lady – you – cheated.’
‘No,’ replied Chloe calmly.
‘Yes, you cheated. This is no map.’
‘Oh yes it is. It’s a map to knowledge. It’s a map to other worlds, the worlds of fiction. It’s a map to great literature.’
‘Great literature?’ scoffed the bat. ‘Flat Stanley?’
‘Flat Stanley is highly original. It’s for younger readers than me, of course, but I loved it when I was little. I couldn’t have written it – could you?’
‘I couldn’t write a shopping list, but that doesn’t make this a map.’
‘It’s all I have.’
‘You’ll regret this, lady.’
The heap slid away into the darkness and the bat followed shortly afterwards.
‘Lady?’ repeated Alex. ‘What lady?’
‘It meant me,’ said Chloe. She hugged her knees. ‘And I’ve got some good news. I know where there’s a map of Attica.’
Alex yawned and shook his head. ‘Where?’
‘Over there,’ she replied vaguely, unwilling to tell her younger brother that there might be live and hostile ink imps waiting for them. Alex had an engineer’s brain and engineers were not the most imaginative of people. At least, they were good inventors, but not good at believing in fantastical creatures. ‘I’ll show you in the morning.’
‘Oh, all right, sis.’ He yawned again and lay down. ‘Did – did that bat really talk?’
But Chloe found she was too tired to answer and fell asleep.
The following morning a shaft of golden light struck Chloe in the face and she woke feeling dreadfully thirsty. Alex was already up and eating some of their stores. He offered her the bottle of water. She drank from it gratefully and then joined her brother at breakfast. They munched away, staring into the distance. There were slanted pillars of light all around them today, marching off like pylons into unknown regions. Obviously it was a very bright day in the outside world. Chinks and cracks in the roof also sent down smaller blade-like beams of light. It was as if Attica were a stage and the lighting manager had just arrived and turned on all the switches.
Chloe’s eyes searched the area for signs of the bat and the heap of clothes, but they were both gone. After the encounter last night she was now ready to accept that they were in some strange world, rather than in the rogue attic of an ordinary warehouse or palace. She didn’t know whether Alex would accept what she believed to be true, but she knew that it was best to let him come to his own conclusions in his own good time.
‘Makes you feel a bit better,’ she said, ‘when it’s sunny.’
‘Yup,’ agreed her brother. ‘It do.’
However, the Jagged Mountain (as the bat had called it) remained very much shrouded in darkness. Jordy was still nowhere to be seen. Chloe was worried about him but she knew him to be a resourceful person – annoying when it came to books, but quite resolute and tough – and she knew he was no wimp. However, she and Alex could not wait around for ever and if Jordy didn’t return before noon, she thought perhaps they ought to follow him.
Jordy did not return, despite anxious prayers from Chloe.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose we’d better go and look for him.’
‘What about Katerfelto?’ asked Alex, looking nervously at the distant mountain. ‘What shall we do about him?’
‘If we run into him, we’ll have to face up to him.’
Alex’s Indian cousins, some being Hindus, had spoken to him about Shiva, the Moon-god of the mountains. There was some thought in Alex’s head that perhaps this great god would protect them.
‘All right,’ he said to his sister. ‘If you can face him, so can I.’
The pair prepared for the journey. Chloe found another bag, a backpack through the straps of which she slipped her arms. It was much easier to carry that way and it held both the torches as well as food and water. Thus by noon they were ready to leave. One more quick glance around the floor to see that they had all the photos which had fallen out of the album, then they were off towards the first of the foothills.
Instead of heading towards a hill of footstools, as Jordy had done, Alex and Chloe decided to try a different route.
CHAPTER 6
Pursued by Mad Mannequins
A strange light was coming from the valley ahead of them. There was one thick sunbeam bearing down from a skylight in the roof which struck the centre of the Vale of Mirrors. But this was reflected back and forth over a thousand thousand