Still Scared: Talking Children's Horror

Still Scared: Talking Children's Horror

The Final Reckoning, Part 1 (Deptford Mice Book Three)

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This episode we talked about The Final Reckoning by Robin Jarvis from 1990, the third book in the Deptford Mice trilogy.

Returning thanks to the returning Ava, who you can find on twitter at @avafoxfort.

If you want to follow us on twitter we are @stillscaredpod, and our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com.

Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her work at makiyamazaki.com.

Outro music is by Joe Kelly, and their band Etao Shin are at etaoshin.co.uk

Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at behance.net/lettydraws

Transcript

Ren: Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray, we’re joined again by Ava Foxfort and we’re discussing the first part of The Final Reckoning by Robin Jarvis.

Ren: Good evening Adam!

Adam: Hullo!

Ren: Good evening Ava!

Adam: Oh no, I’ve got a burp coming. There it is, don’t worry. I didn’t want to burp into the microphone.

Ava: Welcome to Still Burping.

Ren: And how are you two, this five to eight on a Thursday evening?

Adam: Uhh, clammy. If I’m honest. I think I’ve passed past sweaty into clammy.

Ava: That’s an unpleasant transition, that one.

Adam: It is. It’s very close, here. I’m in the computer room at my parent’s house.

Ren: It’s a very small room.

Adam: Can you remember it? You have to go through my parents’ bedroom to get to it, the house is quite folded in on itself. You have to go through my parent’s bedroom, and then through a little walkway, which I have to duck into, across the stairs into this room.

Ava: Your house has just got a lot more elaborate than I imagined.

Adam: It’s not very big, but it’s compact. It’s quite dense.

Ava: I’m into it.

Adam: It’s like a more cottagy version of the house in… House of Stairs?

Ren: I mean, that wasn’t a house that was just stairs.

Adam: Yeah… what’s that horror book about stairs?

Ren: Nightmare Stairs.

Adam: No, not Nightmare Stairs! Nightmare Stairs barely had stairs in it at all.

Ava: Plenty of nightmares, not enough stairs.

Adam: Not a kids’ horror, an adult horror, and it’s all pretentious and pieced together from documents… and like, it’s about an evil film that people watch and then they go into the walls of the house and it has endless labyrinthine stairs.

Ren: Well, I don’t know about that.

Adam: Okay, well listeners, if you know what I’m on about —

Ava: Send your answers on a postcard.

Adam: Or tweet us.

Ren: So Adam’s clammy in a labyrinthine warren —

Ava: — Which seems more appropriate to this book than me, who is just tired. Bit of a weary evening for Ava.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not ready to talk about a load of mice dying.

Adam: Exactly! That’s the spirit! Mouse death!

Ava: I’m now imagining Mouse Death is one of the New York mice. It’s a good rap name, Mouse Death.

Sorry, I said I was tired.

Adam: Spelt Maus, like John Maus.

Ren So, we’ve come to the third and final book in the Deptford Mice series, the Final Reckoning, written and illustrated by Robin Jarvis, from 1990.

And despite this book being less than 300 pages long, it’s sufficiently epic that we’re going to go full Hollywood film trilogy and split our last discussion into two parts.

Adam: You could think of this as The Hobbit of podcasts, and just as good!

Ren: Yeah, so this episode is the one where we metaphorically do shit camping, and the next one will be the episode where we metaphorically ride on a dragon.

Ava: Well, I’m glad I’ve got something to look forward to.

I have accidentally flipped to the back of the book, and it has one of those order forms where you can send money to Simon&Schuster cash sales department, and the final book does cost 49p more than the first two books.

Adam: I bought this book second hand, and my copy has spots of blood on it.

Ava: Human?

Adam: Or mouse?

Ava: The book’s actually been used as a mouse trap, somewhere down the line.

Adam: Or maybe it’s the original copy, and Jarvis wrote the whole thing in the blood of mice as his ink.

Ava: It would explain a lot. I think I would just about put it past him, but.

Adam: I imagine actually that some young child reading it had a bleeding nose —

Ren: In shock —

Adam: And snot-blodded all over the book in shock, and then in adulthood in shame donated it to a charity shop, where I unwittingly purchased it.

Ren: That’s really quite unpleasant.

Adam: Start as we mean to go on!

Ren: So, this is our third episodes of four, and a lot has happened, so —

Adam: Don’t start here! Go and listen to the other two.

Ren: But as a quick refresher, Jupiter the cat died in his cat mortal form, was burned on a bonfire, his spirit went up into the sky, he then got stuck in a crystal ball, taken to the countryside, the crystal ball smashed, he’s gone back up into the sky…

Ava: Thinking about it, the crystal ball was a marble, and it’s actually quite hard to crack open a marble. But maybe if it has a horrendous cat spirit in it.

Adam: I thought you were going to say that it’s quite hard to stuff a cat inside a marble.

Ava: I mean, I’m not saying that’s not true.

Ren: So we’re back in the city, in Deptford, and Jupiter is at large again, but… larger.

Adam: At large in the sky, which is very large. Seriously, if you’re listening, go out, go to your window, look out at the sky now. The sky is properly large.

Ava: Yeah, but you’re in East Anglia aren’t you, and the sky is definitely much larger there than up in this valley.

Adam: In many ways we are the Texas of England. At least in terms of our regressive ideas.

Sorry Texans.

Ava: I was definitely terrified by how much sky there was in North Norfolk.

Adam: Now I want to shoot a Western in Suffolk.

Ren: You could do like, that Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas.

Have someone with a very weatherbeaten face walking through the cabbage fields.

Adam: It’s funny, I was talking to my students about the road movie, and why it’s a quintessentially American genre and you don’t really get any British road movies and I think it’s just like… it wouldn’t take very long, in Britain. And there’d be too many Little Chefs, and things.

Ava: Motorway service stations are definitely not as dramatic and eerie…

Ren: They’re not very liminal, are they.

Adam: Eating a Scotch Egg wistfully, in black and white. No.

Ren: It’s a bit Alan Partridge, isn’t it.

Adam: But then which came first, it’s a bit chicken and egg.

Ren: Eating a Scotch Egg wistfully, or Alan Partridge?

Adam: Right.

Ren: Anyway!

This is why it needs to be two episodes. We need built-in faff time.

Ava: It’s not that there’s a lot going on in the book, it’s just that we have a lot of reckons about Scotch Eggs.

Ren: Okay. So —

Adam: Actually, I will say before we move on from the Scotch Eggs, I did notice that there was one of those mini Quorn Scotch Eggs at the back of the fridge, and I don’t know how long it’s been there, but I’m musing on eating it.

Ava: Well, if you’re going to eat it you have to eat it before the next episode, so you can report back. Maybe we can have a Scotch Egg report at the beginning of The Final Reckoning: Part 2.

That could be an extra segment, like Texture of the Week, Claim of the Week, Scotch Egg Report. Of the week. Might be hard to do a good jingle for.

Ren: ARggH.

Adam: Sorry Ren, I know you’ve got a lot of plot to get through!

Ren: I’m neck-deep in plot and you’re waffling on about Scotch Eggs.

Right.

We have this quite cinematic cold open with the pedlar, Kempe, who had a minor role in the previous book, bringing Audrey, Madame Akikuyu and co. to Fennywolde but I don’t think we thought it was worth mentioning him. He was a bit bawdy, a bit of a rambunctious type.

Adam A bit of a minor, non-playable character in Skyrim or DnD, basically.

Ren It’s the end of Autumn and he’s in high spirits, pleasantly drunk, wandering with his travelling wares and awaiting the trade fair.

He finds one of Audrey’s silver tail bells nestled in the crevice of a wall, and decides he’ll return it to her on his way through Deptford.

But even as he’s holding the small bell in his paw, an icy wind and fog swirls around him.

Kempe is gripped with horror and fumbles for the opening in the wall, but he can’t get away from this immense, rumbling, purring shadow that engulfs him.

The last thing he sees is a flash of blue light and a spear of ice.

It says: ’The terrible ice spear had pierced his body and the blood which trickled out froze quickly. The shadow in the fog purred to itself, and somewhere in that blanketing greyness, the sound of a small, sweet bell tinkled softly’.

So, that’s a bit alarming.

Adam: It’s sad and poetic, but I will get out of the way now to mention, that whenever spears of ice appear, and there are quite a few deadly spears of ice in this book, I kept thinking of this bit in the Day Today where someone is speared with a frozen jet of urine from an aeroplane.

Ren: Oh yes.

Ava: I think it’s from an urban myth. But definitely every time there’s an ice spear there’s a part of me thinking: ‘is it just piss from an aeroplane’.

Which does undermine the dread, which is a shame because the purring fog is so vivid and it’s a very strong image.

Adam: I’m thankful and quite surprised that it’s not just me! So thanks, Ava.

Ava: That’s quite alright, I wasn’t going to mention it but you bought it out of me. Scotch Egg and icy piss.

Adam: A good night out!

Ava: Also it full on does Kempe arguing with himself about whether he’s going to settle down with the woman he has a thing with —

Ren: Millie Poopwick.

Ava: Millie Poopwick. So it is the classic: ‘Oh no, he’s planning on settling down. He’s got one day left til retirement, I think we know what’s going to happen here. It’s a prologue, someone’s going to die.’ And he does, and it’s terrifying! It’s a really dark start.

Ren: Mmhmm, and definitely sets a tone of extreme unease as we return to Deptford, where the mice are getting cosy in preparation for Yule with spiced fruit buns and Thomas Triton’s spooky ghost stories.

Which were quite enjoyable! I feel like there’s a whole genre of ghost stories where they’re like: ‘but then, who’s hand were you holding?’.

Arthur, Audrey’s brother, persuades Oswald to meet him at night to raid the larder, but when they get there, they find it bare.

They rush out to tell the other mice that there’s no food for the winter, but everyone is already out of their beds and looking up at the sky, where all the bats in Deptford are flying out and away from their various attics and rafters in a great, chittering cloud. Which seems fairly ominous, as signs go.

The mice are wary, and Oswald declares it a bad omen: ‘We have no food to survive the midwinter death and all the bats have left us to face something worse! We’re all going to die!’

Ava: Optimistic one, that Oswald.

But to be fair, with the bats status as oracles in this novel it is pretty ominous. Although I think I would probalby be looking out of the window going ‘Ooh, cool’, if I saw that many bats.

Adam: Well, some of them are. Some of the mouse are saying: ‘Ooh, this is marvellous.. etc.’

Ren: And on this note, we get to catch up with Picadilly, who we haven’t seen since he and Audrey failed to communicate their affection for each other at the beginning of The Crystal Prison.

Picadilly has found his way back to the city, to the co-operative mouse commune of Holeborn.

Ava It’s a strong pun, can I just say. It’s a strong London pun.

Ren It’s described as: ‘one of the most perfect mouse societies to have existed in the whole country. Everyone enjoyed their work and nobody thought themselves superior to anyone else – even the Great Thane was known to all as ‘‘Enry’ despite his noble lineage.’

Not sure if the Holeborners are more progressive on the gender front than the Deptford mice, where despite Gwen Brown’s occasional sword-wielding, it is fairly ‘mouse-wives’ making Jam and ‘mouse-housebands’…

Ava: We don’t actually see many mouse-husbands, to be fair. There’s a couple of older mice within the community, but we don’t really know what their day jobs are.

Adam: I guess being eaten by Jupiter, presumably.

Ava: Good to have a hobby! I mean presumably they were just occasionally getting lured into the basement and the Grill.

Ren: Maybe there is a lack of adult male mice.

Picadilly is supervising a food-gathering party, when he spots a feeble and peevish old rat called Barker spying on them.

Picadilly bribes him with food, and asks him why he’s so hungry, as there’s usually plenty of scraps and odds and ends for rats to gobble. Like fluffy bits of nougat, and things. Which is certainly a texture. Barker lets slip something about the ’new blood’ in the rats, and their leader ‘Old Stumpy’.

At which point, I imagine any reader who remembers the Dark Portal, goes ‘Oh no’, as we remember Jupiter’s henchrat, the piebald Cornish rat, with the stump of his tail wrapped in a rag, Morgan.

Adam: Oh, I was just like ‘who’s this new rat!’.

Ren: I was wondering if that clicked for you two. It made me think of it immediately, and I’m normally very bad at spotting things that are going to come up in a story.

Ava: I cannot remember.

Adam: Well, I enjoyed the wonderful surprise!!

Ren: I think Picadilly has his suspicions about who this is, but it doesn’t go into it at this point.

He tries to press Barker for more information, but at that moment two alarming characters turn up, the rats Smiff and Kelly, although Picadilly calls them many things, including: ’Stinky, Pongo, Lardy, and Bog-Features’.

But I don’t know if you noticed this, but in return, all they call him ‘Greyboots, Freckle-Face and Pretty Boy’, which… aren’t insults.

Ava Greyboots is just quite a strong nickname in general.

Adam It’s a bit like in Peep Show where the kids call Mark ‘Clean Shirt’.

Ren I think despite being horrible bloodthirsty rats, they maybe need to do some work on their insults.

Ava: Is it just that their society is based enough on unsettling-ness, that to be a ‘pretty boy’ is negatively seen. That was my take on it.

Ren: Oh, okay.

Ava: They wouldn’t value someone’s prettiness very highly.

Ren: I may be letting my own feelings about how I would like to be called a pretty boy shine through.

Adam: By talking rats!

Ren: They taunt each other a bit, and Smiff and Kelly are itching to give Picadilly a good smacking, but they have to hold off because of ‘orders’ from above.

Picadilly’s pretty alarmed by this and hightails it back to Holeborn to warn them that the rats are getting organised, and Smiff and Kelly threaten Barker for telling Picadilly too much.

Back at Holeborn, Picadilly passes anxiously through the ancient front door with its single fairly casual sentry, and goes into the big hall to join the rest of the mice in an important meeting.

A mouse called Charlie Coppit comes before the crowd with a bloody face and black eye, and tells them how while he was out foraging, a rat started eating food from one of their sacks, and when Charlie told him to knock it off, the rat hit him across the face.

Which is not how they’re accustomed to the rats behaving. They’re more of the snivelling and slime-licking kind of rat, that we’ve heard about before Jupiter got to them.

The Thane and the minister’s discuss what they should do about the rats increasing boldness, and Picadilly pipes with suggestions that they start working on a reinforced front door, and digging a back exit that the rats don’t know about, and spying on the rats to find out their plans.

The Thane is impressed with his tactical mind, and names him the Minister for War.

Adam Yeah, Picadilly nearly risked Claim of the Week, but actually all his claim-making turned out pretty good! An actual minister.

Ren In the society of Holeborn, even a small cheeky claim-maker can be appointed minister.

And Picadilly volunteers to be the one to spy on the rats, and his young friend from the foraging party, called Marty, volunteers to go with him.

Ava: I feel like just announcing the Minister of War like, ‘oh, I guess they’re a bit worried about this stuff, better give them a title’ and then as soon as he’s named Minister, he just leaves. It doesn’t feel like the strongest defensive setup, is all I’m saying.

Ren: Like, ‘Oh you have lots of plans to defend our home. Just go off now.’

Ava: I mean, he is right that the important thing is to gather that intelligence but I feel like he should have been overseeing the defences as well.

And maybe things would have worked out better if he had.

Ren: whimper

Ava: I don’t mean that. I’m not blaming Picadilly.

Ren: Poor Picadilly. We’re trying not to talk about things that turn up in the second half of the book, but —

Adam: — basically, Picadilly will suffer enough.

Ren: Speaking of suffering, we get a sad scene of Smiff and Kelly tormenting poor, hungry Barker, tricking him into giving them a chocolate bar he’s just found in exchange for a stone they’ve wrapped up like a fishcake.

Which I did think was quite an evocative texture.

Adam I mean, I understand because I love chocolate, but a stone that’s like a fishcake, that’s pretty cool!

If you were more entreprenurial, and pulled himself up by his bootstraps, he could have made a song and dance out of that! Like, one piece of meat or a stringy piece of bacon for a look at my stone that looks like a fishcake.

Ren I’m not sure that the stone looks like a fishcake…

Ava It’s wrapped up in a fishy wrapper.

Ren Smell’s faintly of vinegar.

Adam Yeah, you need to use your imagination!

Ren I guess they don’t have much entertainment down there.

Adam My business venture clearly isn’t going to work. I’d better scrap that Kickstarter.

Fishcake or Stone!

Ren Shall we do Texture of the Week, as I’m getting a bit tired of the sound of my own voice?

Adam: Yeah, and Fishcake or Stone isn’t a thing we do on this podcast, we do Texture of the Week.

banging noises

Ren: I’ll put the book down so I have both hands.

Adam: muffled noises like he has his mouth full

You’ve got to sing!

Ren Of the Week!

I don’t know what’s going on. Someone else please talk about your texture.

Ava: My texture is everything to do —

Adam: Everything!

Ava: I mean, it kind of is everything. But everything to do with the bats. The entire chapter about the bats is so full of wonderful textures, and if you’re forcing me to get specific I wanted to pick a ‘social texture’.

Ren: Oooh.

Adam: This is outrageous!

Ava: There’s quite a few things in the bat texture that are kind of incredible, there’s someone dribbling in Oswald’s ear. ‘Oswald was terribly nervous. Here he was at the most important meeting ever held, to discuss the worst foe the world had ever known, with the greatest number of bats anyone had ever seen. He felt extremely small and alone. What use would he be?’

I recognise that that’s not really a texture.

Adam: Not in the conventional sense.

Ava: But it’s a very vivid description of a certain kind of social anxiety, and it gave me a shiver that felt that was a strong texture. So I’m pitching that as a social texture.

Ren: I love it! You’re hired!

Adam: Oh no! I have to up my game!

Ava: There’s just so many little details that stand out in the bat chapter that we’ll come to soon, ‘they circled the huge dome three times and called to the thousands of other bats in their own language’. I love it.

Ren: Mmhmm.

Ava: Big clouds of bats is the best texture I can imagine.

Adam: Did you see that meme video with the baby bat eating the banana? With it’s little chubby cheeks, it’s like the marshmallow challenge, it just can’t get enough of the banana.

Ava You must send me this meme! Show me the bats, Adam. Show me the bats with the bananas.

Adam: I’ll see if I can find it, but while I’m doing that I should try and read my texture. I’ve gone with another quite nice texture… aww, I’ve found the video! Here we go, I’ll send this.

Ava: That’s not a texture, Adam, it’s a meme!

Adam: ‘Thomas Triton stirred in his sleepy and dreamed deeply. Silver armoured fish flashed over his bed and splashed into the wooden wall whilst his forhead rippled and rolled. Green waving weeds spilled over the blankets and salty bubbles blew up through the pillows. Seagulls cried down to him as he drifted through the night on his raft of bed-clothes. They wheeled and circled high above, their voices faint and mournful’.

Ren: Yeah! That was also my texture.

Ava: That whole shippy dream sequence is wonderful. Like the Sirens of old, the haunting faces lured the sleeping Thomas to them. The sea tilted, swelling and churning as the rain battered down from the ceiling sky. Amid the woodgrain clouds another face loomed over him, a squint-eyed, evil phantom, riding on a serpent’s scaly back and laughing with the tempest’s fury.’                Adam: The merging between really captures that liminal state of consciousness, merging between different objects and states of realities and wakefulness and sleep.

Ren: That was also the one I chose, but I did get a back-up which was just the first line of the book: ‘The hedgerows were spotted with berries red as blood, and black, ragged-winged crows flapped over the empty fields shrieking in ugly voices’.

Just in terms of scene-setting, that’s pretty solid.

Adam: Things are gonna get goth!

Talking about bats have you watched the fruit bat stuffing its face with banana.

Ren: I mean, no, because we’re recording a podcast. But if you insist.

Adam: This is what they do on the podcasts, I’ve been listening! Like on Evolution of Horror, they’re always like, ‘let’s just watch the trailer’.

Ava: Oh no, now I’m playing an advert for Uber at you.

Adam: It’s like a reaction video because people like listening to people watch things!

Ren: I’m watching the bat. Oh he loves that banana!

Ava: incoherent keening noises of delight

Ren: Aww, what a good face! Oh my god, he loves that banana so much.

Ava: Awww, you can imagine that thing dribbling in your ear and it being really intimidating, but when they’ve got a banana!

Adam: See, quality podcasting.

Ava: To be clear, my reaction there is definitely to the bat eating a banana and not to Uber, who I think are rubbish.

Adam: And not cute.

Ava: And not cute. I hope you didn’t get that big sponsorship deal with Uber for the podcast.

Ren: Not now!

Adam: We do have a sponsorship deal with baby bats, aww.

Ren: So… so…

Picadilly and Marty hear Barker’s howl of despair as he discovers the trick the other rats have played on him.

Picadilly tries to get Barker to give up more information, but he didn’t bring any food to bribe him with, so Barker’s not playing.

Picadilly tries to threaten the information out of him, but Barker gets extremely agitated, says he has a meeting to go to and can’t be late, and writhes out of Picadilly’s grasp.

So naturally, Picadilly decides that they have to crash this meeting, as this is their big chance to find out who Old Stumpy is and what he’s up to.

They follow Barker and find a huge gathering of rats, packed all filthily and stinkingly together in a chamber. While hiding from the passing rats, they find a pipe that they can crawl up and have a good view over the whole rat tapestry without being too visible to the crowd.

And this is where we find that it is indeed Morgan, who is trading on his reputation as being a vicious rat from Deptford, and whipping the city rats up into a frenzy of hate and blood-lust.

Adam: Morgan’s become a popularist, basically! It really plays out like a rally. Can I read some of it?

Ren: Please do!

Adam: I’ll see if I can remember my Morgan voice, from before.

‘You be here because of blood,’ he screamed. You have none! Where be the hot, burning blood of the ravenous rat? It don’t run in your veins – I should know, I comes from Deptford.’

The crowd murmured admiringly. Everyone had heard of the rats of Deptford and how vicious they were. ‘When I come ’ere,’ Morgan continued, ‘I couldn’t believe me eyes. There you were, you miserable vermin, fawning and scraping – afraid of mice and yer own shadders! It made me honk I were so disgusted.’

He pointed to Smiff and Kelly and a few other fierce- looking brutes. ‘See what can be done if’n you forget yer lily-livered ways and follow me. Turn to the path of Tooth an’ Claw. Let blood flow in the Underground.’

He’s a nasty piece of work!

Ren: One older rat objects to the idea of rats as murderers, and Morgan slits his throat with his claws, right there on stage. The rats chant for war, and blood and death to all mice, and Picadilly and Marty realise that they have to warn Holeborn really quickly.

But as they’re trying to leave, Marty’s foot slips on some rubble, and the rats suddenly notice their hiding place. Picadilly tells Marty to run and warn them, but tells him to take the East Way that the rats aren’t watching.

Picadilly taunts and tries to distract the rats, and has them all running after him, but just as he’s about to get away, he twists his ankle, falls and rolls unconscious beneath the train track.

With an alarming finality, right? Like, is this the end of Picadilly?

Adam: Yes, and everything after is his dying dream. Ahhhh.

Ava: I was really worried at this point that Marty was going to end up leading the rats into the new back entrance at East Way, and that would be how the rats would get into Holeborn.

Whether Picadilly survived or not, I thought potentially he’d doomed them by giving them a secret back route in. But we shall see how that plays out next episode.

Ren: I mean, all the established rules of narrative would suggest that a main character wouldn’t be dispatched so easily, but this is Robin Jarvis we’re talking about.

And it makes a certain kind of grim sense for Picadilly to die being chased by rats, because that’s where Albert Brown met his end in the first book, while Picadilly got away.

Ava: But that’s also one of the benefits of the strong ensemble cast as well, that he’s managed to establish that people aren’t safe just because they’re one of the key members.

It seems odd for him to go then when he’s got such unresolved business with Audrey, but then again people have definitely died with unresolved business.

Adam: Once again, better than Game of Thrones.

Ren: Better than Game of Thrones. So now, while we’re wondering if Picadilly has bought it, that we return to salty sea-mouse Thomas Triton and his uneasy sleep on the Cutty Sark.

Just when he’s about to fall back to sleep, he’s rudely awoken by a squirrel throwing stones at the ship’s hull. The squirrel is greatly distressed, and tells him that he’s been sent for by the Starwife, because there has been ‘murder in the park’.

There’s chaos at the observatory, when Thomas Triton gets there and finds the squirrels mourning 23 of their number, who have all been killed by a spear of ice between the ribs, and are laid out on the grass, frozen solid.

The Starwife tells Triton that in the night, a piercing cold was followed by a great dark cloud sparking purple lightening, and then a rolling thick fog. Through the fog, she made out the shape of an enormous cat, ‘tall as a tree and through its vast shape I could see the stars’. The Starwife tells Triton that the sprit of Jupiter has her Starglass, an object that has great mystical power.

Did we here about the Starglass in the last book?

Ava: Yeah, it appears in the second one. It’s what the Starwife used to collect the milk of the stars to save Oswald from his horrendous illness. I’ve kind of assumed that it’s some piece of aparatus from Greenwich Observatory, whether it’s a real thing or just a piece of discarded telescope or something.

Adam: Can it really milk the stars?

Ava: Can you milk the stars? One can only assume, I can’t think of any reason that Robin Jarvis would lie to us.

Ren: And would it be vegan?

Ava: Are they… farmed stars?

Adam: It sounds like a glamorous job though — ‘milker of the stars’.

Ava: I also really like, I think it’s around here, that Jupiter starts being described as the ‘Unbeest’.

Adam: It’s very metal, isn’t it?

Ren: It’s not pronounced the ‘Unbeast?’

Ava: In here, it’s spelt ‘Unbeest’, in the original text. It works either way, but I like it as ‘Unbe-est’. I like the wordplay, similar to how I loved Mahooot having multiple Os in the last book.

Adam: Actually I think this book in particular would make a very good metal concept album. I can really imagine it as an hour and half long metal opera.

Ava: I’ve never told you that my housemate was part of a band that did a three-album concept crust-punk thing about Watership Down.

Adam: Oh my gosh! Wow!

Ava: I’ve listened to bits of it, not the whole thing. But I imagine it’s quite the thing.

Ren: We’ll have to listen to some when we inevitably do Watership Down.

Ava: I’ll have to see if George is up for coming on the podcast, because I’m sure he’ll have a thought or two about it.

Adam: Is this your friend who works in the book exchange?

Ava: No, no. Kier has never done a concept album about a children’s book series, as far as I know. Although he has been in lots of bands with terrible names, so I wouldn’t put it past him.

Fax Machine… I mean. The same band actually decided that that was a bad name, so they changed their name to A Pleasant Heat. Which to me sounds a bit like you’ve wet yourself.

Anyway, I hope that Kier doesn’t listen to this. Although I definitely have told him to his face that those are some of the worst band names I’ve ever heard.

Adam: If you are Kier, and you want to email the podcast —

Ava: It’s your right to reply!

Ren: Anyway.

The Starwife instructs Triton to watch as they burn the murdered squirrels on the ritual pyre, sending them to ‘the green’. As in the Green Mouse, but not a mouse? The Green Squirrel?

Ava Yeah, it’s not clear if they have an entirely different cosmology or not. ‘‘Speed to the Green,’ she said delving into the bag and bringing out a pawful of leaves and herbs. She cast them into the fire and the flames burned a brilliant emerald and roared in Triton’s ears. ‘

Adam I do own a copy of the Deptford Almanack, have you seen this Ava? It’s frickin’ glorious! I’m going to read from it next time, but basically it’s an almanack with all the days of the year and the seasons, and it gives the precise date and month for the various things that happen in the three books.

But it also has sayings and ruminations, and lots of fragmentary snippets of the squirrel’s cosmology, and things that the bats say, and so forth.

So it’s world-building, really, that Robin Jarvis has done and found a way to compile into this collection. But it’s lovely, and it has lots of illustrations, and tells you about certain characters after the events of the third book.

But we will return to that next time.

Ren The Starwife tells him that he will have to do the same funeral ritual for her, when she dies, and then demands that he take her to the Skirtings, as she has business with Audrey.

The Starwife arrives in the Skirtings and tells the mice that Jupiter has returned, but this time as an Unbeest, an enormously powerful dark spirit. She tells them that their only hope is to consult the ancient wisdom of the bats, and they set a beacon fire on the roof to summon them.

After hours of waiting, they think that the bats aren’t coming, but Oswald, with his superior eyesight, spots two black shapes on the horizon.

These turn out to be Orfeo and Eldritch who turn up and are quite haughty with the Starwife, and tell her that the bats are already well aware of the Unbeest, and that is why they all flew, to join a great bat council of the subject.

The Starwife demands that they fly her to their council, but the bats scoff, and insist that it is Oswald that they need, as he saw them first. They pick up the albino mouse, and carry him away over the rooftops.

Which is where the copy of the book that Ava has, I believe, gets its cover art.

Adam: Which is a little bit confusing, right, because Twit has previously been carried away by the bats over the rooftops. So when I saw that cover, I was like ‘but that’s not what Twit should look like!’.

Ren: My copy’s a more modern one that has, uhh, —

Adam: — Internet on it!

Ren: Yes. It has a rat holding an ice spear, in a kind of lurid purple. Which I’m not wildly fond of.

But yes, the bats take him to their vast meeting, and show him off to their bat comrades, and he gets a severe case of social anxiety, which is understandable, really.

Ava And a dribble in the ear.

Ren They refer to him as ‘the Pink-eyed one whose coming was forseen long ago’. And the bats tell Oswald that their future-sight has been broken, because Jupiter as the Unbeast is eliminating the future, freezing everything into an eternal dark winter, and they must act before he uses the Starglass.

Adam: Extinction Rebellion plug!

Ava: I really like the names of the elders as well. They get greeted as: ‘Hail to thee Ohthere, Lord of the Twilight; hail Heardred, Keeper of the Hidden Ways; hail Ingeld, Consort of the Lady; and hail Ashmere, Wisest of all Counsellors.’

Which is definitely throwing shade on the other three elders.

Ren: The bats instruct Oswald to crawl into a passageway under the building, and retrieve an ancient book of spells and prophecies called the Book of Hrethel.

To help him, Orfeo and Eldritch grant Oswald the gift of bat sight, for seven hours. Which means he can basically see anything, right? He can see round corners and through walls, and miles and miles away.

Ava Right, so, there’s two things that I noticed from reading this that made me think that Robin Jarvis doesn’t know how animals work.

One of them is that bat sights doesn’t see through walls, it’s just sonar. That’s totally a thing, he could have had something about sonar here, he didn’t, and that’s fine.

Adam It’s not edutainment.

Ava It’s not, and that’s fine. I like the bat sight, despite the inaccuracy. But one thing that only occurred to me halfway through this is that there is a lot of the mice bending over and bending their knees, and they’ve had to crawl around on all fours.

And I just started getting a bit freaked out by the idea of mice kneeling. Just wanted to throw that in there, and this seemed like the best point to throw in that Robin Jarvis has anthropomorphised these mice very subtly, in a way that I didn’t really register until they had to bend over to get into something.

Adam Or he just doesn’t understand mouse knees!

Ava Just wanted to get that out of my system. It doesn’t undermine the book at all. It’s just weird.

Ren Eldritch leads him down into the crypt, and kind of casually lets slip that no bats can cross the threshhold that Oswald is about to.

Oswald is like, ‘What? Why?’ and eventually Eldritch reveals that Hrethel had been the keeper of the Great Book, but had become seduced by its power and secrets, and tried to hoard them for himself.

There’d been a big fight, and eventually the other bats had overcome him, but the enchantments Hrethel left on the threshold meant that no bats could go into this chamber.

Ava: I thought that Oswald was a goner at this point. I thought it was a trap.

Ren: It doesn’t seem hopeful.

Oswald reaches the ancient, cobwebbed chamber which holds the wizened and desiccated body of Hrethel himself.

And then has a kind of adventure game sequence of clicking on everything looking for the hidden book.

Adam It really is very much an adventure game sequence.

Ren Before eventually, he realises that the book must be with its master. He touches the corpse of Hrethel and it crumbles to dust, revealing the Great Book, but when he opens it, he finds that every page is blank, and Hrethel has played one last trick on the bats, from the distant past.

Ava: Could I jump in with another bat texture? ‘ ‘Flushed with excitement Oswald went over to the preserved bat once more. Hrethel stared malevolently at him but he was not afraid. He put out a tentative paw and touched one of the folded wings. It was drier than a dead leaf and twice as delicate. It crumbled to dust instantly.’

Ren: ‘Surrounded by flaking particles of itself’, that’s a real texture there.

Ava: Long dead, ancient bat dust.

Adam: I mean, to be fair, that could also describe me with a case of bad dandruff.

Ava: ’Surrounded by particles of yourself’

I mean, we all are, aren’t we?

Adam: All the time.

Ren: It’s also in this chapter that Twit is referred to as ‘the witch husband’, which I enjoyed.

Adam: You sound quite sad about that, Ava.

Ava: No, I think it’s good. I think it’s one of the things that is foreshadowed in the first book, I think they already call him the witch husband. When the bats first meet him and take him off on the first trip over Deptford.

Adam: Ah, so Robin Jarvis has planned some of this!

Ava: Oh yes, it’s all there. The visions in Madame Akikuyu’s marble and the visions of the bats all seem to come true in one way or another.

Ren: It was written as one story.

Ava: Yeah, I can imagine.

Ren: And then someone was like ‘This is far too long!’

Ava: You can’t have 900 pages of mice-misery!

Adam: It suddenly makes it sound like the Dostoyevsky of children’s books.

Ren: So we leave Oswald and return to the Skirtings, where it’s getting colder and colder, and the stores of food are running lower and lower.

The Starwife is huddled by herself, refusing food and ruminating, and Audrey goes up to talk to her. The Starwife reveals that although her fur is now grey, she is in fact a black squirrel, the last of her line and consequently the last of the starwives.

The Starwife declares this to be the night that Jupiter uses the Starglass, and Arthur climbs the fence to see what he can see.

Arthur looks over the old Deptford power station, and sees a ghostly vapour form into the shape of an enormous cat, and drift towards Venice. Uh. Towards Greenwich, sorry.

Ava Towards Venice?!

Ren The Starwife tells Triton to hot-paw it to the Observatory, and Arthur follows him. The observatory hill is swirling with an ominous fog, but Triton and Arthur manage to climb it, and hear Jupiter reciting a spell.

Do we have any further observations or comments?

Ava: Just like, I think it makes sense for us to end the podcast here because as this was happening I was looking at the book and thinking ‘How is this not the climax of the book?’. It’s terrifying, it’s enormous, and everything’s gone.

It’s just a bold thing to have halfway through your narrative.

Adam: Shall we finish with me, do you want me to read it?

Ren: Yes, so, we’ll let Adam and Ava to read us out of this episode, and we’ll return next time for the darker half of the book, honestly. It’s only going to get more miserable from this part in. So we’ll see you then!

Adam  The world was lit suddenly by a brilliant flash of lightning. Thunder rolled and the earth trembled. At last the Lord of the Winter was revealed and the two mice covered their faces in fear. The last traces of mist swept back like a curtain and there he was, the Tyrant of the Dark. He stood astride the observatory dome and cackled.

The unquiet spirit of Jupiter was immense, his huge, flickering outline reached high into the night sky. It was still that of a cat, but one of nightmare proportions. Ice fell from his transparent fur and where his gleaming, cruel feet touched a bitter, arctic frost sparked and fizzled, freezing everything it touched. The dome creaked and a long crack shivered round it.

The ice which flowed over it was as strong as steel. It gleamed bitterly with the deep blue of the eternal void and icicles larger than stalactites stretched down to the ground. A howling gale tore round Jupiter’s huge head. From his mouth his deadly breath hailed down, full of winter’s hatred for the living. His savage teeth were like swords of polished, pale metal, forged by cruel, satanic fingers for a demon’s armoury, his nostrils dripped with tongues of cold flame and his ears were pressed flat against his spectral skull.

But the eyes of the Unbeest were the most terrifying of all – they shone out into the darkness, blazing fires of pure malice. They seared into anything their baleful glance fell upon, withering the trees and cracking the ground. This was where the lightning was born. As Jupiter recited his dread words his eyes dazzled and a stream of fatal energy burst forth, tearing the sky apart and searing into the blackness of space. His snarls were like thunder and his anger a blizzard.

Ava ‘Hear me servants of the dark void,’ his voice hissed upwards. ‘I am the Lord of the World. Whilst you cringe, trapped forever in your exile, know that I, Jupiter, have unlocked the gates of Death and trouble once more the unhappy land. I call you to witness now the tumult I bring.’

Adam He raised his mighty arms over his head and laughed wildly. Between his cruel claws something small shimmered with a silver light. ‘The Starglass,’ breathed Thomas fearfully. He and Arthur were very afraid; they could not believe what their eyes were seeing. Jupiter was indeed a creature of nightmares. They felt like two insects brought before a god, but they could not run to save themselves. Everything now seemed hopeless, there was nothing they could do against such a foe – all was lost. In his huge, brutish claws the Starglass of the Starwife looked like a tiny toy, but it was the only way Jupiter could achieve his goal. If the old squirrel had been there she would have ordered Thomas to destroy it at once. But she was far away and the mice had no idea what was about to take place. They thought that nothing worse could happen – they were never more wrong.

Ava ‘Slave of the timeless stars,’ bellowed Jupiter, ‘obey your new master!’

Adam And he called out a sentence of harsh, powerful words from the far reaches of the abyss.

Ava ‘Remael sen Hoarmath eis Hagolceald!’ he proclaimed defiantly and he threw back his head with a mad, insane gurgle in his ghostly throat. The world seemed to hold its breath. All noise ceased and even the wind dropped as Jupiter completed his spell.

The hush became deafening as the seconds stretched into minutes. In his claws the Starglass began to pulse with light. It throbbed and vibrated violently until Jupiter himself shook. The dome split further and bricks tumbled to the frozen ground.

But Jupiter laughed at the top of his voice and his screeching cackles were heard all over the trembling world. Down at the base of the statue Arthur fell to the floor and hid his face. The noise was too much and he thought he was going to faint at any moment.

Thomas pressed his nails up into his hair, the woollen hat was pushed off his head and he ground his teeth together in agony as the Unbeest’s voice pierced his very soul. Arthur squealed and writhed around in his torment, then with one final groan of despair he fainted and for him the pain came to an end.

The midshipmouse looked at his young companion but was unable to help. Shortly he too would pass out, but he summoned his reserves of strength and raised his head back to the black fiend on top of the observatory. The Starglass in Jupiter’s iron grasp spilled out its power. The magic of centuries, stored in the depths, poured forth and a high pitched scream issued from its heart.

Ava ‘No,’ gloated Jupiter coldly, ‘you must obey me, I know your secret name and have uttered the charm laid down long ago. The celestial pivots are loosened and I command you to hold the heavens once more.’

Adam The silver light from the Starglass suddenly soared upwards. The Unbeest yelled in his triumph and danced on the dome like a maniac. Thomas felt Jupiter’s shrieks of joy boom round his head and he cried out in pain. It hurt so much that he started to hallucinate. It seemed as if the very stars swirled and boiled.

Thomas shook his head and dragged the paws from his face and stared intently at the heavens. He was not imagining it – the stars were indeed exploding and seething. That was the final horror.

The midshipmouse felt all his strength trickle away and he collapsed senseless next to Arthur. The night sky quivered, the fierce starlight shook and waned. A host of wailing voices filled the air as one by one the stars were extinguished. Their light streamed to the Earth, slivers of brilliant thread shooting out of the black chasm.

The slender beams were sucked down to the observatory, down to where Jupiter was waiting, flourishing the Starglass, down into its depths where the brilliance was impossible to look on. As fiery rain they descended and lamentations issued from all creation.

The constellations were quenched, snuffed out by the tremendous powers of both Jupiter and the age-old Starglass and all who witnessed it fell to their knees and prayed. The endless, eternal void came flooding in and the world was plunged into darkness. Not one single star was left in the pitch black sky – all their precious, angry light was trapped in the glass and Jupiter was its master.


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About this podcast

A podcast in which one film lecturer and one scaredy-cat discuss creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and tv.

by Ren Wednesday, Adam Whybray

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