“But when I do this -” he returned to the window, and brought the emberquick to its former position “- the feeling becomes strong, and the music seems ... I dunno. But not weird. You get me?”
“I think so. I guess so.”
But the boy wasn’t entirely convinced that Lilac understood. “Look - it’s a compass.” He gave the emberquick a little shake, as if for emphasis. “Whenever I think of that great dream, this thing always points me in that direction. It wants me to find out something. Something important. I don't know what, but it must be something to do with the dream.”
Lilac inched closer to the child. “This is a mystery,” she said, gazing at the crystal. “Doesn’t it point anywhere else? Is it always the same way?”
“Always,” said Benjamin, turning to face her. “Do you know what’s there? I mean - any idea of what it could be trying to lead me to?”
“Show me,” said Lilac. “Be as precise as you can.”
The boy indicated with a finger. “Just by that tower there - the one next to the small blue one. It’s always the same direction.”
“There’s nothing that way,” said the lady, pausing awhile to reflect. “No, nothing at all. You get the city, the conurbations, then the villages; after that you get the ranges - the Corla Sihan, Rhiannon Peck, and the brooding sisters. Could be that your emberquick is responding to the place where it was mined. The Corla Sihan, for instance, had always granted big yields. Though what your dream has to do with it, I have no idea.”
“Neither do I,” said Benjamin. “I’d like to know, though.”
“Would you indeed.”
The boy nodded. A crafty glimmer flitted across his eyes. “Wouldn’t you?”
Lilac folded her arms. “Are you trying to tempt me with the promise of adventure, child?” she said, without any reproach whatsoever.
“Yep,” he replied, spicing it with the hint of a grin.
“You have become the bold one while I was away, haven’t you!”
“I dunno,” he said, a little unsure of how to respond to the statement. “I suppose so.”
“Well, you certainly have me intrigued,” she said wryly.
Benjamin glanced pointedly at the emberquick, keen to get to the heart of the matter. “I mean, we could follow it,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that the closer we get, the...better the music will become.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it would be best if we moved soon, don't you think?” said Lilac breezily, as if it had been he, and not herself, who had been responsible for the shilly-shallying. “There’s no telling how far away this whatever-it-is could be. We might not even find anything.”
Benjamin doubted it. “How long do you think it’ll take?” he asked.
“I don't know. Ages, perhaps.” The lady smiled - and more than a little knowingly. “There’s really only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
***
But first they had to eat. Lilac was insistent upon it. The cakes she’d bought from Azadeurs, she said, had been purchased at a premium, and she did not want to compromise their freshness. The same went for the tea she had procured at Makato’s. “Blame the Londoner in me,” she explained, as Benjamin made an impatient face, “for believing that time taken for tea and biscuits never fails to be time well spent. Which reminds me - you don’t come so far from London yourself, do you?”
Benjamin mumbled something about his home town, but only out of politeness. His thoughts were elsewhere - in places where great dreams cavorted and adventures awaited - and he had no real interest in pursuing small talk. Lilac seemed to understand this, but it did not stop her from trying her luck. “Do you like it there?” she asked, and received a murmur that ‘it was okay’. She queried him about his home, his friends, and his favourite radio shows, but the boy answered with nothing that required anything more than a few curt monosyllables. “Ah well,” she said, as though resigned to some faintly disappointing fate. She handed him a plate containing a share of the biscuits. “If you must act like a busted instrument, then at least make like a broken drumstick and eat, okay?”
Benjamin complied without protest, the sweetly warm smell of the edibles doing much to shake him out of his reverie. Setting the plate down on the arm of his chair, he pored over the titbits awhile, then picked out a plain, rather shapeless morsel that reminded him of a small rock-cake. Before bringing it to his mouth, he looked over to Lilac, in the hope that her smile might impart some clue as to the marvels in store for him should he take a bite. Would there be lightning, as there was with the last one? Or something different? The lady, however, was giving nothing away. “Just try it,” she said, bringing a cake of her own to her lips and leaving it poised there. “Take the plunge. Show me what a great adventurer you have become.”
The challenge left Benjamin completely unmoved, but he played the part of the good sport nevertheless, if for no other reason than to show to the lady that her dare had been wasted on him. When he finally tried the cake, he did his best to make it seem as if what he was eating was of no more import than a lunchtime sandwich.
But the surprise that he had been secretly bracing himself for didn’t arrive. There was a good burst of flavour - it was almondy, like a frangipane - and the texture had that moist, tantalising, slightly-chewable crumbliness that never failed to make him think of happy grannies in old-fashioned kitchens. But aside from a slight heightening of the usual background sensations (which were now beginning to feel so ‘usual’ as to be almost unnoticeable), there was nothing else. Not, that was, until he wiped what felt like sugar from his mouth and saw, on the back of his hand, a fiery smear that began to spark and crackle as soon as he set eyes upon it.
Benjamin yelped. Lilac laughed. Benjamin shook his hand vigorously, like someone trying to dislodge a nasty, biting creature. Between giggles, Lilac reassured him that the effect was just as harmless as the lightning, and that it was would soon “sublimate and be gone, anyway.” Benjamin patted his lips, in case any of the stuff had been left there. Lilac laughed more. “It’s not that funny,” the boy said, brushing sparks away from his growing smile. “Oh yes it is,” replied Lilac, as she too began to eat, shivering as an incandescent ripple coursed all the way down from her head to her feet. Upon seeing how it had also left her cross-eyed, Benjamin finally let rip with all his pent-up humour. “It’s not that funny,” said Lilac, blinking like a hermit looking outside. “This could be permanent.” Thankfully, it wasn’t, and neither was Benjamin’s particular example of this confectioner’s sorcery. With each and every falling spark, the mark on his hand - and, presumably, his face as well - diminished in size until there was nothing left.
“So - that was rather spiffing, was it not, dear child?” asked Lilac, once she had finished eating and regained her composure.
“It was -” Benjamin struggled awhile, seeking a similarly styled response “- jolly. Rather jolly. Yes.”
Lilac reached for another cake. “Again?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” said the boy, also taking another cake.
This time, he chose a squashy, bite-size article that bloomed in his mouth like a jam-filled doughnut, and charged his hair with so much static that it felt as though his scalp was trying to leap up to the ceiling. Lilac ate something flat and frosted, which caused little candle-flames to spring up from her fingernails. While she busied herself with blowing them out, Benjamin sampled some of the tea. Unlike the tea he was used to, it was clear and fragrant; he’d heard that this was how they served it in Japan and China. Looking closer, he saw that the beverage was also infused with a suggestion of that colourful fluorescence he’d seen in the Amar Imaga and the clouds, and he hesitated before taking a sip, wary of what might result from imbibing something so obviously magical. As it turned out, nothing happened - nothing noticeable, that was. There wasn’t even anything all that remarkable about the flavour, either; it was alarmingly insipid, and possessed of that peculiar kind of blandness
that makes one feel vaguely angry at having to struggle so much to taste it. Disregarding the tea, he decided to concentrate on the cakes and biscuits instead, where both flavour and fun were at least guaranteed. Lilac, seeing what had happened, informed him that he ought to take the tea with one of the biscuits if he truly wished to see what the beverage was capable of; the boy demurred, so she proceeded to demonstrate. When the smoke cleared, Benjamin politely declined the offer to do likewise. He was already feeling quite full, he said, and told her that the biscuit he was currently munching upon was liable to be his last.
Lilac brushed her palms together, then placed the empty plate on the coffee table. “So,” she said, chewing upon some final morsel. “That’s my lot. How about you?”
Benjamin held up a hand, swallowed heartily, and nodded towards his plate. There was one more biscuit left.
Lilac waited while he finished it, and then waited yet further as the boy produced a number of popping noises that seemed to come from everywhere except his throat. When he was done, she asked him if he was ready to go.
“What - now?” he replied, as if he’d not quite believed that this moment would ever arrive.
“Uh-huh.”
And Benjamin being Benjamin - a frequently ordinary boy with a talent for nonsense - enunciated his intent to take this bold new step in his adventure thus:
“Sure. Okay,” he said.
13
Lilac was adamant that they were not going to attempt the quest on foot. It would, according to her, be akin to sending a slug out to look for whatever it was they were looking for. Neither, apparently, were they going to fly. “My dinnywhits need some respite,” she said. “After a night like that, they deserve it, don't you think? Leopold, the voyage; it’ll be a miracle if they ever want to carry me again. So no. They can rest. They’ve earned it.”
So how were they going to travel, then?
“We’ll cycle,” said Lilac, slinging the strap of her satchel over her shoulder.
“Cycle?” asked Benjamin incredulously.
“Yep,” she said, patting the side of the satchel as the silf stirred anxiously inside it. Unnecessary burden or not, the lady was still determined that her catch should not be left alone. “And you won’t have to worry about keeping up with me, either; we’ll be using a tandem.”
Benjamin’s heart sank. Tandems were not, in his opinion, cool. They were like mens’ open-toed sandals and Citroen 2CVs: undeniably useful, but embarrassing. When he issued his response, he made his lack of enthusiasm perfectly clear. “Right,” he said dully, and left it at that.
“Indeed it is,” said Lilac, who’d evidently sensed the boy’s reluctance, but deemed it unworthy of comment. “Now, you still have the emberquick on you, yes?” she asked, as she made for the door. Benjamin assured her that he did, going so far as to produce the stone from his pocket. “Good,” replied the lady, fishing for her keys. “We’re all set, then.”
She led him out into the grubby stairwell, which Benjamin began to descend before Lilac had even finished locking the door behind her. “Where are you going?” she asked surprisedly.
“Um. Downstairs,” he said, as if it should’ve been obvious.
Lilac shook her head, smiling.
“So what - I was supposed to go up?”
“Yep,” she replied, nodding towards the upward flight.
“But you said we weren’t going to fly.”
“No. I said that we would not be going by means of my birds.”
Benjamin rejoined the lady at the landing. “What about the tand-” he said, stopping when he realised what she was implying. “Oh. I see.”
“Come on,” said Lilac, as she sprang up the steps two at a time. Benjamin climbed briskly after her, taking in a few more flights, until the staircase terminated in what would have been a dead end had it not been for the door there. With a flash of her keys, Lilac unlocked it, then pushed it open to reveal not another room, but sky, sunshine and fresh air. They were, as Benjamin had already guessed, on the roof of the building. And on the roof, just ahead, was a very large, open-fronted structure that looked a great deal like an oversized bicycle shed - though within it, racked in a line, were a number of tall contraptions that did not appear to be bicycles at all. Considering, however, that any tandem capable of flight was unlikely to look like one incapable of flight, and that none of the other structures present seemed large enough to house anything bigger than a child’s tricycle, Benjamin concluded that this was the place where their vehicle was stationed. Right next to it (and the boy almost jumped when he first saw it) was a small booth, much like a sentry-box, within which was sheltered an even smaller man.
“That’s Naranarra,” whispered Lilac, approaching the figure. “Communal bike-keeper. I’ll need to sign with him before we get our ride.”
Naranarra was old, with a face so dusky and wrinkled that it put Benjamin in mind of those parched riverbeds he’d see on the telly whenever some drought-blighted place made it into the news. His eyes were pale, almost completely white, and against the darkness of his skin they seemed to glare. The austerity of his gaze was matched by his dress, as he wore only a loosely wrapped turban and a robe whose flow suggested a single sheet which had been carefully folded, then entwined about his body several times over. He sat, cross-legged, on a stool - which didn’t do any favours for his height - and held, in his right hand, the bowl of an extremely long pipe. Though he was sucking upon the pipe contentedly, Benjamin detected no smoke, nor even the faintest whiff of it. Beside this strange little character, at the foot of his stool, was a soup-size cup containing a clear, faintly green, liquid.
“Naranarra,” said Lilac, looking down at him. She then followed this with a stream of dialect that sounded, to Benjamin’s ear, a lot like “hile-hey, whip up nary wey-bong bowata nara-pisan, whassay?”
Naranarra replied in a similar style, taking a moment to glance at Benjamin as he uttered something along the lines of “barinda-flag lopo eye-wraith sear, yeah?”
Lilac nodded. Naranarra grinned. He then turned a little, reached back into the hut, and produced a chained-together notepad and pen, which he then offered to Lilac, alongside some more of those peculiar words. The lady, dashing what was presumably her signature onto the pad, replied with a polite laugh, and something akin to “wilyup, eye-wraith sear, yeah but bowata biggim fie-frim updown lie-sen, heyup!” before returning the pad and pen to their diminutive owner. The formalities complete, Lilac made straight for the large shed, leaving Benjamin in two minds as to whether he should tag along like a needy dog, or stay put with Naranarra, and feel - as he always did when he was in the company of someone he didn’t properly understand (like teachers, or friends’ parents, for instance) - vaguely impertinent, as though it would have been more proper of him if he’d not actually been there in the first place.
But Naranarra quickly put him at his ease. Catching the boy’s attention with a sharp yet gentle tap on the arm, he jabbered out another flurry of dialect - “wayet, eye-wraith sear, don grit hy-ups pullen low, biggim jezwhit allava flit, kay!” - winked with sly good humour, then leaned down, dipped the bowl of his pipe into the cup of green liquid, and resumed his noisy sucking as soon as the stem was brought back to his mouth. Benjamin, though completely unversed in his strange patois, was sure that the old man had just offered him some friendly encouragement; there was something in the rhythm of his speech, the rise and fall of his inflections, that seemed to at least make the gist of it clear, if nothing else. The boy responded with a dutiful word of thanks, but the old atulphi merely cackled, waved him away, and went back to his reedy pipe. Taking it as a signal that Naranarra now wanted to be left alone, Benjamin walked over to Lilac, who was in the process of hauling out a tall, spindly device from a rack in the shed.
“Um - so how the hell are we supposed to ride it, then?” asked Benjamin, once Lilac had the thing in plain view. Despite its height, which the boy estimated at around fifteen feet, it must have been fairly ligh
t, as the lady carried it without the slightest hint of effort. “Does it need more bits, or something?”
“Nope,” said Lilac, brushing her hands together. Remarkably, the contraption - which tapered down to a pinpoint, and was completely unsupported - didn’t topple over when she let go of it. “This is it. All of it. Courtesy of my tenancy agreement.”
Benjamin had already deduced that the Niamagonic take on the tandem would be different. But not this different. To begin with, there was little that was genuinely bike-like about it; there were no wheels, it was upright in attitude (as opposed to horizontal, as a normal tandem should be) and decidedly treelike in shape. From the needle-tip upon which it was balanced - and Benjamin was rapidly coming to conclude that the thing was probably gyroscopic - there extended a slender central pole, which culminated in a bristling nest of gears, chains, fans and propellers at the top. There seemed to be little order to this crown of machinery and impedimenta; it was as if someone had gone into a garage and blindly bolted together anything he could lay his hands on. Underneath, and roughly midway along the length of the pole, there extruded two brackets, one above the other, that were each supplemented with a saddle, along with an attendant pair of pedals below. A short run of pegs led from the bottom of the pole to the topmost bracket, and it was no coincidence that they resembled the kind of maintenance footholds one usually saw on telegraph poles, because Lilac was soon using them to clamber up to the uppermost saddle. Her weight, it should be said, caused the whole device to lean precariously during her climb, but it didn’t fall; once the lady was seated, with her feet at rest on the pedals and a plump crescent of a smile on her face, the thing was quick and smooth in recovering its former poise.
“Not as flimsy as it looks, eh?” called Lilac, beaming down at him. “And don't worry about the keeling; my weight, minuscule though it is, will counterbalance you. Don't forget to strap yourself in when you sit down, either. That’s most important. You’ll find two belts hanging under the saddle; when you get on, just bring them round your waist, click them together, and we’ll be ready to go.”