A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge

sheer speed of its mismatched legs.
    Unfortunately, as a result of these lessons, the rabbit was loose in the cheese tunnels, probably leaving an invisible trail of shed hair, fleas and rodent-fear in its wake to startle and spoil
the delicately reared truckles.
    ‘Here . . . it’s all right . . .’
    She impulsively reached out towards the rabbit, in spite of the tufted hole that its teeth had ravaged in the shoulder of her doublet. The rabbit scrambled away from her with a chitter of claws,
and Neverfell flinched backwards, grazing her knuckles on the coarse wood of the shelf.
    ‘Don’t . . .’ Somehow she had to calm and capture the rabbit again, before the cheesemaker found out. ‘Is it my face? Look – it’s all right, I’m
covering it.’ She tied her velvet mask over her features. ‘There! Look! Bad face gone away now.’ The rabbit simply broke into a round-backed bobbing run, and took off down the
corridor. ‘Oh, you little . . .’ Neverfell scrambled to her feet and sprinted after it, the tiny pail rattling on her arm.
    The rabbit took the first left into the Whistleplatch corridor. It squeezed between the vats as if it were boneless, and lurked behind them until Neverfell poked it out with a broom handle. It
kicked a bucket of standing cream and for a time Neverfell could track the long pale prints left by its back legs. By throwing herself full length she managed to place a hand upon it, pushing it to
the ground, so that it flattened itself again into a quivering, docile dollop of rabbit. Then she tried to pick it up and it transformed into a wild white halo of fur, claw and tooth. Cursing and
bleeding from a dozen scratches, Neverfell set off in pursuit once more.
    Every time the rabbit had a choice between two corridors, it chose the one that sloped upward. Up, up, up , its frantic unthinking heart was chanting. Up means out. Somehow
Neverfell could almost hear it, and as she pursued her heart began the same chant.
    At last it found a dead end, a parade of mighty cheese presses crushing the whey out of great Gravelhide truckles as rough as a cow’s tongue.
    ‘Ha!’ Neverfell swung the door shut behind her and fastened it, then gazed up and down the Gravelhide passage. There – a pair of white ears. The rabbit had squeezed behind one
of the presses.
    ‘Oh . . . don’t make me do this.’ There was a scrabbling. Silence. Scrabbling. Silence. Silence. ‘All right, all right!’ Neverfell pushed back her hair, then began
slowly dragging the nearest press forward.
    First press, grindingly, painfully dragged away from the wall. No rabbit.
    Second press. No rabbit.
    Third press. No rabbit. And . . . no wall.
    Down through the part of the wall that had been hidden by the great presses, there ran a vertical crack some four feet high. At the bottom, the crack opened into a triangular hole, half-filled
with rubble. At some long-forgotten time, the rock’s great mass must have shifted, so that it cracked and created this narrow fissure. The rows of great presses had concealed it.
    There were distinct rabbit tracks in the surrounding mortar dust, leading to the hole. Neverfell stared. Lay flat. Clawed the chunks of loose masonry out of the way. Peered.
    With her cheek pressed against the ground, Neverfell could see that the aperture continued into the rock for about three yards, and then opened out into a larger space. What was more, there
seemed to be a hint of light beyond. With a rush of the blood, she realized that she was on the edge of Master Grandible’s district. If that was another tunnel beyond the hole, it was one
that she had never seen before. Her well-trained cheesemaker’s nose twitched as a thousand delicate and unfamiliar smells assailed it.
    As an obedient apprentice, she knew she had to warn Master Grandible of the breach in his defences. If she did that straight away and in person, however, he would find ways to block this
beautiful hole, and she was not ready for that.