Neverwhere

Richard took a step back and stepped on someone's foot. Someone was well over seven feet tall, and was covered in tufty ginger-colored hair. Someone's teeth had been sharpened to points. Someone picked Richard up with a hand the size of a sheep's head, and put Richard's head so close to someone's mouth that Richard almost gagged. "I'm really sorry," said Richard. "I—I'm looking for a girl named Door. Do you know—" But someone dropped him onto the floor and moved on.

Another whiff of cooking food wafted across the floor, and Richard, who had managed to forget how hungry he was ever since he had declined the prime cut of tomcat—he could not think how many hours before—now found his mouth watering, and his thinking processes beginning to grind to a halt.

The iron-haired woman running the next food stall he approached did not reach to Richard's waist. When Richard tried to talk to her, she shook her head, drew a finger across her lips. She could not talk, or did not talk, or did not want to talk. Richard found himself conducting the negotiations for a cottage cheese and lettuce sandwich and a cup of what looked and smelled like home-brewed lemonade, in sign language. His food cost him a ballpoint pen, and a book of matches he had forgotten he had. The little woman must have felt that she had got by far the better of the deal, for, as he took his food, she threw in a couple of small, nutty cookies.

Richard stood in the middle of the throng, listening to the music—someone was, for no reason that Richard could easily discern, singing the lyrics of "Greensleeves" to the tune of "Yakkety-Yak"— watching the bizarre bazaar unfold around him, and eating his sandwiches.

As he finished the last of the sandwiches, he realized that he had no idea how anything he had just eaten had tasted; and he resolved to slow down, and chew the cookies more slowly. He sipped the lemonade, making it last. "You need a bird, sir?" asked a cheery voice, close at hand. "I got rooks and ravens, crows and starlings. Fine, wise birds. Tasty and wise. Brilliant."

Richard said, "No, thank you" and turned around.

The hand-painted sign above the stall said:

OLD BAILEY'S BIRDS AND INFORMATION

There were other, smaller, signs scattered about:

YOU WANTS IT, WE KNOWS IT, and YOU WON'T FIND A PLUMPER STARLING!!!! and WHEN IT'S TIME FOR A ROOK, IT'S TIME FOR OLD BAILEY!! Richard found himself thinking of the man he had seen when he had first come to London, who used to stand outside Leicester Square Tube station with a huge hand-painted sandwich board that exhorted the world to "Less Lust Through Less Protein, Eggs, Meat, Beans, Cheese and Sitting."

Birds hopped and fluttered about small cages that looked as if they had been woven out of TV antennae. "Information, then?" continued Old Bailey, warming to his own sales-pitch. "Roof-maps? History? Secret and mysterious knowledge? If I don't knows it, it's probably better forgot. That's what I says." The old man still wore his feathered coat, was still wrapped about with ropes and cords. He blinked at Richard, then pulled on the pair of spectacles tied about his neck with string. He inspected Richard carefully through them. "Hang on—I knows you. You was with the marquis de Carabas. On the rooftops. Remember? Eh? I'm Old Bailey. Remember me?" He thrust out his hand, pumped Richard's hand furiously.

"Actually," said Richard, "I'm looking for the marquis. And for a young lady named Door. I think they're probably together."

The old man did a little jig, causing several feathers to detach themselves from his coat; this provoked a chorus of raucous disapproval from the various birds around them. "Information! Information!" he announced to the crowded room. "See? I told 'em. Diversify, I said. Diversify! You can't sell rooks for the stewpot forever—anyway, they taste like boiled slipper. And they're so stupid. Thick as custard. You ever eaten rook?" Richard shook his head. That was something he could be certain of, at any rate. "What'll you give me?" asked Old Bailey.

"Sorry?" said Richard, awkwardly leaping from ice floe to ice floe in the stream of the old man's consciousness.

"If'n I give ye your information. What'll I get?"

"I don't have any money," said Richard. "And I just gave my pen away."

He began to pull out the contents of Richard's pockets. "There," said Old Bailey. "That!"

"My hankie?" asked Richard. It was not a particularly clean handkerchief; it had been a present from his Aunt Maude, on his last birthday. Old Bailey seized it and waved it above his head, happily.

"Never you fear, laddie," he sang, triumphantly. "Your quest is at an end. Go down there, through that door. You can't miss them. They're auditioning." He was pointing towards Harrods' extensive network of Food Halls. A rook cawed maliciously. "None of your beak," said Old Bailey, to the rook. And, to Richard, he said, "Thank'ee for the little flag." He jigged around his stall, delighted, waving Richard's handkerchief to and fro.