Attica (29 page)

‘Does it hurt much?’ asked Alex, almost as if he were curious rather than feeling sorry for his step-brother. ‘Is there much pain?’

Jordy sucked in his breath, holding up his injured arm with his good hand. ‘Not much. Not a lot, I mean. It hurts, but like someone has kicked me. Not as bad as you’d think it would. It’s a sort of numbing pain.’

Alex then busied himself with stamping on those last few imp inks that now scuttled away from Jordy. Coloured ink squirted everywhere. Chloe told him to stop, then closely inspected the damage to her step-brother. She had done First Aid with her gymnastics coach.

‘We need to put splints on that,’ she said, ‘to hold it in place. It’ll need to be set by a doctor, but if it gets knocked or moved in the meantime,
then
it’ll hurt. Tonight it’ll ache like anything. I know, I broke my ankle at hockey. It’s tonight it’ll hurt.’

‘Thanks for the warning,’ gasped Jordy.

Alex went and found some pieces of an old orange box for the splints while Chloe looked for something to bind them with. She found some ladies’ head scarves, which would do admirably, she said. They then boxed in the broken forearm with three pieces of wood. Chloe did a really good job of binding the pieces together, so that though Jordy could move his whole limb, his forearm remained still. Chloe then made a sling which would hold Jordy’s splinted arm.

Nelson
watched the proceedings with a distinct lack of interest as he licked coloured inks from his fur in distaste.

Standing up and feeling a lot better, Jordy assessed the problems he now caused the three of them.

‘Look,’ he said, his face still the grey shade of stale bread, ‘I’ve got to get to a doctor, you know, or gangrene might set in. If that happens I’ll either lose my arm or at the very worst, I’ll die …’

‘Don’t say that,’ Chloe snapped.

‘I’m sorry Chloe, but I’ve got to face the truth. Thanks for doing this up for me, but I’ve got to get home now, somehow. I’m not sure exactly what gangrene is, or how I would know if I’d got it, but from reading books I do know it smells terrible and that it spreads until it reaches some vital organ.’

‘We have to get you home,’ said Chloe emphatically. ‘You need to get to the hospital.’

‘That’s what I’ve been saying,’ replied Jordy, managing to smile through his own distress at her anxiety. ‘It’s what I’ve got to do.’

Chloe said, ‘Well, the first thing we’ve got to do is see whether we’ve got the map or not.’

With some trepidation she unrolled the huge parchment which Jordy had wrested from the ink imps. At first her heart skipped a beat as she thought they had the wrong piece of paper. She had been expecting wiggly lines in different coloured inks, with contours and lots of numbers for heights above sea level. What she had here looked like a board game. But then she realised a map of an attic would look nothing like a map of the normal world. It would look like this chart did, a floor plan of a room. Gradually, as she studied it, she recognised areas they had been through.

‘Look,
here’s the Jagged Mountain – and there – there’s the Forest of Tall Clocks – and over here the place where we met the friendly puppets – oh – oh …’

‘What is it?’ asked Jordy, wincing as the pain grew in his arm. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Here. Look. Down here. Almost off the bottom of the map,’ cried Chloe excitedly. ‘This is where we crossed over from our home attic into Attica proper. I know. I recognise those gently curving rafters, like the flying buttresses on a cathedral. You
must
remember, Jordy, the way they swept across the sky high above us, as we were wandering around, wondering where we were and how to get back?’

‘I dunno,’ replied Jordy doubtfully. ‘It doesn’t do anything for me.’

‘It must do,’ she insisted. ‘You remember how I said it looked like we were in Winchester cathedral?’

‘Nope.’

She began to grow angry. ‘Well, I did.’

‘You must have thought you did.’

Chloe stamped her foot the way she might have done when she was three years old. ‘I certainly did! Anyway, what does it matter? I know where we have to go. We’ve got to start out now.’

Alex said quietly, ‘Jordy’ll never make it.’

‘Yes he will,’ cried Chloe, close to tears. ‘Yes he will.’

‘Not on foot he won’t.’

It wasn’t Alex who had spoken. They all turned to find the bortrekker standing there, towering above them, the capes of his coat making his shoulders look massive in the dim light. He had come upon them without them hearing him, big fellow that he was, which showed just how green were these humans in the ways of the great attic. The two rats, Arthur and Harold, peered from his pockets with glittering eyes. They stared down at Nelson, who was looking up at them with equal interest.

The bortrekker
said, ‘You watch that cat o’ yorn. I’ll scrag him if he tries to get at my rats.’

‘He won’t touch them while they’re in your pockets,’ Alex replied.

The bortrekker nodded. In his right hand he had his fiddle bow, which he used to point with.

‘Now, over there,’ he said, ‘in that dark corner you’ll find something that may be of use to you.’

‘What is it?’ asked Chloe.

‘You go and find out. I’m not sure, see, whether you’ll be able to use it. I’ve never seen it used myself. But there’s a picture on the package, which shows what it can do. You can use the high warm draughts. They’ll take you the length of the attic, back to where you came in, if you guide it properly. Go on, it may be his only hope.’

‘My only hope?’ cried Jordy, in anguish. ‘Oh heck, go and look, Chloe. See what it is.’

Chloe left them, running for the dark corner.

Alex stepped forward now, his eyes shining.

‘Thank you, bortrekker. Thanks for saving my brother’s life.’

‘You’re welcome. And have you finally made up your mind?’

Alex nodded. ‘I think I have. It was a difficult choice. My heart races when I think about model steam engines, but having met
you
again I realise they’re not really important.’

‘Good, then you won’t need them engines, will you? Now you’re not going to be a board-comber, like you thought you was.’

Alex smiled
and took off his pack. He opened it and removed the model steam engines he had collected so far. He handed them to the bortrekker.

The bortrekker said, ‘I’ll hide these for some other board-comber to find.’

‘Thanks.’

Chloe’s face broke into a broad smile and relief flooded into her expression. ‘Alex, you’re not staying here in the attic! You’re coming home with us. I’m so glad …’

Her brother’s next remark crushed any hope within her, turning sudden happiness into anguish with the certainty that he was
not
going home.

‘Oh yes I
am
staying, sis. I’m just not staying as a collector.’ He beamed at the bortrekker and high up in one of the rafters a hopeful bat sighed in disappointment, knowing he would not be wanted after all. ‘I’m going to be like him. I’m going to be a wanderer, learning the ways of the attic. An explorer. A pioneer. I shall roam the rest of my days, learning the lore of the attic.’

‘When you’re ready,’ said the bortrekker, ‘I’ll come and find you. You need to know things. You need to know how and where and why. You’re lucky,’ he continued, ‘I never had no one to teach me. You’re lucky you’ve got me for a teacher. But remember what you’re giving up. There’s no countryside in the attic – only dead furniture and junk. You’ll be saying goodbye to the wild rose and hawthorn, and will be left only with clocks and hat stands. No smell of newly mown grass. No scent of green thyme. Only the dust in your nostrils and the boards under your feet. Gone from you the sight of flocks of migrating swallows. Only swarms of bats fluttering their papery wings. No sudden change from green to silver: a poplar’s leaves caught by a gust of wind. Only the draught between the cracks in the eaves, stirring dead spiders and lifting cobwebs. Not for you the flash of a stickleback in a stream, only the dull movement of some sluggish mollusc in the bottom of a stagnant water tank.

‘D’you
think you can live in such a world?’

Alex nodded, hard. ‘I have to find the watch first though, for Mr Grantham. I promised. I can’t go back on a promise.’

‘If you have to.’

‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘I do – it’ll be my last human act.’

‘Oh, Alex,’ cried the unhappy Chloe.

Seeing that strange shining in her younger brother’s eyes, she despaired for him, knowing she was losing him, had probably already lost him. And at such a time, with an emergency on, when she couldn’t give him her full attention. Unfortunately, Jordy needed her more at the moment. She went to look for the package which would help save Jordy’s life.

CHAPTER 18

Rafter Kings and Rafter Queens

Chloe
approached the place and saw a long large kit of some kind, wrapped in plastic.

A tent? It looked like a tent.

Dropping to her knees with her torch in her hand she shone it on a label which was visible through the transparent wrapping. Her eyes widened. Not a tent. A kite of some kind. She wiped away the dust from the covering and stared hard at the illustration. Not a kite either.
A hang-glider
. Her heart began beating faster. She picked it up, gathering it in her arms. It was quite light, despite the bulkiness.

When she arrived back at the edge of the lake, Jordy was alone, nursing his injured arm.

‘Has he gone?’ she asked. ‘The bortrekker?’

Jordy was staring angrily into the middle distance.

‘And Alex?’ she added. ‘Where’s he gone?’

‘Don’t ask,’ growled Jordy. ‘He’s a nutter. He’s gone off his rocker.’

‘I’ll find him in a minute,’ said Chloe.

Jordy suddenly became interested in what she had in her arms.

She put
it on the ground.

‘I know what that is,’ he cried, gritting his teeth as his excitement exacerbated the pain in his arm. ‘It’s a hang-glider.’

‘Have you done it? Can you do it?’

‘Hang-gliding? Natch, I did it with the army cadets, before my dad married your mum.’ His voice took on that old swaggering tone. ‘I was pretty good at it. I flew like a bird.’ He saw her expression, adding lamely, ‘You know.’

‘Can you do it with a broken arm?’

Despair registered on his face. He looked down at his sling.

‘No, of course not,’ he said, crestfallen.

A determined look appeared on Chloe’s face. Jordy stared at her.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘You can’t, Chloe.’

‘Yes I can. I’ll have to. And you must help me. I’ve seen them on TV. You can do it with two people. The person who’s guiding the glider goes in the harness and the passenger’s slung underneath. They do it when they’re teaching a novice. We’re not even adults. We’re quite light, considering. Our combined weight is probably that of one adult. A largish one, admittedly.’

‘Yes,’ protested her step-brother, ‘but you’re the novice and I’m not exactly an expert. I know what I said before, but I’ve only done it a few times. We’re sure to crash, Chloe, then you’ll end up with something broken too.’

Nelson appeared and rubbed up against Chloe’s leg.

‘And we’ll have to take Nelson with us.’

‘Oh, my lord,’ muttered Jordy. ‘The girl’s serious.’

‘Of course the girl’s serious.’

‘And what about Alex?’

Chloe said, ‘Once I’ve taken you to our house, I’ll come back for him. I’ll be good at it then. I’ll have had practice.’ This time she didn’t sound too sure of herself. ‘He can wait here, by the tank.’

‘He won’t, you know.’

‘What
do you mean?’

‘Here he is now. Look at him.’

Alex was walking towards them. Chloe was surprised to see he had rid himself of all his old clothes, the silly oversized overcoats, the scarves and all the other excess clothes. If there had been no other change, Chloe would have been delighted by the alteration. It would have meant that her brother had given up his ideas about being one of those collector things that infested the attic. One of those people who had turned from a human into a dust-living creature obsessed with gathering one or another of the attic’s treasures.

But now Alex looked even worse. He had on a wide-brimmed hat, a coat with many capes, big boots. He strode like the tall youth they had just come to know. He walked with great confidence in his step. There was in his expression a new look, a look which chilled Chloe to the bone. She did not know this brother, this new Alex. He was a stranger.

‘He’s dressed like the bortrekker,’ she said.

Jordy murmured, ‘That’s what he thinks he is.’

‘That’s what I
am
,’ corrected Alex, coming up to them. ‘I’ve always had it in me and now it’s come out, and here I stand.’

He still had Makishi slung over his shoulder.

Jordy shouted, ‘You’re not a damn bortrekker, you’re an engine nerd. I should be the bortrekker, if anyone. I was in the army cadets, not you.’

Alex sighed and shook his head. ‘You haven’t the right kind of mind for the attic, Jordy. I belong here. I can feel it.’

Chloe said, ‘Don’t I get a thought, Alex? What about me? I’m your sister. What shall I tell Ben and our mother? Don’t you think you’re being just a bit selfish, deciding this on your own?’

Alex
hung his head for a second, then replied quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Clo. But it has to be my decision. We’ll be grown up soon. Adults. Then you’ll get work as a newspaper reporter or something, maybe eventually go off with some bloke you’ve fallen in love with. And me? I’ll have a career somewhere in a town I don’t like but have to be there because that’s where the job is. Don’t you see, we’ll have to part company sooner or later. It’s just going to be sooner, that’s all.’

‘It’s not the same. That’s natural. That’s a natural thing to happen. This isn’t.’ She grew angry. ‘And we’ll never see each other again. If it was some old town I’d come and see you. But I can’t come back here. You know that. I might not be able to. The attic might not let me.’ She stared into his face, realising her words were making no difference. ‘Oh, go on then. Do it. I can’t force you to come back. I’ll never speak to you again, you pig. I hate you. I really hate you. Get out of my sight.’