by Zizou Corder
Janaki kept firing, covering me while I peered over the edge of my cab.
The man was down! He had blood on his forehead and was on his knees. For a second I felt a pang at having hurt him – but then sheer anger took over. It was self-defence, wasn’t it? I didn’t ask him to come after us with a gun. Then another stone hit his back. The combination of catapult and height made the hit strong. He buckled and went on his face in the sea.
The woman, her hands up around her face for protection, splashed across to him and turned him over. The water was just too deep. I could almost see her thinking what to do – drag him somewhere and prop him up? Or give up on him and leave him to drown?
Janaki hit her right in the belly. Crike, this girl is ruthless!
Nigella made her decision. She deserted him.
Splashing like a wild thing at a watering hole, she launched herself towards the main stem of the wheel, where she would be sheltered from our missiles. Was she intending to climb up? I imagined her standing down there, back to the rusty iron, catching her breath and realizing it was two against one.
Janaki stopped the onslaught.
The silence settled.
And I caught the sound of a voice – Nigella’s voice –floating up. She was on the telephone.
Reinforcements!
I craned and craned to hear what she was saying. Couldn’t make it out. No idea how far away they were, or what the plan was.
I glanced across at Janaki. She had her mobile out. She made a questioning gesture – as if to say, shall I ring for help too?
‘Who?’ I mouthed.
‘Mr Maggs!’ she called back, low-voiced, intense.
Fat lot of good he would be! She understood my body language clearly.
‘Police?’
How to do ‘Janaki, I am wanted for bliddy murder, no don’t call the criking police!’ in sign language?
She shrugged. Could I think of anyone?
No, I couldn’t.
Finn?
What could Finn do?
I couldn’t think of anything or anyone I could turn to.
And that’s when I saw the helicopter.
At the same moment Janaki squeaked and cried, ‘Lee! Look!!’
She was pointing out to sea. Out to sea, where we had not been looking, for obvious reasons, was a boat.
I laughed. Great. And I caught her eye and I pointed out the helicopter. It was a long way away and it was heading directly towards us.
She took a deep breath and blew it out.
Beneath us, Nigella began to climb the steps.
And, deep in my jacket, I heard a voice.
‘For god’s sake, Lee, let me out.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘I’m suspended in a little swing on a wrecked Big Wheel hundreds of feet in the air above the sea, with enemies coming from three directions, and any minute now I’m going to start bombarding them with fireworks. Now is not the time for a story.’
And he said – it was the first time he’d talked without me opening him, but I suppose drastic times call for drastic measures – he said, ‘Child. Which of us has survived thousands of years, the siege of Nineveh, the sacking of Alexandria, the Reformation, and other dramas too many to mention? Stop wasting time. Take me out and put me on the seat.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘I have to keep you safe!’
And then I began to feel a warmth, a burning sensation, against my chest where the book lay, and a throbbing against my heart, and the book spoke again, and he said, in thunderous tones, ‘Do as you are told!’
So I did.
I opened my jacket.
I didn’t even have a chance to put the book down – he burst out, filling the space in front of me, growing before my eyes, massive, changing, not a book at all, a great – a great –
A figure.
A man.
A man with big eyes and curly hair, muscular, tall, bearded, wearing pale clothes and a determined look.
He turned to me. ‘My face,’ he said. The familiar voice. ‘My brain,’ he said, pointing at his head. ‘My heart,’ he said, and he tapped his chest. ‘Me,’ he said. ‘My eyes, my mouth. My hands.’ He waggled them. They were huge. ‘All right?’ he said.
I was blinking and croaking.
‘Battle, Lee,’ he said. ‘Are the flares for the helicopter? Good. They’ll distract it.’
And then he whistled, and called out, ‘Mushusshu! Daughters of Mushusshu!’ and then I had to sit down, because all around me were mice, lining up, and they were shivering and as they shivered their skins seemed to fall away from them, and without their skins they grew a little and shook themselves out, and I was surrounded by tiny dragons, the size of kittens, with long wings and sharp teeth, dancing and bowing around him in a frenzy of delight. They were incredibly beautiful. They shone and shimmered. They also seemed to be singing. I held on to my head.
From the other cab, I heard a matching croak of human amazement. I looked over at Janaki. She was staring.
‘Did you know about this?’ she mouthed.
‘Not a criking clue,’ I said.
The dragons’ dance of delight was swift and soon they had gathered round him as he – who was he? – spoke to them low in a strange language.
He glanced up and broke off for a moment to say to me, ‘Nebo. Call me Nebo.’ And for a moment he smiled, and it was as if the sun had come out on my entire life, and then he turned back to his dragons.
Nebo.
‘He says to call him Nebo,’ I called to Janaki, as if in a trance.
She nodded slowly.
With a raised finger he dismissed the tiny dragons and they rose in a cloud. For a second they hovered and then they poured over the edge of the cab in a gleaming purple, green and silver stream, down towards the sea.
A moment later there was a shriek.
The dragons reappeared. Their wings were blurred with speed as they hovered in a row in front of the cab. Suspended from their diamond-sharp claws like sagging laundry from a line, by her clothes and her flesh and her hair, was Nigella Lurch. She was squawking with terror and indignation.
‘Woman!’ said Nebo, and his voice was ringing and magnificent. ‘You ridiculous person! I am not yours and I never will be! I am not for sale! Money does not buy me! Greed does not win the fruits I can give! Do no more harm out of your desire for me! Do not attach your idle fantasies to me!’
And with that the dragons dropped her. Just like that.
We heard a splashy thud and a final squawk. But they were drowned by something more immediate.
‘The helicopter!’ I shouted.
The sound was roaring up on us now. Janaki and I grabbed our flares and matches.
‘May I help?’ said Nebo, and he took one too.
I grinned at him.
The copter hummed towards us. I could see figures through the windscreen. I could see a gun carriage at the side. I could see the copter turning, leaning, to position itself. And I could see two gun barrels aiming right at me. It’s not a nice sight.
‘NOW! NOW!!!’ I yelled, and we let them off, straight at the great domed windscreen.
Janaki was already reaching for another flare – but the deed was done. All three hit. The screen was shattered. The gun shot uselessly into the air as the copter twirled idly on itself for a moment, then with a huge creaking twist it lowered its head and fell in a great tumble to the sea. The dragons circled it curiously, as if it were a giant of their own race, a great fallen beast. And it lay in the shallows, surf ruffling its belly, its rotors still swinging slowly.
Now there was only the boat from the sea to deal with. I turned to check. It was still a long way off. As the helicopter’s moan subsided, there was quiet. My ears were ringing.
Nebo sat down.
‘Come here,’ he said.
There wasn’t far to go, just across the little fairground boat, but I went and I stood near him.
He took my hand. Warm strength emanated from him.
‘All right?’ he said.
I nodded. Couldn’t speak, to tell the truth.
‘Good,’ he said. Then he glanced across at Janaki, raised his eyebrows at her, and turned back to me.
His eyes were golden brown. His hair was greying at the temples. His face was lined and tough and tired. He smelt like honey and oranges. He opened his arms, and he hugged me, and I put my arms around him, and I felt the warmth and the strength.
‘I’m not really meant to do this,’ he said. ‘The Beano is one thing, but human form is quite another… but you wanted it so much. And I have to give people what they want. No one else ever wanted it.’ He looked down at me. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and rolled his shoulders in the breeze and took a deep breath. He looked out over the Drowned Lands. ‘What a beautiful world,’ he said. ‘Enjoy it.’ And he tweaked my cheek, and then…
And then… then the book lav in my hands, warm and heavy.
I was surrounded by tiny weeping dragons.
‘The boat, Lee!’ yelled Janaki.
I swiftly turned to aim a flare at it, but pulled myself up.
Someone was jumping up and down on the deck, waving his arms and shouting.
‘Lee! Lee!’ he was calling.
It was Billy.
He jumped overboard and came running like an elephant through the surf. ‘What the crike’s all this?’ he yelled up, his voice lifting and scattering in the breeze. ‘You all right, man? What’s been going…? Great shot… helicopter! Bliddy marvellous! It’s all over then… what? Who… bloke? You sure… all right?’
I started laughing. Or crying. Or both.
I put my hand over the book. Stroked it for a moment, then put it back in my jacket and tucked it carefully in.
‘Shall we?’ I called to Janaki.
‘Er, yeah,’ she said. ‘Yes. We’ll go down. Yes.’ She looked like she’d been winded. Which she had, in a way. Both of us had.
The climb down took a long time. For some reason we were without strength, dazed and confused, and without confidence in our ability to climb. I felt very weak. We were very careful. Little mice scurried down around us, and we were careful not to put our hands on them, or knock them off.
Billy, at the bottom, greeted me with a massive hug.
‘Man, oh, man,’ he said. ‘That was something. Bringing down that copter. Man, oh, man. Hey, gorgeous,’ he said to Janaki, then he ran over to look at the helicopter. I couldn’t bring myself to.
‘Dead as doornails,’ he reported back. ‘The pilot and the other guy and Nigella. Doornails. That’s good. We can give the police the whole story, blame everything on her. It is all her fault, anyway.’
‘Police?’ I said. ‘Ravens don’t go to the police…’
‘We do if it’s in our interests, Lee,’ he said. ‘Course we do. And if we don’t they’re going to be running round after you about that murder.’
At which I recalled all kinds of things. ‘Billy! You nicked the book off me, you graspole. What you do that for?’
‘To get the reward, dummy,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t, could you? Under the circumstances…’
‘I didn’t want the flipping reward. I wanted the book!’
‘Well, I wanted the reward. And now I’ve got it. And have you got the book?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘So everything’s OK. Let’s go home.’
‘Home!’ I squeaked. ‘I’m not going home!’
Then Janaki said, ‘We should go somewhere. People might have noticed the crash. Might be an alarm or something.’
We stared at her. And then Billy said, ‘Yeah, course.’
We splashed back to Billy’s boat, past the corpse of the helicopter, past Nigella with her hair floating on the water like weed, past the first guy, who’d had the gun. Billy stared at them. I averted my gaze and told myself it wasn’t my fault, it was us or them, it wasn’t my fault. Janaki just stuck her nose in the air and marched by.
CHAPTER 35
Lee Again
I wasn’t feeling too good to tell the truth. We reached the boat Billy had, and Janaki was on the phone to Mr Maggs, saying we were on our way. ‘We’re going to tell you everything, but we’ll be tired and hungry and we have been through a lot… No… Police? Not yet, no… No, he’s a good kid… He wasn’t working with Nigella, not at all… He didn’t mean to steal it!… Of course he didn’t kill him! He had nothing to do with him… Listen – de Saloman didn’t give the book to Nigella – Oh, you know that – Yeah, but listen… she’s dead! I know – no – no… Yes, we’ll tell you everything… What? His daughter! Look – we’ll come straight over as soon as we get back to London.’
There was another surprise though.
I staggered down the little steps into Billy’s tiny cabin. I needed to lie down.
And there was Dad.
Staring at me.
And I stared back.
‘Hello there, Lee,’ he said, and his face was twisted up, and for a moment I thought it was emotion at seeing me again – you know, a dad’s love for his son, or something – but it wasn’t. It was the same old anger.
‘You little graspole,’ he sneered, and his big hand came out towards me and he had me by the throat –
‘LAY OFF ME!’ I yelled, and I kicked and I struggled and he had thwacked me across the face and he was shouting all those things I have to block my ears against…
And then there was another pair of hands, and another voice, and I was lying on the floor in a heap, shuddering.
It was Billy.
He was standing above me, nose to nose with Dad. He was as tall as Dad. His muscles were as tight with fury as Dad’s. He wasn’t as broad as Dad, but he looked like a man.
‘You,’ he said, right into Dad’s face. ‘You stop that.’
Dad narrowed his eyes. Billy did not back down.
‘You just stop it,’ he said tightly. ‘Now, and forever. We’ve had enough, Dad. All right?’
Dad blinked.
‘It’s time,’ said Billy. ‘All right? No more walloping, no more bullying, no more shouting, no more making your entire family feel like shite all the time. And if you do, we are going to kick you out of the house. All right?’
Dad blinked again.
It was a beautiful, beautiful sight. My big brother.
‘I should’ve done this years ago,’ muttered Billy.
I coughed, and struggled to my feet, and stood beside Billy. Not to help in any fight, but to let Dad see that his sons were standing together. Together. I imagined Squidge and Ciaran with us, and even Finn. I felt great.
Actually, I felt terrible.
It was about then that everything began to go rather hazy, and my legs seemed to fall off.
It was most peculiar – I felt myself melting away from the knees. Then – BAM.
I fell over again.
I heard my dad shouting. But not in a bad way. ‘Lee –Lee!’ He grabbed my hand and started to swear. But not in a bad way.
He was undoing my jacket – No! But I was weak, my arms were hanging.
It was Dad on his knees beside me. Dad’s hand on my hot forehead. Dad holding my wrist and counting.
‘Call an ambulance,’ my dad is saying. ‘Now. Tell ’em suspected New Weil’s disease. NOW!’ Dad had me propped up against the wall, my head lolling.
I opened my eyes wide to escape the darkness which was creeping round the edges of my vision. I looked around.
I tried to speak but my mouth was melting.
Janaki was on the phone. ‘Suspected Weil’s disease. Yes. Cut on the hand – Yes, been in the sewers. Yes, he is looking a bit yellow…’
∗
I don’t remember getting ashore. I don’t remember the ambulance, or the hospital at Norwich, or the journey to London, or the hospital in London.
I remember waking up in a sunlit room high over a square, with Janaki sitting at the end of the bed, and Mr Maggs standing over me with a tray, and a fabulous smell of roast chicken. Jan
aki’s eye was the one I caught, and before I could even say a word she said, ‘He’s under your pillow.’
I sat up and reached round. There was the touch of vellum under my fingers. Carefully, I pulled it out.
Mr Maggs was smiling at me. He put down the tray and pulled up a stool.
I looked at him and said, ‘Sorry…’
‘All’s well that ends well,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’
So I opened the book, and I smelt honey and oranges. I touched the page, and then I gave it to Janaki. ‘Would you read to us?’ I asked her.
Mr Maggs passed me the tray. ‘Eat,’ he said, ‘before it gets cold.’
Janaki turned the page. This is what she read:
‘Lee Raven, Boy Thief, by Lee Raven, Janaki, Mr Maggs, Nigella Lurch and others.’
She looked up. Mr Maggs was staring. I was smiling.
‘Chapter One,’ she continued. ‘The Story According to Lee Raven, the Boy Thief. Earlier this year I got myself embroiled in an adventure so extremely peculiar and weird that if any other bloke had come up and told me it had happened to him I would’ve not believed him in fact I probably would’ve decked him for his cheek. However here I am sitting in the place to which this adventure brought me, with the purpose, prize and hero of the adventure in the hands of my friend beside me, so it must be true, and if you don’t believe it I don’t care because it don’t matter, but don’t try and deck me because if you do you’ll be sorry.’
She looked up again, an expression of wonder on her face.
‘Oh, don’t stop,’ said Mr Maggs, with a laugh. ‘Please don’t stop.’
So she didn’t.
‘I’ll start at the beginning because I know that’s where you ought to start a story,’ she read. ‘The beginning was, really, all that palaver in Greek Street, Soho, London, Great Britain, the UK, 20 April 2046…’
The end.
Or the beginning,
depending on how you look at it.
