The Last of the Gullivers (14 page)

Michael went back to the village, wandering its crowded streets until he found the old coin shop he remembered from another day. It was shut, locked, but lights still glowed from a second floor room where the owner lived. The boy hammered the door with his fists, rattling the door on its hinges, until the bald young man came to open it.

“I'm closed, come back in the morning.”

But Michael put his arm in the door before the man could shut it. “I'm sorry, but I need—”

“Go away or I'll call the police!”

“Can you tell me what this is worth?” And he opened his hand and held out the coin Lem had given him, that first day at Fenn's market.

When the dealer saw it, he let the boy in and locked the store tight behind them. “Where'd you get this?”

“It was given to me,” Michael told him. “Is it worth something?”

The young coin dealer nodded. “This is from India, kid, an 1841 Mohur,” he said, looking at it through his glass. “Lion and palm, with the error here, on Victoria. The cast is off-center. There, you see? Didn't you ever look at it twice? A small dent on the reverse, otherwise perfect. This coin is worth two thousands pounds, easily. With the right collectors bidding, it might go for three times that.”

“Would you buy it?” asked Michael.

“Kid, I don't have that kind of money. You need to get this to a city and a good auction house.”

“You can have it for fifty pounds,” the boy said.

But the dealer gave him back the coin. “I won't do that. This thing could be worth a hundred times more.”

Michael set it on the counter. “All I need is fifty.”

The young man shook his head, saying, “No, no, no,” again and again.

Michael begged, “It's really important. I don't care what it's worth. All I need is fifty pounds. You can have it for fifty.”

The dealer kept shaking his head, even as he unlocked the cash drawer in his dark oaken desk. “Here,” he sighed, “this is a down payment, and that's all it is. You come back, kid, and we'll sell the coin together.”

Michael thanked him and went.

As he hurried back to the canal, he passed a dim, dingy pub where a stubbly-faced man sat smoking and drinking by the front window. The man looked up and saw the little boy through the haze and knew him.

“Hold on now,” the taxi driver said to himself.

Michael went into the village fair to find food. He walked the loud, busy streets, past a volunteer band and a troupe of morris dancers, kid-rides, vendors in tents, the whole place crazy with sound and light. He wished his own village were like this, full of music, full of life. He stopped at the street stalls and filled three sacks with food.

Back by the river, he emptied the bags and they all had a feast of fish cakes and pizza fingers, sausages and pasties.

The Lesser Lilliputians were humbled and grateful for all the boy had done to help them. “I don't see how we'll repay you for this,” said Topgallant.

“As soon as it's light,” Michael told him, “we'll finish the journey.”

But even as he said this, a man was stumbling down the dock toward them, with a hollow thumping of planks. The Little Ones hid, quickly, expertly. Michael and Jane couldn't see who it was in the dark.

“Knew that was you.” The stubble-faced man stepped into a pool of moonlight. “The two little runaways.” It was the taxi driver.

Jane and Michael were stuck where they were and had nowhere to run: there was only one way off the dock and the man stood blocking it.

“We don't want any trouble,” Michael told him. “Just get away from us.”

“Tough kid,” the driver laughed. “What're you, ten?”

“Twelve,” said Michael. “How much do you want to go away?”

“Ha. More'n you got,” the man said, slurred.

“Would you go and forget you saw us . . . for fifty pounds?”

“Like y'got that,” he laughed.

Michael pulled out the notes and showed him. “Here. Take it. All we want is to be left alone.”

“For fifty pounds, might jus' do that.”

Michael held out the money and said, “Now go.”

The stubbly man laughed and said nothing more, but grabbed the money and left them, stumbling and fumbling and mumbling back up the dock. They watched till darkness took him. “He might still turn us in,” said Jane. “He might take the money and still go to the cops.”

“Not him,” Michael told her. “He's like Freddie. He'll go back to the pub.”

And the man did. He went back to the pub and didn't leave till it closed. By then, he'd forgotten all about the children.

“Now we don't have any money,” said Jane. “Where do we go from here?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE
LONGBOAT

T
hat coin was worth a lot,” Michael told her and showed her another wad of money. “The man in the shop gave me a hundred for it and said there'd be more. We still have enough.”

They settled under the eaves and they slept.

The sun rose slowly that next dawn and the canal mist didn't burn away. A family of moorhen pattered to the water and a trout gulped a meal from the once-still surface. Over where the longboats were docked, Jane woke to see the booking agent opening his stall. She nudged Michael. “C'mon,” she whispered. “It's time.”

Jane went to the clerk, who was getting his forms ready, and asked about renting a boat.

“Five pounds for an hour,” he said.

“Okay,” she said and, “we'll take a full day,” and she put thirty pounds on the counter.

The man looked up from his work. “And where would Mum and Dad be, love?”

“They're divorced,” she said as she opened her rucksack behind her back, and Thudd Ickens slipped out. “My Dad's over there,” and she waved, that-way-somewhere.

The booking agent stepped around his stand and began setting out a large signboard and Ickens ran off, unseen, the other way.

“He sent me with the money,” Jane said and showed him the notes again. “Thirty pounds. It's all here. We want to rent a boat for the whole day.”

“That's good, that's fine. But I'm not going to rent to a little girl, am I?”

“Why not?” She was stalling now, giving Ickens time to grab the key.

“It's against what we call the law, love.”

“But I have the money, see? Right here.” She picked up the notes and waved them once again. “Thirty pounds.”

The little acrobat was shimmying up an electric wire, tightroping across a coat-rack to reach the box that held the boat keys.

“Yes, love, I saw,” said the agent. “But I still need a real grown-up with real grown-up identification, y'understand?”

Jane saw Thudd Ickens, the key slung over his shoulder, as he crawled into the rucksack. “Well, okay. I'll get Dad then,” she told the agent.

“Yeah, you do that.”

She left the money on the counter and ran away.

“Hold on—! Don't leave this here—! Hey—!”

But she was gone.

“Kids,” the man sighed to himself.

A hundred feet away, at the water's edge, Michael found the longboat to match the key number. The agent had wandered up to the village, for coffee. Jane kept watch as Michael hurried the Lesser Lilliputians aboard, all one hundred ninety-two of them. Last of all, they loaded the giant ship model onto the stern.

Another minute later, Michael had the motor running and Jane untied the lines. They drifted into the canal, clumsily banging other boats, as she stood at the bow and called directions.

The booking clerk was still gone and didn't see, but a lone fisherman, with a long Buddha gaze, watched from the opposite embankment. Jane smiled and waved shyly as they hit a few more boats.

The fisherman nodded. “Everything all right over there?”

“My Dad,” said Jane, “he's—he's not so great with boats.”

“There are bigger sins than that,” the fisherman said.

At last they were clear, in the middle of the waterway, and on their awkward way. The longboat cruised drunkenly down the old canal, sideswiping pilings and trees. Jane and the Lilliputians held on tight. “Michael, is this the best you can do?”

“I never drove one of these,” was the answer from the cabin.

Jane had to look away when they nearly ran down a Snow Goose. A willow drooped to the water and the reeds were overgrown and the longboat plowed on through it all. Soon, Michael got them back in open water and they picked up speed.

It wasn't long before Jane saw another canal boat ahead, loaded with early-morning sightseers, its captain eyeing the boat headed toward him at a dangerous clip.

“Watch your course!” came his far-off call. “Easy, easy there!”

“To your left, Michael, your left!” Jane called.

The longboat turned straight for the other boat, full-speed.

“Hove her to, man! Now, now!”

“Your
other
left!” Jane called to Michael and at the last impossible second, he steered them away—too late for a clean pass—and they went crunching down the side of the tour boat, two hulls crying out as the wood rubbed together. “Sorry,” Jane said as they passed, and again, “sorry.”

The tour captain was furious, trying to kick the other boat clear. “Who's your captain?!”

Jane shrugged and shyly said, “My Dad.”

“Let me see him, now!”

Michael only pushed the engine harder, speeding away. But as they passed, the tour captain got a glimpse of the young boy at the helm.

And he grabbed for the wireless.

Twenty minutes later, they heard a siren. It was the Marine Patrol now, steering an expert course around and between other boats on the river. The children saw two policemen in it, and a large dark figure besides. Michael knew it was Horace Ackerby, Chief Magistrate for Moss-on-Stone. There was no mistaking that giant.

The river here felt the ocean tide, and it was going out fast. The longboat was flying along, pushed by its engine and pulled by the ebbing sea. But the Marine Patrol was moving quickly, too, closer and closer.

“They're coming, Michael. They're going to catch us.”

The boy could see the other officer, Stanley Ford. When the call had first come in from the tour captain, that the children had been seen in the river near Ambridge, he and the Magistrate had left immediately.

“Don't let them get away from us,” said Ackerby.

“Not a chance,” the pilot told him.

Michael tried to coax the longboat faster, but the engine had no more to give. He wasn't watching the quick-dropping water and ran onto a sandbar. There was loud grinding and they were all thrown from their feet, Michael, Jane, the Lesser Lilliputians.

“What was that?” cried Jane.

“Don't know,” Michael said, gunning the engine again and again. But the longboat was stuck tight in the mud.

“Looks like the end of your journey,” the officer called to Michael.

But the boy knew it wasn't. Deep in his pocket was a crumbled and singed piece of paper:
No journey has an end
, it said. The Marine Patrol thumped the longboat's stern.

“I'm really sorry,” Michael quietly told Jane, “for getting you into this mess.”

“Don't be,” she told him. “It was fun.”

Stanley Ford was helping the children onto the police cruiser when the Magistrate saw something downriver. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What's that thing?”

“What's what thing, sir?” Ford asked.

“There, out in the river.” He pointed and the other officers looked. “What
is
it?”

Far down the broad river, a ship the size of a sofa was sailing away, all sails unfurled.

“Looks like a model,” the pilot said. “A kid's toy.”

“Is it yours?” Stanley asked the children.

“No,” Michael answered.

“I know what that is.” The Magistrate—like Cicero, a seeker of Truth—reached for the binoculars in the cruiser cabin. “It's the old wood ship that's been in the window at Gadbury's since I was a child.”

The Magistrate scanned the river till he found the
Adventure's
bow, and a tiny carved mermaid, eyes set on the future. A small tattered flag still hung from the spar. Michael had wanted to take it off; it was old and worn. “Let's leave it,” Mrs. Topgallant had said to him. “It's the flag that's flown when the Admiral of the Fleet is on board.”

“Did you steal that thing?” Stanley asked Michael.

“No—we bought it.”

“Must've cost a lot,” said the officer.

“I guess,” Michael nodded. “But it was worth it.”

“Are you telling me,” Stanley went on, “you spent all that money, just so you could let it go in the river?”

“That's right,” Jane answered.

The Magistrate brought the little ship into better focus and saw the crew of tiny People, swarming its rigging, tightening the sails. On its deck, a crowd of tiny passengers gathered at the rail, watching the passing scene. And he saw another man looking straight back at him through a little telescope: Burton Topgallant, former G.P., Potentate, Pooh-Bah, Keeper of Hopes, the End-All, Be-All, and Admiral of the Fleet. Topgallant lowered the glass and saluted Ackerby.

“Sir?” Stanley was saying now.

“What?” the Magistrate mumbled, fumbled.

“Do we need it for evidence?”

“Need what?” Horace was struck half-dumb by what he'd seen.

“The model. The little ship. If we need it for evidence, we can get it.”

“No,” the Magistrate answered finally. “No. Let it go.”

Ford looked to the children. “And what about them? What'll we charge 'em with?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

BACK
IN A
FIELD
OF
CLOVER

S
tanley Ford had already begun filling out the paperwork. “Sir . . . ,” he said again, trying to get the Magistrate's attention back.

“What?”

“The children,” Ford reminded him. “What's the charge going to be?”

“The children. Yes,” said Ackerby. “Let the children go.”

“Let them what?” Stanley hadn't heard him right. “Let them go? Mr. Ackerby, they took a boat and there was the car and—”

“I'll take care of it,” the Magistrate said.

The officers were confused, and so was Michael.

“But the boy,” Stanley went on, “he broke out of YOI, remember.”

“I remember,” the Magistrate said. “I'll take care of it.” And that's all he would say.

Adventure
sailed on down the mud-brown river, past a spreading city where the water was full of cargo vessels and barges and broad-hulled tour boats. Anyone who saw the model ship took it for a lost toy.

The Lesser Lilliputians stood at the rail and marveled at this race of Giants and all they'd achieved: the dome of a great cathedral here, the towers of a bridge there, an ancient seat of government.

The sea-tide was pulling them at a fast clip and the river grew more crowded. Burton Topgallant called out commands, steering them clear of heavy water traffic. “To the port, steady! Trim the aft sails!” He'd only read the words in books, but now they had meaning.

And their ship sailed on.

“Do you suppose they'll get along without us?” Docksey asked her husband. “The children? They're so young and vulnerable.”

“They're more capable than you'd think, my dear,” said Topgallant. “You must remember, vulnerable creatures have ways of getting by.”

Adventure
reached a wide channel and the sea lay beyond.

When Michael and Jane got home, Ackerby told Jane's father what had happened, almost every detail. There were television cameras waiting, but Ms. Bellknap said the children had been through a lot and needed to be left alone. Mr. Mallery took a second, longer look at Michael and liked what he saw.

And at the same moment, something happened that has never been explained. By some unimaginable shift in climate, the raw ugly wind suddenly stopped blowing across Moss-on-Stone. For the first time ever, the sun shone a whole day and there was only the softest breeze in the treetops. From that day and ever after, the city was known as
Moss-on-Stone, Where No Wind's Blown
.

In the warming sun, as Maxine Bellknap immediately saw, the seed of chickweed and dandelion—favorite foods of House Sparrows—took root everywhere and began to thrive.

An envelope arrived at the Magistrate's office not long after. It held a deed and a stack of legal papers, giving Michael the stone cottage and all that was in it. Freddie was carefully, legally, left out.

Over time, the Lesser Lilliputians drifted into legend. People from around the world have heard the story of Little Ones who wander the clover fields here. Hordes of visitors still come seeking them and tour buses stop in the town and the Inn is booked months in advance.

In the years since, Michael and Jane have repaired the damage done to Lesser Lilliput. They have restored every structure, replanted the tiny gardens, rebuilt the Great Hall and its glorious dome. You can go there and see this yourself, if you know where to look.

And when you're in Moss-on-Stone, listen closely. In the stillness, you may hear Mr. Fenn trying to wheedle a tune from his ancient guitar. Just this morning, he picked up the phone and called an old friend: “I've been thinking—we should get the band together. Yes, The Restless Ones, you remember. You, me, Froth, Gadbury, Larry Tiswas, the rest—making music like we used to. How about it, Horace?”