“You could have fooled me!” Maree said. Some of them even laughed.
But that didn’t stop the questions.
After a while I realised why Rupert was not making excuses. Every time he explained something truthfully, in a way that seemed to clear things up, it was cleared up. The pages they were asking the question about just sort of filtered away from the end of the table. I noticed it first when Stan was croaking out about some of the advice he had given Rupert. Quite a chunk of pages vanished after Stan had finished. But if the people were not satisfied, the pages stayed there. Sometimes they even spread out in a row along the end of the table. This happened when they were asking why Rupert didn’t prevent the murders on top of the hill. And I began to see that if you didn’t tell these people what happened and why, exactly honestly, you were going to have to stand there for days – weeks maybe – until you did. Around then, I started wondering if it was as much fun being a Magid as I’d thought.
The pages spread out again when they were asking about Babylon. They were really interested there. To begin with the questions were the important sort of things you’d expect, like, why had Rupert sent all three Empire heirs to Babylon? (you know, I hadn’t realised he had!), and, had he considered what he was doing? Did he know how few people came back? Had he attended to the rhyme, where it said this?
Rupert suddenly cracked. “No I didn’t!” he said. Well, he almost shouted really. “It was the only way I knew to get Maree back! I felt as if I’d just been stripped myself, if you must know!”
Nobody said anything. The pages just gathered themselves back into the pile, and they started asking other questions, much calmer, detailed sort of questions. The things they wanted to know surprised me. Had the flock of goat’s wool disappeared? Rupert went calm again and said it had, and so had the bottles of water and our clothes. And could he say more what the landscape looked like? He said he couldn’t. Then they asked about the quacks. They were really interested in them. Nothing like that had ever happened before, they said, and could Rupert account for the way the quacks came back as mature birds? He said he couldn’t, but they weren’t just mature, they were clever now. Quacks are normally rather stupid birds, he said. And Maree spoke up and said she thought the quacks had dimly known they were foolish and hadn’t liked the idea. But how had the quacks managed to ask for what they needed? someone along the benches wanted to know.
Maree said, “We haven’t the faintest idea. They got there long before we did. And I don’t know how that happened any more than I know why I was so long after Nick coming back.”
At that, that chunk of pages vanished, but slowly, as if the people were regretting not knowing more, and they went on to the last part and asked about when Dakros appeared. I hadn’t known Rupert was worrying about me so much. I’d have told him not to. I can get out of most things.
Then all the pages were gone. Rupert looked nervous again. A lady right near our end of the table said to him, “Didn’t you realise Charles Dodgson was a Magid? I thought that was quite generally known.”
Rupert was just going to say something to her, when a man further up the table waved at him for attention and said, “You’re not quite right about the Roman augurs, you know. They were mostly pretty stupid. I was actually the chief surveying engineer, and I often had real trouble persuading the blessed augurs to let me put the camp on the node. There were at least three sites where they forced me to miss it. It still annoys me. I wanted you to know it wasn’t my fault.”
Rupert laughed and said “Thanks!”
After that there was a bit of a pause, full of wood creaking and robes rustling. Then the dry-voiced man leant forward from his place halfway along the table and asked, “What is your assessment of your performance, Magid?”
“Pretty awful,” Rupert said. “If I could make a mistake, I did. Sometimes I think I invented new mistakes to make. And I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for the deaths of those children.”
Long silence.
Then I heard the person I couldn’t see in the distance. He had a voice you remember though. He said, “Not that bad, Magid. Until today, you were the youngest Magid among us, and we were guilty of throwing you into the midst of one of our riskier and more tangled Intentions. To tell the truth, we expected you to go to pieces. The most we can blame you for is that you were often too pleased with the workings you were able to perform, and did not always remember why you were performing them. All of us have felt the same in our time. Archon or human, we have all once been new to our abilities. We now hope you will accept some less arduous assignments for the next year or so, in order to profit by and assimilate what you have learnt on this one.”
“I hope so too,” Rupert said. I could see he really meant it.
Then it was my turn. Rupert had explained to me that, because I wasn’t a Magid, I was going to have to read my report aloud. I still don’t quite understand why. He said things about the Upper Room wanting to respect my integral autonomy. Or something. Anyway, all the faces turned to me. I held up my print-out to read it. And I hadn’t any voice at all. What came out was huskier than Stan’s, and I had to push to get that much out. I had to cough hard. I could feel my knees shaking. The edges of the papers fluttered like mad moths.
“Come on. No one’s going to eat you, lad,” Stan said.
“That’s right” Maree added in. “They’ve just consumed Rupert. They’re not hungry any more.”
“Er – hum!” I went. I felt a fool. Then I did read it out.
[2]
“The first part of the way was not too bad. We could have got on quite quickly if Maree hadn’t been so slow and weak. I had to hold her up by her elbow and pull her along. It was quite easy to see the road. It was very stony, and all the stones were faintly lit up from one side as if the moon was shining on them from somewhere, but when I looked round the way the light was coming from, there was nothing. The sky was dead grey-black. I couldn’t see much of the land around. But I could hear it. There must have been dead grass growing all over, because it rustled faintly all the time, in gusts, as if there was a wind blowing across it, only there was no wind. It was the kind of dead, warm calm that makes you sweat a lot. And there was a smell coming off the land that made me think there must be acres of peaty bog out there.
“The way looked quite simple when I was standing in the hotel room looking out at it, but when you got out there it was all ups and downs. It was really hard, getting Maree along it. When we’d got over the first big hill and down into the valley beyond, it began to get to me. It was the way you couldn’t see anything except the road curving about in front, and all the rustling, with no wind to make it. Then, in the bottom of that valley, the road broke up. It was suddenly all big stones, and boulders with sharp corners and sides. I think it was an old riverbed. There was no water, but I could just make out the dry dip winding through the valley on both sides of us, choked with these big rubbly stones. And on our left were square stone lumps and a bit of curving stone that looked like an old broken bridge. Something had destroyed it. We had to clamber about beside it.
“While we were crawling through this bit, Maree seemed to get very eager. She began to struggle around with excitement. I didn’t know what to do with her. I suppose she was anxious to get on, but I didn’t know really, and suddenly everything got to me and I wanted to scream. She was like someone mentally handicapped. I started thinking that maybe the road was destroyed worse than this further on, and maybe what destroyed it was waiting for us, and there was only me to keep Maree safe and get her along it, and I didn’t think I could. I’d never been in charge of someone this way before. And the two of us were utterly alone. I realised I had a very bad feeling about this trip.
“But I had to get Maree to the end somehow, so I sort of squished my mind back together and kept on pulling at Maree, and we got across the dead river and up the next hill somehow.
“After that it wasn’t so bad, mostly because Maree began to be mo
re like a person. She still wasn’t speaking very well, but as we went winding over more ups and downs, she sort of chanted, ‘Up and down, up and down, all the way to London town. On and on, on and on, all the way to Babylon.’ And when I asked her what that meant, she said, ‘Skipping rhyme. You do bumps on the “lon”.’ I didn’t know what she was on about. Then she said, ‘Did you put anything like this in Bristolia?’
“I said, ‘It’s a bit like the Unformed Lands.’
“She said, ‘Talk about it.’
“So I talked about Bristolia all through the next bit, and I felt a lot better, and then we were suddenly coming down a long slope towards another river.
“There was water in this one. I could see it glinting. Otherwise it was dead black. It was enormously wide and, from the way the glints rushed along, it was flowing really fast. There was a huge long bridge over it. I could see the bridge faintly lit up like the road, arching away into distance. The near end had tall sort of gateposts on either side that seemed to be carved into statues. When we got nearer, I could just pick out that the statues were creatures with wings. But I never saw them clearly. By the time we were near enough to see, the whole gateway and the path in front of the bridge turned out to be in black shadow.
“We had just walked into the shadow – and it was cold in there – when the statue on the left spoke. That gave me such a fright that I thought for the moment I might pass out. It had a big hollow voice, a bit like the noise you make when you blow across the top of a milkbottle, and it said, ‘Halt! In the name of the maker of forms!’
“Then the one on the right spoke too and said, ‘Halt! In the name of the maker of force!’
“And I thought at first that both of them spread out a wing to block the way on to the bridge. But when I looked closely, it was more like a grille, in spidery, feathery shapes, like the crystals you get in rocks. I pushed at it, and it felt dead cold – and it wouldn’t budge.
“Then someone else came and looked at us through the middle of the grille. I never saw him clearly, but he was pretty terrifying. He said, in a sharp, cold voice, ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’
“My teeth were trying to chatter by then. I bit them together and said, ‘We need to get to Babylon.’ And I backed away pretty quickly.
“He said, ‘You can’t get to Babylon as you are. Turn back.’
“‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t go back because of Maree. What do we need so that you’ll let us through?’
“I swear he smiled. He said, sort of amused, ‘Much less than you’ve got, or a certain amount more.’
“I couldn’t see how we could have much less, so I said, ‘What certain amount more?’
“‘You’ll have to go back and ask the ones who sent you for that,’ he said.
“‘Oh God!’ I said. ‘Look, isn’t there any chance of you letting us through as we are?’
“‘No,’ he said. ‘Go back and ask for another verse.’
“‘All right then,’ I said. I was annoyed and in a panic, because the candles would be burning down, and Maree was so slow. ‘Then I’ll have to leave Maree here while I go back,’ I said, ‘or we’ll be all night. You won’t hurt her while I’m gone, will you?’
“He was furious that I thought he might hurt Maree – I could tell, sort of feel it raging through the grille at me like cold wind. ‘Nothing will touch her,’ he said scornfully. ‘Go away.’
“So I made Maree sit down just outside the shadow where it was warmer, and I wasted a lot of time telling her to stay there and not to wander away, and then getting her to promise she wouldn’t move from the spot. In the end she said, ‘You run. I’m fine,’ as if she’d understood after all.
“So I turned round and ran. That part, going back, was awful. I hated being all alone, and I was scared stiff Maree would wander off, and I kept thinking how this was wasting the candles, and I was afraid I wouldn’t see the hotel room and go straight past it or something. I went as fast as I could, but I had to go slower after I twisted my ankle down in the dead river. And in some ways I remember it as endless. Yet at the same time it was over quite quickly. It was really only a few minutes before I saw a spreading, winking light at the top of the hill in front, and when I was down at the bottom of this hill, I saw that the light was two of the candles. They looked surprisingly big from there.
“I went panting up that hill and there I was, inside the room again.
“They looked pretty stunned to see me. I could tell Rupert thought at first that we’d been to Babylon and Maree hadn’t come back. So I told them how they wouldn’t let us across the bridge without something more. Rupert kind of sagged with relief that that was all it was.
“He wants me to tell what happened while he was off fetching Zinka.
“Not a lot, at first. I went round to the three-cornered space by the bed. I meant to sit on the bed beside Rob, but I was so impatient that I just kept walking up and down and fidgeting with the bottles on the fridge and so on. Rob went up on one elbow and watched me anxiously. Will said to sit down, I was disturbing the quack chicks, but I couldn’t. So they began running about and cheeping, and I think Rob caught the restlessness too, because he sat up and slid his hooves to the floor and asked me what it was like out there.
“Rob is someone I can talk to. There aren’t many other people, bar Maree, that I can tell real stuff to, but Rob’s always going to be one. I’ve been over to see him quite a lot since all this happened and we’ve talked of everything. (Rob wants to come to Bristol to see me, but we know he’d cause a bit of a sensation there.) This time I told him a bit of what I’ve put down here, mostly about being down in the stones of the dry river, because it was the worst. I didn’t say much. I could tell Will just thought, Oh, it’s hard going out there, but Rob understood what it was like being all alone with Maree behaving strangely and not being able to see.
“Next thing I knew, Rob was out of bed. He said, ‘Yowch!’ because his side hurt, and trampled with his hooves and made faces. His face went all white and twisted for a bit. Then he found his shirt and started putting it on.
“Will said, ‘What the hell are you doing, Rob?’
“Rob said, ‘Getting ready to go to Babylon with Nick. They need my help.’
“‘Don’t be a damned fool!’ Will said. ‘You’ve got one side stitched up. It’s hard going. You’d tear it open again. And it’s dangerous in other ways.’
“Rob stuck his head up proudly, hair flying all over, and said, ‘Bother the danger!’ He said he owed it to Maree. She’d stitched him up and he’d lured her into getting stripped in return. And Will said, really very snidely, I thought, that oh yes, Rob had gone from worm to hero in one bound, and why didn’t he stop posing and lie down? And Rob more or less roared, ‘I am not posing!’ After that they really yelled at one another and the chicks got pretty frightened.
“I didn’t say anything. I wanted Rob along. It was a real relief to think I’d have company, as long as Rob could stand it. And I could see his wound was beginning to feel easier as he trampled about shouting. In the midst of it, Rob whirled round on me and asked if I had a piece of string. I found a rubber band in my pocket. Rob took it and put his hair back in it. For a second it looked exactly like a horse’s mane, until the rubber band snapped and his hair all came tumbling round his face again.
“Rob twiddled the broken rubber in his fingers gloomily. ‘Centaurs always tie their hair back when they’re going into battle,’ he said.
“Will laughed. That made Rob so mad he turned round and went back to bed again. I was feeling really depressed and wanting to hit Will – only he’s bigger than me all over – when Will realised that the door had come open and the quack chicks had run away out into the corridor. Will went leaping after them, swearing a blue streak, and shouted at me to come and help round them up. So I climbed over the candlesticks and went out there.
The chicks were really frightened. They were running every which way, and I could have sworn there were
at least twenty of them, instead of just the two. And you know how when you’re chasing something that small you run all bent over with your arms out like a baboon. Well, I was doing that when I ran slap into Gram White. Thunk. I looked up and found Mum was with him.
“I remember thinking, I wish she wouldn’t go around with him! They don’t make a nice pair.
“Mum said, ‘Oh, there you are at last, Nick! I want you to come along with me now.’
“I shooed one of the chicks back in round the door and said, ‘OK.’ I tried to give Will a look under my arm to tell him I wouldn’t be long, but he may not have seen. He was into serious chick-chasing. Then I went along the corridor with Mum and Gram.
“You see, after Maree’s parents-as-it-were took her off to London, I was left on my own and I had to work out a way to deal with Mum. I know that sounds unfeeling. But I had to. I used to sit and blame myself about it, and then go on and work it out quite coldly. The week after Maree left I realised I wasn’t going to be able to call my soul my own unless I did. Mum wanted me to do everything with her – not my things, her things – and to tell her everything I was thinking. And she looked through my pockets and read my computer files and all my school exercise books. Another thing about Mum is that she enjoys it if you fight with her. Maree always went wrong there, fighting Mum. It gives Mum a real buzz to get you under. But she gets – no, I mean ‘enjoyed’ and ‘got’, I keep forgetting – she got bored if you gave her her own way, and even more bored if you told her lots and lots of thoughts and stuff that was not her kind of ideas.
“My very first cold thought after Maree left was: Mum isn’t interested in me, she’s only interested in me belonging to her. So I invented Bristolia. She got more and more bored with that, though I got more and more into it. Stupid really. I’d only invented it to cover up other things I wanted to think about. I filled my computer with Bristolia and she very soon stopped looking at it. Then I worked out how not to fight her. I just said OK quite pleasantly whenever she wanted me to do anything with her, and waited until she stopped noticing me and then went away. She almost never checked up on what I was doing. She wasn’t interested enough.