Maddigan's Fantasia (25 page)

‘Maddie’s van is still there,’ Timon said. ‘Look! It’s half hidden by those bushes. Come on.’

They were about to jog off through the stones as speedily as they could when they heard a scrambling sound and Maddie, Tane and Bannister burst out from between the huge boulders, almost colliding with Boomer. Maddie seized him, swinging him off his feet and shaking him, while shouting angry questions over his head at Timon.

‘Garland!’ Maddie was crying. ‘Where’s Garland? Where is she? Where is that wretched runaway girl?’

‘Back there!’ Timon shouted, pointing with the map, which he then held out towards them. ‘She’s all right, but she made us leave her there. The Fantasia’s in a bit of danger and she wanted us to warn you.’

‘Danger?’ Maddie slowed down and looked around. ‘Where’s the danger? Is the sky going to fall in or something?’

‘There’s a swamp!’ yelled Boomer. ‘We found a map and it shows a swamp.’

Timon spread the map. At first it blew out like a flag and wind continued to billow in under it as Maddie, Bannister and Tane crowded around it. Timon held it down rather like a fisherman holding a flapping fish and pointed at the road and the printed warning.

Bannister struck his forehead.

‘“Swamp!”’ he exclaimed. ‘I couldn’t make out the word on our map. I thought it said “Camp”’!

‘Oh Lord!’ cried Maddie. ‘They’ve gone. Well,
we
haven’t. We were waiting for you and Garland. But …’ She turned to Tane. ‘Tane … the key’s in my van. Run down the hill and take off after them. Warn them! But don’t go clowning off on your own.
Remember to come back for us. Run!’ Tane took off down the hill without asking any questions. Maddie watched him go, then turned to Timon. ‘Now! Where’s Garland?’

‘In the library!’ Boomer said interrupting. ‘She promised to stay and …’

‘The
library
?’ exclaimed Maddie, sounding as if she’d been told that Garland (being a Fantasia girl) had vanished into a magician’s top hat.

‘The
library
?’ echoed Bannister, but in a very different tone of voice.

‘We found a library,’ explained Timon. ‘A whole library full of books – and with a librarian too.’

‘Old Gabrielle!’ Boomer interrupted him. ‘Your old Gabrielle is in charge of the library, but she grabbed Garland and …’

‘The thing is,’ said Timon. ‘Garland promised to stay there as long as Gabrielle would open the doors and let us free so that we could warn you …’

‘… about the swamp!’ finished Boomer.

‘Gabrielle wants to keep her,’ said Timon. ‘She wants – well, a sort of assistant librarian I suppose. A Maddigan. And Garland’s a Maddigan. Anyhow Garland promised to stay there and help her.’

‘And she told us that Maddigans keep their promises,’ Boomer added.

Maddie gritted her teeth and shook her head. ‘Maddigans
do
keep their promises. But only when their mothers let them,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a word or two to say about Maddigans making promises without their mother’s permission.’

‘We’ll show you the way,’ said Boomer eagerly.

‘No! You kids go back to the road down there with Bannister,’ Maddie ordered.

‘Maddie!’ said Bannister. ‘You’re not leaving me behind. A library. And I’m the Fantasia reader! Of course I’m coming too.’

Garland and Gabrielle sat
opposite one another at a small table. Shelves of books rose up on either side of them, the spines looking like a thousand narrow doors, each one leading to a different kingdom. Garland glanced around at those books with apprehension thinking they might suddenly leap out of their places and fly around her, flapping their pages like wings. However they just sat there, shelf upon shelf of them, closed and silent, keeping themselves to themselves. Deep down Garland knew she was struggling not to cry. Gabrielle had said the library was its own sort of Fantasia, but Garland found it hard to see how this could be, for the library stood still, while the Fantasia danced and spun and cartwheeled along the highways and byways of a dangerous world.

‘You have no idea how happy I am to have you here,’ Gabrielle was saying. ‘I mean the library is what I wanted … it’s what I
chose
… and yet I have felt so lonely for another voice sometimes. I’ve longed for another book lover. The books are comfortable friends in a way … and yet sometimes even the best reader longs to talk about what they’ve just read with someone else. It’s a way of understanding it all even more … of making what you have read truly real.’

‘I do like reading,’ said Garland carefully. ‘I’ve read our books over and over again. Of course we don’t have many of
them.’ She paused. ‘But what I really want to do is to spin along with the Fantasia,’ she said. ‘After all the Fantasia was your invention. And it’s got our name. I want to keep on walking the tightrope. Walking the tightrope is like being alive. It’s dangerous but if you’re clever you stay on the wire.’

‘You can do things like that here,’ said Gabrielle.

‘But you need to do them in front of a crowd … a different crowd each time,’ explained Garland. ‘The crowd watches, and their watching turns into part of your cleverness.’ An idea came to her. ‘I mean a writer writes a book – OK – but somehow or other that book isn’t truly finished until someone reads it. And a trick isn’t really a trick unless someone is surprised by it. And anyway,’ Garland added, ‘I want my mother. I had this great fight with her and now I’m sorry. I want things to be fixed up between us.’

‘You might have to live through that,’ said Gabrielle. ‘It’s impossible to have everything we long for in this life. It’s too late to begin now, but tomorrow I’ll begin to show you the books. You’ll be amazed … simply amazed …’

Then, far off but clear, they heard a voice calling. ‘Garland! Garland!’

Garland leapt to her feet.

‘Mum! Maddie!’ she yelled back. ‘She’s here,’ she told Gabrielle. ‘It’s my mum. We had this fight but she’s forgiven me and I’ve forgiven her.’

‘But remember your promises,’ said Gabrielle in her creaking voice. ‘You did promise! And a Maddigan keeps her word.’

Garland sat down again. Maddie! she was thinking. Maddie would find a way out of this. Maddie would just break the bonds of that promise and sweep her back into the heart of the Fantasia.

‘Where are you?’ cried Maddie, sounding much closer now. ‘What is this place?’

‘It’s a library,’ Garland said, speaking through the door into the hall full of books, certain she didn’t have to shout any longer. Maddie was close enough to hear her.

Another voice made itself heard, a man’s voice, quiet yet carrying.

Bannister.

‘A library!’ Bannister was exclaiming, as if the word ‘library’ was another word for ‘treasure’. ‘Boomer said it was a library. I didn’t believe him. I just had to see for myself. And it is. It really is. A library.’

And with these words Bannister and Maddie came into the room, Maddie leading the way, ignoring the books and looking only for Garland, while Bannister came after her, walking vaguely, almost strolling, staring at the shelves like an astronomer who has just focused on a new universe.

Garland jumped up, pushing her chair over, and flung her arms around her mother.

‘Darling!’ cried Maddie, hugging her back. ‘Thank goodness you’re all right. I’m sorry I was so bad-tempered back there, but you know – life gets so complicated in patches …’

‘Did you drive into the swamp?’ Garland cried back. ‘Did Timon and Boomer warn you?’

‘Look at this,’ Bannister mumbled in the background. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s heaven.’

‘Tane’s on the way now to warn them,’ Maddie said. ‘And when you look at that new map there’s a road that veers off … it’s probably overgrown, easy to drive past, but I think if we follow it we might find ourselves on the road we usually take.’ She looked over at Gabrielle, and her expression changed. ‘Who are you?’

‘Mum, it’s a Maddigan – the
great
Maddigan!’ exclaimed Garland. ‘It’s Gabrielle.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Maddie weakly. She picked up the chair
that Garland had been sitting in and sat in it herself, staring across the table at Gabrielle. ‘I thought – well, to put it bluntly, I thought you must be dead.’

‘I am very much alive,’ said Gabrielle stiffly. ‘And I must inform you that your daughter has promised to stay here with me, and to inherit my library. She has given the word of a Maddigan.’

‘And let me tell you, even if she’d promised ten times over, she is coming with me,’ declared Maddie. ‘I’d never let her give herself up. I’ve lost her father and I am not going to lose her.’

Gabrielle stared into space for a moment. ‘Ferdy?’ she mumbled rather as if she were trying to remember just who Ferdy was. But then something like a glassy beetle crawled down her cheek. Perhaps in spite of herself Gabrielle was weeping a little. ‘My son dead. My grandson dead. And I’m still here.’ Then she stiffened. ‘She has
promised
,’ she said. ‘And that promise is a promise I expect to be kept.’

And suddenly the doors shivered and closed once again, as if the library were both a place of safety and a trap … anxious to keep something it had won from the outside world.

Tane was driving Maddie’s van rather more speedily than it was used to being driven. The path ahead was deeply corrugated and full of jagged stone, and the van not only rattled, but jumped into the air, all four wheels off the ground. Inside, its tins and boxes leapt and danced and rattled in a little fierce Fantasia of their own. Tane swerved around one stone large enough to be called a boulder and then accelerated. ‘Careful! Careful!’ cried Boomer.

‘There’s a time to be careful and there’s a time to live dangerously,’ said Tane. ‘As long as we don’t wind up in the swamp ourselves.’ The van bounced across great gaps in the road rather like a horse leaping ditches then spun around a corner, its brakes screaming.

‘I don’t want to leave Garland with that Gabrielle, even if she is a Maddigan,’ said Boomer.

‘We won’t,’ replied Tane, speaking through his teeth. ‘Garland belongs with us. Just trust Maddie.’ Timon toppled sideways in his seat as Tane swung the van around yet another bend in the track, and then they were leaping and jolting over fiercely uneven ground. Up and over a rise and Tane gave a shout. ‘There they are! There they are.’ He leaned on the horn. One long toot. Three short ones. Another long one. They charged towards the distant vans of the Fantasia.

‘Stop!’ Boomer and Timon were shouting together though nobody except Tane could possibly have heard them. ‘Stop!’ They were shouting to the Fantasia and to Tane as well, thinking the van was about to break into pieces.

Tane tooted madly yet again. But then he suddenly relaxed back into his seat. ‘They’ve heard us. They are stopping. Well, I think they are.’ The van slowed down.

Fantasia people were certainly leaping out of those other vans on ahead, and were peering back down the track. They began jumping up and down and waving wildly.

Tane leaned sideways, still steering a little incoherently, and waving back through the side window. ‘Hey! It’s all in a day’s work,’ he said, in a trembling voice. ‘We’ll stop and explain. Save the day and the Fantasia too. And
then
we’ll go back and get Garland even if we’ve got to besiege that library you keep going on about, and shake that Gabrielle until her teeth rattle. If she’s got any teeth left that is.’

‘She’s got teeth,’ said Boomer. ‘She looks as if she could bite hard with them. And the thing is Garland promised. She
promised
. And she couldn’t cross her fingers because Gabrielle was holding her hand.’ He thought about this. ‘Does it count if you cross your left-hand fingers?’

Tane did not seem to know the answer to this. ‘Well, Maddie’s
probably there by now,’ he said comfortingly. ‘And you know what Maddie is. She’s tough too – Maddigan-tough! Though maybe it would be a good idea if we got back and gave her a bit of support now we’ve saved the day here.’

Someone was running fast towards them.

‘There’s your little brother,’ Tane said to Timon. ‘Must have been worrying about you. Nice to be missed, isn’t it?’

‘Open the doors,’ said Maddie. ‘Open those doors at once. Or it will be the worse for you … and as for your library. I’ll pull the books of the shelves and tear their pages out of them. Because you might be the great Gabrielle, but I am the great Maddie and no one is going to take my Garland away from me.’

There in the eerie shadows of the closed room, Maddie and Gabrielle faced each other, both glaring, both unyielding. And it seemed to Garland that, because they were both being obstinate about things that mattered to them, there was a curious likeness between them … fists clenched, eyebrows drawn in, the corners of their mouths turned down.

‘But you must understand. I
need
someone,’ said Gabrielle. ‘I must have someone. This library has grown to be like another Fantasia to me … and I am not going to last forever. Ferdy took over the Fantasia out there and this child here, his daughter she tells me, did give me a Maddigan promise, and …’

She was interrupted, but not by Maddie or Garland.

‘It
is
a Fantasia,’ declared a delighted voice. Bannister came striding across the big room towards them. ‘Maddie, this is just astonishing. There are all the stories in the world here … all the histories and mysteries … I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Old Gabrielle looked sideways at him with some surprise. It was obvious she had forgotten he was there. Her expression altered.

‘They mean something to you, these books?’ she asked. ‘Just seeing them changes you?’

‘Transformation! I’m transformed,’ Bannister exclaimed, flinging his arms up into the air, a book in either hand. ‘I didn’t think there was any place outside of Solis that had a library like this one. And this one – Maddie, just think – this one is actually owned by a Maddigan.’

‘To be honest I don’t own it,’ said Gabrielle. She had straightened and looked suddenly sharper. ‘I
care
for it. That’s a different thing. But, as I was saying a moment ago, I’m getting old … to be honest all the taking care of it is getting a bit too much for me.’

And now Bannister turned to Maddie. His mouth opened, then shut again. He took a long, slow breath. Anyone could tell his mouth was full of words trying to put themselves into some order before he let them out. Staring at him through the dim light of the closed room, Maddie looked startled, like someone who has just seen the solution of a puzzle, but does not quite like it or dare to believe in it. ‘Maddie …’ Bannister began, and then fell silent, struggling with his mouthful of words.

‘Bannister,’ said Maddie. ‘We need you. We need every working man we can get. You know that, don’t you?’

Bannister nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Oh yes! It’s just that …’ And he looked up at the shelves of books with such enchantment … such longing … that suddenly Maddie began to laugh.

‘Oh, it’s an answer,’ she said. ‘I’ll admit it is an answer. I can see we have to set you free,’ she said. ‘We’ll pay tribute to Gabrielle here, and we’ll buy Garland out of her promise by offering
you
to the library in Garland’s place.’

Bannister’s expression changed again. He looked somehow younger … so eager as he peered through the shadows first at Maddie and then at Gabrielle. ‘It’s not as if we would need to
say goodbye forever,’ he said softly. ‘Not now you know that these roads exist. Not now you know the way here. You can go in one of your Fantasia circles and wind up here again … drop in for a cup of tea.’

‘Indeed we could,’ said Maddie. ‘But Bannister – you know how it is with the Fantasia. We have to move on. No choice! Garland and I will go now … we
must
go … and join the others.’ She looked at Gabrielle. ‘I wish there was time,’ she said, ‘because meeting you is like meeting someone out of a fairy tale. And there is so much to tell … so much to ask about …’ She looked around at the books. ‘But …’

‘But the Fantasia must move on,’ said Gabrielle. ‘I know. I
do
know. Because, after all, I invented it and I was the one who used to drive it on. But I – I grew tired of all that moving on, you see. I wanted to stand still which is what I am doing in a way. Though I feel I am still moving on in my head, you know. There is no such thing as stillness for some of us.’

Then Garland and Maddie hugged Bannister who hugged them back, but in such a distracted way Garland felt he was trying to read the titles on books across her shoulder. And, after a moment of hesitation, Garland and Maddie hugged old Gabrielle too, which was like hugging a legend.

Around them the walls creaked and rustled. The room opened its doors, and through one door Garland saw the hall and that other open door at the end of it. She saw the meadow beyond it, now an evening meadow, still light but no longer sunny. There in the middle of the meadow was that strange gate without walls and there, if they looked hard, dim in the distance, the cliff, its narrow zigzag scribble of steps hidden in the shadow.

‘Be very careful climbing that cliff,’ said old Gabrielle.

‘Don’t worry! We will,’ said Maddie. ‘We know how to be
very
careful. We’ve had a lot of practice.’

And hand in hand she and Garland set off together … back through the gate, across the meadow, up the steps and along to track … back to the road where they found Yves parking their van, preparing to set out with Tane and Timon to bring them home once more. Found! Found! All together again.