Maddigan's Fantasia, page 33
Where was Yves’s van? Where was it? There! There was his van! A moment later Garland was shouting Ferdy’s message in at the van window. She had lived through dangerous moments. She had done what Ferdy had told her to do. Yet none of it was real. Her truth lay in another version of this time, and there seemed to be nothing she could do to make this time believable.
Only a little later, they had managed to ride up successfully onto the rise, to spin the vans into a wide circle and to entrench themselves almost safely, and, while Tane and Bannister peered over the rocks, watching the Road Rats below them, Ferdy and Maddie were holding a Fantasia parley, working out what to do next. Garland, Boomer, Timon and Eden stared out between the vans and down over the rocky sides of the rise, watching the Road Rats circling and shouting. There were so many of them … many many more than there had been during the first attack. They were a Road Rat army.
‘Wrong! It’s all wrong!’ said Garland suddenly.
‘What?’ said Eden.
‘It’s wrong,’ she repeated. ‘In that old diary – the one that you brought back from your time – there was an ending when we didn’t make it. We were trapped with the Road Rats, picking us off one by one.’
‘Like this, you mean?’ asked Eden.
Timon said, ‘Ferdy might still find a way.’
Their heads turned in the direction of the adults.
‘Bailey gone! Shell gone!’ Goneril was saying in the voice of a sad witch. Other voices joined in saying other names.
‘We’ll never outrun them,’ said Ferdy. ‘Where did they all come from?’
‘We’ll fight them off,’ said another confident voice … Byrna perhaps.
‘We can’t fight them all,’ Yves declared. ‘This time there are far too many of them. What do we do?’
Maddie spoke.
‘Surely they can’t think we’re worth the trouble. Look at them out there. They’ve got our food van … they’ve got our fuel …’
‘But it’s more than that this time,’ said Ferdy. ‘It’s “Utu”.’
‘Tane,’ said Garland. ‘I don’t understand that. What’s “Utu”?’
‘It comes from an old tongue,’ Tane told her. ‘It means “Revenge!” An eye for an eye.’
‘An eye for an eye!’ Ferdy was saying slowly. ‘A king for a king.’
‘Oh, Ferdy,’ cried Maddie. ‘Don’t even think of it.’ She seized his arm.
‘You didn’t have to kill him,’ Yves said.
‘I didn’t have to, but I did,’ said Ferdy.
Maddie suddenly burst in with a little flood of words.
‘But listen! Listen! Who knows how many of us would’ve been hurt back there – hurt or killed – if Ferdy hadn’t done what he did.’
‘Right,’ agreed Yves. ‘I was just saying …’
‘Road Rats are unpredictable,’ said Ferdy. ‘If we hold them off long enough, most likely they’ll get bored or discouraged and go off, looking for easier pickings. So! Let’s get organized. What we must have is rest – good rest if possible. So! First watch – Tane and Bannister. Four hours, right? Then me, with – say with Garland to keep me awake! After that Nye and Byrna. How does that sound?’
Nobody argued.
‘Right then!’ said Ferdy ‘Off you go. Sleep! Those are my order to everyone – except you and Bannister, Tane. And Bannister – no candles! No reading! You’re a watchman this time round, not a reader.’
Garland felt so screwed up with the strangeness of everything that she was sure she would not sleep, and yet, when she looked back, she could not remember when it was she had last slept so soundly. It was just that, lying there in the dark (puzzling, puzzling, puzzling), quite suddenly she just somehow was asleep. Afterwards it seemed that all the time she slept she was also hovering somewhere up in the air watching herself sleep and thinking Yes! That’s me, but it’s not really me. The real me is up here watching everything as if I were reading an invented story. All the same she did not stir, until somewhere in the night a hand fell on her shoulder. Blinking awake, she stared up into Ferdy’s face. He patted her shoulder again.
‘We’re on, kid,’ he said. ‘Our turn.’
They began to move quietly out of the van. Ferdy paused by Maddie’s bunk. He smiled at Garland then leaned towards Maddie.
‘My love!’ he murmured and kissed her. Maddie did not wake, but in her sleep she smiled and turned her face towards Ferdy, who looked down at her, smiling back, rather sadly, Garland thought. Together they slid out of the van, silent but somehow watchful. An old moon was hanging like some sort of pendant against the dark skin of night.
‘A talisman!’ said Garland pointing.
‘What?’ asked Ferdy on ahead of her. ‘There they are, thank goodness. Both awake.’
Bannister was sitting by the campfire, legs stretched out in front of him. He drew up those long legs and stood as they approached. But of course he’s not here – not really here, Garland was thinking. He’s back with Gabrielle, saving books, and reading, reading, reading.
‘All quiet!’ Bannister said, sounding real enough to be believed in as he gestured down the hillside. There, smouldering in the darkness below them they could see a Road Rat fire and Road Rat shadows moving around it. Tane yawned as he stood too. ‘I can do another shift if you like,’ Bannister offered.
‘Heavy day tomorrow,’ Ferdy said. ‘Goodness knows what’s going to happen, but it won’t be easy. I didn’t know there were so many Road Rats in the whole world. Off you go. Get what sleep you can. And, Bannister – sleep! Don’t read!’
‘Right!’ said Bannister, grinning in the dark.
Ferdy slowly sank down with his back to a rock and Garland sat down beside him. The heat of the fire came out to somehow polish them with its heat. Garland could feel her skin beginning to shine. In the darkness Ferdy sighed.
‘Funny how things go,’ he said. ‘I mean, men struggle and God laughs.’
‘What?’ Garland felt her forehead wrinkling.
‘The solar converter,’ Ferdy said. ‘This is not just an ordinary Fantasia adventure. We have to win through to Newton.’
He was talking to her, but somehow he was talking to himself even more. Garland longed to tell him that they had been through all that … that they had won the converter … that the lights of Solis were glowing up into the night air and that they would soon be marching triumphantly into the city, but she kept her silence. None of that was true here.
‘When I say we’ve got to win through to Newton I mean the Fantasia has to win through,’ Ferdy went on, ‘and those Road Rats down there … well, I did kill their king. They won’t let up. They haven’t many rules, but I’ve heard that revenging a king is one of them. So it’s up to me to put things straight.’
‘How will you fix things?’ Garland asked, somehow not believing in him, though he was sitting there beside her, looking down at the fires and shadows below them.
‘Well, here we are … besieged,’ he said. ‘We’ve got better weapons than they have, but they outnumber us. There’s just – just too many of them. Too too many! I think we have to offer a sacrifice. Buy them off. I’m telling you this because I have to tell someone, and you’re a Maddigan.’
For a dreadful moment Garland wondered if Ferdy was planning to offer her to the Road Rats as payment for their dead king, and then almost at once truly understood what he was telling her. Ferdy was planning to sacrifice himself. How could it matter? He was already dead. Dead – but dead in another time. Garland turned in the dark. She seized him frantically.
‘No!’ she whispered.
His hands closed gently but very firmly on hers.
‘But that’s what being the boss is all about,’ he said. ‘From Gabrielle on we’ve learned that lesson. In the end, and in a lot of different ways, the boss is always the sacrifice. And when in a few years you’re the boss of the Fantasia …’
‘I don’t want to lose you all over again,’ Garland cried.
‘Again?’ said Ferdy. Garland fell silent. She knew that if she began to tell her story she would not be believed. It would all be treated as something she had dreamed up half an hour ago.
‘Come sunrise,’ said Ferdy, ‘they’ll be in on us. I know that, because it’s what I’d do if I were their leader. And there are just too many of them out there. Too many! We might put up a good fight but we’ll be wiped away … the whole Fantasia gone, the whole mission to Newton failing and Solis threatened unless I give them what they want. It’s too much. Garland, let me go,’ he said for she was clinging to him desperately. ‘Listen! You’re the last Maddigan. It’s up to you from now on. Make your mother strong. See that you all get through to Newton and back to Solis again. Maddie will try, but you’ll need to help her. Be like Gabrielle. Be like me! Be strong.’ He stood up. ‘Become the Fantasia!’ he said, then released her.
But none of this is true. You’re not the real Ferdy,’ Garland thought to herself, though suddenly he was. He was Ferdy, that old Ferdy she remembered, stalking off into the night ready to die for the Fantasia like a true Maddigan. Garland sat stunned and then, very cautiously, she picked herself up and began to follow him, creeping down the slope, down, down, then down again, moving from rock to rock. As she came towards the bottom of the hill she could see the Road Rat camp … tall figures on guard … their strange machines standing silently, waiting for the morning attack. Suddenly there was movement. Voices hissed and echoed. ‘Who’s there? What’s that? Stand where you are!’ The dark figures of the sentries moved towards the dark figure of Ferdy, King of the Fantasia, and Garland heard his voice then other voices, something almost like ordinary conversation, though she couldn’t hear the words. Then she heard a sudden cry, punctuated by thumps and blows. What she did see was her father’s dark figure, bending first to his knees then pitching forward, exactly as he had fallen in that other time, even though in that other time it had been an arrow in his chest that had made him tumble. What she did hear was the distant soft thump as he hit the ground.
And at last this other time seemed real … real all over again. Garland clapped her hands over her own mouth to stifle the cries she felt rising up within her. But she was a Maddigan, and sometimes silence was a form of strength. Turning there in that terrible sad darkness she began to climb back up the hillside – back to the Fantasia which, regardless of time, was her home and her responsibility too.
And this time of course she was the one who had to tell Byrna and Nye, had to wake Maddie, who cried when she heard what Garland had to tell, weeping wildly, had to leave Maddie weeping and tell the others as morning flowed in over the land, and the Fantasia awoke to the echoes of a Road Rat retreat. ‘Utu! Utu! A King for a King!’ the Road Rats were shouting. ‘A King for a King!’ and, mounting their strange machines, they rode away.
Timon looked at Garland. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I suppose some things happen – well, they happen across time in different ways. We can’t escape them.’
‘Maybe he just had to die …’ said Eden. ‘Maybe there’s a sort of deep-down pattern to things we can’t change much.’
‘And what happens if you go back to your time – back to the future and check it out?’ said Garland. ‘Things might not have changed for you.’
‘They will have changed,’ said Eden, sounding rather apprehensive. ‘But maybe not in the way we need them to change.’
‘Don’t sound so negative,’ Timon ordered him in a scornful voice.
‘Hey!’ said Eden. ‘What’s up with you? You’ve gone all bossy in the last few days, and I don’t like it.’
‘OK! OK!’ said Timon turning away from him. ‘Chill!’
‘It’s not OK!’ yelled Eden. ‘Sometimes I’m not even sure of you any more. And I want to be sure of you.’
And Garland thought that in some ways Eden was right. Timon had changed, though it was hard for her to work out just how. Even though he was there, standing squarely in front of them, giving advice, telling them what to do, he no longer felt in tune with them. She interrupted the arguing brothers.
‘Stop it!’ she yelled at them. ‘Things are bad enough. Because, thanks to you and your time-shifting, I’ve had to lose my father twice over.’ She felt she was going to burst into tears.
Timon ignored her, still scowling savagely at Eden. ‘Good one, Eden! See what you’re doing!’
What was going on? Was this the Timon of this time they were living in or was it the same Timon of that other time, that time she still thought of as her true time, but changed in some way. It was a relief when Boomer came riding by, obviously feeling safe enough to ride on his little bike once more. Lilith was chasing after him. Boomer slowed. He stopped, and Lilith stopped too, staring at them.
‘Garland,’ he said gently. ‘Hey, Garland. Sorry. Sorry about your dad and that –’
Garland worked to put herself together inside her own head. She smiled at this version of Boomer who somehow seemed familiar and safe and a true part of the Fantasia. Why did Boomer seem real to her when she felt like a ghost to herself?
‘Yeah, I know. Thanks!’ she said. Boomer looked over at Timon and Eden, standing with their backs to one another, and looking in different directions.
‘They reckon you’re joining up with us,’ he said to them, almost but not quite asking a question.
Timon half-turned to look at Boomer. ‘Could be!’ he said. ‘Would you like that?’
But before Boomer could answer there was a shout. Yves! Yves ordering everyone to gather and to listen to what he had to say. A parley after Ferdy’s death rather like that other parley in that other time. She was going to have to live through it twice.
‘Gather round! Gather round!’ Timon grabbed Eden’s shoulder but Eden shrugged it away.
‘Coming?’ asked Boomer, setting off himself.
‘That’s my dad, telling them what to do,’ said Lilith proudly, and she went too. Garland did not move. After all she already knew everything that would be said. Yves would be wanting them to go back to Solis and Maddie would be telling them that they had a task, that they must bargain for the solar converter and bring it back from Newton. And then they would take a vote on whether or not Timon and Eden could be part of the Fantasia. She knew all of it – all of it – already. She could feel it swirling in her head – and she clapped both hands over her ears anxious to hold everything still.
‘I can’t go through it all again,’ she cried to Timon and Eden. ‘Can we – can we go back – go back to the other first time. I can’t go through it all again. Because mostly I just don’t believe in this time any more. Not the way I believe in the other time. Let’s go.’
‘Yes,’ said Eden. ‘Let’s go. If we can read a time pulse that is.’
‘Right!’ said Timon. ‘And if there’s enough power,’ he added doubtfully. ‘They don’t have the converter yet. And in this time line they mightn’t get it.’
Garland stared at him with horror. ‘You mean we mightn’t be able to go back to my own time?’ she asked him.
‘But this is your own time,’ Eden said. ‘I mean this is the time you asked to be in. You chose it.’
Timon was silent then turned away. ‘Back in a moment,’ he said over his shoulder.
Garland and Eden stood together, not quite sure what to do next. But Timon was back a few minutes later.
‘Okay! I’ve checked, and I’m pretty sure there’s enough power in the converter to make a jump. And it’s not so far into the future. Let’s go to Goneril’s van. We can set up there.’
So they skirted the crowd, hearing Yves say some of the same things he had said earlier in another time and place, slinking along behind Maddie’s van and slipping into Goneril’s van, where Jewel slept. Eden scooped up Jewel and put her against his shoulder. Garland sat on a bunk watching as Timon adjusted the slider.
‘All set,’ he said at last.
Garland saw Timon’s long hand go out to the slider. All at once there was another of those exploding moments. She felt herself dissolving again – and then they were living through those moments of frozen confusion. Days and nights flicked past them as if somewhere a finger was flicking the pages of a diary far too quickly for any word to be read.
Sunshine … rain … wind … calm … lightning … thunder … sunshine again … faster and faster. The frozen children rocked in a storm of time. Then everything slowed down once more … slowed and stopped.
33
Back Again
There they stood … Timon, Eden and Garland … unfreezing, moving cautiously at first and then with more and more confidence.
‘Whoah!’ said Timon, looking at the slider. ‘Spot on. Well, almost spot on.’
‘What do you mean, “almost”?’ exclaimed Garland.
Timon was moving his finger on the slider.
‘Funny!’ he said. ‘We’re here in the right time … but there’s been a hiccup! It’s later – about a week later.’
Garland’s head spun. ‘But how can that be?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’s what we call the butterfly effect,’ Eden said. ‘We didn’t do much back there – I mean we didn’t save Ferdy – but we did change things a bit, and so the place we’ve come back to isn’t quite the same as the place we left.’ He looked over at the Fantasia. ‘It does look a bit different, doesn’t it? Not much, but a bit.’
‘A week later!’ cried Garland. ‘But that means …’ she paused working things out in her head. ‘We’ve only got a few days to get to Solis before the summer solstice.’
‘Let’s get going then,’ said Timon. He sounded remote – not friendly in the way he had sounded only a few minutes ago in that earlier time. As he stared out into the Fantasia Garland had the feeling that she and Eden had stopped existing for him except as useful tools – tools which he might need to call on at any moment.
‘A week,’ Garland repeated. ‘People could have died in a week, or – or got married!’ She began to run, and Eden ran after her.
