Maddigan's Fantasia (14 page)

And then there was another sudden movement – a terrifying one. Garland thought she might die of fright. The figure in the
coffin sat up, the white veil falling away from its strange face. It raised its arms and held them high. It had claws not hands. Its carved face was the face of a demon. It swung itself sideways and stood up. Then, holding its claws high it advanced upon them. Boomer ducked down. Garland dodged, but the
Sleeping
Beauty, sleeping no longer, seized Timon and began to dance with him.

‘That switch!’ hissed Timon desperately as Garland snatched the rod from the floor where he had dropped it, and stared down at the dark wood. There below the dial, barely visible, she made out two buttons set into the shaft. She pressed one … and suddenly the whole room seemed to come alive. The great dolls, heads lolling as if their necks were broken, began an ungainly waltz. She pressed the other and the Sleeping Beauty flung its arms wide, releasing Timon who rolled away, then leaped to his feet and made for the top of staircase. But Garland now found that, by pressing the buttons, she could control that clawed dancer. She could make it turn left and right, make it spin and bow. She directed it towards the window. As it turned it swept the curtain aside.

‘It’s morning!’ shouted Boomer, so taken aback by the
sunshine
that now burst in on them, that, once again, he forgot to whisper. And a moment later the sound of shattering glass filled the room. Due to some accidental movement of Garland’s, the Sleeping Beauty had dived through the window. Running to stare down after it, appalled at what she had done, Garland found she could see it somersaulting down the slope over and over to the edge of the water where a whole group of people had gathered.

‘Look! It’s Goneril. They’re going to duck Goneril,’ said Timon. ‘They’ve got her tied to the ducking stool. The Witch-Finder must be down there already. Eden too! Come on! At least we can prove that the Witch-Finder isn’t magical. We can show
them the wand is – well, some sort of radio-controlled thing.’

However Garland and Boomer were swinging the door wide.

Down at the water’s edge Maddie was standing between the Witch-Finder and the ducking machine, arguing with the Witch-Finder, gesturing as if she were writing orders on the air in front of her.

Yves was standing at her shoulder, ready to move in, but Garland could tell he was only waiting to see if Maddie could talk the Witch-Finder into bringing Goneril down. If Maddie did not succeed he was prepared to lead Tane, Bannister and indeed the whole Fantasia into battle.

‘All witches must be put to the test.’ The Witch-Finder was crying furiously.

CRACK!

A few people started and looked around.

‘She’s not a witch … she’s our Maddigan grandmother,’ Maddie was crying back, glancing up at Goneril. ‘She looks after our little children. She’s got a kind heart.’

‘Duck her!’ yelled someone in the crowd.

‘Oh no,’ said Maddie. ‘I’m in control of your horrible machine and she’s not coming down until you promise me it’s safe for her to come down.’

CRACK!

More heads turned, for how could the Witch-Finder be cracking her whip when she was standing there by the ducking machine, both hands empty.

‘Look at the tower! Look at the tower!’ someone began shouting, and all the Community people looked up, amazed to see the tower flashing with light and giving off sparks as if it were burning.

‘Dunk her! Drown her!’ shrieked the Witch-Finder, trying to get the crowd to look back at her, desperate to take charge once more.

By now most people had stopped listening to her.

Down the hillside came a terrible untidy procession of dark shapes. Will-o’-the-wisps, arms raised, came sliding towards the water. And in front of the black will-o’-the-wisps came the broken marionette, now headless, but still waving its wild claws, while Garland danced beside it, waving the wand. Press the top button and up went those snapping claws into the air. Press the bottom button and the arms fell to its sides. Push the top button to the right and the marionette danced right. Push it left and then up and it swung left, clacking its claws savagely. Timon and Boomer came last of all, like shepherds directing a wild herd towards the water.

‘What have you done?’ shrieked the Witch-Finder. ‘You have released the will-o’-the-wisps.’

Boomer swung away from Timon, and came leaping past the will-o’-the-wisps towards the astonished crowd.

‘It was all tricks!’ he began shouting. ‘That isn’t a true wand. That thing with claws isn’t a monster. It’s just a puppet and we can make it dance. Look at it.’ He turned. ‘Make them dance!’ he shouted to Garland. ‘Make the will-o’-the-wisps behave themselves.’

CRACK! Timon stepped off to one side and cracked the whip. The will-o’-the-wisps stood still. One or two of them lolled a little. Garland held up the forked stick and the clawed creature danced obediently.

‘And if you can make a monster walk with a wand like that one!’ yelled Timon, panting and talking past Maddie and Yves to the Community people beyond. ‘I think you could set fire to a barn from a distance.’

The marionette, still waving its claws, came up behind them. Garland turned and hit at it with the wand that she held. It crumpled sideways and lay there, twitching, looking ridiculous now rather than frightening.

The Community people looked at the twitching doll, lying in the tussock, snapping its claws at the empty air, then over at the lolling will-o’-the-wisps, then up at the tower, still
trembling
with its coloured lights, and then, rather more darkly, at the Witch-Finder.

CRACK! Suddenly the will-o’-the-wisps were on the move again. Timon seemed to be herding them towards the Witch-Finder herself.

‘What are you doing?’ she screamed.

‘Giving you a taste of your own medicine,’ cried Garland.

‘Stop! Stop!’ the Witch-Finder screamed as the will-o’-the-wisps began edging her towards the green grubby water of the swamp. Goneril looked down from high in the ducking stool as the Witch-Finder was edged into the water, through the
cresses
… deeper … deeper.

‘Leave her!’ shouted Goneril. ‘She’s just a silly old woman. Leave her alone!’

So Garland swung the rod she was carrying, striking out at the nearest will-o’-the-whisp. Its black head leapt off, looping through the air as if it had a life of its own and as if it knew exactly where it was going. It fell, rolling, among a group of Community people, all of whom shouted and shrank away from it, as if it might snarl and bite them, but the head merely rolled over until it struck a tussock where it lay, staring up with its wild red eyes. After a moment one of the men picked it up … a round head, red eyes blinking and fading, wires dangling down below it.

‘It’s just a robot,’ Garland explained. ‘They’re all robots powered by a – a –’

‘– generator!’ shouted Boomer. ‘Up in the tower!’

Timon helped the Witch-Finder to her feet once more. She stood beside him wordlessly, staring at Yves, at Maddie, at the whole Fantasia. At last she looked back at Garland, but still had nothing to say. Garland caught a glimpse of silver
around her neck. She was wearing Eden’s medallion.

‘And now we want Eden back,’ said Timon, shaking the Witch-Finder’s arm. ‘We don’t mean you any harm. Just bring Eden back … the boy. The magical boy!’

‘And bring Goneril down from that perch up there,’ said Maddie, cutting in quickly.

Unexpectedly the Witch-Finder grinned at them. ‘You think I can’t make these fools turn on you?’ she murmured. ‘Their fear of me is so ingrained by now that doubting me will tear them apart. Look around. Even now – even with the evidence in front of them – they don’t want to believe you.’

Timon took something from one of his pockets and showed it to her.

‘See what I have here?’ he asked her. ‘A detonator. You burnt that old house yesterday, but we – we might burn your tower up there.’

Garland put out a finger. ‘If I press this button here …’ she said.

The Witch-Finder buried her face in her hands for a moment, but now she looked wildly up at Goneril. ‘Bring her down!’ she shouted. ‘Now!’ Then she signalled to one of the Community men who nodded twice, turned and vanished. And within five minutes Goneril was on solid ground once more and shortly afterwards Eden was back with them.

Lilith flung herself at him. ‘I rescued you!’ she cried dramatically. ‘The Witch-Finder has been tricking everyone but I was too clever for her.’

‘I knew you’d find a way,’ Eden told her. ‘I even slept well.’ But, as he said this, he was looking over her head at his brother, at Garland and at Boomer.

‘Good for you,’ said Garland. ‘We didn’t.’

Timon put the whip into Eden’s hand, then nodded in the direction of the Witch-Finder.

‘How about a swap!’ he muttered. ‘Just suggest it.’

Eden nodded, turning to the Witch-Finder. But she was already holding out his medallion. Eden took it and carefully hung it around his own neck then handed her whip.

‘What is it, though?’ asked a voice. ‘What’s going on?’ Garland turned to find the girl Sara standing there, looking puzzled. ‘Why are things changing? What’s happened?’

‘Well, that tower wasn’t haunted,’ said Garland. ‘The Witch-Finder made you think it was, because she found a way of filling it with strange dolls and toys that moved. I think they must be things left over from the days before the Destruction. And she found a way of moving them, a really old, ancient way. But they worked by a sort of – well, a sort of science I suppose. Nothing to do with hauntings or ghosts.’

‘No ghosts?’ asked Sara incredulously.

‘No ghosts!’ Garland repeated.

‘Everyone set?’ Yves was calling. ‘Come on everyone. Let’s get back onto the road.’

‘Aye!’ Garland heard a dozen voices reply, but she kept watching Sara, waiting for her to look free from hauntings – relieved – even happy.

As Sara stared up at the tower a strange, obstinate expression crept slowly across her face.

‘You don’t know!’ she said. ‘It
is
haunted. The Witch-Finder’s just tricking you all over again.’

Garland felt her own face wrinkling with astonishment. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Aren’t you glad not to be haunted.’

‘We
are
haunted!’ Sara declared obstinately. ‘We
are
!’

Garland opened her mouth to argue again, but a hand fell on her shoulder and a voice muttered in her ear.

‘Forget it,’ Timon was saying. ‘OK, so she’s scared of the ghosts, but they’re what makes her town special. They frighten
her but I don’t think she wants to give them up.’

‘All’s well!’ Maddie was shouting to the whole Fantasia through the window of her van, and Yves was echoing her.

‘All’s well, but back to work! On to the next place.’

Sara turned and stalked haughtily away.

Boomer, shooting around on his bike, tried waving to the people of the Community, but they turned their back on him, and as the Fantasia moved on, leaving the Community, they moved on in silence.

Looking sideways through the van window up at that distant hill she could see the tower – still and dark now – and thought she could make out a figure standing at one of the windows – the very window she had tumbled through only a few hours earlier. But perhaps she was wrong about that. After all, it was a long way off by now. Perhaps she just had a picture of that window and that dark figure in her mind.

Garland stopped writing
and looked through the van window … through the rain and out into even more rain. Some drops bounced up from the mud, others sunk into it. She felt that Doom was grinning back at her … Doom, a dark and bony dancer, leaping and twisting between the Fantasia vans. They should move on. They
must
move on. At the same time Garland knew that moving on was as unwise as staying still. ‘We should keep on the high ground until the rain is over,’ Yves had said to Maddie. ‘You know that.’

‘Some of us think it’s worse to stay on here,’ Maddie had answered. ‘Tane’s not the only one who’s caught whatever it is that’s out there. That little one – Jewel – she’s ill too, and Goneril will probably be next. Because she’s taking care of the sick ones. She must be breathing in the bugs.’

‘We stay here,’ Yves had said obstinately, and Lilith, standing at his elbow had beamed up at him, proud of having a father who was in charge. ‘They say Jewel’s got great big red boils all over her,’ said Lilith sounding horrified, but interested too. Though she was frightened of what was going on she was somehow caught up in the adventure of it.

‘Well, it’s not true,’ Garland said sternly. ‘The sick ones are just lying there terribly hot and feeling all dizzy. It’s really awful for them. They might die.’

Remembering her own words, Garland frowned and sighed, and then, hearing a step out at the front of the van (a step too light to be Maddie’s), she hastily pushed her diary out of sight just a moment before Lilith appeared. Without being invited, Lilith flopped down on Garland’s own bunk bed, spreading herself out as if the bunk was really hers.

‘Rain’s boring,’ she said.

‘Is it getting any better?’ asked Garland.

‘No,’ said Lilith. ‘Wetter and wetter, not better and better.’
Then she laughed, looking over at Garland to make sure Garland was laughing too.

‘Ha! Ha!’ Garland said, sighing inside herself. She did not want to hurt Lilith’s feelings … but she did not want to have Lilith sitting beside her watching her … spying on her, almost … and trying to talk or play with her. She picked up a nearby book and pretended to read.

‘I can read,’ said Lilith immediately. ‘My father taught me.’ Garland nodded. ‘Did your father teach you?’

‘My father
and
my mother,’ Garland mumbled.

‘It’s funny,’ Lilith went on, ‘you having a mother but no father any more, and me having a father and no mother.’ She was not asking a question, and yet, when she paused,
Garland
could tell Lilith was expecting some sort of answer. Garland remained silent. Being silent was like some sort of loyalty to Ferdy who seemed to have been so quickly left behind and forgotten. Silence was often all she had left to offer him.

And suddenly Garland felt she could not bear to lie there
pretending
to read while Lilith, who was so much younger and who just could not be expected to understand Garland’s sadness, tried to match up Yves with Maddie. She leapt to her feet.

‘Rain or not,’ she said. ‘I’m going out. I’m going to check on Goneril.’

As she pulled on her sheepskin coat (woolly side in, skinny side out) and jammed a sheepskin hat down over her ears. Lilith leapt up too, utterly determined that Garland should not leave her on her own. As Garland pushed her hair in under her hat, Lilith danced from one foot to the other, glad to think that something was happening, even if it was only a walk between one van and another.

Outside the rain was coming down … not fiercely but steadily. All around them the land drank until it could drink no
more, after which it pushed the water out and away, forming great puddles, and thin streams which tangled together like silver strings – like the roads of the land.

‘The weather’s being mean to us, isn’t it?’ Lilith cried.

‘Not just us,’ Garland said, sighing. ‘It’s being mean to
anyone
who’s out in it.’

And other people were out in it too.

The rain came down and the wind blew. Maska’s horse suddenly struck a soft pocket of mud. Its legs sank deeply … it rolled its eyes and put it ears back. Ozul dismounted and sank into the mud himself.

‘This time! This place!’ he said bitterly. ‘This wretched time! This horrible place! Why did it have to be here? Now?’

‘We can’t go back,’ said Maska in his curious voice. ‘The place is a horrible place, but it is the right place.’

‘They must have gone this way,’ Ozul persisted. ‘Look! Wheel tracks … hoof marks! If we hadn’t been held up in that wretched town … and taken the wrong road …’

‘We can’t go back,’ repeated Maska. ‘We can’t go back without the Talisman, or the Nennog will delete us. At least rain is better than deletion.’

‘Oh, no doubt about that,’ agreed Ozul, and then spoke to Maska’s horse. ‘Up! Up!’ And the horse did come up onto wet, slippery but solid ground once more. ‘Onwards then!’ ordered Ozul, mounting own his horse. And on they went, following, always following, the dissolving trail of Maddigan’s Fantasia.

As they came towards Goneril’s wagon, Eden loomed up in the doorway, and Lilith made a sound of pleasure. Company, she was obviously thinking, bored with Garland, though not totally ready to let her go. Garland looked towards Eden, knowing he was worried about his little sister in an ordinary brotherly way,
yet it was hard to think of him as anyone’s ordinary brother. He still looked like some sort of young tree given a human shape but without entirely giving up its gentle twiggy look. Lilith fluttered backwards and forwards in front of him like a
butterfly
, looking for a place to perch and open its wings.

A hand fell on Garland’s shoulder. Both Lilith and Garland turned, squinting up through the rain to see Yves, coated and booted, standing behind them.

‘No,’ he said to Lilith. ‘No going inside that wagon.’ He looked at Garland. ‘They’re sick in there … Tane … the little one. Keep away, both of you.’ He said
both
of you but it was Lilith he guided away. ‘And your mother certainly doesn’t want
you
going in there,’ he told Garland, speaking back over his shoulder. And she doesn’t want you running away either, so even if we aren’t moving on in the usual way, just be patient. Stick around. You’re keen on reading, so read some good book or other.’

Garland immediately decided to show Yves that she didn’t have to do what he told her to.

Though she had not really intended to go into Goneril’s wagon, merely to ask through the door about Jewel, she now put her foot on the wagon step, and swung herself up beside Eden.

‘We’re not to go in,’ said Eden. ‘They’re all sick in there. Well, all except me and Boomer. We’re helping Goneril … running errands, bringing water … all that sort of thing.’

‘Who is it?’ called Goneril from somewhere inside, and then the curtain across the door wavered and there she was, Goneril, balancing beside them, breathing deeply as if breathing was something she had just learned to do, and coatless but seeming to enjoy the feeling of rain blowing in at her.

‘It’s the same thing with both of them,’ she said. ‘And with old Shell now.’ She looked down at Eden. ‘Your little sister is very ill I’m afraid, and I can’t do anything about it but keep her
warm and make sure she drinks a lot. Once they had ways of curing all kinds of illness but most of those cures are lost in these times. We’ve nothing left but stories. Stories! You know, once upon a time, actually not too far from here now I come to think of it, there was a man called Pokka who had a theory of how to make everyone well. Pokka’s Theory. It’s in the stories. When I was a young thing travelling with the Fantasia, and Gabrielle Maddigan was in charge, I can remember voices, all up above my head, talking about Pokka’s Theory. Well, we need Pokka right now … and not just his theory. We need his tonic. If ever he had one, that is. Now, off you go.’

And at that moment a bell rang. They were being called for a Fantasia parley. Everyone gathered quickly, jamming together within the circle of vans … clowns and acrobats, riders, jugglers stilt walkers, men, women and children all wearing coats and hats and boots. The rain patted them gently, bounced off or ran down them in little trickling streams to drip into the ground around their booted feet. Yves stood at the front of Maddie’s van. Garland edged up beside him and heard him talking to Maddie in a low urgent voice.

‘Every day we stay here,’ he was saying ‘is a day lost and not only a day lost. It’s another day for the sick to infect the healthy. You saw what happened in the South. They were all dead.’

‘What’s happening?’ asked Garland. She knew Yves was about to make something happen and she wanted to argue about it, whatever it was.

‘Nothing,’ Yves said. ‘Well, I’ll tell everyone really soon.’

Garland turned away impatiently and just for a moment, though the whole Fantasia was pressing in around her she felt she was on her own. And then as she turned she felt once more that strange vibration. Each time she felt it seemed she was feeling it for the first time. But by now she knew just what to look for.

So she did look … looked left … looked right, and (looking right) saw that wavering girl shining faintly through the
drizzling
rain … her own silver almost hidden by the silver of falling rain.

Garland glanced sideways. Eden was standing next to her, and staring blankly in exactly the same direction as she was, but he did not seem to be able to see anything unusual. Penrod came hurrying up towards the parley, and hurried right through that silver ghost without appearing to notice anything unusual.
But I see you. I know you
, thought Garland.
I’ve known you for ages – known you when you were weren’t silver. But where? When? Why has everything gone so strange?

The silver girl was holding up her hand. Garland leaned forward a little, staring. She was being shown something.

At that very moment, somewhere far beyond them, clouds must have parted and a beam of watery sunshine shone down through the fine rain. The girl was holding up a blue jar, trying to fix Garland’s attention on it. The girl and the jar shone out with blue fire, wavered and then grew faint in the pale sunshine. Suddenly the jar looked like a blue star, held in the fingers of a silver spirit. And then a voice cut into her moment of vision.

‘Now listen here,’ Yves was saying, and they all listened. ‘We’ve got a sickness riding with us,’ he said. ‘It’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. The question is, what do we do about it? I don’t think there’s time to stop and nurse the ones that are ill. And besides, those who are ill will only infect the rest of us. And besides
that
, we’re going to need people to help shift the heavy vehicles, and you can’t do that if you’re beginning to feel all hot and faint. So those of us who are well must move on …’ Garland let out a cry. She heard her own voice as if it belonged to someone else. ‘No!’ she was crying. ‘That’s not the Fantasia way. We’ve got to stick together.’

Some voices cried out, agreeing with her. Others backed Yves. Yves began shouting. Maddie shouted too.

‘Look! Hey! Quiet there!’ Yves held up his hands. ‘Listen! It’s not just us. Nothing’s simple. We’re running this errand for Solis, remember, which is like running an errand for – well, for what’s left of civilization, and we count ourselves as being part of civilization, don’t we? Suppose we stick together and we all die together – who’s going to take the converter back to Solis? Do we run the risk of having every Maddigan fade into nothing? I wonder what old Gabrielle would have to say about that?’

Arguing voices crossed and clashed like battling swords. But now Maddie was leaping up beside Yves. ‘Listen! Listen!’
Maddie
yelled. ‘We can’t deny the sense behind the things Yves is saying, but it doesn’t have to be just one thing or the other. Some of us will move on and some will stay behind to support the sick and to move on more slowly when the chance comes. We’ll arrange a catch-up point down the road. And we’ll try to keep a bit of space between our two halves so the disease can’t jump from the sick ones to the rest of us. That’s practical, right?’

And that’s what was decided – partly because it made sense, partly because it was Maddie speaking and, after all, Maddie was a Maddigan.

A little while later Bannister came over to Goneril’s wagon with a book in his belt, and his hands filled with maps … and copies of maps. ‘I think you know this part of the country pretty well,’ he said to Goneril. ‘Better than that lot over there,’ and he nodded at the wagon next to them. ‘They’re beginners
compared
with you. Now – it’s straightforward until you get to Greentown. After that … but anyhow we’ll be in Greentown for a day or two. We’ll be waiting for you. And I’ve copied these maps as well as I can so – just in case you need them,’ he said.
‘I’d like to stay on,’ he added awkwardly, ‘but they’re going to need all the muscle they can get if they strike mud. And we’ll mark the difficult places with flags so you can go round them if you follow us – I mean
when
you follow us.’