Maddigan's Fantasia (36 page)

‘But I might,’ said yet another voice. Tane – Tane followed by Boomer pushing a trolley with a small tank on it, Boomer’s great bird wings strapped across the top of the tank and flapping as if they were longing to take off into the air. Tane was armed, not with mere arrows but with a hose. ‘We’ve got a
water tank hidden here … and you don’t like water, do you?’

As Tane said this, Boomer turned on a pump at the back of the tank and Tane directed a sudden stream of water toward Maska. Maska leapt over the jet, jumped successfully enough, but only to land with an ominous crunch. One of his legs seemed to collapse under him, straighten, collapse again but then, finally, to straighten once more.

‘I’ll get you. I’ll get you all!’ he screamed at them, retreating in great bounding strides. In spite of his awkwardness he moved at unnatural speed, smashing through the bushes, ploughing right over some of them.

‘Quick! After him!’ yelled Garland, as they began their chase, Garland, Tane and Maddie leading, and Boomer following behind them all. He did not look as if he was being left behind however. He moved like someone with a secret plan of his own.

Left behind Timon watched them go. Then he bent his head, seeming to struggle with himself yet again. His shoulders lifted and dropped down, his bent head swung from side to side … and then slowly, as if he had finally decided just who he was, his head lifted again. There was very little of Timon left in the face that looked out at the world, slitted eyes peering between thin strands of golden hair. Timon stood straighter. His shoulders seemed to broaden. Then he lifted an arm level with his shoulder, paused, looking down at the chain that dangled from it. He laughed. Then, abruptly, he jerked his arm high into the air, reaching for the branches above him. There was a jangling sound as one of the chains that held him broke away from him and fell uselessly to the ground. There was no one there to see Timon transforming – Timon breaking his chains and walking effortlessly away, green in the green world, following the vans, not his friends, and making for Solis.

Out in the thin forest,
darting from tree to tree, Maska ran, then paused and looked behind him. There was no one following him now. He had shaken them off. Though Maska was not the sort of creature who was able to relax, a kind of ease overcame him. His movements slowed down, becoming rather more controlled as he began to March forward, sure of himself and sure of his direction. If Maska had been the sort of creature capable of showing pleasure, he would have shown it.

Yet suddenly he paused in mid-stride, tottering in a way he would not have done when he first rode into the Fantasia, all those weeks ago. He looked at the ground ahead of him very intently, as if he expected to see enemy tracks, but the leaves and grasses had nothing to show him. Then it happened again. The air throbbed. A shadow, almost like the shadow of a cloud, but moving faster than any cloud shadow slid across the grasses in front of him. Maska looked up. There, circling overhead, looking down on him, was a strange shape, huge wings outspread, bigger than a hawk, bigger even than an eagle.

Boomer.

Giving a wild triumphant cry, Boomer swooped down at Maska who leapt back as if Boomer might indeed attack him with claws and a curved beak.

‘Suck on this, robot!’ Boomer screamed, but in his excitement he narrowly escaped smashing himself against the top branches of a tree. He veered away, desperate to find space in which to balance himself again. As Boomer wobbled wildly, struggling to regain his smooth flight line, Maska took one step – then another and then, able to run once more, shot sideways to vanish under the trees.

Boomer, swooping and sliding through the air, struggling to work out where Maska might be, suddenly found he had shot out over the edge of the forest and was circling over a wasteland that might once have been a town. There among the rubble below him he could make out the skeletons of buildings, the beetle-shells of things that might once have been cars. Circling again lower and lower, he finally landed in an open space. The motor on his chest had been enlarged. New wires, like brightly coloured worms, coiled out of it. Boomer began to examine these new connections carefully.

‘Where is he?’ asked a voice … and Boomer started wildly, although it was a voice he knew well.

Garland stood, panting and dishevelled, looking around her wildly. Eden came up behind her, staring rather cautiously at Boomer, for in this particular adventure it seemed there was no one who could be trusted. Everything, everybody, might change in a minute or two.

‘They’re still not quite right,’ said Boomer. ‘I think it’s this one.’

‘Hey! Where is he?’ Garland cried again.

‘Lost him. Sorry!’ said Boomer. ‘This motor gives me so much more power I can’t quite get the hang of it. It’s almost like I’m too light for it now.’

‘Where are we?’ asked Eden.

‘It’s a place called Outland,’ said Garland. ‘Solis began here, but moved on over there. These are the scraps it left behind.’

She stared around, searching the ruins, the retreating lines of trees, even the dominating shape of the city, for some sign that Jewel might be close. She listened for crying. It suddenly seemed to her that, even with Boomer there at her elbow, fiddling with his newly powerful motor, even with Eden the magician-boy, the world around her had never been so echoing and empty. The trees had stopped looking like real trees, the sky like a real sky. Instead it looked as if the world had been painted on cloth then set around its edges with a great toy forest, all intended to hide the true world and to confuse someone like Garland.

She found herself longing – not for Yves or Maddie or any Fantasia person, but for her silver girl, the strange ghost who knew all the ways of the world and could point the right way out to her. She clapped her hands across her eyes.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Boomer, staring at her, but Garland did not answer.

‘Shhh!’ whispered Eden. ‘She’s concentrating. She’s making something happen.’

‘Silver girl! Silver girl!’ Garland was muttering into the palms of the hands she was holding over her face. ‘I need you. I
need
you! I
command
you.’

Then she parted her fingers, and peered between them.

There on a broken wall ahead of her she saw something move. She could hardly believe it. The silver girl, faint but certain, shifted like a daylight ghost.

‘I see her,’ Garland cried in triumph, pointing with both hands. Both boys looked in the direction in which Garland was pointing.

‘What’s she on about?’ asked Boomer. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘Shut up,’ said Eden. ‘Let’s do what she’s telling us to do. That silver-girl stuff has worked before, hasn’t it?’

‘This way,’ said Garland, for the silver girl was moving now, sliding from one broken wall to another, rippling faintly across the smashed stones. ‘This way!’ said Garland. ‘Follow me.’

Back in the forest Maska strode along as if he knew exactly where he was going. Trees and bushes caught at him, but he broke through them as if he were the only real thing in a ghost world that deserved to be smashed into nothing. Even the sound of the wind seemed like the voice of a dream rather than a real sound of a real world. And suddenly another sound intruded … a sound that was certainly not a true part of the forest. The sound of a baby weakly grizzling.

Maska’s steps quickened. Walking with confidence he burst an open glade, and there sitting beside a small fire was Ozul struggling with Jewel, who was waving her arms desperately. Ozul looked up, his face sharp with hope.

‘Where is it?’

‘I could not get it,’ Maska said.

‘But we must have it. We must!’ shouted Ozul. His raised voice startled Jewel who began to scream. Ozul looked down at a scatter of small objects at his side. He picked up something and dropped it into Jewel’s open mouth. ‘There!’ he cried. ‘Take that and sleep!’ He looked up at Maska.’ I have to drug her. We can’t have her making a noise or they’ll all be down on us. But we must have that unit back again.’

‘I could not get it,’ said Maska. ‘I have been burned. I have been drowned. I have sparked. I am not what I was. If we do not go back now, I will break down altogether and you will be on your own.’

‘But if we go back without the boys as well as the baby the Nennog will be extremely annoyed with us,’ Ozul said. ‘We might be terminated. You heard him say so.’

‘That is true. But if I do not go back I will terminate anyway,’ said Maska.

‘And what about me?’ yelled Ozul.

‘I don’t care about you,’ Maska said. ‘I am not constructed to feel affection. You know that.’

Jewel’s crying was lessening. Ozul looked down at her.

‘She’s going to sleep,’ he said with relief. ‘At least we’ll have a bit of silence while we work out what to do next. We could kill her of course. But if we kill her the Master might abandon us – let us die in this appalling time. She’s our ransom, if you like.’ The crying stopped altogether. ‘Silence!’ said Ozul gratefully.

And a short distance away, half-jogging, half-tumbling through the ruins of Outland, Garland stopped suddenly.

‘She’s gone,’ she cried. ‘The silver girl has just disappeared into nothing.’

‘She wasn’t ever there anyway,’ said Boomer. ‘She’s just something you dream up.’

‘She seems to – to work though,’ argued Eden.

‘She was there,’ said Garland, ‘and now she’s gone. Though just before she disappeared she seemed to be pointing at something … something over there.’

‘Her pointing’s always meant something before,’ said Eden. ‘Let’s take a look anyway.’

They scrambled across collapsed walls.

‘Funny to think that people once lived here,’ Eden said, speaking in a voice that was almost a whisper. ‘Funny to think of the strangeness of time sort of sweeping things in and then sweeping them out again.’ He looked at Garland. ‘You live in a land filled with ruins, don’t you?’

‘That’s because of the Chaos,’ Garland half-whispered back. ‘Anyhow it was about
there
that the silver girl was pointing.’ They stood looking up and down what had once been a street, hoping Outland would yield them some clue to its mysteries.

‘There!’ cried Eden, suddenly pointing almost as the silver girl had pointed.

Behind a tangle of fallen posts and broken wire an unexpected oval dark space could be seen. It looked so much like an eye it was almost as if the ruins were looking back at them without blinking once.

‘It’s just a hole,’ said Boomer rather nervously, but Garland was already scrambling across the posts and through the wires.

‘This must be it,’ she said. ‘Has to be!’ The boys heard her hissing words echo as if they were confronted by an army of serpents. ‘It’s a tunnel leading to – well, leading in the direction of Solis.’

‘It’ll be too dark for us to crawl along it,’ Boomer said even more reluctantly.

‘No,’ Garland said, as she wormed her way down into it. ‘There are patches where the roof has fallen in so it’s not too bad. I can see well … fairly well.’

‘Sounds dreadful,’ mumbled Boomer, following Eden who was following Garland. ‘It makes me want to sneeze.’

‘Don’t sneeze,’ said Eden. ‘You might wake the giant cockroaches.’

‘What giant cockroaches?’ cried Boomer alarmed.

Garland stopped so suddenly that Eden ran into her.

‘Hey, Boomer,’ she whispered. ‘Listen! Eden was just teasing. Don’t shout. Whisper everything. Crawl quietly and don’t scrape everything with those wings of yours. You should have left them behind. Remember, I was
shown
this tunnel. It means something.’

‘My wings are folded up,’ Boomer whispered back. ‘They fold well.’

Garland crawled on towards the next patch of light, sure that she was doing the right thing, but entirely mixed up about what she was doing, where she was going or what she might find at
the end of the tunnel. And suddenly as she crawled she began to hear voices … two voices … voices she recognized.

‘If we go back without the boys,’ Maska was saying, ‘the Nennog will surely terminate us. I am engineered to resist termination. That’s why I have lasted here and self-repaired myself over and over again in this loathsome time.’

‘We must tell him that the Fantasia discovered the boys were traitors and that they were put to death,’ Ozul said. ‘After all, we do have the Nennog’s Talisman at last. And as for the solar converter – well, it would have been good if we could take it home to our own time, but I believe there are – well – let’s say
forces
in Solis, who will take care of it for us. Remember, the Nennog has a past deeply rooted in Solis, and I think he has several ways of working things to his advantage. He is working
here
as well as
there
.’

Garland found she was now squatting in deep shadows, at the back of a great cave, its floor covered with rocks and stones. In the daylight at the mouth of the cave Ozul was working desperately putting together some device which Garland imagined might be some sort of slider, some instrument that would carry them back to their own time. There on the far side of the cave, she made out the shape of the carrycot and knew that Jewel was there, needing to be rescued.

‘There are friends of the Nennog in Solis?’ said Maska. ‘I did not know he bothered with friends.’

‘Not friends but allies perhaps,’ said Ozul. ‘More than allies. His great change – his move to power – began back in this time. We were both told.’

‘I have suffered damage,’ said Maska. ‘I do not remember what I was told. I am full of patches of nothing.’

Garland, moving as quietly as she could, slid along the back of the cave. If she could stay in the shadows … if she could slide that carrycot, Jewel safely in it, back down the cave to
Eden without waking the baby … if she could slide the carrycot back down into the tunnel … so many ‘ifs’!

‘Hold the light higher,’ said Ozul. And Maska obeyed. Feeling the light move across her, Garland froze there at the back of the cave, but Maska and Ozul were intent on putting their device together. They had their backs to her. Neither of them saw her there. Garland took another step and then another. She crept on, and at last found herself looking down at the sleeping baby, somehow knowing at once that its sleep was not a natural sleep. She hoisted the carrycot, remembering how she had carried it before – how to hold it away from her legs so that she would not trip.

In spite of the batwings folded in on his back and the motor strapped to his chest, Boomer had pulled himself out of the tunnel and was holding out a hand to Eden. They were both moving quietly – very quietly indeed – but Garland rather wished they had stayed down below and out of sight.

Something at the mouth of the cave clinked then rattled.

‘Did you drop it?’ she heard Ozul cry. One step. Another step.

‘How I long to be back in my own time again and free from your company,’ Ozul said to Maska.

‘How I long to be restored,’ Maska remarked. ‘I have never needed company, but I am badly in need of repair.’

‘One more connection …’ said Ozul. There was a click followed by a hiss and suddenly Garland found herself flooded with light. She stood pinned by it there at the back of the cave, the carrycot swinging from her hands in front of her.

Ozul sighed with relief.

‘It is prepared. And it’s working. Get the child,’ he commanded and then Ozul and Maska, turning to where they believed Jewel to be, saw Garland, almost at the mouth of the tunnel, and stared taken aback. ‘You people never give up do you?’ said Ozul. Garland dropped the carrycot, and scooped
the sleeping baby up into her arms. ‘You’re not getting her!’ she screamed diving towards the mouth of the tunnel and the eager arms of Eden, as Ozul loomed over her, snatching wildly at Jewel. Boomer leapt onto his back, while Eden, quick as a wild cat, dived around the edge of the cave making for the unit Ozul and Maska had put together with such enormous care.

‘Get him off! Get him off!’ Ozul was choking, reaching back for Boomer.

And then the carefully constructed slider exploded, bright arrows of light shooting out in every direction. Eden! thought Garland. Eden had managed to pull off one of his magical tricks. Or perhaps he’d just kicked it over. Ozul let out a cry of despair.