“You can have this one on me,” growled Jane. “Tell me to spare him and I’ll spare him. Bleed him and I’ll do that, too.”

I answered without hesitation. “Spare him.”

She pushed him away and then stood next to me, trembling with anger.

“Perhaps this is how all toshing parties end up,” I said sadly. “Maybe there are no Pookas or Mildew or flying monkeys or anything. Just fear and a few too many arguments over spoons.”

I took a deep breath.

“Tommo,” I said, “you’re heading back to Bleak Point, where you’ll wait for us until—when’s sundown?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“Right. You’ll wait until seven-thirty precisely, when you’ll take Violet and the Ford back into East Carmine. Can you do that?”

Still unable to speak, he simply nodded.

“Go now.”

He very gingerly got to his feet and, holding his side, limped off. “What about us?” asked Jane.

“We’re going to High Saffron.”

She stared at me for a moment, head to one side. “You may regret it.” “I can’t regret this trip any more than I do already.”

“I’m coming, too,” said Courtland, getting to his feet.

And with this, she seemed to change her mind.

“Okay, then. But we’d better get a move on. It’s about a three-hour walk to where the Perpetulite reestablishes itself, and High Saffron is an hour beyond that.”

Courtland and I stared at her.

“You’ve been there before?” I asked.

“Once or twice.”

“Will there be spoons?” asked Courtland.

“Oh, yes,” she replied with a smile, “there shall definitely be spoons.”

A Herald Speaks

We followed the track of the old road, which zigzagged steeply down the escarpment. Jane and I both insisted that Courtland walk at least twenty paces in front of us, something he said he didn’t mind since he wouldn’t be able to see our “loathsome faces.” He was carrying Tommo’s satchel as well as his own, so clearly had high hopes of bringing home some spoils. I had checked the time before we left; we had used up almost half an hour of our contingency.

“So,” said Jane, “how did you enjoy meeting your first Riffraff?”

“I owe her my life, and perhaps yours.”

“Possibly. Was it the mother or the daughter who let you out?”

“Daughter, I think.”

“That would be Martha. They don’t call themselves Riffraff, you know.” 

“What, then?”

“The Digenous.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s just what they call themselves.”

“And what do they call us?”

“Many names, and none of them polite.”

At the bottom of the escarpment the road seemed to vanish entirely, until I realized that a watercourse had also considered this the best way to reach the valley floor, and had washed out the roadbed. So we followed the stream, past the rubble of houses, a telephone booth still with flecks of red paint and yet another land crawler, which was now half buried in the streambed, having had the road washed out from beneath it. I’d not seen one before this morning, and now they seemed to be everywhere.

“So what made you change your mind and follow us?” I asked as we negotiated our way around a boulder the size of a garden shed.

“You may have noticed I have a temper,” she said, “but when I calmed down, I realized that this world, blighted and imperfect as it is, would be better with you in it.”

“That’s quite a compliment.”

“Savor it,” she said. “I don’t give them out often.”

We reached a gentle rise in the land. The river moved off to its original course on the right, leaving us on the flat, grassy track of the old road and taking us into a beech forest of great maturity. Large slabs of fractured concrete had been lifted by the slow power of root systems, but of any visible scrap color, there was none. Five centuries of accreted leaf mold, soil and vegetation had effectively put it beyond easy reach, and any bizarre notion that color might be lying around on the surface was nothing more than wishful thinking. Opening High Saffron to mining operations was going to be a massive task. DeMauve would have had no choice but to found a satellite village closer to High Saffron and then have Chromatics spend a week at a time sorting the tosh before transporting it back to the railhead at East Carmine. The extraction of hue would be a long time coming and barely worth the effort. But that, I thought, was why High Saffron remained the treasure trove that it was. Untouched and virgin, it would be as rich as any tosh pit, yet discovered.

“Courtland’s getting quite far ahead.”

“Let him,” said Jane and stopped walking. I did the same, and she turned to look at me. “Are you ready to run with scissors?”

“Could I walk with them first?”

“No. You’re either in or out. Now: Are you ready to run with scissors?”

“I think so.”

“There’s no ‘think’ to it. Your life is going to change radically in the next few hours, and I want to make sure that you’re not going to do anything stupid. You need to know that there is no one you can trust, no one you can talk to, no one you can rely on, except me. We do things my way, or we don’t do them at all. And if you try to take matters into your own hands or betray me, I’ll be there to make sure that all avenues back to me are permanently silenced. Do you understand how important this is?”

“Yes, but as you’ve threatened my life several times before, I may be getting blase about the whole thing.”

“Okay, we need to add some trust. I’m going to show you something I’ve never shown anyone before.

Watch carefully.”

And she leaned closer. I knew she had lovely eyes, but until now I’d never realized quite how lovely.

Light in tone, but with a curious corona around the edges. As I watched, the fine pinpoints of her pupils moved, stretched and grew in size. I tried to step away in alarm, but she held me tightly until her empty pupils were almost to her whites, and she had the grotesque, hollow-headed look of the Previous. I shivered. But I didn’t look away, and her eyes slowly returned to normal, until with a few rapid blinks, they were back to pinpoints once more.

“That was . . . really creepy.”

“Long ago, everyone could do it. And listen, I’m sorry about putting the wheelbarrow in your path—I had to know whether you were one of . . . them. After all, you were showing a lot of interest.”

“That was because I liked you.”

“No one’s ever liked me before,” she said, “so you’ll excuse me for becoming suspicious.”

“Jabez liked you.”

“Jabez liked my nose.”

“I like your nose.”

“Yes, but you don’t only like my nose. There’s a big difference.”

“Whoa!” I said, as what she had told me finally hit home. “You can see at night?”

She gave me a smile.

“Quite well, too. On a full moon there’s almost enough light to play tennis. I think I’m the only one they don’t know about.”

“They?”

“The ones who killed Ochre. The ones who arrive after dusk and are gone before dawn.”

“Riffraff?”

“Nightseers. Above and beyond the Rules. The last line of defense against attacks upon the Munsell Doctrine.”

“How can you be sure they don’t know about you?”

“Because I’m alive. Are you running with scissors or not?”

“I’m in,” I said taking a deep breath. “But wait. How does—”

“Soon, Red, soon.”

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. It seemed like a totally natural thing for her to do, and I wasn’t shocked or surprised. But the guilt wouldn’t go away.

“Violet is very strong-willed,” I said quite spontaneously.

“As long as you didn’t enjoy it.”

“She was very aggressive,” I remarked reflectively. “It’s not supposed to be like that, is it?”