The Dark Portal: Chapter Two: Audrey

[copperfyre]

 

Chapter Two: Audrey

 

We begin our next chapter with a new protagonist, as our last one got brutally killed in the final sentences of the previous chapter. So now we meet Audrey, Albert’s previously mentioned daughter. Audrey is eating breakfast, and worrying about the fact that no one has seen her father in a night and a day. I wish I could reassure you he’s fine, Audrey, but, well. 

 

Thus, despite the fact that it’s the day of the Great Spring Festival, Audrey is very much not in the mood for it. Neither is her mother, Gwen, who is described as putting a brave face on things, and gently suggests to Audrey that they ought to prepare themselves for grim news. They then segue into mousebrasses.

“Then I hope it isn’t like yours,” Audrey remarked. “I don’t want to settle down and be a house mouse forever.”

That’s a little harsh, Audrey! Be nice to your mum, her husband whom she loves has vanished mysteriously. In case you’d forgotten, mousebrasses are important, and the day you get yours is a combination of your coming of age ceremony and finding out your Hogwarts House, so Audrey is particularly sad - and a little angry, which she is ashamed of feeling - that Albert is missing it.

We then get this hilarious description of Audrey, as she ties a pink ribbon in her hair so that the top of her head looked like it was sprouting.  

I continue to be confused about the humanoidish anatomy of these mice, but please remember for the rest of these books that Audrey’s head is sprouting a pink ribbon, and that Jarvis decided this was a great description for some reason.

We move on to the mice decorating for the Great Spring Festival, and we learn more about the mouse belief system.  

From the garden they had brought in bunches of hawthorn blossom and leafy branches - ‘White for the Lady and green for the land spirits,’ they cried as they weaved them into garlands. In one corner were the Chambers of Summer and Winter. Each year these were cleaned and dusted and decorated for the mousebrass ceremony.

A pair of old maids were sewing brightly coloured favours onto the leafy imaged of the Oaken Boy and the Hawthorne Girl. Three stout, sweating husbands had heaved the maypole into the centre of the hall, and already ribbons had been attached to the top of it for dancing.

So we have an English paganish, May Day vibe, with the Green Mouse a clear mousy take on the Green Man, and the importance of the power of nature to even these city-bound mice. I’m also reminded that these books are incredibly heteronormative, which isn’t surprising for kids lit from the 90s, but is now something that niggles at me.

We also meet a couple more of our characters: Arthur, Audrey’s brother, having a grand time, and Oswald Chitter, an albino runt,  so weak he often found it difficult to join in some of the rougher games. He was, however, very tall. The two of them are helping with the decorating.

Arthur demonstrates his down-to-earth, practical nature, by pointing out to the excited Oswald that the Green Mouse is just Master Oldnose dressed up, and he makes the mousebrasses himself. Oswald points out that each young mouse always gets the right mousebrass, despite it just being a lucky dip, so there must be something to the ritual and the ceremony. 

Meanwhile, Gwen and Audrey have an encounter with Mrs Chitter, Oswald’s mother, who apparently doesn’t rate a first name. 

“My dear,” she breathed! “How you must be grieving.”

This goes down like a lead balloon with Audrey, who fiercely tells Mrs Chitter that “Father has not been away for that long really, so there is no need for anyone to mourh - I’m certainly not going to.”

I’m just saying there are reasons why I was convinced Albert wasn’t dead, first time around. Audrey believed he was alive so hard! How could she be wrong?

Mrs Chitter carries on: “Gwen, you can’t have heard can you? That travelling person is back - you know, that awful rat woman with the shawl who came last year - the one with the foreign name.”

a) I hadn’t remembered Madame Akkikuyu showed up this early, and b) in Things I Didn’t Pick Up On As A Child, I’m pretty sure that she fulfills a whole bunch of racist Roma stereotypes, not helped at all by the fact that she’s a rat, so one of the ‘bad guys’ by birth. I guess that’s slightly ameliorated by the fact that she isn’t actually villainous, and gets a pretty sympathetic story as I remember, but still. Not a good move, Jarvis, seriously.

Interestingly, Arthur does seem pretty convinced that Albert is dead, and weirdly okay with this? “Audrey, he’s been gone too long. I love him too, but he isn’t here, is he? Today of all days, he would be here. You know he wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

I feel like this is supposed to show Arthur as being practical and all, and also to further isolate Audrey in that she really is the only mouse who believes Albert might still be alive, but it also comes across as incredibly cold, which is never again a trait that Arthur displays, so it’s kind of odd here.

The Great Spring Ceremony kicks off with music and dancing, but Audrey stands at the edge, not joining in, and instead providing us with this gem of a description: Mouse tails were swaying everywhere like pink corn.

This is such a weird simile. I know we’re using the British corn here, so any cereal crop, rather than the North American corn meaning sweetcorn, but still. Mouse tails really don’t look a whole lot like wheat heads, either!

One of the musicians is Twit, the field mouse who got mentioned by Arthur in the previous chapter, but he passes off his pipe to go talk to Audrey instead, asking if she’ll be joining in. Audrey declines, and so Twit runs off into the crowd and then reappears to gift her with a pair of little silver bells. Aw, I’d forgotten that Twit was sweet and thoughtful, though I think this is also an indication that he has a crush on Audrey, and Audrey has absolutely no idea. (I had no idea either, when I first read this, but it does get explicitly stated at some point later on.)

Audrey decides that she’s refusing to mourn, because Arthur isn’t dead, and she should enjoy the day, so she joins in the dancing just in time for the maypole to take center stage. 

This book, and others, made me want to dance around a maypole so much, and I haven’t yet managed to fulfil this desire.

Everybody continues to be happy and enthusiastic, and it occurs to me that, rather like the early chapters in the Lord of the Rings, setting up the tranquility and bucolicness of the Shire, a lot of this chapter is just showing us that though we first met mice in peril, they do have a happy community and safe, calm lives, with festivals and games and annoying gossipy neighbours.

And then, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the mousebrass ceremony!

Arthur goes first, stepping into the Chamber of Winter.

It had been decorated to represent the bleak midwinter months and the hardship that they brought. Grim, grotesque masks hung from the ceiling. Mournful paper ghosts flapped noisily from dark corners. Streamers, invisible in the gloom, dangled down and touched him, and skeletons reared up and moaned, rattling chains. 

This is so much fun, Arthur loves it, I love it. 

This was the Chamber of Spring and Summer. Smiling faces beamed benignly from the floor, fresh blossom garlanded the walls and a heady scent filled the air. On one side there was a large golden image of the sun that blazed brilliantly. Above his head, corn dollies hung amidst various samples of cheese and grain.

And I love this, too! Ritual! Magic! Arthur having a great time!

He gets his mousebrass from Master Oldnose dressed up as the Green Mouse, and it’s just like Albert’s, the three mouse tails of life and your own family. So Arthur is, unsurprisingly, a reliable sort of mouse.

Audrey is next up, and her mousebrass experience is somewhat different. 

As her eyes grew accustomed to the dismal light, she could see the masks painted with evil faces all around her. A faint wind seemed to be stirring them and as she looked their eyes turned to her.

For some time she stood by the entrance, unwilling to go any further. Gradually the noise of her friends died down but not into silence. Rather, it was as if she had drifted far from them and although they were still rowdy, the distance between them was too great for them to be heard clearly.

I also love this, though for different reasons - we’re right back to our regularly scheduled creepy, and I really love that description of not-really-silence descending upon Audrey. 

It’s really well set-up that we just had Arthur’s normal experience, and then we get Audrey’s horror movie experience right after. To me this is one of the most chilling  - pun intended - bits of the whole book, and in retrospect actually foreshadows a certain amount of what happens. Even on this day of celebration, where Jarvis has given us normalcy with maypoles and music, there are dark things out there, and apparently they have their eyes on Audrey.

This was the heart of winter - the lean time when stomachs are empty and wolves go ravening. Audrey shivered as the wings of midwinter death unfolded around her. The demons of cold were there with her in the darkness. She could feel their bite. She was their prey.

Okay I give Jarvis grief for some of his descriptions, but I really like everything in here. Apparently he does terror better than he does anything else! 

Audrey finally finds the door to the next chamber, and flings herself through it. And the Chamber of Summer is just as supernatural and magical as the previous one.

Green things were sprouting; she felt the joy of unfurling leaves stretching themselves and revelling in their newness. Audrey was astonished. Everywhere glowed green like the sun through the leaves. Blossoms fell in a snowstorm of multicolours and fruit took its place, expanding and growing quickly. Apples puffed up and shone red and green; pears filled out sensually and hung heavy and ponderous on the branches. Acors and hazel nuts browned in the sunshine before dropping to the floor. Audrey could see whole fields of grain rippling like strange yellow seas. Was she dreaming? How could this be happening? 

First I want to be pedantic: some of those are definitely autumnal things. But aside from that, this is delightfully luxuriant language, and such a great contrast to the description of winter and death before.

Audrey pushes aside the sun, as did Arthur before her, though Audrey’s sun is a blazing image, to discover Master Oldnose, his face a picture of bewilderment. He stared beyond Audrey at the living green landscape and his mouth fell open. 

I really like the mental image of Oldnose standing around waiting for Audrey to show up to retrieve her mousebrass, wondering what’s taking her so long, and then Audrey appearing with the magical embodiment of spring and summer behind her. It’s both hilarious, and this great little indication that something really weird is happening to Audrey, and everyone around her is being swept up in it whether they like it or not.

Oldnose suddenly begins to change, the leafy costume he is wearing becoming alive. It had a light of its own, rising in the sap, glowing, feeding the leaves until they shone like lamps and the blossom as wheels of spinning fire. 

Then two eyes formed above her and smokily a face manifested around them.

It was the Green Mouse. 

Surprise visitation from your deity! Yay! You thought this was a big day in your life, but, oh, you were not prepared for it to be this big, not on the order of ‘now meet one of your Gods’ sort of big. This chapter very firmly takes this book from creepy horror to horror-tinged fantasy with mice. Audrey is getting a Big Heroic Heed The Call sort of moment, she’s getting whacked over the head with magic and destiny even if she doesn’t really understand that yet. 

Anyway, the Green Mouse then plucks a mousebrass from his coat and gives it to her, but Audrey is - understandably - afraid, and can’t make herself reach out for it, until she hears her Albert's voice telling her to not be afraid, and to take the mousebrass and wear it always:

“When can I see you?”

Albert’s voice grew faint. “I promise you will see me before the end, my darling child. Now, the Green Nouse is waiting.

Audrey looked in the eyes of the Green Mouse once more and took the mousebrass.

And here, we have Audrey accepting the destiny she’s being whacked over the head with, and I am a sucker for representing that physically.

Also in retrospect, this is probably where I should have worked out that Albert was dead, given that he’s now mystically visiting his daughter, but anyway. 

“That’s funny” said Master Oldnose. “I don’t remember putting one of those in the bag.”

And good old Master Oldnose is here to bring us back down to earth. (Sidenote: Why do Audrey and her family get Brown as a surname, and Oldnose gets Oldnose, what is the naming logic here?). He remembers absolutely nothing of the previous five minutes, or however long it was, and tries to calm Audrey down when she insists that both the Green Mouse and her father had been there. Master Oldnose is not here for these flights of fancy, though he can’t deny that the cat’s face mousebrass Audrey is now holding is a little unusual.

So Audrey leaves the chambers, mousebrass in hand, now absolutely positive that Albert is alive and in need of rescuing. But how to find him? Well, conveniently, a certain fortune telling rat was mentioned just a few pages ago, so Audrey now has a mission: head beyond the Grille, and find Madame Akkikuyu.

This chapter starts off very tonally different from the previous one: no more are we wandering around the sewers being terrified, but we’re preparing for a celebration! I like the way it gives us more about the mouse society, and then the way it really kicks into gear when Audrey gets her magical mousebrass ceremony, which takes us right back to being terrified. It shows us just how tangible magic and divine power is in this story, and gives us some idea of what to expect next, as well as setting Audrey off on her hero’s quest.

Illustration of the chapter:

I love how much is going on in this drawing, it really gets across the business and the bustle of the festival, and everyone coming together to celebrate. And we have Audrey with her sprouting ribbon looking away from the camera, Oswald being taller than everyone, and Master Oldnose in his Green Mouse costume. The little flower corners on the edges are also really nice.

Comments

[kalinara]

So much interesting set up in this chapter!

Also, I INSIST Albert is still alive. I'm not on a river in Egypt or anything!