Page 23 of The Neverfear

The harpy raised consecutive eyebrows – the first expressing scepticism, the second discontent – but she let them pass. Meri led them into a vestibule and up a magnificent flight of marble stairs, scurrying ahead of them on all fours. ‘This way, please! Look out for the Encyclopaedia Glimouriana – they roam freely,’ he said, as they passed a large hardback book with a dozen angular papery legs, scurrying down the stairs.

‘It’s for a project?’ said Jacques in his ear. ‘The last actor I met who was as poor as you, Christopher, I ate, by way of review.’

Meri led the way down a sun-drenched corridor. Christopher tried to glance into the rooms as they hurried past; in one a young sphinx was engraving maps of the stars into the stone wall with a sabre-like claw, watched by a cluster of scholars. He thought of Naravirala, and the note he had sent. Too late now for any reply: he would not be home to read it.

‘In here, if you please,’ said Meri. ‘Mind the step! The Great Caruta Room!’

The room was long, paved with black and white flagstones. Crystalline light poured in through high windows, illuminating the rows and rows of books and the scholars who moved among the shelves, handling the volumes as though they were gold.

‘What is it you wish to know about the Cerberus?’

‘Everything,’ said Anya.

‘Ah! You are an epistemological completist! What bliss, to assist a knowledge totalist!’ Meri went scampering across the floor. ‘I find it difficult, with my paws, to pull the books … Perhaps you could help me? Here – this one is on the Cerberus’s breeding habits; this one is on allergies. This one is on Hercules – he travelled through the Archipelago, many thousands of years ago, and brought the Cerberus out of the underworld to breed it. This one is on how you calm the dog: it loves music, as I’m sure you know, particularly birdsong, sea shanties and contemporary jazz. If you dance, even better.’

Meri moved across the shelves, pausing in front of books for Christopher to pull them out. They were warm to the touch; they felt precious and rare.

‘This one is on the use of its whiskers in potions … Be careful with that book, it screams if you fold over the pages.’

‘I think what we need to know for our project,’ said Anya, ‘is how to find the dog.’

‘Ah!’ said Meri. ‘Quite so! You wish to do fieldwork! You are a true scholar, with a researcher’s instincts. But it will not be possible to actually go in person of course.’

‘Why not?’ said Anya.

‘But, my dear young patron – as I said, the Cerberus is found only on Great Caruta. There are some living in the impassable mountains, and one who is kept locked in a kennel as a hunting dog in the castle of Great Caruta, on the southern shore.’

‘And why can’t we just go and visit the castle?’ said Christopher. ‘Give each head a biscuit, scratch three sets of ears, make friends?’

Meri shook his head so hard his whiskers quivered. ‘Because Great Caruta,’ he said, ‘is the island of giants.’

The Island Of Giants

‘There’s nothing about giants in the Bestiary,’ said Christopher.

‘No,’ said Ratwin. She perched on the tiller of the Neverfear, steering the boat across the waves. ‘That is because they do nots travels. They very seldoms chooses to leaves their island.’

‘And because it’s unusual to meet one and live long enough to write it down,’ said Jacques. ‘Which is why you should abandon your quest! Bandits are marauding across Glimouria, wreaking chaos! They have seized Irian Guinne! We have deceived the Berserker, and are being sent we know not where, to take absurd risks, without any certainty we will get her back! She could be dead already.’

‘We’ve already discussed it, Jacques,’ said Christopher. ‘If there’s the slightest chance we can save her, we have to take it.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t aiming for conversation. Think of me, from now on, as the chorus in a Greek tragedy.’

‘Thanks. That sounds great for morale,’ said Christopher.

They had moved fast. Jacques had been left to order food for the journey from the merchants on the quayside while they organised water barrels and maps, and then they had steered out of the dock in Lithia, and were newly at sail on the open sea. Ratwin, a competent sailor and expert navigator, had taken charge, leaving Christopher and Anya to tighten the mainsail and handle the ropes. ‘The Neverfear is a swiftling boat. If we sails through the nightdark and is lucky with the winds,’ said Ratwin, ‘we’ll be maybies twenty-two hours, or twenties-three.’

‘So what do we know about giants?’ said Christopher.

‘They’re huge,’ said Anya. ‘The toddlers are twenty feet, the adults are sixty.’

‘Theys have only averages eyesights but an excellent sense of smelling,’ Ratwin said. ‘I thinks, as a first steps, you would needs to covers yourselves in something that doesn’t sniff of humans. You’ve heard their songs – Fee fi fo fums, I smell the blood of an Englishmans? That would be you, Christophers.’

‘Then we’ll use Nighthand’s cologne,’ said Christopher. ‘It definitely doesn’t smell of anything human. Let’s check the boat for provisions.’

The new Neverfear was very like the old one. It was, in its rough way, a superb boat. Below deck, there were three rooms: a kitchen, a bathroom with a copper shower and a wood-panelled cabin with two sets of bunk beds and an entire wall of cupboards, some large, some barely big enough to hold a mouse. The bunk beds would have been a tight fit for Nighthand, but were luxuriously large for anyone else. Some boots and clothes were still stowed away in one of the cupboards. The light sconces were decorated with mermaids, as were the mirrors above the bathroom sink and in the bedroom and kitchen.

Jacques preened himself in the bedroom mirror. ‘When you write my biography, Christopher, I would like it to have at least a dozen portraits of my loveliness. You might call it “The Exceptional Beauty of Jacques the Jaculus, Laid Out in Glorious Technicolor by Christopher Forrester”.’