B= The Big Downstairs 2

Two

There were four things that Michael were afraid of and two of them
didn't really count. His mind wandered onto them as the others in his
class listened to his teacher tell them about defending a siege and he
sketched a skull-and-crossbones flag where he ought to have been
writing notes.

The first was crocodiles (alligators didn't trouble him, it was the
skinny nose of the crocodile). His fear was not of being snapped up and
gulped down by a crocodile, but more of being trapped in those slim,
slim jaws, usually by the leg, while the crocodile used him as an
ice-lolly, licking at his leg until the combination of raspy tongue and
croc spit wore it down to the bone. Not to just be eaten, but to be
eaten alive and very very slowly.

There were no crocodiles in this country, except in zoos, so Michael
treated this one as a fear that didn't really count.

Next came the fear of going home after school and finding the house
empty. Not that all the furniture had gone, that the people were gone,
that the house had no smells and no sound. At first, of course, it
would be an adventure, eating whatever he liked from the cupboards and
making his own curry, the way his mother did from time to time, playing
Gran Turismo 3's endurance races to get the cups he'd never normally
win. Someone always wanted the television before the forty laps were
over, usually his sister so that she could watch a programme with
identical-looking American teenagers falling in love in different
combinations every week. So, for a while it would be fun - everyone
dreams sometimes of what life would be like if they were the only
person in their world.

But as the fear continued, it was about sleeping in a house with nobody
else in it, putting the key in the door every night and hoping for a
sound that would never come.

Brrr, thought Michael, as he carried on drawing the flag, without much
skill.

After that, was his fear of a parrot coming to sit on his outstretched
forearm and of putting more and more pressure on with the claws, until
it drew blood that just gushed and gushed and gushed.

Parrots was a fairly realistic fear - there were certainly parrots in
Lincoln, maybe in his street. He wasn't keen on those white birds that
pretended not to be parrots either, cockatiels they called them. White
parrots.

His teacher was standing over him, her head cocked to one side like a
curious dog, waiting for him to notice. He went very red and tried to
look as though it had been a momentary loss of concentration. His
teacher wasn't fooled.

"Perhaps you could remind the class, Michael, of the last thing I
said."

The classic teacher trick, and normally he tried to keep one part of
his brain there in the classroom so that he could just parrot back the
last sentence, but he'd been too lost that day and had no idea.

"Sorry Miss, " he said, "I really wasn't listening. "

Later, in the pub, she told her friends that she didn't blame him.
Sometimes she forgot herself what the last thing she'd said in class
was, which is why it was helpful to ask children to jog her memory. She
was a very kind teacher and didn't ever use sarcasm with the
children.

"Stay behind after class, " she said, "And by the way, that's a
dreadful pirates flag. What sort of bones are they supposed to be?
Legs, arms, ribs?"

Michael blushed again, but he didn't mind Miss M, she was always quite
fair with him. The bones didn't really look very good in his
drawing.

"I'll have to teach you how to draw bones properly, " she said, "Right.
So who can tell me why the windows in the castle are so narrow?"

Miss M was a good teacher, though she didn't much care for it.
Sometimes she whistled old songs, "You see this girl, this girl's in
love with you" and people laughed, but not unpleasantly.

She had short reddish hair, a nice smile and white teeth and she
dressed simply, but not wacky like the art teacher. Michael never
thought much about her, other than that she was alright, for a teacher.
He would never have imagined her as anything other than a teacher - she
had not, so far as his mind went, existed before she became his teacher
and probably wouldn't exist afterwards. For all Michael knew or
thought, she could have folded herself up like a deckchair after the
end of school and been shut away in a cupboard until the next time she
was needed.

He did remember her first day, they all did. She had come into the
classroom and written her surname on the board in pale green chalk. It
began with an "M" but after that it was all j's and w's and z's. An
utterly unpronounceable and long name, that wasn't the name she had on
her chequebooks (not that Michael knew that).

She had said brightly, "Hello, I'm Miss?" and then peered at the name
on the board and pulled a face, "Gosh, what a terrible name. I've no
idea where to start with it. Call me Linda. No wait, Miss M. Call me
Miss M. "

Linda, everyone thought. Nobody had ever seen a teacher give away her
first name before. They all wondered about initials and tried to guess
"F.S Parkin. Frog-snogger. " and sometimes they walked slower as they
passed the staffroom, hoping to hear one of the teachers use another's
first name. They liked her immediately.

And not one of them knew that the name they themselves had seen on the
blackboard was different to the one that the person sitting next to
them had seen. All just names beginning with "M" that were impossible
to pronounce.

* * *

Bede supervised, as the others cleaned up the mess. Bede was the wisest
of all of the clerics, and although his face was sometimes too pink, he
was also very gentle and fair. He had wept, a little, as he had seen
his poor brave friend Mr Duffy, reduced to a salt-statue.

The other clerics set to work clearing him away, firstly by chipping at
him with chisels and squirting him with water from a nozzled bottle
that they used for the roses, to soften the salt until it broke. After
a time, they did not have a statue, but heaps of soft, white
salt.

Someone suggested using a vacuum cleaner, but Bede was horrified,
"After all that has gone on, the idea of any vacuum being a good one?
No, dustpans, brushes and bin bags. That is what must be used. "

These were fetched, and the clerics set to work in silence brushing and
sweeping, until almost all that was left of Mr Duffy was pushed into
chubby black bin bags and then taken outside.

William didn't say much. The clerics were not very talkative anyway,
they had learned the value of silence and also were more than a little
shocked to find their friend turned to salt. Bede allowed William to
clean the soup from the bathtub, which was mostly just letting it drain
and then fishing out any small bits of pasta that were blocking the
plughole, then scrubbing the sides of the bath clean with a scourer and
some sharp-smelling white powder that made a scratching noise.

Bede came over to William, making a slightly disgusted face as bits of
salt crept into his sandals and between his toes. More so as he thought
about what that salt actually was. Bede felt more than a little
relieved that the books were gone. He had been charged with keeping
them safe and it had been a heavy, heavy burden. It would fall on
someone else to recover them.

Although his biceps were still hard as apples, he was too old and tired
now for fighting, and the years of going to sleep and thinking 'what if
anything should happen to the books' had made his brow more furrowed
and creased than it ought to have been. He could settle down now to
sketching insects, tending the chickens, bottling the wine and
occasionally fighting a little evil. That of course, was assuming that
the people who would get the books back did their job and made sure
that there would still be chickens, insects and wine in the
world.

There would still be evil. Of that he was sure.

"Do you remember anything at all about the man who took the books
William?"

"He was beautiful, " said William, "So, so beautiful. "

Bede had lived a long time and seen some very peculiar things, so it
would not be right to say that he was surprised. The last time he had
been surprised was when he was called upon to fight the Melting Swan
and the Clockwork Aunt and he still had some white long feathers
trapped under glass as a souvenir. Aunts were ten a penny, so he hadn't
taken anything as a keepsake of her.

He was not surprised, but he was curious. He had been expecting either
someone very plain to have taken the books, or else someone who didn't
look like a man at all, but just like a particular shade of
purple.

"Beautiful, " he said to himself, tapping his teeth with a finger, "I
really can't think of anyone beautiful who would want my books. Perhaps
I should speak with someone who might know. William, what month is it?
"

"April, " said William.

Bede never swore, but he did look cross. "The worst possible month.
He'll be very weak at the moment, and he never likes to leave London,
even when it is his time. "

He collected himself and drew himself up to stand tall, he was much
taller than anyone would actually imagine when they looked at him from
a distance. He kept his height to himself, curled it up with a slant of
the back and a bending of the knees.

"William, " he said, "I would very much care for a glass of warmish
beer about now. Would you come to the Magna Carta with an old
man?"

There was nothing better William had to do. He had cleaned all of the
soup and he was too frightened to go home and sleep.

"First though, " said Bede, "I shall go to my quarters and change my
shoes. And possibly wash my feet. A man cannot drink beer while a
friend is between his toes. "

* * *

Shona had to tell Roger to stop looking at the ring. He seemed to pay
it more attention than he did her.

"It's a beautiful ring, " he said with a sigh, "But I feel that I
should have done more. If I'm to be in a fairy story I should have
climbed a tower of glass, or taken the ring from a dragon's egg.
"

She put two fingers firmly under his chin and pulled his head upwards
so that he was looking at her eyes and not at her left hand.

"Dragons, " she said, "Burn. And the only thing ever to come out of a
dragon egg was a grumpy baby and the smell of sulfur. This ring is the
one I want, and you are the man I want. "

"But really, " he said, "Magpies. A bit tame. "

She shook her head sadly at him, "Poor industrious magpie. Do you have
any idea how long she spent hunting scraps of tin-foil, neglected
charms from bracelts, the silver backing of mirrors, while all the time
her chicks cried for worms and beetles? The least you can do is respect
her efforts. "

That was true. And he had climbed a lot of trees to find the right egg.
Roger started to feel a little more heroic.

"Very rare, you know, for a mortal to charm one of the Folk. "

Roger realised how little he knew about his new wife-to-be and her
background.

"What about the wedding? " he asked, "Are there any traditions for
that?"

She clapped her hands lightly, "Oh plenty. Don't worry, your family
will never know that mine are different. We'll all leave our Glamours
off. "

He had been told about Glamours by her. This was what made the Folk so
beautiful and graceful, and they could remove it so that they could
pass unnoticed amongst the ordinary people. She had told him that the
Folk keep their true beauty tucked behind their left ears, and it was
true that this was the part of her he found most pleasing to the eye,
although he had to move her hair aside to see her ears at all. He found
it incredible to think that what she looked like now was considered
ordinary, and couldn't help wondering what she might seem like with her
Glamour on.

"You'll get to see, " she said, for she knew his face well and he was
simple to read, back in those days when he was young, "Just for a
moment, when we kiss after the ceremony. Only you will see, so you'll
have to try hard to remember it always. "

He grinned, "That's a date then."

"We'll be married at Lake Garda, " she said, "That's tradition. You'll
love it there, it is so lovely. Wild, but kind. And you will have on
your frogskin waistcoat. "

He pulled a face.

"Not slimy, " she said, "Very, very soft and supple. And it won't smell
of ponds. I promise. "

"Hmmm, " she said, screwing up her face in thought, "Are there plenty
of people coming to the wedding you don't like?"

"None at all, " he said, "Why would I invite people I don't like to my
wedding?"

"It might be an idea, " she said, and fell quiet, simply adding, "It
makes the odds a little better, you see. "

* * *

There was something not right. She could tell. Linda always knew when
the rain would come, she always knew when the newspapers would have sad
stories in. This was something very wrong, and it had this boy
connected to it somehow.

"What was the fourth thing? " she asked him, directly.

He looked up at her, with a rather blank expression.

"The fourth thing you were frightened of. Slow crocodiles, being left
alone, parrots and white parrots? and one more. "

"I didn't tell you that, " he said slowly.

She smiled at him, an infectious smile, and then tapped herself on the
side of the head.

"No, but I heard you in here. Everyone else whispers, if I want to hear
them I have to press close and forget everything else, just concentrate
on them. But you, Michael, you've got a loud brain. "

"I don't believe you, " he said, daring to be cheeky to a teacher,
"Nobody can read minds. "

"Wait then. Sugar mice. You're frightened of sugar mice?"

And that was that. He'd never told anyone that. Well, you wouldn't.
That he didn't like the waxiness of them, their horrid beady eyes, the
fact that they might move when you weren't looking at them.

"They don't count as a real fear, " he said, as bravely as a boy can
when a grown-up learns their secret dreads, "I only count parrots as a
real fear. Parrots are nasty. And alone. "

"Everyone's frightened of being alone, " she said gravely, "They just
won't tell you. Parrots are odd. All that copying, trying to be like
us, trying to please. What is it they're after? Can't just be sunflower
seeds and a ladder to run up. Give me a skinny cat who comes and goes
as he pleases. "

She whistled a quick tune and said, "I was going to teach you how to
draw bones properly. Wait there. "

Linda took a key from her pocket and unlocked a cupboard, disappearing
into it for a moment before wheeling out a squeaking sort of coatstand
on wheels affair that had a slightly milky coloured skeleton attached
to it. Michael wasn't scared of that at all, it was pretty cool.

"I didn't know we had skeletons at school, " he said, with a little bit
of awe in his voice. Nobody else in his class had seen the
skeleton.

"We don't let him out much, " she said, "Now, this is the radius, and
this is the ulna. This is what all of us look like under the skin. What
stops us falling on the floor and just being wriggling jellies. Do you
want to touch him? "

Michael did, and was a little disappointed that he felt so ordinary.
Not as cold as he'd feared, and not as hard either. It was just like
the bones in his little fingers, where the skin was thin and you could
grasp it and feel the outline of it.

"Exactly, " she said, "That's exactly what Trevor here is. Just the
same as you or I if we took our skin off. "

"Trevor? Is that like a teacher joke-name? Shouldn't he be Napoleon
Bone-apart or something rubbish like that? "

"If you like, " she said, looking away. He had the feeling that more
was going on. He tried something. He tried to reach out with his mind,
to move forward with it and nothing else, the way that you feel for a
doorknob in the dark with your hand. He touched something and she
jumped back.

"Quick learner, " she said, "But too many secrets in there. My head's
dynamite. I could blow you up. "

"You knew him, " said Michael, "Before. "

Her smile seemed a little sadder this time, but more real. "I know
everyone," she said, "Everyone who ever comes to Lincoln, I meet them
eventually. "

"And not from anywhere else ? "

She looked relieved, as if he hadn't found as much in her mind as she'd
feared. "No, never been anywhere else. Did my training at Bishop
BigBalls. "

He blushed.

"Oh come on, " she said, "You're twelve, you're not stupid. I know that
everyone calls Bishop Grossteste teacher college Bishop BigBalls,
they've been doing it for years. What else would children call it?
"

"What did he die of? " asked Michael, and then, "If you don't mind
talking about it. I don't want to make you sad. "

She blinked, unused to thoughtfulness, "No, I don't mind. He was in a
car crash. Back in the days when everyone used to drive home from the
pubs, before seatbelts and airbags. "

Michael looked at him. He couldn't imagine being in a car crash, how
fast it might be, how hard it would be, hitting something else.

"How's your mum? " asked Linda, "I haven't seen her in ages. Not since
your father caught her up by that level crossing. "

Michael didn't know anything about this and said so, but told her that
his mum seemed fine. Still mental.

"I think, " said Linda M, "That it might be about time you thought
about what there is underneath you at your house. It might well turn
out to be very important. For you, and your mum, and your dad. And
Lincoln. "

"Who cares about Lincoln? " he said, in a reflex bored way that people
always have when they speak about the place they live and have taken
for granted.

"I care, " said Linda, and she meant it.