Time-Travel Bath Bomb (19 page)

Astonished when that didn’t happen, she opened her eyes again and realised that she was lying on a big, soft bale of hay. Lisa stood up, brushed the hay off her clothes, and watched the farmer, who was approaching her at full speed.

Lisa was tired. Tired of being chased, tired of being afraid, tired of travelling and not finding what she was looking for, tired of not being home with her mother and father and tired of not having her teddy bear. She’d had enough. So she jumped down, pushed the piglet out of her way with her foot, grabbed the pitchfork and aimed it at the farmer.

“I’m going to skewer you and feed you to these pigs, you miserable bumpkin!” she screamed, her voice trembling with rage.

The farmer stopped suddenly and let go of the plank.

“Wha-wha-what do you want?” he asked in a gentle voice.

“I want my teddy bear!” Lisa howled, moving towards the farmer. “Apart from that, I want you to tell me the way to the Pastille! Right now! Let’s hear it!”

“The P-P-Pastille?” the terrified farmer stuttered, scrambling to get out of pitchfork range. “Well, that’s . . . that’s here.”

“There’s no prison here! Where’s the Place de la Révolution?”

“Oh . . . I think you must mean the Bastille with a
B
.”

Lisa’s eyes lost a little of their fury. “The Bastille?”

“Yeah. That’s in the middle of the city, right in front of the Place de la Révolution.”

“How far away is that?”

“It’s kind of a long walk, but may – may – maybe you’re not in a hurry?”

“I need to get there before they behead the Count of Monte Crisco, thank you very much.”

“Uh-oh,” the farmer said. “Then – then you don’t have much time.”

Lisa lowered the pitchfork. “Why not?”

“Because they’re planning to behead that Monte Crisco guy today.”

Lisa tossed the pitchfork aside. “Quick! Do you have a horse I can borrow?”

“A horse?” the farmer scoffed. “I’m a pig farmer, not some yeehaw pony-pusher.”

Lisa sighed. She looked around. A hairy, black pig – monstrous, the size of a motorcycle, with sharp tusks – had just rolled over in the manure, stood up and was now grunting at her menacingly. Lisa sighed again. This wasn’t going to be pretty. This wasn’t going to be without risk. This was going to be pig riding.

ON THIS DAY, a boy named Marcel had come to the Place de la Révolution with his parents to enjoy the crowds. “And to make sure the executioners do their jobs,” his father had said.

His mother had fixed a nice packed lunch, and Marcel was looking forward to the brie and French bread. Of course Marcel didn’t call it French bread, just like Spaniards don’t call theirs Spanish bread, the Danes don’t say Danish bread, the Americans . . . well, you get the idea.

He just called it bread.

And brie.

And maybe a little red wine mixed with water.

They were sitting on a blanket his mother had spread out over the cobblestones in the overcrowded square. Marcel was eyeing the lunch basket longingly while his parents and the other people kept their eyes on the wooden platform up ahead of them. The executioner – a guy with no shirt on, a sweaty torso, and a black hood pulled over his head with just holes for his eyes – would read the person’s death sentence in an authoritative, gravelly vibrato voice. Then he’d pull a cord and, with a whistling sound, the razor-sharp knife would plunge down from the top of the three-metre-high stand and make a
chop!
sound as it cut off the head of the poor guy who was lying below with his neck in the guillotine. The
chop
would then be followed by a cheer from the crowd.

“You see that?” The father nodded appreciatively. “That’s what I call a great beheading. Did you see that, Marcel?”

But Marcel hadn’t seen it. He was bored. These beheadings had been going on all summer. They’d been chopping and chopping. The heads would dance their way into the woven baskets in front of the guillotine and the blood would pour off the stage onto the cobblestones below. And every now and then, when someone had done something extra awful or had been just a little too rich or aristocratic, they would sew the head back onto the body and behead the person one more time.

No, Marcel had liked Sundays before the revolution better. Back then, he and his mother and father used to come to the Place de la Révolution and listen to musicians playing on the stage out in front of the Bastille. Marcel loved music and wanted to be a musician when he grew up. He brought the trumpet he’d been given by his grandfather with him everywhere he went. Today was no exception. So while all the other people were absorbed in what was going on up on the stage, Marcel raised his trumpet to his lips to play a little song he’d come up with all on his own. But he never started playing because he got distracted, staring at something that was galloping down one of the side streets towards them. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t without risk. No, in fact it actually looked an awful lot like pig riding. And there was a girl sitting on the back of the monstrous black pig!

The pig stopped and the girl hopped off and ran into the crowd shouting, “Doctor Proctor! Doctor Proctor! It’s me, Lisa! Are you here? Doctor Proctor!”

But the girl’s voice was drowned out by the whistling of the blade, the chopping and the cheering of the crowd. The girl stopped and stood there, shouting and shouting, but got no response. Of course not, there was no way anyone could hear her delicate girl’s voice. She gave up, and Marcel could see the tears welling up in her eyes as she stood there scanning the crowd in despair. Since Marcel was a sensitive boy who was more interested in music and the happiness of his fellow man than beheadings, he took his trumpet and went over to the girl.

“Hi,” he said.

But the girl was too busy scanning the crowd to notice him.

Marcel cleared his throat. “Hi, Litha.”

She turned and looked at him in surprise. “Did you say Lisa?” she asked.

“Yeth, Litha. That’th what I thaid. Do you need thome help?” Marcel asked.

“How did you know my name?” the girl asked.

“Becauthe you hollered ‘It’th me, Litha’ theveral timeth.”

“Oh, right,” Lisa said, smiling, but it wasn’t a happy smile, more like an about-to-cry smile.

“Your voithe doethn’t carry that well becauthe of all the noithe from all theeth people,” Marcel said. “If you want thith Doctor Proctor fellow to hear you, you need thomething loud. Thith, for exthample.” Marcel held out his trumpet. “And maybe you ought to take that thtrange clip off your nothe.”

Lisa looked at his instrument. “I can’t shout his name with that.”

“No,” Marcel said. “But maybe I could play thome-thing that would make him underthtand that you’re here.”

“What would that be?”

“I don’t know. Ithn’t there a Doctor Proctor thong? Or a Litha thong?”

Lisa looked discouraged and shook her head.

Marcel cocked his head to the side. “Maybe a thong from the plathe you’re from?”

“A Cannon Avenue thong, I mean, song?” Lisa said. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, then,” Marcel sighed, thinking for a minute. “Would you like a thlitce of bread with thome brie and pâté?”

Lisa stared at Marcel’s trumpet. Imagining is imagining, she thought. And dreaming is just dreaming. Or maybe not.

“Could I borrow your trumpet?” she asked.

Marcel looked first at her and then down at his instrument. He hesitated. But then he nodded and handed her the trumpet. She put her lips to the mouthpiece, concentrated to block out the sound of yet another
swish!
–
chop!
–
hurrah!
Because this was what she had dreamed of. Not that it would happen in a place where people’s heads were being chopped off, exactly, but still: playing this song for a large crowd.

She placed her fingers over the keys like Nilly had taught her and then she blew. The first note quivered, hesitant and timid. The second was flat and sounded awful. The third was just wrong. But the fourth was right. Marcel nodded in approval as the sixth note rose, clear and strong, into the blue afternoon sky over the Place de la Révolution in Paris. It’s funny to think about this, but no one other than you and me know that this was the first time in history that anyone in France – and anyone anywhere in the world for that matter – heard a song that wouldn’t be written for another sixty-something years, a song that every Norwegian would one day recognise, a song that would go on to become the Norwegian national anthem, “Ja, vi elsker”.

The notes pierced through the noise of the crowd and made everyone turn around to listen. Even the executioner up on the stage, who’d been nicknamed Bloodbath because of his efficiency, stopped his work, cocked his ears under his black executioner’s hood and scratched his naked barrel-shaped torso. He thought it was quite a captivating melody. All it lacked was . . . well, what was it missing, actually? An accordion maybe? Bloodbath was roused from his musical contemplations by the fact that the guy with his head currently locked into the guillotine, a thin beanpole with some weird eyeglasses that looked like they were glued onto his face, started yelling and shouting in some strange foreign language:

“Nilly! Lisa! Here! I’m up here!”

Lisa stopped playing and looked around, her heart pounding, because there was no doubt about whose voice that was. He rolled his
R
s like a rusty old lawn-mower. It was Doctor Proctor! She jumped up and down, trying to see where his voice was coming from.

“Why don’t you thit up on my thoulderth tho you can thee,” Marcel offered.

“Are you sure you’re strong enough?” Lisa asked, looking sceptically at the skinny boy.

“Of courth,” Marcel said, kneeling down.

Lisa climbed onto his shoulders and Marcel stood up, staggering and wobbling.

“I’m over here!” Doctor Proctor called. “Quick! The situation is a little, uh . . . urgent!”

“Oh no . . .” Lisa said, losing hope. Up on the stage she saw a thin, bony man with scraggly, dishevelled hair over a pair of sooty motorcycle goggles, who was screaming in a language she assumed was Norwegian, as Lisa was still wearing the French nose clips. Doctor Proctor!

“What ith it?” Marcel groaned underneath her.

“Doctor Proctor is in the guillotine! They’re going to behead him! We have to save him!”

Lisa swung herself off, slid down Marcel’s back and started running forwards, pushing her way through the crowd.

“No!” Marcel shouted. “They behead anyone who trieth to thtop people from being beheaded! Litha!”

But Lisa wasn’t listening, she was just forcing her way through.

Bloodbath’s grave, vibrato voice rang out from the stage: “The Revolutionary Court of Paris has sentenced Doctor Victor Proctor to beheading because he tried to prevent the beheading of this fellow here . . .”

Bloodbath stuck his hand down into the woven basket, picked up a head by its hair and held it up to the attentive audience.

“. . . the recently deceased Count of Monte Crisco!”

The crowd erupted into cheers.

Lisa had almost reached the stage, but was stuck behind a tall person who wouldn’t budge. “Please let me through!” Lisa cried loudly, using the trumpet to poke the person in the shoulder.

The person slowly turned to stare at Lisa, smiled broadly and whispered, in a voice as dry as a desert wind, “Ship ahoy, there you are. Let me give you a hug!”

Lisa felt everything freeze into ice. The blood that ran in her veins, the scream she had on her lips, yes, even time seemed to stop moving as a couple of arms – thin, but as strong as steel wires – coiled around her. The breath hit her at near gale force and reeked of stinky socks.

Bloodbath tossed the Count of Monte Crisco’s head back into the basket and put a pair of glasses on over his mask. He started to read aloud from a document.

“The jury had the following to say about the condemned: ‘Doctor Victor Proctor is a funny guy who speaks well for himself. But he chose the wrong tactic and made a nasty mistake when he argued before the court today that he had just invented a time-travelling bath that—’”

The audience laughed in delight and Bloodbath had to wait for a moment before he could proceed.

Meanwhile Lisa squirmed in vain in the tall woman’s iron grip.

“Let me go!” she roared, but the woman’s arms remained locked tight.

“Calm down, child,” the woman whispered into her ear. “Let’s enjoy the conclusion together. After this, the invention will be all mine, don’t you see?”

She had the same sharp teeth and black eye make-up as before, but what made Raspa seem even more terrifying than she had in Lisa’s imagination was that frenzied, crazed gleam in her eye.

“Now, Lisa, are you trying to save that poor slob up there?” Raspa asked, nodding towards the guillotine and Doctor Proctor, who was staring out over the crowd in desperation while Bloodbath read the rest of the sentence to occasional jeers from the audience, which was clearly starting to get bored.

“Whatever,” Lisa groaned. “If they cut off his head, I could just travel back in time a few hours and save him then.”

Raspa laughed and shook her head. “It’s not as easy to change history as you idiots obviously think it is. Haven’t you noticed that? Not even Victor seems to understand that it’s impossible to change what’s happened without giving up your life. Or have you forgotten what I told you in the shop? History is carved in stone and you can only change what’s written if you’re willing to die.”

Now Lisa remembered. Was that why they hadn’t managed to prevent anything from happening?

“Why do you know more about changing history than Doctor Proctor?” she asked to win herself some time as she tried to wriggle her hand that was holding the trumpet free.

“Because no one has studied or knows more about time than me, my girl. After all, I was the one who invented the time soap bath bomb.”

“Time soap bath bomb?” Lisa groaned. She thought about the clocks in the Trench Coat Clock Shop and knew instinctively that Raspa was telling the truth. But she also realised something else at the same time.

“But . . . but if history is carved in stone, then Doctor Proctor can’t die now! If he did, fartonaut powder would never be invented, which would change history. And that’s not possible. At least according to you.”