to this place for good.’ He paused. ‘Just one of these pillars down, that’s all it would take, to crush this world.’
‘Cheerful Charlie, aren’t you?’
‘I’m just saying how fragile this place is. It looks sturdy enough, it’s true, but it ain’t.’
‘A delicate balance?’
‘Well, I don’t know about delicate, but a balance, sure. You interfere with that balance, and WHAM, the whole lot comes crashing down. Everything underneath would be flattened, squashed to pulp. A few cockroaches might live, but not much else.’
Chloe was happy when they moved on and he stopped talking. She preferred her thoughts to dwell on lighter things than the end of the world.
Mostly the apex of the roof was high, out of sight, but they reached an area where the roof was lower and a tangle of rafters above their heads formed a canopy similar to that in a rainforest or jungle. The children sensed movement occasionally in the rafters and believed there were bats up there. Neither Chloe nor Alex were scared of bats, or really any kind of wildlife. Chloe couldn’t stand girls who squealed at anything unusual. Alex didn’t like creepy-crawlies but he was all right with bigger creatures.
They were always seeing movements out of the corner of their eyes, though. The attic was that kind of place. It was a patchwork of shadows and half-light and dazzling sunshine. One drifted from dimly lit corners where the dust was centimetres thick, into brilliant spaces where the sunlight was blinding. Twilight to bright light in a moment. It was no wonder, they told each other, that the light played tricks with their eyes. Shadowy creatures danced with quick movements here, there and everywhere, but you could never catch them in full sight. Maddeningly, they were always fleeting.
However, looking up into the woven network of rafters at one point, Alex was given a start. This was real! No figment of the mind. There, looking down at him, was a doll’s painted face. The blue eyes of the doll, set in pale-pink china, stared at him unblinkingly. She had red cupid’s-bow lips and bulging cheeks of rosy hue. The doll was clinging to one rafter with chubby little ceramic hands, her tiny feet in black strapover shiny shoes on the rafter below. She was wearing a filthy white dress, torn in places. Suddenly, inexplicably, she smiled with a row of neat even teeth. Then she climbed up, as fast as a monkey, into the upper canopy and out of sight.
Alex was so frightened he could hardly breathe.
‘There’s something up there,’ he croaked.
‘I know: bats,’ replied his sister. ‘Come on.’
Alex said no more. There wasn’t any point in worrying Chloe. In any case, they were emerging from the canopy into a more spacious area. There were man-sized figures standing like scarecrows as far as the eye could see. All had definite faces: some hideous, others not so. Alex shuddered, but his sister had been prepared for this.
‘A Land of Masks,’ she murmured.
‘Shouldn’t we arm ourselves?’ asked Alex, taking out his penknife. ‘Any golf clubs around?’
‘If you walk about with weapons, you only antagonise people.’
‘People?’
‘Well, whatever.’
‘We could pretend we were playing golf.’
Chloe said, ‘It’s best we approach pure of heart.’
‘Is it?’ Alex was unconvinced.
The ‘figures’ had been fashioned from odds and ends and hardly resembled people at all. Most of them had no arms or legs, being merely cones made of old clothes, washing line poles, waste bins, that sort of junk. But they were topped by the most beautiful – and ugly – masks. Some were traditional carnival masks which Chloe recognised as being from the Venice carnival. Others were more exotic, from Africa, Polynesia, China and Borneo. Some of the African masks were quite scary: they were meant to be, having once been used in tribal rituals to drive out demons. Others from the same continent were obviously meant to represent animals – lion masks, elephant masks, hippo masks – and were not frightening at all. There were grinning devil masks from China and mournful demi-god masks from the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Very unnerving. Most with hollow eyes. There were huge giant masks at the back, on the edges of the attic, and smaller ones near to the path which the children were using.
‘Don’t look at them,’ said Chloe, walking among the forest of figures. ‘Try not to answer them.’
‘What?’ cried a nervous Alex.
‘Over heres,’ said a mask with a mouth formed in a perfect wooden O. ‘Sir, sir, over heres. Thine eyes must