Un Lun Dun Read Online Free PDF

woman went by above them, pedaling furiously as if she were on a bicycle, striding on two enormous spindly mechanical legs. Strange little figures flitted by at the edges of the market, too fast to clearly see. Deeba murmured an apology as she bumped into someone. The woman who bowed politely to her wore glasses with several layers of lenses, lowered and raised on levers, seemingly at random.
    “Lovely arrangements!” the girls heard. “Get them here! Brighten up the home.”
    Beside them was a stall bursting in flamboyant bouquets, carefully arranged in colored paper.
    “They’re not flowers,” Deeba said. They were tools.
    Each was a bunch of hammers, screwdrivers, spanners, and levels, bright plastic and metal, carefully arranged and tied together with a bow.
    “What on earth are you wearing?” someone said. Zanna turned as someone picked at her hoodie. The man was tall and thin, with a jagged halo of thick, spiky hair. His suit was white and covered with tiny black marks.
    It was print. His clothes were made from pages from books, immaculately sewn together.
    “No, this won’t do,” he said. He spoke quickly, tugging at Zanna’s clothes too fast for her to stop him. “This is very drab, can’t possibly keep you entertained. What you need—” He flourished his sleeve. “—is this. The hautest of couture. Be entertained while you wear. Never again need you face the misery of unreadable clothes. Now you can pick your favorite works of fiction or nonfiction for your sleeves. Perhaps a classic for the trousers. Poetry for your skirt. Historiography for socks. Scripture for knickers. Learn while you dress!”
    He whipped a tape from his pocket and began to measure Zanna. He yanked at his head, and Zanna and Deeba winced and gasped. What had looked like hair was countless pins and needles jammed anyhow into his scalp, a handful of which he pulled out.
    The man did not bleed or seem to suffer any discomfort from treating himself as a pincushion. He wedged some of the pins back into his head, and there was a faint
pfft
with each puncture, as if his skull were velvet. Busily, he began to pin bits of paper to Zanna, scribbling measurements on a notebook.
    “But what if it rains, you say? Well then rejoice as your outfit cuddles you in its gentle slushing, and you’re given the opportunity for an
entirely new book.
How wonderful! I have a vast selection.” He indicated his stall, crammed with volumes from which assistants tore pages and stitched. “What genres and literatures are to your taste?”
    “Please…” stammered Zanna.
    “Leave it,” said Deeba. “Leave us alone.”

    “No thank you…” Zanna said. “I…”
    The girls turned and ran.
    “Hey!” the man shouted. “Are you alright?” But they did not slow down.
    They ran past chefs baking roof-tiles in their ovens and chiseling apart bricks over pans, frying the whites and yolks that emerged; past confectioners with jars full of candied leaves; past what looked like an argument at a honey stall between a bear in a suit and a cloud of bees in the shape of a man.
    At last they reached a little clearing deep in the market containing a pump and a pillar. They stopped, their hearts pounding.
    “What are we going to
do
?” said Deeba.
    “I don’t know.”
    They looked up that empty-hearted sun above them. Deeba dialed her home once more.
    “Hello Mum?” she whispered.
    There was that frenetic buzzing. From a little hole in the back of her phone burst a handful of wasps. Deeba shrieked and dropped the phone, and the wasps flew off in different directions.
    Her phone was broken. She sat heavily at the pillar’s base.
    Zanna stared at her, and her face began to crease.
    “It’ll be okay,” said Deeba. “Don’t. It’ll be alright.”
    “How?” said Zanna. “How will it?”
    Zanna and Deeba stared at each other. From her wallet, Zanna drew out the strange travelcard she had been sent, weeks ago. She stared at it as if it might contain