dah dah DAH) . . . Dea-‘
SQUEAK!
‘She’s got to know some time,’ said the raven.
‘Deaf? My grandfather is deaf?’ said Susan. ‘You’ve got me out here in the middle of the night to talk about hearing difficulties?’
‘I didn’t say deaf, I said your grandfather is . . . (dah dah dah DAH) . . . D-‘
SQUEAK!
‘All right! Have it your way!’
Susan backed away while the two of them argued.
Then she grasped the skirts of her nightdress and ran, out of the yard and across the damp lawns. The window was still open. She managed, by standing on the sill of the one below, to grab the ledge and heave herself up and into the dormitory. She got into bed and pulled the blankets over her head . . .
After a while she realized that this was an unintelligent reaction. But she left them where they were, anyway.
She dreamed of horses and coaches and a clock without hands.
‘D’you think we could have handled that better?’
SQUEAK? ‘Dah dah dah DAH’ SQUEAK?