The Magic of Endings, page 3
Then again it stopped. And they were back in a room. A room he knew better than any other. A room that now seemed infinitely small. His own room in London: Tottenham Hotspur posters covered the walls, clothes covered the floor.
Jojo’s breath was ragged. He reached for his spare pump from on top of the chest of drawers, littered with toys and Lego and books. Put it to his lips and... puff.
His throat untightened and he took a deep breath as he pulled the curtain open. This actually was his room. There was Crondall Street. There was the concrete football pitch. He could just see the top of his school building peeking above the flats opposite.
He turned to face the woman who’d brought him there. ‘That was incredible. Incredible. How did you... ?’
‘Ah,’ said Aunt Pen, the real Aunt Pen, not the tiny woman who had stood beside him in that strange throne room. ‘I can do all manner of things, Jojo Locke. See all manner of things – here and there and everywhere.’ He looked up at the tall woman in her skirt and white blouse. The woman with the many necklaces with all their beads and pendants that he could see now were in the shape of tiny bags and boxes. The woman with the hoop earrings. But he knew she was somehow the same woman as the small creature that had been in that strange hall of statues. He also saw that she looked older somehow, more stooped, not quite as towering as the Aunt Pen he’d met that morning.
‘I,’ she said rather grandly, ‘am a faerie. One of three and one of nine. One of three, the first three – the muses three. And one of the nine – nine sisters, nine sorceresses, nine faerie queens, if you’d believe such a thing. You could call me your faerie godmother if you choose.’
Jojo’s mouth dropped open and his eyebrows shot up. ‘Wha—’ he began. ‘I mean... like wha–?’ But there were no words.
‘I know,’ said Aunt Pen – a faerie, a queen, his own godmother, apparently. ‘I know. A lot to take in. Throwing you in at the deep end. No point mucking about. Thought I’d show you right from the start. Get it into your head, nice and solid. You’re not dreaming, Jojo Locke. This is all real.’ With that, Aunt Pen picked up a handful of Lego from a box on Jojo’s bed and flung it at him. The plastic bricks rained down as real as real. Jojo threw up an arm to protect himself.
‘Oi!’ he said, still catching his breath.
‘All real,’ went on the magical woman in the form of an old auntie. ‘That great hall that we visited for the briefest of moments was real, and, you will come to find, a dreadfully important place. Dinn Ainnhir, the House of the Nine, the great castle of the queens of Elfhaeme.’ Jojo could see that place, it was burned into his memory. The strangest of strange places. ‘That took it out of me, delivering us there. I don’t think I have the power to go back that way, not until... not unless... but,’ she frowned now, ‘you will go there again before we reach the end. Then, you must go alone.’
‘What... ?’ This was pure mystery to Jojo. What on earth was all this about? But before he had time to say anything, before he had time to think...
‘Ready?’ said Aunt Pen.
She said this while grabbing his hand once more. Blink, and again they were gone.
They were sunlight. They were the morning. They were a beam of breaking light, shooting out to everywhere all at once. This time though, Jojo struggled. As light, he pushed against the light around him. He broke free and all went dark.
When he came to once more Jojo found himself clutching his asthma pump, standing in his pyjamas, amongst the wildflowers and tall grass of the field opposite the cottage.
Beside him stood the old woman. Aunt Pen. Just an old auntie. Except... those eyes, those faerie eyes.
Jojo plonked down on his backside, squelching into the mud; his shaking legs would not hold him. ‘So that place...’ he half whispered, half gasped. He wrapped his arms around himself; checking all was real now. ‘That wasn’t... like... the real world?’
‘Well,’ said Aunt Pen, ‘that depends on your perspective, does it not? To me, my sisters, to all the free folk of faerie, our world is very much “the real world” as you put it.’
‘The... the... free folk of faerie?’ Jojo whispered. It began to dawn on him that he was not just looking at a real-life faerie but discovering through her a whole world beyond his comprehension, a world of legend and myth and magic. ‘There’s more...?’ he said.
‘Oh, you humans,’ Aunt Pen shook her head and tutted. ‘Of course there’s more. Or there was and... will be. We hope.’
Jojo was lost. What did this cryptic statement mean? But he didn’t have time to consider. Aunt Pen went on, ‘Elfhaeme is a wide world. Many call it home, from the free faerie folk – piskies, spriggans, sylphs and sprites and others of the Seelie Court, to the gnomic peoples of the underworld – goblins, hoblins, bobbarts, to the giants and the knockers, the mer and the lep, to the solitary creatures who govern all things magic, from the stars to the rolling tides, from the land of dreams to your waking miracles. We might come and stop a while in your world but home is where home is... or was.’
Jojo was still puffing, and squeezing his fists together tightly again and again and shaking his head in disbelief or in a desperate effort to sort his thoughts and the pictures that ran through his mind. ‘That was... that was another place... another whole world?’
His own real world of the cottage was just below them: down the slope of the field stood the old, whitewashed stone home.
‘Bingo! You’ve got it! Someone give this boy a medal. Where did you think I was from... France?’
Jojo looked up at the old woman. She wriggled her nose and blinked and in the flash of light that followed became the tiny woman, no taller than the little stool that lived in the bathroom back in the flat. Belts and parcels were slung about her. A pirate hat capped her head. Aunt Pen blinked again and she was back to the old woman who’d whirlwinded into Jojo’s life the night before. Blinked once more and there was the faerie. A faerie in the flesh.
‘What’s... what’s going on?’ exclaimed Jojo, gasping, clutching at the muddy ground.
‘Nothing much,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘We’re just here. You’re sitting. I’m standing. And that is part of the problem. Time is ticking on. Time is running out.’
Jojo could not fathom what the... faerie (he could not even conceive of the reality of that word) was saying. He squeezed his eyes tight shut. ‘I am dreaming,’ he muttered. ‘I must be. It must be. This is all a dream. This is all... this isn’t real. It can’t be. I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming!’ He squeezed his eyes shut and muttered over and over again.
Aunt Pen the faerie grinned. ‘You’re not dreaming, you big bazzook,’ she said softly and rapped her knuckles on his head. ‘Stop it!’
Somehow she was precisely like an auntie. Even if that is exactly what she wasn’t.
He did stop muttering. But he could not stop shivering. ‘You’re not dreaming. But you are in shock. Here,’ she pulled at her bags and parcels, searching for one in particular. When she found it, a small, silver grey sack with a drawstring top, she reached in and produced a tiny gold bottle.
With a flick, she flung it to Jojo.
Between shivers he reached up and caught it.
‘Drink,’ Aunt Pen said. ‘Just a sip. A tiny drop.’
Jojo did not drink. He looked at the bottle and back at the tiny woman.
‘Please, Jojo,’ she said, her voice falling to a gentle whisper. ‘Drink.’
Jojo shivered, shrugged... could he believe this?... A different world?
He unscrewed the minuscule lid. Steam curled out, but the gold bottle was cold. He sniffed at the contents – sort of spicy and sweet.
He put the bottle to his mouth and sipped. Heat rushed through him from his teeth and tongue and gums, across his face. It flushed down his neck and then ran in streams, gushing, gurgling, till he was warm all over.
‘What was that?’ he said.
‘That, Mr Locke, was Kernowan Moonshine. Brewed in the light of the Kernowan moon. Give it here. A little drop will keep you toasty all day.’
Jojo reached out and handed it back, placing it in the minute hand of the creature in front of him.
He blinked and swallowed hard. ‘This... is... unbelievable.’
‘I know,’ said Aunt Pen, looking altogether pleased with herself.
‘And you really are...’ He stopped. ‘You really are... a...’ He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t squeeze the word out, even if he did begin to believe it.
Aunt Pen, the tiny Aunt Pen, stared into his eyes: ‘I am a faerie,’ she nodded. ‘I have not lied to you, Jojo. Apart from the aunt part. My name is Penperro. I am, as I said, your godmother. And we have met before. Long ago, when you were just a little boy, upon the waves not far from here. The memory is somewhere there, in that noggin of yours, along with a thousand others which have been...’ Aunt Pen opened and closed her mouth, gasping like a fish. Like there were words she just could not say. A space where the words should be. Imprisoned words. She got one out ‘...locked...’ before she gave up and went in a different direction. ‘You shall see before we are done. You shall see the things I cannot speak of.’
Jojo stared.
Aunt Pen grinned a wide grin. Then without reason that Jojo could tell, she lifted her hand to her ear. ‘Hang on, your mum is wondering where her tea is.’
Without another word, Aunt Pen reached out, clutched Jojo’s thumb in her tiny hand and blinked.
Taking Flight
Moments later, Jojo was stumbling out of the kitchen, where Grandma still sat, munching cereal, seeming not to have noticed anything.
‘That took a long... buuuurrrrpppppp!’ his mum said.
Jojo had in his hands a steaming cup of tea which he sloshed over the sides as he took dazed step after dazed step forward.
‘My fault,’ said the woman following Jojo. Aunt Pen was back to normal size (or grown to giant size?). ‘I was just showing Jojo a thing or two.’
‘Not... buuuurrrrppp!... to... buuuurrrpppp!... worry!... buuuurrrrpppppppppppp!!!’ said Mum.
Then Mum caught sight of Jojo’s filthy, mudcaked pyjamas. She frowned. She looked him up and down. She... ‘Bbbuuuuurrrrrppp!’
Jojo ran to his room and pulled on a pair of jeans and his favourite yellow T-shirt before Mum could ask any questions. He slipped his asthma pump in his pocket – who knew what the rest of day would bring? Then he ran back to check on her.
Mum was tough. Mum didn’t cry. Mum was a fighter. She’d tell the boys that she had to fight her way through school – no one expected this black girl orphan immigrant to be top of her class. To fight her way through university – her maths department was full of men and boys jostling for position. To fight her way into the world of accountancy after she took a break from work while the boys were young. Now she was fighting to make all their lives work, make enough money to keep everything running, make enough time to keep them all together.
Mum didn’t cry. Apart from once a year. Seventh of August. It was a double whammy. The birthday of Mr Jamie Locke, their vanishing dad, and the anniversary of his disappearance. He went missing on his thirtieth birthday.
Not that she talked about it. Not that she said anything about Dad. She seemed to have as little to say as Jojo had to remember.
‘Your dad made me fly,’ she’d say to Jojo and Ricco. But that was all. That was the sum of the talk about Jamie Locke, the vanished man.
Mum wasn’t a big crier, but she looked miserable there on the sofa, unable to do anything without erupting into burps. Her face was dark. Her lips tight. Her eyes red and dim. She drew her eyebrows together. She opened her mouth. A small, sad burp escaped.
‘I... buuurrrrpppp... think... burrrupppp... I’ll have... buuuurrrrpppp... a bath... buuururrrrrppp.’
Jojo nodded and said, ‘I’ll run it for you, Mum.’
As the water cascaded into the metal tub, and Jojo added a few glugs of some green Relaxing Bath Soak he’d discovered in the cupboard, he found himself thinking about the morning, thinking about all that had happened. He remembered what he’d said. I wish, he’d said, I just wish you could stay one more day. And then... well... Mum had stayed one more day. This thought, this granted wish, swam through Jojo’s brain.
We need to talk again, he mouthed at Aunt Pen when he had returned from the bathroom. She was sitting beside Ricco, who was still watching cartoons on TV.
She made a face in reply. She squinted at him.
What? she mouthed back.
Jojo knew, he knew, that she knew what he was saying. Hadn’t she read his mind earlier?
Come with me, he tried again.
Me? Aunt Pen mouthed back, pointing to herself and making a surprised face.
‘Come ’ere!’ Jojo said loudly this time, a little flame of anger flickering in his chest.
‘What?’ said Ricco. ‘I didn’t do nothin’?’
‘Not you,’ said Jojo. ‘Watch the cartoon, buddy.’
Ricco turned back to the TV.
YOU! Jojo mouthed finally and definitely at Aunt Pen.
Oh, me, she mouthed in reply and was with him in an instant, flitting across the room, proving herself once again to be far more than just an auntie come to stay.
‘You did this,’ Jojo muttered. ‘You got Mum sick. Didn’t you?’
Aunt Pen pursed her lips and thought. ‘Hmm. Let’s go somewhere a bit quieter.’
‘No! No!’ choked Jojo, remembering the strange castle, the flight to his room back home, the mud of the field. Remembering and feeling for the first time a little terrified of the faerie godmother.
Aunt Pen let out a short laugh. ‘Not like that,’ she said. ‘Just this way.’ She extended a finger and beckoned to Jojo. They walked down the hall to Jojo and Ricco’s room.
‘Well. It’s not quite as simple as that,’ Aunt Pen said, sitting on the bed, looking up at a stern Jojo, his hands on his hips.
‘I saw it. I made a wish. I said I just wish you could stay one more day. Then you did that thing where you blink with your nose all crinkly. Then it happened. Mum couldn’t stop burping and had to stay here.’
‘OK,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘That is what happened. Sort of. Thing is, Mr Locke, it’s not quite as simple as me just blinking and making things happen. I’ve got sort of boundaries. Limitations. I don’t even really get to decide. There’s a bigger plan at work here, you see. I can sort of steer things, if you like.’
Jojo frowned at his faerie godmother. ‘What are you talking about? Steer things? Like this is some sort of ship?’
‘Well... that’s not a bad analogy actually, young Locke. A bit of a lost ship. You’re all at sea, you see. Have been for many years since... you lost your first mate. Need a serious course correction. That’s my job. Getting you back on track.’
‘Back on track?’
‘Getting everything back on track. The Lockes, the Sisters Nine, the whole flimming world. There’s more than a little at stake here. Can you not see it? No, I suppose not yet.’ She let out a deep sigh. ‘It’s more important than you could possibly know that we put right something that went dreadfully wrong, that we put the whole grand spinning worlds of reality back on track.’
The boy frowned deeply, part confusion, part anger. The anger won out. ‘Back on track?’ said Jojo again, his voice strained. He couldn’t shout. There was just a wall separating them from the bathroom and Mum, he could hear her burping even as they spoke. But if he could... ‘Back on track? I don’t have any idea what you are talking about. But I do know that you did this. You granted my wish that Mum would stay home.’
‘Sort of.’
‘So, you can grant wishes.’
‘Well...’
‘Like, if I said, I wish...’ He thought for just a moment and then the words seemed to tumble out, like he too was not in control but was being forced to follow a path blindly into the unknown: ‘I wish I could fly!’ Those were the words he could not put back in.
Aunt Pen grinned a wide grin. Her nose began to wrinkle and twitch.
‘Oh, me too,’ said an excited voice from the door.
Jojo spun on his heel – five-year-old Ricco was standing in the doorway, his eyes shining – then he turned back to Aunt Pen.
Her grin was if anything wider, she breathed in deep and then...
‘No, no, no,’ said Jojo. ‘I was just...’
...but it was too late. BLINK!
There was flash of light that seemed to fill the room and then, absolutely nothing happened.
Jojo grabbed his little brother. ‘You’re OK. You’re OK.’
‘Gerruuff,’ said Ricco through the tight squeeze he was being given. ‘Course I’m OK. What d’you think?’
‘Just... just...’ Jojo started then looked to Aunt Pen, an eyebrow raised.
‘Like I say,’ said Aunt Pen, ‘it’s more of an art than a science. Sometimes it’s instant and sometimes... no, no, this one’s instant.’ Her eyes had flicked to Jojo’s back. And at that moment he felt it.
A sparkle on his shoulder blade, a frisson of electricity, running down his spine.
‘Woah!’ said Ricco. ‘Wooaahh!’
A buzzing tingle strode across Jojo’s back. He reached an arm round behind him: where his T-shirt should have been, there was something soft, soft but spiny.
‘What is going on?’ said Ricco.
Jojo spun his little brother round. Feathers, white and speckled with brown, sprang from his pyjamas too, sprouted and grew.
And grew.
‘What have you done?’ Jojo said. ‘What have you done?’
‘Me?’ said Aunt Pen. ‘Me? You need to be more careful about what you wish for. Wishes are not to be flittered away. Think of what it is you really, really want, before you go burbling about flying.’
While she spoke, that buzz, that tingle spread across Jojo’s back, across his shoulder and began its descent down his arms, toward his hands. Feathers were springing up all over, and not just that, his arms were getting longer.
He tried shaking them off, shaking and shaking. But instead he found rather than shaking arms, he had flapping wings. He lifted half a metre off the ground and then came crashing down onto a bedside table.
