The Magic of Endings, page 4
‘Woah,’ Ricco said. ‘WOOAAHH!’
‘What do we do? What do we do?’ shouted Jojo.
‘What is... burrrpppp... going... buuurrrrrpppp... on in there?’ shouted a voice from the bathroom. ‘Are you... burrrppppp... OK? Jo—burrrppprrppp... jo? Ricco?’
‘We’re OK, Mum,’ called Jojo, his voice a squeaky rasp, as Ricco shouted, ‘Look at me, Jojo!’ and with a step and a flap was out of the open window and away.
‘I think,’ said Aunt Pen, in reply to Jojo’s earlier question, ‘you’d better fly.’
Memories of the Sand
RICCO!’ shouted Jojo, launching himself forward. He meant to throw a hand out to grab at Ricco, to grasp his fast disappearing foot. But that lunge became another flap and another flap and before he knew it, Jojo too was headed for the open window and the summer sky beyond.
‘Look at me, Jojo!’ Ricco squealed. ‘I’m flying. I’m flying!’
And he was, he really was. He was three metres off the ground and rising, flapping great long wings of white and brown, each sweep of them propelling him forward.
Jojo spun back toward the bungalow, twisting his own wings – if Mum looked out now...
No. The bathroom blind was down. But he could hear her: ‘Boys?... buuurrrrppppp... Boys? Are you O—buuuurrrrrpppp... K? What’s going... buuurrrrpppppp?’
Jojo gulped, still flapping his wings that kept him hovering. He glanced over his shoulder at his disappearing brother. He looked back to his own window where a tiny lady, with grey hair, huge gold earrings and a pirate hat, was grinning out at him.
What could he do?
‘We’re just... we’re just popping out, Mum,’ he shouted. ‘Just gonna get some fresh air.’
‘Hang... buuuurrrrpppp... on!’ his mum called.
He looked back to Ricco. He was tiny now, a little action figure of a boy, suspended in the sky. He couldn’t just hang on. So he didn’t.
By some magic, Jojo didn’t just have wings, he knew how to use them. He turned and flapped and like that, he was away. A big sweeping burst and he had taken to the skies. Up, up and away.
Ricco was some distance ahead, not just flapping but swooping, diving downwards before catching himself and soaring up again, up and up.
‘Ricco,’ Jojo called, his larger, more powerful wings pushing him toward his brother.
The air was not, as it had always been, simply the space around him. It was now, to his wings, solid. It was a staircase on which he could place his winged arms and propel himself forward. Except when it was water, through which he could swim, he could glide.
He was a bird, a speeding eagle. He was born to fly.
Jojo could not help himself: as his brother turned to see him, he let out a cry of joy and exhilaration: ‘Wooohoooo!’
‘Yeeahhhh!’ shouted Ricco in reply. ‘We’re flying!’
‘We’re flying!’ shouted Jojo. ‘We’re flying!’ All thought of going after his little brother to bring him back home was gone. Now his heart was set on flying, on plunging through the white-streaked, blue beyond. ‘Come on!’
Jojo caught up to his brother and now tagged him and overtook him.
‘You’re It!’ Jojo shouted. Then he flew – beating and gliding, twirling and spinning. Ricco laughed and laughed and flapped after him.
‘Come on, bud,’ he called after him then waited till his laughing, soaring brother had him.
‘Ittttt!’ screamed Ricco and tore off and up across the sky.
A flap and swoop and Jojo was after him, joining him in laughing and screaming. And on they went.
If you’d looked up then, from the fields and tracks below, you’d have seen them, high up as two birds, darting and diving, revelling in the summer sun. Something did look up, a lot of somethings. A colony of tiny creatures, which, seeing the fun that was being had, rose from a wildflower meadow to join the two boys. Creatures which you would have thought were insects. They were not.
These beings had only got halfway there when the game stopped.
‘Look, look,’ said Ricco, between laughs and gasps. He was above Jojo. Higher and higher Ricco had gone and he was pointing down now. Jojo, letting the game fall from his arms, and a last chuckle cough out from his throat, followed his brother’s finger.
All the world was laid out below them. The cottage and the lane was behind. Hills to the left. The village of Dor, little toy cottages and shops and the train station to the right.
Jojo remembered, somewhere in his head, that he was afraid of heights. He remembered that fear but he felt none then. The wings made him fearless.
Out in front of them, where Ricco pointed was the sea. Bluer than the sky, a great, flat pond of blue, only broken by the arch of stone which gave Dor its name. It protruded out from the cliffs that bordered the village, hugged the beach at one end, vaulted over the waves. The Door of Dor.
That’s where Ricco pointed. The sea. The sun glinted off the gentle ripples.
‘Amazing!’ Jojo called up to his brother. But Ricco was higher now, higher and higher.
Jojo looked back down to the blue and the beach. The sand swept a long curve beyond the dunes. They never went there. Not to the beach. Jojo realised, as he looked at the great sweeping expanse, that he didn’t know why. They went to the town and the hills, to the park, the river and along to the famous faerie mounds. But neither Grandad and Grandma nor Mum would take them to the beach.
The beach. It was a misty fog of lost memory, that place, and now it was as clear a picture as any place could ever be. Jojo could make out small sails out on the crystalline pond. He could pick out individual children with buckets and spades on the sand. He knew he’d been there. But when... when...
Jojo frowned. His eyes became fixed. Not on anything he saw there now, but on some moment of memory that appeared before him.
His dad. He was sure it was him.
Jojo flapped his wings, hovering, trying to focus on that man dancing in his mind.
Ricco whooped, a long way up now, higher and higher.
What Jojo saw was a man. He saw just his back. A tall, broad man. He blocked out the setting sun as Jojo sat on the sand. The man was a dark shadow against the light. Jojo could see his floppy wet hair, like a mop on his head. He watched him bend and pick up a stone. Then he turned. There was no face he could see. He was just black shadow. But Jojo knew that his father was looking right at him.
‘Come on, buddy,’ said the memory Dad. ‘I’ll teach you how.’
Buddy.
That’s what he called Ricco. And now he knew why. Now he knew.
A feather spiralled past Jojo’s face. But he did not move, apart from his flapping wings. He hovered, letting the memory flitter past him.
He saw it all now. His dad teaching him to skim stones on that very beach. His dad’s beach. Maybe that’s why they didn’t go there.
He remembered skimming his first stone. He remembered his dad picking him up and flying him around the beach.
Another feather passed him, scudding back and forth through the air.
‘Buddy,’ he heard his father’s voice again. ‘Buddy, you did it!’ His dad made him fly.
Another feather.
Buddy.
Feather.
Feather?
Jojo shook himself out of the memory and looked around at the blue sky. It was not just a few feathers. There were tens of them, maybe a hundred, spiralling and dipping and fluttering down out of the clear.
Buddy! Ricco!
Jojo wasted not a moment longer. ‘Ricco!’ he shouted and beat his wings as hard as ever. Beat and beat and shot like an arrow upward, searching the sky for his brother. He saw him then, higher than he could have imagined. Another silhouette against another sun. It blazed orange and red behind Ricco as he continued to fly upward. Up and up. Higher and higher.
‘Ricco!’ Jojo screamed. ‘RICCO!’ But scream as he did, up his brother went. As feathers continued to rain down.
Surely Ricco could hear him, Jojo thought. The air was clear. There was nothing between the two of them. But higher they went.
It was as if that great red ball burning above called to him, drew him.
‘Ricco!’ Jojo tried again. ‘Come back. You’ve gone too high!’ He felt it now, the heat of the sun on his own wings. He felt feathers come away as if the sun reached down with minuscule hands and plucked them out.
Harder and harder he beat his failing wings, with each stroke catching up with Ricco. Further and higher they flew towards the sun.
The sun, which seemed now not just to shine down but to stare at them.
‘Ricco!’ And with that last shout, Ricco’s wings burst with a final puff of feathers and from far, far above, what sounded to Jojo like a cry of laughter.
As Jojo continued to shoot upward, Ricco began to drop. Jojo’s heart hammered. Sweat coated him beneath his T-shirt. He had moments to think. Moments till the two would meet. Could he just catch him on his back? Catch him and piggyback him down? It was the only plan he had.
Spreading his own ragged wings, Jojo stopped himself and began his own descent. Slowly, not driving downwards, letting himself begin to fall, watching over his shoulder for his plummeting brother. Watching him as you’d watch a football, following its path, ready to catch it on a stretched foot. Only this was no football, which if he missed it, would carry its path onward to the next player or off for a throw-in. This was his brother.
If he could, Jojo would have reached up to wipe the tears which streamed from his eyes. But he could do nothing but strain forward, to keep the limp form of his brother in his eyeline. To try with all his might to make their paths intersect.
Nearly... nearly...
Jojo spread his wings and tried to glide beneath Ricco.
Missed him.
Ricco kept on falling.
‘NOOO!’ screamed Jojo. ‘RIIICCOOOOO!’ But there was nothing he could do. Nothing. His own wings were shredded. He did not even think he could stop himself falling: Ricco ahead and he behind.
They fell.
Back down to Earth
The wind battered Jojo as he tumbled downwards, desperately trying to spot his little brother through tear-streaked eyes.
He was sure he could see a dark cloud below. But the sky had remained clear blue as they had played about and flown upward. It could not be a cloud. Or could it? Could it? It was not just dark but speckled with colour – green, brown and grey.
It was not a cloud. Ricco hit it, slowed, then disappeared into a haze.
Now Jojo did lift a hand, or a wing, to wipe his eyes. The last of his feathers quickly pushed aside the tears. He opened his eyes as he too entered the cloud which definitely wasn’t a cloud.
Tiny hands, thousands of them, grasped hold of Jojo, his clothes, his fingers, his feet. Tiny, tiny hands, attached to tiny arms and tiny bodies.
The creatures which had risen to join them from the wildflowers were not insects. Not at all. They were people, of some kind, far, far smaller than the faerie Aunt Pen. The one holding Jojo’s collar, just in front of his eyes, was no bigger than a mouse. A minuscule person, dressed in grass-green, with the wings of a dragonfly.
Jojo did not stop falling, but he slowed as a thousand hands pulled him upward. Little faces strained. Tiny voices sang out together. He slowed and he slowed and he could see, just below him, his brother slowing too.
‘Thank you! Thank you!’ Jojo gasped at the tiny woman who strained at his collar and pulled upward. If she heard him, if she understood, she did not show it.
The tiny people and his brother were not all Jojo could see. The ground, the fields and their own cottage still approached quicker than he would have liked. Still they slowed and still the world rose to reach them.
Jojo could see exactly where they were heading. The barn which sat across the road from their grandparents’ cottage. They were nearly upon the moss-covered corrugated roof.
Jojo screamed as a thousand tiny hands let go and a thousand tiny people flew away, back to the safety of their meadow. There’d be no falling boys there to rescue.
Jojo screamed as he and Ricco crashed into the ancient roof. The roof cracked and broke. The pair tumbled, finally, onto a burst bale of old, scratchy hay and Jojo found himself staring upward at a blue sky through a hole almost exactly his size.
‘Have fun?’ said a voice.
Jojo did not turn to look at Aunt Pen. Not right away. He tried to catch his breath. He lay still and breathed in deep. Coughed and choked. He took his asthma pump from his pocket. He took a puff and another, grateful to his past self for not leaving it in his muddy pyjamas.
Finally, he turned to where the faerie, now just in the form of the old lady Aunt Pen, sat on a dry and dusty bale of hay. ‘Fun?’ he said, sitting up.
Then he turned to his brother, who was sitting up beside him, shaking his head and grinning. ‘That was amazing!!!’ Ricco shouted. ‘A-MAZE-ING! But how did we... ?’
He didn’t finish his question as Jojo, knowing his brother was safe, turned back to the faerie. ‘Why didn’t you stop us? Why didn’t you save us?’
‘Stop you?’ Aunt Pen said. ‘Do you think I am in charge? In control? Not I. Save you? Sometime, Jojo Locke, you will have to do the saving. You will have to save your family. And besides, I saw the piskies come for you.’
‘Pixies?’ Jojo said. ‘They were pixies?’
‘Piskies,’ Aunt Pen replied. ‘Piskies. Not pixies. There are many of them in your world now, trying to see out the falling darkness. Even they, smallest of the Seelie, know that you are worth saving. And to your question, young Ricco. How did you fly? Well... shall I tell him, Jojo? Or would you like to?’
‘Piskies?’ Jojo muttered. There was more to see, more to find of this new world opening before him. More creatures like Aunt Pen. More wonders. ‘I... I... can’t,’ Jojo said.
Ricco was standing now and brushing dust and hay, bits of roof and feathers from his pyjamas. ‘Tell me what?’
Jojo stayed sitting. He looked from Ricco to Aunt Pen and then back again. ‘She,’ he began. ‘Aunt Pen... she’s... well...’
‘Yeah?’ said Ricco, his little brow wrinkling.
‘Aunt Pen is a faerie.’
And as he said it, the old lady with the white hair sitting on the hay bale, jumped down, and her leap become a whirl of cloth and hair and wrinkled skin and the person that landed was no longer the auntie but the faerie in the pirate coat and hat. The dozens and dozens of bandoliers, sashes, packets, parcels and pendants across her chest jangled as she landed.
Ricco’s mouth made a big, elaborate O. ‘WHAAATTT!’ he said. ‘You are...’
‘A faerie,’ the wizened, miniature pirate said.
‘AY-MAY-ZING! AMAZING! AMAZING!’
‘I know,’ replied Aunt Pen, grinning her grin.
Jojo shook his head and sighed.
‘Can I make a wish, then? Can I make a wish?’ Ricco shouted, leaping and shaking the last of the feathers from him.
‘No!’ said Jojo as Aunt Pen said, ‘Weeellll...’
But Jojo carried on the quickest. ‘We can’t just go making wishes.’
‘He’s right. Sort of. I do have certain limitations. There is a plan here,’ Aunt Pen tried to say but Jojo went on over the top of her.
‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing! She’s dangerous.’
‘How dare you!’ said Aunt Pen. ‘I’m not just any faer—’
But before she got further, Jojo said, ‘She made Mum sick when all I wished for—’
‘Well you weren’t very specific, see,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘And I did make it happen. Mum has stayed one more day.’
‘OK. OK. How about this. I wish Mum could stop burping.’
Aunt Pen pursed her lips. Thinking. She scratched her head. ‘You can’t just reverse magic like that. That is precisely the problem we have. Once they’re out, things cannot simply be put back in the box, the pieces just won’t fit any more. They must be... completed... ended... fulfilled. If I could then I would...’ Aunt Pen opened her mouth in that fishlike way again, struggling with words which were unsayable. ‘I would...’ she tried again. Finally, she huffed. ‘Some things I cannot speak of. But... well...’ Aunt Pen fumbled at her necklaces, the little packages and bag pendants. ‘Ah ha,’ she said and pulled one from the bunch. It looked for all the world like a miniaturised treasure chest.
She took it in her long fingers, seeming to press it here, twist it there. There was a click and a tock and it opened. Aunt Pen reached in with a finger and thumb. She caught something with a, ‘Here we go.’ She pulled and pulled and out popped a full-size alarm clock, the sort with a bell on top. The sort that could not possibly have fitted inside that tiny pendant.
Ricco’s mouth fell open. ‘Oh, man!’ he said. ‘That was amazing!’
Aunt Pen nodded and grinned. ‘I know. It rather was, wasn’t it.’ Then she studied the clock. ‘The thing about magic in this world is, it doesn’t last all that long. Like your wings. There’s a time limit to these things. And those burps that have been inflicted, at your wish, I might add again,’ she raised an eyebrow and a finger to Jojo, ‘should be stopping right about...’
But before she could finish: ‘Who’s in there?’ called a voice they all knew from outside.
Grandad.
‘Don’t tell him,’ Jojo hissed at his brother. Why, he wasn’t sure. Apart from, he wondered, he still wondered, if perhaps he was simply going mad. ‘Don’t tell him.’
‘Who’s in there? You’re trespassin’. I’ll call the police.’
Jojo stood and rushed to the door. ‘It’s us, Grandad. It’s us.’ He pushed at the rickety, wooden door and there was Grandad, standing in the light of the summer sun.
‘What you doin’ in there?’ he said.
‘Jus’ playing,’ Ricco said, appearing at Jojo’s elbow. ‘Jus’ playing.’
Grandad pushed at the door, letting in more light. Jojo’s heart skipped – Aunt Pen – he glanced back but the faerie was nowhere to be seen. ‘Well,’ said Grandad. ‘I guess it is your barn.’
