Maddigan's Fantasia (33 page)

Timon watched him go, a little smile touching his lips, that greenish light flashing briefly at the back of his eyes. Then, instead of joining one of the work crews, he walked on past the vans, making for the edge of the lake. He stood there staring out at the great blue spread of the lake and then looked sideways, his eyes looking from one patch of reeds to another until in the middle distance he made out two figures. They were small – insignificant – too far away to be recognizable and yet Timon felt sure he knew exactly who they were, and set off, as casually as if he were merely going for a lakeside stroll. All the same he knew just where he was making for, and who he was going to meet.

Maska saw him approaching
, and looked across at Ozul who was busy setting up the power book. ‘He is on his way,' said Maska. These days his surface looked more like flaking rust than true skin.

Timon came marching towards them, his steps sterner and much more purposeful than they had been when he strolled away from the Fantasia. ‘Is it ready?' he asked, looking past Maska and focusing on Ozul who was now kneeling trying to make some small connection. The screen suddenly blipped and burst into life. Green light sprang out from it, dyeing Ozul's forehead and cheeks for a moment. Timon stepped up to him and pushed him away. Dropping to his knees in front of the screen, he spoke to it.

‘The diary – it's not the Talisman,' he said.

‘What then?' asked a croaking voice, savage with irritation.

‘I don't know,' said Timon. ‘I just don't know. And it's not so easy to find out. It's hard to ask the right questions. My brother doesn't trust me any more.'

‘Do you think he has it? That he's hiding it?' asked the Nennog.

‘I can't tell,' Timon replied. ‘And it's not so easy to sneak away from the Fantasia either. They are struggling. They need all the help they can get, so they notice if I'm not there.
I need a communication device. This one.'

Beside him Ozul let out a sound of protest.

‘But Master …' he began.

The Nennog spoke again.

‘Give it to him. And, Timon, search for it!
Search!
Find it! And report back to me directly.' The screen went blank and the green glow faded. Timon stood up slowly and turned to Ozul.

‘Well, you heard him,' he said, and gestured towards the power book. ‘Pack it up and give me the case.' Ozul stared at him briefly and then, obediently, began folding the device into itself while Timon looked over his shoulder, staring at the distant Fantasia. When Ozul wordlessly handed him the case, he simply snatched it and, without another word, made off around the edge of the lake.

‘He will betray us,' Ozul said.

‘The Nennog does not think so,' said Maska in his struggling voice. ‘And the Nennog is always right.'

Timon strode on towards the Fantasia.

By now the Fantasia was ready … poised and ready to move on once more. Off to one side Boomer was talking to Garland who had her bow slung over her shoulder and was hanging a quiver of arrows from her waist.

‘Don't trust him. Please. Don't trust him. Truly he hates me, but I think he hates the whole lot of us.'

‘He doesn't. He can't!' said Garland. ‘You're just jealous.' She turned away but Boomer caught her arm. Strangely enough he sounded less like Boomer to Garland than like a sort of grown-up guardian.

‘He doesn't even feel like a person. Try grabbing his arm the way I'm grabbing yours. I grabbed him back there, and his arm felt like wires. Burning wires. They burnt me! And they made me – you know –
jump!
Like electricity jumps you.'

The strange thing was that Garland half-believed Boomer.
But she did not want to find herself admitting that what he was telling her might be true.

‘Oh, get away, Boomer,' she said impatiently. ‘That's just mad. Not possible.'

‘I don't make things up,' said Boomer. ‘I'm not a making-up sort of person.'

Garland knew this was certainly true. She half-turned towards Boomer again … half-opened her mouth with no idea at all just what was going to come out of it. And then beyond him she saw Yves and Maddie marching towards them, both looking grim.

‘Oh-oh! Trouble!' she said quickly, worried by their expressions but secretly glad that something was distracting her from thinking about Timon. ‘What's wrong?' she called to Maddie, and Goneril, behind Garland, interrupted in her Gonerilish way.

‘What did they say, those lake people?'

‘They don't want a show,' said Maddie. ‘What they
do
want to do is to buy the converter. And of course it's just not for sale.'

Goneril gasped, clapping her hands over her head.

‘They
know
about it? It means something to them?'

‘Word must have got around. Anyhow they're prepared to pay a fortune,' said Yves. ‘You know what they're like here … they depend on Solis, and yet in a way Solis and the lake people are rivals. They don't want Solis to become too powerful. But we won't sell, and they won't take us across.'

‘Won't take us across?' exclaimed Penrod. ‘Do we have to trek all the way around the edge? We'll never get there by the solstice.'

‘No. Not quite as bad as that. They've agreed to hire us rafts, so that we can find our own way over,' said Yves. ‘We'll have to be very very careful indeed, and it's taken our last actual money, but if we get the converter to Solis …'

‘If we get the converter to Solis, Solis will pay us very well,' said Maddie. ‘But we've got to get it there first … and we've got to get it there by the solstice. The rafts are over by that little wharf there. So … let's go rafting. Nice day for it.'

As they set off, marching after Yves back into the heart of the Fantasia, Timon sidled in and joined them, smiling at Garland, the smile of a friend who has been away for a long time. Indeed he seemed to be, once again, that old Timon, the tall prince who had first joined them, all those weeks ago. ‘Have you hurt your arm?' she asked, for there was a bandage wound around his wrist and in under his sleeve, but Timon looked down at his bandage, shrugged as if it was something he couldn't be bothered talking about, then gave her a grin that was almost mischievous. Lilith's voice floated back to them.

‘Dad, how will we get past the Guardian? We don't know the password the way the Lake people do. Dad, what about the Guardian?'

‘What's the Guardian? asked Eden from somewhere off to the left. He had not been walking with them, for over the last few days he had seemed to be edging away from his brother, finding other company whenever he could.

Lilith looked at him with astonishment. ‘The Guardian is the
Taniwha
,' she cried. ‘Everyone in the world knows that. It lives in the lake. Dad, how will we get past it without the lake people helping us?'

‘Look!' said Yves a little desperately. ‘We're the Fantasia. Right?'

‘We can do anything,' Maddie put in with fantastic confidence. ‘We can out-monster any monster. Now, first of all we'll edge the vans onto those big rafts. Easy-peasy! And then those of us who are left over will split into small groups and we'll go, quietly and politely, onto the small rafts. Hey! Look, there's the magician's table lying in the grass. How did that
come to be left out here? Fold it up and pack it away, Garland.'

‘What happened to your arm?' Garland asked Timon again, as she made for the magician's table lying in the grass just outside Maddie's van.

‘Burnt! Putting out the fire. Clumsy!' said Timon. But when Garland put out her hand towards him he shrank away from her touch.

‘Hey, it's fine. Thanks for asking and all that, but it's fine.'

Immediately uneasiness edged back into her.

‘Did you know Eden had lost that diary?' she asked, longing for everything to be friendly and understood between them.

‘Fuss over nothing,' said Timon. ‘I'd borrowed it. I wanted to check up on something. I've put it back now.' Then, on the steps of Goneril's van, he paused. ‘You know
your
diary will be worth a fortune in a few hundred years.'

‘Yeah, right!' said Garland laughing. ‘But then my diary
is
that other diary, isn't it? I mean that diary you've got is a future ghost of mine.'

‘Hard to work out, isn't it?' said Timon. ‘All we can do is to laugh and keep on going.'

He did laugh, but his laugh was not a comfortable one. Garland could not work out just what was going on with Timon. He was OK at the moment but maybe she would begin feeling uneasy about him again the next time they met.

And she might have felt even more uncomfortable if she had seen Timon's expression as he shut the van door behind him. Once he was
inside
and on his own, he became something entirely different from what he had been
outside
with the powerful forces of the Fantasia working around him, helping him to hold himself together.

‘Where is it?' he asked the air. ‘
What
is it?'

Green light flooded his eyes, and under the force of that
green glow the interior of the van underwent a curious change. Certain things suddenly shone out as if they were being forced to respond to Timon's gaze. Other things seemed to lose their shape and somehow shrink into insignificance. A book concealed under Goneril's mattress suddenly lit up and became as visible as if it were lying on the top of her quilt. Timon pulled it out and stared at it briefly, but it was nothing he wanted –
How to Get a Man and Keep Your Independence
. He grimaced scornfully, then pushed it back under the mattress again, before turning to study Eden's bed, putting his head close to it and running that strange green gaze – up and down it … up and down. Something shone out vaguely, not under the pillow, but hidden inside it.

‘Gotcha!' muttered Timon. Then, almost carelessly, he ripped the pillow open. Feathers flew up around him, drifting and swirling. Timon groped among the feathers and pulled an object out from the nest, staring down at it with a triumph that was not entirely his own. ‘Gotcha!' he said again, but staring down at what he had found as if it were something in which he could hardly believe. Straightening, he looked left and right, then, almost unwillingly it seemed, he moved back to the door of the van, opened it and leaned there, looking out wearing the expression of someone who was working out just what to do next.

The shoreline of the lake curved in front of him … blue water, a thin edge of sand crossed every half mile or so by a series of boat ramps which thrust out into the water like wooden commas in a long, liquid sentence. A daytime mist was rolling in across the lake, but the shoreline in front of them was clearly visible, and in the middle distance, on one of the bigger ramps the Fantasia vans were drawn up in a line. Once out on the water, the rafts became invisible in that mist, the vans seeming to float above their own reflections in an unnatural
way. Two vans were already being poled away towards that mist. Meanwhile a third van – Yves's van, the heaviest van of all – was being driven, it seemed, straight onto the surface of the lake. Of course, Timon knew, there must be a raft drawn in by that jetty. He hoped it was a very big one.

After a moment Timon closed his eyes in a purposeful way. His eyelids still glowed for a few seconds, but slowly that eerie stain faded, and when he opened his eyes they were, once again, the eyes of the good prince, ready for adventure. He set off confidently towards the jetty, watching as the third van now floated away, following the other two. Judging from the way Tane, Yves, and Penrod were bending and hauling, yet another raft was being drawn alongside the jetty and yet another van was no doubt being prepared for a voyage into the mist.

Timon was not
the only spectator. Boomer, Lilith, Garland and Eden clustered a little way along the jetty, beyond the point where it began stepping out into the water, all watching anxiously as the vans edged out and on and then away. ‘Are they going to make it?’ Boomer asked. ‘I mean it looks really …’ He broke off. ‘It looks sort of impossible,’ he said at last.

Timon came up and stood beside them. Boomer glanced sideways at him, then edged away, pretending he wanted to look over the jetty railings and into the water below.

‘It does look impossible,’ Timon said, ‘but you’re the experts.’

‘Of course we’ll make it,’ Garland declared. ‘We have done this sort of thing before. Boomer will tell you. Boomer, remember the time before last … or was it before that …’

‘He’s being a bully,’ Lilith suddenly screamed out. ‘I hate him. I hate him.’

And Eden was shouting, ‘You give that back to me. It’s mine.’

Garland turned. The two brothers were wrestling on the ground, struggling to snatch something from one another.

‘Why were you hiding it?’ Timon yelled.

‘It was mine,’ Eden yelled back. ‘I just wanted to look after it. Anyhow, I’m allowed to have a few secrets.’

‘Shut up! The Taniwha will hear you,’ screamed Lilith, making far more noise than either of the boys.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Garland.

‘He’s stolen my cameogram,’ Eden said rather more calmly, speaking past Timon to Garland and Boomer. ‘I wanted to remember them.’

‘And I just wanted to look at it,’ said Timon, stepping back. ‘They were my parents too.’

He certainly looked innocent enough as he held up a little round frame from which a man and woman, three dimensional and somehow real although they were so small, gazed seriously out at the world. ‘It’s nothing much – except to me, that is. See?’

‘Weird clothes!’ Lilith said critically. ‘Really weird! They look as if they’re dressed in silver paper.’ A sudden thought came to her, the same thought that had already come to Garland. ‘Hey! Is that the Talisman thing-y you keep talking about?’

‘No way! It’s just a private picture I carry around with me!’ cried Eden, jumping and snatching it from Timon, who gave it up easily enough.

‘You’d better not be lying,’ he said. His voice was light-hearted, but Garland, staring at him, saw with dismay that his mouth was thinning and the corners were being drawn down in that way that always frightened her. Eden must have seen it too.

‘You want proof?’ he cried. ‘OK! Look!’ And, abruptly, he hurled the picture into the blue waters of the lake. ‘It’s gone. I wouldn’t throw the Talisman away, would I?’

Timon froze, then seemed to go a little mad. ‘Idiot! You didn’t have to do that!’ he shouted, rushing to the jetty rails and staring down into the green, while Eden, sad and bewildered now, subsided on the thin grey boards. Timon vaulted over the rails splashing down into the sea. He stood there, water lapping up
above his knees, staring down into the water as if he were trying to read words in the foam on the water.

‘Hey!’ Lilith shouted at Timon. ‘Come out of the water. I don’t want to see you eaten by the Guardian.’ Eden and Timon both looked over at her, and she added, ‘The Guardian will really truly hear you if you yell and splash like that.’

‘The Guardian will hear
you
a mile off,’ said another voice, cutting in on the argument with authority, and there was Yves bearing down on them. ‘Get out of that water. There’s a history of people who paddle in this part of the lake just disappearing.’

‘You’re making that up’, Garland said doubtfully.

But at that moment, looking beyond Yves to the jetty, she saw something that drove Timon and Eden and their wild argument out of her head. Out on the jetty Tane was delicately unpacking the solar converter from one of the vans and putting it onto a small raft. Somehow she knew that Yves was planning to be captain of that particular raft and to have the solar converter under his own particular authority.

‘
You’re
taking it!’ she cried. ‘You’re taking that solar converter thing – on one of the little rafts.’

‘Of course I am,’ said Yves. ‘And I’m taking it separately. I’m sure the vans are going to be all right, but if we
do
have trouble with any of the rafts it will be one with a van on it. I don’t think that converter would enjoy a dip in the lake, do you? Salt water wouldn’t improve it. We can’t take any risks. Anyhow, come on you lot. Stop your stupid fighting and get on one or other of the little rafts. It’s
our
turn to go.’

Maddie had carefully driven their van onto the last big raft and was stepping on herself, along with Goneril who was cuddling Jewel, and with Penrod. Yves herded Lilith after them. Then Yves stepped on his own raft with the converter firmly lashed in the centre and beckoned to Garland and
Boomer to follow. Standing boldly beside the converter, he took up the long pole almost as if it were a sword of glory.

Timon and Eden hesitated for a moment, and then moved to get on the raft too but Tane, one raft further on, called out to them, ‘Over the weight limit for
that
raft,’ he said. ‘You boys come with me.’

Yves was already bending and pushing. His raft hesitated, as if it were rather reluctant to leave the shore, then curved out onto the still waters of the lake.

‘Now, quiet, you lot!’ he said in a stern voice. ‘No fighting! I feel that even a bit of shouting might upset the balance. Anyhow, I need to concentrate.’ He bent and pushed again. Side by side the small rafts began to follow the big ones towards that thin, hovering fog. Somewhere ahead of them Garland could hear a regular subdued splashing. Mist, like shreds of pale silk in the air, began to drift around them, and they, too, became part of the mystery of the lake.

‘Do you know which way to go?’ Garland asked Yves doubtfully.

‘You bet I do,’ said Yves softly, poling on. ‘I’ve done it before. And your dad – the great Ferdy that is – he knew this lake by heart. Well, he was the one who first showed me. I took lessons from him.’

Timon’s voice carried across the water. ‘How big is that Guardian – that monster you were talking about?’ he was asking Tane.

‘Big,’ Tane said. ‘Big and old. It’s a mutant they say. The mutant spawn of mutants formed way back in the Chaos.’

Everyone fell silent. Nobody wanted to attract the monster mutant of mutants. And (perhaps because they were poling along so very quietly), Garland heard, somewhere in the fog behind them, subdued splashing. She nudged Yves, and pointed silently back into the mist. But Yves had already heard and so
had Tane. They stood straight in the middle of their rafts listening, the poles poised in their hands. The splashing went on. And then, there behind them, smudged with the mist, two shapes – both unfamiliar and yet familiar too – came sweeping towards them, seeming to glide effortlessly over the surface of the water. Timon’s voice came whispering over the water for a second time. ‘Ozul! Ozul and Maska!’

‘Oh no!’ groaned Garland. ‘Quickly! Yves quickly!’ And, as she spoke, she was letting her bow slide from her shoulder and into her right hand while blindly drawing an arrow from the quiver hanging from her belt.

Yves on his raft and Tane on his both bent and pushed powerfully, but Ozul and Maska were like machines. They would be overtaken and there in the heart of the fog they, the Fantasia children, along with Timon, Eden and Jewel might vanish for ever.

An arrow came flying out of the fog, missing Timon by inches. He shrank down, but the next arrow seemed to drive right into him. Garland saw him fall flat on the raft, but heard him cry, ‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop. It just went into the shoulder of my jacket. I’m trying to hide, that’s all.’

‘They’re firing at Timon,’ said Boomer, as if he could hardly believe it. Garland thought he even sounded a little jealous because Timon was getting all the attention. Of course he wouldn’t really want the arrows that went with it.

But now it was Garland’s turn. She set her arrow free, only to see Maska take one hand from his pole and catch it in mid-flight just as he had done before.

‘You will have to do better than that,’ he called across to her, in a voice that sounded as if it were forcing its way out through a throat filled with dirt and rust.

‘They’re gaining … gaining …’ muttered Yves.

‘Eden,’ Timon was saying. ‘Do something.’

Garland could not see Eden well enough to be sure, but somehow she could feel him gathering himself together there in the mist … she could feel him struggling and then going limp.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I just can’t.’

‘You fool,’ Timon cried. ‘You threw it away. You threw away the Talisman.’

‘It
wasn’t
the Talisman,’ Eden shouted back. ‘It’s just that – just that – I don’t believe in myself any more.’

But by then Ozul and Maska had propelled their raft alongside Tane. Maska lifted his pole to strike at Tane who swung up his own pole to counter the blow. That blow fell, and fell so strongly that Tane’s pole snapped cleanly in half. Yves, meanwhile, had swung his raft around, and now came in from the side with a great, swinging stroke of his own, hitting Ozul, and bringing him to his knees. Maska spun around to face Yves, and as he did so something came in from the side striking him furiously on his face. Garland blinked at the strange shape that now stuck out from Maska’s cheek. Maska did not bleed but a curious oily liquid sprang from the wound. One of Maddie’s edged stars had come at him out of nowhere.

‘Mum!’ shrieked Garland, spinning around in the act of fitting yet another arrow into her bow, and there, sure enough, was a ghost raft, edging through the mist, Penrod poling it and Maddie standing, arm back, aiming yet another of her circus knives – a sharp crescent moon of a blade at Maska. Maska, swayed to the left, then crouched and leapt onto Tane’s raft as the moon flew past him. Tane promptly stabbed at him with the broken pole he was still holding but Maska swept the half-pole sideways as if it were a mere straw. Tane swayed, overbalanced, then tumbled backwards into the water, shouting as he fell. But at the same time Yves leapt into Ozul’s raft, yelling furiously. ‘If you want them you’ll have to take me first.’

Ozul, rising up from the logs that made up the raft, seemed
perfectly happy to do this, for he flung himself at Yves. Then Garland, struggling to notch that second arrow, saw the whole raft tilting. Tane was trying to haul himself back on board. Maska moved in preparing to kick him in the face. But now Boomer jumped across the rafts, landing gracefully on Tane’s, diving in to clutch Maska’s leg like a furious cat-boy, clinging there, biting and ripping as if he had needle-teeth and claws. Maska looked down at him with some surprise, Garland thought, and then thumped his fist carelessly down on the top of Boomer’s head, and Boomer immediately fell, limp and unconscious, to the deck of the raft. Maska kicked him into the water, then swung round on Garland. ‘You people – you won’t – you just won’t learn,’ he declared, and grabbed the end of her bow. ‘You seek destruction,’ he said, ‘and I am created to deal destruction out.’ Saying this he swung her off her feet … swung her so easily Garland was filled yet again with the fear that there was something unnatural about Maska’s strength. It was a strength which no mere human, no matter how tall and fit, could repel.

Then she was struggling in the lake. The mist was closing around her, the lake water was swallowing her. She had been flicked away from the fight as easily as if she were an insignificant piece of rubbish, getting in the way of the true struggle. She bubbled under the water and then, as her head came up and out, gasped wildly for breath. Looking up through the fog she was able to see that Maska had reached Timon’s raft. She also saw with great relief that Boomer was bobbing and gasping in the water quite close to her, and that Eden was reaching out for him.

‘Go on! Try to kill me,’ Timon was saying, but speaking now in a very strange voice – a voice she did not recognize. ‘Try to kill me and you will know final disintegration.’

Maska had been about to deliver a blow. Now he stopped, arm raised, standing there rigidly as if a sudden spell had been
cast on him. Timon stepped forward and, placing his fingers almost delicately in the middle of Maska’s chest, flicked at him. Maska tottered, arched over backwards, then fell, hitting the water and splashing, just as Tane had done only a few minutes earlier, just as Garland had done herself. But Maska’s reaction on hitting the water was like nothing Garland had ever seen. He did not sink immediately. His arms and legs thrashed stiffly but convulsively and huge sparks seemed to leap out from him as if he were exploding. Sparking, then sparking again, he jerked and quivered on the surface of the water, before finally sinking. The lake swallowed him. Maska was gone. Garland found she was clinging onto the side of the raft and Timon, having disposed of Maska, was already holding out a hand, strangely speckled with green, to help her. However, Garland was too frightened to take that hand.

‘Quickly!’ Timon said urgently. ‘Something worse is coming. I can feel it there, twisting under the water. Quickly.’

And he was right. There on the other side of the rafts the water began to seethe and boil. Ozul and Yves broke out of their struggle, springing apart, both staring in amazement and alarm. The water swirled furiously, seemed to quieten down, then swirled again.

And then, at Garland’s own shoulder, a great head reared up out of the water. Twisting around she found herself staring into the eyes of something like a horned eel, but huge and somehow old – ancient. Four eyes! Two heads! Garland was looking into double mystery and history too. As if from a great distance she thought she could hear Lilith singing, but of course she was screaming and screaming, and behind that screaming Garland could hear Maddie shouting her name over and over again.

‘The Taniwha! The Guardian! The monster!’ Lilith screamed as if one name was not enough. And perhaps a monster with two heads, really did deserve two names.

‘Garland! Garland!’ yelled Maddie across the water as if only one name counted. And then Garland felt herself seized and pulled down.