Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children

by Conn Iggulden

  Sparkler could not mention that he had read the information in a human book. His memory of that stolen glance was vague. He too thought it was unlikely, in all honesty.

  “Yes, Beryl, but if I am right, the heaviness of the air above us is something we just get used to.”

  “Like a coat, thir?”

  A Tillet lad looked up with interest. “Made of wood, or something,” he said helpfully. “A really heavy coat.”

  “No, no not like a coat. Like a…like a blanket,” Sparkler said, beginning to sweat a bit.

  “Made of wood,” the lad added.

  “No.”

  “You could tetht it by flying high up, I suppothe,” Beryl said doubtfully. “To thee if the air ith lighter up there.”

  Sparkler nodded. “Very good, Beryl, but how high is high enough?” he said. “Tollins are not high-flying creatures, as you know.”

  Irritatingly, that was true. Tollins needed very little wing-power to go from flower to flower in the summer. Even bumble bees make them look short-range. You may think flying things know a great deal about flight, but in fact the opposite is true. Bees never think about how they fly. If they did, they might crash into a rosebush.

  “Pay attention, Tillets,” Sparkler said. “Professor Grunion asked me to assign homework, so here it is. How do we test if the air is less heavy up there?” Hands shot up, but the afternoon was waning and Sparkler was already thinking about the new arrivals in the tunnels under the station.

  “Answers by tomorrow, please,” he said. “Dis…wait for it, Beryl…dis…missed!”

  The class lifted into the air and began making their way home. To Sparkler’s satisfaction, many of them were looking up as they went.

  The Hall of Tollins under Chorleywood Station was still flooded when Sparkler returned. It had been flooded for the best part of a month, when the clumsy humans had dug some sort of a drain above their heads.

  “How’s the pump coming?” Sparkler asked his team, knowing the answer from their faces.

  Wing was there, the daughter of the High Tollin himself. Sparkler wasn’t sure how he felt about Wing. She was certainly pretty, but she seemed to regard him as some sort of puzzle she had to work out. He could feel her doing it as she looked at him. It was a little bit unnerving. She had an enormous brown mole as well. He didn’t like it much, especially when it ate his sandwiches.

  “It’s still not watertight,” she said. “You were right, pulling one wooden tube inside another seems to suck the water out of the tunnels. The problem is that we can’t do it fast enough.

  Most of it leaks out and even if we empty the water into buckets, it will take years to drain the Hall.”

  “More pumps?” Sparkler said, almost to himself. “More Tollins on each pump? Rows of buckets?”

  “Still too slow,” Wing said. “It might be time to abandon the old Hall and make a new one.”

  Sparkler sighed. He had vowed not to depend on human knowledge. Since he had cured the High Tollin’s gout the previous winter, he had not been back to the bookshelves in local houses. He had already copied a few to go with his herb book, but he had sworn that was it. Obviously he wished now he had not copied a French dictionary or the one about someone called Peter Pan. He’d only copied that because he thought it was about Tollins. The only really useful one was a book on ancient machines. If a giant catapult would have helped with the flood, Sparkler could have built it.

  He was so engrossed in thought that he did not see the High Tollin’s guards come up behind him. Now that he was a favorite of the High Tollin, they tried to be as nice as possible, hoping that he would perhaps forget the rough treatment when he was just an escaped prisoner.

  “Message for you, sah,” said the larger one. “The High Tollin most respectfully requests your presence.”

  “What, now?” Sparkler said. “I’m in the middle of trying to work out…”

  “You’d better go,” Wing said. “You know what Dad can be like and he’s already busy with those Dark Tollins.”

  Sparkler frowned at the unpleasant reminder.

  “Yes, I suppose so. Lead on then.”

  The guard nodded, smiling greasily.

  “Right you are, your honor.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHY ROAST BEETLE IS ALWAYS THE RIGHT CHOICE

  S SPARKLER ENTERED THE TEMPORARY Great Hall, which wasn’t a hall and certainly wasn’t great, he noticed the High Tollin smiling across at him, which was always a worrying sign. Around the bearded old prune were the newcomers: Dark or Country Tollins. It wasn’t that Sparkler disliked them, not exactly. The whole Tollin community of Chorleywood was in a buzz about them. Visitors were rare enough and the Dark Tollins had come up from Dorset, further to the south than almost any of them had ever been, even by fireworks.

  The Dark Tollins hadn’t been impressed by the pumps, which was fair enough as they didn’t work. They also hadn’t been impressed by curing gout or the classes for young Tillets. Sparkler had the strong impression that they thought he was a troublemaker, intent on upsetting the proper Tollin ways. Still, it was only a visit. They couldn’t stay forever.

  “Come in, young Sparkler,” the High Tollin said cheerfully. “I’m sorry we can’t offer you a chair, but this room is rather cramped compared to the old Hall.”

  Sparkler nodded a greeting to the newcomers. They stood very close to the High Tollin, almost as if they owned him. Sparkler struggled to put a smile on his face. The sooner this was over, the sooner he could go back to the problem of the pumps.

  “You called for me, sir?” he said.

  “To introduce you, lad. You haven’t met our country cousins yet? Good, good. This young man, gentlemen, is our finest asset! A boy of great promise and wondrous brain!”

  The leader of the Dark Tollins stepped forward and made a short bow. He was dressed in simple clothes, well worn. He looked curiously at Sparkler, but spoke to the High Tollin.

  “We’ve heard about this one, of course. The Tollin who speaks to humans and steals from them. The one who cares nothing for the old ways.”

  The High Tollin froze in shock.

  “That’s a bit much, Wangle, don’t you think? A bit rude?”

  Sparkler felt a flush of anger spoiling his calm. “You think it’s enough to laze around all summer, then starve all winter, do you?” he demanded.

  “Now, now, Sparkler, there is no need to get upset,” said the High Tollin. “I’m sure our guest did not mean to offend. I thought you could perhaps show him your progress with the pumps. The old Hall will be dry and snug any day now, I’m certain.”

  “Tollins built the first Great Hall,” Wangle said coldly. “Tollins can build another, with their own hands. True Tollins don’t need these pomps.”

  “That’s ‘pumps,’” said Sparkler wearily. “And yes, we could just dig another hole, but we have more brains than moles or badgers. You let yours turn to soup, if you like. This Tollin will embrace the future.”

  “Be careful what you embrace, Tollin,” Wangle said. “Some things have thorns.”

  The following evening, Sparkler was pacing the workshop of his friend Grunion. The smell of roast beetle filled the air.

  “The nerve of him, Grunion! He’d have us grubbing about in the mud forever, I suppose.” As he paced, Sparkler looked through the homework his temporary class had handed in. Even the fact that the paper had come from his own experiments with grasses was a reminder of the scornful Dark Tollins.

  “A hawk!” he said, throwing one piece of the grasspaper down. “Oh yes, very sensible. We attach ourselves to a hawk and somehow persuade it to fly very high.”

  He looked at the next one, Beryl’s entry.

  “Why are they called Dark Tollins, anyway?” Grunion asked, chewing on a bit of leg. “Needs something, this beetle, perhaps a bit of wild onion.”

  “Hmm? Oh, they’re called Dark Tollins because they prefer tunnels to daylight. I don’t think they even use flowers. Just a life in the dark, ea
ting worms and things. Our cousins! Honestly, we have more in common with fairies. At least they don’t live like moles.” He accepted a leg and crunched it as he read. That was the good thing about roast beetle. Always enough leg for everyone.

  “This one from Beryl is interesting,” said Sparkler, reading. “Fire sparks move upwards, but fall when they are cold, so hot things must rise…. A fire could be carried in a clay pot to heat the air…” He thought for a time. “It’s an interesting idea. We’d need some way to catch the hot air—a bag of some kind. Hmm…if we carry the heat with us, in theory, we should be able to just keep going up forever.”

  “Until you hit the sky, obviously,” said Grunion, munching.

  “I don’t think you can ‘hit’ anything, Grunion. It’s just sky—air, you know.”

  “How do you know though? Could be glass, or something.”

  Sparkler’s eyes gleamed.

  “It’s a theory,” he murmured. “The question is, can we test it?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HIGH HOPES

  HEY DIDN’T CALL IT A BALLOON. That is a human word and just means a big ball. The class of Tillets called it a windbag and kept giggling about the name for reasons Sparkler could not understand.

  It was simple enough to make, once he had persuaded the old Tollin ladies to sew great ovals of grasspaper together. The danger of course was that it could be seen. Humans are not good at spotting Tollins, but they would have no problem seeing a small hot-air balloon rise slowly above the Common. As a result, most of the stitching had been done in the chambers under the station, then brought out in pieces. Sparkler gritted his teeth as the Dark Tollins came round to examine the work. Their leader sneered when he heard it was for flying.

  “You’ll be making legs for walking next,” Wangle murmured, almost to himself, but just loud enough for Sparkler to hear. He didn’t reply. His father had always said he should rise above insults and this time, with his windbag, he was going to take the advice literally.

  They chose dawn for the first flight, when very few humans would be about. Sparkler found a spot deep in the woods and instructed the class in tying the string to a wooden spindle. The design for a catapult had come in useful after all, as he had a way to unwind the string slowly.

  “You turn the handle click by click, understand?” he said to the Tillet boy who seemed to think the air was a wooden blanket. The boy nodded, proud to be included.

  Sparkler was the only one going up in the small basket underneath the windbag. He didn’t see how it could be dangerous, but he’d refused Beryl’s request to come along.

  The candles in the tray sent hot air into the bag and slowly, wonderfully, it grew plump. The basket trembled on the ground and, with Beryl watching, Sparkler tried to look as if he wasn’t enjoying himself.

  “Hold on!” came a voice he knew. It was Wing, flying low over the grasses.

  Sparkler looked nervously at the class, who nudged each other.

  “Um…yes?” he said. Wing rolled her eyes.

  “I’m coming too,” she said.

  “There’s no room,” Sparkler replied. “Settle down, class.”

  “Yes there is, look,” Wing said, climbing in. “Pop another candle in the tray if it needs it. I have sandwiches as well. And a kettle, to make tea.”

  “Sandwiches?” Sparkler said. “Wing, this is science, not an outing!”

  “No, it’s more of an upping than an outing, but even scientist Tollins need sandwiches.”

  “Not the kettle then, we’ll never get off the ground.”

  “Scientists need tea as well,” she said firmly.

  Beryl was grinning for some reason and Sparkler gave up. He put another two extra candles in the tray and lit them from the others. The windbag began to quiver again.

  “One click at a time,” Sparkler called to the Tillet on the winch. “Gently does it.”

  “This is fun,” Wing murmured, making herself comfortable.

  “It’s science, Wing!” Sparkler hissed.

  “Fun too, though,” she said.

  The wooden spindle turned and the long woven thread unwound, click by careful click. The windbag lifted into the air, taking two Tollins, some sandwiches and a kettle. Some of the Tillets said, “Oooh!” at the sight, while others said, “Aaaah!”

  Slowly, the windbag rose above the trees and still further, so that the class of Tillets was just a distant smudge on the ground.

  “I should have worked out a signal,” Sparkler said suddenly. “How will they know when to bring us down again?”

  “We could always fly down and tell them,” Wing said.

  “Not if we go as high as I’d like,” he replied. “There’s an awful lot of thread down there, you know. I did tell you this wasn’t just a day out.”

  “Still, it’s very peaceful,” she said. “And I don’t often get you to myself.”

  Sparkler cleared his throat, feeling a bit warm despite the breeze. The trees grew smaller below and for a time, he was lost in appreciating the view. He’d never been so high. He doubted any Tollin ever had.

  “Those Dark Tollins would eat their words if they could see this!” he said.

  The basket lurched and Wing cried out, grabbing the edge.

  “What was that?” she said.

  They seemed to be rising much faster all of a sudden.

  “Oh no,” Sparkler said. The windbag was shooting upwards.

  “The string must have broken,” he said. The Common was just a green patch below them and he could have sworn it was getting colder. The clouds were still above them. Surely they couldn’t rise above the clouds? He winced at the thought of bumping the windbag on the glass ceiling Grunion had predicted.

  “What do we do?” Wing said. Her voice was surprisingly calm, so Sparkler calmed down as well. She handed him a sandwich and he chewed it thoughtfully.

  “Too high to fly down ourselves, do you think?” he said.

  “I don’t know. We could do it in theory, but who wants to test that?”

  The air became white mist as they reached the clouds. For a time, the two Tollins were blind as they rose higher and higher.

  “You’re shivering,” Wing said. “I should have brought a blanket.”

  Sparkler was thinking, hard.

  “I can snuff the candles and the air in the bag should cool. We’d come down again.”

  “How fast?” Wing asked seriously.

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  “Then I’ll put the kettle on the candles while you’re making your mind up,” she said. “Are we going to die?”

  “I don’t know!” Sparkler said miserably.

  “Definitely cup of tea time, then.”

  “How could the string have broken?” he said.

  Far below, the Tillets were flying in all directions, panicking. The Dark Tollins stood by the winch, looking up at the tiny speck that was the windbag being swallowed in clouds. Wangle sheathed a dagger and dropped the severed thread.

  “Right. That’s him out of the way,” he said sourly. “Too many ideas for his own good. Are the others ready?”

  “They are,” said another. “We have the High Tollin and that means we have them all in the palms of our hands.”

  “Get them building a new Great Hall then. Fit for a Dark High Tollin.”

  “Or a High Dark Tollin, if you like,” his companion said.

  “Just get them digging, will you?” Wangle replied.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HIGH TEA

  REAKING THROUGH THE CLOUDS would have been a wonderful experience, if Sparkler hadn’t been close to panic. By the time the tea was boiling and he had snuffed all but one of the candles, the clouds themselves were far below.

  “This tea is tepid,” he said.

  “Well the kettle boiled,” Wing said. “It should be piping hot.”

  “Really?” Sparkler replied. She shrugged and put the kettle back over the last candle, wedging it on the wooden struts. In just mom
ents, the water was boiling and she took the lid off to show him. Sparkler threw away his tea and poured more water, sipping it warily.

  “What are you doing?” Wing cried.

  “Still not hot!” Sparkler said in wonder. “It must be the height. No, the weight of the air! There’s less air above us, Wing! Somehow, having less weight changes something important and the water bubbles at a lower temperature.* If only I could freeze it, to see what happens then. This is wonderful! Beryl will be thrilled. Wing, we need to get down, right now!”

  She watched him stare at the steaming kettle for a while, lost in thought. He really was a very odd Tollin indeed, but she hadn’t met another like him.

  Wing reached out and snuffed the last candle.

  “Right then. Let’s hope it’s slow enough to jump out before we hit the ground,” she said.

  “Oh, this is brilliant,” Sparkler said, dreamily. His mind was hopping from idea to idea like one of the droplets hissing on the kettle. “Steam, Wing. For the pumps. I can use steam!”

  “Yes, that’s lovely,” she said. The windbag seemed to be rising more slowly, or even not rising at all. The world below was enormous, bigger than she’d ever realized. She swallowed nervously as they began to descend.

  Deep under Chorleywood Station, the High Tollin was purple with rage.

  “You will regret this! You came here to steal our tunnels, our homes! You use us like slaves. Sla-aves! You’re worse than the bearded men. Execution is too good for you!”

  “Do be quiet, old fellow,” Wangle said. “You think we country cousins are simple folk? What did that boy say? ‘Lazing in the sun and starving in winter?’ Yes, and we are tired of it. For an entire year, we hear stories of the clever Tollins under the station, who can cure disease and make paper. Why should we grow thin and ill while you are fat and healthy?”