Big Change for Stuart

by Lissa Evans

  ‘Half right. The one with the lolly was May, but the other one was June. I’m April. You missed a vital clue.’

  ‘What?’ asked Stuart.

  ‘June isn’t as curious about things as I am. She didn’t ask you all about the mysterious phone call, whereas I would have. It’s about what we say, as well as how we say it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Maybe, if you really concentrate, you’ll get all three of us next time.’ She leaned her chin on top of the fence and smiled down at him. ‘So what was the phone call about?’

  ‘It was, um …’ Suddenly he didn’t feel much like telling her; he wanted a bit more time to think about Miss Edie’s offer and what it might mean. Rich with a great big golden capital R … April wouldn’t spring silly tests on him, and then lecture him on the result, if he had pots and pots of money – she’d be too busy wondering whether she was going to get a lift in his new car. He imagined the triplets trudging to school in torrential rain while he swished by in his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s no time to tell you now – it’ll have to wait till tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘OK.’ She looked disappointed. ‘See you then.’

  ‘See you.’

  ‘Oh, hang on, Stuart. I had a brainwave about the Fan of Fantasticness. You know we’d decided that it must fold up somehow, but we haven’t worked out how?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I remembered that May had this stupid plastic fan she won at a fair last year. When you opened it, it stayed open until you tried to stretch it out a bit more, and then it suddenly sprang shut. It broke after about two goes but I’ve done a drawing to show you what I mean.’ She handed a piece of paper over the fence to him. ‘I wondered if Great-Uncle Tony’s fan might work in the same way. Only I think it would probably take two of us to try it – the mechanism might be quite stiff after all this time.’

  ‘OK, I’ll give it some thought.’ Stuart pocketed the paper, gave her a grown-up sort of nod and went back into the house. An idea occurred to him.

  ‘Dad, would you like to come to the museum with me tomorrow morning? I can show you how some of the tricks work and maybe you can help me with one we haven’t solved yet.’

  ‘A solution that needs lexicographic skill and cerebral— I mean, that needs word knowledge and brain power?’

  Stuart looked up (and up) at the tall, spindly figure of his father, and shook his head.

  ‘What we need for this one,’ he said, grinning, ‘is muscle.’

  THE FAN OF Fantasticness looked like a huge outspread peacock’s tail, each of its ‘feathers’ made of silver metal enamelled with greens and blues. Stuart’s father walked around it admiringly.

  ‘Strictly speaking,’ he said, peering over the top of it at Stuart, ‘there is no such word as fantasticness. Although you’ll find both fantasticalness and fantasticality in The Oxford English Dictionary.’

  ‘I thought you were going to endeavour to use shorter words, Dad,’ said Stuart. ‘Both of those are even longer than the one I came up with.’

  He unfolded the drawing that April had given him, showing how her sister’s little plastic fan would ping shut if you tried to stretch it wider; and then he looked at the actual Fan of Fantasticness.

  Each ‘feather’ was actually a very long thin triangle, joined to the others only at the bottom. It was obviously designed to fold up. And you could see that when it was folded, the triangles would all slide behind one other, with the one in the middle ending up at the front. And he also noticed that the one on the far right had a sort of ledge along the length of it. Perfect for putting a foot on, and pressing down …

  Stuart gave it a go, and felt a slight springiness. ‘Dad,’ he said. ‘Can you come round here? This is where I need a bit of muscle power.’ His father wandered over.

  ‘Put your foot on that ledge, next to mine, and when I count to three, really, really press down. As if you’re trying to stretch the fan out even wider.’

  ‘If you’re confident that I won’t contribute to its comminution.’

  ‘You’re using long words again, Dad.’

  ‘Sorry. I won’t damage it, will I?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Now – one, two, three!’

  There was a rusty screech followed by the boing! of a giant spring, and Stuart found himself flying through the air. He had the weird impression that he passed straight through the fan before landing with a thud halfway across the room.

  ‘Have you sustained any serious contusions?’ his father called anxiously, loping across to where Stuart lay.

  ‘No … I don’t think so.’ He sat up, feeling a bit bruised and dented. One of his shoes had fallen off during the flight.

  ‘That’s certainly an extraordinarily powerful mechanism,’ said his father, helping him to his feet. ‘One would have thought you’d been expelled from a cannon.’ They both looked over at the Fan of Fantasticness. It had snapped shut like a Swiss Army knife. From where they were standing, only the central triangle was visible – all the other segments had folded in behind it.

  ‘From several to single,’ remarked his father. ‘Rather akin to my continuing attempt to move from polysyllabic to monosyllabic speech.’

  Stuart limped across the room to pick up his shoe. Odd bits of loose change from his pockets were scattered across the floor, as well as the remains of a packet of mints that he’d forgotten about, and he crawled around collecting them.

  ‘My goodness,’ said his father, peering into the mechanism of the fan. ‘There’s a considerable gap just behind this central segment. I think you may have passed through it during your flight. It’s actually large enough for an individual to interpolate themselves into it – indeed, someone shorter than myself standing here would be totally invisible to the audience.’

  Stuart looked up and laughed to see his father’s head poking over the top of the triangle.

  ‘That must be how they did it,’ he said. ‘Great-Uncle Tony’s assistant would hop into the gap just as the whole thing snapped shut. Everyone would think she’d disappeared.’

  ‘And there’s an artefact here as well,’ remarked his father, crouching down.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A man-made object. One might call it a star – apart from the fact that it only has four extrusions.’

  Stuart’s hand flew to his pocket. The Magic Star had been in there; it must have fallen out when he shot through the air.

  ‘And there’s an odd quartet of sulci in the gap where I was standing,’ continued his father. ‘In fact, it looks as if this stellar object might be perfectly congruent with—’

  A terrible realization shot through Stuart, and though he didn’t know what the words sulci or stellar or congruent meant, he somehow knew that his father was just about to fit the four-pointed Magic Star into a matching set of grooves that he’d just found in the Fan of Fantasticness, and he hurled himself across the room, arms outstretched, yelling, ‘DON’T DO IT, DAD! DON’T FIT THE STAR IN THERE!’ and had just managed to snag his father’s sleeve with one hand when there was a soundless explosion, and he was no longer in the museum, but in a white, windowless room, standing on a blue and purple rug, looking at a painting of a volcano.

  ‘More magic,’ he said, his voice a whisper.

  He looked around. His father was nowhere to be seen. The room was very large; it looked like something out of a stately home, with a massive fireplace, a grand piano in one corner, and three separate doors. It was full of sunlight, the white walls so bright that they hurt his eyes. How can it be full of sunlight when there are no windows? he wondered, and then he looked up, and heard himself shout in surprise.

  There was no ceiling to the room. Above him stretched a clear blue sky. The only visible object was a tall square tower with a balcony running all round the top of it.

  ‘Hello!’ shouted Stuart. ‘Anyone around? Dad? Are you here somewhere?’

  There was no answer.

  He walked over t
o the nearest door and opened it. It led to a concrete cell, bare except for a mattress on the floor and a bucket of dirty water. There was no ceiling on the cell, either. He closed the door again and opened the one next to it. Beyond lay a long sunlit corridor with yet more doors opening off both sides. He walked along the corridor and chose a door at random. It opened into a stable, in which an enormous horse was furiously stamping its hooves. It swung its head round and glared at Stuart with fierce reddish eyes, and he quickly closed the door and tried the one opposite. Inside was a room with a trickling stream instead of a floor, and a set of stepping stones which split into three paths, each leading to another door. The sun twinkled overhead, the tall tower casting the only shadow.

  Stuart picked his way across the stepping stones, and chose the left-hand door. It opened straight onto a blank brick wall. He let the door swing shut again, and stood there, thinking hard.

  ‘It’s a maze,’ he said slowly.

  And then he heard someone high above him call his name.

  Or rather, half his name.

  ‘Stu!’

  He looked up, startled.

  Way above him, on the balcony at the top of the tower, stood his father.

  ‘HI, DAD!’ YELLED Stuart, waving. ‘Are you all right?’

  Rather hesitantly, his father waved back. ‘This is most odd,’ he called down, his voice faint with distance. ‘What is this place and how did I get here?’

  Stuart tried to think of a simple way of explaining the vast and complicated truth, and then decided that he couldn’t. ‘You’re in a dream,’ he yelled. ‘A very peculiar dream. Can you get down from there?’

  ‘There’s a steep set of stairs with a door at the base but the door has a bolt that is not on my side. I’m stuck here, I think.’

  His father sounded disorientated and a bit wobbly, and Stuart realized that he would have to take charge himself; after all, it was his third magical adventure – he should know something about it by now. ‘Dad, can you see I’m in a sort of weird maze?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you work out which way I should go? You must have a really good view from up there.’

  There was a pause while his father peered down, moving his head as if following a path. He walked right round the balcony at the top of the tower, disappearing from view for a few seconds, before reappearing and calling down to Stuart.

  ‘Yes, I think I can see where you should go. You would end up at the foot of this thing.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘This thing that I’m on. This tall thing.’

  ‘The tower, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Stuart stared up at him. He couldn’t see his father’s expression from this distance, but it was clear that something was very wrong.

  ‘Why didn’t you say tower?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t,’ said his father.

  ‘Why can’t you?’

  ‘I just can’t. It seems that in this dream my mouth won’t say words that have more than one … bit to them.’

  ‘Bit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean syllable? You can only say one-syllable words?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  His father’s voice was full of frustration, and it occurred to Stuart that it was probably as hard for him to use only short words as it would be for Stuart to use only enormously long ones. ‘Don’t worry,’ he yelled reassuringly, ‘it’s just part of the dream. It shouldn’t be a problem – you just have to say left or right or whatever. Where do I go now?’ He was still standing on the stepping stones in the room full of water, with three doors ahead of him.

  His father peered over the balcony. ‘Go through the door!’ he shouted, and then paused to think. ‘The door that is not on the left or the right.’

  Stuart walked forward and opened the middle door.

  A huge shiny green leaf barred his way. He pushed it aside and found himself in an enormous conservatory full of tropical plants, with creepers dangling from wires above him and vast, perfumed flowers blooming on every side. When he looked down, he could see a muddle of narrow brick paths snaking through the vegetation, crisscrossing each other in a complicated network.

  ‘Which way do I go?’ he shouted up to his father.

  ‘To a door near a thing.’

  ‘A thing? What sort of thing?’

  ‘A thing from which clear stuff that you can drink comes out of.’

  ‘Water, you mean? So I’ve got to find a tap? Or a hose?’

  ‘No. You can find things like this in parks. A round shape. Splish, splash. Coins are thrown in.’

  ‘A fountain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Stuart moved cautiously through the vegetation. Butterflies flickered between the flowers; a lizard appeared, paused briefly on a bunch of nearly ripe bananas and then zipped away again Somewhere to his left he could hear the tinkle of water. He ducked under a hairy stem, parted a wall of leaves and found himself beside a stone fountain, with a jet of water shooting upwards out of the mouth of a stone dolphin.

  On the wall nearby, almost covered with purple flowers, he could just see the outline of a door.

  ‘Through here?’

  ‘Yes. But take care.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In the next room there is a … a large beast.’

  ‘Another horse?’

  ‘No. It’s huge and grey with a trunk.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  Stuart opened the door just a crack and saw a square concrete room, the floor covered with straw. Lying across most of it was an elephant. It appeared to be asleep, though its stomach was rumbling gently, and occasionally it moved its trunk around, sending blasts of warm grassy breath across the room. Hardly daring to breathe, Stuart eased his way in and tiptoed forward, straw crackling underfoot. He felt even smaller than usual, and incredibly vulnerable. The elephant would only have to roll over, and he’d be flattened like a lump of pastry under a rolling pin.

  Two metal doors lay ahead, one of them to the left and one to the right.

  ‘You need to go through the right-hand door,’ shouted his father.

  ‘I can’t,’ called Stuart, as loudly as he dared. ‘There’s an elephant lying in front of it.’

  Its vast bottom was actually wedged right up against the correct door.

  ‘The door on the left is a dead end,’ said his father. ‘But if you go back to the plant room you could fetch some fruit which might tempt the beast to move.’

  ‘Bananas!’

  It didn’t take Stuart long to locate the bunch where he’d seen the lizard, and he twisted off a handful and found his way back to the next room.

  He held one of the bananas near the tip of the trunk, and the elephant groped forward sleepily, opening one eye.

  ‘Bananas!’ said Stuart, moving it further away. ‘Come and get your lovely bananas!’

  The elephant hauled itself slowly to its feet and Stuart threw the bananas into the far corner, then dodged round the side of the lumbering animal. The door was now clear and he made a lunge for it.

  HE STEPPED INTO a long room with a cool, green marble floor, and walls hung with large paintings. It took him a moment or two to realize that the only door was the one he’d just walked through.

  ‘This is a dead end,’ he shouted up to his father.

  ‘No it’s not – there are … one more than ten ways out.’

  ‘Eleven? Eleven doors? Where?’

  ‘They’re by the square things … I mean, not by … and not square … Oh dear, this is so hard to say.’

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ shouted Stuart encouragingly. ‘Have another try.’

  ‘The things with paint on,’ called his father.

  ‘You mean the paintings?’

  ‘Yes. The doors are not in front of them.’

  ‘Behind, then? You mean the doors are behind the paintings? Or do you mean the doors are the paintings?’ He walked up to the nearest one, a soppy po
rtrait of a girl holding a box of chocolates, and yanked at the right-hand side of the frame. It swung straight open, just like a door, to reveal a hole in the wall, big enough to step through. And on the other side of it was a sweet shop, a really fantastic one, every shelf laden with jars, every counter stuffed with fudge and bubble gum and toffee and marshmallow and liquorice and chews and sherbet and fizz-bombs …

  ‘Is this the way?’ shouted Stuart hopefully.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ Disappointed, Stuart let the painting swing shut again. ‘Which one should I go through, then?’

  ‘The one that shows a … a …’

  ‘I might as well try all of them,’ said Stuart.

  ‘No, don’t do—’

  ‘It’ll be just as quick.’

  He tugged at the frame of the next painting along, a seascape with a giant squid sticking its head above some improbably huge waves, and the picture smacked open as if on a spring. A torrent of freezing water gushed through the hole, and Stuart, soaked and gasping from the cold, struggled to close it again. A jellyfish flobbed through the gap, followed by a long, orange, sucker-covered tentacle.

  ‘OUT!’ shouted Stuart, using all his strength to slam the picture against the intruder. The tentacle withdrew, the door closed, and a sheet of water, green with seaweed, glided along the floor of the gallery, leaving a thin coating of sand behind it.

  ‘OK,’ said Stuart, teeth chattering with shock, ‘maybe not such a great idea.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ called his father.

  ‘Yes, just about.’

  He had a sudden memory of assuring his mother that he and his dad would be absolutely fine while she was away, and then he looked at the next painting – an arctic landscape with a snarling polar bear – and decided to leave well alone.

  ‘The one you want,’ called his father, slowly and carefully, ‘shows a room at the top of a house. A room in the roof with things in it of all types, shapes and sorts.’

  ‘An attic,’ said Stuart.

  He jogged around the gallery and soon spotted the painting he needed. It showed a dimly lit room piled high with bags and boxes; an old rocking horse stood in the corner. He pulled at the frame, and the painting swung open to reveal a similar room but one so stuffed with objects that it was actually difficult to see where he could climb in.