Go! she ordered him, closing her eyes and freeing her hand from the gorgon’s grip. Go, or I’ll not spare you again. We’re even now.
With a screech and a leap from the branch that made it oscillate violently, almost unseating Connie, the griffin shot into the sky and sped away over the treetops, screaming his hatred of her mercy to the heavens. Connie collapsed with exhaustion against the trunk, her head bowed.
“You let him go!” Mack protested, his voice laden with accusation. “You had him and you let him go!”
“Shut up, Dad!” Col intervened from above. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t,” Mack fumed.
Connie looked up at Col and saw that he was watching her with an expression of pity.
“You made the right choice, Connie,” he said. “Whatever he’s done to you, to us, you mustn’t become like him.”
“But I…I couldn’t do it, Col,” she said, her voice choked. “I can’t kill my companion.”
Just then the blare of police megaphones, cheering voices, and miscellaneous musical instruments erupted into the space under the oak’s boughs.
“Save Merlin’s Oak! Save Merlin’s Oak!” chanted the protesters.
Looking down, Connie saw the pale ovals of upturned faces. She glanced around her, wondering what had become of the gorgon. The creature had slithered further up the tree and was lying camouflaged in a thick spray of lemon-colored leaves. Some of the crowd below, however, had spotted the vivid red and yellow costume of the jester, and a babble of voices built as more and more people pressed into the confined space. The man from the council, with his bodyguard of police, pushed through to the front and looked up. He seemed to regard the presence in the oak tree of Mack Clamworthy, dressed as a belled jester, as the final insult. Incensed, he grabbed a megaphone and bellowed upward:
“Get out of that tree! That tree is scheduled for clearance today. You are trespassing on council property.”
The crowd jeered but then gave a cheer as Mack waved at him.
“Come and get me then!” he shouted.
“Mr. Clamworthy,” Connie called down to him, “it might not be such a bad idea to get down. And I wouldn’t mind a ladder.”
There was a shrill scream from below. “Connie!” It was Anneena. She had just spotted her friend half-hidden in the branches above.
“Hello, Anneena,” Connie shouted back. “I’m a bit stuck. So’s Col.”
The rest of the crowd now noticed the girl on the bough.
“Who’s that?” exclaimed the council man.
Godiva Lionheart shouldered her way through the press. “There are children up there. Do something useful for once—get your men to fetch a rope and a ladder.”
Anneena’s sister, Rupa, pushed her way over. “What’s happening?” she asked
“It’s Connie. Look, she’s up there. She says Col is even higher.”
Mr. and Mrs. Nuruddin now joined their two daughters.
“We need the fire brigade,” Anneena’s father announced. He collared the closest policeman and entered into an earnest discussion, resulting in the use of a police radio to summon help.
“Hang on, Connie!” Rupa shouted up the tree.
“I’m not exactly going to do anything else, am I?” Connie called back.
Zed made his way to the front with his entourage of photographers and news crews. He was grinning broadly.
“This is really wild. Who are they?” Zed asked Rupa, removing his sunglasses to take a closer look at the tree’s inhabitants.
“You’re not going to believe this, but you are looking at a jester, a missing girl, and, somewhere higher up, Sir Galahad.”
“Girl? What girl?”
“Connie Lionheart.”
The name began to buzz around the circle of reporters. Two of them even climbed up to get a closer view, until they were threatened in no uncertain terms by Mack. He was mindful of the gorgon curled around a branch only feet above. Forced back to the ground, the reporters began to shout up questions.
“What you doing up there, Connie?”
“How long have you been here?”
Connie peered up at Col. “What should I say?” she mouthed to him.
“Improvise,” he said with a pained grin.
“I’ve…er…I’ve been up here all week,” Connie lied. “I’m here to give my support to the protest—Save Merlin’s Oak! Save Merlin’s Oak!”
“Yeah, you heard the girl,” shouted Zed. “Save Merlin’s Oak!”
The call was taken up by the protesters who began to chant it again, drowning out further questions from the reporters, much to Connie’s relief.
There was a commotion below as police forced the spectators and horses back, allowing a team of yellow-helmeted firemen through to the tree. Two of them were carrying an aluminum ladder, which they placed against the trunk. Before they could reach Mack, he had swung down and dropped to the ground.
“Don’t need help, thanks,” he said.
His escape was prevented by a policeman who placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“You’d better come along with me, sir,” the officer said. “We’ve got a few questions for you that you’ll have to answer down at the station.”
Mack shrugged. “Fine, but not till my son’s down safely.”
The policeman hesitated.
“Hey, man, have a heart!” said Zed, slapping Mack on the back.
Faced with a barrage of cameras, the officer nodded.
Having climbed as high as they could by ladder, two firemen were now making rapid progress from branch to branch toward Connie. She looked anxiously over to the gorgon, but the creature had not stirred, her head well-hidden in the folds of her wings.
“Col,” Connie called up softly so only he could hear, “do you think you can make it down to us? I don’t think it would be a good idea for them to come any higher, do you?”
“I can’t, Connie,” Col replied, “there’s something wrong with my leg. I think it might be broken.”
To Connie’s alarm, the gorgon began to move. She unfurled herself and slithered higher up the tree.
“Don’t look!” Connie called out in warning to Col. “She’s coming.”
“It’s all right, Connie,” one of the firemen shouted, thinking she was panicking, “we’re almost with you.”
The gorgon climbed to the very top of the tree, spread her wings to their full extent so that they surrounded her like a butterfly, and leapt into the air. Lifted by the wind, she slipped away on the current accompanied by a flurry of dead leaves. She glided into the distance, fluttering down like a bronze seed and out of sight into Snake Hollow.
“Here you are, take my hand.” Tearing her eyes away from the horizon, Connie held out her arm and found it grasped in the reassuring clasp of the nearest fireman. He clipped a harness around her, to which he had attached a rope. The other fireman climbed to join them, looked up, and whistled.
“How did your friend get up there?” he marveled. “Got wings as well as armor, has he?”
“He thinks he’s broken his leg,” Connie said quickly.
“We’ll need the stretcher then. Hang on, son.”
Connie was lowered to the ground, dangling like a spider on the end of a thread. Once her feet touched ground, she was immediately wrapped in blankets and bundled away by a policewoman.
“But Col!” she protested.
“As soon as there’s news, I’ll let you know,” the policewoman said, dragging on her reluctant charge. “But I think I’d better return you to your parents, don’t you?”
“My parents are here?”
“Of course. They’re coming up from town now. Your great-aunt is here somewhere already.”
Godiva was the last person Connie wanted to see right now. She tried to slip away, but the police officer had a firm grip on her. Connie caught sight of Col’s father. “Mack—tell the others I’m down,” she shouted. “They’ve got to know. And Argand and Skylark??
?you’ve got to find them—see that they’re all right.”
The policewoman clearly thought she was raving. “Calm down, dear. What you need is a nice cup of tea and a rest. All your protester friends are safe,” she added, clearly thinking that Argand and Skylark were nicknames for some of the eco-warriors. “You’ve got to come with me.”
19
New Member
The policewoman guided Connie out of the wood and over to a police van parked in front of the bulldozers, which sprawled like yellow crocodiles on a river bank, teeth-edged jaws gaping open. A dozen or so road-workers were sitting with their feet up in the cabs of the idle machines. A few of them looked up from their newspapers curiously, but then seeing nothing more than a bedraggled girl and her escort, returned to the sports pages.
Connie sat on the back step of the van holding a mug of tea from a police flask in her shaking hand. The shock of all she had gone through over the past week was beginning to hit—the forced entry into her mind by Kullervo and his followers, the days spent lying tied up on the top bunk, the last few perilous hours at the summit of the oak. And now she was going to have to give some kind of explanation to her parents and greataunt, but what that would be she could not even begin to imagine in her numbed state. Of one thing she was certain: whatever she said would not stop Godiva from telling her parents to impose the severest punishment she could think up. Connie’s suffering was not over.
A police car came up the hill on the tail of an ambulance with lights flashing and siren blaring. The ambulance turned into the picnic spot and disappeared from view, but the second vehicle continued up the hill to where Connie was waiting. The moment of reckoning had come. She stood up, letting the blanket fall to her feet, and took a deep breath. The rear doors opened and her father and mother got out, then her great-uncle. There was a momentary pause as the three of them looked over at her silently, her father’s face gray with the strain of the past few days, her mother’s tear-stained, her great-uncle’s eyes full of pain. All Connie’s made-up words of explanation died on her lips, and she burst into tears. It was the best thing she could have done because it immediately released an outpouring of emotion from her mother that swept over her, too, like a storm.
“Darling, where have you been?” her mother cried, grasping her in a tight hug as if she never wanted to let go of her again. Her usually immaculate clothes were rumpled and had clearly been slept in. “Do you realize what you’ve put us through? We were beginning to think that all sorts of horrible things might have happened to you when we didn’t hear from you.”
Her father put his arms around both his wife and daughter. Connie could smell his reassuring scent—she felt secure in his strong embrace. “Now, now, she’s safe,” he said with unusual softness. “Let’s not talk about this now. Let’s just be thankful that she’s back with us.”
Uncle Hugh came over to stand awkwardly beside the family huddle.
“Are you all right, Connie?” he asked uncertainly.
“I’m so sorry,” Connie said, brushing the tears from her eyes with the back of a grubby hand. “I wish it’d all never happened,” she added truthfully.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize how bad it had got,” he said gruffly. “I let you down.”
This was what Connie feared—that he would blame himself.
“No, no, it’s all my fault. I know I shouldn’t have run away.”
The policewoman returned with Godiva Lionheart. Connie thought her great-aunt looked dazed. Godiva walked up to her. She said nothing but patted Connie on the back.
“What? Y…you’re not going to tell me off?” Connie stammered.
Godiva shook her head.
Hugh approached his sister and took her arm. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice.
The policewoman gave a discreet cough. “I think we’d better get Connie away before the media get here. I’ll need to ask her a few questions later, but for now I suggest you take her back home.”
It was a very subdued party in the police car for the short journey back to Lionheart Lodge, where Connie’s parents had been staying over the last few terrible days. There did not seem to be a safe topic of conversation. Uncle Hugh began to ask about the procession as a way of lightening the mood, but he fell silent when it was clear that Connie did not feel like talking. The police driver sensed the awkward atmosphere and tried to help by switching on the radio. Unfortunately, the local news station was running continual coverage of the exciting events up at Mallins Wood:
“…a most extraordinary day, you’ll agree, Steve,” the reporter burbled to the studio. “First the stand-off between the protesters and the construction team and now this.” The policeman moved to switch it off, but Connie intervened:
“No, leave it, please!”
“Yes, and now I can see them winching the boy down. A local lad, according to the procession’s organizers, Col Clamworthy. He arrived here this morning dressed as Sir Galahad. You may remember, Steve, I reported how he left the others, waving a lance over his head. Look, here he comes—but I can’t see how badly injured he is. Two firemen are lowering him to the ground. We had no idea that he’d gone on such a dangerous quest when he galloped off. How he got up so high is anyone’s guess.…”
“Is there any news of the girl they brought down earlier?” the studio presenter asked in a voice that suggested he was lapping up the drama.
“Connie Lionheart, the missing girl? She’s already made a name for herself as an environmental protester over that tanker incident on New Year’s. Too bad the police didn’t think to look earlier at the obvious place where all the eco-warriors in the country were congregating, ha, ha,” the reporter laughed heartily, making Connie wince. “From what she said when she was found, she had been up the tree all week as a kind of protest—extraordinary dedication for one so young.”
“And how is the campaign to save Mallins Wood going now that the appeal to buy it has been launched?”
“Zed Bailey told me earlier that he’s been bowled over by the response. He only launched the appeal a matter of hours ago, but the Web site has already been inundated with messages of support and cash pledges from people all over the country. Of course, the dramatic coverage of the rescue of the missing girl and her friend has helped give it publicity they could not have dreamed of. And yes, the boy is down. Sir Galahad is once more on the earth and in the care of the emergency services.”
“Thank you, Mike. If any of our listeners would like to make a pledge, you can log on to the Save Merlin’s Oak Web site, check our site, and follow the link. And now, stay tuned for Krafted’s first live appearance at the Hescombe Music Festival.…”
The car pulled up on the Abbey Close. Walking down the path, flanked by her parents, Connie took a last look up at the sky and wondered what was happening on the moors. Had her message got through in time to stop the others from coming to rescue her? What would Kullervo’s forces do now that their leader had fled? Confused and abandoned, would some of them try to attack, or would they just melt away, biding their time for a more favorable occasion? From what the reporter had said, everything seemed quite normal in the wood, apart, that is, from the assortment of medieval characters, horses, reporters, and emergency services all milling around the foot of Merlin’s Oak. It looked as if the attack had been postponed. The Society had survived this crisis—just barely.
“Now, darling,” her mother said as she ran a hot foaming bath for her, “take off those clothes and have a nice relaxing soak.” As Connie discarded her brown leather flying suit, her mother picked it up gingerly. “Godiva mentioned your strange taste in clothes, but I’m pleased to see that it stopped you from getting too scratched up while you’ve been perched up that tree,” she said with a hint of approval for the once-despised garment.
“And,” Connie said with a yawn as she stepped into the tub, “at least I’m not on national TV wearing bells and armor.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.
”
Connie’s mother stepped softly out of the room as her daughter lay back in the bubbles and tried to let the warm water wash away both the grime and the bad memories.
The fire crew wrapped up Col like a very large papoose for the journey down the tree. His leg was aching, his back screaming with pain where the dragon’s tail had caught him, and the rest of him was a network of minor injuries, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was Skylark, last seen tumbling through the trees not far from the clearing where they had taken off. As soon as he bumped to the ground, he looked frantically around for his father and spotted him in the company of a stern-faced policeman.
“Dad,” Col shouted, “Dad!”
The crowd fell back, allowing Mack to reach his son’s stretcher. He knelt down beside him and took Col’s hand.
“It’s all right, son,” Mack said loudly. Then, quieter, he added, “No need to worry—I’ve called off our forces—just in time, too. The dragons were about to set off. I had some difficulty though; my guard here was very suspicious—thought I was talking to some eco-warrior reinforcements or something.”
Col was only half-listening to him, desperate to get an answer to the only question in which he was interested. “But Skylark? How is he?”
“I don’t know, Col,” Mack said with a shake of his head. “Captain Graves and some volunteers are leaving now to search the wood for both him and Argand. I’d go myself but apparently I’m under arrest.” He grimaced. “They seem to think I put you and Connie up to climbing that tree. Your gran’s on her way to the hospital—she’ll meet you there.”
The paramedics ushered Mack back and picked up the stretcher. Col felt his frustration building. He could not bear to be carried away like this not knowing. Skylark could be lying injured somewhere close-by. He might even be dying. He could be dead already.