Maddigan's Fantasia (31 page)

And this time of course she was the one who had to tell Byrna and Nye, had to wake Maddie, who cried when she heard what Garland had to tell, weeping wildly, had to leave Maddie weeping and tell the others as morning flowed in over the land, and the Fantasia awoke to the echoes of a Road Rat retreat. ‘Utu! Utu! A King for a King!’ the Road Rats were shouting. ‘A King for a King!’ and, mounting their strange machines, they rode away.

Timon looked at Garland. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I suppose some things happen – well, they happen
across
time in different ways. We can’t escape them.’

‘Maybe he just had to die …’ said Eden. ‘Maybe there’s a sort of deep-down pattern to things we can’t change much.’

‘And what happens if you go back to your time – back to the future and check it out?’ said Garland. ‘Things might not have changed for you.’

‘They will have changed,’ said Eden, sounding rather apprehensive. ‘But maybe not in the way we need them to change.’

‘Don’t sound so negative,’ Timon ordered him in a scornful voice.

‘Hey!’ said Eden. ‘What’s up with you? You’ve gone all bossy in the last few days, and I don’t like it.’

‘OK! OK!’ said Timon turning away from him. ‘Chill!’

‘It’s not OK!’ yelled Eden. ‘Sometimes I’m not even sure of you any more. And I want to be sure of you.’

And Garland thought that in some ways Eden was right.
Timon had changed, though it was hard for her to work out just how. Even though he was there, standing squarely in front of them, giving advice, telling them what to do, he no longer felt in tune with them. She interrupted the arguing brothers.

‘Stop it!’ she yelled at them. ‘Things are bad enough. Because, thanks to you and your time-shifting, I’ve had to lose my father twice over.’ She felt she was going to burst into tears.

Timon ignored her, still scowling savagely at Eden. ‘Good one, Eden! See what you’re doing!’

What was going on? Was this the Timon of this time they were living in or was it the same Timon of that other time, that time she still thought of as her true time, but changed in some way. It was a relief when Boomer came riding by, obviously feeling safe enough to ride on his little bike once more. Lilith was chasing after him. Boomer slowed. He stopped, and Lilith stopped too, staring at them.

‘Garland,’ he said gently. ‘Hey, Garland. Sorry. Sorry about your dad and that –’

Garland worked to put herself together inside her own head. She smiled at this version of Boomer who somehow seemed familiar and safe and a true part of the Fantasia. Why did Boomer seem real to her when she felt like a ghost to herself?

‘Yeah, I know. Thanks!’ she said. Boomer looked over at Timon and Eden, standing with their backs to one another, and looking in different directions.

‘They reckon you’re joining up with us,’ he said to them, almost but not quite asking a question.

Timon half-turned to look at Boomer. ‘Could be!’ he said. ‘Would you like that?’

But before Boomer could answer there was a shout. Yves! Yves ordering everyone to gather and to listen to what he had to say. A parley after Ferdy’s death rather like that other parley in that other time. She was going to have to live through it twice.

‘Gather round! Gather round!’ Timon grabbed Eden’s shoulder but Eden shrugged it away.

‘Coming?’ asked Boomer, setting off himself.

‘That’s
my
dad, telling them what to do,’ said Lilith proudly, and she went too. Garland did not move. After all she already knew everything that would be said. Yves would be wanting them to go back to Solis and Maddie would be telling them that they had a task, that they must bargain for the solar converter and bring it back from Newton. And then they would take a vote on whether or not Timon and Eden could be part of the Fantasia. She knew all of it –
all
of it – already. She could feel it swirling in her head – and she clapped both hands over her ears anxious to hold everything still.

‘I can’t go through it all again,’ she cried to Timon and Eden. ‘Can we – can we go back – go back to the other first time. I can’t go through it all again. Because mostly I just don’t believe in this time any more. Not the way I believe in the other time. Let’s go.’

‘Yes,’ said Eden. ‘Let’s go. If we can read a time pulse that is.’

‘Right!’ said Timon. ‘And if there’s enough power,’ he added doubtfully. ‘They don’t have the converter yet. And in this time line they mightn’t get it.’

Garland stared at him with horror. ‘You mean we mightn’t be able to go back to my own time?’ she asked him.

‘But this is your own time,’ Eden said. ‘I mean this is the time you asked to be in. You chose it.’

Timon was silent then turned away. ‘Back in a moment,’ he said over his shoulder.

Garland and Eden stood together, not quite sure what to do next. But Timon was back a few minutes later.

‘Okay! I’ve checked, and I’m pretty sure there’s enough power in the converter to make a jump. And it’s not so far into the future. Let’s go to Goneril’s van. We can set up there.’

So they skirted the crowd, hearing Yves say some of the same things he had said earlier in another time and place, slinking along behind Maddie’s van and slipping into Goneril’s van, where Jewel slept. Eden scooped up Jewel and put her against his shoulder. Garland sat on a bunk watching as Timon adjusted the slider.

‘All set,’ he said at last.

Garland saw Timon’s long hand go out to the slider. All at once there was another of those exploding moments. She felt herself dissolving again – and then they were living through those moments of frozen confusion. Days and nights flicked past them as if somewhere a finger was flicking the pages of a diary far too quickly for any word to be read.

Sunshine … rain … wind … calm … lightning … thunder … sunshine again … faster and faster. The frozen children rocked in a storm of time. Then everything slowed down once more … slowed and stopped.

There they stood
… Timon, Eden and Garland … unfreezing, moving cautiously at first and then with more and more confidence.

‘Whoah!’ said Timon, looking at the slider. ‘Spot on. Well, almost spot on.’

‘What do you mean, “almost”?’ exclaimed Garland.

Timon was moving his finger on the slider.

‘Funny!’ he said. ‘We’re here in the right time … but there’s been a hiccup! It’s later – about a week later.’

Garland’s head spun. ‘But how can that be?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s what we call the butterfly effect,’ Eden said. ‘We didn’t do much back there – I mean we didn’t save Ferdy – but we did change things a bit, and so the place we’ve come back to isn’t quite the same as the place we left.’ He looked over at the Fantasia. ‘It does look a bit different, doesn’t it? Not much, but a bit.’

‘A week later!’ cried Garland. ‘But that means …’ she paused working things out in her head. ‘We’ve only got a few days to get to Solis before the summer solstice.’

‘Let’s get going then,’ said Timon. He sounded remote – not friendly in the way he had sounded only a few minutes ago in that earlier time. As he stared out into the Fantasia Garland had
the feeling that she and Eden had stopped existing for him except as useful tools – tools which he might need to call on at any moment.

‘A week,’ Garland repeated. ‘People could have died in a week, or – or got married!’ She began to run, and Eden ran after her.

Timon looked after them with a superior smile. He started to follow them, but then stopped abruptly, taken over by some invisible force. Spasms wracked him from head to foot, but he did not cry out. There on the edge of the Fantasia he silently gasped and struggled, turning his face this way and that, shutting his eyes as if there was something he was refusing to see. Greenness glowed through his closed lids and even crept out onto his cheeks. He gasped, then gasped again. Then, finally, he spoke.

‘Yes, Lord Nennog, I hear you,’ he murmured. ‘You’re inside my head, and every word is coming in truly. What is it you want me to do?’

Garland had already forgotten Timon. It seemed at first that the Fantasia camp she was running into, Eden at her heels, was just as she had left it, though as far as she could tell everyone was more or less the same as they had been. There was Penrod (alive! alive!) taken aback by the rare hug Garland was giving him in passing. There were Byrna and Nye, those wild twins. Goneril was carrying an armful of wood towards the fire, grumbling on … grumbling on … always being Goneril.

And there was Maddie, seeming even more astonished at being hugged by Garland than Penrod had been. ‘What’s come over you?’ she asked, laughing and hugging Garland back. ‘You haven’t been running off again have you?’ she asked.

‘Not far,’ said Garland, lying, for she had been further than she had ever been in her life before. Garland could see the familiar vans, but all looking strangely worn – certainly more
battered than she remembered them. Or perhaps they had always been like that. There was no way she could trust things in the way she had once trusted them.

‘Another day,’ said Tane, ladling out bowls of something from a pot over the fire. ‘I’m not sure that it’s going to be another dollar though. Not today.’

‘We could put on a show,’ said Penrod, but there’s no one here to pay us. We’d have to pay ourselves.’

Somewhere behind them people, tasting the meal, began to exclaim with distaste.

‘Is this soup or porridge?’ someone asked.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Tane. ‘Just eat it and be very, very grateful.’

‘I’m going to throw up,’ grizzled Lilith.

‘Well, do it away from me,’ muttered old Shell.

‘If whining was meat we’d all be full up,’ said Goneril stoically. She turned to Eden who was cuddling Jewel. ‘Give that bairn to me.’ And she took Jewel tenderly in her arms. ‘I’ve got just a wee bit of milkies back in the van for you,’ she whispered.

‘A bowlful of these rare delicacies for you?’ asked Tane ironically, passing a bowl to Garland, who took it, though she was not hungry.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and turning to Maddie she asked, ‘Mum, we’ve got to keep going, haven’t we?’

Maddie nodded wearily.

‘Right! We’ve absolutely got to push on. But we do
have
to sleep as well. We’ll push better with a little bit of sleep. Don’t worry. We’ll be up and off again before dawn.’

Saying this, she took a few steps towards the van. Garland saw Yves touch Maddie’s hand as she passed him. Once the sight of that little caress would have made her furious, but now she felt nothing but a sort of calm sadness. She must be getting tired too. Or perhaps, deep inside herself, she was admitting that Yves was not so bad after all.

‘I hate this stuff,’ Lilith was still whining behind her. ‘I want something nice to eat.’

One thing was certain, Lilith was always Lilith. Turning, Garland gave her such a warm smile Lilith stopped in her tracks, shocked into silence by being suddenly liked. The very bows in her hair seemed to flap with astonishment. Boomer shot past on his bike wearing a pair of huge bird wings that flapped wildly around him.
So
, thought Garland,
the Birdboy adventures must have happened more or less as she remembered them.

Timon walked past looking eerily calm and composed. ‘Still think you can fly?’ he asked Boomer derisively.

‘I might get a chance to practise tomorrow!’ Boomer cried.

‘Dream on,’ said Timon contemptuously, ‘dreams are free.’ As he said this his eyes met Garland’s.
He’s changing!
she thought.
Why did he speak in that scornful voice? He didn’t have to. Timon’s changed in some deep important way. Why? How?

‘But those wings are amazing,’ Tane shouted at Timon’s back, and sounding rather indignant at having the wings dismissed. ‘I’ve spent a bit of time looking at the motor too. I think I’ve worked out a way to power it up.’

But Timon was making for Goneril’s caravan. He climbed into it, and shut the door behind him.

Garland turned away. She was tired, but not tired in the way that everyone else in the Fantasia seemed to be tired. Somewhere there would be a corner where she could sit in restful silence and work most of the confusions and contradictions out of her head before she went to bed. Tane was moving by, collecting the bowls, joking with people as he went.

‘We’ll be back in the land of milk and honey soon. Boomer might even be able to fly there,’ he told her. Garland looked between the vans towards Solis.

‘The Solis lights don’t seem quite as bright tonight as they – they used to be,’ she said uncertainly, and Tane paused, looking towards Solis too.

‘We’re so close to the summer solstice,’ he said, ‘too close. Maybe they’re running low on power. Never mind. We’ll put a bit of speed on.’ He waved a bowl in the direction of that glow. ‘Hey, Solis … don’t worry. We’re on our way. Maddigan’s Fantasia will save you.’

Garland gave a bit of a grin and sat down beside the fire, hoping that she would have time to stare, without interruption, into the smouldering ashes but there was a rustle as Eden (that stick boy) crouched down beside her. There must have been something of the way she gathered herself in that worried him.

‘Do you want me to go away?’ he asked cautiously.

‘No,’ said Garland. ‘Just for a moment I – well, I thought you were someone else.’

‘Timon?’ asked Eden, staring into the fire. ‘He has gone all strange hasn’t he? You see it too, don’t you?’

Garland nodded. There was something she suddenly had to say. ‘I’ve really stuffed things up, haven’t I? By wanting Ferdy back.’

‘Not your fault,’ said Eden. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s nothing to do with you. Probably us. Maybe we shouldn’t have come here in the first place.’

‘No need to try being nice to me,’ Garland told him. ‘I don’t deserve it. I was the one who wanted to go back and change things. But nothing important changed, did it? Bailey still died. Dad … well, I just didn’t
believe
in him, not until he set out to die. And then I did believe in him for a few minutes. And somehow shifting from one – what did you call it? Time stream? – shifting from one time stream to another has changed things here a bit, hasn’t it? Maybe we won’t get to Solis in time.’

‘He frightens me,’ he murmured. ‘Timon, I mean! He really, really frightens me.’

Eden and Garland looked at each other, both of them struggling with strange worries almost like dreams, and with no way of waking up from them.

Out in the darkness, some distance beyond the firelight and the ring of vans, Timon was sitting with Ozul’s power book set up in front of him. He
had
gone in at the front door of Goneril’s van only to slink secretly out through the back door and to vanish into the night. Though he had no torch of any kind he walked as if he knew exactly where he was going and ten minutes later found himself with Ozul and Maska, who stared through the dusk at him, then bowed their heads as if they were recognizing their master.

Timon spoke. And now, across time and space, it was the Nennog’s eerie voice that came out from between his lips, speaking not only to Ozul and Maska but to Timon himself.

‘Very good, Timon,’ the Nennog said. ‘Most creative. You are doing well.’ And the laugh that then came out through Timon’s quivering lips was the Nennog’s laugh. In spite of himself Ozul shivered at the sound. Maska remained totally still, staring out over Timon’s head into the darkness.

‘Can this mere circus ever succeed?’ asked the Nennog.

‘They might,’ Ozul muttered. ‘Might! They’re very tough … very determined.’

‘Timon?’ asked the Nennog.

‘They won’t,’ said Timon, seeming to answer himself. ‘I’ll see to that.’

Maska broke out, speaking in a decaying but urgent voice.

‘If there’s a chance they might succeed … even a small chance … we should kill them.’

‘Then we might never find out just what the Talisman was …
is, and I might – that is to say the Lord Nennog – might be in another sort of danger,’ said Timon.

‘Exactly!’ the Nennog said through Timon’s mouth. He laughed again. Ozul hid his face in his hands. ‘Ah, my boy what a team we are. Which of us is which? Shall I delete these unnecessary idiots?’

Ozul looked up desperately.

‘My Lord,’ he cried softly. ‘We have worked for you – been true to you …’

Timon squirmed as if he, too, were wrestling inside himself. He began to pant slightly.

‘No!’ he said at last, speaking in his own voice. ‘They still have their use.’

His expression changed, and the voice that struggled through Timon’s lips was the Nennog’s once more.

‘What is it?’ asked the Nennog sharply. ‘I can feel doubt in you.’

‘It’s – it’s nothing,’ said Timon, still twisting. ‘It’s hard to make room for you. My head is splitting in two.’ Maska moved sideways to stare at him, and Timon raised his head to stare back at Maska. His eyes glowed that blank and horrible green. Maska stepped back again.

‘I will find the Talisman,’ Timon announced in his own voice. ‘I will work out what it is and bring it to you. I promise. You can trust me. After all I
am
you.’

‘Exactly,’ said the Nennog smugly. ‘Exactly and excellent. At last I have made a true connection. So, Timon, go about my business! Go now!’

Tane, stirring the embers of the fire and putting fresh wood on it, looked up to see Timon stalking towards him out of the shadows.

‘Hey! You should be resting,’ he shouted, and then, ‘are you all right?’

Timon was just a little unsteady. ‘Fine,’ he said remotely. ‘Fine! Just tired … very tired.’ And suddenly he was racked with another ferocious spasm. ‘Fine!’ he repeated, but clutching himself and rocking himself back into the world.

‘You don’t look it, mate,’ said Tane. ‘Get some rest. Will you be okay? Do you need a hand?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Timon. He walked over to Goneril’s van for the second time that evening. The door closed behind him once again.

And now the Fantasia was wrapped in darkness, except for the fire and for a single light burning in the back window of Maddie’s van. Writing secretly by candlelight Garland saw a tear splash down on her page.

She was crying.
Ferdy, Ferdy, Ferdy,
she wrote,
I thought all the crying was over. But in a way, over in that other time at least we did have a chance to say a sort of goodbye. We Maddigans like things finished properly don’t we? We don’t like straggling ends. Here’s a promise. We will get to Solis in time,
she wrote,
and Solis WILL SURVIVE. I promise you. I promise you. Which means I have promised you twice over. Pretty powerful promising
.

She looked at what she had just written and shook her head.

It’s strange to have two diary entries for the same thing … the same but different,
she thought.

And then she closed the cover of the old diary and settled herself to get some sleep.