The Iron Woman Read Online Free Page A

down on its back. Then it scrambled to its feet, leapt up and fell on its back, over and over, as if it were inside some kind of spinning fiery bubble, inside the fiery hole. But its voice came loud and clear, a wailing cry like the same words shouted again and again. But Lucy still could not make out what words those were, till the frog too whirled into smoke.
    Then came a squirming thing that Lucy could not make out. Then with a shock she recognized it. It was ahuman baby. It looked like a fat pink newt, jerking and flailing inside a fiery bubble. But just like those other creatures it came up the fiery tunnel, doing its dance, which was like a fighting to kick and claw its way out of the fiery bubble. This time the crying was not like words. It was simply crying – the wailing, desperate cry of a human baby when it cries as if the world had ended.
    Lucy could not bear to see any more. She knew this baby, too, would suddenly burst into flames, blaze into a whirl of smoke and vanish. She dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.
    As she got control of herself, she suddenly thought: This is my nightmare. I’m back in it. If I make a big effort, I’ll wake up and everything will be all right. And she looked up.
    But if she had hoped to see her attic bedroom with the case of five stuffed owls, it was no good. There in front of her eyes were the black columns of the legs of the Iron Woman. And there was the cold river. And she could feel that strangeness in her ears, that ringing, but fainter now, with the singing of the birds breaking through.
    The Iron Woman was gazing out through the trees. ‘What’s happened?’ cried Lucy. ‘Oh, what’s wrong with everything?’
    The rumbling voice shook the air softly all around her. ‘Them,’ she heard, in a low thunder. ‘Them. Them.They have done it. And I have come to destroy them.’
    The great black eyes stared at Lucy – black and yet also red, with a dull glow. Then the voice came again, louder, like a distant explosion: ‘Destroy them!’
    And again, still louder, so the air or her ears or her whole head seemed to split. Her whole body cringed, as if a jet fighter had suddenly roared down out of nowhere ten feet above the tree tops:
    ‘Destroy them!’
    Who? Lucy was wondering wildly. Who does she mean? Who are ‘them’? And she would have asked, but the Iron Woman had lifted a foot high above the ground and for a frightful moment Lucy thought this huge, terrible being had gone mad, like a mad elephant, and was going to stamp her flat. Then the foot came down hard, and the river bank jumped. The Iron Woman raised her other foot. She raised her arms. Her giant fists clenched and unclenched. Her foot came down and the ground leaped. Her eyes now glared bright red, like traffic lights at danger.
    Slowly, the vast shape began to dance, there on the river bank. Lifting one great foot and slamming it down. Lifting the other great foot. She began to circle slowly. Her stamping sounded like deep slow drumbeats, echoing through her iron body. But as she danced, she sang, in that awful voice, as if Lucy were dangling from the tail of a jet fighter just behind the jets:

    ‘DESTROY THE POISONERS.
    THE IGNORANT ONES.
    DESTROY THE POISONERS.
    THE IGNORANT ONES.
    THE RUBBISHERS.
    DESTROY.
    THE RUBBISHERS.
    DESTROY.’
    She wasn’t singing so much as roaring and groaning. She seemed to have forgotten Lucy. It was an incredible sight. The size of several big elephants rolled into one, and now working herself up, every second more and more enraged. And Lucy was thinking: She must mean the Waste Factory. People are always worrying about how the Waste Factory poisons everything. She’ll trample the whole thing flat. Nothing can stop her.
    Lucy’s father worked at the Waste Factory. Everybody worked at the Waste Factory. Only the month before, the Waste Factory had doubled its size. It was importing waste now from all over the world. It was booming. Her