The Touchstone

by Andrew Norriss

  ‘So Kai was right? It was all a trap?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Ivo nodded firmly. ‘It was always a trap. I mean, it would have been nice if you'd persuaded Kai to give up the Touchstones on her own but Quomp said the chances of that were very slim so it seemed like he should bring along the buzzbots in case.’

  ‘You both knew it was a trap? And you didn't tell me?’

  ‘Gedrus told us not to,’ said Ivo apologetically. ‘He said if we did the whole thing might not work.’ He looked down at his friend. ‘Quomp says Kai didn't mean to kill you. Well, he doesn't think she did. She meant to stun you but she forgot you were only twelve years old and a human.’ He peered anxiously down. ‘You're looking all pale again. Are you feeling all right?’

  Douglas said that he would like a glass of water and, as Ivo hobbled off to get it, he lay back on his pillow, staring into the distance. One hand reached automatically for the stone round his neck before he remembered that the Touchstone was no longer there.

  He wanted to ask Gedrus to show him what had happened, to find out what had been done with Kai and her ship, to send a message to the Guardian, to ask any of the thousand questions that bubbled in his mind… but he couldn't. He would never be able to ask the librarian anything, ever again.

  Douglas found he did not really mind about not being told about the trap. He didn't mind about being in hospital. He didn't even mind about being killed by Kai. But not to have the Touchstone round his neck was as if some vital part of himself had been amputated. He wanted, more than he could ever have imagined, to have it back. He wanted it with an intensity that was almost a physical pain and, lying there in the hospital bed, to his astonishment he found a tear trickling down his cheek.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Douglas was in hospital for three days. He was finally sent home on the Wednesday but, even then, the doctors said he probably should not go back to school for at least another two weeks.

  Mrs Paterson had recently started her new job as dance instructor at the Greenway Studio, so there was a problem about who should look after Douglas while he was at home. There was talk about hiring a nurse but, in the end, he stayed there on his own with the phone by his bed and strict instructions to call Mrs Dewer next door if there was an emergency.

  Mrs Paterson was not entirely happy with the arrangement but she could see no other choice. At the dance school she had small children about to take their first grade exams, older students preparing for national competitions and a large group of old-timers for whom the regular weekly dance session was their only social outlet. They all depended on her. She couldn't let them down.

  And besides, she was thoroughly enjoying the classes. Hugely enjoying them. It was more fun than she could have believed to be back in the world of chassés, promenades and reverse corner turns. It was just unfortunate that Douglas should be recovering from a lightning bolt at a time when Mr Paterson was so ferociously busy with launching his supermarket trolley, and neither of them could afford to take time off work.

  Douglas assured her that he didn't mind being on his own, and he meant it. He slept a good deal of the time, particularly in the first week, and when he was awake he had plenty of visitors. Ivo called in regularly. On Thursday and Friday he came round after school, and after that it was half-term and he usually hopped round on his crutches some time in the morning and again in the afternoon. He would probably have stayed all day, except that his new workshop was being built and he needed to be at home to make sure it was done properly. And once it was finished he was at work a lot of the time on the new robot.

  Mr Parrot was another regular visitor. He sent a card and a vast bowl of fruit wrapped in cellophane while Douglas was in hospital, and then called in at the house in Western Avenue when Douglas came home. He brought with him an expensive-looking MP3 player as a get-well present and a copy of his new business brochure with colour pictures of his new, very luxurious office.

  ‘It's not too far from school,’ he said cheerily, ‘so you can still call in on your way home if you want to tell me about any “pictures” you've seen and what shares we ought to buy.’

  Douglas told him rather sadly that he didn't think there would be any more pictures.

  ‘Now, now.’ Mr Parrot refused to be downhearted. ‘None of us knows what the future holds. Give it time, eh? Give it time.’

  He called round again the next week with his monthly report, which was a carefully printed sheet inside a shiny folder that said how much money Douglas had made over the last four weeks. It was an enormous sum and he asked if Douglas had any instructions as to what he should do with it.

  ‘Not really,’ said Douglas. ‘Not at the moment. Could you look after it for me?’

  Mr Parrot said he would be delighted. He might not be as spectacularly successful as Douglas had been, he said, but looking after people's money and making it grow was not only his job, it was what he enjoyed doing. It was what he had always wanted to do, ever since he was Douglas's age.

  Another regular visitor, if an unexpected one, was Mr Linneker. The headmaster came to see Douglas while he was in hospital and then called in almost every day while he was at home. Each time he brought with him a magazine or a book he thought Douglas might enjoy and, if Douglas wasn't too tired, he would stay for a game of cards or to help with a puzzle or simply to sit and talk.

  They talked a good deal, more and more as the days passed and Douglas grew stronger, and he found he looked forward to the headmaster's visits. Mr Linneker was a good talker and a keen listener and the conversation would roam over all sorts of topics – though for some reason the one thing they never talked about was Hannah. Mr Linneker never mentioned the fact that Douglas had told him where to find his daughter in Norwich, and Douglas somehow felt it would be wrong to ask what had happened.

  One of the things they did talk about was Douglas's parents getting a divorce. It turned out that Mr Linneker's parents had separated when he was Douglas's age so he had been through much the same experience and knew how it felt. They had several conversations on the subject but there was one in particular that Douglas remembered.

  They had been discussing why people got divorced and whose fault it might be and Mr Linneker said he was more and more convinced that, with his parents at least, it was impossible to say it had been anyone's fault.

  ‘Looking back,’ he said, ‘I can see now they just needed to go in different directions. There was no point in them staying together when they didn't want to.’

  ‘But why didn't they want to?’ asked Douglas.

  ‘I'm not sure any of us chooses what we want in life,’ said Mr Linneker thoughtfully. ‘It's more something we discover about ourselves. I sometimes think we're all born with this sort of compass needle in our heads, telling us where we should be heading. North may be different for all of us – it makes some of us want to be engineers, others want to be businessmen, or musicians, or dancers… some of us even want to be teachers – it all depends which way the needle is pointing.

  ‘And I think with my parents, and maybe with yours, that the needles were just pointing in different directions. So that's where they had to go. It doesn't mean either of them was right or wrong.’

  Douglas thought about it a lot after the headmaster had gone. If there was one thing he had learnt from Gedrus it was how important it was to know exactly what you wanted, what you really wanted, from the deepest part of you. He thought about how some of the people around him had always seemed to know what they wanted, like Ivo or Mr Parrot. About how unhappy people could be when they didn't know what they wanted, like his mother until she got the job at the dance school. And he thought about how angry people could be if they weren't allowed to go in the direction they wanted, like Hannah wanting to be with her friends…

  But mostly he thought about knowing exactly what it was that he wanted for himself, and how frustrating it was to realize that he could never have it. Having the Touchstone had always been more than fun or excitement o
r adventure. From the moment he first held it he had felt it was somehow supposed to be his. Knowing that he could never have it back had not altered this feeling. It simply left him with a deep and sometimes overwhelming sadness.

  It was the Monday after half-term, almost two weeks after Kai had taken him out to the barn, that Douglas's most surprising visitor turned up.

  Mrs Paterson had come home to make Douglas his tea, and was just getting ready to return to the dance studio when the front door bell rang.

  Hannah was standing on the step. She was wearing a black skirt and black T-shirt as before, but with bright yellow tights and a yellow ribbon in her hair that made her look a bit like a wasp.

  ‘I've come to see Douglas,’ she said.

  ‘What a splendid idea.’ Mrs Paterson held open the door to let Hannah in. ‘He could do with a bit of company.’ She led the way across the hall to the kitchen. ‘He gets left on his own a lot these days, I'm afraid, with me out at work so much of the time.’ Crossing the kitchen, she held open the back door and ushered Hannah out into the garden. ‘And it's not good for him. He's been getting all moody and feeling sorry for himself.’

  She pointed to a figure lying on the grass at the far end of the garden. ‘I keep telling him he ought to take up ballroom dancing. It's such a wonderful thing to shake you out of a depression. Have you ever tried it?’

  Hannah said she didn't think ballroom dancing was really her thing.

  ‘Well, if you ever want to give it a try, let me know.’ Mrs Paterson produced a card from her pocket. ‘You've got a very good shape for the jive. If he's asleep, poke him in the ribs and wake him up. He won't want to have missed you.’

  Hannah made her way past a pond, down some steps and then across the lawn to where Douglas was lying on a rug in front of the summerhouse.

  He sat up as soon as he saw her.

  ‘Hi,’ said Hannah. ‘Did you know that most of your answers in that maths test were wrong?’

  ‘Oh… yes,’ said Douglas. ‘Well, I didn't at the time, but I… I'm sorry if I got you into trouble.’

  ‘You did.’ Hannah sat down on the rug beside him. ‘But it turned out OK. That's what I came to tell you about really. If you're interested.’

  Douglas said he certainly was. He was very curious to know what had happened when Hannah's father found her in Norwich.

  Hannah put her arms round her legs and rested her chin on her knees. ‘I ran away to where I used to live,’ she said, ‘but my dad came and found me.’

  ‘I heard,’ said Douglas. ‘Was he very angry?’

  ‘No, that was the weird thing. He wasn't angry at all.’

  Hannah had expected him to be angry. She remembered the shock of hearing her father's voice as he arrived at Laura's house and her determination that she was not going to give up and go home with him, whatever he threatened and however loudly he shouted. But, to her surprise he had not threatened or shouted at all.

  He had come striding up the stairs to the attic room, straight over to the wardrobe in which she was hiding, as if he knew exactly where she was, flung open the door and then… sat down beside her and asked if they could talk.

  They had talked for nearly two hours. Hannah had told him about not wanting to move and how she wanted to be back in Norwich with her friends, and Mr Linneker told her about the stresses of being in a new job and how, even when you loved people, you could still make mistakes.

  ‘Maybe we can negotiate a solution on this one,’ he had said in the end. ‘If you tell me exactly what you want, I'll tell you what I want, and we'll try and work out some way we both get as much of what we want as we can.’

  ‘And did you?’ asked Douglas.

  Hannah nodded. ‘I've been staying in Norwich over half-term, and I can go back again in the holidays. Dad says he hadn't realized how much I wanted to be there. He says it's good when you know what you want like that. He says it's the people that don't know that have the real problem.’

  Douglas nodded but said nothing.

  There was a large spider crawling up Hannah's leg and she picked it up and put it back on the grass before saying, ‘How did you know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where I'd gone.’ She looked directly at Douglas. ‘I know it was you. Dad didn't want to tell me but I made him. He thinks I told you where I was going before I ran away, but I didn't. So how did you know?’

  ‘I'd like to tell you sometime,’ said Douglas, ‘but I can't at the moment.’

  Hannah nodded.

  ‘If I shouldn't have done it, I'm sorry,’ Douglas went on, ‘but at the time it seemed like the best thing to do.’

  ‘I wasn't complaining,’ said Hannah. ‘I don't know why, but it all turned out rather well.’

  After that they talked about what it was like to be hit by lightning, and when Douglas would be coming back to school – he thought the next day – and what it was like to live in Norwich… And then Hannah noticed it was gone five o'clock and past the time she was supposed to be home.

  Douglas walked her back to the house and as they crossed the hall to the front door, he said, ‘If your dad is right, and knowing what you want is a good thing, what happens if you know what you want, but it turns out to be something you can't have?’

  They were standing out in the drive, with the sunshine pouring down through the trees sending a pattern of dappled light on to the gravel.

  Hannah gave a little shrug. ‘I suppose you could scream and shout and make a nuisance of yourself until they say you can have it,’ she said. ‘It worked for me.’

  Douglas thought, rather sadly, that making a nuisance of himself might not have too much effect on a Guardian of the Federation.

  ‘I'll see you tomorrow,’ said Hannah but instead of walking away, she turned to Douglas, put her arms round his neck and held him very tightly for a moment. Then she released him as quickly as she had seized him and set off down the driveway without a word.

  There was something in the way she walked that reminded him of Kai, Douglas thought. There was that same sense of determination and purpose in her movements, as if she knew exactly where she was going and what she would do when she got there.

  At the bottom of the drive she turned.

  ‘Something my dad told me,’ she called back. ‘He said, before you kick and scream and make a nuisance of yourself, you should try telling people what you want. He said, if you ask, sometimes that's all it takes.’

  And with a wave she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Three days later Guardian Quomp came back. Douglas was in his bedroom doing some homework and trying not to remember how much easier it had been when he had Gedrus to give him all the answers, when he heard a tapping at the window.

  The Guardian was outside the first-floor window, standing on a small, flat, floating disc.

  ‘You're looking a lot better than the last time I saw you!’ he said when Douglas opened the window. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Douglas thought the Guardian was looking much better himself as he stood there, fingering the green crystal round his neck and beaming happily down.

  ‘I'm fine,’ said Douglas. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Good!’ The Guardian swayed slightly on the disc, as he thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘And how's the heart? You know we gave you a new one? An improvement on the one you had before I might add. If you ever want to take up long-distance running you'll find you have incredible stamina.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Douglas. ‘Ivo told me.’

  ‘Well, there's a couple of things we ought to talk about and I thought, as your parents are out, that this might be a good time. But if it's not convenient I could call back later.’

  ‘No, that's fine.’ Douglas pushed open the window. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  The Guardian looked at the size of the window and then at the size of his waist. ‘Might be safer if I came down to the back door.’ He pointed rather proudly to the disc beneath his feet. ‘Have you se
en this? Got it today. You just lean the way you want to go and whoosh! I'll meet you down there!’

  He leaned to the right and flew off at an alarming speed towards the trees at the side of the house.

  When Douglas got down to the kitchen the Guardian was already waiting at the back door, carrying the disc under one arm. ‘If there was any chance of a cup of tea,’ he said, pulling a couple of leaves out of his hair and brushing a moss stain from his elbow, ‘it would be more than welcome.’

  Douglas made a pot of tea and Quomp breathed in a mug of scalding hot liquid with a sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘Right then, first things first.’ He took a box from his pocket and opened it to reveal what looked like a brooch in the shape of a tiny bunch of flowers. ‘I've been asked to give you this.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Douglas.

  ‘It's the Flaggiano Cluster.’ The Guardian took the flowers carefully from the box. ‘It's a Federation award for bravery – well, the award, really.’

  He stepped forward and pinned the brooch to the front of Douglas's T-shirt.

  ‘On behalf of the Presiding Council of the Order of Guardians, it is my proud privilege to present this to you with the grateful thanks of the Federation for your help in the safe return of four stolen Touchstones.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Douglas. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘It's the only plant able to grow in deep space.’ The Guardian pointed to the brooch. ‘They can withstand temperatures from absolute zero to 5000 degrees centigrade. If you splash a bit of water on them every couple of centuries, they'll flower for a thousand years.’

  ‘I'll try and remember that,’ said Douglas.

  ‘OK, ceremony over.’ The Guardian returned to the table to pour himself another cup of tea. ‘But I want you to know I meant that bit about the grateful thanks of the Federation. What might have happened if Kai had got away, I dread to think, and the only reason she didn't is you.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ asked Douglas. ‘Is she dead?’