The Magic of Endings, page 10
And Grandad was right. After a few minutes of pitching waves, both Ricco’s stomach and the swell settled down. Soon Ricco and Trevor were scrambling from side to side:
‘This is brilliant!’
Paarpp!
‘This is just amazing!’
Paaarrrppp!!
‘We’re at home, having breakfast, and then we’re here. In the sea! In a boat! Brilliant!’
Paaaarrrrrppppp!!!
Jojo, however, was lost in thought, lost in the past. Not this past but his own. He was, it seemed, getting to know his father. And there on the boat, he remembered more.
He remembered the red boat. He remembered his father sanding and hammering and fixing it with Grandad one summer, while Jojo sat on the bench inside and ate ice cream. He remembered sailing to a secret cove and Dad diving for scallops. He remembered learning to fish.
His dad was behind him, his arms around him.
‘Look, buddy. You just flick it.’
His dad’s hands were over his as he held his rod. Together they flicked the line, the weight and hook out to sea.
‘That’s it, bud. That’s it.’
A kiss landed on the top of Jojo’s head.
He remembered.
When Aunt Pen produced impossible fishing rods from another necklace and Grandad proceeded to hand them out, Jojo clung to his, resting his head against the cool metal pole.
‘Fishing,’ said Grandad, ‘is the art of patience. You cast and you wait. You wait and you watch, and you feel. You feel the fish beneath us. Feel them take a nibble at the bait. Feel them have a sniff. Feel and wait. Wait till they’ve really got hold.’
Some way away, a red dot was set on the calm sea and Jojo could imagine a much younger Grandad giving much the same speech to another boy – a boy who was his dad.
‘Then comes the skill. The skill of the reel. Reel him in. Reel him in.’
While he talked, Grandad was showing Ricco and Jojo around their rods. Ricco was all in. But Jojo just nodded, knowing that somewhere in his head he knew all of this already.
It was Aunt Pen who had manned the boat, sailing them out to sea. She was still the woman Aunt Pen, but there was more and more of the faerie about her. Somehow she’d changed into the red jacket, striped trousers and leather boots that she wore as a faerie. Her gold hoops and bandolier of chains swung and glimmered as she quickly took down the sails, rolling them up and catching them and tying them in an elaborate array of knots.
‘Here looks like a good spot,’ she called over the winds and the waves.
They were some way out. The beach was a stripe of dusty yellow. The rocks were grey stones, small enough you could reach out and grab them. The arch, which Jojo could not help but lift his eyes to look at every so often, was a faerie-sized door sitting atop the sea. There was something about that archway. Jojo couldn’t shake the feeling it was watching them.
Grandad showed Ricco how to cast his line out on the other side of the boat from Jojo. And Ricco was soon watching and waiting. Aunt Pen was lying back with her eyes closed, letting the sun beat down. Trevor had settled himself next to the faerie, his head resting on her leg. Jojo still clung to the fishing rod.
‘You OK, boy?’ called Grandad, attaching a little worm on the hook on his own line.
Where had the worms come from? Another of Aunt Pen’s necklaces? What else did she have in there?
‘Mmmm...’ Jojo nodded.
‘Al righ’, lad.’ Grandad turned back to his own rod and left Jojo to the gentle lapping of the waves, the up and down and up and down. Left him to his memories.
Knock.
Was that the knocking of the waves against the bottom of the boat?
Knock. Knock.
No one else seemed to have noticed it. Ricco and Grandad stayed on the other side, staring into the water. Aunt Pen had fallen asleep.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It was definitely coming from below. From Jojo’s side of the boat. What would be knocking on a boat from the sea below? Jojo did not like to think.
Jojo leaned towards the edge of the boat. His stomach churned. His jaws tightened. He leaned further. He peered down into the sea.
At first there was nothing. There was reflected blue sky and reflected yellow wood. There was a dark shadow beneath the boat. Jojo was going to lean back. To think on these memories and what it all meant. But before he could, his eyes widened. There was something there.
Eyes staring back.
Two pairs of eyes. Huge eyes that grew larger as he stared. No, not larger. They grew closer. And Jojo could see more than just eyes – a nose on each of the two creatures, the small button nose of a child. And a mouth, wide, stretching, open, lined with sharp teeth. The last thing he saw was a series of pronged fins on top of the sea creatures’ heads – a long fan of fin in green and purple and blue.
This was the last thing Jojo saw, because along with the strange faces, rose arms and hands. Hands with long webbed fingers which reached and grabbed and took hold of Jojo with an iron grip. Now he did call out.
‘Grandad! Aunt P—’
He did not finish screaming Aunt Pen’s name, for the creatures, small but far stronger than Jojo, pulled him from the boat, like you’d pull a fish from the sea. And with a splash, he was gone.
Trevor jumped up at all the noise, barking and farting.
Grandad dropped his pole and leaped, throwing out a hand to grab his grandson.
Ricco didn’t know what to do. Something pulled at his fishing rod at that very moment. He held it in one hand and reached back with the other. ‘Jojo!’ he shouted.
Aunt Pen merely opened one eye, craned her neck to look. ‘Mermen,’ she muttered with a shake of her head.
Beneath the Waves
It was indeed a pair of mermen that had hold of Jojo. He struggled against their grip. He struggled and pulled. He wrenched at them. He twisted and tried to spin. He threw himself back and forth and back and forth.
Any minute, he thought, he’d be out of breath. Any moment, he’d simply drown and these things – these creatures? These children? They’d have him.
For children is exactly what they looked like to Jojo. Children smaller than Ricco. Five-year-olds? Like the children in the reception class at school. Tiny, fish-like children. Tiny, but strong.
They pulled him down and down as he struggled and struggled. Knowing at any moment his breath would fail. He was dead. This was the end.
Except it wasn’t.
His breath was not running out. The surprise when he realised this was so great, that he forgot altogether about struggling.
He looked to the merboys. One looked back at him and... smiled? Was that toothy, stretched grimace a smile? That was definitely a wink.
Very strange – this sea creature had a bracelet on its wrist. Not some special twisted seaweed thing. A plastic band, green with algae, but unmistakably the sort of band put on you when you find yourself in hospital. But if one of these things had ever been in hospital, surely the whole world would know about it. Wouldn’t they? Unless... unless... this thing was once a boy like him? Is that what they planned? To make him a fish-thing?
The merboy to Jojo’s other side did not look at him, but peered onward, into the dark of the sea.
And here came Jojo’s next great surprise. If he could look at the creatures and he could look ahead into the gloom, then... he could see, he could open his eyes in the salty water. And he didn’t feel a thing – his eyes didn’t sting at all.
Then he felt it.
Something had changed. In his neck. On his eyes. His hands too. He looked first to his hands where they were pulled forward by the fishchildren. His hands, green in the fading light from above, had grown webs like the creatures.
He couldn’t see his neck, but looking sidelong at the merboys, he could guess what had happened. There, on their necks, as on his, were a series of slit-like openings. He knew what these were because of a particularly good school project on animal adaptation – these were gills, allowing him to breathe underwater. He couldn’t guess what had happened to his eyes, but something had happened, something to protect them from the sea.
He screamed – it came out as a silent parade of bubbles.
Was he already changed? Was he a mer too? Would he be a sea creature for ever?
There was no way to ask. But he did have some hope. He was not scaled like the creatures yet. As far as he could feel, there was no fins on his head. He pressed his tongue against his teeth – no sharp little fish teeth.
More magic. Temporary like Aunt Pen’s magic?
He had hope. And he took the hope with him, into the heart of the sea.
They did not seem now to be travelling altogether downward. They shot on, somewhere away from the boat. The fishchildren’s long webbed feet beat at the water, propelling them as a trio of torpedoes.
Looking up and back, Jojo could see the sun – it was a pinpoint of light. But there was no sign of the boat. No sign of Grandad and Ricco and Aunt Pen.
Aunt Pen – would she come for him? Or was this her doing? He still wasn’t sure if he could trust her.
He could see the seabed now, ripples of dark sand, gardens of waving seaweed. And fish – shoals of some little silver darting fish.
Onward they went.
Sand gave way to rocks. Fish gave way to crabs – bigger than Jojo would have guessed. Something else big was down there too. It moved out from behind a rock as they passed. A shark. Not huge like the films – but still a shark.
Jojo tried to shout again. To scream.
The merboys paid him no mind as they dragged him onward.
They were definitely not going down now. As the seabed sloped upward, so did they. More rock and weed, fish and crabs. No creature paid them any mind. The shark had not followed.
Ahead, now, Jojo could see an end. Ahead was a wall of rock, then a gap, then another wall of rock. They were not making for the gap. They were making for the wall. And they were not slowing.
Jojo pulled again. Pulled and tried to shout to the fishchildren. How could they not see it – the solid, dark rockface? Were they like birds, flying into a clear window?
Closer and closer they drew, and the rock grew darker, till it was a wall of black.
Jojo pulled and pulled but there was nothing he could do to get away from the mer. Their grip was iron.
Jojo screamed once more. Once more was all he had time for before they hit the black. But they did not hit a wall. Unseen to Jojo, they’d flown straight into the mouth of an underwater cave. A cave or tunnel, for as Jojo’s eyes adjusted, he could see the smooth walls as they passed deeper into the dark, walls which began to glow.
Still they shot onward – these merboys were on a mischievous mission. They passed unseen through that dark tunnel and then, again, without warning, out into a large chamber, and out of the water, into the air. And there, finally, bobbing on the surface, the two merboys released Jojo’s arms.
He sunk a moment, before kicking his own feet, kicking and swimming to the steps in front of him. When he reached them, he lay and drew in deep breaths. He rubbed his now sore wrists and looked around.
The chamber was not any old cave. This was in fact no cave at all. It was a room of sorts. It was circular, with large pillars holding up the ceiling above, which glittered with the light of thousands upon thousands of glow-worms. Between each pillar there was what seemed to be an arched doorway – nine, Jojo counted. But these went nowhere. Unlike the smooth, carved stone of the pillars and arches, the openings ended in rough, raw rock. There was no way out of the cave.
‘Where on earth am I now?’
He said this to no one in particular, but as if in answer, one of the two merboys leaped from the water over Jojo, to the top of the steps. Here he pointed forward.
Jojo stood and clambered up the steps. They were slick with green weed and Jojo nearly slipped more than once. He joined the tiny fishchild at the top of the steps and took another look around.
He’d seen a room like this before. This one was smaller. But very much like the room he’d first seen the faerie Aunt Pen in, the room they’d travelled to by light. The room with the statues of a boy playing, a man standing in thought. The room with the two silver chairs. Although in this room, there were no stained-glass windows. And there were no silver chairs. Instead of the chairs was a wooden chest. The sort a pirate would keep his treasure in.
This chest is what the fishchild pointed to. He pointed and made to speak. But as with Jojo under the water, no sound came out. No words, but Jojo did not need them.
He could see what he’d been brought here for.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Should I open it?’
The fishboy nodded. He reached out a hand to push Jojo forward. As the long, webbed hand came towards him, Jojo saw his own hands were no longer webbed. He felt his neck as the merboy nudged him – no gills. And, as he noticed this, drips of seawater fell into his eyes, stinging and blinding for a brief moment.
Phew! He was not a merman then. Just a boy in a cave. With no way out. No way out, but a way onwards.
He looked once more at the merchild. The creature nodded, pushed Jojo forward, then leaped away like a frog, back to where his partner waited, bobbing in the pool of water.
What was there to do?
Jojo walked on, leaving pools of water with every step as the sea drained from his clothes. He looked around at the empty arches and the shadows of the huge pillars. Shadows grew and shrank and grew again as the glow-worms moved and shifted above. He felt like he should be scared. But he was not. He felt like he was a braver boy than the Jojo Locke who had started this summer holiday.
It was a short walk to the chest. It should have been an old thing, Jojo thought, old and rusted, but it was not. The wood itself was shiny with varnish and the metal straps almost sparkled under the insects’ light. Jojo could not imagine who had put it here, but it was clear it had not been here long.
Jojo did not hesitate. He lifted the lid.
As you or I would, Jojo expected this chest in this hidden room to be filled to the brim with treasure. He expected glittering gems, jewellery and piles of pirate plunder.
But, in this chest there was just one thing.
Now this thing was old. It was a coin. One, singular, nine-sided, red-gold coin. Jojo took it between finger and thumb. On one side was stamped a series of small symbols or maybe letters. Jojo spun it between his fingers. The other side depicted the head of a woman. A woman with curls of hair which caught the light and flickered red. But not just any woman. She had, without question, the pointed ears of a faerie. And a face that was instantly recognisable to Jojo.
And, as if in thinking of her, Aunt Pen chose that moment to appear.
The Peace of Mab
What have you got there, Jojo Locke?’
Aunt Pen had not swum in. She had not been brought by scaly merboys.
Her voice came from high above. And as Jojo looked up to spy her sitting on some stone shelf near the top of those tall pillars amongst the many glow-worms, he held up the old coin. What was it doing here? Who’d built this strange place? He had no answers. But somehow, he knew this coin was important. He would need it. That’s why he’d been brought here.
‘A coin,’ he said, ‘with your face on it.’
What did it mean that this coin had Penperro’s face on it?
‘Not my face,’ she said, still seated high up in the ceiling above. And then, in the next instant, with just a streak of light, she stood beside him, inspecting the coin. ‘My sister’s.’ Another moment, another streak, and she was beside the steps leading down to the pool which Jojo had entered from.
‘My sister... the one who...’ Aunt Pen opened her mouth and closed it. Opened and closed. More lost words.
Jojo frowned at her, then down at the red coin.
‘Keep it safe. It is vital. It is deathly important,’ she said.
Jojo looked down at the chest. This chest for this one coin. Must be important. He pocketed the coin, deep into his shorts.
‘What now?’ said Jojo.
‘Now,’ said Aunt Pen, ‘you act.’
‘What?’
‘Courage is not enough. You must have the will to act. And act quickly. Are you ready?’
‘Ready?’
‘Ready to RUN!’
And as she shouted this last word, somewhere in the rock below, a drum sounded. A thud that shook the floor and sent a ripple through that water where the merboys had been watching. They were gone now.
Jojo rubbed fresh drips of water from his eyes. He blinked and looked to Aunt Pen for answers. What was happening? What was this drumming that was sounding again?
But as he looked, she was a streak. A streak of light and she was gone.
‘Aunt Pen?!’ Jojo shouted as the drum beat again and the ground shook. Shook this time as if giant hands rocked the place. Jojo stumbled.
‘How do I get out?’ Jojo called, looking up at the ceiling where he saw what seemed to be, but couldn’t be, stars going out. Glow-worms were one by one disappearing, crawling away or simply stopping their glow.
The earth drummed and the ground shook. Then there was a crack, like the bone of some huge beast breaking. This came from close by. From one of the rocky openings.
Jojo watched in horror as one of the craggy blank rockfaces came to life. The rock shivered and rippled like the surface of the pool. It bulged outwards, taking shape. It was as if some creature pushed its way out of the earth and into the world.
Not any creature. A man. A huge man. From an entrance to Jojo’s right came a great rock giant.
‘AUNT PEN!’ Jojo screamed again.
No reply except the earth pounding. No reply except another terrible crack and another and another, as each rock, one by one came to life, rippling as another stone-man pushed his way into the world. No reply except a grinding, crushing voice which came from the first stone-man.
‘Who disturbs the peace of Mab?’
Jojo’s mind raced. Mab? Stone giants? A coin with a faerie’s face? Abandoned by Aunt Pen? I’m ready? Ready for what? How will I get out? How will I get out? How will I get out?
