The Fetch of Mardy Watt. Charles Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ must be here. Is it at the nape of your neck?”

      “What?”

      “Or inside your elbow? I’d have seen if it was in one of the obvious places.”

      “Rachel, listen to me! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

      “I’m looking for your mark, of course! The Crescent of Initiation! How else could you know I was a witch?” asked Rachel irritably. “How could you know a thing like that without being one yourself?”

      “Are you crazy?”

      “You wrote that note, didn’t you? In the hieratic script! Foolish, foolish.”

      “I don’t know what you’re-’

      “And, if more proof were needed,” Rachel added in deep disgust, “here you are in Uraniborg itself.” She gestured around her, to the smoky, yellow horizons at either end of the endless street and at the blank-eyed windows facing them.

      Uraniborg. The word was strange to Mardy, but it seemed to waft through her mind like mist through moonlight, with a dreadful melancholy. She repeated, limply, that she wasn’t a witch and hadn’t called Rachel a witch – didn’t even believe in witches (Rachel snorted here) and had certainly never heard of Uraniborg. “I just want to get home,” she said.

      Rachel did not seem to be listening anyway. Whatever she had been looking for on Mardy’s face was obviously not to be found. Finally, she put her hands on her hips and admitted defeat.

      “OK – I was wrong. You’ve got Artemisian blood, of course, but you’re not an initiate.”

      She still seemed to be talking to herself more than to Mardy. Standing there in her school uniform – one size too small – with her face screwed up as if she was in the middle of a tricky maths problem, Rachel looked for a moment as out of place as Mardy felt. She wasn’t at all Mardy’s idea of a witch. But for all that, Mardy did not doubt her. Whatever else the air of Uraniborg did, it made believing that kind of thing easier.

      Perhaps Mardy’s eyes were only now growing accustomed to the strange light here; or perhaps it had only now chosen to show itself, but something was becoming visible at the end of the street – just where Bellevue School ought to have been. It was a tall, thick tower with a conical roof. Its walls, as far as Mardy could make out, were of rusty, red brick, but its roof was gold and in this sunless world it was the brightest thing she could see. Powered by some unseen engine, the roof was turning slowly and in complete silence. The golden tiles were revolving on the axis of that central turret.

      Just coming into view was a place where the expanse of gold was broken by a small square of darkness. Mardy realised that this was a raised hatch: one of the golden tiles had been lifted on a hinge and propped open. And from the hatch a tube projected, crimson and silver.

      “A telescope?” said Mardy.

      “The Mayor…” breathed Rachel. “Quick, I’ll hide us.”

      There was a new and urgent note in her voice. Rachel began rubbing her hands together, one over the other, as if she were washing with soap. Within moments her hands were no longer empty. They held an object the size and shape of a duck egg, a smooth bolus of yellow smoke. She threw it to the ground, where it cracked open and bubbled out a dull, tarry liquid. Steam rose, the same nicotine yellow as the air of Uraniborg, and hung in a thick curtain between them and the tower. The tower was invisible again.

      “If he’s really looking hard for you, this won’t stop him, of course,” said Rachel. Even her voice was muffled by the curtain of yellow air. “Let’s hope it’s a routine survey.”

      Clearly, she expected Mardy to understand what she was talking about. But Mardy’s incomprehension must have been obvious from her face.

      “You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?” said Rachel.

      “No. And I don’t think I want to.”

      “I keep forgetting. It’s because you’ve found your way here even though you don’t understand about having a separable soul, and I don’t see you how could have … Oh, bother!”

      Rachel looked petulant, as if she had failed to guess a simple riddle. She even stamped her foot. “Oh, bother!” she repeated. “I see it all now.”

      She stood there biting her lip for such a long time that Mardy was eventually forced to prompt her: “What do you see?”

      “What you’re here for, of course! We knew he was preparing the Binding Spell again, but I never thought he’d act so fast. Come to the horse trough and I’ll show you.”

      Rachel took Mardy’s hand and turned about so that they were facing the blank wall between Hal’s house and the next. Only now the wall was no longer blank. Most of the pavement was obscured by a large stone trough and above it a tombstone-shaped plaque had been engraved in leafy letters.

       Weary traveller take your ease

      Lay down the burden that you carry,

       It is compact of foolish cares

      Then stay and by this fountain tarry.

       Life’s a race not won by hurry

       Chasing every flattering breeze

       Let Fortune brag and Care be sorry

      Weary traveller take your ease.

      Near the bottom of the plaque a cherub puffed his cheeks and blew. A green copper pipe projected from his mouth like a pea-shooter and there was a pump handle.

      “Don’t look so surprised,” said Rachel. “It’s been there all the time, you know.”

      Mardy was quite certain that it had not, but she did not wish to provoke another of Rachel’s snorts by protesting. She noticed, however, as she and Rachel moved the few paces to the horse trough, that the curtain of yellow air Rachel had created followed them obediently, smudging the light as it came and blocking the far end of the street from view.

      The trough was empty, but Rachel began working the pump at once. At first, she produced nothing but a hollow clanking, alarmingly loud in the empty street. Then the clank got mixed up with a deep-throated gargle, the gargle progressed into a gloop and finally a stream of rather murky water spilled from the pipe. Filling the trough took some time, but long before Rachel had stopped pumping it was obvious that water in Uraniborg was not what Mardy was used to. As it rippled and spun at the bottom of the trough, mixing with dust and moss and fragments of twig, it also found time to glisten. It was thicker than ordinary water, with a metallic look to its surface, and somehow sluggish. What was strangest, amidst the scum and bubbles Mardy sometimes thought she caught a reflection of people or places quite unknown to her. A circle of women chanting in a forest clearing. The inside of a bedouin tent. A venerable Chinese face, frowning intently and just on the point of speech. Then the water would eddy and slide to a new angle.

      “That should be enough,” said Rachel at last. She sounded out of breath from all that pumping. She stood beside Mardy, waiting for the water to settle. In her hand was a pin. When the water was still, she took СКАЧАТЬ