Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

This was something that Newman’s father was soon to learn as well.

y brother Gus stood upon the crest of the Northern Ridge, at a spot within sight of the Summit of Exchange. Having never before ventured up to this lofty aerie, Newman’s father didn’t know quite what he should expect to see there. In his fancy, Augustus Trimmers had imagined the place to be a bit more elaborately appointed. He imagined significant architectural detail upon its constituent buildings of trade, and perhaps a flag or two planted in a brace of mutual national comity: the Dingley jack with its stars and broad squiggle (representative respectively of the stellar firmament and the River Thames), and whatever was flown in this portion of the Outland, be it Corea or Italy of the U.S. of A. But in truth there wasn’t much to the Summit at all: merely two small warehouse sheds set upon a pavement, and then lodged within a stand of stunted, wind-gnarled trees, a hundred or so yards away, an old and weathered wooden gazebo-pavilion sheltering a few wooden tables and attendant chairs. (Perhaps, thought Augustus, this is where the brokers sit to negociate terms of barter and trade with the Outland tradesmen.)

Situate upon the pavement in a disordered row was a battery of empty barrows and handcarts. Augustus recognised the one- and two-wheeled vehicles from the times he had seen them coming down from the ridge, carrying all the smaller products of the Outland that were required by Dinglians, and even a few that weren’t (designated for that select group of his kinsmen who could afford a taste of luxury in their lives). Augustus remembered that when he was a little boy there had been mules that made the trip, but they had all died during a tetanus outbreak and had never been replaced.

There really was no mystery to the place, and it gave Augustus to wonder if there should be less mystery in the land that lay beyond it. What if the lives of the Beyonders, he mused, turned out to be just as dull and unintriguing as these dilapidated barrows and these tired and sagging buildings implied?

Gus posed the question to himself as he laid his knapsack inside the bed of one of the empty barrows, its ironwork rusting away in flakes, its paint curling up in slow, prolonged detachment from its sideboards.

He took a moment to conduct an inventory, to make certain that nothing which should be necessary for his survival in these first days in the Outland had been overlooked.

“Good, good, good,” he said to himself, and then appended, “now where the devil is that key?”

The key to which Augustus Trimmers referred had a very important purpose: it unlocked the wicket gate that was set into the tall, wire fence that trailed along the ridge and here separated the Dell from the Terra Incognita — a fence which, though to his knowledge had never been fully surveyed, was presumed to encompass all of the Dell. As a rule, only Dinglian brokers possessed copies of the key, but Gus had been told by his friend Pumblechook, a locksmith, that he owned several copies himself and had once betaken himself and two of his ale-drinking chums upon a daring picnic and drinking party in the near Outland for the sheer thrill of it. What’s more, Gus knew exactly where Pumblechook kept those duplicates, and was successful in pinching one of them the day before, when the easilydistracted locksmith had his back turned. Egress from Dingley Dell would, therefore, be an easy accomplishment for my brother.

The same could not be said for his son Newman, who surely hadn’t the same convenient means for breaching the cordoning, sharply barbed fence. This particular worry had affixed itself to larger, more general concerns for Newman’s safety in the Outland. How did he do it, without incurring serious, lacerating injury to himself?

Finding the key, and settling his mind that his hurried packing had not put him to too great a disadvantage, Gus Trimmers unlocked the wicket and commenced his trip down the other side of the ridge.

From the lofty vantage point that accompanied his first steps abroad, Gus could see a house or two, which looked from this distance not much different from the houses of the Dell. A thick canopy of trees obscured all but these two dwellings. Gus wondered what, if anything, nested or stirred below. Was there a world of life and industry here beneath all of these trees, or was there little if any form of civilisation at this point so close to his own valley home? Must one push much farther, even beyond the next mountainous ridge, to gain the true, reflective face of the heretofore most recondite Terra Incognita? Or was there nothing for hundreds of miles round save a sequence of sparsely populated ridges and valleys?

The trip down the Outlander’s side of the ridge took not so long as Gus had guessed that it would, for there was a well-worn and partially-paved path to guide him in his descent (the better to roll a wheel barrow up in the opposite direction) — a path that looked not so very different from the trail that took the barrows and the hand-carts down and into Dingley Dell, laden with merchandise. “I am not yet impressed by what I see,” said Gus to himself as he shifted his gaze from his feet to the surrounding landscape, forever on the lookout for some sign of Newman, some clew as to his son’s whereabouts — or more disquieting, his final fate.

The children tumbled out of the omnibus in a great squealing and bouncing horde and raced one another to the receiving and main exhibits building of Clive and Clare’s Reptilarium. Newman hopped down from the vehicle and glanced up at the large placard that overlooked the park. It said “Reptilarium” in large curving letters and bore the image of a menacing, fang-bearing cobra.“I can’t believe you’ve never been here before!” shouted Gregory, straining to be heard over the din of excited voices. The two boys took their place in the queue that was fast forming in front of the door. One by one each of the children entered the building, as the meticulous woman from the omnibus counted them off, and as the driver and the other man stood by.

The second man seemed to be studying Newman more closely now, his expression staid and unrevealing. Newman didn’t understand why the man was scrutinising him in such a sharp way, and then suddenly he understood it perfectly: the man was most certainly in league with the others — the ones who sought him — and, if he was to believe Miss Wolf, the ones who sought him for a purpose that Newman could scarcely permit himself to believe.

He shuddered.

“This is Mizz Edson,” said the woman from the omnibus, introducing her young charges to the woman standing next to her inside the building. “She’ll be our guide for the morning.”

But few of the children were looking at Mizz Edson. Instead, most of the eyes in the room were roving about, taking in the colourful pictures of reptilian creatures that hung upon the dark, carpeted walls, and peeping squeamishly into the glass cages placed throughout the room, each occupied by a different cold-blooded creature.

“Can we pet the animals?” asked a little girl wearing a lattice of miniature metalwork upon her teeth.

“There’ll be some you can pet,” answered Mizz Edson, who wore the same uniform as all of the other Reptilarium employees: grey trowsers and a single-pocketed forest-green blouse. “But not all of them. I’ll let you know which ones are friendly and which ones aren’t.”

There were thirty-two other children in the room besides Newman. He had counted them, too. He wished that there had been even more children who had crowded themselves inside that omnibus, so that he could now more easily hide himself amongst them. The cold look of the Outland man frightened him, and he wished to put himself as far away from him as possible. Whilst Newman was trying his best to avoid the man’s gaze, the Outlander took a step in Newman’s direction, and whether it was intended as a minatory advance or no, my nephew countered it by pushing his way as unobtrusively as possible through the group of fidgeting, chittering children to a spot nearest the counter where money was paid and guests given tiny cheques that permitted entry into this strange little zoo.