Maddigan's Fantasia (32 page)

Those trees
, which had been bare when the Fantasia passed them on its way out, were deeply green. Their leaves rustled in a light warm wind. It was two days before the solstice, two days before mid-summer, and Garland was waking into yet another morning’s sunlight angling through the van window and striking remorselessly into her face. The sun out there was determined that she should wake up and get going. Garland felt under her pillow for her diary, but she did not begin writing in it straight away though lines were scribbling themselves out in her head.

But she had said goodbye to Ferdy even if she had said it in another time, and now it was as if her life with Ferdy was – well – still important – still part of what she was in a most secret, central way – but somehow closed down. She no longer felt obliged to tell him where the Fantasia was, and what it was getting up to.

She leaned against the side of the van and looked out of the
window, cupping her hands on either side of her eyes like a passenger at sea staring out of a porthole. The van was parked on the edge of that lake, and there like a strange ship in the middle of the lake was a curious island – almost a floating city – a centre for holidays and trading. The rich people of Solis came here to relax … to lie around, staring into the blue above and the blue below. Garland leapt from her bunk, stretched, and then in a few minutes dressed and made for the outside world planning to stare into the blue herself. After all the blue belonged to everyone.

The whole Fantasia seemed to be up and about ahead of her. She thought she could see them all. Boomer was shifting some anonymous boxes, his Birdboy wings still strapped to his back and making even the simplest job difficult for him. How he loved those wings. Maddie was helping Nye yet again to straighten the stilts on the roof of his van and Yves … Garland stopped. Yves was sitting at a little table talking vigorously to a man she did not know, a man wearing a shirt with a large sun printed – or possibly embroidered – on it. As she stood wondering, the man moved and she saw that, directly below the great yellow sun his shirt sported a blue patch – a picture of the lake. No doubt about it he was a lakeman and he and Yves must be talking terms.

Garland skipped over to Maddie. ‘You should be with him,’ she said, but no longer sternly. She spoke with resignation.

‘Come off it,’ said Maddie. ‘You know the lake people don’t deal with women, not officially that is. They’re a lot of dreary old Destruction leftovers, and dealing with women is against their leftover customs.’

‘What do the lake women do? I mean what do they talk about?’ asked Garland.

‘Clothes. Babies. Shopping,’ said Maddie, grinning.

‘How dumb is that?’ asked Garland. ‘Mind you, shopping would suit Lilith.’

Another man in a matching T-shirt came towards the small table, carrying racks of fish and steak and a woman followed him carrying a tray laden with brown bottles.

‘They’re setting up a bit of a barbelay for themselves, complete with stubbies. It’s their custom. I mean they
were
from the Golden Coast before the Destruction took their beaches away from them.’

‘We haven’t time for any barbelays,’ said Garland. ‘We’re in a hurry.’

‘It’ll be quicker to go across the lake than around it,’ said Maddie. ‘I think Yves will manage to arrange something. We’ll probably have to buy our way in with a show, so get yourself ready.’

The thought of a show was wonderful. It was almost as if over the last few days the Fantasia had lost touch with its real purpose. Now it might have a chance to win itself back. As Garland spun towards the van a voice she knew all too well called out to her.

‘Hey! Hey, Garland. Look!’ and there was Boomer, now high in a tall tree, still wearing those Birdboy wings.

‘Come down!’ yelled Garland. ‘We might have a show to do.’

‘This could be my act,’ Boomer said, and he actually strutted along the branch, clucking and flapping those wings in an extremely important way. Garland couldn’t help grinning.

‘You want to see me?’ asked Boomer, spreading his arms and his wings along with them. But suddenly Lilith rushed up, screaming and calling for help.

‘It’s an emergency!’ she cried. ‘Help. He’s gone mad.’

Garland immediately thought of Timon … thought of his strangeness over the last day or two. It was not impossible to believe she might follow Lilith into Goneril’s van and find Timon gibbering and rolling on the floor, his mouth full of green froth perhaps. But it was Eden who had upset Lilith. It
was Eden who was madly searching for something, lifting not only pillows but mattresses, flinging things around him.

‘The diary!’ he shouted to Garland when he saw her in the doorway. ‘The one we brought with us. It’s gone.’

‘OK! OK!’ said Garland. ‘But don’t tear the van to bits or Goneril will absolutely tear you to bits too. Just be … just be systematic!’

She was pleased with herself for thinking of the word ‘systematic’ and Lilith was delighted with it too.

‘That’s right!’ she said. ‘Be systematic and then we’ll find it.’

But out in the reeds and rushes on the side of the lake someone was holding that diary … someone was turning the pages carefully, passing over the recent entries, going back into it a bit. Someone was reading the words, hearing them spoken in Garland’s voice.

Will there be room out there for a grown-up me? Will I ever get married? Of course I’ll never leave the Fantasia but there’s no one in the Fantasia I could marry. Well, there is Boomer of course. But I could never fall in love with Boomer – he’s only a kid, and anyway he’d only love me if I was a clockwork girl with wheels instead of feet.

Though the book was closed very gently, there was still something about its closing that seemed to suggest Timon had slammed it shut. ‘Are you the Talisman?’ he said aloud. ‘I don’t believe it. The medallion’s gone, but Eden’s still got his power. So the Talisman must still be close to us somehow. But how? The Talisman! What
is
it?
Where
is it?’ He stared down at the diary’s faded cover in a sort of angry puzzlement, then lifted it as if he were going to throw it as far as he could out into the lake. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he mumbled. ‘What am I becoming? Give me a clue! Give me a clue!’

But, though his arm went back, for some reason Timon could not throw the diary away. Instead he brought his arm
back again, paused and then, very carefully, settled the diary inside his shirt once more. As he stood there his expression changed. He was in pain. He doubled over, writhing as if he was being torn in two, clutching his chest, vaguely trying to protect the diary as he bent, while his narrowed eyes began to give off that strange greenish glow. Timon struggled with something that was in the outside world and in an inside world too. He was struggling to be himself.

At last he seemed to get himself under control once more. The anguish flowed out of him. Slowly, he stood up, then – slowly, slowly – he walked off back towards the busy Fantasia.

Nobody was particularly thinking of Timon – wondering where he was or
how
he was. Over in Goneril’s van Garland and Lilith were putting things away, though Lilith was not being particularly helpful. Eden sat slumped between the bunks, his face buried in his hands.

‘Just tell me,’ said Garland. ‘Tell me why it matters so much. I mean you can just steal another version of the diary, can’t you? Just whip it away into some other time in between mine and yours and grab the diary from back there and let the people of that other in-between time worry about losing it.’

‘You know it doesn’t work like that. Those other in-between people are
us
too,’ Eden began, but he was interrupted. Somewhere outside someone began a hoarse screaming.

‘Goneril!’ exclaimed Garland. ‘Something’s wrong – really wrong. Come on.’

Lilith was already at the door. Garland followed her almost falling over her. Eden, distracted from his own despair, leapt out after them.

Outside the Fantasia people were all staring incredulously up into the air at Boomer – Boomer flying and tumbling. Tane ran beneath him, looking up at him and shouting instructions. At any moment it seemed Boomer might actually crash to earth
again. His hands moved wildly as he tried to work the controls of the motor strapped to his chest, but anyone could see those wings were really too much for him, though every now and then it seemed he was almost in charge.

‘Change gear-mode,’ Tane shouted.

‘Land! Land!’ screamed Goneril and Boomer tumbled towards her, then swooped up. ‘I can’t,’ he shouted over his shoulder, speeding upwards into a high curve, only to come rushing down, down once more. Lilith’s scream blended with Goneril’s. But once again Boomer managed to save himself, zooming upwards, this time straight towards a tree. It seemed he must smash himself against one of the bigger branches, but he somehow managed to swing out past it, and grab a smaller one. He hung there, swinging and panting, high above the ground.

‘Whoah!’ they hear him exclaiming, and the Fantasia burst into a chorus of advice. ‘Down! Come down! Turn it off! Shrug those wings away.’

‘Pull yourself along,’ Garland shouted, perhaps more clearly than anyone else. Timon came up to join the group. Looking sideways at him, wondering where he had been, Garland thought she saw an expression of satisfaction on his face. But before she had time to wonder about this, Boomer reached for the next branch which bent and snapped in his hand.

‘Whoah!’ he cried again, now swinging by one arm high above their heads.

‘Hang on,’ called Garland, running over to the tree and beginning to climb.

‘Get the safety net!’ she heard Goneril shouting, and thought it was good advice, while Boomer dangled, perfectly still now, frightened that any sort of struggle might break the branch he was clinging to.

‘Stay cool, Boomer!’ Garland shouted, though she had no
idea just what she would do when she reached him. She was close enough now, to see that his fingers, locked around the bending branch were slipping. In another moment …

‘Do something! Do something magic!’ she could hear Lilith shouting to Eden.

And then Boomer finally lost his grip. He screamed out as he fell, and Lilith screamed too. Garland saw him tumbling past her. His fall seemed endless. But then he did hit the ground. Garland longed to clap her hands over her ears imagining that she might actually hear the crunch of Boomer’s bones.

But something entirely unexpected happened. Boomer bounced. The ground somehow rebounded beneath him as if he had fallen onto a trampoline. Boomer fell again … bounced again. ‘Whoah!’ he cried. ‘Whoahhhhh!’

And the Fantasia people burst into laughter … laughing with huge relief. Goneril embraced Eden, their saviour-magician, then ran to help Boomer to his feet once more and hug him too.

‘Your magic is still working,’ Lilith was shrieking at Eden who stood looking as surprised as anyone else. ‘Show me how to do it. Show me!’

Boomer was standing up again, staggering a little. He looked down at the ground under his feet, then stamped hard on it. It seemed perfectly solid. There wasn’t an atom of wild bounce about it.

‘Accidents will happen,’ she heard Timon calling across to Boomer. ‘Lucky you!’

She swung down from the last branch and ran towards them, shouting as she ran. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Think so,’ said Boomer. ‘I thought I had worked it all out but …’ He shrugged and began to examine his wings carefully. ‘When I got going it was all sort of scary,’ he muttered. ‘I suppose you have to practise. Birds do.’

Tane came hurrying over. ‘Thank goodness you had a bit of help with that one,’ he said. ‘And now I’m going to help you a bit more. You got that gear sequence wrong. And I think you’re heavier than most of the Birdboys. We must try to come up with a way of injecting a bit more power into that system.’

‘Wonderful!’ Maddie was calling in her bossy, head-of-the-Fantasia voice. ‘A happy end to a stupid adventure! And now back to work!’

‘Back to work!’ repeated Yves and the adults, spreading out and around, began their lifting and folding and packing once more.

‘Garland,’ Maddie was yelling. ‘Give me a hand here, will you?’

‘But Mum …’ Garland began.

‘Garland!’ Maddie shouted. ‘The solstice is galloping towards us. We’ve got to go.’

All in a moment Boomer found himself on his own, trailing one wing and staring down at another. After a moment he hitched the wing over his shoulder again. It felt almost as if he were wearing his drum. And he felt that his Fantasia family was behaving much too casually about what they had just seen. He had just had a terrible fright, but, after all, he had flown … he had actually flown, even if he had found it hard to fly in the right direction. ‘Hey!’ he called, but already people were getting to work. Only Timon was still standing around, and Timon was turned away from him, watching Garland who had done nothing but climb a tree in a perfectly ordinary way.

‘Hey you! Timon!’ And Boomer, gathering courage, leapt forward and grabbed Timon’s arm only to fall back and down as if he had been struck. For he had felt something like an electric current rushing through Timon … something quick and furious. Boomer had never been bitten by a snake but this is what he imagined a snake bite might feel like, as if the snake
itself, along with its poison, was twisting through his whole body. As Boomer lay on the ground rocking to and fro, Timon looked down at him and then, glancing left and right, leaned forward.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, but the blue eyes staring down at Boomer seemed totally chilly.

He held out his hand, but Boomer rolled himself up, like some sort of chrysalis, in his own flexible wings, shouting, ‘Get away! Stay away from me! Leave me alone.’ Then he relaxed. The wings somehow unwound themselves flicking him back onto his feet, and without looking left or right Boomer tore off toward Goneril’s van his wild wings flapping so powerfully that every step he took was like a leap into the air.