As Madame Zahnia lowered her arm she absently clipped Gasbag around the ear and the little zany mouse woke with a jolt and a snuffle.
“Wha—wha—?”
“Pay attention when yer ol’ grandma’s speaking to ye, you pesky little scapegrace.”
“I was listening. Just in my own way!”
“Gnah!”
Smack!
“That doesn’t sound like, well, very much,” said Sylvester nervously, referring to the Zindars’ gift.
“Oh, but it is,” responded Madame Zahnia, her attention shifting to Sylvester and away from a grateful looking Gasbag. “It is. Whatever the wish, no matter how great it is, no matter how impossible it might seem, it’ll be granted. That’s the deal. You can wish for riches far beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and they’ll be yours. Or you can wish for your dreams to come true, for your grandest fantasies to be realized right here in the real world, in flesh and blood and stone, and that’ll happen too. You could even wish for the stars to start going out, one by one, until the sky is dark and the world is cold and dead, and that’d come about just like you wished it. The only provision the King of the Zindars put in place is that, whatever it is you wish for, it’s got to be of your own free will that you’re doing it. If someone else tries to force the person who’s been selected as the lucky wisher to wish for something else, then that’s a wish that won’t come true, and the treasure of the Zindars will just lie there like an inert lump, dead to us forever.”
She sighed, then resumed her tale.
“The King of the Zindars took this gift and sealed it in a magical casket, and his followers buried the casket in a place where no one left behind on Sagaria knew where it was. When the time is right, so the Zindars said to the Sagarians, there’ll be a person who’s as right as the time, and that person will find his footsteps – or her footsteps, true, dearie,” Madame Zahnia added hurriedly to Viola, “that person will find his or her footsteps guided infallibly to where the magical chest of the Zindars lies in its Hiding Place of the Ages” – you can hear those capital letters, mused Sylvester – “and will know how to act wisely with the gift that is found there.”
Madame Zahnia placed both of her front paws flat on the table and looked at each of her visitors’ faces in turn.
“You can imagine how much those who are of base heart would give to get their hands on a power like that,” she said portentously, “on the ultimate prize. It is lucky that so few believe the legend. It is unlucky, as I said, that one of those few is that villain, Cap’n Rustbane.”
She paused once more to let the full import of her words sink in.
Sylvester replayed those last few words in his mind. “Those who believe in it, you said,” he observed slowly. “Does that mean you yourself don’t? Believe in it, I mean?”
Madame Zahnia cocked her head and looked at him out of one glinty eye, like a bird. “My, you’re the sharp-eared young feller, aren’t you just?”
Sylvester felt himself blushing. “Well, it’s just that you … that you … well …” he found himself stammering.
“It’s hocus pocus, isn’t it?”
“It surely does sound like hocus pocus,” he agreed. “A lost race from somewhere beyond the stars. A war that tore up the face of the world and stitched it back together again. A magical power that has to be sealed in a treasure chest. The power to make all your wishes come true. It sounds like the sort of thing our mothers tell us to make our eyes grow wide when we’re too small to know any better. And yet …”
“And yet you’re all prepared to believe it, aren’t you?” said Madame Zahnia, her voice sounding kinder that it had at any time since they’d been brought to her.
Sylvester spread his paws. “I … I do.”
She reached forward and patted the back of his forearm. “Good for you, young … Sylvester, wasn’t it you said your name was?”
“Sylvester,” he confirmed.
“The legend of the treasure chest of the Zindars,” she said, her voice low as if she were confiding in him, “is one of those legends that’s true only so long as you believe in it. For all those people who dismiss it as nothing more than a load of old baloney, something only the credulous would fall for, then sure enough there’s nothing in it. It’s just a fairy tale. They could be given a map that led them to the exact site where the casket is buried, and they could dig there for a thousand years and still not find anything – not unless they believed in the truth of the tale with all their heart. They’d be trying to get their hands on the gold at the end of the rainbow, because they don’t truly believe in that either. But for someone who does believe in the Zindar gift, someone who has a kind of conviction they can’t explain that the magical chest of the Zindars is out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered. For them it’s a different story, a different story altogether. If they search for it they may find it. And if they find it, then the chances are they’re the right person to have done so, just like the old king foretold. And in that case they’re the one who can make the greatest wish there’s ever been and see it come true.
“Which is why Deathflash – Rustbane – can’t be the one to find it. There’s no one who believes in the legend more than he does, so he fits the bill that way, all right. But the kind of thing he would wish for, the kind of fate he’d desire to see falling upon this world and all who dwell in it, why it doesn’t bear thinking about. It’d be worse than your worst nightmares, wouldn’t it, young feller?”
Again she patted the back of Sylvester’s forearm in that maternal way.
He gulped. “Yes.”
Madame Zahnia held his gaze a few heartbeats longer, and then fell back into her chair, chortling and chuckling so the ripples of fat in her face ebbed and flowed like ocean waves.
“And here you are believing me,” she said, wiping a little white dot of spittle away from the corner of her mouth, “a well-educated librarian and assistant archivist who should know a whole lot better than to be listening to the maunderings of a daft old jungle charlatan. And I am a charlatan, Sylvester, let no one deceive you otherwise. The advice I give the people who come to me is usually based on things I see or I feel, or that I’ve learned over many, many years in this world. I spice up common sense, traditional medicine and a passel of good education that no one around here knows I have with a few words of voodoo mumbo jumbo here and there, and everyone thinks I’m the great Voodoo Priestess. Even young Rasco and Gasbag think that.”
She thwacked Gasbag upside the head again, not because he’d done anything new to deserve it, but presumably as a matter of principle.
“At least, they think they think it. Deep down, what they know is that it’s all hocus pocus. But it’s hocus pocus that makes them happy and that’s what they pay me for – pay me willingly, and shower honors and gifts upon me even when I don’t want them. O’ course, my advice would be every bit as good without the voodoo hocus pocus, but it wouldn’t be so enjoyable for them to swallow, like a pill someone’d forgot to put the sugar coating on. I can see, young Sylvester, that you’re one of the few that can do without the sugar coating. What you don’t know, my lad, is how much o’ what I just been telling you is true and how much is,” she gestured expressively, “hocus pocus.”
“Then all this,” said Sylvester, nodding toward the impressive crystal ball in the middle of the table. “All this is just a ruse?”
Madame Zahnia shook her head firmly. “Oh, no. I didn’t say that everything I do is a fraud. I do have a gift. The gift I have is being able to see the future. I can’t always see it very well, and I can’t always see it very far and without the help of my Revealer,” she patted it affectionately. “There’s times I can’t see into the future at all, but the gift’s there, all right, and it’s as real as you and me.”
Sylvester, who occasionally wondered idly if he did exist or whether life was actually an illusion, took h
er words at face value.
“And the future you’ve seen for us all is what?”
“That I can’t tell you,” the old mouse replied. “The only way you can find out what the future’s going to hold for you is to live through it yourself.”
“Well, that’s not much use,” exclaimed Viola. Clearly, she’d been keeping a lot of emotion pent up for far longer than she’d have liked, because her voice was uncomfortably loud in the confined space. “What’s the use of being able to predict what’s ahead if you can’t tell anyone about it?”
Madame Zahnia grinned inscrutably. “It’s better than nothing, ain’t it?”
Sylvester knew that wasn’t the real reply, but it was all Viola was going to get. While Madame Zahnia and Viola shared one of those conversations that goes round and round in circles without anyone expecting it to ever actually get anywhere, Sylvester tried to recall something he’d read in Cap’n Adamite’s journal was nagging away at the back of his mind and for a few minutes he couldn’t for the life of him put a finger on what it was. Then, with a little gasp of relief, he remembered. He could see the dead buccaneer’s scrawl as clearly as if it had been there in front of him (rather clearer, in fact, because his imagination cleaned off a few of the ink smudges created by the dampness of the journal’s hiding place). What Sylvester read was this:
The true location of the treasure?
Let me commit to writing no more than that it can be seen only through the fall of the Ninth Wave.
He waited for the next gap in the increasingly waspish exchanges between Viola and the old voodoo priestess, then said shyly, “Tell me, Madame Zahnia, if you’d be so kind, what’s the Ninth Wave?”
Madame Zahnia seemed to freeze mid-breath. Viola could tell she’d been dismissed instantly from the old mouse’s attention and pursed her lips angrily.
“The Ninth Wave?” said Madame Zahnia quietly. “And where would a young feller like yourself have been hearing about that, eh?”
Sylvester looked evasively from side to side. Somehow he didn’t think it’d be right to tell a near stranger about Cap’n Adamite’s secret journal. “It was just in, er, idle chitchat, you know. Something I overheard in a bar one day. Can’t think why it popped into my head just now.”
It must be excruciatingly obvious that I’m lying, he thought. He dared a glance at Madame Zahnia and could see by the smile touching the corners of her mouth that she was seeing right through his clumsy subterfuge.
She chose, however, not to call him on the lie.
“The Ninth Wave,” she said. “Ah, yes. It’s a tale out of mythology, you know.”
Now Madame Zahnia’s the one who’s lying, thought Sylvester, and I’m the one seeing through her. She doesn’t believe this is just a piece of mythology at all. She believes in it as much as she believes in the treasure of the Zindars, which is with everything she’s got.
The old seer was still talking.
“In everyday terms, there’s the sailor’s superstition that every ninth wave is bigger than the other eight, but I don’t think that’s what you mean. What the old myths say is that the boundaries of the mortal world are marked by a wall of … a wall of something that’s called the Ninth Wave. On this side of the Ninth Wave, there’s the world we know, and not just this world, but all the stars of the firmament too. On the far side of the Ninth Wave, though, ah, things are different there. That’s the Otherworld, that is, on the far side of the Ninth Wave. It’s where magic happens, and it’s where the soul journeys in dreams, or after it’s left behind this mortal realm.”
And Cap’n Adamite believed the chest of the Zindars can be found only “through the fall of the Ninth Wave, thought Sylvester. What in the name of goodness can he have meant by that? Did he mean the only way anyone can find the treasure is by dying first? But that wouldn’t be much use, would it? Not a lot of fun having your wishes granted if you happen to be dead at the time.
His confusion must have been written all over his face, because Madame Zahnia smiled at him sympathetically. “My answer hasn’t been as helpful to you as you’d hoped, has it?”
“No.”
“Answers have a habit of doing that,” she said. “Especially the answers to the most important questions of all. And especially when those answers come from the lips of an old charlatan voodoo woman you ought to have better sense than to ask questions of in the first place. No?”
There wasn’t any malice in her teasing, and Sylvester grinned back at her. “I expect you could tell us more if you really wanted to.”
Her face grew serious. “No, I couldn’t. It’s like my telling you about what your future holds. I can tell you only so much. After that, it’s something you have to find out for yourselves. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Madame Zahnia suddenly clapped her forepaws together. “Now, it’s getting late and you’ve a long journey behind you. You people must be tired and, if you’re not, this old voodoo woman most certainly is. These pesky scamps of grandchildren it’s been my evil luck to inherit will sort you out somewhere to sleep, and some good food to put in your bellies before that.”
She turned a stern eye on Rasco.
“Hop to it, brat.”
“Okey-dokey, surely I will, Madame Zahnia, oh mighty one, mistress of all the known universe. You can rely on your Rasco to—”
She aimed a half-hearted blow at his head. “Less of your impertinence, rascal.”
Sylvester wasn’t really listening to her. “Sometimes I wish,” he began, speaking really to himself, “sometimes I wish it wasn’t me all this was happening to but someone else. It’d have been easier if I’d never set eyes on that map.”
Old she might be, but there was nothing wrong with Madame Zahnia’s hearing.
“Don’t talk tripe, Sylvester.”
“What?”
“Tripe. Don’t talk it. You’re not a fool, so don’t make yourself out to be one.”
“Eh?”
“Throw a stone into the pond.”
Sylvester looked around him. “There isn’t a pond.”
The fat old mouse rolled her eyes expressively. “Pretend there’s a pond, dimwit. Do I have to explain everything to you?” She saw Sylvester looking down at his paw and added, “And pretend there’s a stone as well.”
“You want me to throw a stone that isn’t here into a pond that isn’t here?”
“You’re a bit slow to catch on, young feller, but you get there in the end. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Now, go ahead and toss your stone.”
A little self-consciously, Sylvester mimed lobbing a pebble. “Splash,” he said.
“Well, at least you didn’t miss the pond altogether,” said Madame Zahnia with a mock sourness. “Now, look at the ripples.”
“I’m looking at the ripples.”
“See them?”
“As clearly as I see you.”
“All right, Sylvester, what I want you to do now is stop those ripples.”
He took a half-pace forward, as if to the edge of the imaginary pond, then looked at her in bafflement. “What do you mean?”
“The surface of the pond is all covered in ripples because of the stone you threw in. I’m just asking you to make that surface smooth again.”
“But I can’t do that,” he cried, his brow furrowing in mystification. What was the voodoo lady trying to tell him? “If I tried to get rid of the ripples, all I’d do was make more ripples, and more ripples on top of that. Every attempt of mine would just make the surface … ripplier.”
“Exactly,” said Madame Zahnia. “And that’s how it is with life, too. The only way you can stop the ripples is not to throw the stone in the first place. But you’ve already thrown the stone – or discovered the map, it’s the same thing really. You can’t go back and change that. So, you’re just going to have to live with the ripples unti
l time makes the surface smooth.”
“I’ve got to live with the consequences of my own past, you mean?” said Sylvester.
“Exactly. Like it or lump it, you’ve started along a road you’re going to have to stay on until you reach its end. These good companions of yours” – Madame Zahnia indicated Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry, who were watching all that was going on as if it were a theatrical play – “they could abandon the route if they wanted to. But—”
Viola grabbed Sylvester’s arm. “Who said anything about abandoning? We’re all in this together.”
Madame Zahnia stared at her. “You’re certain of that?”
“Yes.”
“Me too,” chipped in Mrs. Pickleberry. “If I don’t keep me peepers on those two there’s no telling what they might get up to they shouldn’t oughter.”
“You’re a mother after my own heart, Daphne,” said Madame Zahnia warmly. “Now, as I said, I’m tired even if you three aren’t. Let Rasco and Gasbag look after you, and don’t eat the mango they offer you for your supper, even though Gasbag’ll tell you it’s perfectly fresh. He’s been trying to get rid of it for a month now.” Madame Zahnia waved them away carelessly. “Now, be gone with you.”
14 Betrayal, Doublecross . . . and Worse
There was a monkey chattering directly outside his window. Sylvester propped himself up on one elbow and looked around him through blurry eyes. Last night, he’d slept better than he could remember doing in years, and certainly since leaving Foxglove. There’d been something about the combination of the heavy and surprisingly good meal their hosts had served up, then a bed made of a heap of mats and cushions, then the gentle rocking of his little hut all night long as the wind made the branches sway.
The only trouble was that he’d spent much of the night dreaming about Cap’n Rustbane, or at least of being back on board the Shadeblaze with Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry.
The Tides of Avarice Page 36
