But I had seized the tap out of Olish’s hands and I listened to it, I listened out for it. Come on, come on. Speak up. Let me hear you. But it didn’t say anything.

‘You can talk,’ I said, ‘I know you can. Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson, that’s what you say, come on. I’ve heard you often enough.’

‘Clod Iremonger, give it back this instant!’ wailed Aunt Olish.

It didn’t say anything.

‘Oh, be careful with that!’ she cried. ‘Give it back!’

It didn’t say anything at all.

‘Oh, Aunt Olish,’ I whispered as she snatched it from me, ‘it’s just a tap now.’

‘It’s our Tummis’s birth object!’

‘Aunt Olish, Uncle Iktor,’ I said, ‘Tummis is dead.’

And I ran away.

An Engine Inside Me

The house was full of storm, and something else beside that. Mourn, mourn, you Iremongers. The house was full of guilt. Everyone was white and shivering; it was always like this when an Iremonger went missing in the heaps. But this missing of all missings was my missing. Tummis. Tummis gone. And with him the person that was once Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.

I never wanted to hear the objects’ names. I never asked for that. I so hated it then, all those muttering pieces, I so despised that I could hear them, all those locked things. How I longed just to be like anyone else, just to hear what everyone else heard, not the names of all those lost people. I didn’t want to know that Tummis was dead, I wanted there to be hope that he might yet be found. I wanted him to come back. But I knew that he shouldn’t.

I knew that he couldn’t.

To make things worse the storm was so loud it got into my head; it sat and swirled with my thoughts, played with them, took them over, scratched inside me. I could still hear the movement of objects out in the heaps, those murderous heaps. Some objects made it over the walls and hammered against the shutters, as if they were mocking the loss of Tummis.

Maybe I’d kill Moorcus. Maybe I should. What should I do?

I went home.