The Magic of Endings, page 6
‘Just the kitchen. Well... maybe you could fix Mrs Locke a little lunch too.’
‘Oooh, wonderful,’ said Grandma. ‘Cheese on toast, please.’
The goblin, Hob or Mr Goodfellow as Aunt Pen had called him, gave another little bow. ‘I would be most honoured to serve lunch to so fine a lady. If you would care to take a seat.’
Grandma bustled past the two boys still crowded in the doorway. ‘A delightful man,’ she said. ‘Just delightful.’
The goblin leaped from the cupboard, flipped, twisted and landed with a roll amongst the flour and raisins on the floor. ‘I’ll begin here, I believe,’ he said, and proceeded to pull a large dustpan and brush from within his clothing. ‘I’ll take my payment where I find it,’ he added.
‘Of course, of course,’ said Aunt Pen, pointing the boys out of the kitchen and snatching up the cake tin from the egg- and butter-smeared table. ‘Let’s leave Mr Goodfellow to it.’
‘We can’t just—’ started Jojo.
‘We can,’ said Aunt Pen as the door swung shut behind them.
‘The kitchen—’ tried Jojo.
‘Will be spotless when we return,’ said Aunt Pen as she hustled them into the hallway.
‘But Grandma—’
‘Is in excellent hands. She’ll have the best cheese on toast of her life. Goblins, as well as being excellent cleaners, happen to also be very fine chefs.’
And with that Jojo, Ricco and Aunt Pen were out of the door and on the way to the park.
‘That was awesome,’ said Ricco.
‘It rather was, wasn’t it,’ said Aunt Pen, grinning her usual mischievous grin and heading out into the world.
Lost in the Park
The park was busy. There were littler kids than Jojo all over the playground, which looked out towards the hills around Dor. Ricco, still clinging onto the football he’d brought, ran off to climb the big netting pyramid. Jojo scanned the slide, zipline, climbing frame and settled on a sulky swing. Aunt Pen watched on from a bench like she was just an ordinary aunt taking her nephews to the park.
How could Mum and Grandad and Grandma all believe that she was their godmother? Even though they’d never, never seen her before. Must be magic. Bad magic? Maybe she wasn’t here for good. Maybe she was here for bad.
Jojo sat on the swing, his legs dangling, his face pointing away from the hills. He knew if he swung high, you could catch a sliver of the sea beyond the village. He didn’t swing high though. He was too busy thinking.
Aunt Pen seemed to be asleep on the bench. Ricco had made some friends at the top of the pyramid – Ricco was like that. They were seeing how high they could jump from it.
Maybe Jojo should be taking advantage of this whole thing. If she was his faerie godmother then what should he be wishing for? If Jojo could wish for anything, if he was going to use Penperro’s magic, what would he wish for? Riches? Adventures?
Finally Jojo kicked off from the ground. Swinging his legs back and forth. He was flying then. Not real flying, not like the day before.
He wondered, staring up at the sky, falling back down to the ground again, and again and again, if he should phone Mum to tell her about who Aunt Pen really was. But he knew, he just knew, that it would sound even stranger over the phone, all this magical madness. Grandad? Maybe he should tell Grandad? What would he say? How would he even begin?
Sky. Swing. Ground. Swing.
And would he believe him? Could he believe him?
Ground. Swing. Sky. Swing. Ricco. Ground. Swing. Ricco. Sky.
‘Jojo,’ Ricco shouted. ‘Let’s play football.’
Jojo slowed and then jumped from the swing, not twisting and flipping like the little goblin but still being rather pleased with his landing.
‘Yes!’ said Ricco. ‘Good one.’ Then as they walked towards Aunt Pen on her bench by the gate: ‘It’s not happening. You said something was happening. Where’s my wish?’
Jojo had been thinking about this all the way to the park. Something was happening, Aunt Pen had said. But nothing. Not yet.
‘I don’t know, Ricco. But maybe it’s a good thing. I told you about the castle and the throne room and the... and the... faeries.’ He had told him about it on the way to the park, with Aunt Pen chipping in corrections and alterations. He’d told him about the flight through space and time, the thrones, the statues and the darkness. He’d told him what he’d wished, for Mum to stay home, and what Aunt Pen, or the magic in her, had done.
‘Who knows what your wish will turn into. Who knows what dream she’ll pick?’
‘What?’
‘Well you said you want your dreams to come true. You didn’t say what dream. You’ve got to be specific... I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Ooooh, football,’ said Aunt Pen, rising from her bench. ‘I love football. One of the best, I am.’
They played football on the big field where the woodland started. You could walk that woodland all the way along the river which ran from Upford to Dor – Jojo knew that because they’d done it with Grandad. It was Grandad’s favourite walk. He liked to walk from here to the faerie mounds. A clump of little hills on the edge of Upford, which legend said were the ancient homes of faeries. Each was topped with a ring of stones, bedded in the ground. Grandad went there a lot. He said they were important but could never say why. He just knew it.
What had Aunt Pen said about faerie mounds? They were the way into her world. You just needed to walk around them in a storm. Jojo would not be doing that in a hurry. The sight of that dark land filled his thoughts and filled him with fear. Especially the throne room. What did it mean? Why had they flown there? Why there? Why him? It seemed so unreal in the middle of the day in the park.
Little did Jojo know, this was also the woodland where Dad had grown up, building dens, climbing trees, finding animal burrows and camping out at night to try to spot the creatures. Grandad had not told them, because Grandad, like Jojo, had a big empty space where his son should be.
Aunt Pen fiddled around with her necklaces then found one that impossibly contained a portable football goal: she pulled it out of a tiny pendant like a magician pulling out infinite handkerchiefs and swapped it for the cake tin. Jojo kept looking round to check no one was watching. They didn’t seem to be.
Aunt Pen plonked the goal down in front of the thick trees.
And then they played. Aunt Pen really was rather good. She was a good bit better than Ricco and Jojo, at least. And Ricco was good. Like, really good. He was six years younger than Jojo, but better than him already. Even Jojo knew that. Aunt Pen, though, was even better.
They played knockouts. First Aunt Pen beat Ricco, dancing round him, slotting the ball through Jojo’s legs into the goal. Then Aunt Pen beat Jojo, with a mazey run around a family picnic; she flicked it over a dog and, catching the ball on the volley, sent it rocketing past Ricco.
A girl called Cherish asked to join them. She was small but whippet-quick and older than Jojo.
They made Aunt Pen go in goal. But even with three of them working together, they couldn’t put anything past her. To Jojo, to Cherish, to Ricco, back to Cherish. Whack! Dive! Save!
Cherish laughed, ‘Your grandma’s really good!’
‘She’s not our–’ began Ricco.
‘She’s our aunt,’ said Jojo.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Aunt Pen, bowing. ‘As good as you may be one day, Cherish Clarke.’
The girl blushed, gulped and frowned all in one.
Jojo looked from one to other. What did Aunt Pen know? He didn’t ask. How much would Aunt Pen say if they let her? ‘Come on,’ Jojo said. ‘We can beat her.’
But they couldn’t.
It was strange to see this old lady leaping one way, springing the other, rolling, twisting, beating the ball away, in her big skirt and necklaces and coat. People had stopped to watch, cheering as this old auntie flew around the park.
Jojo, Ricco and Cherish were gasping and sweating but Aunt Pen was fresh as a daisy.
‘Come on, you three,’ she shouted after she’d yeeted the ball halfway across the park. ‘You gotta have more than that!’
Ricco looked at Jojo. ‘Penalties?’ he said.
Jojo nodded.
‘We’re gonna take penalties,’ Ricco shouted back to Aunt Pen, then trotted off to retrieve the ball.
‘Right you are,’ she said.
Ricco took the first one. Hard and fast toward the bottom corner. Aunt Pen dove and caught it in one curled hand.
Cherish next. She tried the other corner. The same result.
Jojo booted it straight down the middle. Aunt Pen punched it away with a growl of victory. Then a laugh.
‘National Five-Aside Champions we were, me and my sisters. A long time ago.’
Sisters? She’d mentioned her sisters before. But it was now that Jojo thought how remarkable this was. She had her own family somewhere. A family of faeries. He wondered if they were close. If they got together for holidays and Christmas and stuff.
Penalty after penalty, Aunt Pen just caught them or swatted them away like they were flies. There were more cheers for their faerie godmother. And she enjoyed every one. Raising her fists in the air, she grinned to the small crowd of picnickers and dog walkers and teenagers who’d given up their game of frisbee.
Ricco had given up too and was sat in a little heap of boy by the goalposts.
‘Right,’ said Cherish. ‘This is it.’ She planted the ball on the spot. She took a big run-up. The crowd started a slow clap, getting faster and faster as Cherish approached the ball. She swung and smacked it. It soared, spinning in an arc away from the goalie, toward the top right corner. It was going in. Surely this one. You’ve never seen a penalty like it.
Jojo stood and stared. This was it... and then... like a cat, Aunt Pen pounced. Her arm seemed to stretch. Jojo could have sworn she gave a little nose wriggle, an imperceptible blink. Her hand shot out like a bullet. Her fingers clawed.
One finger, the longest, grew a little longer and caught the ball at the very last moment, sending it spiralling past the post.
The crowd groaned. No goal. Then cheered. What a save!
‘Oh, come on!’ muttered Jojo. No goals and the ball was gone, somewhere into the woods behind.
Ricco leaped up. ‘I’ll get it!’ and off he ran.
‘Good effort,’ Aunt Pen called to Cherish.
‘Oh no,’ said the girl, her eyes on her watch. ‘Oh no. Have you seen the time? I’ve gotta go.’ Then she turned and ran. ‘Sorry,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Sorry about the ball! If I’ve lost your ball, I’ll replace it!’
‘Don’t worry!’ Jojo called, then half waved and walked over to where Aunt Pen stood in goal.
‘Did you see where it went?’ Ricco was shouting from the edge of the woods. ‘I can’t see it.’
Aunt Pen was grinning from ear to ear. ‘I am rather good, aren’t I?’
Jojo stuck out his tongue. And laughed. ‘It must be around there, buddy. Right where you are,’ he called to Ricco.
Ricco stepped further into the stand of trees. Further in, further away from Aunt Pen and Jojo.
The crowd had all left, returning to dogs and towels and their abandoned frisbee, not bothering to watch a boy searching around for his lost ball.
‘Nothing!’ shouted Ricco.
‘Hmmmm, mysterious,’ said Aunt Pen.
Jojo took a puff on his inhaler and looked up at her. ‘What have you done?’
‘Me? Me? I don’t do anything. Only what you ask. Your wish is my command,’ she said, looking down at Jojo then doing a funny little bow.
‘I can’t seeeeeeeeeee...’ shouted Ricco. Then silence.
Aunt Pen and Jojo spun, their eyes searching the woods, leaping from tree to tree. Empty. No Ricco. He was gone.
‘What have you done?!’ said Jojo again. ‘What have you done?!’ Then he was off, running toward the trees.
‘Hold on,’ said Aunt Pen and she was with him, running.
‘If some other strange creature has got him... or if you’ve sent him off to some place... or if he’s got some terrible illness too...’ Jojo didn’t stop to say any of this to Aunt Pen, he just shouted it over his shoulder as they ran straight into the woods.
‘He was around about here,’ said Aunt Pen. They crashed through the trees to the spot where he’d been.
‘He’s not here!’
‘Hmmmm, very strange.’
‘It’s more than strange,’ said Jojo, pushing forward into the woods. He couldn’t lose another part of his family. He just couldn’t. ‘It’s an absolute disahhhhhhhhh—’
Then he too disappeared.
‘Well. At least we now know what happened to Ricco,’ said Aunt Pen, staring down into a deep, dark hole in the ground.
She held her nose, closed her eyes and stepped off the edge, following them down, down, down to who knows where.
Voices in the Dark
Dark in here, isn’t it?’ said Penperro to the dark.
And the dark answered: ‘It’s really dark.’
‘Oooo,’ said Aunt Pen, feigned surprise in her voice. ‘Who’s there?’
‘What do you mean, who’s there?’ said the dark. ‘It’s me.’
Aunt Pen didn’t answer for a few moments. She thought about who this could be, here in the dark. ‘Are you my conscience?’ she whispered.
‘What?’ said the dark. ‘It’s me. It’s Jojo. You came down right on top of me. It’s amazing you didn’t break something. You’re very light.’
Aunt Pen was quiet a few moments more. ‘A bit disappointing really,’ she said, ‘I’d quite like to meet my conscience. She’s got a few things to answer for, truth be told. So, where are we?’
‘Where are we?’ said the dark, who was doing a convincing Jojo impression by worrying about everything.
‘How should I know?’ said Aunt Pen. ‘This isn’t even my world. This is your world. Tell me, what would a big hole be doing here, do you think? What was it Ricco wished for...’
‘...his dreams to come true,’ Jojo whispered. But what did Ricco dream of?
It was Jojo’s turn to think for a moment, listening to the rustle, clinks and clunks as Aunt Pen fiddled with her necklaces. He thought about the things that lived in the dark – moles, mice, rabbits... rats! Was this a dream or a nightmare?
‘This is a rather big tunnel,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘You know what they say...’
Jojo did not know what they say. There was a click and light shone out from a table lamp that Aunt Pen held in her hands – a normal sort of table lamp with a wire and plug on the end, but this wire went trailing back and into one of the bags that hung around the faerie Aunt Pen’s neck. No wonder she was so light. She was back to her tiny faerie form.
‘They say, big tunnel, big monster.’
Jojo looked around. It really was a big tunnel, almost big enough for him to stand up in. The walls were hard-packed earth, as was the ceiling and floor. There, lying on the floor was the football. No sign of his brother. What had Ricco been dreaming of? For surely this was the dream he had wished for. Visions of giant mutant rats sprang to Jojo’s mind. ‘Ricco?’ he shouted.
‘Oooh, I wouldn’t shout,’ said the faerie. ‘Big monsters don’t like people shouting after they burst through their front doors.’
Jojo threw up his hands. ‘Well, what are we supposed to do?’ he said.
‘Mmmmm,’ said the faerie, licking her lips. ‘Do you smell that?’
‘What?’ Jojo sniffed the air. There was a smell. Not unpleasant. Familiar, almost wafting above the smell of wet earth. It smelled like toast.
‘This way,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘What about Ricco?’
‘Yes, yes, I mean, let’s find Ricco.’ Then much more quietly, as if Jojo couldn’t hear her there in the silent tunnel, ‘But if there’s a meal to be found then so be it.’
The table lamp lit the way along the tunnel as Aunt Pen went first, casting long shadows up and round the walls. Aunt Pen was singing softly as they stepped, as quietly as they could toward whatever awaited. This time, Jojo could make out what she was singing:
‘We’re gonna get you, giant monster.
We’re gonna get you, giant monster.
We’re gonna get you, giant monster.
Unless you get us first!’
‘Shhhhh,’ said Jojo. ‘You’re really not helping.’
Was the lamp getting brighter or was there a source ahead, lighting their way?
‘Sometimes you have to help yourself,’ whispered Aunt Pen, and then too quietly for Jojo to hear, ‘And sometime soon, Jojo Locke, you will have to do precisely that. And you will find, as you’re finding now, that beneath the worry and questions there’s a seed of bravery.’
There was a light ahead, glowing round a bend in the tunnel. And it definitely smelled of toast – toast and hot chocolate.
And what was that? Voices?
‘Shhh. Stop,’ said Jojo. ‘What’s that? Is it Ricco? Monsters don’t talk, right?’
Aunt Pen had stopped. She cupped a tiny hand round her pointed ear. ‘All the best monsters talk,’ she said.
Jojo hesitated. What was round that next bend, in that warm glow? There was definitely more than one voice. And what was that? Laughter? How many creatures were there? He had to get Ricco, though. He couldn’t let one of Aunt Pen’s magic wishes devour his little brother. He just couldn’t. He hurried past Aunt Pen. ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘Quickly.’
‘There you go,’ whispered Aunt Pen.
‘And quietly!’ hissed Jojo.
The faerie dropped her voice to a breath. ‘Courage will be needed.’
So they stepped slower than ever toward the light and the voices. The bend was running out. And they could hear what was being said now.
