REVISION: Song of Smoke - Chapter 1

‘At this point, young man,’ said the conductor, ‘It is traditional to present me with a ticket.’

Oskar turned from the window, pressed himself deep into his seat and smiled. His pockets were empty and at the station, he had skipped the barriers and slipped aboard.

‘Unless, of course, you ave’ a valid reason for travelling free of charge?’

There was a cool draft in the carriage, and though it wafted about the conductor’s face, beads of sweat still collected and ran down rolls of his neck, settling on his shirt collar. As the rattletrack had moved slowly closer toward the city centre, he had barely noticed the conductor traipsing along the aisle, stamping tickets and grumbling noisily with every new excuse. Sour-faced and pink like a boiled ham, the man lingered by his seat, running a hand over his waxy moustache and tutting.
Between his lips flashed a pointed tongue, yellowed and thin as a whip.
He smiled, fixing an eye on Oskar’s hand.
‘Is that a ticket in your hand?’
It was not.

Today’s order of business was an errand. Oskar was carrying a slip of paper, on which was written a single word. That morning, as the market square pulsed with movement, Professor Sinclair had fixed him with his certain grin and passed him the note.
‘Now look, it’s nothing too serious. He’s a friend, owes me a favour.’
He had paused to brush distractedly at the tufts of hair sprouting just above his ears.
‘But look, hurry back. Don’t stay out too long. We wouldn’t want you missing out tonight.’
There was, he’d been told, a flask of tea and some sweetbreads in it for him.
Late into the night before, his stomach had been rumbling, keeping the others in the archway awake. He’d seen no reason to refuse. All the way there, Oskar had clasped the note deep in the palm of his hand. He would let nothing shift it.

‘If that is a ticket, I would suggest you let me see it-‘

Oskar smiled weakly. Outside the windows, he could see the first bands of fog begin to break. That morning it had rolled in, silent and serene, over the broken spires of the city. Where the light burst through, it was filtered by greens and blues, so that the streets seemed more like some shimmering coral reef than the thoroughfares of a thrusting metropolis. Now, the shattered towers and bone white domes of the palatial district came juddering forth from the pulsing smoke. His stop wasn’t far away; if only he could find some way to distract the conductor, he might be able to rush past him and out into the busy streets below.

‘Young man,’ said the Conductor, ‘You are trying my patience.’

Oscar eyed the track - just a nose further, just a little longer, and they would be close enough to dash for it. He could barely breath. A fine would mean being hauled to one side, taken from the train and turned over to the tick-tocks. As the professor said - never trust a tick-tock. They hated his sort.

‘It isn’t a ticket, but –‘

The conductor’s eyes narrowing peevishly and he fumbled with his notepad, but from somewhere behind came a sudden commotion. He stood a moment, looking Oskar up and down, then sighed and dashed down the aisle. As Oskar turned his head to follow, he saw a woman had fallen from her seat and lay writhing on the floor. Slight and pale faced, she was stretched across the gangway rolling like a fish drawn from the sea. Her eyes were rigid with terror and she hissed words from the corner of a mouth that seemed twisted and warped in painful convulsion.

The conductor kneeled by her side and readied her head with his hands.

‘I don’t believe this! The third today –‘

The city was not a well place. Recent months had seen outbreaks of Muscat’s Bilge in the poorer quarters, and Leaping Sickness loose in the Western suburbs - lethal, among all the tottering high rises. This, though, was something much stranger indeed.
The attacks had been spreading in waves, and always with the same symptoms and the same words uttered from the patients’ mouths.

He paused a moment and turned to face Oskar, glancing up the aisle.

‘You stay there, boy.’

Oskar nodded, but silently rose from his seat and crept toward the door. Juddering into the station, the train pulled to a halt and Oskar tucked himself behind the last bank of seats, judging his moment carefully. With a hiss, the doors began open and the instant a gap wide enough was made, he slipped through and dashed down the platform. Somewhere behind, he heard the conducted yowling angrily, but as he rattled down the stairs, pushing through the crowd and out into the street below, his voice was soon drowned out. The blood rushed in his ears, thrilling to his escape. A laugh tumbled from his throat.

Out in the open, the crowd swarmed around him like a cloud of persistent insects, voices rattling and buzzing in his ears. On the street corner ahead was one of the old entertainments, a Jonny Rattletop, its chest a cage full of gecko birds. As Oskar moved past, it lifted its top hat in a gust of steam and blew a heavy whistle.

‘Morning, Mr. Rattletop,’ said Oskar, smiling.

The smell of burnt leather filled the air. Ahead, the street bottlenecked. The wooden fronted shops and overhanging sings pulled close until they were brushing the top of his head. Passing through the tightest of gaps, Oskar was forced to draw as close as possible to the gummy eyed beggars and street vendors either side, with their stalls perched shakily on the high edges of the pavement; trays filled with rusted metal parts, smart-mouths, dried meats, thundertins and crispy rolls of parchment covered in forbidden words. From the rooftops above rose the sound of blaring music - a constant, rolling drumbeat pulse and a snatches of some high, droning reed. Ahead of him, a circle of flower girls threw down their things and danced.

The sounds all around passed through the throat of the street and emerged like a belch in the open plaza ahead. Moving out, it was as though the world through which he had just passed had fallen away. Buildings of cool, white stone clamoured for space along the edges of the square. The silence was heavy and cool, punctured only by a murder of blood crows rippling across the sky, their cries echoing about the empty space.

As Oscar moved across the square, it soon fell into the shadow of the grand municipal library, his destination. Ahead lay a huge, grey stone building whose steps led up to booming doors, covered with ornate designs. It was an unshaken image of the city as it once had been: proud and wise, protective of its past.

Oskar marched up the steps and pressed through a small opening. He entered into a dimly lit hallway, where lights flickered in the walls and marble floors squealed with the sounds of persistent movement. All around, the brotherhood of librarians scuttled about their business, backs hunched, robes pulled tight about their faces.

Oskar stood agape a few moments before he felt a hand on his shoulder and a high, irritable voice asked:
‘yes?’
Turning, he faced a librarian, a drawn young man whose sallow face was interrupted by the whirring bronze eyepieces fixed to his skin. Their constant shifting and refocusing gave the uncomfortable impression that he was looking through Oskar, deep into his thoughts.
‘I...need to see the curator,’ said Oskar.
‘Do we?’
There was a pause.
‘Yes. I have a message...from a friend of his.’
‘Indeed?’
The librarian, he could tell, was enjoying this brief moment of power, drawing it out for as long as he could. Had he known where Oskar was coming from, he might well have tortured him further.
‘Then perhaps you should follow me.’

Together they headed down a creaking iron stairwell, at the bottom of which lay a dim causeway lined with socketed bulbs.
‘Now, do keep close,’ said the librarian, flashing cracked and yellow teeth.
‘We wouldn’t want you getting lost.’
He smiled and shuffled down the corridor, beckoning.

After a few moments they passed out of the shadow and into a high-domed hallway. It was lined with tottering stacks of books and papers, draped here and there with tapestries and crackling lights. Up above, there were rope bridges and clanking gangways, across which librarians moved, hunched and oblivious. From the centre of the hall rose a great, winding oak, its highest branches tracing the tiled frescoes that patterned the upper ceiling. Where the roots of the ancient tree folded beneath the floor, there were ripples in the ground, scattered with fallen leaves. In the few interrupting beams of sunlight, dust could be seen, drifting around the trunk like stars through the cosmos.

He stood a moment in silent awe, but the librarian tugged at his sleeve.
‘Your first, is it?’
‘Yes’ said Oskar.

In a minute, they were off again, pressing across the floor. They moved up another staircase against a far shelf, then over a gangway and through into an inlet carved into the Western wall. A passageway stretched deep into the stone and as they moved further and further down it, the ceiling grew lower and lower until they could only shuffle on in staggered hunches. Finally, they came to a single, bolted door. The librarian reached into his cowl and plucked a bundle of keys from a pocket. He settled on a single one, outlined in rough silver, and began to turn it in the lock.

Halfway through, he paused, twisting his face toward Oskar.
‘He – is a busy man. Not much time to waste. Do not linger. Do not touch anything. I will be waiting.’

The door opened with a dull click. Impatient, Oskar moved through.

He found himself in a wood panelled room. As outside, the ceiling hung low above his head, but toward the centre it blossomed outward, curving up toward a skylight that opened onto banks of cloud and fog.

There were stacks of books, heavy shelves, and a desk littered with papers. In a far corner, a yellowing skeleton topped with a rakish hat and scarf accumulated dust. A fireplace crackled hungrily and from a spinning box at its side, music played, soft and brassy. Above the low tones a voice could be heard, humming along and scattering words where remembered.

The door drew shut with a bang, and with it the singing stopped. From behind a shelf the voice came again.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’
Oskar froze. He had no idea how to respond. He moved silently forward.
‘I said it’s strange, isn’t it?’
Another pause.
‘Here I am, the most important person in the whole building, and they never seem to let anyone in to see me.’

The curator emerged from behind the shelf. A small, round faced man with sharp eyes and a squat belly tucked behind a worn waistcoat. He moved in an off-centre lollop, a book in one hand and a tumbler of golden yellow liquid in another.
He looked Oskar up and down.
‘And, when they do...well...’

He smiled and collapsed into a winged armchair. Around him, dust blossomed in the air. He picked a book from a pile to his left, shook it clean and opened it. After scanning a few lines he chuckled to himself, a lolloping, syrupy laugh.
‘What...what are you reading?’ asked Oskar, nervously.
‘Oh, I can’t say I read any more.’
He lifted the book high in his hands, running a finger along the spine.
‘I don’t see words on the page, no no. That’s not my job.’
The curator sighed and gulped at the tumbler.
‘I see rivers of thought...information, the skin they’re bound with and, when I’ve worked all that out, I mark them accordingly.”
With that, he tossed the book casually over his shoulder. It landed with a plop behind a stack of books and papers.
‘My job... is to split hairs...now that I have none of my own left.’
He smirked, leaning forward so that his bald head caught the light. Then, breathing deeply he lay back into the chair, picking up the music again and snatching at the tune through mouthfuls of drink.

‘The Librarian said you would be busy - that I wasn’t to waste your time.’
The Curator only smiled contentedly, shutting his eyes. Minutes passed in a whisper.
‘I am always working, even when my eyes are closed.’
‘Now!’ he said, leaping from the chair, ‘What, I wonder, are you after?’
Oscar held out his hand, the note flexing on the breeze.
The Curator took it from him and read it with a single pass of his eyes.
‘Ha!’ A laugh escaped him, ‘I see.’
In a moment he was off, light on his feet and scurrying about behind another pile of scattered things.
‘I see, I see, I see.’
Somewhere a stack tumbled. Something hard and metal clanged against cold stone. A yelp came from a corner of the room.
‘Turn that over would you?’
A hand emerged from the mess and pointed toward the spinning box. Oskar realised that the music had stopped. He reached a hand under, pressed it against the warm metal, and tipped it over on its pedestal. Immediately, new sounds began to emerge, rich, warm and strange. He stood a moment in admiration. It was a new, different kind of music, sad and bewitching and yet a smile seemed to former at the corners of his mouth.
‘What…makes that sound?’ asked Oskar, rather in awe.
‘Well now,’ said the curator, talking as volumes continued to rain down from above,
‘It is not so much a question of what makes it as what made it. That, you see, is the last of them - the waterflies of the Southern district, or rather the sound of their wings humming against the riverbanks, and a chorus of copper lizards. I suspect you never heard either…used to drive my father mad. Of course, there are no more, now. The fog did for them. Now…’
The curator at last emerged from behind the stacks, red-faced and clutching a volume in his hands; a small book in a brown, lightly furred cover.
‘This will be what he had in mind. Yes, this is the one.’
He pressed it into his hands, on top of which was the note. It read ‘Wodwo.’
‘Your professor and I, well. We knew each other. Good man, your friend. Unfortunate. Some of us hide our pasts more cleanly than others.’
He let his eyes run around the room, then looked Oskar up and down.
‘Still -’ his voice carried the edge of warm sarcasm.
‘I can see he picks his company well…so I needn’t tell you how important it is you look after this. A rare book, if ever there was one.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Oh, all manner of nonsense. The language of stones, the buried Gods -’
The curator, small and squat, began to wave dramatically,
‘The worlds beneath worlds. Yes, fanciful nonsense, but dangerous to own. So look after it, understood?’
Oskar nodded, tucking it under his shirt.
‘That’s the spirit’ said the Curator, smiling and heading back toward his heavy chair.
A moment later, he was slumped amongst the cushions, eyes closed. A succession of chirruping snores began to issue from his mouth. Oskar hurried from the room and back down the passageway to the hallway, where the oak rose triumphant from the centre. No-one to be seen. Nothing. Whereas before, the echoes of constant, scurrying motion had filled the air, now Oskar was alone. A leaf fell from one of the branches and drifted gracefully toward the floor.

Out in the lobby, the silence seemed thicker; it clung to the walls and hang ominously in the air. The librarians were huddled close to one side, muttering in their circles. A procession of people wound their way slowly through the doors, passing between a band of tall, darkly dressed shapes who stooped low and addressed each as they passed. From their angular bodies and halting movements, Oskar knew them straight away. Tick-Tocks.

There would have to be another way out.

Oskar scanned the room, but everywhere were locks and dead ends. One of the Tick-Tocks glanced up, over in his direction, and a chill ran through him as it cocked its head and began to turn to face him.

Then it hit him; somewhere ahead and to the left, a quiet hallway led off from the lobby - perhaps, Oskar thought, toward the street. Now the Tick-Tock was shifting, raising its arm to point in his direction. He moved as fast as he could, cringing each time the marble squeaked beneath his toes. Soon he was away and into the corridor and in the background, commotion was beginning as the Tick-Tock left its post and moved across the lobby in pursuit. There was a patch of light at the end of the corrior, emanating from a door topped with a clear glass panel. The exit. He moved, steadily. The handle was so close he could almost feel it cool against the palm of his outstretched hand. He slipped, scuffing his toe, but rebounded off a wall and kept moving. He had to, there was so little time.

As he drew nearer, shadows fell across him. Something moved behind the door, and slowly, it was opened. Before him stood the librarian with another man at his side; Tall and dark, dressed in a wide brimmed hat and coat. His face was a porcelain mask behind which eyes rolled, raw and yellow, his mouth fixed in a grin. The librarian muttered something into the man’s ear and he tilted his head toward the floor someway behind. Oskar followed his eyes down toward the book, which had slipped from his shirt and lay draped across the tiles. Somewhere behind, the Tick-Tock advanced up the hall.

‘Perhaps,’ the man whispered, ‘you might pass that to me?’

A black gloved hand stretched out toward him, grasping.