Annie laughed. ‘No Thomas, not England.’ Her eyes followed his to the perfect day outside. Birds were talking to one another, the mountains were green and brown and copper and gold, a soft breeze carrying the fragrance of flowers, played with the downy hair on her arms… ‘Definitely not England,’ she said.
‘But wasn’t I sick? I mean - I was sick…wasn’t I?’ Thomas asked, suddenly not so sure.
Annie’s eyes, and voice, turned serious. ‘Yes, you were,’ she answered. ‘Very sick. But you’re all right now.’ Ruffling his hair. She saw the new questions in his eyes and tried to explain as best she could - pausing a lot and taking time to think.
‘It’s different here Thomas. It’s not like…’ She waved her hand in a sideways motion and struggled on. ‘Like where you come from…the other side. The Earth.’ She said the word as if she didn’t like the taste of it, and after another pause, continued.
‘Nobody gets sick in Rainbow’s End. And nobody that gets to Rainbow’s End sick, stays sick for long. There are no germs here… No flies, no mosquitoes, and no pollution. Just clean fresh air and water, and sunshine and love.’ She beamed at him. ‘Lots and lots of love.’
Thomas asked, frowning, ‘How long have I been here?’
‘You have been asleep for two days, almost three.’ Annie replied. She looked at Thomas’ watch and so did he. It had stopped - its digital face was blank, and he felt his confusion further deepen. It reflected on his face; Annie saw the frown return and a hundred new questions in his eyes. She laughed and put a finger on his lips to stop him. ‘Sshh,’ she said. ‘Better wait Thomas. Let Big John explain - he’s very good at it.’
He nodded and the two of them sat looking through the window for a silent minute. Then his stomach growled - long and hard and embarrassing. It was empty and his bladder full. Seeing Thomas’ discomfort, Annie got up off the bed and pointed to another door, half-hidden in the corner behind the two big chairs.
‘Through there,’ she said.
*
The bathroom - like the bedroom - was huge, and Thomas couldn’t help but compare its opulence to the small, practical space shared by Grammy and himself back home.
The large tub and basins (two of them), were of pink-veined marble, and the taps and fittings intricate things of glass and chrome with levers and hoses and cradled showerheads. A large picture-window behind the bathtub looked into a shady forest with trees and bushy ferns and green ropes of moss. Dark, slippery-wet rocks helped hide the small, tranquil pool into which a small waterfall silently spilled its molten silver.
It was real - not a picture - and Thomas felt a dreamlike quality steal over his senses yet again. How was it possible for one room to look onto a bright summer’s day, and the very next, into a living rainforest? The wonderful smell of fresh-cut flowers assailed his nostrils and unable to take in anything further, Thomas closed off his mind and went about his business.
When he re-entered the room a minute later, Annie hustled him back into bed, and after propping two large pillows behind his back, bade him wait. Seconds later the bedroom door opened and the woman called Frieda entered, carrying a huge tray covered by a white cloth. She made big eyes at him, smiled and said, ‘Breakfast, young man’, then placed the tray on top of his stretched-out legs, and with a flourish, whisked away the covering cloth. Thomas gasped and gaped at the display in front of him.
The plate was large and round and piled with half a dozen different foods, the smell of which flooded his mouth with saliva.
A golden heap of scrambled eggs lay in its centre, surrounded by several strips of crispy red-brown bacon, a pair of juicy-fat and still-steaming sausages, a couple of large, fried tomato slices, and several triangles of thick, heat-softened cheese. A pile of small brown, pan-fried mushrooms, together with three slices of golden-brown toast lay on a side plate, dripping and smelling of melting butter. Small bowls held pats of fig and strawberry jam, and a large frosted glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice completed the picture.
Annie nudged Frieda’s ribs with a soft elbow, and with a wink and a smile and some obscure excuse, they left the room. Thomas picked up his knife and fork and attacked the feast in front of him.
*
With his stomach full to bursting and, dressed in brand-new clothes, Thomas softly pulled Annie’s bedroom-door shut behind him. It made a “clicking” sound as he turned away. Then he stared. And turned back again in disbelief. Annie’s door was of wood, and on it, her name in loopy golden script, obviously done by a child. Just a couple of metres to the right, another door - of the same wood, had “Frieda” written on it, in huge purple block-letters. Two metres to his left, “Jason” was stencilled in precise block letters on yet another door. Recalling the size of the room he had just left, a befuddled Thomas slowly shook his head, then took another step backwards and turned around.
The doors behind him were just a few of many lining the circular walls between which he stood; walls seemingly hewn out of the rawest rock, the walls of a cave. A great big cave.
Its floor was about forty metres across, flat and level and smooth enough to host a ball on; the walls were rough and raw, in grey and brown, and rose many metres above the doors before angling inwards to join and form the dome of the roof. At the roof’s centre was a big open circle, obviously manmade; it - together with the high wide opening of the entrance - let in enough sunlight to lighten up every dip and nook and cranny of the caverns surface. Its most astonishing feature however, were the gems. And their colours.
Ropes and ribbons and clusters and lines of emeralds and sapphires and rubies and garnets; purple pinks and reds, and a hundred shades of blue and green, were inlaid and incrusted in the grey-brown walls; beginning on the floor and then rising and branching and stretching until they disappeared into the rocky dome of the roof; in partnership with the sun, they turned the cavern-walls and floor into a glittering miasma of sparkling, glittering colour.
Thomas was agog, spellbound, entranced… and only became aware of Big John when the large man rested a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
He nodded mutely and stared at the huge man standing next to him. He was massive - a small giant really. He wore his long grey hair in a thick pony-tail; his beard was full and neatly clipped, and his eyes - the same colour as his hair - twinkled. His voice was nice - a “let’s-be-friends” voice - and he said, ‘My name is John,’ and solemnly shook Thomas’ hand. He smiled and his teeth were big and white. ‘There is normally more than one of us around, so everybody calls me “Big John”. You can too, if you want.’ He smiled again and lifted his eyebrows. ‘I’ll bet you have a thousand questions,’ he said. Thomas nodded, and John put his massive arm around the boy’s shoulders.
‘Let’s go sit outside.’
*****
Ariana’s Pool…
The sun was out: its warm soft glow a velvet glove that caressed your skin and mellowed your senses, turning you all languid and lazy and sleepy again.
Unless you were hung-over. It just made you grumpy then, and short-tempered, and plain disagreeable. If you were born that way, it made you worse…
He was sitting on his hands and his pale white feet dangled beneath the surface of the water - like two dead fish. His hair was a bushy mess and his eyes bloodshot.
She sat down next to him and her voice was soft. ‘Hello, Orson.’
He grunted and squinted at the water.
‘You’ve been back two days.’
‘Three.’ Another grunt, almost a groan.
Ariana sighed. ‘Have you and Tessa been cellar-crawling again Orson?’
He said nothing, but squeezed his eyes tightly shut. It brought visions of overflowing rubbish bins and empty wine bottles, and an urge to throw up. A pair of sun beetles started their monotonous buzzing in the tall grass somewhere behind them, and Orson swore softly and painfully under his breath. When he spoke, his voice was but a croak. ‘We almost died,’ he said. Then - clearin
g his throat, ‘We were almost killed!’ Louder.
‘Yes, I know all about that,’ Ariana said. The water in front of them rippled and Orson heard his own voice coming from it.
“And now what dog?! Look at the… the…crap you and Madame Ariana have dropped us in!” He felt his face flush, but before he could say anything, heard himself begging and wheedling - “Come on, Ariana, come on. Bring us some magic…”
The ensuing silence was deafening and Orson refused to look at Ariana, instead glared at the dog sleeping in the shade of the nearby willow tree. He heard her snore and felt his bile rise at the unfairness of being human. Just then, the yellow finch started its raucous noise, and although it hurt his head terribly, Orson felt sadistic pleasure when he heard Tessie’s soft yelp, and saw her, in an almost human gesture, fold yellow paws over floppy ears.
He watched for a minute, and then, keeping his eyes on the dog, said, ‘He’s a Traveller, Ariana. He never slept. He never even blinked.’ He looked at her. Ariana wore a white dress and her raven-black hair loose, and she was very beautiful. She said, ‘I know Orson.’ Her voice gentle. ‘I know.’
They sat quietly for a minute and then Ariana said, ‘Tell me about him Orson. Tell me about Thomas.’
His eyes turned pensive and Orson started rubbing the grey wart at the side of his nose. It turned bristly purple after a while, and he said, ‘He’s just a boy. Eleven years old… Tall for his age.’ He gave an ugly grin. ‘Taller than me.’ He picked up a small pebble and threw it at the hung-over dog, missing her by a metre.
‘Hair the colour of straw,’ he said. ‘And green eyes… Very green eyes that seem to look right through you. He has freckles…’ Orson shrugged. ‘He’s just a boy, Ariana.’ Concluding - ‘A good boy, I think.’
They were both quiet again. Orson looking for pebbles and throwing them in the water, and a minute later - unable to contain himself any longer - blurted, ‘Is he the one, Ariana? The next Traveller?’ The hope in his voice turned Ariana’s soft. ‘I don’t know, Orson,’ she answered, ‘I honestly don’t know…’
Disappointment showed on his face and Orson slowly struggled to his feet before pushing them - still wet - into a pair of beautifully crafted leather sandals. His head hurt and he wanted his bed. His voice became harsh and his attitude its normal quarrelsome self again.
‘You owe me a new coat,’ he demanded, ‘and new boots; and a cap; and…’
Ariana’s voice interrupted his with a sigh. ‘Annie’s already fixed your coat Orson. And you can buy a hundred pairs of boots if you want. You know that.’
‘Gmmphff.’ He blew loudly through his fleshy nose and looked at her with a haughty expression. ‘Just so’s you remember what you just said.’ He turned around and slowly started away from the water, then paused and without turning around, said, ‘I might see you tomorrow. If I feel better.’ He stressed the “if” and stepped onto the well-trodden footpath. Tessie staggered to her feet and followed, her walk just as unsteady and jarringly painful as her partner’s.
*****
The valley lay surrounded by mountains and hills on three of its sides, and stretched away in a series of meadows: greener and lusher down its centre and closer to the river, then lime and autumn and gold the further one moved up its edges and away from the water. Clusters of, and the occasional single tree, created oases of shade and homes for the valley’s thousands of birds; masses of multi-hued flowers dappled and dusted the meadows, transforming them with sprays of colour into rainbows of their own.
The river looped and curled and twisted down its centre, a sparkling rope that bound and connected a long string of silver-blue pools. Two or three kilometres distant, it disappeared into a thick green forest, which, even from a distance, seemed forbidding and mysterious.
The azure expanse of the sky was a soft, watered-down blue; the only clouds, a few downy dabs of white low above the far-off mountain tops.
A pair of fish-eagles, wings spread wide and the feathers at their ends splayed like fingers, rode the air currents: leisurely patrolling the length of the river, with the occasional sharp cry proclaiming their area.
There were two benches: of wood and polished mirror-smooth by thousands of backsides seeking their comfort over centuries of time. They were anchored into the large flat rock fronting the elliptical entrance of the cave, one stood on its left, and one on the right; both facing down the length of the valley.
Thomas and Big John shared the one on the right. The boy was taking in the beauty of the valley; in between taking surreptitious glances at the man whose huge body took up most of the rest of the bench. His eyes were on the pool of water in which Thomas, Orson, and Tessie had landed three days ago. It lay on their right - just a couple of hundred metres away. Seven brilliant pillars of colour rose from its centre, creating a rainbow that stretched high into the air, before curving away and disappearing over a towering cliff and waterfall. The waterfall tumbled and splashed down a series of natural steps in the rock-face, its entrance into the pool muted and not even heard from where they sat. The laughter and shouts of the children playing on the pool’s banks and in its water, echoed happily through the morning air, and put a contented smile on Big John’s face. His grey eyes (very much like Orson’s) crinkled and smiled with the rest of his face. Thomas kept quiet - content to watch the adult’s enchantment with the happiness of children. The song of the sun-beetles and the friendly sun on his face made the boy all drowsy and sleepy again and he started drifting.
Then Big John spoke. ‘Everything at Rainbow’s End is different, Thomas. Seasons, time, and years as you know it - they don’t exist here. The nights and days - they never vary - their length stays the same. It rains every morning between three and four. It never snows unless Ariana gets a bee in her bonnet, or wants it to. The sun shines but doesn’t burn; it’s never cold, always beautiful - like today.’ He opened his arms as if to embrace the perfect day.
‘Space here… that is also different. You are used to only four dimensions: length, width, depth, and time. Here, none of them can be measured by Earth standards. We have dimensions that physicists on the Earth have not yet begun thinking of… or even dream about. Dimensions within dimensions; space within space; rooms within rooms… Always more, and nothing - or almost nothing - as it seems.
‘And time…’ He looked at Thomas. ‘In your old world Frieda would be in her early fifties.’ He saw disbelief in the boy’s eyes and asked, ‘How old do you think I am, Thomas?’ He was really not very good with ages, but the soft lines and wrinkles on the man’s face were no more or deeper than Sergeant Wilson’s at home in Rockham, and Grammy had told Thomas the bobby was retiring the following year at age sixty-five. That’s what he said now - ‘Sixty-five?’
John’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You sound quite sure of that,’ he said, and Thomas nodded. The big man waved a hand at something, somewhere in the skies above. ‘Back there,’ he said - ‘on the Earth - I would now be more than a hundred and twenty years old. Here, I am somewhere in my late seventies, but I can pass for a lot less.’ The scepticism still lay in Thomas’ eyes and Big John laughed. ‘Orson would also look younger,’ he said, ‘if he drank less. We are the same age - at least, in Earth time. I know he looks older, but in Rainbow’s End time, he’s actually younger than me. He came here long before I did, and aged a lot slower in that time. We’re twins, you see…’
*****
Desolation…
Far, far away, in a small room that was bitterly cold, the black-clad boys wormed and fought their way deeper under their dirty grey blankets. They huddled together and stayed away from the freezing walls; the rock burned anything it touched with cold. They were hiding, too miserable and afraid to talk, and when they whispered, the chatter of their teeth seemed louder than their words. Kraylle’s demented screeches echoed up and down the long passageways, and the boys shivered - not only because of the terrible cold.
But they would not leave. They could not leave. Desolation and K
raylle’s Castle was their home - to some of them the first and the only they’ve ever had…
And tomorrow would be better. Rudi said so…
*****
Thomas was tired. Wonderfully, deliciously tired. The day had been like no other he’d ever known. Had he been an adult, his sanity might have flown very early on; as a child his imagination had been sorely tested as surprise followed surprise; strange was followed by stranger; and incongruous by the impossible.
He had played a game of cricket and had three delicious meals; not counting the ice cream and cold drinks in between. He had seen wonderful things (like the cave), and heard stories that could have come straight out of a Hans Christian Anderson or Brothers Grimm novel.
And now he wanted to sleep. He had taken a shower in Annie’s bathroom (in a shower stall he was sure had not been there earlier), and afterwards she had supplied him with a set of brand new pyjamas and showed him to his room. The door was unmarked and the small, cell-like space seemed to have been hacked out of the same grey and brown stone as the rest of the cave. There was no window; and the reds, violets, pinks, greens and blues of the walls sparkled and shone in the light of the single, bare bulb that hung from the roof. The bed was the only piece of furniture and Thomas left his clothes (neatly folded) lying on his sandals on the floor; the photo-album which he had salvaged from his backpack and which Annie had kept for him, under his pillow. He lay in bed; drifting and thinking about his day…
After their long talk, Big John and he had taken a slow walk to the Rainbow Pool, and were watching the children play a game of cricket on its grassy bank. An ice-cream vendor - his large icebox hanging from a strap around his non-existing neck and resting on his huge stomach, had appeared as if out of nowhere, a dazed expression on his bristly red face. The children had rushed him and everybody had helped themselves to ice-creams or cold drink - some to both. The vendor had seemed stupefied by the number of items coming out of his box, and once everybody had been helped, Big John stuffed several one-hundred Euro notes into the man’s shirt pocket. He had stumbled off, still in a daze, and when Thomas looked for him again, he’d disappeared…
Rainbow's End - Wizard Page 5
