Mister Monday: Chapter Fourteen

[pangolin20]

Chapter Thirteen | Table of Contents | Chapter Fifteen

Kerlois: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Mister Monday! Last time, Arthur was captured, which took an entire chapter for some reason.

This chapter opens at the “Upper Coal Cellar Entry”, which is “a rickety wooden platform on the edge of a blasted plain”. It is a vast open space, which is only lit by “three or four elevators”. (I suppose those elevators are for the other Cellars?) As in the Atrium, there is a ceiling, though this one is flat and “much higher up”.

Arthur is marched onto the platform. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees that the plain beyond the platform is not “a totally featureless expanse”, as he thought. In the middle, there is a “circular patch of total darkness”, which he realises is a massive hole, “at least half a mile in diameter” of unknowable depth. Noon confirms that the hole is the Deep Coal Cellar, and tells a Sergeant to march Arthur to the edge.

Well, that certainly seems like a place that Arthur will not be getting out of any time soon. It is good to see they are sensible about choosing a place to put him. We are then told there is a “pathway” from the platform to the pit, which is “paved with white stone” which repels the dust that lies around it. The dust billows up as they pass. Arthur guesses it is “coal dust”, and he hopes it will not still be in his lungs if he ever gets home, because his lungs truly could not handle that and he would need the Key for that.

Hmmm, I thought the Key would clear out the dust on its own? It did with the smoke he inhaled when trying to save Mrs Banber, after all. Oh well, Arthur might easily forget that now.

The Commissionaires march on and Arthur tries to stay calm. After all, Suzy has the Will, and the Will will surely come after him. Only Dusk said that the Will would not come here, because they feared the Old One. The “defeatist part” of Arthur’s mind speaks up again, saying that it does not sound good to be stuck in a “prison pit” with a “creature called the Old One”. Um, Arthur already heard about the Old One the previous chapter. Why does he need to think this now? Was he genuinely not there in the previous chapter?

Noon says that Arthur will not be alone in the pit, while looking at Arthur “knowingly, as if he had just read [Arthur’s mind].” There are some “House Denizens” there (what a ridiculously redundant phrase, especially from Noon) who have been put to “the most menial of tasks”, like “chipping coal to size”. That seems like a relatively minor punishment to me; those Denizens are certainly lucky. Well, Noon says they will not dare bother Arthur. But there is someone else, called “the Old One”, who Arthur should stay away from “if [he] value[s] [his] life and sanity”, and who “is not to be trifled with”. (That gives me the impression of some kind of “eldritch abomination”, frankly.) If Arthur stays away from him, he will only suffer from cold, damp and the coal dust.

Arthur asks how he will recognise the Old One. He apparently tries to “sound defiant”, but instead, he sounds “squeaky and small”. He clears his throat and then asks how he is supposed to get out if he does want to give the Key to Monday. Noon smiles coldly and says that he will know the Old One, as he is “hard to miss”. He warns Arthur away once again from him. As for getting out, he says, Arthur will only have to call his name three times, and then he will “come and fetch [Arthur]” or send someone to do it.

As Noon finishes speaking, they reach the edge of the pit. The Commissionaires stop just before it, and Arthur looks past them into darkness. He cannot see how deep the pit is or any light from below. Hmmm…

Noon tears a page from his notebook, which he folds into the shape of “two wings”. Then he uses a small knife to serrate the edges, to make those look like feathers. He then writes a word on each wing and slowly shakes them. They grow bigger with each shake, until he holds “a pair of feathery wings as tall as Arthur”. That is certainly convenient. The wings are noted to be “pure white and glowing”, but where Noon holds them, “black ink trickle[s] down from his fingers like blood”. I suppose the wings are still “actually” paper, then, and they have been transmuted into another form for the moment, then? That was probably also how he gave the Lift Driver his new uniform… Even if he would only have his notebook, he would be quite powerful already.

Noon tells the Commissionaires to let him through, and they all step aside. The one closest to the hole steps in and just drops straight down. Arthur does not hear him hit bottom. Noon frowns at that and complains about ‘inferior merchandise’. I do not exactly see why we need this, since we already know that the Commissionaires are not very intelligent. If we needed something here, I would have rather thought of Arthur looking further into the pit.

Either way, Noon then slaps the wings on Arthur’s back and shoves him straight into the pit! Arthur can feel the wings attach themselves to “his shoulder blades”. He finds it a weird sensation, which is not painful, but not pleasant either. He compares it to having a tooth filled at the dentist (which he apparently had done?). The shock of the wings attaching, and of the wings spreading and slowing his fall, “[take] his mind off the fact that he [has] just been pushed into an apparently bottomless pit”.

Well, if Arthur can describe the feeling of the wings attaching to his back in detail, then he can note that he is just pushed into a hole, too. I just do not believe this at all. (shakes head) Why do these moments keep appearing?

By the time he has registered that he is falling, the wings are “beating hard” and he descends very slowly, like a spider on a web. I would have them only do so when he nears ground, myself, but I guess this was easier to implement, and why would Noon care either way? Arthur can hear Noon laugh, and then the tromp of boots as the Commissionaires march away. That is a good villain moment for Noon.

We get this:

‘I’ll never call you,’ whispered Arthur. He clutched the Key tightly in his hand. His voice came back, strong, angry and loud. ‘I’ll find a way out. I’ll sort you and Mister Monday and the whole lot of you!’

Go off, Arthur!! This is so much more satisfying than him lying around waiting to be captured! Further, he finally promises to do something about Noon and Monday! They are the ones who have caused all of this trouble in the first place, so he rightly should sort them out!

Just then, a voice near him says that “[t]hat’s the spirit”. Arthur, quite sensibly, lashes out with the Key in surprise, but finds no one. He is still falling slowly, and there is only air and darkness around him… or is there? Arthur raises the Key and tells it to shed light. Yes!! He finally uses the Key for something besides opening and closing things!

They Key then shines with “sudden bright light” and illuminates everything around Arthur. In the light, Arthur can see “another winged figure” who falls just as fast as Arthur. It is a man who is clad only in black, with black wings “as glossy and dark as a raven’s”. It is… Monday’s Dusk! Arthur spits his name and asks what he wants.

Dusk says that it seems that Arthur does know some of the Key’s powers, “as Noon would have it”. Since he whispers, Arthur can hardly hear him above the beating of their wings. He says that he wants to help Arthur, since he has been chosen by the Will and holds the Minute Key. Arthur thinks it must be “some sort of trick”, and asks if Dusk is not “Monday’s right-hand man” or something.

Dusk explains that Noon sits at “the Master’s right hand”, Dawn at his left, and Dusk stands in the shadows behind him. That does conform with the impression I got so far… He says that it is sometimes “easier to see the light when you stand partly in the darkness”. Monday was not always as he is now, and the same goes for Noon and Down. The Lower House was not always the mess it is now. Bit by bit, that lead him to realise that something needed to be done. So he helped the Will free itself, “by giving an Inspector a box of snuff”, and now he will help Arthur by “giving [him] some advice”. Then Dusk was the one who instigated all of this in the first place, it seems!

Arthur does not believe this and thinks it is obvious that this is “good cop, bad cop”, with Noon playing the “bad” one, and Dusk now playing the good one. He does admit that Dusk is “pretty convincing” at it. Also… if he is playing “good cop”, should he not be trying to convince Arthur to give up the Key?

Dusk says that Arthur should talk to the Old One. “The others” forget that, while he opposed the Architect, he does not hate the Architect’s work. Since Arthur is a part of that work, the Old One will be interested and will not harm Arthur. Great, we have characters talking about things Arthur does not know again. He tells Arthur to ask the Old One about the Improbably Stair and to use the knowledge he is given.

Arthur asks why he should trust Dusk. Well, maybe because he has not tried to talk you into giving up the Key? I could say that Dusk might try to get Arthur killed by the Old One… but that would probably mean that the Will would choose another Rightful Heir for the Minute Hand, which would not solve much.

Dusk asks why Arthur should trust anyone, so soft that Arthur cannot hear him at all. Arthur repeats his question and Dusk flies very close to him. He repeats his own question, and says that the Will wants their way, as do Monday and the Morrow Days, but “who can say what those ways will lead to”? He tells Arthur to be cautious. That is quite sound advice, I would say, especially with how shady the Will has been acting.

With that, Dusk beats his wings harder and flies up. Arthur has no control at all over the Wings Noon made for him, so he keeps falling. That was an interesting conversation, I would say. Come to think of it… I am quite sure that Dusk only managed to get such good timing because Noon stopped to berate the Elevator Operator (who I see were named “Elevator Drivers” at one earlier point. Tch). If Noon had not, Dusk would have had little time to hide, after all… so he did take quite a risk to be willing to talk to Arthur, as I doubt Noon would have been pleased to see Dusk at the Cellar. I think that, of itself, is quite good proof that Dusk has good intentions for this.

Arthur has quite some time to think about what Dusk said. He keeps falling slowly, and he eventually gets used to the motion of his wings and even gets sleepy. The Deep Coal Cellar is deep indeed, deeper than “any pit or mine” Arthur has ever heard of on Earth, “save for the ocean trenches where strange life forms dwelled”. So… somewhere between four and eleven kilometres, then? (I certainly like him bringing this up, by the way.) I also feel like noting this is hardly the longest fall possible in the House.

Finally, there comes an end to his fall. His wings suddenly beat even harder, so that he “[comes] to a complete stop”. Then they detach and he falls the last few feet onto “hard, wet ground”. He falls over and get soaked, nearly losing the Key. Just after that, “two shredded pieces of paper” fall next to him and dissolve in the water. Let us see where we are, then.

The puddle he fell in is thankfully “only a few inches deep”. Arthur gets up and holds up the Key so he can see farther. By the light, he can see there are puddles everywhere. Between them lies somewhat drier ground that is “a foul, muddy mixture of coal dust and water”. Um, where does this water come from? Has it just always been here?

There are also “piles of coal” everywhere. These look like “small pyramids five or six feet high” and are piled up “every five yards or so”. Arthur looks over at the closest one, and see that the pieces of this one are “misshapen lumps of very different sizes”, unlike what Suzy had. Presumably they are cut to size here, then. He walks around and sees the pyramids are all of different sizes and different standards of ordering. Some have collapsed altogether. Poor people who need to stack those all over again…

Well, as Noon said, it is “cold as well as damp”. Arthur thinks that the water at least keeps the coal dust down, though it billows up when he moves, so… Either way, he needs to keep moving, as it is too cold to “stay still”. Since he is soaked, I would expect him to cool quite quickly, too. If Suzy is right about not having to eat, he thinks he can keep moving “all the time”. Only she did not say anything about not needing to sleep and he is tired. He knows they have shifts, so that should mean that the people, “or Denizens, as they seemed to be called”, do need to sleep.

He hopes that the Key can protect him against “pneumonia or a cold”, if he can catch such things here, “despite Suzy’s opinion”. Arthur, she has lived her for centuries; I do not think that counts as an “opinion” rather than an “experience”. That aside… I think it would be quite easy not to catch by just staying a sensible distance from everyone.

It would still be miserable to try sleeping on a pile of coal here, though. Arthur walks between the piles of coal as he thinks on what to do. “Should he trust Dusk?” He notes that the Will mentioned the Improbable Stair as a way to get to the Dayroom just before they were busted, and now Dusk mentioned it, too. So maybe it is a way to get out and into “Monday’s rooms”.

But to find out, he needs to find and talk to the Old One. He noticed Dawn and the Commissionaires shiver when he was mentioned, so they were clearly afraid of him, and the Will must also fear him, or else Noon and Monday would never have let him down here. Truly now? We never saw the Commissionaires shiver in fear at the mention, and further, Dusk said that the Will dared not come there directly before Dawn shivered at the mention! Are we to believe that Arthur woke at precisely that time?

Further… Let me quote this same chapter:

Though Dusk had said that this was one place the Will wouldn’t dare go, because it feared the Old One.

What we have here:

And the Will must also fear the Old One, Arthur concluded, or Noon and Monday would never have left him down here with the Key.

Congratulations to Arthur for concluding something he already knew! Seriously, did this see any editing? Also… I think this might be in place, as this is also in the “new and improved” edition:

You Missed a Spot: 1

I do not care to go back for points, but I think the editor could have done quite a better job, especially in this book.

Arthur cannot think of an alternative, so he assumes that he needs to get “methodical about finding the Old One”. The pit is only “half a mile in diameter”, after all, and if he keeps track of what he has covered, it should be possible to search it in a “grid pattern”, though it will not be quick. Hmmm, the surface area of the pit would be 1/4π square miles, or 0,7854 mi² (2,034 km²). If he were to take a grid of, say, five metres, some calculations tell me it would take 285 laps of 1,426 kilometres to cover. That is 406,5 kilometres. At a brisk pace of 5 km/h, that would take 81,3 days to cover.

Of course, if Arthur would climb on a coal pyramid, he might speed things up a bit, because the only thing that prevents him from looking to the walls is the other coal pyramids. Or he could simply use the Key to point in the direction of the Old One; that would save quite some trouble.

(Also, I would advise him to reach a wall first and then spiral inwards; with a grid, he would need to cross over from one half to the other at some point.)

He says the obvious way to go about things is to take a few coals off each pyramid and put them down in a pattern, so he knows if he has been to that pyramid before. He sighs and goes to put the plan in action. Just as he reaches to take a “big chunk of coal” off the nearest pyramid… someone jumps out from the other side, “brandishing a weapon” and shouting at Arthur to leave the coal be. And there the chapter ends.

Well, that was mostly nothing. The only part that stays in my brain clearly is Arthur’s conversation with Dusk; the rest is just… fluff. The next chapter should be somewhat better about that, at least. Until chapter 17!

Comments

[kalinara]

It's good to see Arthur being a bit more proactive at least!

[pangolin20]

Kerlois: It absolutely is! I do not mind the general idea of him being overwhelmed by the events, but this... well, him lying apparently knockd out for a chapter is a bit too much for me. I think a good comparison is the third book of this series, where he is adrift at sea without any Key and yet does not lie down to die.

Further, I am quite sure the book will improve significantly in the next few chapters!

[pangolin20]

Should have asked earlier, but do you mind me replying like I did?

[kalinara]

It's fine. :-)