Then he seemed to remember the absurdity of his enemy, and instead of backing away he came at them again with the swords. But the Johns were swift. Mischief darted under Shape’s vast hand and pushed his little blade into Shape’s thigh. The knife went in three or four inches and lodged there, blood spurting over Mischief’s hand and arm. It was enough to make the monster let out a cry of rage and pain. He dropped the blades and clutched the wound, gritting his teeth as he pulled the knife out.
Inside the lighthouse, Candy had climbed fifteen steps when she heard Mendelson’s shout. She carefully ascended another three, until she could see through a hole in the wall. She had quite a good view. She could see that Mischief was playing David to Shape’s Goliath out there.
The sight gave her courage. Instead of advancing up the stairs tentatively, as she’d been doing, she picked up her speed. With every step she took, the whole structure rocked and groaned, but she reached the top of the flight without incident and found herself in a round room, perhaps eight or nine feet across.
She’d reached the top of the lighthouse. But now that she was actually
“O little one,
My little one,
Come with me,
Your life is done.
Forget the future,
Forget the past.
Life is over:
Breathe your last.”
Doing her best to blot out the sound of Shape’s obscene little lullaby, she scanned the landscape around the lighthouse.
“Mischief!” she yelled. “Where did you go?”
She only had to call once. Then he was there, racing toward the tower through the grass. There was blood on his hands, she saw. Had he wounded Shape? She dared hope so.
“Lady Candy? Are you all right?”
“I can’t find any light up here, Mischief! I’m sorry.”
“He’s coming, lady!”
“I know, Mischief. Believe me: I know.
“What?”
“The oldest game, Candy.
“Yes! There’s a cup!” she yelled back down to the brothers.
“Put the ball in it!” Mischief replied.
“What ball? There isn’t any ball.”
“There should be a ball.” ;
Candy didn’t waste time telling Serpent to be more polite. She had only seconds to spare before Shape made an entrance into the round room, she knew. So she stopped talking and did as Mischief suggested, stepping over the hole she’d made in the platform and returning to look for the ball.
She listened as she scoured the room. To judge by the sound of his feet, Shape was close to the top of the stairs. Then—just as she was certain he was about to open the door—she heard the welcome sound of splintering timber, and her pursuer loosed a shout of alarm. His weight had apparently been too much for the staircase. She heard a series of crashes as broken portions of the steps fell away into the stairwell. A moment of silence followed, when she dared hope that perhaps Shape had fallen down the stairwell along with the broken stairs and was lying at the bottom of the flight. But instead of the distant moans she’d hoped to hear, there came an outburst of words in a language she had never heard before. She didn’t need a translator to recognize them as curses.
She crossed to the door and glanced down, just to see what had happened. A large portion of the staircase—five or six stairs—had indeed collapsed under Mendelson Shape’s weight. But he had somehow managed to avoid the full fall by jumping back down the stairs before they had collapsed beneath him. This left a sizeable gap for him to get across before he could continue his ascent. She was disappointed that he wasn’t dead or comatose at the bottom, but this was better than nothing.
Looking up at her, he made horns of his forefinger and smallest finger, which he jabbed threateningly in Candy’s direction. No doubt had he possessed the power to strike her dead on the spot, dead she would have been. But all he could do was curse and point, so she left him to it and went back to search for the missing ball.
As she did so, she heard Mischief yelling up at her from outside. Obviously he’d heard the din.
“I’m coming in, Lady Candy!”
She went to the outer door and called down to him.
“
She saw him looking through the holes in the tower wall to confirm what she’d told him. He was aghast.