‘In less than ten minutes!’ said one man, dancing past me.
‘It is a miracle!’ shouted another.
‘It’s nothing of the sort,’ I muttered through gritted teeth, ‘it’s Perkins frittering his life away.’
I looked around, knowing he would still be about. Such a feat would have exhausted him, and he’d need help getting to the North Gate. I eventually found him sitting on a bench a little way away.
‘That was quite something,’ I said, my voice trembling. His face was obscured by his hands, and I dared not see what price his magic had exacted this time around.
‘It was a win-win,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘My timing was good and the Princess lives, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Llangurig Railway War is over?’
‘It is.’
He looked up at me and smiled. A mile of track in under ten minutes is a fearfully large spell. By my best estimation he was now in his early fifties. His hair was streaked with grey and there were wrinkle lines about his mouth and eyes. A small mole on his cheek was now more prominent, and he was wearing reading glasses.
‘I thought it would only take six years from me,’ he said with a smile, ‘but it took over twenty. But then, I’m not so young as I was.’
‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘Here, take my arm.’
I pulled him to his feet and we stumbled back through the main gates and the deserted town. ‘For Sale’ signs had already sprung up, and townsfolk were loading handcarts with their possessions and beginning to move out, the town’s purpose now vanished with the arrival of the railway. We were passing a parade of shops when I stopped outside a second-hand furniture store and stared in the window. I moved closer. This was not what I had expected.
‘Will you look at that,’ said Perkins with a smile as he followed my gaze, ‘he’ll never live this down.’
Sitting in the antique shop’s window and surrounded by several pieces of furniture, a moose’s head and various items of bric-a-brac was a large rubber Dragon, its scales perfect, its mouth open and a large array of black teeth on display in its rubbery mouth.
‘I can turn him back instantly if you want,’ said Perkins. ‘It’ll only take ten years off me.’
‘Absolutely not. Your spelling days are over until we get you back to Kazam. I’ll go and make enquiries while you sit down and rest.’
A bell rang above my head as I opened the door, and a few seconds later a middle-aged woman appeared from the back room. She stared at me over her half-moon glasses, and didn’t look the type to take any nonsense, nor give any.
‘I’m interested in the rubber Dragon,’ I said, touching Colin’s rubber scales with an index finger. In life they would have been hard and unyielding, but here they felt soft and pliable, like a marshmallow. ‘Is it for sale?’
‘Everything’s for sale,’ she said, ‘make me an offer.’
I emptied the contents of my pockets on to the counter. There was a shade over eight hundred plotniks. The woman looked at the money, then chuckled derisively.
‘The rubber scrap value alone is fifteen hundred. Give me two thousand and it’s yours.’
‘I don’t have two thousand,’ I told her. ‘Eight hundred and an IOU for the rest.’
‘I don’t take IOUs.’
‘It’s all I have.’
‘Then you aren’t going to own a rubber Dragon today, and given that Llangurig is being abandoned, he’ll be sold to the recyclers tomorrow, and made into bicycle inner tubes and pencil erasers.’
It wouldn’t be a dignified end for such a magnificent beast, but I had an idea. It wasn’t a good one. In fact, I think it might have been one of my worst, but I needed to buy Rubber Colin before anyone figured out who or what he really was.
‘Then I’ll trade,’ I said. ‘You give me the rubber Dragon, and I’ll give you … me.’
I took my indentured servitude papers out of my pocket. I had two years to run at Kazam and after that I was free – or free to sell myself for another year or two, or whatever I wanted.
‘I’ll give you a year of me,’ I said. ‘I work hard and learn quick. That’s got to be worth two thousand any day of the week.’
The shopkeeper looked at my orphan papers and stared at me suspiciously.
‘There’s something I’m missing here,’ she said. ‘No one in their right mind would swap a year of themselves for a rubber Dragon – unless …’
Her voice trailed off as a look of sudden realisation crossed her face. All of a sudden, she knew. A Dragon – any Dragon, in any condition, transformed or otherwise – would be worth a thousand orphan years. The cat was now out of the bag, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I could have tried to steal Rubber Colin but wasn’t sure how far I’d get with something I could barely lift, and besides, this was Llangurig, and it was perfectly legal to have a weapon hidden beneath the counter, and doubly legal – encouraged, actually – to use it on shoplifters. We stared at one another for a moment in silence.
I took back my indentured papers and pushed the eight hundred plotniks and an IOU for a further twelve hundred across the counter. We weren’t bargaining any longer. I was going to tell her how it was.
‘This for the rubber Dragon. Take it or we take him and you get nothing.’
‘And how do you propose to take him?’ she asked, her hand reaching under the counter.
‘I have a sorcerer outside who can transform him back to a living, breathing and very angry Dragon in a twinkling,’ I said. ‘I know Colin personally, and believe me, he won’t be happy to have been turned into rubber. Take the money. It’s the best you’re going to get.’
‘You can’t threaten me,’ she replied defiantly. ‘The law is on my side.’
I leaned forward and lowered my voice.
‘And magic is on mine. Which do you think the more powerful?’
We stared at one another for a moment until, finally, she saw sense.
‘Looks like you’re the owner of a rubber Dragon,’ she said, taking the money and the IOU.
‘A wise choice,’ I said in a quiet voice, ‘but there’s one other thing: I need a hand trolley.’
A few minutes later I had loaded Rubber Colin on to the trolley and was wheeling him along the street, Perkins at my side, steadying the rubber creature, which wobbled about all over the place in a very undignified manner. It was about the size of a pony, but weighed, thankfully, only about a tenth as much.
We stumbled to the North Gate, where Addie, Wilson and the Princess were waiting next to a battered jeep that was attached to a trailer that contained eight ‘barter quality’ goats.
‘I’m not going to ask where you found that,’ said Addie, pointing at Rubber Colin, ‘but it’s going to be a tight fit.’
It was a tight fit. Ridiculously so. But with Rubber Colin in the back of the open jeep, Wilson and Perkins on either side of him and with me and the Princess sharing the passenger seat, we could just about fit in. Addie coaxed the jeep into life.
‘Is Perkins okay?’ asked Addie. ‘He looks kind of … old.’
‘He’s fine,’ I said, even though he wasn’t, not really. ‘Let’s just drive.’
So we did. We took the rough unmade road towards Cadair Idris and after an hour had passed we knew that the Princess’s pardon was now official, and she was free.
We drove in almost unparalleled discomfort for another two hours until we reached a waterfall, where Addie knew there was a dry cave hidden behind some rhododendron bushes. We stopped and then sat in silence for some time, not moving, the eight goats bleating plaintively as they weren’t used to being in a trailer and could smell the water. It had been a worrying afternoon, and the positive outcome of the trial notwithstanding, we could all feel the stress within the small group. We ignored one another for the forty minutes it took to settle in the cave, all of us working at our chores without talking. I chased out a boogaloo that had taken refuge while Addie and the Princess went to tether the goats near the
river, and Perkins and Wilson wandered off to look for fireberries. Colin stayed in the back of the jeep, his lifeless rubber eyes staring unseeing into the gathering gloom.
We reconvened when the fireberries were ignited, the daylight had gone and the supper was about ready. It was Spam, but everyone was too tired to complain.
It was the Princess who finally broke the silence.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘all of you. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’
‘You should thank Perkins,’ said Addie, pointing to where he was sitting on a stone farther back in the cave. He looked preoccupied and in that sort of dark place where you shun companionship, but are secretly glad when someone forces it upon you.
‘Did he give more of himself?’ asked the Princess anxiously. ‘In years, I mean?’
I nodded.
‘Over twenty.’
‘Oh,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I must speak with him.’
She went over and spoke to him in a quiet voice. She took his hand in hers, and I saw him shrug, then smile, then nod some thanks of his own.
We opened some tins of rice pudding, which, along with the Spam and some pickled eggs, was all Addie could find for provisions at short notice, and washed it all down with a cup of tea.
Conversation after dinner was muted. We had come a long way and each of us had dodged death at least twice. The Princess kindly offered to tell us how hedge funds operated, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it and there were no takers. There would be no spin-the-bottle, no stories. The search had suddenly become more dangerous, more real.
Seven o’clock passed and no homing snail had arrived. I felt very much on my own, with only my wits to guide us.
The Princess placed her bedroll next to mine.
‘I’m not doing very well, am I?’ she said once we’d settled down and were staring at the roof of the cave, ready for sleep. ‘I mean, this adventure is meant to make me less bratty and more wise and thoughtful and stuff but all that’s happened is that you’ve all put your lives on the line to save me, but I’ve done little except need to be rescued. I feel like the worst princess cliché.’
‘It could be worse,’ I said, ‘you could be screaming and swooning or demanding a bath in rabbit’s milk or something.’
She agreed with this, and there was a pause. I hadn’t much cared for her at the beginning, but I’d be sorry to lose her now. And not just because there was the hint of a fine queen about her, but because I actually quite liked her. I recalled Kevin’s words: You will be saved by people who do not like you, nor are like you, nor that you like. It had been true then, but it wasn’t so true now. None of us had saved the Princess from the executioner because she was just the Princess. We had saved her because she was part of whatever made us us.
‘We’d have done the same if you were Laura Scrubb,’ I said. ‘We don’t abandon our friends.’
‘I’m glad,’ said the Princess. ‘Your friendship and trust mean more to me than everything I have, or everything I will ever be.’
There was no answer to this, so I nodded to say that I understood.
‘What did you say to Perkins?’
‘I conferred upon him the Dukedom of Bredwardine – in recognition of his sacrifices in the service of the Crown. I know the honour system is the worst kind of bullshit, but the Snodd dukedom also allows the holder a twenty-five per cent discount at the Co-op, free bus and rail travel and two free seats at the Wimbledon finals every year.’
‘He deserved it,’ I said, then added in a louder voice so everyone else could hear: ‘Don’t tell the Federation, but I’m upgrading this search to quest status.’
The flickering light of the fireberry played upon the roof.
‘About time too,’ came Addie’s voice in the darkness.
To the foot of the mountain
That night, I dreamt of my parents again. They were scolding me for leaving my conch on the half-track and telling me that I couldn’t marry Perkins because he was ‘old enough to be my father’. Then I was dreaming of Kevin Zipp, who said he had come to say goodbye and to not ‘lose sight of all that is good’. After that I was chasing after Curtis and the half-track, and when I stopped and turned around, five Hotax were staring at me with their small pig-like eyes, and one of them was holding a surgeon’s saw and another a bag of kapok stuffing and a sewing needle. I’d turned to run but found I couldn’t for some reason, and that’s when I was shaken awake. It was Addie.
She put her fingers to her lips and beckoned me to the rhododendrons that were hiding the entrance to the cave. She gently pushed the branches apart to reveal two pale blue Skybus trucks parked on the road next to the waterfall, almost identical to the ones we had seen before. The drivers seemed to be comparing notes about the journey, and from the manner in which their large, four-wheel-drive trucks were parked, one seemed to be heading off in the direction of the Cadair range, and the other, mud-spattered and dusty, seemed to be returning.
As we watched they shook hands, climbed into the cabs of their trucks and drove off in the directions I had guessed.
I looked at Addie and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged. She had no idea what they were doing here either.
‘There are no manufacturing facilities in this direction,’ she said, ‘or at least, nothing that I know about.’
‘Smuggling?’ I said.
‘It’s possible,’ said Addie, striding across to look at the tyre tracks. ‘The Mountain Silurians used to illegally export spice, but if they are still doing it, why use Skybus vehicles?’
‘I’ve counted at least six while I’ve been here,’ I said, ‘all heading to and from the border. Aviation parts, you say?’
‘So I’m told,’ said Addie, squatting down to study the tyre tracks, ‘but I’ve never looked inside the lorries, so I don’t know for sure. Notice anything odd?’
We were at a muddy section of the road, and Addie was pointing at the tracks. One was deep and well defined while the other vehicle had hardly made any imprint at all.
‘One’s laden and the other not,’ I said. ‘So what?’
‘Because,’ said Addie, ‘the one that’s heavy is the one going towards the mountains – the lighter of the two is coming out.’
‘They’re delivering components to the mountains?’ I said. ‘That makes no sense at all.’
It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed this. The first two Skybus lorries I’d seen had been halted while their drivers chatted. The one heading out accelerated away more easily than the one heading in.
‘These vehicles are delivering something to the Idris mountains,’ I said slowly, ‘but what?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Addie, ‘but I’d like to find out.’
‘What about Curtis and the half-track?’ I asked.
‘Just there,’ said Addie, pointing at a ghost of an imprint on the dusty roadway, ‘and by the look of it, he passed through here yesterday afternoon about midday. If he stopped for the night, he may be only six or seven hours’ drive ahead.’
‘It’s not so much his capture or punishment I’m interested in,’ I said, ‘even though such a thing would be welcome. I’m really after the half-track, or to be more exact, my bag and what’s in it.’
It was the conch, of course, the Helping Hand™ – I’d get hell from Lady Mawgon for losing it – and the letter of credit to negotiate for Boo’s release.
‘We better get a move on, then,’ said Addie.
Perkins rubbed his head when I woke him. His new age had established itself more firmly overnight. His voice was deeper, his face more lined, his hair greyer. He moved with the more measured certainty of someone entering their fifth decade, and seemed more thoughtful in his responses – and was painfully stiff after the cold night in the cave.
‘Ooh, bloody hell,’ he said, rubbing his legs.
‘Welcome to the club,’ said Wilson, who’d had longer to acclimatise to the myriad changes that advanced age wrought upon the human body, ‘and don’t wo
rry if you start forgetting the names of things or being less sharp than you once were. You may even have trouble … have trouble, um …’
‘Finishing your sentences?’ put in Perkins.
‘Exactly so. All entirely normal. But with age comes wisdom.’
‘I think wisdom comes with years, not age,’ replied Perkins sadly. ‘I’ve managed to separate the two. I think I’m going to be old without wisdom.’
‘If that is the case,’ said Wilson, ‘you won’t be alone.’
Addie suggested we let the Skybus trucks have half an hour’s start so we would not be observed, but it took that long to get the goats herded into the trailer as they had a certain bounciness about them that didn’t permit easy herding.
‘They’re called ISGs,’ explained Addie once we had rounded up the goats and coaxed the ancient jeep’s engine into life, ‘for International Standard Goat. They’re a sort of one-size-fits-all-goat that does everything pretty well: climb, give lots of milk, soft fur, excellent meat. It was the legacy of Emperor Tharv’s father, who became convinced that what the world really needed was animal standardisation. He managed to standardise the goat, honey bee, badger and hamster, and was working on the bird kingdom when he died.’
‘It’s why so many birds are small and brown,’ explained Wilson, ‘so he had moderate success.’
We drove for two hours, stopping to fill up the jeep’s leaky radiator three times. We climbed steadily up the rough, winding track and once on the high Plynlimon pass we stopped for a moment to stretch our legs, change drivers and make a short devotion at the shrine dedicated to the once popular but now little known St Aosbczkcs, the patron saint of fading relevance. This done, we surveyed the scene that was laid before us.
Below us were bumpy foothills through which we could see the road slowly winding down towards the fertile valley floor, a random patchwork of natural woodland and open grassland. But beyond this valley and dominating our view was the place in which the Leviathans’ Graveyard and Sky Pirate Wolff’s hideout were most likely to be hidden: Cadair Idris. Although I’d seen pictures, the mountain was even more spectacular in real life. Sheer walls towered vertically from the valley floor, presenting a dizzying pinnacle of grey rock that was awe-inspiring and terrifying in equal measure. High waterfalls cascaded into space from high on the sheer rock walls where the water dispersed into clouds of water droplets that formed clouds that clung to the lower reaches of the mountain. Although it was reputedly the second-highest mountain in the unUnited Kingdoms after the peak named T4 in the Trollvanian range, the exact height of Cadair Idris had never been fully determined. The summit had never been out of cloud in living memory, making a triangulation survey impossible. ‘Between six and seven thousand feet’ was a pretty good guess. When the sun rose in the morning, the shadow of the rock would extend across three kingdoms.