…and into summer.
CHAPTER 10
Master Stroke
The heat struck like a blowtorch, so sharp and sudden that she gasped.
She’d had sunstroke once, up on the downs, when she’d gone without a bonnet. And this was like that; the world around here was in worrying shades of dull green, yellow, and purple, without shadows. The air was so full of heat that she felt she could squeeze smoke out of it.
She was in…reeds, they looked like, much taller than her…
…with sunflowers growing in them, except…
…the sunflowers were white…
…because they weren’t, in fact, sunflowers at all.
They were daisies. She knew it. She’d stared at them dozens of times, in that strange picture in the Faerie Tales. They were daisies, and these weren’t giant reeds around her, they were blades of grass and she was very, very small.
in a dream, even at a posh ball, the Nac Mac Feegle knew how to behave. You charged in madly, and you screamed…politely.
“Lovely weather for the time o’ year, is it not, ye wee scunner!”
“Hey, jimmy, ha’ ye no got a pommes frites for an ol’ pal?”
“The band is playin’ divinely, I dinna think!”
“Make my caviar deep fried, wilya?”
There was something wrong with the crowd. No one was panicking or trying to run away, which was certainly the right response to an invasion of Feegles.
Tiffany set off again through the crowd. The masked people at the party paid her no attention either. And that’s because they’re background people, she thought, just like the background trees. She walked along the room to a pair of double doors and pulled them open.
There was nothing but blackness beyond it.
So…the only way out was to find the drome. She hadn’t really expected anything else. It could be anywhere. It could be behind a mask, it could be a table. It could be anything.
Tiffany stared at the crowd. And it was then she saw Roland.
He was sitting at a table by himself. It was spread with food, and he had a spoon in his hand.
She ran over and knocked it onto the floor. “Haven’t you got any sense at all?” she said, pulling him upright. “Do you want to stay here forever?”
And then she felt the movement behind her. Later on, she was sure she hadn’t heard anything. She’d just known. It was a dream, after all.
She glanced around, and there was the drome. It was almost hidden behind a pillar.
Roland just stared at her.
“Are you all right?” said Tiffany desperately, trying to shake him. “Have you eaten anything?”
“Fwa fwa faff,” murmured the boy.
Tiffany turned back to the drome. It was moving toward her, but very slowly, trying to stay in the shadows. It looked like a little snowman made of dirty snow.
The music was getting louder. The candles were getting brighter. Out on the huge dance floor the animal-headed couples whirled faster and faster. And the floor shook. The dream was in trouble.
The Nac Mac Feegles were running to her from every part of the floor, trying to be heard above the din.