This Tale Is Forbidden by Polly Crosby

Author:Polly Crosby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Trove room was large – at least as big as Oswald’s shop. Every wall was lined with shelves, right up to the ceiling. And upon each shelf, hundreds and hundreds of objects were stacked on top of each other.

As Nesta stood there, taking it all in, a great buzz of sound rose like a wave all around her. It no longer sounded like the rubbing of butterflies’ wings, but like all kinds of winged creatures: dragonflies and swallows and mosquitoes and swans, bats and eagles and bees, as if every bird and insect and winged beast she had ever seen in the forest – and all those that she had never laid eyes on – were in here, their great wings rubbing and beating in perfect, harmonious union, like the strings of an extraordinary orchestra.

And alongside this incredible sound came smells and flashes of images, flickering through her mind like sunlight reflected on the stream back home, and Nesta remembered her grandma’s words from the coin’s vision:

If you get a roomful of things, all calling for your attention, all shouting and crying and pouring emotion at you, then the feeling you get is akin to a feeling of madness. That, dear girl, is called the Clamouring.

So, this was her first real taste of the Clamouring at its most powerful. This was what her grandma had wanted her to learn to hear. Nesta tried to focus on different objects, to pick out the separate voices from within the buzz, but it was all so complex. The colours and sights accosted her senses, rising and falling, dancing close to her then flitting away, impossible to pin down.

She was half aware of Kit, standing next to her, his mouth falling open in shock.

“Whoa,” he breathed.

But Nesta barely heard him. She tried to conquer the sound, as her grandma had asked her to. She focused on a large jar on a shelf, filled with misty-looking pickling vinegar. Inside, she could just make out a golden egg floating eerily. The wave of sound dimmed to a warm hum all around her, no longer overwhelming but comforting, like a lullaby, and in this small reprieve, she looked from shelf to shelf, taking it all in. She saw a jar filled with what looked like old breadcrumbs. Above it, a huge coil of plaited hair sat on a shelf, much longer than any she had seen in the city, curled up like a python. Little whispers floated down from these objects, as if the pieces of Trove were talking quietly among themselves, and she pulled her eyes from the shelves with difficulty.

“Can you hear that?” she said to Kit.

“Hear what?”

But she just shook her head, overawed. If she touched something now, might she be able to hear its story? Gingerly, Nesta reached out a hand to a silver sewing needle, its long, thin point sparkling in the light. But before she could touch it, it gave a sudden squealing scream, and she drew her hand back quickly with a cry of alarm.

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