The Giant's Almanac, Andrew Zurcher [accelerated reader books txt] 📗

through a needle he barrelled into the light, growling and baring his teeth. In all their years of playing Fitz had never seen the dog angry in earnest, and he shrank behind the thick board of the door – but only to a place where, through the rough-cut hole that Arwan had used for a handle, he could still see.

Mr Ahmadi had almost reached them. Now turned, he backed towards the hut, towards Arwan whose stance – set and heavy as a fighter expecting the first punch – promised cover. Out in front, Aslan advanced on a near tree, snarling, his thick coat of golden fur transformed into the bristling hide of a boar. He seemed to know something that the skittering eyes of Mr Ahmadi had not yet determined, and by the rigid line of his tail Fitz read the danger before the men had seen it.

Fitz never saw the arm that threw the knife. He was aware only of a flash as its blade sliced through the torchlight, and of the heavy spring of the coiled dog as Aslan leaped – impossibly high – into the night air.

Mr Ahmadi hadn’t had time to twitch, much less avoid the blade, and the knife would have sunk deep into his neck if it hadn’t sunk, instead, into Aslan’s. Before any of them understood what had happened, the dog dropped from the air on to the unyielding ground. Fitz knew from the way the body fell, already as heavy and formless as a wet rag, already as silent as the earth against which his head slumped without rebound, that Aslan was dead.

Fitz’s eyes gagged. Where his hands gripped the heavy, rotting board of the door he retched with anger and pain, every joint in his arms and hands and fingers no joint, but breaking, convulsing, tearing from the inside the very buckles by which he stood, and held, and watched.

And watched.

Where he drew the knife from Aslan’s neck, Mr Ahmadi’s hands were stained dark with blood.

And watched.

A spasm ripped through the dead dog and from its blood-curded throat a cry through the night. Mr Ahmadi dropped the heavy blade against the grass, kneeled, and sank his fingers into the dog’s flank and fur, kneading it back into stillness. Through the gap in the door, alone of those inside the little hut, Fitz watched the man ease the dog away.

And watched.

‘Habi,’ said Arwan. He had gathered Aslan in his arms, and laid him by a tree. ‘Habi.’

No words more – time must have passed – the men had moved – Fitz felt the door push haltingly against the stiff pain in his arms – he felt nothing but – Clare’s hand against his forehead drawing him towards her – he remembered he had gasped.

Space was suddenly tight inside the toilet, suddenly bright. By the light of Arwan’s torch he saw for the first time the little room’s walls, which had been papered throughout with huge sheets scrawled over with minute equations. These equations, studded with numbers and operators and strange symbols he had never seen, gathered in clumps, and were connected by a complex network of lines and arrows. He watched them, fixing on them, pulling himself back to focus. They had been written and rewritten, revised and developed in different colours of ink, but always in the same, small, feverish writing.

Arwan and Mr Ahmadi shoved their shoulders against the stubborn door, jamming it shut; Fitz kept staring at the numbers flowing and clotting in the shadows as if they might explain something, as if they might account for the hollow thud of his friend against the ground, or the hollow thud of his heart against his ribs. On and on they went, like shoulders against wood, inscrutable and inconclusive. Ned and Clare, pressed against the wall, were craning their necks to see over Mr Ahmadi’s shoulder. Clare’s eyes stood wide, white in the pale wash of equations. She had seen Mr Ahmadi’s hands where he was wiping them on a rag.

Fitz noticed the bright edge of the torchlight against the numbers. He noticed Arwan’s thick, resonant breath. He noticed a feeling like metal against his neck. He noticed anger and sorrow in his fingertips, in the tight ball of his foot above his toes.

The door was shut. Mr Ahmadi turned.

‘Today, this is Arwan’s office,’ he said. His voice was flat, steady, brittle as a reed. ‘He is a mathematician.’

Mr Ahmadi regarded them all for a moment: Ned, who was still scanning the walls with curiosity and surprise; Clare, who had backed against a sink with Fitz’s hand squeezed between both of hers, and pressed to her tight stomach; and Fitz himself, his thoughts as blank as Mr Ahmadi’s face. ‘Arwan is always hunting for prime numbers. But we’re not here for mathematics. I have to get you into the museum,’ he said.

Ned’s eyes started, then widened.

‘I have a friend there,’ he said. ‘He’s expecting us – I was going to bring Clare this afternoon –’

Mr Ahmadi raised his hand. ‘I know. Unfortunately, your friend Professor Farzan is shortly going to be arrested.’

Ned’s lips moved, and he seemed to be squinting, but nothing came out of his mouth. Eventually, with great effort, he managed to say, ‘Why?’

‘For abetting thieves in the theft of a priceless ancient artefact.’

‘Professor Farzan is an eminent scholar,’ snapped Ned, angrily. ‘He’s never helped a thief in his life.’

Clare put her hand on his arm.

‘No, not yet,’ said Mr Ahmadi. ‘Follow me. I’m afraid I have to ask you to put up with one more difficult climb.’

From outside they heard the sound of raised voices. Arwan blew air out of his pursed lips in a sigh. ‘The boys will take care of it,’ he said. ‘For now. You must hurry.’

He pushed them all back into a corner, then lifted a corrugated metal sheet from the floor. Beneath it gaped a hole, from within which, by the light of his torch, they could see the rungs of a ladder.