Mister Monday: Chapter Fifteen

[teres]

Chapter Fourteen | Table of Contents | Chapter Sixteen (Part I)

Vermaanti: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Mister Monday! Last time, Arthur was thrown into a prison pit and he had a conversation with Monday’s Dusk.

So we open on last chapter’s cliffhanger: someone yelling at Arthur not to take their coal. Well, the man continues, but as soon as he sees the Key, he changes tone and lowers his implement. He quickly says that he does not mean Arthur, but rather someone else, and he points. Arthur falls for it and looks, but he can’t see anyone.

The man says he’ll get back to work, then. We’re told he has the same basic robe the elevator operator had after his demotion, though this one is black from the coal and quite tattered. He is also a head shorter than Arthur, though he looks like a full adult.

Arthur asks who he is. The man says he is “Coal-Collator Very Ordinary Tenth Grade”, and he has precedence “9665785553”. Hmmm, why would this position be called “Very Ordinary”? That seems like an unnecessary wrinkle in the classification to me. Further, his priority number implies that there are at least 10 billion people in the House, which seems a little much to me. In fact… knowing what I know, the majority would have to live in the Lower House. So, since Monday’s executive office is on the “sixty-hundredth floor”, which I suppose is the 6000^th… that means there would have to be 1,67 million people per floor, which I can certainly say is not true. So I think that the dear man is exaggerating his situation somewhat.

Arthur asks for the man’s name now. The man says that he doesn’t have a name any more, and very few of the people down here do, at least not what Arthur would call names. He asks Arthur if he may go now. And why wouldn’t they have names any more? What do they call each other instead?

Arthur asks what his name was and what he did before he was sent to the Coal Cellar. The man says it is a “cruel question” and wipes a tear from his eye. Still, Arthur has the Key, so he has to answer. Then… why does he say it’s a “cruel question” to someone who has the Key? I guess it might be that he thinks he can’t get any worse than this, but he should know he can and he doesn’t know how Arthur will react.

The man answers like this:

I was called Pravuil, sir, Tenth Assistant Deputy Clerk of Stars. I counted suns in the Secondary Realms, I did, sir, and kept their records. Till I was asked to amend the paperwork pertaining to a certain sun. I… ah… refused and was cast from on high.

It sounds quite convincing. We have seen someone be demoted for quite petty reasons before, and we have heard about records, too, so this seems like a plausible scenario. It also plays into the interference with the Secondary Realms we have heard about. I can see why Arthur would take it, since I did too at first.

Still, looking closely, I see quite some weird things in it.

1) Why “Clerk of Stars”? That seems like a much too broad area, especially since “stars” would be a not insignificant part of describing the Secondary Realms. It would simply be too broad to work; a red dwarf has a very different life from a blue star, after all.

2) It was Pravuil’s job to count stars and keep their records? Those sound like they don’t really fit together, and there certainly isn’t a lack of Denizens to do this. Why would anyone need to count stars, anyway? The House was made before the Secondary Realms, so they could track all stars from their beginning. As long as all new stars are registered, the number should be already known.

3) I guess that he didn’t want to change a record for no good reason, but “amending the paperwork” sounds more like he was asked to change normal documents to reflect a change.

4) Why the hesitation about “refused”? Did he call the person who asked him all kinds of names, then? That’s the feeling I get, at least.

5) Why would he have been demoted to Coal-Collator immediately? It seems more likely to me that he would have been demoted to something like… Ink-Filler (just for example). A job that wouldn’t let him work with records would be good enough, I think. If this kind of demotion was as common as Pravuil makes it out to be, the Coal Cellar would be packed full. (In fact, Suzy said earlier that demotion to Commissionaire Sergeant is quite common. Why didn’t he become one of them?)

Arthur says he doesn’t want to upset Pravuil and asks him what he does down here. Pravuil says he collates the coal into piles, at which he indicates the pyramids. Then “one of the Coal-Chippers” comes to cut the coal to size and put them in a “request basket”, which takes it to whoever ordered the coal. He adds that whoever ordered the coal has probably “forgotten what a fire is and become used to shivering”. Not that we’ve seen the House be cold so far, but whatever.

Arthur asks after the baskets and how they are taken up. Pravuil says that he “see[s] [Arthur’s] thinking”. Arthur wants to escape (duh). He is thinking of “[l]ax procedures” and of “[s]omeone [he’ll] want to punish”. Um, you don’t know that at all, Pravuil. That might be true for most people here (assuming that they were sent here because others wanted them gone, which Pravuil implies), but Arthur has the Key, so would that assumption work?

He says it is not so, though. The baskets are small and have “active labels” that take them to their destination. And if Arthur thinks that he might use a label to transport himself with, he would be also wrong, as someone called “Bareneck” could tell him if he found his head. Arthur asks after Bareneck.

Pravuil sniffs and says that is someone who took a label off a basket and “tied it around his neck”. Pravuil told him it was stupid, but the man didn’t listen. When the label went up, it didn’t take Bareneck with him, but instead cut off his head, which “rolled off somewhere” while he knocked over coal with his body. Pravuil expects that Bareneck will eventually find his head or someone else will. But you’d know the general vicinity of where this would have happened, and the head can’t have rolled that far. What would the trouble be in looking there? I also get the impression that Pravuil stood and watched while this happened, and he’s even disdainful about it? That’s not a good look.

Still, I doubt that this really happened. After all, Suzy told us that Denizens can survive this if the head is put back on “soon enough”. Since Pravuil doesn’t give use any time indication, I think that he’s making this up out of whole cloth, or just telling a spooky story.

Arthur is thoroughly creeped out. He looks around, half expecting to see the headless man walk around, groping for his head, or, even worse, the head lying buried with its “senses intact”, without a way to communicate.

He then says that he is not “investigating anything”. He may have the Key, but he is not a House official or a friend of Mister Monday’s; he is “a mortal, from outside”. Um, what does that have to do with what Pravuil just said? I get that Arthur might want to reassure him, but he could have done better at integrating it.

Pravuil answers like this:

‘Whatever you say, sir,’ Pravuil said, with unveiled suspicion. Clearly he thought Arthur was trying to trick him into something.

Well, little surprise there, given how suspicious Arthur has just acted. He says that he will get on with his work. Arthur asks if, before he goes, he can tell or show him where the Old One is. Pravuil shivers and “[makes] a gesture with his hand”. He says that Arthur shouldn’t go near him, because he can kill Arthur “permanent-like”. He can reduce Arthur to Nothing, “with no chance of coming back”.

So, in other words, he can kill Arthur and make him unresurrectable? That would be horrible to a Denizen, I guess, and I do like that we get to see that with Pravuil. Arthur says he has to. Pravuil points the way and says he will note the coal is not ordered there, because no one dares to sweep around the Old One.

Arthur thanks him and says he hopes that Pravuil will “[be] restored to [his] old position one day”. Not that you hope that he will be freed from the prison pit, or that you’ll bother to get him out? Okay, then. Pravuil just shrugs and goes back to work. We get a description of the “strange implement” he holds: it’s a “kind of weird broom and pan combination” that forms coal dust into pieces of coal, which Pravuil stacks.

Arthur goes in the direction Pravuil indicated. Just after Pravuil has disappeared in the dark, he calls out that Arthur shouldn’t “stay past twelve”. Arthur asks what that means, but gets no answer. When he walks back, Pravuil is gone; there’s only the pyramid with some new pieces on top. He’s definitely involved with more than he lets on, it seems.

Arthur mutters to himself about the advice he got: “Don’t go near the Old One. Do go near the Old One. Don’t stay past twelve. Trust the Will. Don’t trust the Will.” He wishes that someone would give him some straightforward advice and even pauses as if he might hear it. Then he starts off again, implementing his idea from last chapter. He takes ten pieces off the first pyramid and puts “it” in a pattern at the base.

You Missed a Spot: 2

At the next pyramid he uses nine blocks, and so on until he only has one and starts over, this time adding a new block to keep track of which iteration it is. By the time he has done this across 126 pyramids, he doubts “several things”:

1) That he will ever find the Old One

2) That Pravuil has pointed him in the right direction

3) That the Cellar is as large at the bottom as at the top.

Well, the pyramids of coal were said to be some five yards apart, so he would have walked about 630 metres. The Cellar might still be as large at its base as at the top.

Arthur also gets quite cold despite continually walking. He doesn’t feel hungry, but does wish for something to eat, as that would warm him up. It will certainly make the trek through “this freezing, wet, dark dump of a place” less boring, he thinks.

Because he is tired, he holds the Key “lower and lower at his side”, so the light it sheds falls lower and lower, until it only lights the floor around his feet. Beyond it, he can only see darkness. Well, that sucks quite a bit… It just sounds so very lonely.

Well, he suddenly sees another light up ahead. It is a “blue, shimmering light” like a gas fire. Arthur raises the Key and walks faster, sure that the Old One must be there. He is both “nervous and excited” at this. We get an explanation that he is nervous because Dawn and the Commissionaire Sergeants, along with Pravuil, seemed to be afraid of him and excited because it is something different and he might even get out.

Um, we did not see the Commissionaire Sergeants look afraid of the Old One at all.

You Missed a Spot: 2

As he nears the light, he slows down and holds the Key even higher, not wanting to be surprised. He thinks that every shadow behind a pyramid “promise[s] some sort of ambush”. The pyramids are thinning, though, as do the puddles. The ground also becomes drier and higher and the coal dust makes way for stone.

At the last pyramid, Arthur crouches to see what lies ahead, and we are told he needs to blink a lot because of the combination of the light from the Key and that from ahead. Then we get a page of description.

Before him, there’s a “raised circular platform” of some “sixty feet in diameter”. Around the edge of the platform stand Roman numerals, and from a “central pivot” come “two long pieces of metal” of differing lengths. As Arthur watches, the longer piece moves a bit about the rim, and he realises that it is a minute hand, and the platform is a “clock face”! I think that might have been expected, given that Arthur has the Minute Hand and Monday the Hour Hand.

That isn’t the strangest thing, though. Chains lead from the ends of the hands through “some mechanism of gears and pulleys” near the central pivot. They then connect to manacles around the wrists of a man who is sitting “near the numeral six”. The chains shed the blue light. Arthur says they look like steel, but cannot be, as no steel shines like this. It might have been enchanted to shed light?

The man is also not exactly a man, but rather a giant, as he is some “eight feet tall”. He looks like “some sort of aged barbarian hero” who has “overdeveloped muscles along his arms and legs”, though his skin is “old, wrinkled and translucent” so the veins are visible. He only wears a loincloth and his head is “shaved to a stubble”. He seems to be asleep. Arthur notes his eyelids look strange, as they are “raw and red”, which he thinks looks like the man has been sunburned, which is of course impossible.

Arthur figures the man is the Old One. He slowly comes closer to study the mechanism. After a few minutes, he thinks that they will be loose around “half-past six”, and will bind the Old One to the center at noon and midnight.

You Missed a Spot: 3

At the moment, it is 18:35, which means that the Old One can sit “next to the numeral six”. Judging by how long the chains are, Arthur guesses that the Old One can’t move out of the clock face. There are also two trapdoors next to the central pivot, which are the size of regular doors, “with arched peaks”. He likens them to those of a cuckoo clock, but he does not think that cuckoos will come out of them.

Finally, something happens. The Old One suddenly shouts at Arthur to “[b]eware”. Arthur leaps back and trips. He can hear the chains rattle behind him and panics. He is too slow, though. The Old One held the chains close against his body to make it seem like he had less slack than he had and very soon he stands over Arthur. Up close, Arthur says he looks “even taller and meaner”, and his open eyes do not look very good. They are “red-rimmed and bloodshot”, and one pupil is gold, while the other is black.

He asks Arthur (who he calls “Key-Bearer”) if he has seen enough and loops a piece of chain around Arthur’s neck and pulls it tight. Arthur hits him with the Key, but absolutely nothing happens. The Old One goes on, asking if Arthur’s “masters” didn’t tell him that nothing of the House and nothing of Nothing can harm him, except for the creatures of the clock, which “nightly gnaw and gouge [his] eyes”. Then he thanks Arthur for giving him a “moment of entertainment” as he “rend[s] him limb from limb and consign[s] [his] essence to the void”.

There the chapter ends. Well, that was not very bad, though I wish we didn’t have a whole page put to description. I’ll see you again in chapter 18!