At the moth’s instruction (and how it pained him to even think those words), Onrey lifted up the wicker horse’s head from the debris on the ground, and hung it back on the wall.  The moth fluttered up to sit on the nose.  “I think this is how they said to do it…  Alas, young queen, passing by / If this your mother knew / Her heart would break in two.”

Those words resonated with Onrey more than he would have liked.  If his own family knew what had happened since he set out, that he’d been beaten in a fight and forced to rely on the aid of something as pathetically small as this moth, what would they say?  But he had no time to dwell on it, because as soon as the words were out, the horse’s mouth began to move. 

The eyes- just glass a moment ago, but now alive- fixed on the moth, and a gasp came out of the wooden mouth.  “You’re Kai Domino, aren’t you?”  Onrey had never heard Colwyn Ballantine’s voice before, but he knew immediately that he was hearing it now.

“I am, yes,” said the moth, “I’m sorry about…”

Onrey gathered up the tattered remains of his confidence, and cleared his throat.  “I’m Onrey Tavin, and we have matters to discuss.”

The horse- Ballantine- went quiet for a moment, and seemed to be sizing him up.  “Alright,” he said eventually, “But first, do either of you know where my nieces are?”

“They’re fine,” said the moth, “Or they were last time I saw them, anyway.  As far as I know, they’re still on their way to Opal Hill.”

“Well, that’s something.  Has the house been broken into?  I know the horse’s head was knocked off the wall somehow…”

“There was a guy…”  The moth made an irritating whine to indicate that he was uncertain.  “He said he was the girls’ dad?  He broke the lock and threw a bunch of furniture around, looking for…”

Onrey was not going to leave it to the moth to tell the story of his humiliation.  “His name was Joe Warbeck, and he beat me half to death for questioning his manners.”  He practically spat the words.  “Friend of yours?”

The moth eyed him nervously, then turned back to Ballantine.  “Actually, I should probably just let this guy tell it.”

Ballantine didn’t voice any objection, so Onrey got straight to the point.  “Your nieces trespassed on my family’s property and told a pack of lies in order to escape.  And when I came here to ask for an explanation, I was set upon by this Joe Warbeck.”  He stared into the horse’s glass eyes, waiting to see how he responded.

“I see.  Where is he now?”  No hint of an apology.  Onrey didn’t know why he was still surprised, at this point.

The moth spoke right across him.  “We don’t know.  He ran away after knocking this guy out.”

Once again, Onrey restrained himself from crushing the loathsome little insect between his fingers.  “Mr Ballantine, I came here today because our two families should have spoken face-to-face a long time ago.  We demand that you restore the use of the paths to us.”

Ballantine blinked.  “What?”

“You seem to feel that only you and your family deserve the right to travel from place to place.  Why should that be?  Why should the rest of us have to pass through Dovecote Gardens just to communicate?  Is it truly just so you can grow fat off the profits?”

Ballantine shook his head.  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.  Are you saying that you think…?”

A knock at the door interrupted them.  Onrey had closed it before picking up the horse’s head, but the thing was still barely hanging on its hinges.  Even so, somebody felt the need to knock.

“Oh,” said Ballantine, “I don’t suppose one of you could answer that?”

Onrey spluttered.  “I’m not your doorman!”

The moth flew up and tsked at him.  “Alright, you drama queen, I’ll do it.”

Onrey would have liked to have seen how the moth planned to open a door that was a thousand times his size, but, after a moment’s reflection, he decided to walk across the hallway and open it himself.  It was not done to wait around while others did things for you.

He opened the door to see one of Colwyn’s nieces- the one with the long hair, the one who’d lied to his father’s face when he’d asked them to catch the rocfinch- flanked by two tall, silver beings whose heads looked as if they were topped with tree-branches.  Opal Hill, he remembered from his father’s notes.  Each of these people was actually five or six siblings combined.

Before he could say anything- a greeting to the Opal Hill folk, an admonition to the girl- Onrey heard a voice from behind him.  “Jeanette?  Is that you?”

The girl’s face lit up.  “Colwyn!”  And she strode past Onrey as though he wasn’t even there, straight up to the horse’s head on the wall.  Her companions stayed where they were, as if rendered speechless by her behaviour.  “Right,” she told her uncle, “Before we say anything else, tell the Finery family where you are right now.”

“Hm?”  Ballantine glanced over at the Opal Hill folk in the doorway.  “Oh, I see.  I’m in the Iridescence family’s attic.  They’ve been keeping me here for two or three days.”

Onrey blinked.  That certainly changed things. 

“See?” said the girl Jeanette, looking over at her friends, “What did I tell you?”

One of the silver beings said, in a voice as deliberate as it was furious, “What on Earth is going on here?”

“Are you saying that’s Colwyn Ballantine’s voice?” asked the other.

“I am saying that!” said the girl Jeanette, with an impudent grin.

“Where’s the evidence?” demanded the furious silver being, “The pictures of your brother?”

“Oh, right.”  The grin widened.  “I don’t actually have a brother.  I just made that up so you’d let me into your house.”

The silver being looked about to say something, but had to stop for breath on the way.  So Onrey spoke instead.  “Quite good at lying, aren’t we?”

If he’d been expecting shame, then he was disappointed.  “Pretty decent, yeah.”

The other silver being- the one who’d asked about the horse’s head- tapped their fingers on the doorframe.  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what…”

They went silent, and looked up.  A huge, dark shadow had descended over the entire house.

(To be continued)

The space behind the door was pale, half-finished, and smelled of sand, and as they walked through it, Rube talked continuously so that she wouldn’t panic.  (She almost thought, “so that Sally wouldn’t panic,” but then she decided to be honest with herself.)

“I don’t think they’ll notice we’re gone unless someone points it out,” she told Sally, “Think about it- they know the three of us are sisters.  And they can… merge with their siblings.”  They rounded a corner.  “And they probably know that humans can’t, but if no-one reminds them, their minds will just fill in what they expect to see, right?”

“Right,” said Sally, with a look on her face as if she was humouring a lunatic.

“It’s like that thing where you try to read a paragraph, and all of the words have the first and last letter in the right place, but the rest of the letters are mixed up, but you can read it and understand it anyway.  You see what you expect to see.  That’s why…”

She broke off.  Up ahead of them, in the inside wall, was a door.  It was hanging slightly ajar.

“We need to be quiet when we walk past,” Rube told Sally, nodding towards it.

Sally shook her head.  “I don’t think it goes back into the living room…”

She was right.  The door looked as if it had warped and swelled over the years s that it could no longer close properly, and as they got closer Rube could see through the gap.  It looked like there was a set of steps.  They went down rather than up, but they went somewhere.

Rube opened the door fully, and glanced at Sally for confirmation on what they were going to do.  She didn’t really need to, though.  They hadn’t come this far not to check everything out.

So they descended into the Iridescences’ basement, Rube fighting every instinct that told her what a bad idea it was.  She couldn’t even see what was down there.  A beige curtain, made out of some kind of thick, heavy material, hung over the bottom of the stairs.  When Rube touched it so she could move it aside, it had a grubby, greasy feel to it, as if it had been there gathering dust for decades on end.

On the other side was a hallway, and Rube was unnerved by how featureless it was.  The walls, in the same shade of grey as the scuffed tile on the floor, looked as if they had been made out of the same cardboard as cheap egg cartons, all rough and knobbled, looking as if it would fall apart if it got even slightly damp.  There was light, enough to see everything clearly, but no matter how much they looked around, they couldn’t find the source of it.  No bulbs, no windows, no anything.

At the end of the hallway, there was a bend that led into another.  And halfway down that hallway, jutting out of the wall, was a huge skeleton.

Sally was the one who screamed first, which at least meant that Rube felt less embarrassed later.  It was understandable, though- that thing had practically leapt out at them.  It towered over them, taking up half the hallway, its fangs and empty black eye sockets reminding Rube of that close-up photo of a spider in her old Biology textbook.

Sally, her hands still clutched in front of her chest, let out a sheepish laugh.  “Do you think it’s an elephant?”

“Maybe?” said Rube, “Or a mammoth?”  She eyed the skeleton warily.  They were in a new place, after all, and they didn’t know all the rules yet.  Rube couldn’t be completely certain that the skeleton wouldn’t suddenly roar into life.  “But what’s it doing…”

She broke off.  She’d heard something.

There were footsteps coming towards them.  Rube and Sally turned to the other end of the hallway, beyond the skeleton, just in time to see someone put her head around the corner.  A girl about Rube’s age, with hair the same shade of blue as her skin.

(To be continued)

By the time the door clicked open, Sally felt as if she’d been waiting in there for hours.  She probably hadn’t.  It was just that worry tended to stretch time out as far as it could go, especially when there wasn’t anything else to do.

Sally had hoped that she’d open the door and immediately find a staircase leading to the attic, but instead she found… well, the inside of a wall.  A thin, uneven-looking corridor that seemed to stretch most of the way around the outside of the house.  Not that Sally had seen all of it,.  She’d decided to duck round the first corner and wait there, so that if the Iridescences followed her in, they wouldn’t catch her straight away.

Not long after that, Sally realised something unpleasant: she didn’t know whether or not her sisters knew where she’d gone.

They probably did.  Even if Jeanette had been too absorbed in her story to notice Sally leaving, Rube definitely would have.  Mum had told Rube that she was in charge, and when you said that to someone like Rube, they took it seriously.  It became a massive, crushing weight of a responsibility.  Rube definitely wouldn’t have let Sally disappear without checking where she was going.  She’d have known.

But Sally didn’t know for sure.  She hadn’t checked.

When Sally heard the door open, she instantly stuck her head around the corner (completely blowing her cover if it turned out to be one of the Iridescences, but at least she’d still have a head start).  It was OK.  It was Rube.

Sally mouthed her name (she didn’t know how much the Iridescences would be abe to hear from outside, and she didn’t want to risk it) and beckoned her over.  Rube gave her a brilliant smile and ran up to meet her.

“I am so sorry!” she whispered as soon as she got there, “I had to wait for Jeanette to get them to go past the door…”

Sally waved this aside (though it did make her feel better to know that she might have actually been waiting a long time).  “Did Jeanette see which way you went?”

“Yes.  We didn’t talk, but…”  Rube stopped, held up a finger, and bent over with her hands on her knees, breathing heavily.

As she waited for Rube to talk again, Sally looked down the long corridor, trying to see if she could spot anything down at the far end, where she hadn’t been yet.  If they followed it long enough, they’d find the steps to the attic.  Because they had to.  Sally wouldn’t accept anything less.

(To be continued)

“First of all, his name’s not really Kai Domino,” said Jeanette, “He’s called Michael Warbeck, and he’s our brother.”

The Iridescences sat on the sofa, completely dumbstruck.  For some reason, they weren’t in their silver tree form- instead, they were five separate people in various shades of blue and purple.  The Finery family had stayed a tree.  Maybe they had to when they were at work.

“I’ve known that him and Colwyn were up to something for a while,” continued Jeanette.  Sally had never known that Jeanette was so great at lying.  She didn’t know if she was making it up as she went along, or if she’d been rehearsing it the whole journey here, but she hoped she could keep it up.

“Well,” said one of the Iridescences, a thin royal-blue woman with curly hair piled up on her head, “I suppose our only question is whether or not we can believe any allegations from such a family.”

One of her brothers turned to her.  Turned on her, Sally thought.  “We’ve known Ballantine was no good from the start.  What more do you want?”

“An explanation for how these girls decided to sell out their family so easily?”

“Some family.  They’re doing us a favour, Pin.”

Sally looked up at the ceiling.  It was flat.  The whole house was designed as one big room, with stairs and decking around the edge of the walls making up the second floor.  The room tapered up like a rocketship, but the ceiling was flat.  Even though, from the outside, there had been that little bump on the roof.

From his prison?  In, what, the Iridescence family’s attic? 

Probably, thought Sally.

“I didn’t want to sell them out,” said Jeanette, trying to look anguished, “I just saw how their behaviour was getting out of hand, and…  Well, you’d be doing us a favour by helping us stop them, to be honest.”

So, there was an attic up there, somewhere.  But how were you meant to get there?  The only stairs Sally could see led up to the decking, which was only about halfway to the ceiling.  Maybe there were more stairs behind some of those screens up there? Or… wait. There had been something weird next to the front door, hadn’t there?

Sally looked to her right, to see the door they’d come in through.  There was another one in the same wall, maybe ten metres away from it.  But Sally remembered what the front of the house looked like, and there definitely hadn’t been another door on the outside.  The only place that door could lead was inside the wall.

The man who’d spoken before turned to the Finerys and said something aggressive and triumphant in their language.  Like, I hope you’re listening to this.  The Finerys gave a skeptical hum.

Nobody was looking at Sally.  Inch by inch, she slid to the edge of the sofa they were on and dropped to the ground.  Nobody saw.  They were all focused on Jeanette, who said, “The only problem is, we don’t know where either of them are right now.”

One of the Iridescences- a thin mauve woman- made a strange honking sound.  It took Sally a few seconds to realise it had been a laugh.  “Not much use then, are you?”

Sally shuffled sideways so that a big houseplant blocked her from everyone else’s view.

“Maybe not.”  Jeanette looked down at the floor, doing her best to seem humble.  “But we could do with your help.”

Another honking sound.  “Right!  And we’ve just been sitting here doing nothing, waiting to help you!”

Jeanette rewarded this with her very best cringe.

Sally moved through the room on her knees, trying to hide behind everything she could.  Jeanette was doing a good job of commanding everyone’s attention, but she couldn’t rely just on that.  You never knew when people would get bored.

The curly-haired Iridescence sister cut across them.  “You said you could prove that Colwyn was lying.  How can you prove it?”

Sally had reached the wall.  The door was just a little way down from where she was.  And as she looked at the area around it, she saw a hook on the back of a nearby bookcase, with a small key hanging on it.

“All you need to do is point me in the direction of some of the people who think they know Kai Domino,” said Jeanette, “I bet they shut up pretty fast when I show them some of Michael’s baby pictures.”

Sally eased the key off the hook, pinched between her thumb and ring finger.  If it made a noise, Jeanette would probably drown it out, but she still didn’t want to risk it.

The curly-haired woman snorted.  “No-one knows Kai Domino.   They’ve got a lot to say about him, but they’ve never actually met him.  Funny, that!”

Sally turned the key in the lock.  She’d worried that it might make that clunking sound that old locks did sometimes, but it didn’t.  Not so loud that they could hear it over there, anyway.

“Pin, shut it.   Where are those pictures?”

“Back at the house.  Dovecote Gardens.  You can come back with me, if you like, and then you can choose which ones I bring.”

Sally opened the door and slipped inside.

(To be continued)

After what seemed like hours, Joe Warbeck reached the top of the stairs.  The whole time, his surroundings hadn’t changed at all- smooth rock walls with circular lights every six feet or so.  And no hint at all of what he was actually heading towards.

It was funny to think of all this being on Colwyn’s property.  To be perfectly honest, Joe had never got to know him that well.  For years, Jackie had tried to make them be best friends, but Colwyn had always been standoffish.  One of those guys who was intimidated by people who told the truth.  He’d always come across as a spoilt rich boy, but Joe had never thought he’d be crazy enough to try and drill a tunnel into a mountain, like he was a Bond villain trying to build an underground lair. 

At the top there was a sign, at least.  It was pinned to the wall directly in front of the stairs, between two sets of double-doors.  The left side of the sign was in Chinese or something, but the right side read:

_{Underhill Towers}

_{First Floor:  Flats 101 – 110}

_{Second Floor:  Shops}

_{Third Floor:  Garden Centre}

_{Fourth Floor:  Flats 120-130…}

Joe laughed out loud.  What was this?  Flats, shops…  And in a mountain?  Was this Colwyn’s idea of a development project?  Was he trying to set up his own version of fucking Disneyland?  Where had he got the money for this?  He must have been in debt up to his eyeballs- even Jackie’s relatives didn’t have this kind of cash to throw around.  Whatever Colwyn had done to get all this probably hadn’t even been legal.

Joe had to go up and see this.  Maybe he could even take some photos.  The big, empty vanity project in the middle of public land… the papers would go wild about that.  Compared to that, the guy back at the house was nothing.

He opened up one of the doors, and saw, as he’d expected, another set of stairs.  He just about jumped them two at a time, he was so keen to get up there.  On the second landing, there was a door that led to a corridor with big windows on one side and a row of doors on the other.  He tried a couple of the doors, but they were locked.  Never mind.  The shops were on the next floor up, he remembered.

Halfway up the stairs, something unexpected happened- Joe started to hear voices.  There were actual people up there!  Who’d have thought?  So, either Colwyn had actually managed to sucker some people into moving in, or his creditors were up there keeping an eye on the place.  Either way, it sounded like a lot of them.  This would be interesting.

It was an actual shopping centre.  A real one, like they had in every high street in the country.  Though, saying that, every single shop name was in gobbledegook again, and the people walking by were some of the ugliest he’d ever seen.  Protruding teeth, sunken eyes, not a chin in sight… the kind of people who looked like they had one set of great-grandparents each.  Maybe Colwyn’s project wasn’t setting up his own Disneyland, but breeding a whole village of mutant mountain people.

Joe went into a newsagent… or at least, that’s what it looked like.  Newspapers near the front, anyway.  He took a look at the front pages, but obviously they weren’t in English.  Nobody he recognised in the pictures, anyway.  There wasn’t a queue at the moment, so he could go right up to the cashiers and get an idea of what this place was actually about.

They weren’t any prettier than the rest of the mob.  A man who looked as if he’d never been out in daylight, and a woman with hair so thin and lank that it was practically see-through.  Joe walked up and tapped on the desk.  “Alright?”

The cashiers looked at each other, and then the woman did her best to give him a smile through those teeth of hers.  “Good evening!  How can we help you?”

“Well, you can tell me what this place actually is, for a start.”  He looked from one to the other.  “Come on.  What’s he up to?”

“Who?” asked the woman.

(“It’s a newsagent,” mumbled her friend.)

 Joe laughed.  “Who else would I be talking about?  Colwyn!”

The woman blinked at him.  “Colwyn Ballantine?  From Dovecote Gardens?”

 “For God’s sake…  Yes!  Him!”

The two of them looked at each other again.  It was as if they couldn’t do anything without checking in with each other every thirty seconds.  Then the man cleared his throat.  “Um, we don’t know much about him, I’m afraid.  There’s an Information Centre on the seventh floor- they might…”

 Joe laughed, and shook his head.  “You don’t know your own landlord?  Jesus.”

The cashiers frowned.  Clearly, Joe had spoken out of turn.  Hadn’t he seen that expression a million times when he was married to Jackie?  The man leaned forward.  “Look, I don’t know what Colwyn’s been telling you, but you’ve got completely the wrong idea.  He’s not…”

“Oh, come on!”

“Look, I know you two are probably friends and everything, but…”

Joe nearly jumped backwards in shock.  “We’re not friends!  Do I look like I’d be friends with somebody like him?”  The assumptions people made.  Joe didn’t think Colwyn had any friends.  Too keen on himself to have room for anyone else.  “Look, call him what you like- I just want to know what he thinks he’s doing with this place.  Because if he thinks…”

All at once, Joe stopped.  He’d just seen something move in the back of the shop.

He hadn’t taken a proper look in that direction before, but now that he did, he saw that there was no back wall where you’d expect it to be.  There were a few rows of stalls, and then it seemed to open up into a much bigger space.

Joe went a bit closer, and saw that there was a kind of balcony at the end there.  Beyond it was a kind of scaled-up version of the newsagent- floor about fifty feet below, news stands the size of car parks, papers you could use to keep the rain off an entire building.  And moving around the aisles, as casual as can be…

They were…

There was a word that Joe didn’t want to use.  Because it was impossible.  He was dreaming.  This was all a big joke.  There was no way that…

He was back at the front of the shop before he’d even noticed himself running.  He’d knocked over one of the magazine stands on his way there.  “What the fuck are you keeping back there?!” he screamed at the cashiers.

They didn’t look at each other this time.  Instead, they just stared at him as if he was mad.  “That’s the Dahut section,” the woman explained slowly, as if she was speaking to a child, “If you don’t want to go in there, it’s fine.  There’s a till right here.”

“What’s wrong with you?  There are…  That place has…”

Dragons.  There were dragons in that place in the back of the shop, standing upright, each one ten times the size of a man.  Shining scales in green, blue, red and gold.  Long claws that could rip a man in two with a flick of a finger.  And wings.  Somehow the wings had been the most disturbing thing of all.

There was a little bit of static from a gadget on the desk, and a rumbling voice came out of it.  Joe didn’t understand what it said.  He was too busy trying to imagine the creature that went with that voice.

The woman cashier pressed a button to reply, said something reassuring in whatever language they spoke, and then ended the call.  They had an intercom.  They talked to the dragons on an intercom.

“This is, what, some kind of experiment?” demanded Joe, “Government stuff?”  That was where Colwyn would have got his money.  He’d agreed to let this happen on his land.  And Jackie had sent their daughters off to stay with him.  Happily, without a care in the world.  Sent them into the lion’s den.

The man reached out to pat his arm.  “You need to calm…”

Joe grabbed the arm and twisted it back.  “You do not tell me…”  He broke off, breathing heavily.  In one quick movement, he moved back a couple of feet, grabbed one of the newspaper stands, and threw it at the desk.  “Those were dragons!  I want to know what this place is about, and I want to know now!”

He turned to pick up the next one- there was plenty of stuff to throw before he ran out- but, as soon as his back was turned, he felt the cashiers’ hands on his arms and shoulders.  He tried to shake them off, tried to kick out, but it was no use.  In ten seconds flat, they had him on the ground.

(To be continued)

The frog-lizard-thing took them away from the city centre and up the mountains that surrounded it.  They passed by endless crags of lumpy white stone, broken up by little rockpools full of animals Jeanette never got a good look at, until they arrived at a house surrounded by smooth white walls about twenty feet high.  The only part of the house Jeanette could see was the roof.  It looked as if it had a wide veranda like at Dovecote Gardens, but there was an extra bit on top that made the whole thing look like a weird, cream-coloured hat.

The frog-lizard-thing came to a stop and crouched down.  All at once, the jelly came unstuck from their bodies and receded.

“Come on, then,” said the Finery family, motioning towards the front gates.  They were metal, with bars arranged in gorgeously intricate patterns that probably made them all the more impossible to break.  The Finery family rang a bell on the wall, and another grey tree-person appeared on the other side.  The Finerys asked them a question in Opal Hill language (which probably wasn’t actually what it was called, but Jeanette had to work with what she had), and the other person said something back.  Jeanette might not have understood the words, but she was pretty sure she understood the tone.  Do you have an appointment?  No?  My clients are very busy and it would be most inconvenient to blah blah blah.

Jeanette stepped to the side to see if there was anything interesting around the corner.  The walls had been built high enough to keep out people from Opal Hill, so maybe they’d overlooked some way a smaller person could get in.  The wall seemed to be smooth all the way round- no holes, no cracks that could be widened into holes, no convenient crags you could use as footholds for climbing.  Instead of a fourth wall, it backed onto the side of the mountain.  Jeanette looked up at it- there was a kind of ledge up there.  Not low enough to jump down onto the roof from, but maybe low enough to climb down?  Could she be sure about that?  And could she be sure that there was any way down from the roof?

Behind her, the Finerys were still talking to the doorman (doorpeople).  Jeanette wondered if maybe it would be easier ton get in that way.  Her first thought was to tell the Iridescences that she knew where Kai Domino was, and make out that she was willing to betray him and hand him over to them.  She decided against this, though- Sally and Rube would probably get upset, and the Iridescences wouldn’t want to admit that they knew who Kai was in front of the Finerys.  So what else could she say to make them let her in?  Was there a way to drop hints about Kai in code?

Suddenly, she had it.  She marched back up to the gate, where the Finerys were still pleading with the doorpeople, and said, “Tell them I can prove that Colwyn and Kai Domino are lying about them.”

For a few seconds, the doorpeople and the Finerys both stared at her, dumbstruck.  Then the doorpeople nodded.

As they disappeared into the distance behind the gates, the Finery family glared at Jeanette.  “What do you think you’re doing?”

“It’ll get us in, right?” said Jeanette with a shrug.

The Finerys made an outraged spluttering sound and turned away from her.

Jeanette glanced back at her sisters.  They looked a little as if someone had hit them both round the head with a wooden plank, but they were a lot less horrified than they would have been if Jeanette had pretended to sell out Kai.  She’d made the right decision.

After a couple of minutes, the doorpeople reappeared.  “Alright,” they said, unlocking the gate, “Come on in.”

(To be continued)

Try as he might, Onrey couldn’t remember if he’d been conscious for the last few hours or not.  It seemed as though his mind had been bobbing along in a pool, up and down, side to side, while his body waited down at the bottom.  But now he knew where he was.  He was on a landing in Dovecote Gardens, and there was a voice.  “Hey?  Are you awake?”

“Yes.”  Onrey screwed his eyes shut, then opened them again.  “Yes, I am.”

The voice made an uncertain sound.  “I don’t know many people from Kindling Grove.  When you get little black cracks on your skin, does that mean you’re just bruised, or that something’s broken?”

“Um.  Bruised.”  Normally he’d resent this kind of ignorance, but right now he was, pathetically, just glad to have somebody there to help him.

“OK, good.  There’s a few of them on your face, but with any luck, that’s the worst of it.  Do you think you can sit up?”

Onrey reached out, put his palm on the wall, and pulled himself up.  That meant that he could see a lot more of the room- the staircase, the banister, Colwyn Ballantine’s open bedroom door- but he still couldn’t see the person he was talking to.  It occurred to him to look around, but the dull pain in his head and neck kept him still.  “I was tricked.  I was trapped.”  He tried make sense of what had happened to him.  He still wasn’t sure how he’d ended up like this, from a starting point of regaining his family’s honour.  “They set a trap.”  There was nothing else to look at, so he focused on a little leaf on the carpet in front of him.  A leaf, or an insect?  He wasn’t sure. 

“Who was it?” said the voice, “I know the people who actually live here aren’t in.”

“He said his name was…”  Onrey stopped.  He’d just realised what the thing on the carpet was, and where the voice was coming from.

For a moment, he just stared stupidly.  Then he said, “You’re a moth.”

“That I am,” said the moth.

Onrey realised that he wasn’t ready to stop staring stupidly.  This was nothing he’d prepared for.  His father had told him stories about the strange things that happened on the paths, stories that had been passed down for generations, since their family had had access to the whole place.  But talking moths?  Surely that was a step too far?

“My name’s Kai,” said the moth, after a polite pause.

There was nothing else to say.  “I’m Onrey Tavin.”  He swallowed.  “The man who attacked me said his name was Joe Warbeck.”

“Right,” said the moth, “That might be the girls’ father.”

Onrey nodded.  “He did mention daughters…”  Suddenly, he realised the full significance of what the moth had said.  “‘The girls’?  How do you know them?”

“Oh, I met them a couple of days ago.”  The creature sounded as though he was grinning.  “I’ve been helping them out… or they’ve been helping me.  More of that, to be honest.”

Onrey narrowed his eyes.  “And I suppose you were the one who helped them escape?” he spat.

The moth fluttered his wings, completely unruffled.  “Nope.  I would have, but I went off for help and they were gone by the time I got back.  But I would have,” he repeated, seemingly just to provoke Onrey even further.

Onrey felt a sudden urge to crush the wretched creature under his knuckles.  “You had no right.  They trespassed on our land.”

“Right.  By having a picnic half a mile from your house.  Bet you were devastated.”

“I would suggest,” said Onrey, battling to keep his temper in check, “that you amend the way in which you speak to the heir to a great house.”

The moth snorted.  “Uh-huh.  If that’s how you talked to Joe Warbeck, I’m not surprised he punched you.”

With an angry cry- this creature had no idea what had happened when he’d met Warbeck- Onrey made to spring to his feet and grab his sword.  He never made it.  Before he could even stretch up to his full height, his head was spinning and he was forced to lean against the wall for balance.

He glanced down at the moth to see if he was going to say something about that.  He didn’t.

“Anyway,” said the moth, after a pause, “never mind about the girls for now.  Was Joe Warbeck the one who smashed up Colwyn’s room?”

“Yes.”  Onrey had almost forgotten about Colwyn’s room.  And he realised, now, that he’d been lucky that Warbeck hadn’t recognised him.  He’d been violent enough as it was, so how much worse would it have been if he’d known that Onrey’s family had imprisoned his daughters?

The moth continued.  “When you were coming up the stairs, did you see a model of a horse’s head on the wall?  It would have been made out of wicker?”

Onrey shook his head.  “I wasn’t looking.”

 “Right.”  The moth fluttered up to perch on top of the banister.  “I’ll go downstairs and see if it’s still in one piece.  If it is, we can use it to contact Colwyn.”

(To be continued)

There were stables in a big grey building at the end of the road.  The Finery family took them up to their section on the second floor and unlocked one of the gates.  They whistled, and a large animal stepped forward. 

It was some kind of… frog?  Lizard?  Something wide-mouthed and green.  It was about the same height as an elephant, but broader.  And as it crouched down, Rube saw a grid of large, deep holes in its back.

The Finery family grabbed the reins and motioned towards the holes.  “Alright- in you get.”

Rube stared at it.  The holes were about half a metre across, and the insides of them glistened like jelly.  They couldn’t mean… She wasn’t supposed to…

Jeanette was the first to move, hoisting herself up onto the frog-lizard’s back and sliding across to a hole in the middle.  Once she’d sat down, it seemed to close around her, so that only her head and shoulders were visible

Then, while Rube was still gawping, Sally followed, a little more awkwardly, and settled into the hole next to Jeanette.  So now, Rube had no excuse.  She climbed up, choking back her surprise at how soft it was, and sat in the hole next to Sally.

She tried not to wince as the sides moved towards her.  It felt like jelly, too.

The Finery family gave an approving nod, and climbed into the… driver’s seat?  It only came up to the waist on them.  Or where Rube assumed their waist was.  They pulled on the reins, and they were off.

The frog-lizard-thing moved in long, bouncing strides, which just made Rube even more confused about what it actually was.  At least the jelly kept them all still, instead of rattling around and getting carsick.  But they couldn’t even move their arms.  It felt wrong.

They moved through the city, taking in more neon and glass and glitter, more corncob buildings, and more silver tree-people.  They went past a park filled with the kind of plants Rube usually associated with jungles, and across a bridge carved with animals she didn’t recognise.  They passed by little shops that looked as if they’d been hidden in the corners, and huge department stores with their windows packed with colours. 

Jeanette nodded towards her- probably the closest she could get to nudging her without her arms free.  “So…” she said, low enough to be mostly drowned out by the breeze, “I don’t think the Finerys are going to be very helpful.”

“We’ve got to give them a chance…” mumbled Rube.

“OK, but if they blow that chance, what’s our backup plan?”

Rube said nothing.  They seemed to be heading away from the city centre and towards the mountains.  Rube remembered the little army from Tavin Chapel, and frowned.

Sally looked from Rube to Jeanette.  “We could trick the Iridescences into capturing us so we can find Colwyn.”

“Sally!” hissed Rube.

Jeanette grinned.  “I was just going to say we should break in.”  She almost looked impressed.

Rube wanted to tell them to stop being ridiculous, but the sad thing was, she didn’t think they were.  The Finery family hadn’t exactly fallen over themselves to help them- they’d mostly just sighed at them until they’d made it clear that they weren’t going away.  But breaking into the Iridescences’ house?   Never mind the risk, how were they even meant to do it?  It wasn’t as if they were experts in breaking and entering even when they knew what kind of building they were dealing with.  Who knew if the Iridescence family’s place was even the same shape?

Jeanette took in Rube’s expression.  “I mean, I’m happy to be the one who actually does it.”

Rube sighed.  “No, I’m the oldest.  It should be me.”  It was about time she took responsibility for something.  She’d promised Mum that she’d keep an eye on Sally and Jeanette, but so far she’d just followed them around, feeling useless.

“Why can’t we all do it?” asked Sally, sounding a bit hard-done-by.

“We need someone on the outside,” said Jeanette.

“To do what?  Wait around here and probably get captured anyway?”

That was a good point- they didn’t know anywhere safe to wait around here.  And they couldn’t just send one person into the house while the other two went back to Dovecote Gardens, because how would the person inside ask them for help if they needed it?

Rube didn’t like it, but she couldn’t see any other options.  At the moment, they were safer in a group than they were apart.  “Alright.  We’ll all do it.  But not until after the Finerys try it their way.”  And there probably wasn’t much hope of that, so it looked like they were going in. 

For some reason, Rube thought about the Three Musketeers.  All for one and one for all.

(To be continued)

When Joe Warbeck thought back on it later, he realised that none of it would have happened if he’d left right away.  But he’d had visions of the front entrance packed with police cars, waiting for him to come through so they could slap the handcuffs on him.  What had happened back at the house had been a clear-cut case of self-defence, but Jackie’s cousin had always struck him as the kind of person who’d have the local police in his pocket.  He went up one of those paths to look for a back way.  There was bound to be one.  People like that always had to have something hidden from the little people.

The path got steeper as it went along, until eventually Joe had reached a definite hill.  That was OK- he wasn’t afraid of a little extra exercise.  Could be quite a pleasant walk, really.  Most people would have been too busy shitting themselves over what had happened back at the house to think clearly, but Joe was actually feeling very calm.  Could be quite a pleasant walk.  Lovely breeze.

This whole mess was typical of Jackie.  It was all about her own comfort.  God forbid anything interfere with that, even her own children.  It hadn’t been any different when they’d been together.  Joe would be the first to admit that he wasn’t the easiest guy to live with, but if you stuck it out instead of giving up the moment things got a bit difficult, he made it worth it.  He paid you back in spades.

Joe was starting to get out of breath.  He hadn’t even been able to see these hills from outside.  Went to show how much land they had, he supposed.  Nice life if your daddy was rich.  You could buy up half the planet.

Joe sat down on a little bit of grass by the path, wiping his forehead and looking up at the sky.  Jackie had sent the girls here, of all places.  Instead of letting their father take care of them, she’d packed them off to the middle of nowhere and got them exposed to nutters who waved swords around.  Joe couldn’t think about it too long, or he’d get too angry.  He’d…

There was something strange up ahead.  Like… a cave?  A hole in the hill?

Slowly and painfully, Joe got up and moved towards it.  As he got closer, he saw how big the hole was, and he saw what was in it.  A grand, golden staircase, leading up into the dark.

(To be continued)

Rube had thought of Sleet and the other people in Wallfruit Cove as “they” because she hadn’t known whether any of them were men or women.  The person she was speaking to now was a “they” in a very different sense.

They’d introduced themselves as the Finery family.  The woman they’d seen leaving the building was Til Finery, and her siblings were Ab, Si, Bon and Koo.  Together, they made a silver, tree-like being who worked for the Opal City council.

“So,” said the family, who’d sat behind a desk made out of dark green stone, “what can we do for you?”

Rube swallowed.  She wasn’t sure where to start.  “Well… do you know Colwyn Ballantine?”

“From Dovecote Gardens?”  When the Finery family spoke, it sounded as if one person was speaking, not five.  Rube wondered what everyone’s individual voice sounded like, and whether that affected the whole.  “Yes, we’ve crossed paths from time to time.  Wonderful man.”

Jeanette said it before Rube could.  “He’s been kidnapped.  We need your help.”

The Finery family didn’t reply right away.  Their face might have looked more like tree bark than anything human, but Rube was sure it had frozen into a rictus grin.  “OK.  And you are…?”

“His nieces,” Rube said quickly, “His sister Jackie’s daughters.”

Jeanette gave her an odd look, but didn’t say anything.  Rube was sure she’d done the right thing.  Mum and Colwyn were practically siblings, right?  And “cousin” might have made them sound too far-removed.  They needed to make it clear that things were urgent.

The Finery family nodded.  “And who told you he’d been kidnapped?”

“He did,” said Rube.

The Finery family looked confused.  Rube wondered if they had phones in Opal Hill.  If not, the idea of someone talking to you while they were trapped somewhere else might be a hard one to swallow.

Sally cut in.  “There’s a horse’s head in…”

“It’s OK, Sally,” said Rube.  If they didn’t already know about Falada, it was best not to bring it up now.  “The point is, he has a way of getting in touch with us.”

“I see,” said the Finery family.

Rube wasn’t sure if they did see, but she decided to carry on anyway.  “Did Colwyn ask you questions about the Iridescence family?  And about a boy named Kai?”

This time, the Finery family smiled.  “Ah.  Kai Domino.  We’ll tell you what we told Colwyn- there’s absolutely no record of a boy with that name going missing.  I don’t know who Colwyn relies on for his information, but they steered him wrong this time.”

“We’ve met him!” Sally burst out, “They turned him into a moth!”

The Finery family edged back, as of they were worried that Sally was going to spit at them.  “A moth?”

“Yes!”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know!  Ask them!”

The Finery family settled in their chair.  “And where is he now?  Kai the moth?”

“He went to Wallfruit Cove to get help for us,” said Rube.  She didn’t feel like getting into the whole story, but if it would get things moving…

“Ah.”  The Finery family smiled.  “Well, I’m afraid we can’t proceed on this without him.  We’d need to hear….”

“But they’re keeping Colwyn prisoner!” snapped Jeanette.

The Finery family sighed.  “The Iridescence family?”

“Yes!”

“And do you have any proof of that?”

“Colwyn told us!”

“From his prison?  In, what, the Iridescence family’s attic?”

“I don’t know!  Probably!”

The Finery family sighed again- a heavy, long-suffering sigh- and stood up.  They were around eight feet tall, although Til Finery had looked much shorter on her own.  “Look.  We’re going to take you to the Iridescence family’s house.  You are going to see that Colwyn’s not there.  And then do you promise to drop it so that we can actually find your uncle?”

Rube looked at her sisters.  What other option did they have?  “OK.  Yes.”

(To be continued)