Mister Monday: Chapter Sixteen (Part I)

[pangolin20]

Chapter Fifteen | Table of Contents | Chapter Sixteen (Part II)

Corneille Blanche: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Mister Monday! Last time, Arthur met up with Pravuil and then met the Old One.

 

We last left off with the Old One apparently thinking that Arthur is an assassin sent from above and threatening to kill Arthur in response. You know, seeing Arthur in such a situation yet again has made me realise that he has achieved preciously little to better his situation. Things have kept worsening for him since the beginning of the book, and what has he actually been able to do about it? Well, almost nothing. Since we are now some 60% into the book, it is past time for there to be a change. Let us see if that happens, then.

We open on Arthur saying that he is not from the House and is not an enemy. The Old One just growls and pulls the chain so tight around Arthur’s neck that it hurts. Then he pulls him upright and sniffs. After the third sniff, he lets some of the chain go. He says somewhat friendlier that Arthur is indeed a mortal, from a “world [he] know[s] well”. Arthur has taken his amusement away (and he calls Arthur “manikin” here, which I think sounds a bit weird), so he needs to “provide by other means”. He asks how a mortal has come to bear “the Lesser Key of the Lower House”.

Arthur begins to say something about the Will, but just then the Old One removes the chain from around Arthur’s neck. A few seconds later, both hands of the clock move further toward the twelve and the Old One is forced to step back as the chain tightens. Arthur gulps and thinks that if the chain had still been around his neck, he would have been strangled. He now “seriously doubt[s]” what Suzy said about “the difficulty of dying in the House”, because the Old One can clearly kill or at least do something like it.

Um, how does that contradict what she said? From what we heard from Pravuil, the Old One clearly has extraordinary powers, and getting killed by him is something that you would have to seek out. Further, I am quite sure she meant it is difficult for Piper’s Children and Denizens to die, not for people like Arthur.

The Old One commands him to speak and tell his name. Arthur should not fear, because he was “always a friend to [Arthur’s] folk” and the Architect is his foe. He does not bear “ill will” to the things she made. Indeed, long ago he helped making mortals too, though the Architect “sought to deny his artistry”. I guess he hates the Denizens because they remind him of the Architect, then?

For what he says… there is no way to verify this yet, but he did have a chance to kill Arthur and deliberately chose not to, so Arthur can probably trust him. (I mean, what else can he do if he wants to get out?)

Arthur first gives his name, and says he is not exactly sure why he has the Key. He then launches into his tale: the Will tricked Monday into giving up the Key, but now he wants it back and Arthur has been sent here until he gives it back. Before that happened, the Will told him to get the Hour Hand and “take over the Lower House”, because only then he can go home and stop the disease the Fetchers brought with them. My, it is entirely accurate to what happened. Well done, Arthur!

The Old One stops him there and tells him to begin from the beginning, proceed to the middle and… he can see there is no end yet. Before he tells it, though, they will “drink wine and eat honey cakes.” Hmm, I am a bit suspicious of the wine drinking, but the cakes seem fine to me. Then again, I do not know for sure if it is possible to get drunk in the House (though I do think so, based on something in Sir Thursday), and the Old One might not know.

Arthur says he would like a cake, and looks around for a place the cake and wine might come from. He cannot see anything, “though nothing would have surprised him”. The Old One holds his hand out with the palm to the ground and recites a small verse:

Sweet cakes of almond meal, sticky with honey,

A dozen piled on a platter of woven straw.

A pitcher of wine from the sun-kissed hills,

Flavoured with resin from the crack-barked pine.

Well, I do not know if it is a verse per se, but I do like this one enough to include it. At this, the floor shakes and breaks open, and a “pool of darkness” rises and overflows. This quickly transforms into “an earthenware jug and a flat-sided basket full of delicious-looking small cakes”. When the Old One picks it up, the crack in the floor closes. Arthur asks where this came from, and thinks he is not sure he wants to take they honey cakes “all that badly now”.

The Old One explains while pouring “a continuous stream of wine” into his mouth. My, that is an interesting feat! He says that Nothing lies close beneath them here (presumably because they are so deep) and if one has the power, or a “tool of power” like the Key, it is possible to make many things from it. After all, that is where everything came from, even the Architect, and he too, “hard upon Her heels”. He then gives Arthur the wine jug.

Arthur tries to follow the Old One’s example, but he gets most of the wine wrong, and when he does swallow some, he wishes he had not. It tastes “horrible, like licorice, and burn[s] his throat”. The honey cakes are fortunately much better. They are “very sticky”, there are “pieces of orange peel” through them and they are “soft and moist”. I will leave it up to whoever reads this how this tastes. Arthur takes three of the cakes, and the Old One takes the other nine.

Once they are done with this, the Old One tells Arthur to tell his story, and drink when he needs to. He offers the jug again and Arthur refuses. He does tell everything, from the first time he met Monday. The Old One listens carefully to the story, “sitting with one knee up and his chin rested upon his fist”, and moving from time to time as the clock moves. By the time Arthur is finished, it is 20:40 and the Old One is a few feet inside the clock face. Arthur sits by the numeral eight.

He notes that the clock face gives off a “gentle warmth”, like that “given by the sun on a clear, calm winter’s day”. Then I presume he lives relatively close to the equator. He feels more comfortable there, and also “extremely tired”. I do not think that is too surprising after what he has been through.

The Old One says it is a “curious tale” and one where he needs to consider his role. He is the enemy of the Architect whose Will has “made [Arthur] its agent”. On the other hand, he is not the friend of the Trustees, whose “petty usurpation” offends him more than his hate for the Architect. Yet he does not know what to do about Arthur, and he tells him to rest until he knows what to do.

Arthur agrees, and he talks about how very tired he is, and how easy it would be to go to sleep… but there are those “creepy doors” at the centre and Pravuil’s warning. He decides that he does not want to suffer pain, so he asks the Old One if he promises to wake him before twelve. He thinks that the Old One is certainly trustworthy enough to keep “a small promise like that”. The Old One looks at the doors and says he will not have to ponder that long. …It is not dishonest per se, but it certainly feels like it.

Arthur asks it again. By now, talking is quite an effort and his eyes are already falling shut. We also get the phrasing “his jaw an effort to move” here, which I do not think works well with the sentence structure.

You Missed A Spot: 5 (Vermaanti miscounted in the previous chapter)

The Old One confirms that he will and Arthur smiles and falls asleep. The Old One watches him, and a minute later, he says he does not know how long before twelve he will wake Arthur. He looks at the doors again and then says this:

“Shall I let them have your sight so that I might sleep a single night without torture? Or shall I suffer as I always suffer, and give you what help I can?”

Ooh, this is a nice cliffhanger to end the section on! And if the Old One did decide to let Arthur suffer, I doubt I would hold it against him. He has known Arthur for only a few hours, at most, so I can see why he would rather not suffer. On the other hand… if he lets Arthur be unharmed, Arthur will probably seek him out again and he can actually influence things and just have more company. If I were him, I would go for the latter.

So there is a scene break, and Arthur is woken by the Old One shouting. He feels like the sound “hurl[s] him upright”, though that is actually “his adrenaline-spiked muscles”. (sighs) Yes, I think we could have thought that for ourselves, Nix.

Well, the Old One shouts that Arthur should wake and he should run, or “they will have [him]”! Arthur stands “dazed and disoriented” for a small moment, and then a “tremendously loud bell” sounds nearby, which nearly throws him off his feet. Simultaneously, he hears the two doors near the centre open… which they actually do not, so this is quite confusing.

You Missed A Spot: 6

There further comes a “horrid, high-pitched giggle” from whatever may be inside. The next moment Arthur is running away as fast as he can, first off the clock face and then to the coal pyramids. Halfway there, the bell sounds again. Arthur says it is obviously the clock, “striking noon or midnight”. (I am quite certain it is midnight, since he came here in the morning.) After the bell, he can still hear the giggling, now combined with sounds of clockwork and “the ratchet of moving gears”. Arthur throws himself behind a coal pyramid just as the clock sounds for the third time. The ground shakes again, and coal falls on Arthur’s head. (Then I wonder how this pyramid stayed here so long.)

By now, he is thoroughly awake and afraid, and he wants to run into the coal field as fast as he can. His fear is so strong that he actually begins to do so, holding the Key up the light the way. After a few steps, he stops to think about it further. He thinks that he is just running away from a noise, nothing more. He also needs to get out of here, and since the Old One offers the best chance of it, it would be unwise to lose track of where he is. So he takes a deep breath and turns around to see “if there actually [is] anything to be afraid of”.

He needs to squint because the blue light is even brighter than before. The Old One’s arms are tied behind his back and are hold close to the clock hands. His ankles seem to be tied to them too, though Arthur cannot see how. It is clear, though, that he cannot move at all.

And here I would like to cut for the time being, as I cannot see a good stopping point ahead. Until next time!