Un Lun Dun Read Online Free PDF Page A

ain’t scared of a trashpack, are you? Pests like them? Need a much bigger lot’n that to do you any damage.” He lobbed another stone. “If you’re that yellow, why you off walking in the Backwall Maze? You wouldn’t like it if they came swanning into
your
manor, would you? Mind how you go.”
    He nodded and half-grinned, gave them a little salute, then strode off away from the wall, brushing dirt from his already dirty clothes.
    “Wait a minute!” Deeba managed to say.
    “We don’t know…where…we…” Zanna said. Their voices trailed off as they turned to watch the boy go, and saw the square he had pulled them into.
             
    It was big, full of stalls and scores of people, movement, the bustle of a market. There were costumes and colors. But above all the girls’ attention was taken by the light shining down from above.
    In the narrow alleys, they had only seen slivers of sky. This was the first time since emerging from the door that they had had a clear view.
    The sky was gray, not blue. Here and there were a few scurrying clouds, unfolding like milk in water. They moved in all different directions, as if they were on errands.
    “Deebs,” said Zanna, swallowing. “What is
that
?”
    Deeba’s throat dried as she looked up.
    “No wonder the light’s weird,” whispered Zanna.
    The orb above them was huge, and low in the sky—a circle at least three times the size of the sun. It shone with peculiar, cool dark-light like that of some autumn mornings, giving everything crisp edges and shadows. It was the yellow-white of a grubby tooth. Deeba and Zanna looked directly at it without hurting their eyes, for long seconds, their mouths wide open.
    The sun had a hole in it.
    It hung over the city, not like a disk, or a coin, or a ball, but like a donut. A perfect circle was missing from its middle. They could see the gray sky through it.
    “Oh…my…God…” Deeba said.
    “What
is
that?” said Zanna.
    Deeba stepped forward, staring at the impossible sun shining like a fat ring. She looked down. The boy who had rescued her was gone.
    “What’s going on?” Deeba shouted. People in the market turned to look at her. “Where are we?” she whispered.
             
    After a few seconds people went back to their business—whatever that was.
    “Okay. Okay. We have to figure this out,” said Deeba.
    Behind them was a blank concrete wall, the edge of the maze they had come through, broken by a few alley entrances. In front, the market stretched as far as they could see.
    “Why’d you turn that
stupid
wheel?”
    “Like
I
knew we were going to end up here?”
    “Can’t ever leave anything alone.”
    Hesitantly, the two girls stepped into the rows of tents, buyers, and sellers. There was nowhere else to go.
    They were immediately surrounded by the animated jabbering of a market morning. Deeba and Zanna kept looking up at that extraordinary hollow sun, but the scene around them was almost as bizarre.
    There were people in all kinds of uniforms: mechanics’ overalls smeared in oil; firefighters’ protective clothes; doctors’ white coats; the blue of police; and others, including people in the neat suits of waiters, with cloths over one arm. All these uniforms looked like dressing-up costumes. They were too neat, and somehow a bit too simple.
    There were other shoppers in hotchpotch outfits of rags, and patchworks of skins, and what looked in some cases like taped-together bits of plastic or foil. Zanna and Deeba walked farther into the crowd.
    “Zann,” Deeba whispered. “Look.”
    Here and there were the strangest figures. People whose skins were no colors skin should ever be, or who seemed to have a limb or two too many, or peculiar extrusions or concavities in their faces.
    “Yeah,” said Zanna, with a sort of hollow, calm voice. “I see them.”
    “Is that
it
? You
see
them? What
are
they, for God’s sake?”
    “How should I know? But are you surprised? After everything?”
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