Suzy handed Arthur one of the jars of what looked like woolen frog fingerpuppets, stuck the other in her apron pocket, then busied herself putting everything else back in the satchel. She hung it over her neck at the front so it didn't get in the way of her wings.
"There's six stickit fingers in the jar. Bung them on now, thumb and every second finger," she instructed, unscrewing her own jar. "They won't stick till you speak the spell, which is 'Stick by day and stick by night, stick for a minute each, left and right.' Only one of your hands will stick at a time, so you can move about. Just remember which is sticky and which is about to unstick. I'll tell you how to take them off when we need to."
Arthur repeated the spell in his head to make sure he got it right, then put the six stickit fingers on his thumbs and alternate fingers. They were just like little woolen finger-puppets, only they wriggled and squeaked like little live mice as he put them on, which made it quite difficult.
He was concentrating very hard on that task, so he got an awful shock when Suzy suddenly picked up the copper rod he'd almost used as a weapon and swung it at something that came flying in like a pitched baseball. It was about the size of a baseball too, but black and fuzzy, almost like a lump of tar.
Suzy hit it. The end of the copper rod puffed into metallic mist as it struck, but whatever it was batted over the edge of the Pit and went straight down.
"A gobbet of Nothing," said Suzy with a frown. "Trying to find other gobbets to join to make a Nithling."
She looked up at the sunburst, which was very faint now. The clouds were practically solid again all around it, and she and Arthur were in twilight that was rapidly turning into darkest night. "I thought the sunburst would keep that sort of thing down for longer. You'd better grab some kind of club. Copper's better than steel, though neither's much use really against unformed Nothing. Need silver or something special like one of them blades made from frozen moonlight or burning with architectural fire, like Noon's. How're your wings? Can you reach your strings? Don't pull 'em yet."
Arthur craned his neck to look. His wings now stretched from his shoulder blades to his knees and were magnificently feathered and shining. They were beating slowly, as if they were warming up. The air they washed around him was cleaner, faintly orange-scented, and very refreshing. He felt for the strings, which were hanging down his chest on either side of his neck.
"I can reach them," he confirmed. He looked around and saw another piece of copper pipe, this one thicker and longer than the tube Suzy had appropriated. He started for it, was lifted off his feet, and overshot by several yards.
"Be ready," warned Suzy. "They'll flap proper-like in a minute."
Arthur bent down and half-crawled, half-pulled himself to the copper pipe. Just as his hand closed around it, his wings gave an almighty beat, lifting him ten feet off the railway.
Suzy was still on the ground, her wings warming up.
"You can lean to change direction!" she shouted. "Aim for the center of the Pit to start with. Harder to get shot at from the train or the road. If you get to the ceiling before me, you have to somersault just before you hit. That'll confuse the wings for a bit and they'll slow down. Use your stickit fingers to stick to the ceiling. It'll be easy!"
Arthur's wings increased the depth and the speed of their beat again, and he began to accelerate upwards. He looked down and saw a huge, only vaguely human figure that had long, wet dragonfly-like wings trailing down its back. As Arthur watched, it climbed up over the lip of the Pit and began to stalk towards Suzy.
She was looking up at Arthur, and obviously could neither hear nor see the Nithling.
"Suzy!" Arthur screamed. "Look out! A Nith -"
Chapter Ten
As the Nithling lunged at Suzy's back, the sunburst suddenly went out, plunging the Pit back into total darkness, save for the pathetic circle of light from the strom lantern clutched in Arthur's shaking hand. Suzy didn't have a lantern - she'd only had the two fixed on the wheel taken by Japeth. Arthur strained his eyes, desperately trying to see what was happening, but to no avail. He couldn't hear anything either, over the beat of his wings and the rush of air.
"Suzy!"
There was no answer. Arthur's wings beat inexorably on, taking him higher and higher, faster and faster.
"Suzy!" he shouted again.
The only response came from above, a sudden swathe of rain. But Arthur's wings repelled or blew the drops away and surrounded him with an envelope of warm, dry air.
"Suzy!"
She must have escaped.
Arthur tried to recall that last split-second image before the sunburst died.
Suzy's wings had been fully extended, about to beat down, hadn't they? She would have taken off an instant before the Nithling struck her. Right?
Arthur remembered what Suzy had told him about Nithlings. It seemed like only yesterday and he clearly recalled her words:
"A festering bite or scratch from a Nithling will dissolve you into Nothing. That's why everyone's afraid of them."
It was only yesterday, Arthur realized. They'd both survived Monday, but Tuesday was much worse. It had been bad enough to start with, but now -
Something flittered into the light of Arthur's lantern. Instinctively he hit at it with his copper tube, knocking it back into the rainy darkness. Only after he'd done it did he realize it was another one of those flying lumps of Nothing.
A gobbet. Seeking other gobbets to make a Nithling?
Arthur started to look everywhere feverishly, craning his head as far around as he could to either side.
What if a gobbet of Nothing hits me in the back of the head? Or in the wings?
Another gobbet hurtled past Arthur's foot. He kicked at it, and the point of his clog disappeared, sliced off as if by a guillotine. For a heart-stopping instant Arthur thought his toes might have gone as well, till he wriggled them.
For the first time Arthur experimented with changing direction. As Suzy had said, the wings only flew up, but he found he could quickly change the angle of his ascent. To avoid any gobbets that were targeting him - which they might be able to, he didn't know - Arthur leaned to the right, then the left, then backwards and forwards, till he started to spiral and had to try and remain still and straight to stop that.
Whatever he did, there were still gobbets flying around him. So far none had come from behind, or if they had, they were blown away by his wings. Soon Arthur was batting them away every few minutes with his rapidly diminishing piece of pipe. Every time he hit a gobbet, it dissolved several inches of copper and he had to be careful only to get them with the dissolved end.
Then one hit Arthur's lantern, boring a hole straight through it, extinguishing its flame, or whatever actually shed the light behind the glass. Arthur groaned, but the darkness only lasted a few seconds. A soft, mellow white light slowly grew all around him, and the gobbets of Nothing were rimmed with luminescence as soon as they got close.
The light was coming from Arthur's wings. That was comforting for a few seconds, till he realized that being lit up like a Christmas tree angel in the Pit was just an invitation to Nithlings, Overseers, and who knew what else.
Not that there was anything he could do, or any time to think about it. More and more gobbets were flying at him, most of them coming up from below, so he had to draw his knees and feet up and lean forward, which was quite difficult. Every time he leaned forward too far or let one knee fall lower than the other, he lost his balance and started to spin around.
After beating away at least a dozen more gobbets of Nothing, Arthur noticed that there were fewer of them, but the ones that were still attacking were larger. They were combining? becoming a Nithling.