The Game (8 page)

F
iddle came a little way along the coaly path with Hayley. He said he wanted to make sure she didn't miss the way, but Hayley was fairly sure he was being kinder than that. There seemed to be horrible things going on on either side of the path. There were screams and groans, and somewhere someone who sounded to be dying kept saying, “Water!
Water
! Oh, please,
water
!” Fiddle hurried Hayley along and Hayley tried not to look, until they came to a place where the air was full of desperate panting and a sort of grinding sound. Hayley could not help looking here.

There was a hill to one side and she could dimly see someone trying to heave a boulder up it. All she could really see was a pair of straining legs in ragged trousers, some way above her head. But just as she looked, the person lost control of the boulder and it came rolling and crashing down, bringing the man with it. “Oh,
curses
!” he cried out, ending up in a heap, half under the boulder, almost at Hayley's feet.

“Is he all right?” Hayley said to Fiddle. She thought the man might be crying.

Fiddle pushed her on. “Not really,” he said. “But there are no bones broken. He has to get up and push the stone again until he gets it to the top of the hill.”

“
Why
?” said Hayley.

“Because your uncle Jolyon says so,” Fiddle said. “He's in charge here. This is what happens to people who offend him.”

Hayley was glad to think she had never liked Uncle Jolyon. “Can't anyone
stop
him?” she said.

“Not very easily,” Fiddle said, “though they tell me that a seer called the Pythoness said it could be done. We're trying to find a way. Now this is where I have to
leave you. You'll find things become more and more normal from here on, but do try to keep going whatever you see.”

“Will I see you again?” Hayley said.

“Quite probably,” Fiddle answered. He waved to her and turned back up the path.

Hayley sadly watched him go. Even though she had only talked to him once and nodded to him with Martya, she always thought of Fiddle as her first real friend. She sighed and walked on.

The path became a passage with barred prison cells on either side of it. Behind one of the thick doors, someone was yelling out, “I hate the lot of you! The whole
lot
of you!” From behind other doors, chains clinked.

I suppose this is more normal, Hayley thought, shivering.

She marched on. The passage went from arched stone to dingy brick and then to modern-looking concrete with strip lights in the ceiling, but there were still prison cells on either side. She came to a squarer part, where soldiers with guns were kicking someone who was
writhing about on the floor. This
was
more normal, Hayley supposed. There had been scenes like this on Grandpa's telly. But seen up close it was very nasty.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” she told the soldiers.

Only one of them took any notice. He swivelled his gun round to point at Hayley. “Get out!” he said to her. And the woman soldier who seemed to be in charge snapped, “Shoot her,” without looking up from kicking.

Hayley moved on in a hurry. There seemed to be nothing else she could do. Next moment, she was in a huge office, very brightly lighted, where people sat at desks in rows, all hard at work with computers and telephones. Hayley pattered quickly down the space at the side of the desks, hoping not to be noticed, until she came to the desk at the very end, where there was a man who seemed to be working harder than all the others put together.

Here something made Hayley stop and look. This man had a large tray marked IN on one side of his desk, piled with papers, forms and plastic files. He was snatching these out at the rate of two a minute,
studying them swiftly, marking some with a pen, putting some in a copier and then snatching them out, making notes about them on his computer, signing both copies and slapping them into a smaller tray marked OUT. Then he snatched up another set. He was going so quickly that Hayley was sure that he was going to get the IN-tray empty any second. But, just as he was down to one file and two forms, someone came along and dumped another huge pile on top of them. The man groaned and started working on those.

What had made Hayley stop and stare, however, was not how hard the man was working: it was the look of him. He had black curly hair and a brownish skin. The curly hair was receding from his wrinkled forehead and there were rays of further wrinkles fanning from the sides of his big black eyes. He looked familiar. The way he moved was a way Hayley knew. In fact, although he was not young, he looked extraordinarily like the young man in the wedding photo that Grandma kept on Hayley's mantelpiece.

“Excuse me,” she said to him. The man looked up.
The moment he did, Hayley was absolutely sure who he was. “What's your name?” she asked him.

“Foss,” he said. “Cyrus Foss. Forgive me – I've got so much work—”

“Then you're my dad!” Hayley said. “I'm Hayley Foss.”

The man had bent over his papers again, but now he put them down and stared. “Hayley?” he said. “We had a baby girl called Hayley.”

“That's me!” Hayley said delightedly. They stared at one another wonderingly. “Why are you here?” Hayley asked.

“Being punished,” her father said glumly, “for marrying Merope. It was forbidden. I never understood why, but I knew there was some kind of prophecy. So you're Hayley? You don't look much like your mother, but you've grown up very pretty. Where have you been all this time? Were you being punished too?”

“I'm all right,” Hayley assured him. “I had to live with Grandpa. He's all right, but Grandma
isn't
. Can't you leave here now, so that I can live with
you
?”

“No,” said her father sadly. “I've tried to leave over
and over, but I always find myself back at this desk, whatever I do.”

“But it looks
awful
!” Hayley said.

“It is,” he said. “You know what it feels like? It feels as if I'm rolling a huge stone up a hill, and every time I get it nearly to the top, it rolls straight down to the bottom again.”

Hayley thought of the man she had seen crashing down the hill under the boulder. That had been her father too. This was the way the mythosphere worked. Things got harsher and stranger the further out you were in it. “Oh!” she cried out. “Isn't there
any
way I can rescue you from here?”

Cyrus Foss smiled at her. It was a harrassed smile, but Hayley had seldom seen a nicer one. “I don't think you can,” he said. “But maybe your mother could.”

“So where is she?” Hayley demanded.

“Somewhere else in this hell,” he said. “She—”

He was interrupted by an office lady carrying a neat pile of shiny plastic files. “These are all wrong,” this lady said. ““They all have to be done again.” She dumped the files on top of the stack already in the IN-
tray. The stack was too high to take them. Every one of them slithered off sideways and fell on the floor, taking half the rest of the papers with them.

Cyrus Foss gave a moan of despair and bent down to collect them. Hayley dived down under the desk to help. Face to face down there, her father whispered, “She'll be in a women's strand, somewhere much wilder than here, I think.”

“Right,” Hayley whispered back. She crawled across under the desk and stuck her head out beside the office lady's neat feet. “Can't you help?” she said.

“Not my job,” the lady said coldly.

“But
you
made them fall down,” Hayley pointed out.

“I don't want to ladder my tights,” the lady retorted. “And you shouldn't be here. You're interrupting this prisoner in his work. You'd better leave here before the manager finds you.”

“Cow!” Hayley's father murmured, with his face still under the desk. He added loudly, “Yes, better leave Hayley. We don't want you in trouble too.”

“All right,” Hayley said. “See you.” She scrambled violently out past the lady's neat feet, hoping she would
ladder the tights as she went, and stood up among the other desks. “I'll be back,” she told the lady. “So watch out.” But the lady simply turned and walked away.

Hayley threaded her way between the busy desks and came to a door. She turned round there to wave to her father, but he was frantically at work again and did not look up. Hayley sighed – the kind of sigh you seem to drag up from near your knees – and pushed her way out through the door.

Outside, the strand leading away in front of her was cloudily transparent now, like smoked glass. Hayley hurried along it, blinking back tears and refusing to look at any of the dreary scenes happening on either side of her, until the strand suddenly turned almost as clear as air underneath her feet. She found herself walking high above the jumbled roofs and turrets of Aunt May's guesthouse. She could see the gutter and the window she had squeezed out of the day she arrived. Ahead of her and below her were the grounds of the place, full of racing figures as the Tighs and the Laxtons all hurried towards the paddock, where Harmony was standing by the card table. Hayley could
hear the clock, chiming out
Over the Rainbow
, but very slowly, as if it had almost run down. And Tollie had almost won. He was halfway up the paddock, pushing and rolling an immense egg. This reminded Hayley so of the man pushing the boulder that she stood still and shuddered.

Then, Hey! she thought. I can
win
!

She ran. She came charging down the almost unseeable glassy strand, brushed past Tollie and his egg and landed panting in front of the card table. Tollie screamed with fury.

“That does it!” he yelled. “I'm telling!”

“I've got one – a golden apple!” Hayley panted to Harmony.

Harmony seemed to have got over her bad temper. She smiled and said, “Let's see it then.”

Hayley unzipped her pocket and fetched the apple out. For a moment it glowed bright as a small sun and smelled wonderfully of apple. But as Hayley held it out towards Harmony, it was a plastic Christmas ornament just like the ones Harmony gave out as prizes. “Oh!” Hayley said. “But it
was
! It really
is
!”

“I know,” Harmony said. “They go like that here.” And she passed Hayley another apple just the same. “Your prize,” she said.

“I hate you both!” Tollie snarled, leaning both arms on his vast egg. “Still” he added smugly, “I stole a lot of diamonds too. And I'm still telling of Hayley.”

James arrived then, waving what looked like a spike with threads of silk streaming off one end. “Is this it?” he asked Harmony. “It was on her spinning wheel. But it was a real closie. She sort of half woke up and said ‘Kiss me!' and I just
ran
!”

Lucy pushed up from the other side with a dry-looking slice of cake in one hand. “Out of her cottage wall,” she panted. “She saw me and she chased me all the way back here. I don't think I want to play this game again.”

“
I've
got a roc's egg!” Tollie said loudly.

He went on saying this as the others began arriving, waving peculiar objects and jostling Hayley about as she carefully zipped both apples into her pockets. “Do these look like thumbscrews?” she heard someone ask.

“I know it looks like a handful of jelly,” said someone else, “but it really
is
an eyeball.”

“
I've
got a roc's egg!”

“This card really
was
the Queen of Hearts, honestly. It's alive. It sort of squiggles.”

“I caught the fox, but he bit me and got away. Do I need an injection, Harmony?”

“
I've
got a roc's egg!”

“Sorry about the blood, Harmony. He'd just killed her when I got there. It was horrible.”

“
I've
got a roc's egg!”

“Oh, be quiet, Tollie!” Harmony snapped. “What's the matter, Troy?”

“
And
I'm telling,” Tollie mumbled, as Troy arrived last of all, very quiet and dejected.

“I couldn't find that garden anywhere,” Troy said. “So I came back and the strand took me through the house for some reason. Mercer's on the phone in the hall. He's telling Uncle Jolyon all about the game.”

“Isn't that all we need!” Harmony said. She scooped the cards, the markers and the clock into her coloured bag and snapped the table together. “Everyone go and
put their stuff in the trophy cabinet. It'll be open for you. Tollie, you'll have to leave that egg there and hope Uncle Jolyon doesn't notice it. Troy, Hayley, come with me. We'd better find Aunt May.”

Aunt May was hurrying out of the house as they came to it. She let Tollie, followed by the crowd of Tighs and Laxtons, rush indoors past her and stopped Harmony, Troy and Hayley.

“Quick,” she said. “Jolyon's on his way here already. I wish Mercer wasn't so damn dutiful, but Jolyon
is
his father, you know. Jolyon had no idea that Hayley was here with us, and he's furious. We've got to get her away.”

“Does he know about the game?” Harmony asked.

“No – if he knew she'd been playing
that
, he'd go berserk!” Aunt May said distractedly. “But I'd get her away even if she hadn't been. Hayley, you're a darling and you saved us from the flood and what's been done to you is a
shame
. Harmony, Troy, think what to do,
quickly
.”

“We were supposed to be taking her to Mum when we left,” Troy said. “To go to school in Scotland, Pleone said. We could take her now.”

“Yes, yes, take her to Ellie. At once,” Aunt May gasped. “Go upstairs and pack your things, all of you.”

Troy and Harmony wasted no time. They dashed indoors and raced up the stairs in long strides. Aunt May, looking perfectly distracted, with her hair unrolling in long lumps, seized Hayley's hand and rushed her upstairs in a rattle of necklaces. When they reached Hayley's room, Aunt May dragged Hayley's little suitcase from under her bed, shook her head – causing more hair to unroll – and hunted in a cupboard until she found a big duffel bag. Into this she crammed all Hayley's new old clothes as fast as Hayley could pass them to her. She was just forcing Hayley's brush and comb in on top of Hayley's washing things, when Troy and Harmony arrived at a gallop, Troy with a huge backpack and Harmony carrying a bulging airline bag.