The Thief of Always

‘Just keep walking!’

Half out of hunger, half out of curiosity, Harvey did as Rictus had instructed, and as he came within three steps of the wall a gust of balmy, flower-scented wind slipped between the shimmering stones and kissed his cheek. Its warmth was welcome after his long, cold trek, and he picked up his pace, reaching out to touch the wall as he approached it. The misty stones seemed to reach for him in their turn, wrapping their soft, grey arms around his shoulders, and ushering him through the wall.

He looked back, but the street he’d stepped out of, with its grey pavements and grey clouds, had already disappeared. Beneath his feet the grass was high and full of flowers. Above his head, the sky was midsummer blue. And ahead of him, set at the summit of a great slope, was a House that had surely been first imagined in a dream.

He didn’t wait to see if Rictus was coming after him, nor to wonder how the grey beast February had been slain and this warm day risen in its place. He simply let out a laugh that Rictus would have been proud of, and hurried up the slope and into the shadow of the Dream-House.

III (#ulink_fe48aaca-4d22-5e37-bcf1-7ddbc7afb35a)

Pleasure and the Worm (#ulink_fe48aaca-4d22-5e37-bcf1-7ddbc7afb35a)

WHAT A fine thing it would be, Harvey thought, to build a place like this. To drive its foundations deep into the earth; to lay its floors and hoist its walls; to say: where there was nothing, I raised a house. That would be a very fine thing.

It wasn’t a puffed-up peacock of a place, either. There were no marble steps, no fluted columns. It was a proud house, certainly, but there was nothing wrong with that; it had much to be proud of. It stood four storeys high, and boasted more windows than Harvey could readily count. Its porch was wide, as were the steps that led up to its carved front door; its slated roofs were steep and crowned with magnificent chimneys and lightning rods.

Its highest point, however, was neither a chimney nor a lightning rod, but a large and elaborately wrought weathervane, which Harvey was peering up at when he heard the front door open and a voice say:

‘Harvey Swick, as I live and breathe.’

He looked down, the weathervane’s white silhouette still behind his eyes, and there on the porch stood a woman who made his grandmother (the oldest person he knew) look young. She had a face like a rolled-up ball of cobwebs, from which her hair, which could also have been spiders’ work, fell in wispy abundance. Her eyes were tiny, her mouth tight, her hands gnarled. Her voice, however, was melodious, and its words welcoming.

‘I thought maybe you’d decided not to come,’ she said, picking up a basket of freshly-cut flowers she’d left on the step, ‘which would have been a pity. Come on in! There’s food on the table. You must be famished.’

‘I can’t stay long,’ Harvey said.

‘You must do whatever you wish,’ came the reply. ‘I’m Mrs Griffin, by the way.’

‘Yes, Rictus mentioned you.’

‘I hope he didn’t bend your ear too much. He loves the sound of his own voice. That and his reflection.’

Harvey had climbed the porch steps by now, and stopped in front of the open door. This was a moment of decision, he knew, though he wasn’t quite certain why.

‘Step inside,’ Mrs Griffin said, brushing a spider-hair back from her furrowed brow.

But Harvey still hesitated, and he might have turned round and never stepped inside the House except that he heard a boy’s voice yelling:

‘I got ya! I got ya!’ followed by uproarious laughter.

‘Wendell!’ Mrs Griffin said. ‘Are you chasing the cats again?’

The sound of laughter grew even louder, and it was so full of good humour that Harvey stepped over the threshold and into the House just so that he could see the face of its owner.

He only got a brief look. A goofy, bespectacled face appeared for a moment at the other end of the hallway. Then a piebald cat dashed between the boy’s legs and he was off after it, yelling and laughing again.

‘He’s such a crazy boy,’ Mrs Griffin said, ‘but all the cats love him!’

The House was more wonderful inside than out. Even on the short journey to the kitchen Harvey glimpsed enough to know that this was a place built for games, chases and adventures. It was a maze in which no two doors were alike. It was a treasure-house where some notorious pirate had hidden his blood-stained booty. It was a resting place for carpets flown by djinns, and boxes sealed before the Flood, where the eggs of beasts that the earth had lost were trapped and waiting for the sun’s heat to hatch them.

‘It’s perfect!’ Harvey murmured to himself.

Mrs Griffin caught his words. ‘Nothing’s perfect,’ she replied.

‘Why not?’

‘Because time passes,’ she want on, staring down at the flowers she’d cut. ‘And the beetle and the worm find their way into everything sooner or later.’

Hearing this, Harvey wondered what grief it was Mrs Griffin had known or seen to make her so mournful.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, covering her melancholy with a tiny smile. ‘You didn’t come here to listen to my dirges. You came to enjoy yourself, didn’t you?’

‘I suppose I did,’ Harvey said.

‘So let me tempt you with some treats.’

Harvey sat himself down at the kitchen table, and within sixty seconds Mrs Griffin had set a dozen plates of food in front of him: hamburgers, hot dogs and fried chicken; mounds of buttered potatoes; apple, cherry and chocolate pies, ice cream and whipped cream; grapes, tangerines and a plate of fruits he couldn’t even name.

He set to eating with gusto, and was devouring his second slice of pie when a freckled girl with long, frizzy blonde hair and huge, blue-green eyes ambled in.

‘You must be Harvey,’ she said.

‘How did you know?’

‘Wendell told me.’

‘How did he know?’

She shrugged. ‘He just heard. I’m Lulu, by the way.’

‘Did you just arrive?’

‘No. I’ve been here ages. Longer than Wendell. But not as long as Mrs Griffin. Nobody’s been here as long as she has. Isn’t that right?’

‘Almost,’ said Mrs Griffin, a little mysteriously. ‘Do you want something to eat, sweetie?’

Lulu shook her head. ‘No thanks. I haven’t got much of an appetite at the moment.’

She nevertheless sat down opposite Harvey, stuck her thumb in the chocolate pie, and licked it clean.

‘Who invited you here?’ she asked.

‘A man called Rictus.’

‘Oh yes. The one with the grin?’

‘That’s him.’

‘He’s got a sister and two brothers,’ she went on.