A Face Like Glass (59 page)

The light all around was getting brighter, and something inside her chest started to swell until she felt it might float her aloft like a balloon. Colours were showing in the rocks that cracked
and crumbled underfoot. There was an amber glow in the sky ahead now, a gleaming crust on the underbellies of the clouds.

‘Everybody! Put on your smoked glasses!’

There was much fumbling in packs, and suddenly hundreds of drudges and palace servants wore spectacles with round, dark lenses. It was part of the preparations made for every fugitive, for who
knew how tender, cave-dwelling eyes would deal with true daylight?

And then the first spear of sunlight showed over the rippled horizon, and everybody forgot to flee or cower. The eastern sky lazily paled to peach, with frills of white cloud lost in it, and the
wind ceased its restless roaring, freshened and found purpose. The dark and ominous rocks slowly flushed with purples, dark reds, dull golds, blue-greys. Birds were black bullets, too fast to be
seen, and air was wide and wild and had somewhere to be in a hurry. There were scents of baked dust and dry dew and the hot-cold smells of a world awakening.

The slope laid itself out before them, jagged as a toothline, descending towards the foothills and then the blue and gold dunes, and somewhere beyond them the world where the trees waved and the
brooks ran and the seas champed at the bits of the shores.

And Neverfell led the way down the slope at a run. She slithered and stumbled and fell and recovered and galloped and leaped and there was no wall to stop her and no roof to bang her head. Above
her the pale sky was turning fiercely blue like a mermaid’s eye. The wind ran with her, its roaring as loud as the breath in her ears.

By the oasis west of Mount Cusp, young Pelrun the goatherd met with a strange pilgrimage. He knew at once that they belonged to the little people who lived beneath the
mountain, for they were small, pale and had faces like dolls. All wore discs of dark glass on their eyes, and held cloth shields on sticks over their heads to keep off the sun. They spoke only
their own strange tongue, but he cut the fruit from some prickly pears and gave it to them to show he meant no harm. The little people tasted the soft pink fruit, and though their countenances were
as stone several of them wept, he knew not why.

He brought them to his village, and one among the fairies, a golden-haired maiden who was taller than the rest, used signs and mime to trade a vial of rare Wine for camels, water, cloaks, and
guides across the desert. Pelrun himself travelled with the strangers as far as the grassy plains.

At the time he did not know whom he was escorting. Later, many would speak of Zouelle the Vintner and Grandible the Cheesemaster, the first Craftsmen to leave their home among the little people
and bring their magical Crafts to the overground for others to learn. Pelrun saw only that these fairies were uncommonly fascinated by common things, that they could spend hours raptly gazing at a
butterfly, or cupping handfuls of stream water as if the sparkles were jewels.

One thing struck him as strange above all else. Among these fairy folk there travelled a young human girl with flame-red hair who gabbled happily with the little people but seemed to know no
human tongue. He guessed that she must have been stolen by the fairies very young, and raised by them as one of their own.

When they reached the parting of the ways at the edge of the desert, it seemed to him that she thanked him, though he could not understand her words. She was not pretty, but her face showed her
heart so clearly one could not help but understand her. As she clenched the grass between her bare toes, her smile was like the sun swimming through blue eternities.

Martin for accompanying me on cheese-making courses and into cave networks, and listening patiently to my incoherent burblings about monkeys and glowing carnivorous plants;
Rhiannon, Deirdre, Ralph and Reuben for their invaluable feedback; my editor, Ruth, and the rest of Macmillan for letting me write a book that sounded crazy even to me; my agent, Nancy; Kathleen
McGrath for copious information on sleep and insomnia, and for coming up with the idea behind the Morning Room; Professor Chris Idzikowski for his expert insights into sleep, blue light and the
biological clock; Dan for letting me quiz him about brain lobes; Liz Wootten for inspiring an entire character by mispronouncing the word ‘kleptomania’; Felix; the Yarner Trust
cheese-making course; the caves and cheese-making demonstration at Cheddar Gorge; the subterranean alleys of the Real Mary King’s Close; the Chislehurst Caves; the grottoes of Quinta de la
Regaleira; the Hellfire Caves; Las Grutas de Lanquin; The Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam; the underground dwellings of Matmata; the Seattle Underground Tour; and the Legendary Black Water Rafting
Company, with whom we floated down Waitomo’s underground rivers, stared at glowworms and jumped off waterfalls to our hearts’ content.

Frances Hardinge spent her childhood in a huge old house that inspired her to write strange stories from an early age. She read English at Oxford University, then got a job at
a software company. However, by this time a persistent friend had finally managed to bully Frances into sending a few chapters of
Fly By Night
, her first children’s novel, to a
publisher. Macmillan made her an immediate offer. The book went on to publish to huge critical acclaim and win the Branford Boase First Novel Award.
A Face Like Glass
is Frances’s
fifth novel.

Also by Frances Hardinge

‘Remarkable and captivating, masterfully written and with a wealth of unexpected ideas . . . Full of marvels’

Sunday Times

‘Hardinge writes with energy and verve’

The Times

‘Hardinge is a hugely talented writer of tireless invention and prose’

Guardian

‘
Twilight Robbery
has everything: fabulous characters . . . richly evocative world-building and writing so viscerally good you want to wrap yourself up in
it’

Sunday Telegraph

First published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com/childrenshome

ISBN 978-1-4472-2594-2 EPUB

Copyright © Frances Hardinge 2012

The right of Frances Hardinge to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
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liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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