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‘Disguises! What kind?’ asked Suzy ‘I wouldn’tmyself, with some tattoos like yours’

‘Actually,’ Arthur said, ‘I ondering about disguising ourselves as rats Ordinary rats, if that’s possible I e I don’t want to get turned into a rat Not that it wouldn’t be great to be a rat, if I had to be one --’ Arthur stopped before he got hitayle and the hel to every word

‘You want anyone looking at you to see a rat,’ said Doctor Scamandros

‘Yes’

‘It can be done,’ said Sca prepared, so I shall have to start fros ill need are noses and tails’

‘Noses and tails?’

‘Yes Rat noses and tails’

Arthur winced as Longtayle’s right ear rotated and quivered in attention

‘Uh, I don’t think --’ ‘No, no Not real noses and tails We’ll have to make soo Now let me see We shall need a quantity of nice thin paper, a silue, some cardboard Activated ink’

As he spoke, the Doctor pulled all these things out of his coat pockets, along with a pair of scissors, several quills, a quill-sharpening knife, and an enamelled snuff box

‘Are you falue that when dry is quite solid and three-dimensional?’

‘You mean papier-mâché,’ said Arthur He’d made masks for the end-of-year play at his old school ‘I’ve done solue and paper I shall write on each layer of paper with Activated

Ink, i it with a spell of illusion and th with each layer, which when coed illusion that will cloak your body and present the appearance of a rat to anyone who looks at you I estimate that to produce two such rat noses will take at least five hours’

‘I think it’s going to be at least twelve hours before we even get to Drowned Wednesday,’ said Arthur ‘So we’ve got plenty of time’

‘We shall need it,’ said Scamandros ‘For the rat noses willFeverfew, as I previously mentioned To present them with the sounds and smells of a rat, we shall need to work on another spell, which will be housed in tails Tails that must be woven expressly for the purpose on looms created for that spell and that spell alone’

‘Loos with lots of threads in a fraet one in here, even if you’ve got it tucked away in those pockets’

‘Looe,’ said Scamandros He reached into his coat and cah and two inches in diameter They each had four nails hammered into the top of them

‘Allow me to introduce you to the wonders of the Arkruchill circle loom,’ said Doctor Sca,’ said Arthur ‘I kno to do that Or I did know, once’

‘French knitting?’ asked Sca But doubtless, as with ood ideas, it came from your Earth and was transplanted to Arkruchillor by travellers from the House You will need small hooks and the yarn’

He handed over two small silver hook-ended needles and two balls of brown, fuzzy wool, then quickly explained how to run the wool through the cotton reel, arrange it around the nails, and start weaving or knitting, with the occasional use of the hook After a few false starts, Arthur and Suzy quickly began to produce lengths of knitted wool

Once they had the knack, Scamandros took the reels back

‘I have to write the spell on theain,’ he explained ‘In any case, we should do the noses first They will take the ht hours were taken up entirely in craft activity, interspersed with occasional breaks for tea or to look at solobe Once they passed through a large sargasso of salvage, and all kinds of things bu-lost possessions, treasured by their owners Many of them were children’s toys, di in the darkness of the sea

Finally, the as done The rat noses looked like papier-mâché cones with paper whiskers The rat tails looked like three-foot-long braids of broool But if you looked closely, you could see the words of Sca about in the paper, or on the wool Tiny lettersup into words Arthur couldn’t read thees of rats Nor out of the gutter near the central railway station in his old hoed Scamandros ‘But please remember, you must have both nose and tail on for the complete illusion, and if you only wear one of the two, there ht be some imbalance in the spell’

‘Like what?’ asked Suzy

‘Suffice to say that if you put a nose on, put the tail on quickly thereafter,’ said Scamandros ‘And vice versa’

Arthur picked up a rat nose and stuck it over his own, tying the cord at the back of his head It felt ridiculous, a feeling made even worse when he fastened the rat tail to the back of his trousers

‘Marvellous!’ said the Doctor ‘Say sorumbled Arthur As far as he could tell he looked just the same and his voice sounded norhed

‘I’ll try mine!’ she said

Arthur slipped off his rat nose and undid the tail as Suzy put hers on As she tied the cord at the back, she disappeared Arthur blinked, and it took hi down There was a rat near his feet, looking up at hi a pink paw

‘It works!’ exclai around her neck like a strange necklace

‘I could have done with one of these years ago,’ she said ‘How long will it last?’

‘A few days,’ said Sca in the Activated Ink will eventually eat through the paper and the wool But it is a reliable, well-ht even last a little longer’

Arthur looked at Suzy Her eyes were dreaht about an additional use for the rat disguise, beyond sneaking into Feverfeorldlet

‘Pilchards,’ said the hellobe It was suddenly full of flickering silver shapes, so many that Arthur had to stare and focus to work out that the Balaena had struck a huge shoal of fish

‘We tayle tenof fish ‘She concentrates the fish in her path, using her powers’

He picked up the speaking tube