Crossing To Paradise by Kevin Crossley-Holland

and then a little crumpled piece of parchment.
    â€œWe can sit here,” the priest said, and he and Gatty sat down, side by side, under an old crab-apple tree.
    Austin put the parchment on the ground in front of Gatty.
    A.a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h.i.k.
l.m.n.o.p.q.r.s.t.
v.u.x.y.z. amen.
    â€œLetters,” said Gatty. “What’s this at the end?”
    â€œBegin at the beginning,” Austin told her. Then, using a twig as a pointer, he advanced from letter to letter, naming it, sounding it, and having Gatty copy him. “Ai…a. Bee…b. See…c. Dee…d. Eee…e.
    â€œThere you are!” said Austin. “The letters we use to make words. Now copy each letter on to the slate.”
    â€œI will!” cried Gatty eagerly.
    â€œWhat’s London like then?” Gatty asked Nakin as they and Lady Gwyneth led the group south.
    â€œLondon!” he said. “Where can I begin?”
    â€œIs it as large as Ludlow?” Gatty demanded.
    Nakin gave a short, scornful laugh. “It’s larger than all the Marcher towns rolled together!”
    â€œIs it as large as France?” Gatty asked.
    Lady Gwyneth smiled, then quickly tucked her chin into her cloak.
    â€œYou can’t compare London to France,” said Nakin.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œOne is a city and the other’s a country.”
    â€œI didn’t know that,” Gatty said.
    â€œLondon’s like a monster with one hundred arms,” Nakin said. “It’s like the monsters in the sea beyond Venice.”
    Gatty opened her eyes sky-wide.
    â€œYes, there are. And there’s a huge fish, more than one mile long.”
    Gatty gasped.
    â€œBut London’s even longer than that,” Nakin told her. “And as wide as it’s long. It’s noisy. It’s dirty. It’s everything. You’ll see.”

8
    As they walked on, Gatty thought of the largest, noisiest, and dirtiest things she had ever seen or heard, but nothing began to prepare her for the shock of stepping through the wide arched gate in the towering wall, and into the city of London.
    The first thing was: a burly man pushed right between Gatty and Lady Gwyneth, in a hurry to get out through the gate as they were coming in.
    The second thing was: Lady Gwyneth was smacked on the left shoulder by a flying cabbage.
    â€œYach!” bawled a woman at the burly man. “Next time I’ll give you cabbage ears.”
    Lady Gwyneth took Gatty’s arm and held it tightly. She walked on as if nothing had happened.
    Ugh! The stink! Sewage pits. Putrid fruit. Fish so rotten they glowed green in the gloom. Scrapheaps of heaven knows what. Mud. Under the sky’s leaden lid, all London’s foul odors swarmed and stewed around them. The smell was so thick Gatty could taste it! She grinned and screwed up her face like a pickled walnut.
    There was no stopping. The pilgrims were part of a seething throng. Two men rolling a cart loaded with samples of wool. Another man carrying an oblong brass plate on his head! Another wearing harness. Three women clutching awkward hens to their breasts, and another cradling the horn of a cow. Dozens and dozens, hundreds, hundreds of men and women and children side-stepping, jostling, striding, barging, talking, bargaining, laughing, arguing, playing, skipping, tripping, yelling, wailing—or, like some people, slumped against walls, somehow sunken into themselves, with nothing left in this world to hope for.
    â€œWhere are we going?” Gatty called out.
    â€œThe Three Archers,” Nakin shouted. “Down by the river. Follow me.”
    At the far end of the long street leading away from the city walls, there was a marketplace with three lanes spoking out of it.
    Some people took the left lane, some the right, and some, like the pilgrims, chose the middle one. For the first time since entering the city, they had a little space to pause and draw breath.
    At this moment, two boys