Free Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve Page A

lizard girl and the three-headed goat. "Mutations, no doubt," said Fever, looking at the scary pictures painted on the barge's stern. "It would be unkind to go and stare at them." Ruan and Fern sighted a stall selling candyfloss, and their father bought three sticks. "It has no nutritional value whatsoever," said Fever, looking doubtfully at the pink cloud he handed her. She stretched her head forward, wary of getting the stuff on her coat. It tasted as it looked, scratchy and sticky and very pink. Not nice, not exactly, but fun.
     
     

    Fern thrust Noodle Poodle into her father's hand and ran off after Ruan, both children gripping their candyfloss sticks like pink banners as they hurried to watch a fire-eater performing. Fever half wanted to go with them, but she told herself it was not dignified for an Engineer to gawp at vulgar entertainments. While Kit Solent strolled after the children, she hung behind, eating her candyfloss with awkward, birdlike movements of her head and an expression which was meant to signal to anyone watching her that she was not enjoying it, just tasting it in a spirit of scientific inquiry. And as she ate, she stopped to stare at the strange events on the open stage at the rear of a barge called "Persimmon's Ambulatory Lyceum, where actors dressed in cardboard armor were talking too loudly to one another in front of a painted landscape . It is all make-believe, Fever thought. The words, the clothes, the things -- that's not a real sword, and I'm sure that man's beard is made of wool . Even the people are pretending to be other people. Why would anyone waste their time watching such stuff ? Yet people were; quite a crowd had gathered before the stage, and a pretty girl who seemed not to be needed in the play just then was strolling amongst them with a basket, into which they threw their offerings.
    It was like a symbol for all the foolishness of the world outside the Head, and Fever was still staring at it when a hand came down on her shoulder from behind. It gripped her firmly, though not painfully, and turned her. She dropped the candyfloss and wiped pink stickiness from her mouth on the back of her hand. A gaunt white face stared down at her. Hard old eyes, pale as glass in the shadow of a tattered hat brim. A rough voice that said, " 'Scuse me, Miss, I needs a word...." But it didn't seem to be a word the stranger wanted so much as a long, hard look. His pale eyes roved over Fever's face as if he were reading her.
    He frowned. "What are you?" he muttered.
    Fever gave a violent shrug, and the old man's hand fell from her shoulder. She turned away from him, almost knocking over the shabby boy who seemed to have sprung up behind her like a mushroom out of the littered grass. She scanned the crowds between the barges, and saw the fire-eater's burning breath flare up like a beacon, guiding her to where Kit Solent was. Hurrying toward him, she looked back and saw the old man and the boy standing, watching her. They were the same pair who had been watching the house that morning, she was sure.
    "All right, Fever?" asked Kit, when she writhed through between the other spectators and arrived beside him.
    She nodded, wiping at her mouth again. She did not want him to think that she could not be left alone for thirty seconds without trouble finding her. The old man had mistaken her for someone else, that was all. That was the rational explanation. She calmed herself, and looked skeptically at the fire-eater in his roped-off ring.
    "I do not believe that he is really eating that at all...."
     
    ***
     

     
    Chapter 11 Master Wormtimber
     
    That afternoon, at the hour when the low sun shone flickering through the wheels of wind trams as they rumbled above the streets, Bagman Creech and Charley went down Cripplegate and turned right along 'Bankmentside. A wind huffed at them off the Brick Marsh, but it could not quite blow away the acrid smell of the big vats where scraps of plastic dug up from the