‘Look at this. A whole lake. Maybe even an ocean. Who knows what’s on the other side of this lot?’
The water in the tank smelled fresh and clean. It was like being on the shore of a vast lake where sparkling mountain stream water came cascading into a natural basin and filled it. Instead of mountain streams, however, there were lagged water pipes which led from gutters up on the roof. When it rained in the outside world, as it seemed to be doing now, clean water gushed from the gutters, down the pipes and directly into the tank. In turn other pipes carried the excess away, to tanks all over Attica, where it was used in the inhabitants’ strange world. Thus there was a balance which maintained a safe surface level of the Attican lake.
‘Isn’t that something?’ whispered an awed Alex. ‘What a marvel of nature.’
This remark caused his sister to look at him sharply.
‘What do you mean, nature?’ she said. ‘This isn’t natural, Alex. This is an attic, built by someone.’
‘Yes,’ replied her younger brother, giving her a significant look, ‘but by who?’
‘Whom,’ she corrected automatically, then could have bitten her tongue as Alex gave her a withering stare. ‘I mean, Alex …’
But he had turned his back to her.
Chloe’s heart sank once more. How could she tell him? How could she say it worried her that he thought the attic world was natural? Of course it worried her. It meant that Alex was becoming part of that world: another sign that he was beginning to fit in here, grow into this place. She shuddered when she thought of it. Her brother was changing into someone else. It wasn’t natural at all: it was entirely unnatural. She and Jordy had to get Alex out of here quickly, before he became that someone else completely.
‘Come on,’ Jordy cried, unaware of the tension and the negative atmosphere which had suddenly sprung up between Chloe and Alex like a chill breeze, ‘let’s find those bureaus.’
Chloe bit her tongue again. Bureaus. It should be bureaux.
The three of them traversed the edge of the great lake, which seemed to be square, for they reached a corner and on turning it, found what they were looking for: a vast forest of writing bureaux. They might have been dismayed by the sight, knowing that they had to find one particular bureau in this multitude, but they could see one brilliant bureau. On it were beautiful pictures of long-tailed birds and cliff crags with single trees gripping their ledges and one lovely snow-tipped mountain. But that wasn’t the reason they thought it brilliant. It was brilliant because it was painted with a crazed gold lacquer and – caught as it was in a shaft of sunlight – it dazzled as if it were made of real gold. In that huge and seemingly endless forest of writing bureaux this one called to them with its astounding beauty.
It had no branches, of course, but it had leaves. These leaves were quills sweeping from inkpots clustered on its shelves. Feathers of fresh-snow white. Other bureaux also had goose feathers sprouting from their inkpots, but not like these. Those on the golden bureau were of a purity which stopped your heart. These must surely have come from the wings of angels for they sang to you with their faultlessness. Not a drop of ink soiled them, not a speck of dust marred them. They were perfect in their whiteness, in their elegance, in their surety that they were hallowed feathers.
‘The map couldn’t be anywhere else,’ said Jordy, ‘could it?’
He hadn’t said where and they didn’t answer him. The other two knew what he meant and Jordy’s question was purely rhetorical.
Jordy then cried, ‘Well, come on – let’s go and get it.’
He ran into the forest before the others could stop him. They themselves hesitated to rush in with him. Both Chloe and Alex were mindful of the warnings they had received regarding the ink imps. They couldn’t actually see any of these creatures at that moment, but such warnings always had to be taken seriously in the attic.
And they were right not to follow him. Out of inkwells and inkpots standing on many of the bureaux came the ink imps. They were small liquid creatures only centimetres high but in the shape of men. Coloured they were: green, red, blue and black, according to the ink in the pots from which they had emerged. They left no marks where they