Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex (9 page)

The older boy groaned. What a useless bunch of kids he’d been lumbered with. Every one of them could win a misery guts contest in ugly town.

“Oh, lighten up, the lot of you!” he called out. “This has got to be better than what you left behind at home, hasn’t it?”

Five sullen faces stared back at him. He rolled his eyes and knocked his knuckles on his temple.

“Hopeless!” he uttered. “Bloody hopeless. Right, I’m going to grab a shower. I’ve a feeling I’m going to get lucky, not that any of you can possibly understand what that means. If you need a wazz, go now while I get my towel. Just a wazz though; if you want to drop a log, tough – you’ll have to wait till I’m done.”

He went up the stairs to the mezzanine. At least he’d had the sense to be first up here and take ownership of one of those beds. He wouldn’t have to sleep down there, which would be an airless pit of sweaty socks, bad breath and BO by tomorrow morning. Herr Spenzer’s zits probably glowed in the dark too.

At the top of the stairs Marcus stopped. The other bed up here had been taken by the black lad from the other coach. He was reclining on the covers with his earphones in, puffing away on a cigarette. The grey smoke had gathered in a ghostly canopy overhead.

Marcus scowled. “Hey, dude,” he said. “You wanna take that outside? I don’t want me or my stuff to stink.”

Nike boy’s eyes opened and appraised him slowly, up and down. Marcus folded his arms so he could push the biceps out a bit more. He wasn’t going to be intimidated. Still, that lad was stocky, not gym-toned but naturally brick-wall solid.

“You just call me ‘dude’?”

“Take your cancer sticks outside, man,” Marcus told him.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, white boy.”

“Oi, don’t start that!”

The lad rose from the bed and Marcus saw he was a good bit taller than himself. He stood his ground as the other approached, the cigarette hanging on his lip.

“I will start what the hell I want,” he said as he came closer. “Who is you to lay down rules in here? Lab rats don’t get to say what’s what. You’re in the same experiment as the rest of us. If you don’t like my nicotine then you better go find somewhere else to lay your head this weekend cos I
will
be lighting up in bed, I
will
be blowing smoke in your face while you sleep and I
will
be burning holes in your AussieBum panties. You better pray to baby Jesus that’s all I’ll do, cos I got me a blade and your pussy face could do with a few lines of interest. You hear what I’m saying?”

Marcus blinked nervously. The boy leaned into him and exhaled a dense fume of smoke. Marcus spluttered and backed away, clenching his fists in readiness.

Suddenly the other boy broke into a laugh.

“Just teasin’ ya!” he roared, throwing his words back at him. “Take a joke!”

Marcus glared fiercely for a moment. Then he pushed past to collect
his toiletries bag and a towel from his case. In stony silence he stomped downstairs to the shower. On the way he heard Spencer chuckling. He’d remember that.

On the mezzanine the smoker returned to his bed and stretched out on it luxuriously. “Lee Jules Sherlon Charles,” he congratulated himself. “You is the last of your kind.”

It wasn’t too long before the drum was beaten again outside and everyone was summoned from the cabins.

Alasdair emerged feeling hungry and was glad to see serving maids weaving through the crowd, bearing trays of food from the stalls. He grabbed a large slice of ham and chicken pie and a ceramic goblet of ale and made short work of both. At least the food was good here and one thing he did admire about the world of
Dancing Jax
was the quantity of booze the characters got through. They drank ale in place of tea, coffee or soft drinks and the nobles were always quaffing wine. If that’s what life was really like in the olden days, they must have been perpetually off their faces.

“Is there a vegetarian option?” Jody asked one of the wenches. “That’s just a lump of death wrapped in a murder parcel that is.”

At her side, now washed and in clean, dry clothes, little Christina absorbed her words and shrank away from the proffered tray.

“There is cheese and bread, Mistress,” the serving maid told them helpfully.

“I like cheese,” Christina declared brightly. Her very empty tummy was growling.

“It’ll have been made with the chopped-up insides of a baby cow’s stomach,” Jody informed her.

Christina wrinkled her nose and shook her head with disgust.

“We’ll just have the bread,” Jody said. “Though that’ll be packed full of additives and made with chlorine-bleached flour.”

She took several slices of a rustic-looking loaf and sniffed them. “You
wouldn’t believe what they put in this rubbish,” she grumbled. “There’s a list of E-numbers long as your arm, trans-fats, preservatives, traces of pesticide.”

Christina was too busy devouring her second slice to comment.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got a banana?” Jody called after the departing serving maid.

A snigger sounded behind them. Jody turned to see Marcus shaking his head in disbelief at her.

“Don’t you worry,” he laughed. “They’re going to roast a wild tofu for you veggies later.”

Chuckling, he continued on his way. He was carrying two goblets of ale and was on a mission. Jody watched him push to the front. She recognised his type, and marked him down as not worth talking to.

The Ismus had returned with the Jacks and they were sitting in places of honour around a raised stage area. Cameras were snapping away and Jody saw that American TV reporter among the other news crews.

“So much for Julie bloody Andrews,” the girl muttered. “Didn’t take her long to get Von Trapped.”

Charm and her mother had stationed themselves right by the stage. Charm had changed into a short skirt and scraped her hair into a ponytail. They were waiting for the performance to commence, or for a lens to stray in their direction. A large pair of Gucci sunglasses shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun, but she would have worn them whatever the weather.

“This has got to be the glam corner!” Marcus declared, blinking in feigned surprise as he came bowling up to them. “No one told me there was going to be a Mooncaster’s Next Top Model contest going on here today. Would either of you two lovely ladies like a drink? It’s not bubbly, but it’s the best they’re offering; the mead smells like a wino’s emptied himself in it, so we’ll have to make do with this. Now rev up your fun glands, the party starts here!”

Mrs Benedict pursed her lips and viewed him suspiciously as she took one of the goblets.

“I don’t like your manner, young man,” she said. “It’s overly familiar and flippant and we don’t know you.”

“Call me Marcus!”

“Why? What’s your real name?”

“That is my real name. I’m just being friendly. I saw you two beautiful damsels over here, on your lonesome, and thought
I have got to go over and say hello
.”

He held out the other drink. Charm regarded him and the ale through her shades.

“There’s more’n four hundred calories in a pint of that stuff,” she said.

Marcus looked shocked. “You don’t need to think about things like that!” he cried. “Not a stunner like you.”

“She’s been on some sort of faddy diet ever since she was nine,” her mother informed him. “She won’t allow so much as a Jaffa cake in the house. She’ll be so much happier in the castle – there’s none of that silliness there. You don’t need to count calories when you’re laced into a good strong bodice with a panel of wood tucked down the front.”

“Well, whatever made her beautiful, I’m glad of it,” Marcus said, raising the goblet and drinking a toast to them. “You’re the hottest babes here.”

Mrs Benedict tutted, but she was always ready to praise her daughter.

“She is most fair, isn’t she?” she said proudly. “Two years ago that was
the
face of Lancashire Pickles. You couldn’t eat an onion in a Bootle chippy without seeing her smile on the jar. ‘Only our vinegar is sour’ the slogan said.”

Marcus smacked his forehead. “I knew you had to be a model!” he exclaimed. “I said so, didn’t I?”

The girl’s mother nodded. “Oh, yes, she’s a true professional. Been doing it since she was ten, haven’t you, child? This was going to be a big year for her. We had The Plan all worked out, didn’t we? Still, what a prize she’ll be when she finally awakens to the real world.”

“Maybe we’ll know each other there!” Marcus suggested hopefully.
“That would rock, knowing you here and there as well. So what is your name, beautiful?”

“Charm,” she answered in a voice of lead.

“It couldn’t be anything else!” he said with a grin. “I’m
charmed
to meet you.”

The girl said nothing and those sunglasses made it impossible for him to read her expression. He tried one of his trademark winks. They had a pretty good success rate. The girl turned back to the stage and he thought he caught what sounded like a bored sigh.

It was time for the performance to begin. First there was a display of courtly dancing, in which the Jacks and Jills took part. Then there was a re-enactment of an episode from the book, when the Jill of Hearts was kidnapped by a Punchinello Guard, who carried her off to a cave under one of the thirteen hills. The short, hideous creature was realised by a dwarf actor wearing an ingenious costume with built-up shoulders and a large, false head jutting from his chest. The head was suitably repulsive, with swivelling eyes and, when it menaced the captured girl, the younger children in the audience covered their own. But the Jack of Clubs came to the rescue just in time. He sliced his sword straight through the creature’s neck and the head went rolling across the stage.

“Oh, them fings is well vile,” Charm said to her mother. “I fink I’d scream if I saw ’em.”

“
When
you see them,” Mrs Benedict corrected. “But don’t you worry, child. The Punchinellos are usually kept in strict order by their captain, Captain Swazzle, who reports to the Ismus direct. It’s the fiends that go creeping outside the White Castle and in the woods and fields that are to be feared, but you’ll never have to worry about the likes of them, being of such obvious high-born quality.”

“I dunno… I still wouldn’t like to see them every day. Snow White always used to freak me out. When she woke up an’ all them tiny old bald blokes were pervin’ at her. That was well dodgy, know what I mean?”

Marcus remained silent. He heard Mrs Benedict speaking about
Mooncaster as though it was a real place, in exactly the same way everyone else he knew spoke about it. He could not understand how or why anyone could believe such infantile rubbish. When this madness had first started, he had wondered if it was a massive con and they didn’t actually believe in it at all, but why they would pretend to do so was an even bigger mystery. What were they getting out of it?

In his darkest moments, and there had been many of those in recent months, when he felt utterly alone and filled with despair, he had questioned his own reason. But his ego was indefatigable and pulled him through every time. He almost wanted this weekend to successfully change him into a believer, just to see what the fuss was about, but he really couldn’t see it happening. How could it? It was only a stupid book.

Elsewhere in the crowd, Christina turned to Jody and whispered in a frightened voice that she hadn’t liked ‘Mr Big Nose’ and was glad he’d been ‘deheaded’.

Jody put her arm round her. “There’s no such things as Punchinellos,” she assured the seven-year-old. “They’re only monsters in a story; they don’t exist.”

“But the Jacks and Jills are in the book too,” Christina said. “They’re real.”

“Just kids playing dress-up. There aren’t any witches or fairy godmothers, no Mauger beast at the gate, no werewolf and no castle.”

“My mummy and daddy say there are,” the little girl uttered unhappily.

Jody glanced over to where Christina’s parents were standing. Mr and Mrs Carter had forgotten about their young daughter and were transfixed by what was happening on the stage. Jody looked away in disgust. She didn’t even wonder where her own mother and father had got to.

“People are the only real monsters,” she said.

It was time for the reading. A distinguished actor, who had appeared in countless movies and voiced umpteen CGI characters, stepped on to the stage to appreciative applause. The serving maids made sure every child had a copy of
Dancing Jax
and the recital commenced. The actor’s voice rang
out, with that dry, clipped, resonant gravitas only the best Shakespearean thespians possessed.

“Dora, poor Dora the blacksmith’s daughter, was a lumpen girl, built like bricks and mortar. When she was ten, she was as tall as her father, at sixteen even he could not have fought her. She could wrestle the burliest farmhand and punch out a horse’s molar. The villagers of Mooncot were justly proud of her prowess, but none of them would court her. Dora, plain Dora despaired how nature had wrought her, so one bright morn she set forth – with ham and cheese and a flagon of well-drawn water. Every young maid knew of magick Malinda, so off she went and sought her. A pretty face and voice of silver was all that she was after. But Dora, dim Dora lost her way, forgetting what her father taught her. ‘Don’t go down the dingling track, where the toadstools grow much taller!’ Down the dingling track she tramped and heard strange voices call her – to Nimbelsewskin’s forest house where soon began the slaughter.”

Through force of habit, Jody followed the words on the pages. She had learned very early on that rejects who showed willing were persecuted far less than those who rebelled. Marcus was doing the same. He pretended to read along with the rest, but all the while his eyes were flicking left and right.

The face of every adult was transfigured with rapture as they found their way back into the Realm of the Dawn Prince and resumed their vivid lives there. Soon they were rocking back and forth, their eyes rolling up into their heads. Only the children who arrived that day remained motionless – they and the Ismus.