Un Lun Dun Read online

  In the middle of the room was a pillar of pipes, where needles jerked up and down on gauges, and pressure was channeled by fat iron taps. In the dead center was an ancient, heavy-looking one the size of a steering wheel. It looked like it would open an airlock in a submarine.

  “Let’s go,” whispered Deeba. “This place is scary.”

  But, slowly, Zanna shuffled forward. She looked like a sleepwalker.

  “Zanna!” Deeba moved back towards the door. “We’re alone in a cellar. And no one knows we’re here. Come on!”

  “There’s more oil,” Zanna said. “That thing…that umbrella, was here.”

  She touched the big spigot experimentally.

  “‘…when the wheel turns,’” she said.

  “What?” said Deeba. “Come on. You coming?” She turned her back. Zanna gripped the wheel, and began to turn it.

  It moved slowly at first. She had to strain. It squeaked against rust.

  As it went, something happened to the light.

  Deeba froze. Zanna hesitated, then turned the wheel a few more degrees.

  The light began to change. It was flickering. All the sound in the room was ebbing. Deeba turned back.

  “What’s happening?” she whispered.

  Zanna tugged, and with each motion the light and noise faltered a moment, and the wheel turned a little farther.

  “No,” said Deeba. “Stop. Please.”

  Zanna turned the valve another few inches, and the sound and light shifted. All the bulbs in the room flared, and so, impossibly, did the sound of the cars outside.

  The iron wheel began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The room grew darker.

  “You’re turning off the electricity,” Deeba said, but then she was silent, as she and Zanna looked up and realized that the lamplight shining through the windows from outside was also dimming.

  As the light lessened, so did the sound.

  Deeba and Zanna stared at each other in wonder.

  Zanna spun the handle as if it were oiled. The noise of cars and vans and motorbikes outside grew tinny, like a recording, or as if it came from a television in the next room. The sound of the vehicles faded with the glow of the main road.

  Zanna was turning off the traffic. The spigot turned off all the cars, and turned off the lamps.

  It was turning off London.

  6

  The Trashpack

  The wheel spun; the light changed; the sound changed.

  The glow from outside went from the dim of streetlights, down to darkness, then slowly back up to something luminous but odd. The last of the car engines sounded very far away, and then was gone. At last the wheel slowed and stopped.

  Deeba stood, frozen, her hands to her mouth, in the strange not-dark. Zanna blinked several times, as if waking. The two looked at each other, and around at the room, all different in the bizarre light, full of impossible shadows.

  “Quick! Undo it!” Deeba said at last. She grabbed the wheel and tried to turn it backwards. It was wedged stubbornly, as if it hadn’t moved for years. “Help!” she said, and Zanna added her strength to Deeba’s, and with a burst of effort they made the metal move.

  But the wheel just spun free. It wasn’t catching on anything. It whirred heavily around, but the light didn’t change, and the noise of traffic didn’t return.

  London didn’t come back on.

  “Zanna,” said Deeba. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know,” whispered Zanna. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Deeba said. Zanna grabbed her arm and they ran back into the corridor.

  The peculiar light was shining around the edges of the doorway they had come in by, as if a giant black-and-white television were playing just outside. Deeba and Zanna went for it full-tilt, and shoved it open.

  They stumbled out. And stopped. And looked around. And let their mouths hang open.

  It was not night anymore, and they were not in the estate. They were somewhere very else.

  Just as it had when they entered, the door opened on waste ground between tall buildings, and to either side were big metal bins and spilt rubbish. But the tower blocks were not those they had left behind.

  The walls just kept going up. Everywhere they looked, they were surrounded by enormous concrete monoliths that dwarfed those they remembered, and stood in more chaotic configurations. Not a single one of them was broken by a single window.

  The door swung shut, and clicked. Zanna tugged it: of course it was locked. The building they’d emerged from soared into a sky glowing a peculiar glow.

  “Maybe that room’s, like…a train carriage…” Deeba whispered. “And we’ve come down the line…and…and it was later than we thought…”

  “Maybe,” whispered Zanna doubtfully, trying the door again. “So how do we get back?”

  “Why did you turn it?” Deeba said.

  “I don’t know,” said Zanna, stricken. “I just…thought like I had to.”

  Holding each other’s arms for comfort, peering everywhere wide-eyed, Zanna and Deeba crept into the passageways between the walls.

  “I’m calling Mum,” Deeba said, and took out her phone. She was about to dial when she stopped, and stared at the screen. She showed it to Zanna. It was covered in symbols they’d never seen before. Where the reception bar usually was was a sort of corkscrew. Instead of the network sign was a weird pictogram.

  Deeba scrolled through her address book.

  “What’s that mean?” said Zanna.

  “Those aren’t my friends’ names,” whispered Deeba. Her phone’s contact list contained random words in alphabetical order. Accidie, Bateleur, Cepheid, Dillybag…

  “Mine’s the same,” said Zanna, checking her own. “Enantios? Floccus? Goosegog? What is that?”

  Deeba dialed her home number.

  “Hello?” she whispered. “Hello?”

  From the phone sounded a close-up buzzing like a wasp. It was so loud and sudden in that silent place that Deeba turned it off in alarm. She and Zanna stared at each other.

  “Let me try,” said Zanna. But dialing her number led to the same unpleasant insect noise. “No reception,” she said, as if that were all that was wrong. Neither of them said anything more about the strange words or pictures on their phones.

  They went deeper into the cavern between the windowless buildings.

  “We have to get out of here,” said Zanna, speeding up.

  They ran past windblown old newspaper, deserted tin cans, and the rustling of black rubbish bags. In growing terror they turned left then right then left, and then Zanna came to a sudden stop, and Deeba bumped into her.

  “What?” said Deeba, and Zanna hushed her.

  “I thought…” she said. “Listen.”

  Deeba bit her lip. Zanna swallowed several times.

  For long seconds there was silence. Then a very faint noise.

  There was a rustling, what might be a light footfall.

  “Someone’s coming,” whispered Zanna. Her voice was halfway between hope and despair—would this person help, or be more troubles?

  Then she slumped, and pointed.

  It was just a torn black rubbish bag, billowing nearby. It scraped gently against the ground.

  Deeba sighed and watched it despondently as it fluttered a little closer. There was more rubbish behind it: with a clatter a can rolled into view, and there was the whisper of newspaper. A little collection of discarded stuff swirled at the passage entrance. The girls leaned against the wall.

  “We got to think,” Deeba said, and tried and failed to use her phone again.

  “Deeba,” Zanna whispered.

  There was more rubbish than had been there a moment before. The black plastic, and the can, and the newspapers, had been joined by greasy hamburger wrappers, a grocery bag, several apple cores, and scrunched-up clear plastic. The rubbish rustled.

  More rolled into view: chicken bones, empty tubes of toothpaste, a milk carton
. Debris blocked off the way they had come.

  Deeba and Zanna stared. The rubbish was moving towards them. It was coming against the wind.

  As the girls began to creep backwards, it seemed as if the rubbish realized they were onto it. It sped up.

  The cartons and cans rolled in their direction. The paper fluttered for them as madly as agitated butterflies. The plastic bags reached out their handles and scrambled towards the girls.

  Deeba and Zanna screamed and ran. They heard the manic wet rustle of the predatory rubbish.

  They raced through the maze of walls, desperate to get away.

  Behind them there was a scrunching of paper, a percussion of cardboard, the squelch of damp things moving fast. The girls were fighting for breath.

  “I…can’t…” said Deeba. Zanna tried to pull her along, but Deeba could only flatten against a wall. “Oh help,” she whispered. Zanna stood in front of her, between her friend and their pursuers.

  The rubbish was close. It had slowed, and was creeping towards them. The stinking heap came with motions as careful and catlike as its odd shapes would allow. The stench of old dustbins was strong.

  Ragged black plastic reached out with its rip-arms, trailing rubbish juice like a slug’s slime. Zanna raised her arms in despairing defense, and Deeba held her breath and closed her eyes.

  7

  Market Day

  “Oy!”

  A voice came from behind them, and stones began to whistle past them. Someone grabbed Deeba and Zanna by their collars and hauled them backwards out of the alley.

  It was a boy. They stared at him as he elbowed in front of them, chucking more pebbles and bits of brick and brandishing a stick at the rubbish. Which was cowering.

  “Go on!” he said. He threw another well-aimed stone. The rubbish flinched, retreated. “Get out of it!” the boy shouted. “Disgusting!” The rubbish scrambled to get away.

  Zanna and Deeba stared. The boy turned to them and winked.

  He was about their age, very thin and wiry, dressed in odd patched-up grubby clothes. His hair was messy, his face shrewd. He was raising an eyebrow.

  “What’s that all about?” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “You ain’t scared of a trashpack, are you? Pests like them? Need a much bigger lot’n that to do you any damage.” He lobbed another stone. “If you’re that yellow, why you off walking in the Backwall Maze? You wouldn’t like it if they came swanning into your manor, would you? Mind how you go.”

  He nodded and half-grinned, gave them a little salute, then strode off away from the wall, brushing dirt from his already dirty clothes.

  “Wait a minute!” Deeba managed to say.

  “We don’t know…where…we…” Zanna said. Their voices trailed off as they turned to watch the boy go, and saw the square he had pulled them into.

  It was big, full of stalls and scores of people, movement, the bustle of a market. There were costumes and colors. But above all the girls’ attention was taken by the light shining down from above.

  In the narrow alleys, they had only seen slivers of sky. This was the first time since emerging from the door that they had had a clear view.

  The sky was gray, not blue. Here and there were a few scurrying clouds, unfolding like milk in water. They moved in all different directions, as if they were on errands.

  “Deebs,” said Zanna, swallowing. “What is that?”

  Deeba’s throat dried as she looked up.

  “No wonder the light’s weird,” whispered Zanna.

  The orb above them was huge, and low in the sky—a circle at least three times the size of the sun. It shone with peculiar, cool dark-light like that of some autumn mornings, giving everything crisp edges and shadows. It was the yellow-white of a grubby tooth. Deeba and Zanna looked directly at it without hurting their eyes, for long seconds, their mouths wide open.

  The sun had a hole in it.

  It hung over the city, not like a disk, or a coin, or a ball, but like a donut. A perfect circle was missing from its middle. They could see the gray sky through it.

  “Oh…my…God…” Deeba said.

  “What is that?” said Zanna.

  Deeba stepped forward, staring at the impossible sun shining like a fat ring. She looked down. The boy who had rescued her was gone.

  “What’s going on?” Deeba shouted. People in the market turned to look at her. “Where are we?” she whispered.

  After a few seconds people went back to their business—whatever that was.

  “Okay. Okay. We have to figure this out,” said Deeba.

  Behind them was a blank concrete wall, the edge of the maze they had come through, broken by a few alley entrances. In front, the market stretched as far as they could see.

  “Why’d you turn that stupid wheel?”

  “Like I knew we were going to end up here?”

  “Can’t ever leave anything alone.”

  Hesitantly, the two girls stepped into the rows of tents, buyers, and sellers. There was nowhere else to go.

  They were immediately surrounded by the animated jabbering of a market morning. Deeba and Zanna kept looking up at that extraordinary hollow sun, but the scene around them was almost as bizarre.

  There were people in all kinds of uniforms: mechanics’ overalls smeared in oil; firefighters’ protective clothes; doctors’ white coats; the blue of police; and others, including people in the neat suits of waiters, with cloths over one arm. All these uniforms looked like dressing-up costumes. They were too neat, and somehow a bit too simple.

  There were other shoppers in hotchpotch outfits of rags, and patchworks of skins, and what looked in some cases like taped-together bits of plastic or foil. Zanna and Deeba walked farther into the crowd.

  “Zann,” Deeba whispered. “Look.”

  Here and there were the strangest figures. People whose skins were no colors skin should ever be, or who seemed to have a limb or two too many, or peculiar extrusions or concavities in their faces.

  “Yeah,” said Zanna, with a sort of hollow, calm voice. “I see them.”

  “Is that it? You see them? What are they, for God’s sake?”

  “How should I know? But are you surprised? After everything?”

  A woman went by above them, pedaling furiously as if she were on a bicycle, striding on two enormous spindly mechanical legs. Strange little figures flitted by at the edges of the market, too fast to clearly see. Deeba murmured an apology as she bumped into someone. The woman who bowed politely to her wore glasses with several layers of lenses, lowered and raised on levers, seemingly at random.

  “Lovely arrangements!” the girls heard. “Get them here! Brighten up the home.”

  Beside them was a stall bursting in flamboyant bouquets, carefully arranged in colored paper.

  “They’re not flowers,” Deeba said. They were tools.

  Each was a bunch of hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, and levels, bright plastic and metal, carefully arranged and tied together with a bow.

  “What on earth are you wearing?” someone said. Zanna turned as someone picked at her hoodie. The man was tall and thin, with a jagged halo of thick, spiky hair. His suit was white and covered with tiny black marks.

  It was print. His clothes were made from pages from books, immaculately sewn together.

  “No, this won’t do,” he said. He spoke quickly, tugging at Zanna’s clothes too fast for her to stop him. “This is very drab, can’t possibly keep you entertained. What you need—” He flourished his sleeve. “—is this. The hautest of couture. Be entertained while you wear. Never again need you face the misery of unreadable clothes. Now you can pick your favorite works of fiction or nonfiction for your sleeves. Perhaps a classic for the trousers. Poetry for your skirt. Historiography for socks. Scripture for knickers. Learn while you dress!”

  He whipped a tape from his pocket and began to measure Zanna. He yanked at his head, and Zanna and Deeba winced and gasped. What had looked like hair was countless pins and needle
s jammed anyhow into his scalp, a handful of which he pulled out.

  The man did not bleed or seem to suffer any discomfort from treating himself as a pincushion. He wedged some of the pins back into his head, and there was a faint pfft with each puncture, as if his skull were velvet. Busily, he began to pin bits of paper to Zanna, scribbling measurements on a notebook.

  “But what if it rains, you say? Well then rejoice as your outfit cuddles you in its gentle slushing, and you’re given the opportunity for an entirely new book. How wonderful! I have a vast selection.” He indicated his stall, crammed with volumes from which assistants tore pages and stitched. “What genres and literatures are to your taste?”

  “Please…” stammered Zanna.

  “Leave it,” said Deeba. “Leave us alone.”

  “No thank you…” Zanna said. “I…”

  The girls turned and ran.

  “Hey!” the man shouted. “Are you alright?” But they did not slow down.

  They ran past chefs baking roof-tiles in their ovens and chiseling apart bricks over pans, frying the whites and yolks that emerged; past confectioners with jars full of candied leaves; past what looked like an argument at a honey stall between a bear in a suit and a cloud of bees in the shape of a man.

  At last they reached a little clearing deep in the market containing a pump and a pillar. They stopped, their hearts pounding.

  “What are we going to do?” said Deeba.

  “I don’t know.”

  They looked up that empty-hearted sun above them. Deeba dialed her home once more.

  “Hello Mum?” she whispered.

  There was that frenetic buzzing. From a little hole in the back of her phone burst a handful of wasps. Deeba shrieked and dropped the phone, and the wasps flew off in different directions.

  Her phone was broken. She sat heavily at the pillar’s base.

  Zanna stared at her, and her face began to crease.

  “It’ll be okay,” said Deeba. “Don’t. It’ll be alright.”

  “How?” said Zanna. “How will it?”

  Zanna and Deeba stared at each other. From her wallet, Zanna drew out the strange travelcard she had been sent, weeks ago. She stared at it as if it might contain some clue, some advice. But it was only a card.