Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [91]
Past a copse of twisted trees there was a sofa and several chairs in front of a television, burrowed through by voles and little digging beasts, and wound around with leaves. The TV was on, with the sound turned down. Through the ivy that crisscrossed its screen, it lit the clearing with the colors of a game show.
The travelers swept the little hollow free of stones and sticks, and made camp. They were just in time. Twilight came, and one by one, the lights in the house went out. The noises of the forest changed. A new chorus of night-things began.
“Are you really going to go looking now?” Deeba said. Mr. Cavea nodded his cage.
She watched him in the television’s colors. Mr. Cavea reached up and opened the door to his birdcage-head. The bird twittered.
“He’ll be back by morning,” the book said. “He says to keep his money fresh.”
“I have to admit he’s earning it,” Deeba said.
The bird hopped onto the threshold of the cage and gripped it with its little claws, then took off. The instant it flew out, Cavea’s human body froze, swaying slightly on locked legs.
The bird fluttered away, through loops of vine and under the dark shadows of trees, through the doorway, out of sight. As it went, it sang.
When no one was looking, Deeba gave Mr. Cavea’s leg an experimental prod. It was warm and fleshy—it felt like a leg. But it didn’t move or respond. Cavea’s vehicle just stood, the door to its cage open in its hand.
63
The Source of the River
Deeba woke several times to growls from nocturnal predators, but every time Hemi or whichever utterling was on watch duty would reassure her and go back to quietly chatting with the book or, in the mute utterlings’ case, listening to its murmurs. When she woke to the weak first light from the room’s bulb she realized that they had let her sleep through.
“Why didn’t you get me up?” she said to Hemi crossly. He didn’t answer, but looked away in embarrassment.
Cavea’s body still stood as it had when the bird left. Deeba flicked a snail from its trouser leg as they breakfasted.
After more than an hour, the bird that was Cavea shot into the clearing. It circled them several times, adding its voice to the incessant backdrop of birdsong, then flew to the cage.
Its feet closed on the metal rim, and the human body jerked. The bird entered the cage, and Mr. Cavea stood up straight, stretched all his human limbs, and closed the cage door. The bird sung lengthily.
“Thought so,” said the book. “Where else would you expect a high-flying bird like Claviger to go? Upstairs.”
It was a long and difficult climb. Each step was thick with vegetation, and the travelers had to negotiate a brook that descended the length of the stairs.
They rested on the little mezzanine where the staircase changed direction. Mr. Cavea was at the front, carrying the book, his explorer’s suit becoming more and more filthy. The bird sang at them to hurry, and Deeba and Hemi and the utterlings did their best to obey. The three utterlings helped each other, clambering silently over each other’s bodies in a constant chain of themselves.
“I wish I could do that,” Deeba said. Hemi raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh shut up,” she roared. “Not with you.” At the top of the stairs they stopped again. Through the thick leaf-cover they could see doorways on either side of the hall, and at its very end a window. Only a little daylight could struggle through the leaves that covered it and reach them.
Three times they had to move fast. A sinuous green creeper emerged quietly from under a nearby door and wrapped around Hemi’s leg. It tightened and, shaking its leaves, hauled him towards the doorway, which opened onto darkness. He fell and gripped the roots around him. It was only his phantom heritage that saved him. Hemi strained, and Deeba saw the vine tighten on his trousers as the flesh beneath went semi-incorporeal. With a grunt of effort, Hemi dragged his half-ghost limb out of