by Valija Zinck
“Twisted my ankle,” Granny Elizabeth groaned. “Heavens above, it hurts.” Her face suddenly turned as translucent as the paper-like bark of the birch. “Aah-aah-aah! I need to sit down.” She dropped onto the grass, pearls of sweat on her forehead.
“Let’s have a look.” Mrs. Gardener started to remove her mother’s boot, but when she pulled, Granny Elizabeth screamed in pain. The sweat ran down her face in small streams.
“I think I—” she murmured, then slumped backward onto the grass. She blinked briefly, but was silent.
“What’s the matter?” Penelope dropped to her knees beside her mother. She shook her grandmother’s shoulder and tapped her cheek lightly. But Granny Elizabeth lay there in the grass with her eyes closed, unmoving.
“She’s fainted. You know she can’t cope very well with pain. That was probably a bit too much for her just now. Oh, and there’s no phone reception out here! Stay with her—I’m going to run home and get help.” Before Penelope could answer her mother, she’d already hurried off.
Penelope took Granny Elizabeth’s hand and stroked it. “Can you hear me?” she murmured. But apparently Granny couldn’t. And so Penelope waited for her mother to fetch help, watching particles of light filter down from the branches to the grass and dance in the evening sun. She looked across the wide fields, listening to the rustling of the grass. Clouds were gathering overhead.
Suddenly, the voice of the road resounded in her ear: “IT’LL BE LONG PAST DARK BY THE TIME HELP ARRIVES, AND THERE’S A THUNDERSTORM BREWING. PUT THE LADY ONTO ME, AND I’LL TAKE IT FROM THERE.”
“Really?” Penelope stood up, grasping G.E. under the arms. She pulled and tugged, but her grandmother was heavier than she’d thought. She managed to move her about an inch, but they were still a hundred yards or more from the little lane.
“YOU NEED TO MAKE MORE EFFORT,” boomed the road. “I CAN ONLY BEND WHEN IT RAINS—THE SUN MAKES ME AS STIFF AS A DRY WORM—OTHERWISE I’D HELP YOU.”
Penelope tried to roll Granny Elizabeth, but it wasn’t easy. “I’m doing my best,” she panted.
“NO, YOU’RE NOT. WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS JUST A WASTE OF ENERGY. YOU’VE GOT TOO MUCH CABBAGE IN YOUR HEAD, OTHERWISE YOU’D BE DOING WHAT YOU’RE REALLY CAPABLE OF.”
Penelope couldn’t believe her ears. Here she was, dragging and pushing and rolling for all she was worth, and this bumpy little road had the nerve to speak to her in that tone! And what did that even mean—“cabbage in her head” and “doing what she was really capable of”?
“STAND FIRM AND GROW STRONG.”
Penelope didn’t know what it meant by “stand firm,” and she certainly didn’t know how to “grow strong.” But some instinct told her to try. She stood, calmly, silently, and closed her eyes.
After a few moments, her feet began to tingle, and then to twitch. Penelope had the sense they were rooting themselves in the ground somehow. And then, with a gasp, she felt a great power beginning to flow through her, rising up from the ground. Her whole body tingled now. She was drawing strength from the ground! Good, thought Penelope, that’s good. I really am feeling stronger. She tried to breathe slowly and evenly, but it was difficult when some kind of electrical impulse was hissing through her body.
Oh! She felt herself grow airy all of a sudden, as light and permeable as the wind. Her body gave a jerk, and she looked down.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Sto-o-o-p!”
This was all going very wrong. She didn’t want to be light, she wanted to be strong … but … her feet! Her feet, in their blue sandals … they were floating in the air!
Well, “in the air” was perhaps a slight exaggeration: Her sandals were a quarter of an inch above the ground. And then it was half an inch, and then an inch. Penelope had no idea what to do. Now she was two inches above the ground, now four. Blades of grass waved beneath her feet, the trees rustled above her, and her heart was hammering in her chest. Higher and higher she rose. Oh, no! Now she was already a foot and a half in the air. If this carried on, she might end up having to send her mother a postcard: Sorry, had to fly. Greetings from the moon, Penelope.
But she had to admit, there was something very nice about floating—she could let herself be carried along, rocking gently on the current of the wind, and look down at the world from up above. She could …
A chain of geese flew over, silhouetted against the pinkening sky like a moving letter V. The birds’ throaty, squealing cries echoed down to Penelope, dragging her back to reality. Instinctively, she reached into her hair with both hands, feeling her wild tangle of curls fizzing with power, and pulled down on it hard. Immediately she jolted to a stop. She lurched, and the strange electrical impulse hissed through her body again. She hung there, three feet above the ground now, clutching her hair tightly and feeling relieved. She cleared her throat.
“What now?” she wondered aloud.
“BE CALM,” the road rumbled. “FINISH WHAT YOU HAVE BEGUN. FOCUS YOUR MIND AND RELEASE THE LIGHTNESS YOU’VE COLLECTED. LET IT FLOAT DOWN TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER.”
Penelope looked at Granny Elizabeth. She looked at her plump stomach and her wrinkled hands, and as she did so, her own body became heavier and slowly began to sink. As her sandals touched the grass, Granny Elizabeth rose slightly into the air. It was barely visible, but her grandmother’s bulky body was floating a few millimeters above the ground.
Cautiously, Penelope let go of her hair and waited for the road’s next instruction.
“NOW FOR THE DIFFICULT PART,” boomed the road. “NOW YOU DO NOTHING. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CONCENTRATE ON DIRECTION. THE GOOD LADY NEEDS TO BE PLACED ONTO ME, NOT HANGING AROUND IN THE AIR. CONCENTRATE AND WAIT. THAT’S ALL. YOU MUSTN’T DISTURB THE PROCESS OR GET IMPATIENT.”
Penelope took a deep breath and let her thoughts travel the distance between herself and the road. The sun was setting behind the trees, and the shadow of the birch tree was beginning to fade when, all of a sudden—whoosh! Like a dry autumn leaf blown by the wind, Granny Elizabeth slid across the meadow all by herself. She wobbled a little, then slid farther along, until—whoomp—she had landed on the road.
Penelope exhaled heavily, then started to run over to where her grandmother lay.
“PERFECT POSITIONING.” The words rumbled around her. “NOW, TAKE HER HAND AND WALK ALONG BESIDE HER.”
Penelope obeyed, stumbling along on the grass beside the sliding road, clutching her grandmother’s hand. She quickly felt tired. “Can’t I ride on you as well?”
The ground beneath her shook a little. “I CAN ONLY DO THIS FOR ONE PERSON AT A TIME IN EACH DIRECTION—I’M A ROAD, NOT A SUPERMARKET CHECKOUT. AND YOU’RE NOT A PACKET OF COOKIES, ARE YOU?”
“All right, keep your hair on,” muttered Penelope. She started to jog, as the road set quite a challenging pace.
They were more than halfway home, when—ka-wumm!—Penelope’s hand was dragged from Granny Elizabeth’s and she fell hard onto the paving slabs.
“What was that about, road?!” She rubbed her knee. “One minute we’re breaking the speed limit, and the next we’re making an emergency stop?”
“THERE’S A REASON—YOU’LL SOON SEE.” The pavement vibrated as it spoke.
A moment later, a car’s headlights appeared over the hill. Penelope realized how dark it had grown, and glanced up at the sky—mountains of dark clouds hid the sun. At the sound of the car’s engine, Granny Elizabeth opened her eyes, gazed around her in astonishment, and muttered something that sounded like, “Can’t remember a thing.” She tried to stand up.
Penelope scrambled quickly to her feet and held out her arm for Granny Elizabeth to lean on. “Can you manage?”
“How should I know?” she said irritably.
The car pulled up, and Mom stepped out of the passenger seat. A man Penelope recognized from the neighborhood got out of the driver’s side. The expression on Mrs. Gardener’s face changed in a moment from very relieved to utterly confused.
The neighbor hurrie
d to help Granny Elizabeth into the car. “How did you do that?” whispered Mrs. Gardener to Penelope.
“I’ll tell you later,” whispered Penelope. She was still trying to make sense of it herself.
As they clambered into the back of the car, the first bolt of lightning flashed against the dark sky, closely followed by an echoing crack of thunder. All of a sudden, the rain hammered down on the surrounding meadows. Penelope couldn’t even see any raindrops in the car’s headlights: The rain was a flat wall of water. Now she was more than grateful that the road had hurried her along—if she’d been out in this weather, she’d have been soaked through to the bone in seconds. Their neighbor had to drive very slowly because it was coming down so hard, and from time to time he even stopped altogether.
“Controlled driving is essential in these conditions,” he expounded. “It’s vital not to overestimate one’s own capabilities, or the vehicle’s.” He patted the steering wheel gently. “Though, of course, I do like to get some speed up from time to time too. It’s important to really open the engine up regularly. I’ll take you on a motorway tour sometime if you like,” he said to Penelope’s mother. “Then you can see what a good bit of equipment I’ve got under this hood.” On and on he went, and he didn’t appear to notice when the rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started. He continued driving at an agonizing crawl.
Penelope rolled her eyes, and Mrs. Gardener asked tentatively if perhaps they could get moving again.
“Of course, but one must always bear in mind that the road is very unpredictable in wet weather conditions.”
Penelope had to smile at that. And in sunny conditions too, she thought affectionately.
That night Penelope dreamt about floating. She was drifting weightlessly over the dragon house, and she couldn’t find a way to come down, no matter how hard she pulled on her hair. Suddenly, a red-haired man with laughing eyes popped his head out of the chimney and called out, “The hair pulling is just for beginners anyway. There’s a completely different method of accomplishing that kind of thing.” But he didn’t say what the method was, and a moment later, Penelope woke up.
The dream was already fading, and soon she couldn’t remember anything about it; all that remained was the strange floaty feeling it had left behind. She wished she had someone to talk to about all the bizarre things that had taken place over the past few days, someone who could lend her a little support. There was the road, of course, but the road was just that: a road, not a person—besides which, the road itself was one of the bizarre things.
“Penny! Breakfast’s ready!” Her mother sounded cheerful, at least.
Penelope came downstairs to find a huge tower of pancakes on her plate and all sorts of toppings scattered across the kitchen table. Immediately, she forgot all about her strange floaty feeling and her wish for support. Instead, she sat down and started eating.
Pancakes with sugar and lemon. Pancakes with applesauce. Pancakes with maple syrup. Pancakes with raspberry jam. Mmm! Her mom’s pancakes were simply the best—once you started, it was impossible to stop eating them! But after the eighth pancake, Penelope’s stomach started to ache. And after the ninth, she felt as round as a ball, and so heavy and full that she couldn’t imagine going to school by any stretch of the imagination. But her mother could imagine it perfectly well, so she pressed Penelope’s schoolbag into her hand, planted a kiss on her cheek, and shooed her out of the house.
Penelope plodded heavily along, pushing her bike over the bumpy track and resolving never to eat again. The others will think I’ve turned into a beach ball, she thought as she huffed and puffed her way up the track. But perhaps my luck will be in—if I can get myself to the beech tree, the road might give me a lift up the hill.
“Morning,” she called out when she got there, lifting her bike onto the pavement. The road wound its way sluggishly between the hills, as though it was asleep. Penelope cleared her throat and waited. But the ground didn’t shake, and no thunderous voice could be heard. Everything remained silent and peaceful.
“Don’t you do mornings, then?”
No reply. Penelope took that to mean no. She sighed, and pedaled laboriously up to the bus stop under her own steam.
Everyone gathered around Penelope on the school bus, and later in the classroom, a crowd formed around her again, but it wasn’t due to Penelope’s transformation into a beach ball.
“Cool dye job!”
“That hair makes you shine like the sun!”
“Wow, wow, wow!”
Of course—her hair! Penelope had grown so used to it over the weekend that she had completely forgotten that the others hadn’t seen her blazing red tangle of hair. Kids from every class thronged around her; even some of the seventh graders had come to have a look.
“How come you’ve never done that before? It looks super cool!” her deskmate Anna-Lea asked, tugging gently on a strand of Penelope’s hair.
Mr. Potts waved his hands and tried in vain to call the rabble to order, but no one paid him any attention. Finally, he had to resort to striking the big gong that he always used when his lessons needed a bit of crowd control.
“Out, out, everyone, please!” he scolded them, though his voice was friendly. “You all have lessons to go to, even if our dear Miss Gardener is looking extra elegant and vibrant today. That hair tops even Tom’s and Pete’s golden locks.”
But Pete seemed to have more pressing issues than hair color on his mind. At break time, he pulled Penelope abruptly to one side. “Is Coco your cat?” he asked, with an uncertain look on his face.
“Yes … why do you ask?”
Pete didn’t reply, but asked further: “And do you know what Blackslough is?”
Penelope gasped—it was where her father lived, of course, but she hadn’t told anyone about that. “What are you talking about?” she snapped, her eyes flashing, then immediately regretted her tone when she saw the nervous expression on Pete’s face.
“I don’t know anything,” he stammered. “I—I—I thought perhaps you might know.”
Penelope softened her tone. “Oh, did you really? And why would you think that?”
“Because … because …” Pete’s voice died away. It was only when Penelope put a reassuring hand on his arm that he grew a little calmer. “Because I heard someone saying: ‘Bring Coco to Blackslough, please, bring Coco to Blackslough.’ ”
Penelope felt the color drain from her face. Was someone trying to kidnap her cat? “Who said that to you?”
“That’s just it—no one said it to me. I just heard these voices in my head, you know? I was kicking the ball around up on the soccer field on my own. I couldn’t see a single person, but all of a sudden there was the first voice—it was sort of soft and warm—and it said that about Coco.”
Penelope took a step backward and looked Pete up and down. She took in his blue sneakers, one lace blue and the other one orange, his skinny legs in worn jeans, his baggy black sweater, and his light blond hair. Was it possible? Was he, too, perhaps … ?
“Can you do it too? The hearing-before-hearing thing?”
“The what?” Pete raised his eyebrows.
“Well, I mean … do you ever know what your mom’s going to say before she speaks to you?”
“Oh, yeah. Every time.” Pete grinned. “Either she says, ‘Tidy your room,’ or she says, ‘Tidy your room this minute.’ ”
Penelope shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. I mean … do you ever hear your mom or dad say something, as if they were actually speaking when they aren’t?”
“Penny, please, I can’t do anything like that. I’d probably have forgotten about this altogether, if it was just the first voice, but then I heard another voice, and that one said your name—Gardener, I mean—so I thought I’d better ask you about it.” He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “That voice, I mean the second one, it wasn’t friendly—there was something cold and slippery about it. It called out, ‘Is that bit of blue string you
r new plaything, then, Gardener?’ Then everything went quiet again. I waited for ages, and after a while, I started to wonder if I’d imagined it all. So I shoved it to the back of my mind and carried on playing. But then, when I saw you this morning, I thought perhaps I should tell you … perhaps you’d know if it means anything.”
Penelope was lost for words. Nothing Pete had told her made any sense. Her tongue began to click softly, and her knees felt shaky. But then she drew herself upright. I’m Penelope Gardener, she thought, and I’m going to find out what’s going on with this strange voice.
“Thanks for telling me about it,” she said to Pete. “I think it could be important, and if I can work out what’s going on, I’ll tell you. But it’s break time now. C’mon, let’s go and find the others.”
Doing homework when your mind is on something else can be quite time-consuming. That afternoon, Penelope sat for the better part of three hours, supposedly working on her English essay, and only managed to write two sentences. Not very impressive, especially as neither sentence had anything whatsoever to do with the essay topic. The first sentence was written in large letters on the sheet of lined paper in front of Penelope:
And, farther down the page in slightly smaller letters:
Penelope had written the sentences down because she hoped it’d help her to understand them, and stop them turning over and over in her head. It wasn’t really working. She went back over what she did know: For starters, Pete couldn’t do the hearing-before-hearing thing, that much was obvious. His hair wasn’t red, and besides, Penelope always felt completely normal when she was around him, whereas her father had said that people like them could sense each other’s presence. But why had Pete heard what he’d heard? And who had said it to him?
“Holy swamp cow! This isn’t getting me anywhere.” Penelope stood up abruptly and set off outside to clear her head. The fresh air in her face felt good, and blew away her tiredness.
Penelope decided to wander to the stone circle to try out the floating. It started well, though she couldn’t float any higher than the smallest rocks, barely three feet above the ground. It was as though the power drained away if she went above a certain height, or as if there was something pressing down on her from above and stopping her from getting any higher. Maybe I just need more practice, she thought, lowering herself back down to earth. She decided she’d practice every day from then on. And she’d stick a tape measure to her bedroom wall to keep a record of her progress.
