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“Oh!” shrieked Anne. “It’s hideous!”
“Oh!” breathed Bran. “It’s brilliant.”
Despite himself, Primarily Scurrilous Brunty felt rather proud. He puffed up his chest. “One of the little secrets of my trade. Didn’t you ever wonder how bad news travels so fast? Time Flies! Musca Tempus Fugicus, to be precise. I do so love to be precise! And only the bearers of bad news can command them.”
“With that stuff you poured on the ground?” asked Anne shyly. She supposed insects were animals and she ought to love them equally to a dog or a bird, but she couldn’t quite manage it.
Brunty grinned. “The Sands of Time, Duchess Disappointment! They can’t resist.”
Bran stuck his finger in what was left of the red sand and tasted it. The Time Fly hissed at him and hurried to suck up the rest before he could steal anymore.
“It’s sugar!” he said.
The fly buzzed, velvet and kind. “Time past is sweet, boy,” she said. “And time to come is sweeter still.” Her voice echoed like a little thin flute in the stone caves.
Brunty patted the jet-black, wrinkled hide of the beast. Her wings quivered. “They’re terrible gluttons, the Time Flies. Overeaters of time and space. No restraint at all. They gobble up all the time it would take us to get where we’re going and excrete the space between us and our destination. Not bad, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not bad,” agreed Bran and Anne. They were in such terrible trouble, yes, of course they were, but they could not help marveling at the creature.
And then the most peculiar thing happened. Brunty the Liar, Brunty the Spying Sack of Slime, Can’t-Take-Him-Anywhere Brunty gave the deepest, most graceful, humblest bow anyone has ever bowed.
“Madam,” he said, in the most elegant, courtly, grandest of accents, “might I, your lowly servant, inquire after your name?”
“It’s Ryecote, sir!” chirped the fly. “Ryecote, daughter of Applemeal, daughter of Spillwine, daughter of Horseye, daughter of Dunglace—”
Brunty interrupted her, but he did it so sleekly and smoothly that it seemed as though Ryecote had quite finished her sentence. “What a noble and august lineage! How fortunate I feel to have found myself in the care of the scion of such a queenly and ancient house!”
“Goodness, that’s perfectly all right,” the fly demurred, but anyone could tell she was pleased. “Very pleased to meet you and all.”
Brunty pressed on, his voice growing ever more adoring and kind. The headlines on his waistcoat shimmered and read: MERCY AND CHARITY RUN WILD IN THE STREETS and PRINCESS TRAVELS ABROAD TO HELP THE POOR. “And I, Lady Ryecote, am called Brunty Errata-Huntingdon, of the Elseraden Errata-Huntingdons, lately made Lord after the untimely death of my stepbrother. May I also present . . . these . . . people.” He gestured halfheartedly at Branwell and Anne. “Sir Rotter and Lady Rubbish.”
“Oh my! Of the Middenheap Rubbishes?” exclaimed Ryecote in insect awe.
Brunty bowed deeper. “Indubitably, your loveliness. Now, Lady Ryecote, if you will excuse the intolerable imposition, my companions and I have great and pressing need to journey swiftly to the Bastille in the fair and glittering city of the Lefthand Verdopolis, far and far from here. Will you, Princess among flies, Gloriana in her highest, consent to carry myself, my wards, and my excellent and entirely safe technological cargo upon your sublime back and bear us to the welcoming arms of Mother Gondal?”
“What is he on about?” whispered Bran. “It’s only a fly!”
The Time Fly rubbed her ashen wings together in joy. “Oh, Lord Brunty, I would just love to give you a lift! I don’t think I’d like anything in the world half so well, unless it was a bit more of that yummy sand you’ve got, but who can say no to a lick of time? Not me, and I’ve got the thorax to prove
it! That’s all right, Mr. Ryecote loves my thorax best of all the thoraxes that ever were! What a lucky bug I am! Just wait till I tell my sisters! Pithpip is always going on and on about how our grandmum snatched away the Jewel of Glass Town to Gondal so fast no one knew little Vickie’d gone! I’ll finally get to show her up, the old tailflicker. Said I’d never amount to much when we were larvae—well, look at plain little Ryecote now! And such a handsome, well-spoken man asking for me. My, my, Mr. Ryecote will be jealous! But I don’t care a bit. I’m pleased as a pony! A fine, powerful, beautiful pony that no one would ever call hideous.”
Anne blushed with shame. Now that she’d met the fly properly, she rather thought she’d like to take her home to Haworth with her and feed her through the kitchen window every night forever and ever. And yet, through her blushing, her clever, hungry ears caught a word that meant nothing and everything to her. Vickie?
“Can’t I take it back?” Anne begged shyly. “I think you’re wonderful. Just wonderful. The prettiest fly I ever saw.”
Ryecote lifted her huge cut-glass eyes and chortled gleefully. “Of course you can! I was only teasing. Teasing is the most fun you can have on the ground, I think. I don’t hold a grudge; it’s not in my nature! Got a heart like a sugar lump, me. Hop on, darlings! I can’t wait, I’m starving! It’s a long way to Gondal, a nice big tuck-in with dollops of dessert. Don’t mind the weight, now. I’m a strong girl; everyone says so. That Ryecote, she could carry the whole world on her back, our pa used to say!”
Branwell and Anne grabbed at each other’s hands. It was their last chance to run. Run to Charlotte, run to Emily, run to Bestminster, run to Crashey and Bravey and Gravey and Rogue, run back to the light. But before they could decide to brave the black labyrinth underneath Ochreopolis and cross their fingers that they’d not starve to death before finding the way in the shadows, Lord Brunty Errata-Huntingdon of the Elseraden Errata-Huntingdons seized them by the waists. He shoved them up onto Ryecote’s gleaming onyx saddle, a saddle so big it could have held a second Magazine Man, a second Bran, and a second Anne, even a second horrible acid machine, and still had room for a lunch basket.
Brunty punched his chest viciously a few times. “Come on, don’t go soft on me, lads, or we’ll never go a mile,” he mumbled.
The kindly headlines on his breast faded out and bled black until they read bad and worst once more. WAR! DEVASTATION! REVENGE! VICTORY AT ALL COSTS! The Magazine Man squeezed Anne and her brother painfully tight against his gut and held the Thing out before him like a ferryman’s lamp.
Ryecote trumpeted into the stony darkness ahead of them. Had the sun ever reached down this far? Anne thought it might have tried, but gotten scared and run back up to the sky and never told anyone about it. The Time Fly wiggled her hindquarters like a cat about to dash after a mouse. “Everyone safe? Everyone cozy? Everyone snug as a bug in a wine jug? I got caught in a wine jug once when I was wee. It was the best half-minute of my life—”
The caverns wobbled. The tunnels shuddered. The chasm full of wormsharks and at least one immortal three-eyed leviathan groaned. The underside of the city seemed to, somehow, and only once, tick. Like a minute hand juddering into place. And then, everything was buzzing and nothing was not buzzing and the buzzing was inside them and outside them and they had always been buzzing, their whole lives; they would never stop buzzing for buzz was the whole of the universe from star to moon to dust—
And
