Shock Forest and other magical stories

by Margaret Mahy

  The curious thing was that my father, who had made so many strange and beautiful bridges, was a very ordinary-looking bridge himself – a single-span bridge built of stone over an arch of stone, springing upwards at an odd angle, vanishing into the cliff at the very feet of the terrified soldiers. He looked as if he had always been there, as if he would be there for ever, silver moss on his handrails, on his abutments, even on his deck. Certainly he was the quietest bridge I had ever crossed as I went over to help the soldiers down. There was no way forward through the cliff. Still, perhaps the job of some rare bridges is to cross over only briefly and then bring us back to the place we started from.

  We came back together, the three soldiers and I, and I’m sure we were all different people on the right bank from the people we had been on the left.

  Our feet made no sound on the silver moss.

  “They can say what they like about that old man,” cried the older soldier all of a sudden, “but I was never so pleased to see a bridge in all my life. It just shows there are good reasons for having bridges in unexpected places.”

  Together we scrambled downstream, and at last, back on to the road.

  “But who’s going to build the bridges now, then?” asked one of the young soldiers. “Look! You were with him. Are you a bridge builder, too?”

  They knew now. They knew that unexpected bridges would be needed.

  But someone else will have to build them. I am not a bridge builder. I am a traveller. I set out travelling, after that, crossing, one by one, all the bridges my father had built… the picnic-bridges of childhood, the wooden ones, the steel ones, the stone and the concrete. I crossed the blue bridges of the air and those that seemed to be woven of vines and flowers. I crossed the silver-thread and mother-of-pearl bridge one moonlit midnight. I looked down into the melting heart of the world and saw my reflection in a bubble of fire while the harps sang and sighed and snarled around me with the very voice of the volcano.

  Some day someone, perhaps my own child, may say that word of mine back to me – that word I said to my father – but I won’t turn into a bridge. I shall become a journey winding over hills, across cities, along seashores and through shrouded forests, crossing my father’s bridges and the bridges of other people, as well as all the infinitely divided roads and splintered pathways that lie between them.

  The Travelling Boy and the Stay-at-Home Bird

  Sam lived with his anxious Great-Aunt Angela in a house with high hedges and a closed gate. When she was behind her high hedge with the gate slammed shut Great-Aunt Angela was happy. Jaunts, junkets and journeys worried her to bits, but a closed gate soothed her, smoothed her, made her feel serene. In her little sun-porch she would knit and sew and sing like a spring blackbird and, sometimes, snatch a catnap as well, whereas a journey, even to the shops, made her go all fidgety and fretful. At such times she became a very difficult great-aunt for a boy like Sam.

  Sam had eyes halfway between sky-blue and sea-green. You never saw a boy with such a look of distance about him. There were a thousand journeys locked up inside him waiting to get out.

  “Go here! Go there! Walk! Run! Skate! Sail! Fly!” said the voices in his head. “Get there somehow!” But Sam was not allowed to do any of these things. The gate was always shut, and he was forbidden to go into the dirty, dangerous world outside.

  Sometimes, however, Great-Aunt Angela, though rather short-sighted herself, saw Sam’s blue-green look of distance and overheard the echo of the voices inside his head.

  “I suppose he needs some lively company,” she thought. “I’m not very fond of animals, but perhaps a good, clean pet of some kind…” and, very bravely, she put on her boots and her good going-out coat, took her shopping trundler and called Sam. Then they set out together to visit the Paramount Pet Shop, which was all of two corners away. They crossed the street when the traffic lights told them to cross and Sam could see four roads, all going in different directions. One road led to the sea, another to the mountains, one pointed to the South Pole and another to the Equator. He was surrounded by possible journeys and all the roads seemed to be saying, “Take me! Take me!”

  Workers had made a hole in the street and its black mouth hissed, “Down here! Down here!” as Sam went by. He looked up and the sky was filled with travellers… a Piper Cherokee plane from the aero club, a couple of ducks in search of the river, and a whole crowd of sparrows, flying in every direction. “Up and away! Up and away!” they cried, but only Sam could hear them.

  Great-Aunt Angela’s own ears were too full of rattling footsteps, roaring cars, and raging trucks to hear the voices of possible journeys crying out to her.

  When they got to the Paramount Pet Shop there were pets of all kinds to choose from – dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rabbits – but Great-Aunt Angela did not want anything that would track in dirt on its paws, or have babies.

  “What about a bird?’ said the pet shop man, a very secret-looking man, unusual to find behind a public place like a shop counter. “Their cages are very easy to clean. Sam could learn to do that for himself, couldn’t you, Sam?”

  “I don’t want anything that has to live in a cage,” Sam said. “I don’t like cages.”

  When the pet shop man heard this he gave Sam a very careful glance, and Sam stared back, and saw at once that the pet shop man was full of journeys too, but that his journeys had all been taken. He wore them openly on his face, which was lined like a map with the tracery of a thousand explorations.

  “Why, I think I have just the pet for you, Sam,” he said at last. “It’s out the back because it’s rather large.”

  “I can’t afford much!” cried Great-Aunt Angela, anxious immediately. “And we don’t have much room.”

  “Oh, they’re very cheap, these particular pets,” the pet shop man assured her. “They’re very hard to place because you’ve got to wait until the right customer comes along.” Then he went out into the back of the shop and returned a moment later with a bird following him… a tall bird, rather like a patchwork tea-cosy on long yellow legs, quite tame and looking as if it would be no trouble at all around the house.

  “It’s very brightly coloured,” Great-Aunt Angela said nervously, for bright colours were part of the danger of the world to her.

  “Oh, that could change,” the pet shop man said. “He’ll grow to whatever colour you need him to be. And he’ll fit into any space you happen to have in the house. Fitting into available space is this bird’s speciality. And he’ll grow to the exact size that suits you.”

  Great-Aunt Angela was delighted to hear this. “I do like him,” she decided. “I love his blue eyes. We’ll take him shall we, Sam, and we’ll call him Norton after my late cousin Norton. He’s got a look in his eyes that reminds me of dear Norton very strongly. You’ll like that, won’t you, Sam?”

  “Yes, thank you, Great-Aunt Angela,” Sam replied.

  But in his mind Sam called the bird Fernando Eagle, the freest name he could think of, a name for some buccaneer or bold adventurer who also happened to be a bird.

  “He’s too tame, really,” Sam thought. “He’s over-tamed, but I’ll un-tame him. I’ll teach him to fight and fly and to be free, and when he does fly away at last – well, it will be almost as good as flying away myself. It will be a kind of promise to me that some day I’ll be free too.”

  Great-Aunt Angela paid the money, and Sam and she walked home through the rattling, roaring, raging streets while Fernando Eagle stalked after them like a particularly well-behaved dog.

  At home, with the gate closed and locked, Great-Aunt Angela gave Sam and Fernando Eagle a slice of bread and jam each.

  “He needs worms and wigglies, not bread and jam,” Sam cried.

  “Oh Sam, don’t say such things!” Great-Aunt Angela exclaimed in alarm. “I can’t bear to think of worms and wigglies. And look –” she added triumphantly – “he’s eaten the bread and jam and he’s asking for more.” And so he had, and so he was.

 
“Good bird, Norton!” said Great-Aunt Angela, patting him on the head.

  Sam saw he had no time to lose and began his plans for the un-taming of Fernando Eagle immediately.

  “He hasn’t got parents to teach him,” thought Sam, “so I’ll have to be a sort of parent to him.”

  He tried to make himself as much like Fernando Eagle’s father as he could.

  First he cut a bird mask out of cardboard but, when he tried it on, Fernando Eagle looked doubtful. Then he wrapped himself in an old curtain covered in red, white and blue squares, but Fernando Eagle merely sighed and shuffled his feet.

  “Feet!” thought Sam and he cut himself big bird feet and stuck them on to the soles of his school shoes with sticky tape. Then he painted his new feet and his old legs (up above sock level) with yellow poster paint, and looked hopefully at Fernando Eagle. But Fernando Eagle sank his head deep into his ruff and clacked his beak in alarm.

  “Now!” Sam cried. “Listen! This is how eagles call,” and he hopped around the room giving wild, dangerous cries of the sort he thought a free bird ought to give, as it took off into the sky. Such cries had never been heard behind the high hedge before. Out in the sun-porch Great-Aunt Angela started as if she had been stung and dropped several stitches. Even so, she was not as frightened as Fernando Eagle who ran behind a chair and cowered there, terrified.

  “Sam! Sam!” cried Great-Aunt Angela as she burst into Sam’s room. “What a noise! Look at the room! Look at your legs! Look at those scraps of cardboard, look at your feet! Look at your face! Look at poor Norton, he’s petrified, poor bird, and no wonder! Clean yourself up at once and then sweep the floor! Goodness gracious, what an example to set an innocent pet barely in the house thirty minutes. He’ll think you’re some sort of hoodlum or noodlum, Sam.”

  She went out of the room and Fernando Eagle scuttled after her, anxious for quiet dignified company and more bread and jam. Sam was left to tidy up the mess he’d made. He was disappointed but not discouraged.

  “It’s a beginning,” he thought. “I suppose it is pretty confusing for a bird before he realizes what he’s supposed to do. But once he catches on he’ll love it. Fancy being able to fly! I wish I could. I’ll give him a flying-from-tree-to-tree lesson tomorrow and see how he gets on. I want him to be as free as air… as free as – as a bird…”

  In the middle of Great-Aunt Angela’s little square of lawn was a small tree, doing its best to be a tree in spite of being barbered and bobbed every spring and autumn. Still, if you really wanted to you could climb up into it and from there you could see almost over the top of the high hedge. However, Sam was not supposed to climb it for fear of falling down and hurting himself.

  “Look, Fernando!” cried Sam. “Watch me!” He made himself wings out of a corrugated cardboard carton and an old feather duster and tied them in at his wrists and shoulders. Zooming over the lawn he climbed up into the tree so rapidly that it did almost look as if he were flying. He stood on the topmost branch sweeping his wings up and down, and his wild free cries had a real echo of distance in them. It was as if all the journeys locked up inside him were crying out aloud against the high hedges and the closed gates. But Fernando Eagle shook his head and looked back over his shoulder longingly to Great-Aunt Angela’s kitchen.

  “Blow!” thought Sam. “He’s not getting the idea. If only I had another tree… one’s not enough for a proper tree-to-tree exercise.” An idea came to him, and he went into Great-Aunt Angela’s tiny tool-shed and brought out her all-aluminium-extendible-collapsible step-ladder and stood it close to the tree. He stuck it all over with pieces of hedge and fallen leaves.

  “Look, Fernando!” he said, pointing at the tree. “Tree! Tree! Get it?” Fernando pretended to scratch his ear with one foot while balancing on the other, and Sam was encouraged by this display of skill. He pointed to the step-ladder. “Another tree!” he said slowly and clearly, though he had to admit, secretly, that it did not look very like a tree in spite of all his work. “Another tree! Two trees! Now watch!” Waving his wings gracefully he climbed the step-ladder, stood there beautifully balanced and then leaped from the step-ladder into the top branches of Great-Aunt Angela’s tree. He did this supremely well… he really did look as if he were flying. But unfortunately Great-Aunt Angela chose that moment to look through the kitchen window, just checking up.

  “Sam!” she screamed. “Oh Sam! Oh! Come down at once, you inconsiderate boy! What’s got into you? Are you trying to drive me to my death?”

  “I was teaching Fernando how to fly,” Sam began to explain, but it was no use. He was called untidy, dirty and dangerous, the sort of boy who would set a bad example to a pet.

  “Fernando doesn’t need to fly!” Great-Aunt Angela declared. “He doesn’t want to fly. Look, you’ve made him hide his head under his wing, poor thing. And he’s been a model bird all day. I was worried to begin with, he was so brightly coloured he looked a bit raffish, but his feathers are beginning to lose that flashy patchiness and settle down to a nice, quiet grey.”

  And so they were. Parts of him were about the same colour as Sam’s school uniform.

  “That show’s he’s happy!” said Great-Aunt Angela with satisfaction. “So don’t upset him.”

  Sam felt desperate. It seemed to him that if Fernando Eagle couldn’t learn to fly, he, Sam, would live for ever behind hedges and closed gates until all his journeys withered and died inside him. “Go here! Go there! Up… up… away… awa-a-ay…” called the voices in his head and he thought Fernando Eagle must hear them too. But he didn’t. He ate platefuls of bread and jam and grew neater and more school uniformish day by day – taller, too. Now he was just the same size as Sam himself.

  Great-Aunt Angela knitted him a little blue scarf and a blue woolly cap with a white tassel, and fussed over him more and more. It was as if Fernando was the real person in the house and Sam just some sort of unnecessary ghost who had got in behind the high hedge by accident. One day when Sam and Fernando were on the lawn doing nothing much, Sam flapping his arms in a tired fashion and Fernando looking the other way, Great-Aunt Angela came out of the house in her good going-out coat, pushing her shopping trundler in front of her.

  “Norton!” she called. “Norr-ton! I’m going down to the supermarket. You may come with me if you like and push the trundler.”

  Sam was astounded to hear Fernando Eagle reply in a very ordinary voice, as if he had been talking ever since he was hatched out of the egg, “Yes, Aunt Angela! I’d love to. Does Sam have to come as well?”

  “Who’s Sam?” the Great-Aunt said. “Some little imaginary friend of yours? Now, Norton, don’t become too fanciful. Too much fancy is a dangerous thing for a growing child.”

  “I will be careful, Auntie, I promise,” answered the foolish bird. “I really will. May I push the trundler all the way to the shops?”

  “Of course you may,” replied Great-Aunt Angela graciously. “You deserve a little treat. You’ve eaten up your greens and your bread and jam so well lately.”

  Sam watched them as they set off down the drive. He felt lonely because, though he had never got on very well with Great-Aunt Angela, she was the only relation he had. But more than that, he felt desperate for Fernando Eagle.

  “One last chance!” he thought. “One last chance for him to see that he doesn’t have to stay here. He can fly away and be free.”

  “Fernando!” he called. “It’s your last chance. You must fly. You must FLY.” He ran down the drive after them and all his imprisoned journeys rose up inside him like leaping flames. “Like this, Fernando!” He held out his arms and the world turned under him. Great-Aunt Angela carefully closed her gate but Sam went up over it and did not come down again. The air took him into itself. He, Sam, was the one to fly.

  As if he had been flying for years he rose up higher than the high hedge and saw the whole street beyond – the traffic lights winking at him and the shops behind the traffic lights. He even thought he could see the pet shop
man at the pet shop door.

  “Up and away!” said a voice like a bell ringing in his head. He had often heard it before but never so clearly and now he could do what it told him to do. Up and away he went, between the painted roofs and the chimneys, frightening sparrows, scolded by startled starlings. Up and away, over the chimneys now, and suddenly all directions were possible for him.

  The city looked at first like a game of noughts-and-crosses being played beneath him, and then like a great clockwork Christmas present, muttering to itself while lights flashed on and off.

  “Up and away!” said the voice like a bell, and a new silvery voice whispered,

  “The sea! The sea!”

  “Are you surprised?” asked a third voice, but not in his head. This one came from beside him, and there was the pet shop man flying too. “I saw your great-aunt and Norton trembling together by the traffic lights so I thought you must be up here somewhere.”

  Sam thought of Norton and felt sad for the stay-at-home bird. “I wanted him to be Fernando Eagle,” he said.

  “Fernando Eagle never existed,” replied the pet shop man.

  “Believe me, you were the eagle of your great-aunt’s house. There was no eagle space for a bird to fit into. But there was a Norton space… a grey bread-and-jam-trundler-pushing space… and he fitted in there exactly. He will be very happy and so will your great-aunt. Look! There they go!”

  Far below like grey ants, Great-Aunt Angela and Norton crawled back towards the front gate and locked it behind them, shutting out the dangerous clockwork city.

  “The sea! The sea!” insisted the silver voice and Sam saw that he was indeed set free. Below him lay the world threaded with the bright tracks of a thousand possible journeys. The west wind came alongside him as he flew. A salt taste came into the air.

  “You choose!” said the pet shop man. “It’s your first journey. I’ll come as far as the beach with you to see you on your way. You’ll meet other travellers, of course, but even when you don’t you’ll never be lonely, for a journey is all the companion a true traveller needs.”