Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [108]
“He’ll find something to catch hold of, Princess,” said Marcellus. “Don’t you worry.”
“I hope so,” said Jenna.
Stanley’s eviction upset everyone—including Sarah. She hadn’t meant for the rat to fall. In her panic to close the window, she hadn’t registered the fact that Stanley was on the outside. But Sarah was not going to admit to that. She needed to keep control of things, and if people thought she was tough enough to throw out a rat to its possible demise, then that was no bad thing.
Sarah set about organizing everyone, and soon there was a fire blazing and a fragrant stew bubbling in the pot hanging above it. A stew, Lucy noted, as far removed from her mother’s as to be worthy of a different name. At the thought of her mother, Lucy sighed. She hardly dared think what was happening to her parents just then—or to Rupert in the boatyard. In fact, it was all so frightening that Lucy hardly dared think at all. She sat close to Simon beside the fire and held him tight. At least Simon—bruised and battered though he was from the Fetch—was safe.
Simon drew Lucy close to him. “They’ll be okay, Lu,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”
But Lucy did worry. And so did everyone else behind the Big Red Door.
Chapter 36
Outside
Stanley fell farther than he had ever fallen before. A rat’s life was precarious, particularly that of a Message Rat, and Stanley had fallen off things many times before—but never anything as high as the top floor of the Ramblings. And he had certainly never been pushed.
It was probably being pushed that saved him. It was such a surprise to suddenly find himself airborne that Stanley was quite relaxed as he was launched into space. And so when he landed in the middle of one of the many scraggly bushes growing out of the Ramblings walls, bounced off, tumbled ten feet farther and landed—just—in a larger cousin of the previous bush, Stanley’s little rat bones did not snap into pieces as they might have done if his muscles had been tensely awaiting their doom. Dazed, Stanley lay, listening to the sound of its bare winter branches slowly cracking under his weight.
The final craaaaaack of the branch did, however, make the rat a little tense. It suddenly swung down like a broken bone itself and, just in time, Stanley performed a neat leap to a large stone that was jutting out of the wall. His long, delicate claws curled into the masonry and, very slowly, the rat began what he later described (many times) as his controlled descent.
The walls at this point of the Ramblings went straight down into the river but, luckily for Stanley, far away in the Port the tide was going out, and the river even as far up as the Castle was affected by the tides. At the bottom of his controlled descent Stanley clambered down the huge blocks of slimy green stone that formed the base of the Ramblings (and spent most of their time under water), slipped off and landed in the river mud with a faint plop.
The rat now began the long trek home. He skirted the Castle walls, hopping up onto the riverbank when he could, leaping over rocks, rotting hulks and mud flats when he couldn’t. It was a dismal and occasionally frightening journey. Once Stanley thought he heard a distant roar come from deep within the Castle and the sound unsettled him, but it was not repeated and he began to think he had imagined it. As Stanley traveled onward he could not help but glance up at the Castle, searching for a lighted window to raise his spirits. But there were none. He had left the only one far behind him, and he began to wonder if even that was now Darke. The darkness frightened Stanley. He had never paid much attention to the Castle lights before; rats did not understand humans’ love of light and flames. They preferred shadows where they could run unseen; light meant danger and usually someone wielding a broom—or worse. But that night Stanley began to appreciate the human love of light. As he hopped through yet another patch of sticky,