Lady Friday

Chapter Twenty-Four

Leaf woke slowly. For several moments she thought she was in the middle of some not-very-pleasant dream, imagining she was awake. But as her senses came fully together, she knew it was no dream.

Harrison’s anxious face loomed just above her own. He had the silver spoon in his hand, some noxious-looking blue liquid dripping from it.

“Wake up!” he urged. “Wake up!”

Leaf slowly edged her head up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her arm felt like it had just recovered from a bad case of pins and needles and she almost smacked herself in the lip. She was not surprised to see the smear of the blue medicine on her hand.

“What?” she said muzzily. “Who-”

“It’s Harrison! Wake up! We have to go hide!”

Leaf sat up properly. Her poor, stressed brain was putting everything together.

Harrison-sleepers-Lady Friday-experiencing-Friday’s Noon ...

“What’s happening?” she asked. She meant to sound incisive but her words came out slurred. Her mouth was still recovering too.

“Lady Friday’s gone completely mad!” shrieked Harrison. “She’s experiencing everyone! All the sleepers at once! We have to hide!”

“All the sleepers?”

“Every mortal in the place! The Denizens are putting everyone in the crater. They’ll be here in a minute!”

Leaf looked around. She was in a room full of sleepers, much like the Yellow Preparation Room, though this room had pink walls.

“This is the last ward!” gabbled Harrison. He grabbed Leaf’s arm and pulled her off the bed. “Come on!”

“Why help me?” Leaf asked groggily as she let herself be led to the door. “Why not just save yourself?”

“I said I’d help, didn’t I?” Harrison said nervously. He opened the door and looked up and down the corridor. “Come on!”

Leaf followed. She was still trying to get a grip on walking as well as thinking. The two came together reasonably well after a few paces, but as her thinking improved, Leaf suddenly stopped.

“My aunt Mango!” she exclaimed. “I have to get her!”

“She’s already in the crater! Everybody is,” Harrison said as he ducked into a stairwell. “They’ll take the sleepers in the Pink Prep Room anytime now. Hurry!”

Leaf followed Harrison down the stairs.

“We have to stop Lady Friday,” she said. “She can’t-”

“She can,” said Harrison. “She is. Nothing we can do about it except hide and hope we survive.”

“Why is she doing this?” asked Leaf. “How long have I been out?”

“Why? I don’t know! It all happened suddenly. Axilrad got the order. I... I started to help and then I realized ‘every mortal’ meant me as well. Oh, you’ve been under for only six or seven hours. No harm done, I’m sure.”

“We have to get weapons and head for the crater,” said Leaf. “If we can distract Lady Friday at least-”

“We’ll be killed!” said Harrison. “Use your head. We’ll be lucky if we can save ourselves. Wait! Where are you going?”

“The crater,” said Leaf. “There must be something I can do.”

“You’ll get caught up,” hissed Harrison. “You’ll get experienced. You’re as crazy as Friday!”

“Thanks for waking me up,” said Leaf. “At least you’ve done one good thing.”

“And that’s it!” Harrison turned away from Leaf and clattered down the stairs.

I need a bow or a gun or even a slingshot, thought Leaf. Something to shoot at Friday when she hops on that rock, something to distract her long enough to run out .... No, that won’t work .... I suppose Harrison is right ....

Angry tears welled up at the corner of her eyes. Leaf knuckled them away as she climbed up the steps. She didn’t have a clear idea of what she was going to do, but she knew she had to do something. Throw a rock from up above, perhaps, though she doubted she could throw anywhere near far enough to reach the middle of the lake.

At the next level, which she noted was circle eight, Leaf pulled out the Mariner’s medallion.

“This is probably the last time I’ll ask for help,” she said. “If you don’t come soon, it’ll be too late. Lady Friday’s experiencing everybody. Everything’s gone wrong. I need help now!”

The medallion remained a lump of carved bone in her hand. Leaf tucked it in and continued to head up. A vague notion was forming in her mind. If all the Denizens were busy herding sleepers into the crater, then circle ten would be empty. There was a reasonable chance she might find something useful in Noon’s office. Some kind of weapon. A replacement telephone. Something.

Or I might find Friday’s Noon again. Leaf shivered and forced herself to take another step, keeping close to the wall and what little shadow there was under the gaslights.

Circle Ten was as quiet as it had been before, which gave a false sense of security. There could be any number of Denizens about to pop out of their rooms. Leaf crept as quietly as she could, counting off the numbers over the doors.

She was just passing the nine o’clock mark when she saw something move right on the curve, at the eleven. If she hadn’t been so nervous, she might have missed it, for it was low and small and moving slowly.

A gray-green tendril, the tip of an ambulatory seedpod. It quested about from side to side, and more of it slid into view, the thicker parts, closer to the body of the plant.

Leaf stopped and slowly began to back down the passage. She had only gone a few paces when she caught sight of another tendril, this time behind her. She was caught between two of the plants, and they were between her and the stairs.

The girl held her breath and very slowly edged over to the nine o’clock door. She gripped the handle and began to turn it, but it only moved a fraction before she met resistance. It was locked.

Leaf looked up at the gaslight above, thinking that perhaps if she could grab the pipe and point it, she could use it like a flamethrower. But there was no visible pipe, just the dragon head of the gas jet, a solid lump of bronze set into the ceiling.

The nearer tendril stopped its questing and suddenly, sickeningly advanced, rippling like a snake as it headed straight for Leaf.

Leaf shut her eyes and remembered Milka’s words.

Count yourself lucky that you mortals die easily.

A terrible crackling noise filled the air and Leaf felt an excruciating pain shoot through every bone in her body, including her teeth and skull. She screamed and fell to the ground.

“Set the dials, Sneezer,” said Arthur. He stood outside the circle of clocks, still clad in his paper-patchwork clothes, still bearing all Four Keys. After their arrival via the Improbable Stair-which had gone better than Arthur had expected, with only one strange stop along the way-there’d been no time to change or do anything except have a hasty conference with Dr. Scamandros, who now stood behind him, along with Part Five of the Will, Suzy, and Fred. Sneezer, the butler, stood within the circle of the seven grandfather clocks, turning the hands to the setting he and Scamandros had worked out for Lady Friday’s retreat.

“You’re sure Leaf didn’t mention my mother?” Arthur asked again.

“Definitely not, no,” replied Dr. Scamandros. “She had very little time. I fear for her.”

“So do I,” said Arthur. “Any luck with the telephone to Dame Primus?”

Dr. Scamandros shook his head. “Nor with telegrams. They keep coming back marked Return to Sender.”

“The dials are set for watching, sir,” said Sneezer as he retreated back out of the circle. “May I suggest you take a few minutes to look before going through?”

“Only long enough to make sure it’s not opening into Nothing,” said Arthur. “I don’t want to waste any time. Anything could be happening to Leaf and my ... the other mortals.”

As he spoke, a trail of white fog appeared out of the floor between the clocks and began to slowly spin around, spreading quickly till there was a slowly rotating cloud. Silver luminescence rose through the white, growing brighter as it reached the edges.

Arthur blinked, and in that blink the cloud became a window to another world. Looking through it, he saw a great crowd of people-humans-standing ahead. In front of them was a lake, and in the middle of the lake there was a stone column with a silver chair set atop it. Above the chair, a winged figure was descending ... a very tall Denizen with extra-large yellow wings, who held something impossibly bright in her right hand.

“Sneezer!” snapped Arthur. “We need to go through right now!”

The butler jumped into the circle, so quickly that his long white hair whipped around his face and the tails of his coat leaped up almost to the small of his back. He deftly adjusted the hands of several of the clocks and jumped back out.

“Go, milord!”

Arthur and his companions moved almost as swiftly as Sneezer had, entering the circle as the clocks began to chime.