The Ear, the Eye and the Arm: Chapters 31–40

“You!” she bellowed in a terrifying voice.

He tried to speak, and an audible sound came out of his mouth.

The creatures erupted from a crevice and filled the air with their jittering bodies.

A pitchfork was embedded in a jacaranda tree.

Every one of the women in the garden had been provided with something to fortify her nerves.

“Let’s leave that to the General. Our job was to find enough evidence to give him a search warrant.”

“It was an enormous lady dressed in black. She gave me palpitations.”

“I do hope you find the poor lost lambs. Such a tragedy.”

He gave the little bag from Resthaven to General Matsika, who was brooding like a thundercloud at the edge of Mrs. Horsepool-Worthingham’s property.

They escaped from Dead Man’s Vlei. They got in and out of Resthaven. They eluded the Masks in the subway.

Anyone can go up and down the elevators of the Mile-High Macllwaine, provided she doesn’t make a nuisance of herself.

They were dotted with woody fungi, as big as dinner plates, and parasitic orchids.

The brooding spirit of the trees surrounded him like the coils of an electric dynamo.

His legs were ringed with gold anklets, and around his neck he wore a large, almost luminous ndoro.

Leaves swirled, trees snapped, and night-apes fled with cries of woe.

“If they didn’t have diplomatic immunity, I’d have them arrested as thieves. They take silverware, glasses, even”— the maître d’ quivered all over with anger—“my wallet. I saw one of them slip it into his pocket, but do you think I could do anything? Once they’re inside the embassy, it’s Gondwannan territory. The police are helpless.

He carefully noted the position of the Gondwannan Embassy before sitting by the panoramic window that made the Starlight Room famous.

The men were dressed in expensive dashikis, and the women wore long classical Ethiopian gowns.

Arm felt a ripple of lazy good humor from the dinner party, a surge of greed from the waiters as they sized up the clothes.

“I have no evidence the Gondwannans are implicated.”

“Poor She Elephant!” mocked another with the speckled snout of a hyena.

The boy impulsively grasped the tusks protruding from the mouth.

The Masks crouched in their hideous disguises, hidden behind their tinted windows.

Only then could it gain the attention of the sluggish Gondwannan gods.

You should have confronted her the minute you learned about her treachery.

As he thought this, he remembered a poem the Mellower used to recite to them in the nursery.

Gold-inlaid tables were crowded with jade and ivory statues of the most exquisite workmanship.

It was large and shifting, as though composed of shadow and the ominous stench that pervaded everything.

Twice as large as any of the others, it had a human face, but one so twisted with agony, it was unbearable to look at.

The traffic beacon at the top of a metal scaffold cast a fitful red light as it blinked on and off.

The stream of Masks that now swept onto the dock appalled him.

Eye could have seen their hideous shapes, but Arm could feel their malevolence.

He aimed at the bewildered detective—and was felled by Mother on the spot.

The Gondwannan Ambassador tore open Tendai’s shirt and jumped back as though he had been scalded.

He was so filled with awe, he almost forgot the desperate situation he was in, but the tribal spirit soon woke him up.

She bullied and exploited them, but to the mournful, unwanted vlei people she represented home.

“Be defiant. It will make your eventual surrender that much more powerful.”

The elevator opened with a second load of passengers—paramedics this time, with Amadeus glowering at the rear.

Tendai saw that the stuffed hyena, dried owls and mummified bats had been pulverized.