A huge fat crinkled worm flew over the raft.
Red, green and gold.
With whiskers.
It was there and gone in a second.
Alex sat up quickly and stared.
What was that? Was he seeing things?
No, there it was, heading towards the horizon.
It was a worm. At least it looked like a worm from where he stood.
‘Hi! Don’t go,’ he yelled in panic. ‘Come back here.’
He stood there waving and yelled again, this time angrily.
‘Get back here, you rotten bugger!’
This time the worm-thing seemed to take notice. It flew through the air with wavelike movements, flowing up and down like a serpent. When it turned back – and it did turn back – Alex could see it was an oriental dragon, the kind that Chinese people used for celebrations. It was long and tubular, with the usual mythical head and huge eyes. It flowed through the air like a kite and returned to the raft, its eyes blinking. There were long tapes dangling from its body and as it flew over Alex grabbed the end of one of these ribbons, expecting to pull the creature to a halt. However, it didn’t jerk to a halt, but almost pulled Alex off his feet. Alex quickly tied the end of the ribbon to his mast and stepped back, hoping for the best.
The flying dragon, roaring to bolster its strength, pulled hard. Gradually the raft began to leave the swirling waters of the vortex into which it was being dragged. With Alex encouraging his saviour, the raft was eventually pulled clear of the whirlpool’s clutches and out of danger. Until now most of the animated objects of the attic had been hostile. But here was one, like Punch and Judy, which seemed only too glad to help. The attic, like anywhere else, had good and bad about it. Alex was growing fonder of the place all the time.
Once he was clear he released the dragon’s tapes and the creature continued on its journey to an unknown destination.
‘I must not fall asleep again so soundly,’ Alex told himself. ‘I was lucky that time. Next time I may not be. I have to remain alert.’
The trouble was, he was alone, and had to sleep sometimes.
Over the next day or so, Alex met with more of the brown fisherfolk he had encountered earlier. They were almost always cheerful, waving to him, shouting greetings. Once or twice he traded with them for food, his store of paperweights standing him in good stead. There was one time when a sullen one passed by his craft, rowing a canoe fashioned from half a car roof-rack pod, who refused to acknowledge him, but this was a rare occurrence. For the most part they were a delightful race of people, who seemed only too eager to make contact and help if at all possible.
Alex did of course fall asleep again – he had to rest – but nothing untoward happened to him.
One evening he was enjoying what appeared to be an aurora borealis, the northern lights of the attic. They seemed to have been produced by the moonlight shining through the bevelled edges of skylight windows. The cut glass acted like a prism, splitting the white light into its natural colours, which in turn were sent in ribbons into the atmosphere of the attic. Outside, the wind was blowing, rattling the windows, thus making the bands of colours ripple, twist and wave, producing movement. The northern lights of the attic were almost as wonderful and mystical as the real aurora borealis.
It was as he was watching that he felt a slight movement beneath his feet. He looked down at his raft. It had not been a wave or the swell. Something had touched the craft underneath. He glanced over the side and his eyes widened. There, passing below his vessel, was the largest snake – or eel – he had ever seen. It was a monster, but he was relieved to see that it wasn’t the Loving Flounder. This creature was as thick as the belly of a jumbo jet and moving silently and effortlessly through the water. At the front end it had huge jaws, partly open, which revealed a thousand sharp white teeth. At the other end – well, Alex couldn’t even see the other end – but he could see enough to know it was finned.
It took an age for the serpent to pass under him and when it was gone Alex was still standing there, watching where it had been, long and green like a deep-sea current made manifest. The episode sent a chill through him. There were monsters in these waters he had not been told about, yet perhaps very few knew of them. The bortrekker and board-comber might never have come across them. And even the fisherfolk might have only legendary tales instead of actual experiences to go on. Maybe he was privileged to be one of the only humans to have witnessed such a monster?
‘I wonder why I don’t feel privileged,’ he said out loud.
‘I would, if I were you,’ interrupted Makishi. ‘It was an amazing sight.’
Makishi was perched on top of the mast. Alex had put him there after the incident with the maelstrom, to act as a lookout. So far he had seen nothing and could not be blamed for not warning of undersea monsters since his job was to watch for any potential problems on the horizon. His occasional remarks, such as the one he had just uttered, were somehow comforting to Alex, whose yearning for society had increased.
‘Thank you, Makishi. In that case, I shall.’
Later they was passing between archipelagos and atolls decorated with bird cages and bamboo umbrella stands. At one lonely island he found a shivering little Attican boy, whom he rescued and took aboard. It seemed from some drawings the child made in the dust that he had been marooned by pirates. Pirates? Why had no one warned him about pirates?
On a later island where the bird cages were draped in feathers he found inhabitants, more of the fisherfolk, who used cricket bats to paddle their island canoes and floating light bulbs to moor them in the bay. The child seemed to know them so Alex passed the boy on to them.
Alex spent the night with them and enjoyed an evening of dancing and creaky singing beneath paper lanterns that glowed with a faint light and were found by him to contain fireflies. It was here the dragon returned and swooped down to swallow a long line of the lanterns. This brought the inhabitants out of their huts. They spent the next hour throwing marbles at the dragon, trying to drive it away. Alex pretended to join them. No one noticed that he wasn’t trying very hard to hit the target.
The dragon, on seeing him, gave him a hurt look and Alex, knowing he owed this creature his life and breath, felt a little ashamed.
After the dragon had been chased away the grumbling Atticans unveiled some strange contraptions. It seemed they had forgotten to wheel out their dragon-scarers to guard their lanterns while they enjoyed their festivities. The dragon-scarers were made of bicycle parts, bits of vacuum cleaners, old radios, lawn mowers, kitchen utensils, gardening tools and electric fans. These were fashioned into giant mobiles which moved in the slightest draught. Wheels spun and worked arms and levers and ratchets, which had the giant dragon-scarers swinging their arms and rolling their heads, as if they were live creatures.
On yet another archipelago was a forest of artificial Christmas trees decorated with tinsel and paper chains. This brought a lump to his throat as it reminded him of his family, now far away. It was on the beach of an island such as this that he was attacked by what he thought were scarecrows, but turned out to be Guy Fawkes dummies. Christmas tree angels saved him by flying in like a swarm of sparrows and hampering the efforts of the guys until Alex had launched his raft and set out to sea again.
One morning he woke to find calmer waters than usual and there on the horizon was a thin black line. He knew then that he was coming to the end of his voyage. That black line was the lip of the other side of the Great Water Tank. In the space beyond were the vague shapes of objects of a far place.
It was on these inland waters, which the bortrekker had called the Farside Roads, that Alex encountered another craft. It was very similar to his own makeshift vessel and was sailing the other way. Those on board were not Atticans, but a boy a little older than himself and a girl about his age. They had obviously entered into the spirit of seafaring, being dressed in naval attire, the boy with a white peaked cap with an anchor badge on it, and the girl in a bl
ue-and-white striped jersey and navy-blue knee-length trousers.
‘Ahoy there!’ called the boy. ‘You a real person?’
‘Yes,’ cried Alex. ‘You?’
‘Yes. We’re lost.’
‘So am I – or I was.’
‘Weird place, ain’t it?’
The girl called, ‘We’re looking for our old attic.’
Alex didn’t know what to say to that. Naturally he didn’t know where their personal trapdoor might lie.
As they passed by one another, Alex said, ‘You should find a bortrekker or a board-comber. They’ll help you.’
‘Thanks,’ the boy replied. ‘A bortrekker, eh?’
‘Yes – like me.’
‘We met an attic boy who called himself a rafter king,’ called the girl, ‘who was climbing up there.’ Her eyes swept the roof space. ‘He said he was once human, but he wasn’t much help in the end. Apparently there’s quite a few of them, up in the roof space. He said he’d lived up in the rafters too long and had a little hut up there. He told us he’d become a rafter king to stay out of the way of the Removal Firm. Do you know them?’
‘Yep – large Atticans in khaki dustcoats. Stay out of their way if you can.’
The boy leaned forward, hanging on to the mast.
‘Atticans?’
‘Villagers.’
The girl’s expression brightened. ‘Hey, you want to come with us?’
Alex shook his head. ‘No, sorry.’
They both seemed disappointed.
‘OK, good luck.’
‘You too. Try and find a map. There must be more than one, I’m sure. You’ll get home then.’
‘Thanks.’
They watched each other’s vessel for a long time until they both became specks in each other’s eyes.
‘Nice people,’ said Makishi, afterwards.
Alex thought the idea of being a rafter king sounded exciting. Board-comber, bortrekker or rafter king? How many others were there, in this wooden world of the attic? Beam-walkers? Roof-rangers? Maybe even tank-voyagers? Nah, he’d made his choice. Bortrekker.
Over the rest of the morning Alex sailed towards the edge of the sea and finally hove in with a slight bump against the side of the tank. He moored his craft, not knowing whether he was going to use it again. Dressing once more in his bortrekker gear, he was ready to go ashore.
He disembarked and began walking along the wooden rim. His legs felt wobbly and it seemed as if the solid ground beneath his feet were moving. That was just an illusion though, after days on a rolling vessel. He was here on dry land once again and close to the end of this quest.
Descending the ladder on the side of the tank he found himself among huge dunes of hearth tools – coal scuttles, tongs, brushes, shovels – which he climbed over with no difficulty. Beyond these dunes was a solid wall of upright pianos. These looked so much like fortifications that Alex wondered if he’d wandered into hostile country. Were these defences here because someone or something lurked behind them? A creature so insecure and unsavoury that it needed walls to keep out its enemies? Or perhaps the piano walls had been built to keep something in? Like a giant ape or a people so savage the attic would be devastated by their release?
‘Tread softly here, Alex,’ he told himself.
He climbed up on one of the pianos, to peer at the land beyond.
CHAPTER 20
Attack of the Music Makers!
‘I hope you haven’t come to steal my watches.’
Alex turned and was surprised to see a short stocky girl, in the rags and tatters of a board-comber. This one was quite different, however, to the board-comber who collected Inuit carvings. For a start, the mask she wore was quite attractive: a gold-dusted carnival mask which hid only the top half of her face. There were three scarlet feathers protruding gaily from the top of the mask. Her dress was even more flamboyant, with outrageous colours and lots of tassels and hanging ribbons. There were reds and purples, greens and blues, yellows and oranges. All these were happily mixed in together, making a spectacle more suited to a fairground. Instead of a bat hanging from one ear, this board-comber had a small owl on her shoulder. The owl regarded Alex steadily with round serious eyes.
‘Watches?’ asked Alex. ‘What watches?’
‘Don’t think I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know what?’
‘Why you’re here. No one comes here. You must’ve come to steal my watches. There’s no other reason.’
When the board-comber stepped in closer, Alex could see that in physical age she was not much older than himself. Probably about Jordy’s age. However, her eyes contained the promise of more wisdom than was owned by Alex, Jordy and Chloe put together. Her skin was like a smooth parchment, with a whole life history written upon it. Alex would guess she had been up in the attic many years and had learned its seasons, its cycles, its myriad quirky rhythms and tides. No doubt she had witnessed the moon locked in every glass in the roof and had seen the sun roll from one window to the next a hundred times.
This was a veteran of the attic: an ancient of days.
‘You’re wondering how long I’ve been here.’
‘Yes,’ said Alex.
‘A hundred years.’
Alex said, ‘You just made that up.’
‘No,’ she replied earnestly, ‘I’ve been here a hundred years. Don’t you know real time doesn’t move for us humans in the attic? It seems our bodies are caught in some kind of time-limbo between the two worlds. Have you seen the clocks and watches here?’
‘They go backwards.’
‘And in our old world, they go forwards.’
Alex realised he was supposed to see something significant in that and finally the answer came to him.
‘Oh, I see,’ he cried, ‘they oppose each other. They keep real time at a standstill.’
‘That’s it,’ replied the board-comber. ‘Just for us intruders. Now, what are you doing here? You’d better tell me, because I’ll find out sooner or later. It’s to steal watches, isn’t it? You want my treasures. Did the Organist send you? He did, didn’t he?’
Alex decided to be truthful. ‘I – I just want one of your watches.’
‘One is everything, one is all.’
‘You can spare just one. It’s for a good cause. Where are they anyway?’ He looked around. ‘Do you keep them locked up?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know, little boy?’
‘I’m not a little boy. I’m a bortrekker,’ said Alex, drawing himself up in a dignified manner. ‘Don’t you know a bortrekker when you see one?’
She looked him up and down contemptuously.
‘Dressed like a bortrekker, but all shiny and new.’
Alex was huffy. ‘Got to start somewhere. Bet you had to start somewhere. You can’t learn everything in one day.’ He paused and pleaded with her. ‘See, the reason I want this particular watch is because it would help an old man. He threw it in the attic many years ago, in a temper, but he’s – well, he’s going to die soon – and he wants to make his peace with his memories. You can understand that, can’t you? I’ve got a letter here,’ Alex patted his pocket, ‘which will help, but I really came up to get the watch.’
‘Then you’ll go down again?’
Alex drew a deep breath. ‘No, no, I don’t think so. I want to pass the letter and the watch on to my brother and sister, so they can deal with it. But I want to stay up here.’ He looked around him and waved a hand. ‘I like it here. You do too, or you wouldn’t stay. And all the other board-combers and bortrekkers. The attic’s a great place, isn’t it? You can almost feel it liking you back, once it knows you want to be here …’
She walked around him, looking him up and down, and studied him from every angle.
‘Are you sure you want to stay up?’
‘I – I think so.’
‘Hmmm, think so don’t get it done.’
‘Will you give me the watch?’
She stepped back from him,
shuddering. ‘I couldn’t. Those watches are the wheels that run my heart. If I lost just one, my heart would stop beating. They’re my treasures. I need them all. If one went, I’d pine for it, I know I would. The other watches would pine for it. We’d all be terribly upset. I don’t like being upset. Give it up, this quest. Tell the old man you couldn’t find it. Say it’s lost for ever.’
‘I’ll tell you what, let me look at your collection?’
She screwed up her face and seemed about to refuse. Then she must have changed her mind, because she brightened, her face breaking into the most wonderful smile Alex had ever seen, the corners of which almost reached her ears. ‘Oh, I love showing it off. I do. I really do. I love showing my collection to those who haven’t seen it before. It’s a magnificent collection of watches, the best in the attic. Here, let me put this on you.’ She tied a scarf over his eyes, then cried, ‘Come on, come with me.’
‘I can’t see you,’ he said, feeling the air. ‘How can I follow if I can’t see?’
He felt a small, slim, warm hand slip into his own and his blood turned to warm olive oil in his arteries.
The board-comber seemed very excited. Of course, thought Alex, she would be. There’s nothing a collector likes better than showing off his or her collection to an interested stranger. Someone to go ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ at prize possessions and say ‘aren’t you lucky?’ and ‘isn’t that fabulous?’ and ‘where on earth did you find it?’ – things like that. Someone to whom the collector can explain how difficult certain pieces were to come by and, in this case, someone to point out highly prized movements and tiny hairsprings, escapements, and other delights of the internal workings of watches.
He was taken, he knew not where, and the blindfold removed.
There before him was one of the great supporting pillars, but this one was covered in wrist-watches and pocket-watches. Hanging from nails by their straps or chains, they covered the pillar to a depth of three watches and a height of two metres. They were all ticking away madly, creating a terrible din, all showing the correct time, all going backwards. There were silver ones, gold ones, black ones, white ones, every other colour you could think of. In the burnished light from a distant window they glinted, they flashed, they glimmered, they burned. Snakeskin straps, golden chains, expanding silver bracelets. There were those which proudly announced they had ‘17 Jewels’ on the face. Others were ‘Waterproof’. There were watches with Roman numerals and there were watches with Arabic numerals. Some of the makes he knew to be very expensive, others quite cheap, and a thousand he had never heard of before. Some pocket-watches had their face-covers open, others had them closed. One or two had perspex cases and you could see the brass-toothed wheels turning, the flysprings quivering inside.
Attica Page 26
