Un Lun Dun

“He’s built a maze around the telephone,” the book said. “So people can’t find it.”

The streets emptied as they went on. They passed between terraces that loomed and leaned and became overhangs, until they walked in a tu

The turns grew sharper, the streets shorter and more cramped. The alleys seemed to double back impossibly. Deeba and her companions passed dead ends, spirals, carefully confusing blind alleys.

“I think I’ve got a map,” the book said. “Check around page three-sixty.”

There was a plan of the maze, so extraordinarily complicated it looked like a human brain. Below it was printed: THE BLABYRINTH.

“I can’t follow this,” Deeba said, staring in the light of the streetlamps and the moving stars.

“’Course you can,” the book said. “You see the entrance? Put your finger on it. Now follow as I tell you. Don’t press too hard on the page, you’ll tickle. Are you ready?

“We’ve gone left, left, right, left, left, right, right, left, and right. Then left. Stop. Where your finger is is where we are.”

“How can you remember that?” Hemi said.

“I’m a book,” it said smugly. “We have good memories. Mark that place. Gently. Do you have a pencil? Now find a way from where we are to the center. When you’ve found one, move your finger along it.”

It took Deeba and Hemi several minutes of false starts and retracing their trails, but eventually they traced a twisting route to the center of the maze. Deeba moved her finger slowly along it, and the book translated her fingertip journey, murmuring directions she and Hemi cautiously followed.

At last they turned into the cul-desac at the center of the Talklands maze. In front of them was a red phone box.

58. Touching Base

“Dad?”

“Deeba?”

The phone had accepted the coins in various currencies that Deeba had fed it. It wasn’t a good line, and Deeba’s voice and her father’s were separated by long pauses, and heavily distorted, but they could hear each other.

Hemi, Curdle, and the book waited outside the phone box, looking into the rapidly encroaching night.

“Dad, can you hear me? I’m so glad to talk to you!”

“What are you up to, darling?” he said after another long pause. Even knowing about the phlegm effect, Deeba could not help being shocked by how calm he sounded. She had not been home for so long.

“I’m okay, Dad, I just wanted to say I’ll see you soon. And to tell you I love you and…and don’t forget about me.”

As she spoke, Deeba was astonished to see through the glass a dense clot of wasps emerge from the phone outside the box and tear off into the night. They flew close together, extraordinarily fast, disappearing in an instant.

After a moment, they, or another group, zoomed back down out of the sky and into the phone again. They buzzed together, and through the receiver, Deeba heard her father’s voice.

“Forget about you?” he laughed. “What are you talking about, mad girl?” She laughed back, a little hysterical with happiness.

“Get Mum, will you?” she said, and watched the insects zip off again to buzz her voice down the phone to her father. But only half of them came back, and when she heard her father’s response, it was broken up and faint.

“…can’t…not…gone out…” he said.

“Say that again, Dad, I can’t hear you.” Deeba sent the wasps skywards. “Tell her I said hello! Tell her I called!” Make her think about me, Deeba thought. Hemi knocked on the phone box. Deeba didn’t even look at him, just made an irritated motion.

Her father said something else in an even more fragmented voice, and Hemi knocked again. The book muttered her name.

“Will you shut up, you two?” she said with her hand over the receiver.

“Deeba,” said the book. “Get out here now.”

When Deeba turned, what she saw through the glass made her hang up in the middle of the static that was all she could hear. She stepped back outside to join her companions.

Dark figures were bearing down on them.

They moved furtively, and fast.

“What are they?” Deeba said. She saw a quickly scuttling thing moving like a crab, something dark red and simian, a stiff-legged man the size of her little brother. They and others came towards the travelers, with no sound.

They approached with slow and threatening motions, in an amazing variety of shapes and colors and spikes and limbs. None of them had mouths.

“They’re Mr. Speaker’s court,” the book whispered. “They’re going to take us back to him. We’ve been done for unauthorized speaking in the Talklands.”

“Maybe I can explain,” Deeba said.

“Explain? You’ve done enough talking. Just keep your mouth shut from now on.”

One of the skulking little figures stamped its foot in obvious anger. It was a little potbellied man with yellow skin, on four scrawny legs, waving four thin arms at them to shut up. He had at least five or six eyes, blinking rapidly and glowering. He made a shhhh motion, with his forefinger in front of where his mouth should be.

His companions grabbed Deeba and Hemi roughly by their arms. A big mouthless squirrel with wings and something like the cross of an armadillo and a centipede squabbled silently over the book, until the squirrel-thing bore it away.

“Careful!” Deeba heard the book say. “You’ll scratch my cover!” She struggled but could not break free.

“Deeba,” Hemi muttered. “D’you think you could have a plan that doesn’t involve me being attacked?”

“Leave us alone,” she shouted. Each word seemed to make her captors more angry. “I just wanted to talk to my mum and dad. I wasn’t causing trouble. I have to go!”

But Deeba, Hemi, Curdle, and the book were swept away, out of the Blabyrinth and through the streets. For the first time since entering the borough Deeba heard noises. The night rang with extraordinary cries, single words spoken with an amazing, resounding voice.

“KETTLE!” she heard, and “MAGNANIMOUS! SEPTIC! GULLY!”

These and other words emanated from an enormous building shaped like a drum, towards which the silent figures dragged them.

59. Despotic Logorrhea

“SO,” the enormous voice said as Deeba and her companions were dragged inside. The sound of the words echoed everywhere. “UNLICENSED SPEAKING. THAT’S A SERIOUS OFFENSE IN THE TALKLANDS.”

In the dead center of the huge hall, a man sat on a raised throne. At least, Deeba thought, sort of a man.

Under sumptuous robes, his limbs and body were twig-thin. His head was extended and misshapen, to accommodate his absolutely enormous mouth. It was almost as big as the rest of his body. His huge jaw and teeth moved exaggeratedly as he spoke with that astonishingly loud voice.

He wore a crown of inverted spikes, each of which, Deeba realized, was a speaking trumpet that swung down in front of his mouth, to amplify him further.

“TERMINUS!” he said. “SPOOL! BRING THE CULPRITS CLOSER. GECKO!”

When he spoke, Deeba saw quick motion in front of Mr. Speaker’s mouth.

“What was that?” Hemi whispered.

“QUIET!” Mr. Speaker shouted, and Deeba gasped to see something living slip from his mouth, scuttle like a millipede down his shirt, and disappear. “NO TALKING WITHOUT PERMISSION!”

With each word, another strange animal-thing seemed to coalesce and drop from behind his teeth. They were small, and each a completely different shape. They flew or crawled or slithered into the room, where, Deeba realized, hundreds of other creatures waited. Again, none had mouths.

“SOOOOO,” Mr. Speaker said slowly, watching her, a snail-thing popping out from between his lips. “YOU’RE JEALOUS OF MY UTTERLINGS?”