Enchanted Glass (27 page)

It was not pleasant. Aidan and Rolf scuttled hastily into the edge of the crowd, where they tried to stay quiet and hidden.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the vicar began again when the noise had died down, “it gives me great pleasure to introduce Mr Ronald Stock, whose Stables add such lustre to our village, and who has graciously agreed to open this humble Fête of ours.”

Everyone was bewildered. Heads turned, looking for Ronnie.

The vicar pointed dramatically towards the distant gate. “Mr Ronald Stock,” he announced. “Applause, please.”

The band began to play the Melstone tune.

Everyone swung round as Ronnie Stock came cantering through the gate and across the field towards the platform. He was riding a white horse caparisoned like the steed of a knight of old. The horse did not look happy. It was draped round with blue and gold cloth and adorned with a blue and gold visor topped with a gold spike. Ronnie himself was in Elizabethan dress: a red and gold doublet and cloak, red tights and small puffy pants, also red and gold. On his head was a large feathered hat, like an outsize beret, which he swept off and waved to everyone as he cantered up.

Stashe turned her face away. “Oh dear,” she said.

There was no doubt that this was a grand entry. Everyone clapped. The people by the beer tent whistled and hooted. Ronnie beamed as he reined in stylishly beside the platform, slapped the hat back on his head and gracefully dismounted. A young lady came briskly up to take charge of the horse.

“Hey!” said Stashe, starting forward. “I thought
I
was supposed to do that!”

“I’m glad you’re not,” Andrew said.

The moment Ronnie was off its back, the horse made a serious effort to rid itself of the blue and gold outfit. The young lady was carried high into the air and then had to dodge irritated lashing hooves.

“But that’s
Titania!
” Stashe said angrily. “I hope poor Snowy
steps
on her!”

Tarquin and Andrew each took one of her arms to stop her rushing off. Tarquin said soothingly, “There, there, there.” Andrew was speechless, watching Ronnie Stock gracefully swaggering up the steps of the platform. He had not seen Ronnie before this. He had always imagined him as short and wide, perhaps with a bluff red face. Not a bit of it. Ronnie was tall, thin and elegant-looking, with a narrow, aristocratic face. In fact…

Andrew found himself looking across at Mr Brown on the other side of the platform. Ronnie Stock could almost
have been Mr Brown’s twin. Mr Brown was staring at Ronnie in utter white outrage, because the unthinkable had happened and Oberon himself had a counterpart in Melstone.

Well, Andrew thought, this is your own fault for living here so long!

Mr Brown turned, slowly, and searched the crowd for Andrew. He found him and raised an elegant white finger. Andrew had to brace himself against a charge of electric magic. The world turned grey and dizzy for him and he had to hold himself up on Stashe and Tarquin.

Mr Brown then turned the finger towards Ronnie Stock. Ronnie had no defence against magic. He swayed for an instant and then went down on the platform with a hollow crash, like a tree falling.

There was consternation all over. Ladies in hats bent over Ronnie. People began pushing through the crowd, shouting, “Let me through, I’m a nurse!” or, “Make way! St John’s Ambulance!” or, “I know First Aid!” while Mr Brown simply stood where he was, angry but otherwise unconcerned.

In the confusion, the horse got away from Titania.

Aidan felt somebody nudge him. The Puck stood beside him giggling. “Think you’re safe, don’t you?” he said to Aidan. He made a little wriggling gesture with one plump hand.

To Aidan’s horror, the silver charm flew off his neck and landed some yards off in the grass.

Rolf dived for the charm, picked it up in his mouth and dropped it at once with a scream. Silver is poison for weres. Aidan dived for the charm too, scrambling after it on his knees in the grass. He had almost reached it when a gap somehow opened up in the crowd and he saw Mr Brown standing on the platform staring at him. It was a merciless and contemptuous stare. Aidan knelt where he was, staring back and feeling utterly worthless, small, foolish and stupid. He knew at once who Mr Brown was and he knew that Mr Brown had no value for him whatsoever.

“Well, too bad!” he said to Rolf. “As if I cared!” He looked round for the charm and found that it had disappeared.

Across the field, Titania stopped chasing the horse and pointed at Aidan. Over the other way, the policewoman looking after the Fancy Dress children was pointing at Aidan too and yelling. Strange beings rose up from all parts of the field and advanced on Aidan. He was suddenly alone with Rolf in a wide circle of grass, with Securities and tall, helmeted people coming at him from one direction, smaller folk with antennae rushing at him from another, and stranger creatures with cobweb wings flowing towards him from all around. It was worse than anything that had
happened in London. The mad, nightmare part of it was that the band was still playing and clashing with the mechanical music from the roundabout. And it was all in bright daylight.

Andrew, still swaying and dizzy, saw Aidan kneeling in the distance and the creatures converging on him. “Got to help him!” he said. He thought he said it to Stashe, but only Tarquin was there. Stashe had said, “I
must
catch poor Snowy!” and gone dashing away.

Before Andrew managed to move, there was queer wailing and dim screaming that grew louder and louder. Groil came crashing through the hedge behind the platform, with his army of pursuers close behind him. It was obvious that Groil had had no idea that the Fete was going on here. He vaulted up on to the platform —which swayed and creaked under his weight —got mixed up in a line of bunting, and stared round in amazement as he struggled free of the little flags. Then, as his pursuers came streaming up on to the platform behind him, Groil hurdled Ronnie Stock and leaped to the ground, knocking two ladies in hats sideways and strewing bunting across the band as he went. He sped across the field in great strides and went to ground somewhere near the beer tent. His pursuers lost him. They went rushing this way and that, searching for Groil, getting in the way of the creatures
advancing on Aidan and overturning the bakery stall. Some swarmed on to the bouncy castle and others invaded the roundabout, which stopped with a loud steamy squeal.

In seconds, the Fete had dissolved into confusion. In the roped enclosures, the dogs and most of the ponies went mad, while the Fancy Dress children huddled together screaming and Mabel Brown ran back and forth shouting orders that no one attended to. From the beer tent came yells, crashes and the sound of drinks being spilt. Mrs Stock, slipping and sliding on buns and chocolate cake, darted out from behind her clothes stall and went for Groil’s pursuers with her umbrella. “Get
out
of it, you beastly things!” she shrieked, poking and bashing and swiping, and broke several sets of antennae.

Nearby, Shaun dragged one of the pillows out of his mother’s vast dress and beat on any creature that dared to come near. Trixie followed him with another pillow. Feathers flew. Creatures winced and wailed and ran about.

Mr Stock came out of the competition tent carrying his zeppelin marrow on one shoulder and demanding to know what was going on. When he saw the hordes advancing on Aidan, he charged off that way, whirling the great vegetable. The Puck, who was rushing behind the horde, yelling at them to grab Aidan and kill Rolf, was Mr Stock’s first victim. The marrow caught him THOCK! on the side
of the head. It laid the Puck out cold on the grass, but the mighty vegetable remained intact, mottled and glossy.

Meanwhile other people came out of the competition tent and hurled Prize Potatoes into the confusion.

The whole crowd, including Mr Stock, was scattered by the galloping Snowy, hotly pursued by Stashe. Snowy was now in a panic. He could not seem to shake off the tattered cloth trailing off him and he kept finding strange beings among his legs. Everyone, human or immortal, kept having to dodge Snowy’s violent back legs and his iron plunging front hooves. The advance on Aidan slowed and spread a little.

I must
do
something! Aidan thought. With the talisman gone, he was quite unprotected among scrambling clawed feet. He remembered Andrew telling him that the name Aidan meant “new fire” or something like that. It was all hazy with panic. But he thought, That’s it! Fire!

On the platform, the vicar pulled himself together and, draped in torn bunting, took the microphone and tried to appeal for calm. “PEOPLE, PEOPLE!” his voice boomed out. “PLEASE PULL YOURSELVES TOGETHER!” As his voice boomed on and on and nobody listened to it, Aidan put both arms round Rolf and tried to surround both of them in impenetrable flames. The clawing arms and the vicar’s booming
distracted him. He panicked. I can’t do it! he thought, and tried harder.

He was suddenly in the middle of a bonfire. A mistake! he thought as Rolf’s coat sizzled and his own hair started to burn. “
Help!
” he screamed, surrounded in tall orange flames.

Tarquin and Mr Stock tried to push their way towards Aidan. “Though what we do when we get there, I don’t know!” Tarquin said to Mr Stock.

“Lay about us,” Mr Stock said grimly. “Beat it all down.”

Andrew shook his head to clear at least some of the muzziness away and began to push the other way, towards the platform. He knew what he needed to do, if only he could think properly. He could see Mr Brown standing on the platform with his arms folded, quite unmoved by the confusion. In fact, he seemed faintly amused by it and not at all troubled by the way Aidan seemed likely to burn himself to death. Andrew pushed through the crowd in great strides and took his glasses off as he went. This transformed Mr Brown into a strange, wavery, tall being with a face that was not really a person’s. Andrew looked away from him and tried to fix his dizzy mind instead on the window in his own back door. Green for Stashe, blue for Shaun, orange for Mrs Stock, yellow for Rolf, red for
Mr Stock. No, the pane he really needed was the purple one with the face in it that might have been Tarquin’s. And he needed the other window in the shed too…

Groil must have seen the trouble Aidan was in. He surged into sight near the beer tent and marched towards Aidan’s bonfire, towering above everyone else in the field. He burst in among the creatures crowding outside the flames and trampled on through. The first Aidan knew of it was Groil’s feet sizzling as Groil seized Aidan and lifted him up into his arms. It was the strangest feeling. It took Aidan right back to the time when he was small enough for Gran to carry him about. But he did his best to put the fire out before Groil was badly burnt. He knew Groil’s feet were like leather, but all the same…! And there was poor Rolf leaping and yelping.

Aidan felt Groil’s chest buzz as Groil shouted, “Leave him
alone!
He’s my
friend!
” He swung Aidan this way and that to avoid the Securities reaching for him and the clawing fingers of the cobwebby people.

How do I put the fire out? Aidan wondered frantically. Do it backwards, or what?

Andrew, at the same time, with his mind firmly fixed on the two windows, shoved past the edge of the crowd and marched up the steps to the platform. Mr Brown turned to watch him, consideringly, as Andrew stepped over the
scarlet figure of Ronnie Stock —who was starting to roll about and groan a little —past the ladies in hats and up to the vicar. “Excuse me,” he said politely and took the microphone out of the vicar’s hand. “I need to speak,” he explained as he fumbled in the back pocket of his jeans for the scrap of paper he had torn off the old comic Aidan had been reading. The trouble was he had to put his glasses on again to read it. As soon as he did, he saw Tarquin now standing at the bottom of the steps, staring up at him anxiously, and Mr Brown starting to edge towards him.

Hoping very much that this would work, Andrew ignored them both. He held the microphone up to his mouth and the scrap of paper to his eyes and read out the strange words he had written there long ago when he was Aidan’s age.

The words did not boom like the vicar’s voice. They came out of the loudspeakers like rolls of thunder and like long trumpet calls. Every other noise was drowned in them. All round the field people and creatures were forced to stand still with their hands over their ears. When Andrew had finished speaking, there was utter silence. Total stillness.

During that silent time Andrew felt the magic streaming inwards from eternity to focus on the two purple panes of glass, in the door and in the roof of the shed. It took effect.
The great oak tree behind Melstone House seemed to Andrew to stir and then lift its branches. Its crowded twigs filled with zigzags of lightning. Thunder rolled around it. Bearing the thunderstorm in its boughs, the huge tree advanced upon the field and the Fete. It seemed an age on the way. Andrew stood for what felt like an hour, feeling the thunder tree coming, with the storm swirling in its canopy and energy flashing through its roots. But it seemed to be there in instants too.

It advanced across the field, passing through Groil, Aidan and Rolf, leaving scorched grass behind it and a ring of creatures terrified and kneeling. It strode through the crowd and made straight for Tarquin. Tarquin’s mouth opened in a scream of silent pain.

“Oh no,” Andrew said. “He’s not big enough. He’s had a lot of pain already.” His voice in the microphone added to the thunder already pealing round the field.

But the great oak had merely paused at Tarquin. It swept on through the crowd and on to the platform and became part of Andrew himself. NOW SPEAK, it said.

Andrew felt himself towering taller than Groil. He was a mighty trunk, huge twisted branches, twigs of lightning and a thousand leaves crackling with force. His mind thundered. He fought to find a voice people would understand. He fought to find his own brain. It was a frail
human twist of a mind, but he found it and he clung on to it. He pointed a finger, or perhaps a branch at Mr Brown, now nearly beside him on the platform.