Talina in the Tower Read online

  Grignan’s voice rose to a roar. ‘Our humiliation was just a stepping stone for the Venetians. Our beautiful lagoon nourished their greedy empire. Our green fields were turned into stone. They paved our hunting glades for squares. The humans built only poverty and death for the noble peace-loving creatures of the lagoon. Since the humans invaded, we—’

  Talina felt her hands prickle with fury. She thought, ‘All this self-pity! These Ravageurs are hardly peace-lovers. They don’t live in harmony with their fellow creatures! Look what they do to rats and cats!’

  Hundreds of little stabs of pain pierced Talina’s skin. She glanced down at her arms and held in a scream. Coarse black hairs were breaking through her flesh. Her nails were growing at a visible speed, curling into talons. Her shoulders, too, had swelled. Her dress split all the way down the left side now. The ropes were straining.

  ‘I must keep sweet, serene and reasonable,’ she told herself. ‘I mustn’t rise to this. I know it’s all lies. But my goodness, that meat smells good.’

  Grignan’s roar grew even louder and more furious: ‘Since the Venetians robbed us of our rights and our home, we have been condemned to wretched roaming in desolate wildernesses, ever excluded from what’s rightfully ours.’

  The two Ravageurs nearest to the fire-ringed portrait spat at it again, careful to avoid the blue flames. Now Talina noticed an inscription above it: ‘May the Flame of Shame Torment our Enemy Forever.’

  ‘Shame!’ called out some of the Ravageurs. ‘What poor ones we are!’

  ‘They seem pretty comfortable to me,’ thought Talina angrily. ‘Not very wretched at all. And one does not find a lot of Soufflé aux taupes in desolate wildernesses I’d have thought.’

  ‘Since the humans stole our ancestral land …’

  Talina raged silently, ‘So he keeps saying. But how do we know that they did steal it? Says who? Oh!’

  She’d just caught sight of her own nose – now a hand’s breadth in front of her face, pointed and covered with fur. Her dress and pinafore were hanging off one – furry – shoulder. The rope was fraying where it stretched.

  Grignan strode about the stage as he warmed to his theme. ‘The humans exterminated my ancestors and carried off our cubs, subduing their spirits and turning them into that half-wolf breed, the domestic dog, the biggest insult to ferocity ever to grovel in front of an inferior species.’

  The Ravageurs screamed, ‘Gnaw zem to bits!’ ‘Tear out their intestines!’ Talina pictured Futfallo, Razin and Gierchit, who’d have loved to do exactly that to her and Drusilla. She thought, ‘Not all dogs are an insult to ferocity.’

  And this made her think of the Guardian, who terrified even the dogs. If she didn’t find her parents, she might have to go back to him.

  She trembled with fury.

  Looking down, she saw dark hairs poking out of the tops of her socks and her hands had thickened. More black hairs sprouted from the joints of her fingers. She flinched at the smell of her own breath – meaty and rotten.

  Over in the Sala del Sangue, Grignan seemed to be thinking about Talina’s parents too. He had paused in his rant while the Vizier whispered something in his ear. Now he stiffened, and looked around warily. Talina strained to catch what they said.

  ‘The surprisingly hairy prisoner said what?’ Grignan asked Magisterulus. ‘You say this Ratfood thing claims we already have its parents?’

  His eyes were narrowed with suspicion.

  ‘I expect they’re peeling or washing something up at this point, if we didn’t eat them,’ the Vizier said casually.

  ‘Where did we claim them, and when?’

  Talina raged silently, ‘You have no claim to anyone! You kidnapped them three months ago.’

  Magisterulus consulted some runes roughly hacked into the wall behind the platform. ‘Told us itself, name of Molin.’

  With his back to his Lord, the Vizier did not see Grignan drop down on his hindquarters or his eyes open with displeased surprise. Nor did Magisterulus notice the look of hate his master now shot at the fire-ringed portrait. The Vizier chattered, ‘Yes, here we are. January 30th, from the Archives. The male, let me see – ah yes, Marco Molin, Keeper of Most Ancient Manuscripts, Department of Malignant Spells, Invoked Pestilences and Abominable Rites.’

  The Vizier turned and saw Grignan’s expression at last. He closed his jaws with a snap and lowered his head.

  ‘The girl is of absolutely no import then,’ Grignan pronounced, emphatically, after a short silence. He changed his tone to nonchalant. ‘Did you get her hair, by the way?’

  The Ravageur Lord appeared not to care one way or the other when Rouquin grovelled, ‘Yes, sir! A great clump came out nice ’n’ easy. Put it straight in the scorpion tank, lak I was s’posed for to do, sir.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Grignan, dismissively.

  But there was something furtive in Grignan’s eyes as he said it. Something that made the Vizier step forward with concern. Something that made the butler turn a fresh page and ladle an extra helping of Tournedos de Rat Mort onto Grignan’s book, topping it with a glistening mound of Golosi’s Mostarda.

  As the Ravageur Lord loudly – with exaggerated slurping and gnashing – savoured the tournedos, the eyes of his creatures were fastened in fascination on his working jaws, watching their master’s feat of greed with respect.

  ‘This is my chance,’ Talina thought. Her fingers inched backwards until they found the end of the painfully tight rope. She tugged. As the rat had promised it would, the bow slid undone. Her bonds loosened. With relief, she shrugged off the ropes and stood up, surprised to find that ‘up’ meant on all fours. Hastily, she picked up the corner of her damaged dress in her teeth.

  ‘The kitchen,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I must get to the kitchen.’

  To get to the kitchen she had to cross the Sala del Sangue, passing through the middle of the Ravageurs. It was then that she caught sight of herself in a smeary mirror behind the rat harp. She suppressed a howl.

  She was no longer herself, nor even recognizably human. Only the torn dress she held up with her teeth identified her as anything different from … a Ravageur.

  Her instinct was to lie down and weep, but Talina forced herself to think rationally. ‘Being a cat was reversible. Being one of these horrors must be too. Professor Marìn will have something for it. And just now it’s useful. They won’t notice me if I cross that room now – now that I look almost exactly like one of them.’

  Still, it was a terrifying thing to enter the portals of the Sala del Sangue, to walk past the ranks of Ravageurs still sucking their tablecloths on the U-shaped table while staring with rapt envy at Grignan on the stage.

  She passed the first cluster of Ravageurs. As she rounded the curve of the ‘U’, Nochin Quinchou’s eyes bulged for a second at the sight of her. She trotted on as casually as she could, joining two other Ravageurs who were gathering empty rabbit-juice buckets. Between them, she felt almost safe.

  The sheep doors were metres away now. All she had to do was make it past the section of the table where Frimousse and Rouquin sat. Frimousse sneezed loudly as she passed, but did not take his eyes off his master. Talina was staring so hard at their backs that she did not notice Fildefer fling a stripped lamb bone on the floor – but she felt herself trip on it. Her flailing elbow sent a rabbit-juice bucket flying from the mouth of the Ravageur beside her. It landed on the floor, spinning.

  Half a dozen heads turned in her direction.

  ‘Who’s zat?’ cried Croquemort. ‘A female? In the Sala del Sangue? Kill ’er!’

  Frimousse looked closely at Talina, trembling by the door. ‘No, it’s ze human girl thing woken up. Ze human females always make me sneeze. But zis one’s … not so much human now. How ’ard did you hit ’er, Rouquin?’

  ‘Whatever she is, now she’s awake, we can play wiz ’er!’ rejoiced Rouquin. ‘I know lots of nasty games. Is so funny when zey squeal! “Sweeter with dessert”, Lord Grignan said.’ He frowned
. ‘But she looks a leetle bit too much lak …’

  Grignan slammed the book closed on top of his tournedos, which squelched loudly. Rouquin cowered, his head down.

  ‘Let her go and join the other slaves, you imbecile,’ mumbled Grignan. ‘We have the hair. I’ll deal with her later. She’s not very interesting. I wouldn’t eat her if they gave her away free with a French restaurant.’

  Those were the last words Talina heard as she slipped through the door.

  ‘Or could it be,’ she thought, ‘that I have something rather too interesting to say? That he doesn’t want the other Ravageurs to hear?’

  She looked back and caught Grignan’s eye.

  Its liquid glitter told her, ‘I’m not finished with you at all.’

  a slippery second later

  BEYOND THE SHEEP door Talina found herself in a passageway blackened with smoke. The floor was slimed with nervous droppings.

  She proceeded gingerly towards a sound of clashing metal and the darkly intense smell of roasting meat, which still made her nose twitch greedily.

  Light flooded the end of the corridor, making her hasten. But when she arrived at the doorway, her cry of ‘Mamma! Papà!’ died on her lips.

  She was in a vast kitchen, peopled by slaves who toiled like ants, some heaving loaded baking trays, others stirring gigantic cauldrons; a dozen were elbow-deep in washing-up; six more were plucking the feathers from a small mountain of dead geese.

  Along a central table ran a line of lecterns, lit by a flickering forest of candelabra. On the lecterns lay spattered cookbooks, many in French, and grandly illustrated. On another table, dozens of cats were swiftly sorting ripe and unripe beans into neat piles with deft paws.

  Talina recognized a boy from her school. Dark-haired blue-eyed Sargano Alicamoussa was weeping over a stack of onions. She noticed Gianni Nanon, the man who first eavesdropped on the Ravageurs: now he was peeling potatoes. The prettiest girl in her class, Clara Massianello, was trimming artichokes with a blunt knife. Talina’s eyes skittered over the room, searching in vain for her parents.

  People caught sight of her and hastily lowered their eyes, muttering to one another and looking fearfully towards the door.

  Into the silence, Talina shouted, ‘Has anyone seen my father? Marco Molin? The Keeper of Manuscripts at the Archives? Or his wife?’

  But everyone kept his or her head bent, and redoubled the speed of work. The sounds of scraping knives, sloshing water and beating spoons were all that could be heard. The cats quietly abandoned their bean-sorting and slunk under the table.

  Finally there came a terrified whisper from Sargano Alicamoussa.

  ‘Is that really you, Talina? What’s that growing out of your face? Why is your nose so long? Why are your eyes that opal colour? Is that fur on your back? And, excuse me for saying so, Talina, but I think you should know that your dress is split right down one side.’

  It sounded lame even to her when she explained, ‘It happens when I have a little flouncy … when I lose my temper, it seems that I start to look like the animal I’ve got angry with … I’m especially absorbent of magic, you see.’

  Sargano’s handsome face was bewildered.

  ‘You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?’ Talina asked. ‘It’s too bad! So frustrating! Oh well, that’s my solution, then, I suppose. I’ll have to get all beastly with you humans. Then I’ll start to look like one of you again. Pardon me while I—’

  Talina took a deep breath and screamed, ‘Why won’t you answer me? What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting so frightened, you lily-livered sops? I’m just a girl looking for her mother and father. What’s happened to your human decency? Has it gone to the same place as your courage?’

  Three hundred brows wrinkled and three hundred mouths gasped as Talina’s mane, muzzle and claws shrank away and she stood upright like an ordinary human girl, though a red-faced, loud one in a badly torn dress.

  ‘That worked anyway!’ Talina sighed with relief. ‘But they obviously don’t quite understand me. I may be mostly human again but I suppose I’m still speaking Ravageur or something.’

  A large tortoiseshell cat strolled over to Talina and stuck out her paw. A strange mixture of Ravagish and Humantongue now actually, with a touch of Felish.’

  ‘No!’ Talina moaned. ‘I am Talina, and I am one hundred percent human.’

  ‘Tigger-Maria, pleased to meet you, or half-meet you,’ the tortoiseshell said in Felish, looking dubiously at Talina. ‘But if you keep turning Ravageur, you won’t find cats pleased to meet you in general. Ravageurs don’t eat a lot of humans, as they find them untasty, but they will eat a bit of cat now and then.’

  ‘I assure you, I shall never eat a bit of cat!’ cried Talina.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking: “Not much eating on a cat.”’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘But there’s a particular part, round the ribs, that the Ravageurs like as a snack. They call it cat bacon. They like it smoked in strips and wrapped around grapes or baby corn cobs as a crunchy snack between meals. So, miss, what are you, exactly?’

  Talina explained her situation breathlessly, while helping herself to a needle and thread still bloody from being used to sew up a stuffed side of mutton. She tacked her dress and pinafore into a semblance of decency, pausing sadly when the cat assured her that there were no kitchen workers by the name of Molin.

  ‘If I were you,’ added Tigger-Maria, ‘I’d flee smartish, before Grignan changes his mind. He’s a devil for that.’

  ‘I bet he is,’ said Talina. As she spoke, her eyes – now taking in more colour – roamed over the cats, who had climbed back up on the tables and resumed sorting beans. She noticed six pure-white kittens among them.

  ‘Er, Tigger-Maria, do you mind if I take these? I’m a … friend of their mother’s. I’ll return them to her. That’s something I can do. At least someone will be getting their mother back!’ She couldn’t hold back a sob.

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Tigger-Maria. ‘They’re no use here – always giving themselves airs, the little tykes. There’s a door behind the scullery,’ the cat pointed, while Talina tucked the kittens into the large pocket of her pinafore. ‘That door leads directly to the outside, and then it’s just a few minutes to the jetty. But be careful when you pass the Stake House.’

  ‘The Stake House?’ Talina did not like the sound of it. Something clicked in her stomach, as if locking in a very disagreeable sensation.

  ‘You’ll know it when you see it. And smell it. And feel the flies biting. It’s the big bird box with the raw meat on stakes all around it. It’s where the Ravageurs keep their vultures.’

  Talina tucked the last of the kittens into her pinafore and fled.

  at the shore of the Ravageur island,

  one minute after that

  TALINA RAN SO fast that she saw the Stake House only in a blur. She tried not to sharpen her impression of its bloody palings, or to let the image enter her memory. But she could not escape the smell.

  ‘Pooh!’ she whispered. ‘Che cagnòn! What a stink.’

  She was still retching when she reached the jetty. The gondola was moored just where Frimousse and Rouquin had left it. Talina leapt in. Quickly, she buried herself under the sacks she found there.

  ‘We’ll hide here till dark, and row away,’ she told the kittens, ‘back to Venice.’

  ‘We don’t row,’ one of the white kittens said in a superior tone. ‘We are rowed.’

  ‘I was obviously right about who your mother is,’ Talina told them.

  ‘You should curtsey when you speak to us,’ came the reply, ‘or Uncle Bestard will see to you.’

  The sacks smelled strongly of Ravageur. After a minute or two, so did Talina and the white kittens.

  ‘Horrible!’ said Talina, trying not to breathe.

  A gloomy voice answered, ‘Smelling like a Ravageur is your best way of hiding from ’em. And as for rowing yesselves away, you’ll never do
it, be you ever so strong. The currents that flow round this island is slow and dangerous. Then when you reach that circle of fog, you’ll go round and round in it, blindly, forevernever. You has to know your way – or you is a drowned thing.’

  ‘Who’s talking? Who are you? Where are you? But keep your voice down!’ whispered Talina.

  One of the rower-rats poked his head up from under another sack at the far end of the boat. He looked hard at the kittens, ‘I sees you brung some cat-brats with you, missy. For why?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I take these kittens home to their mother? Everyone else round here just takes what they want,’ said Talina indignantly.

  ‘Temper, temper,’ sneered the rat, talking out of the side of his mouth. ‘Hardly becomes something like you to criticize others.’

  ‘Don’t you work for the Ravageurs, then?’ asked Talina hotly. ‘You’re one of their rowers. Aren’t you literally one of their creatures?’

  ‘Not me. I has me pride. This is me own vessel and I takes it when I likes. Sometimes I likes Ravageur wages. But I wouldn’t niver lower mesself to go in their house and play their harp.’

  ‘Well, you’re different then. If you’d been in there, you’d know. The other rats don’t serve them because they like to. They are simply terrified.’

  The rat leant forward argumentatively. ‘But of what? Them Ravageurs don’t scare Altopone,’ he pointed to his chest. ‘I’ve seen more Ravageurs than your knees has seen linen napkins, missy, and I can tell you this: It don’t take much courage for a huge Ravageur to kill a rat, do it? Does a human get a medal when it kills a mosquito? They kills only to amuse themselves. And they attacks only creatures what is weaker than they is. They is dangerous all right, but they is more hyena than wolf. Someone ought to say “boo!” to ’em once in a while. But no one does. They is all too blind. Humans is blinded by that thing wot they have, wot rats do not. Imagination. The human race is cursed with it. It makes ’em do ridiculous things. Like pretend. Pretend that them Ravageurs is Pastry-Bandits from Rovigo. Pretend that everything is all right … As if!’ he scoffed.