Twelve-year-old Carmen has a secret: she can talk to her cat Grim. But the powerful Brotherhood has banned pets, and the penalty is death.
Ward is the most wanted boy in the world. The only thing standing between him and the hangman's noose is maste...
"Completely unnecessary," he puffed. "Oh, who is this?" He craned his neck out and looked around.
"My friends." Ward said. It felt strange to say this. "We need to speak to you. We've got a problem. I told them that if anyone could solve it, it was you."
Snapper looked at Slops. "He said that?"
"Well not exact -" Slops began.
"Course he did," Mildew said. "Everyone's heard of your problem-solving. You're a genius they say – a regular progeny."
The door opened a little further. "Is that so? Well I wouldn't usually allow – but in the circumstances – well okay, come in then."
Ward thought Snapper might insist that Grim and Leif stay outside, but he seemed to have no aversion to them. The fel and the gillywig prowled about Snapper's richly furnished but somewhat decayed lounge as Snapper served a light repast of blackleaf, fruitcake, shortbread biscuits, blueberry muffins, and cupcakes.
Perhaps the food sharpened Snapper's senses, but he soon reverted to his earlier suspicion, staring at each of them in turn over the top of his ruff, which had sprung outwards alarmingly, as if it were a natural defence mechanism designed to protect the soft Snapper neck within.
The ruff eventually spoke.
"Young people these days ask too many questions. I never asked questions as a boy. It's a dreadful way of finding anything out."
Mildew, not one for introductory back-and-forth, said: "Does the name David Nassar mean anything to you?"
Ward thought Snapper's suspicion would intensify, but instead his eyes lit up. "Yes it does! Let me show you something."
He swept over to a bureau, drew a hoop of keys from his pocket, unlocked a drawer, and returned with something under his arm. He propped it on the coffee table so that they could all see it.
"Twenty-seventh century," he said proudly.
It was a woodcut. Carmen would have recognised its type from the books in the library under the Old City, though this one was not in a book but a picture frame. It depicted an outdoor scene. Cages hung in the background, and there was the suggestion of a river beyond. People in strange clothing stood in the foreground, while about their legs twined animals that may have been cats or dogs, though their faces looked oddly human. The sky was filled with birds. Dozens of beaks fought for purchase on the clothing of the man they were carrying away. The noose about his neck had been severed, and the rope trailed through the air. He seemed hardly a man at all. His hands were like the talons of an eagle, his knees bent backwards like the hind legs of a horse. There was a suggestion of nightmarish deformity beneath his clothes, as if someone had dressed a spider. His eyes were closed.
"He's dead," Mildew said.
"Asleep," Snapper explained.
"I wouldn't be snoozing if a pack of birds was making off with me," Mildew said.
"It's a symbolic sleep," Snapper said. "The artist was trying to tell us something."
Ward looked up at Snapper. "What?"
"That David Nassar was one of the Sleepers."
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When a pack of birds is making off with you but you still manage to take a selfie. Priceless.
