Echo was at a loss for words, he was still so utterly baffled by the sudden turn of events.
‘Thank you,’ he said eventually. ‘And, er, what should I call you?’
A Leathermouse cleared its throat and announced solemnly: ‘My name is Vlad the First.’
‘My name is Vlad the Second,’ called the one beside it.
‘My name is Vlad the Third,’ squeaked another.
‘My name is Vlad the Fourth.’
‘My name is Vlad the Fifth.’
‘My name is Vlad the Sixth.’
‘My name is Vlad the Seventh.’
‘My name is Vlad the Eighth.’
‘My name is Vlad the Ninth.’
‘My name is Vlad the Tenth.’
Echo didn’t realise his mistake until Vlad the Eleventh had introduced himself. Every last one of the Leathermice insisted on calling out its name. It wasn’t until Vlad the Two Thousand Four Hundred and Thirty-Eighth had made himself known, by which time Echo was almost dying of hunger, that the creatures showed him the secret route to the roof.
The Mother of All Roofs
When Echo came out on the roof, he felt he had entered a new and far bigger world. The wind was so strong, it ruffled his fur and nearly blew him over. He had never been so high up before and the view was breathtaking. Ghoolion’s castle served as a monumental observation tower. The whole of Malaisea lay spread out below. What had looked to Echo at ground level like a gigantic labyrinth flanked by insurmountable walls dwindled at this altitude to the size of a miniature plaything, a disorderly jumble of dolls’ houses and building bricks traversed by tiny carriages and horse-drawn wagons, and inhabited by creatures that scuttled around like the busy inmates of an anthill.
All at once Echo realised how pathetically little he knew of the world in which he lived. He experienced a fierce desire to explore the regions beyond the horizon above which the sun was shining so brightly. The countryside between the town and the distant Blue Mountains on the skyline was a hundred shades of green, a patchwork quilt of woods, fields and meadows that would certainly have taken him months to reconnoitre in every detail. Possibly years. Possibly a lifetime.
And that was when Echo’s woes caught up with him again. Months? Years? A lifetime? He had only a week or two left. Thirty days - no, only twenty-nine now. He looked up at the ghostly, waning moon. Horrified to think that it would hover up there for a month like a portent of his approaching death, he banished the dismal thought - shook it off as though ridding his fur of raindrops - and proceeded to explore the roof.
It was indeed the mother of all roofs, an architectural marvel that tapered to a point and consisted of gables of varying sizes, stone walls and stairways that served no obvious purpose.
Although it wasn’t the first roof Echo had climbed around on, it was certainly the biggest, the highest and the most dramatically complex. Dozens of chimneys jutted from it like stone mushrooms with metal caps. Most of the tiles were as correctly laid as any tiler could have wished, but elsewhere they stuck out awry like huge, neglected teeth, buffeted and dislodged by centuries of wind. Where one or more were missing, having been washed away by the rain, the gaps were occupied by little wild gardens of thistles, buttercups and daisies.
The tiles themselves looked almost indestructible, being composed of an iron-hard slate that had defied the passage of time. The fine cracks and cavities in their rough exterior provided Echo’s paws with excellent footholds. One false step, one slip, one trip, and he would have fallen like a stone, down past the windows of Ghoolion’s abode and ever onwards, down and down, until his bones shattered into a thousand splinters on the castle forecourt below. It wouldn’t matter which way up he landed because his flexible bone structure and padded paws would never be proof against a fall from such a height.
The stairways had also suffered from the wind and weather, having cracked and crumbled away in places, and Echo was often obliged to leap boldly across the gaps. But it was the sheer danger that generated much of the thrill it gave him to tiptoe from tile to tile