The Battle of the Sun

by Jeanette Winterson

  ‘You will never rule me,’ said Jack. ‘I would die first.’

  The Magus regarded him. ‘Die, Jack, would you? Then you shall!’

  And the Magus galloped forward, his cloak flying out behind him, and from the streams of his cloak came every kind of evil – came goblins and devils, red-eyed demons and hook-faced birds, came creatures without heads, came heads without bodies, came silent furies and whistling deaths, came claws, beaks, talons, came the tearing, ripping, shearing racket of dark power.

  As Jack ducked and swung his sword, Mother Midnight in the poop-house pulled her own cloak around her and flew straight out of the window, calling like a bird of prey, but the birds of prey who came at her call were light and clear and aimed themselves fearlessly at the flapping hells that covered the sky.

  As soon as the window was open, the brave little dog Max, seeing his beloved Jack in the thick of the fray, jumped out and landed on fast feet and ran at hounds of hell six times his size.

  When Mistress Split saw this, she thought only to save her Boojie, and springing off her one leg, she abseiled down the sunflower, and pulled out her huge sword from beneath her skirts and set to work at every monster that came near her or threatened the dog.

  ‘Slash Mash Crash Bash!’ she shouted. ‘Come here to be beheaded.’ BANG! went a goblin’s head. CRASH! went an imp in a cart. MASH! went a pair of evil eight-legged things with beady eyes and nasty fur. SLASH! went her sword, and down went an homunculus with a red face.

  ‘Bless my wig!’ cried the Keeper of the Tides. ‘Am I to be here helpless while my friends perish?’

  And he pushed his ceremonial cannon into the window and began firing cannonballs into the squawking air.

  ‘Take that, and that, and that!’ he cried, as a hideous harpy thudded at his feet.

  At the house on the Strand Roger Rover took command of the Queen’s troops and they poured out on to the river, and never were men braver, their swords flashing, their double-headed axes slashing the sky.

  The Queen was on her feet, her lion heart alive with battle. Fearlessly she stood in the fully open window and shouted out, ‘The Queen of England is with you!’

  And it was time for Silver to do her part.

  She ran downstairs and into the armoury and fastened on herself a breastplate and helmet and took a small light sword. Then she went to find Jack.

  As soon as she reached the river a thicket of suffocating brown moths covered her face, their wings like stinging nettles. She dropped the visor on her helmet and pushed on, showing no fear at the ghoulish wreckage around her.

  Jack was fighting a hellish thing in a cloak that had eight arms and no head.

  ‘Jack! The Magus! Look!’ cried Silver.

  The Magus had taken his chance in the commotion, and slipped away towards the unguarded house, empty but for the Queen. Jack looked up to see him scaling the wall like a bat.

  With one mighty push, Jack shoved his horse right through the swirling cloak with eight arms, and galloped towards the house. As the horse came near, Jack stood up on the saddle like a circus boy, and leapt straight up the wall at the Magus.

  The two of them fell, rolling and tumbling over each other.

  ‘Your power is ended,’ cried Jack. ‘Ended!’

  But the Magus struggled free, and ran as swift as a wild animal through the smoking fighting crowds on the river, Jack pelting behind him.

  Before Jack could reach him, the Magus took out a horn, and blew it. The noise was so frightening and eerie that everyone stopped fighting for a moment. Stopped to see what it was that was happening.

  The River Thames opened like a wound, and from the deep underground wound came an army of metal men. They had no eyes, no hearts. They walked in step, mechanically, and in unbreakable ranks. The sound of them vibrated on the river. The noise was deafening.

  The Magus began to laugh, and his laugh was metal, and his face was metal.

  The metal men began to cut down the brave soldiers of the Queen. Lop off their metal heads and their metal bodies fought on. Lop off their metal legs and their metal arms swung their axes. Lop off their metal bodies and their metal legs kicked whatever came near.

  Jack watched in panic. Metal, he thought. What can you do with metal? And then he knew . . .

  Jack slipped through the confusion to where the Dragon lay wounded. He sat by the Dragon’s head. ‘Help me once more,’ he said.

  ‘How so, Jack Snap, why might I?’ said the Dragon.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Jack. ‘Melt the metal men.’

  The Dragon looked at Jack as though he knew him from a long way off, another time, an older land, and perhaps he did, for there are many things that dragons know. Then, without warning, the Dragon twisted his great head, and as the ranks of metal men came near, the Dragon breathed his fierce fire.

  WHOOSH! went the fireball. WHOOSH! went the purple flames. The heat was intense, the heat was as hot as the sun skimming the earth. The heat turned the air into shimmering waves so hot that a woman a mile away had her eyebrows singed off.

  The metal men reddened and glowed. Their metal joints swelled and stalled. Their ungiving bodies turned molten, and as they flared and glowed and heated to a thousand degrees, they melted the solid gold of the river where they marched, and the river was turning to molten gold, and the metal men were sinking, clanking, steaming, burning.

  The troops and fighters on the river were desperately trying to reach the banks. The battle had become a chaos.

  Suddenly the Magus was beside Jack, his face twisted and snarling. ‘Save yourself, Jack, if you can!’ And with double fury he flung himself at Jack.

  As the two fought harder and harder, Jack felt his strength growing, and his mind clearing. He had the Magus by the throat and he was looking into him, through him, it seemed, and what he saw was nothing – emptiness.

  ‘You have no power,’ said Jack. ‘You are empty.’

  A little further away, watching the fight, was the Abbess.

  She took a little silver ball from her pocket, and held it up to the light. The false Silver, she thought. Let us see what happens if she joins the fray. The Abbess threw the ball of mercury, and threw it and threw it and threw it on to the river. It rolled and grew.

  ‘It’s time to stop, Jack,’ said a familiar voice. ‘The battle is done.’

  Silver was there. Jack looked up at her. ‘Didn’t I promise to tell you when it was time? Well, now it’s time to stop. The battle is over. I promise you. The metal men are defeated. And your mother is waiting in the house.’ Silver was smiling. ‘Come on, Jack.’

  Jack hesitated and let go of the Magus, who lay winded on the golden river. Jack looked at Silver carefully; she didn’t smile like that, false and unhappy. Jack said, ‘Show me the King’s ring.’

  And the shadow Silver collapsed back into a ball of mercury and rolled away. The Abbess from her vantage point was displeased. She had expected the Magus to slay Jack at that moment, and while she did not care whether Jack lived or did not, or whether the Magus succeeded or did not, she cared very much to control matters. The presence of Silver, true or false, seemed to spoil that. She wrapped her cloak about her and made her way towards the house.

  ‘Max! Get that ball,’ shouted Jack, and the brave dog dodged and tackled between the feet and hooves and claws, and steam and broken iron, and was gone.

  As was the Magus.

  But now the whole length of the solid gold river was cracking. It was as if a sulphur spring had burst beneath.

  Clouds of thick steam rose up. The solid gold was breaking and splitting into little landmasses that were driven with tidal fury down the river that had been pent up. Horses, monsters, griffons, harpies, soldiers, mobsters, fighting boys found themselves on flat rafts of gold, swept away from London and out towards the sea. Eddying and swirling like a tortured serpent, the river returned from its stilled state, and hurtled between the breaking, splintering gold islands, where clung precariously all the old
enemies, now crying piteously for their lives.

  Jack saw the Magus on a block of gold, using his cloak like a sail, and rafting towards London Bridge.

  Jack grabbed a pikestaff from a soldier, and aimed it like a jumping pole to fling himself across the boiling, breaking river, now on to a fragment of gold, now on to an upturned boat, but gaining on the Magus as the tide roared.

  ‘Jack Snap!’ cried a familiar voice. It was the Dragon. ‘You cannot kill him without his heart!’ And the Dragon tossed the Cinnabar Egg to Jack, who caught it lightly, bowing once from his speeding river-run boat, as he and the Magus alone surfed the tidal Thames.

  The Keeper of the Tides saw the black figure of the Magus skimming towards him through the chaos of the seething river, and he saw Jack, in fantastic leaps and bounds, not far behind. As the Magus approached, the Keeper of the Tides dropped the net and caught the Magus, spinning him up as a clever spider does a fat black fly.

  Now Jack was underneath and, as the Magus struggled in the net, Jack grabbed the net, and such was his strength that the net broke, and the two of them went down into the river. Down, down, down, down, down.

  Under the water they were, and the Magus turned into a fish with huge blank eyes, but Jack did not let him go, and the Magus turned into a giant crab, with claws that could wrench a man’s arm from its socket, but Jack did not let him go, and the Magus turned into an eel and wrapped himself around Jack’s body, but Jack held and held and held, and finally the Magus turned back into himself, and the two of them grappled under the water, until Jack had the Magus’s head held back, as he had done with the Sunken King.

  And Jack took out the Cinnabar Egg, and holding it above the water line, he cracked it in one hand.

  ‘My heart!’ cried the Magus. ‘My safe-kept heart.’

  And the Magus began to disappear.

  ‘Jack,’ he said, bubbles of water coming from his mouth like dreams, ‘you were stronger, after all. Ah, Jack, what worlds we could have had . . . what hearts.’

  And as Jack held the Magus, he felt something like forked lightning enter him, and he fainted.

  What shapes are they up ahead? What sounds?

  The river was still under the Bridge. The Keeper of the Tides looked and looked but nothing came to the surface.

  Then he heard shouting from the riverbanks, like all of London was shouting from the riverbanks, and he saw that the hard hateful roofs of gold were nothing more than higgledy-piggledy tiles and thatch, and the walls that had gleamed and glistened were plaster and wood again, and the streets that had been paved with gold and shone like mirrors at midday were back to their usual filth and mud.

  And across the bank, water flowed into the cisterns, and men and women dunked their heads, and baptised their babies, and dipped their thirsty cattle in the troughs, and the troughs were wood and not gold, and the cattle were warm steaming flesh and not gold, and the ovens were baking real bread, and the alehouses were serving real ale, and all that was chaos and dirt and teeming life was life again and not worth a gold tooth if you sold it, but richer than the universe.

  And men and women were hugging each other, and sharing trotters and cabbage, and the city gates were open, and country people crowded in bringing gifts of eggs and cakes, and the soldiers, high on their horses, picked fruit high on the tree, and bent down to give it to the children.

  And the fish in the river were fish.

  And the birds in the trees were birds.

  And the bees were not golden bees, and the flowers were not golden flowers, and the air smelt of herrings and honey-hay, of malt and yeast and pigs, and of the sweet moving day.

  And the Queen, in her gilded chair, looking out on to the river, clapped her gnarled and ringed hands.

  And the fiddlers played, and the singers sang, and there was dancing everywhere. And people found that life was better than gold, and that love was worth more than riches. And what had been lost was found.

  ‘Where’s Jack?’ said Silver.

  JACK

  Silver went down to the river, and took a boat, and before she could untie the anchor, Max had jumped in the prow. But Silver had no skill with boats, and the Thames was still boiling in its fury. As she eddied and tossed and made no headway, a fat weight flung itself in beside her and took an oar in its powerful arm; its powerful one arm. It was Mistress Split.

  ‘Row,’ she commanded.

  Under Mistress Split’s direction, and Silver pulling mightily with her two arms, and Mistress Split skilfully rowing her side and managing the unruly tide, Max barking encouragement, the boat passed under London Bridge.

  The Keeper of the Tides was leaning out. ‘They went down,’ he cried, ‘and Jack did not come up!’

  Silver was full of foreboding, and Max’s tail had begun to droop.

  ‘Row!’ commanded Mistress Split, and on they rowed, past the crumbling edges of London, and towards the marshes.

  And that is where they found him.

  Jack was floating on his back with his eyes wide open, watching the clouds. He had no sense of where he was, or who he was, only that he was floating, and that his whole body was tingling like a jellyfish. He did not know it, but he was slightly luminous.

  He thought the clouds were cities, and he thought he was dreaming.

  A boat pulled alongside him, and one muscled sturdy arm yanked him over the edge.

  ‘You’ve woken me up,’ he said regretfully.

  ‘We’re going home,’ said Silver.

  HOME

  What a party!

  The whole city of London came to Roger Rover’s house on the Strand.

  There were ox roasts and pigs on spits and chickens broiling in stock, and vats of soup, and cauldrons of eels and cheeses the size of cartwheels rolling through the courtyards, and apples piled into pyramids greater than anything built in Egypt. There were tiny cakes to pop in your mouth and cakes so vast that they had to be sliced with a sword, and there were jellies with jewels shining inside them, and sugared rabbits, and sweet almonds.

  The dancing had begun, the clodhoppers and the nobles all together. A lady in silk and furs danced with a cabinetmaker wearing patched breeches. The girls who carried fish in baskets on their heads, and whose hair smelled of herrings, bowed before perfumed lords, and were welcomed that day as equals.

  And equals they were, not because gold had made them each as rich as the other, but because gold had made them each as hungry and thirsty as the other. The golden fish on golden plates were hateful. The golden water in golden goblets was a torture none could endure.

  And those who had hidden fortunes in fields, and went back secretly, guiltily, to dig them up before the party was done, found nothing but mouldy sacking and worms.

  The gold was gone.

  Jack walked unsteadily from the boat, Silver holding his arm, and Max running beside him. Roger Rover, keen-eyed, saw them coming up through the water-gate, and went down himself to help the boy whose clothes were soaked through.

  ‘Put him by the fire,’ commanded Sir Roger, and as the servants began to help him undress, they saw that his body was covered in small cuts and wounds.

  There was a knock at the door, and in came Mother Midnight, who had shown her own bravery many times that day. She was carrying a pot of ointment.

  ‘Smear Jack in this,’ she said.

  It was Silver who rubbed the ointment into his shoulders and chest and on his legs and feet, and as she worked, intent on what she did, she didn’t see that each wound worked, healed and closed, and was healthy and whole again.

  ‘Now drink him this,’ said Mother Midnight.

  Jack drank the steaming foaming brew that Mother Midnight poured from her flask. His weariness left him. He stood up. ‘I must find my mother,’ he said.

  Jack went to the hall where his mother was. Her hair was still made of gold and her body was still made of stone. Jack began to tremble. He had done everything in his power, and he had defeated the Magus, but he had lost his mo
ther.

  John Dee was behind him. Jack turned on him. ‘You told me that if I defeated the Magus, my mother would be returned to me. But she is stone!’

  John Dee shook his head sadly. ‘Jack, I do not understand. The Magus is defeated, and his enchantments should fall with him. That is the rule. But, for your mother, I fear that the bond between you was what he hated, the love of a mother for her son, the love of a son for his mother . . .’

  ‘Or father . . .’ said Jack, thinking of William, who had run away and not been seen. ‘The Magus never loved his own son William.’

  ‘Love or its lack is at the bottom of most things, Jack, as you will discover, though it be covered by a thousand other stories and ten thousand powers.’

  ‘But that does not free my mother,’ said Jack, very sad.

  John Dee put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘The Magus bound her with all the hatred that was in his heart – a frozen lake a hundred miles deep in ice is not colder or harder than his heart.’

  ‘But he is defeated!’ said Jack stubbornly.

  ‘This dark magic lives after him,’ said John Dee. ‘Perhaps in time . . .’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I love her now, not in time.’

  Silver came forward. She touched Jack gently on his arm.

  ‘Jack, a long time in the future I have to do something that I have already done – I mean, I came here after I had done it in my world but long before I have done it in your world, but while I was doing what I had to do, a friend of mine got trapped somewhere terrible, and there was nothing that could save him, except . . .’ and she whispered something to Jack.

  Jack went to his mother and he put his arms around her, and he said, ‘The dark magic that holds you fast cannot stand against the love I bear for you.’