was quickly—and thankfully—distracted from this disturbing thought by the crowds that gathered along the sides of the avenue to cheer our arrival. They were Yatsill but, unlike those we travelled with, they were clothed—and in such a bizarre manner that I repeatedly rubbed my eyes and pinched myself, half-convinced I was hallucinating again. Those creatures that stood in the front rows of onlookers wore four-legged trousers or billowing skirts. Their upper mussel-shell-shaped bodies were encased in colourful waistcoats over which long jackets were draped, some male in design, others female. Viennese masks covered their faces—all with four eye-holes, all resembling long-beaked birds or bejewelled human faces or Pierrots or Punchinello—while their heads were adorned with frilly bonnets or top hats, though in the latter case many among the crowd were throwing theirs into the air while yelling, “Hooray! Hooray! Three cheers for the new Aristocrats! Hup hup hurrah! Hup hup hurrah! Hup hup hurrah!”
The rearmost spectators were rather less extravagantly dressed, their “suits” being of a baggier cut, their heads adorned with cloth caps or drab bonnets, and their masks simplistic depictions of a human face.
The hullabaloo and dazzling sights so jumbled my senses that it was impossible for me to properly explain everything to poor Clarissa. Perhaps she understood this, for she stood at my side and gripped my hand tightly, as if to shackle me to the reality she represented—the reality of Earth and home—and prevent me from drifting off into realms of madness. Had she not done so, the sheer lunacy I was now witnessing might have pushed me over the brink.
“Hallo hallo!” Spearjab exclaimed. “There’s trouble!”
He pointed to a small group of Yatsill who, unlike the majority, were unclothed. They were chanting, “Down with the dissonance! No to change! Back to the trees! No to change!”
“Backward thinkers!” he said dismissively. “Ignore the blighters. Only a bally fool stands in the way of progress. Hey? What? Harrumph! Now then, I propose a tour of the new city. But first we must stop at a tailor’s. I feel positively naked! Naked, I say! It won’t do at all!”
Mademoiselle Clattersmash placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, my dear. The matter of the dissonance must be addressed at once.” She pointed at Clarissa and me. “We should deliver these two to the House of Lords immediately.”
“Oh, very well, very well. Humph! Humph! Humph! But I insist that the acquisition of clothing must follow right afterwards! What!”
“I shan’t argue,” Clattersmash said. She raised her hands to her face and wriggled all her fingers excitedly. “I’m positively eager to pick out a dress!”
The Ptall’kor took us down to the third terrace, turned right onto a wide thoroughfare, and came to rest outside a monumental white edifice that reminded me a little of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Two figures were standing on the steps that led up to the building’s ornate entrance. One, a Yatsill, was wearing top hat and tails, with a white shirt and perfectly enormous bow tie. While his trousers were black, as one would expect in such an outfit, the jacket and hat were pink. His mask resembled the face of a heron, with a long pointed beak.
The other was plainly a Koluwaian male, though, like the witch doctor Iriputiz, he was of a considerably taller and skinnier build than the average islander. He was wrapped from head to toe in purple robes, had a cloth of the same colour wound around his head, and wore a Pierrot mask over his face.
“Saviour favour you,” the Yatsill said to Spearjab as we disembarked. “It’s bloody good to see you again, Yazziz Yozkulu. Welcome to New Yatsillat!”
“Colonel Momentous Spearjab now, Prime Minister. Humph! And you, sir?”
“I have settled upon Lord Upright Brittleback.”
Spearjab bowed. “Tip-top! Very nice! Very nice indeed! And New Yatsillat! How wonderfully appropriate! I sensed a great deal, of course, but not that particular morsel! Ha ha!” He waved a hand toward Clattersmash. “My Lord, you know Tsillanda Ma’ara, now Mademoiselle Crockery Clattersmash. Harrumph!”
“I do indeed.”
Clattersmash held out a hand and the prime minister reached to shake it, hesitated, then took it by the fingertips and raised it to the end of his mask’s beak, giving it a light peck. “You chose the female gender, then, Mademoiselle?”
“I did,” she replied. “It occurred to me that those in the Council of Magicians would mostly select the male. I thought it might give me an advantage to go the other way.”
“Shrewd, as always,” Brittleback responded. He turned to Spearjab and flexed his