I cling to the top of the wall. ‘I need to speak to you.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Not here.’ My eyes flick to Mazen. ‘On our own.’
Rose rolls her eyes. ‘Just tell me, Arthur.’
‘Grandad’s disappeared!’ I say in a rush.
‘Grandad’s what ?’
‘He’s disappeared. One second he was in the attic, and the next he was gone. Please stop bouncing, Rose. Grandad’s gone and you’ve got to help me find him!’
With a sigh she comes to a stop.
Mazen stretches, then says, ‘He’s probably lost in all the mess he keeps up there.’
‘All his “mess” is in the garden. There’s nowhere to get lost in the attic now!’
Mazen shrugs. ‘Just saying. He’s a messy person.’
‘He’s not messy. He’s . . . a collector!’
‘He’s messy, Arthur,’ snaps Rose, hands on her hips. ‘Now hurry up and tell me what happened.’
‘Grandad crawled through the camp bed –’
‘What? Why would he do that?’
‘It doesn’t matter why he did it; what matters is that he crawled into the middle of the mattress then disappeared!’
Rose doesn’t look worried or shocked; in fact, she bursts out laughing. ‘Arthur, he’s playing a trick on you!’
Anger rises up inside me. Every second I stand here talking to Rose is another second that Grandad is missing. ‘He’s not. I was holding his hand. I felt him being pulled into the bed. I saw his hand shoot inside!’
‘Then he must still be there.’
‘He isn’t. I checked!’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Well, check again.’
I reach into my pocket and feel the feathers and straw that I picked up before I ran out of the attic. ‘There’s something else . . .’ I lean over the wall and open my hand. ‘I found this inside the bed seconds after Grandad disappeared.’
Rose takes a step closer and alarm flashes across her face. ‘Crowky . . .’ she whispers, but then she shakes her head. ‘It’s Grandad. He must have put them there.’
‘Really? Because I’ve never told Grandad about Crowky. Have you?’
‘What are you two talking about?’ interrupts Mazen.
‘It’s nothing,’ says Rose. ‘Just Arthur trying to get me to play with him.’
I’m so angry I throw the feathers and straw in her face, and Mazen screams, ‘Get that gross stuff off my trampoline!’
Rose gathers it up and chucks it back at me. ‘Leave me alone, Arthur! Why can’t you accept that I don’t want to hang out with you?’
My foot slips out from under me. ‘Do you honestly think I’ve made all this up so that you’ll spend time with me?’
‘Yes,’ she says, making Mazen laugh.
‘Well, guess what, Rose? I don’t even like you much these days, and I’m only talking to you right now because Grandad has vanished and I think Crowky has got him!’
Now both of them are laughing.
‘Fine,’ I say, my cheeks burning. ‘If you won’t help me, I’ll just have to find him on my own.’ I jump off the wheelie bin, slip on a rotten crab apple, scramble to my feet, then stride towards the back door.
‘When you get to Roar, say “hi” to Mitch!’ Rose shouts.
I turn round. Rose is watching me with a sarcastic smile on her face.
‘You’ve changed so much Mitch wouldn’t even recognise you,’ I say. Then I walk into the house and let the door slam shut behind me.
Back in the attic, I stare at the camp bed.
I’ve looked for Grandad everywhere. Even though I know he couldn’t have got out of the bed, I’ve still checked every room in the house, the cellar, the shed and even the garage, and opening the bed isn’t an option. Some truly weird stuff has happened in the past hour and I’m not about to do anything that might permanently erase my grandad.
He disappeared inside the mattress so that’s where I’ve got to go too.
Trying to ignore the feathers and scraps of straw, I get down on my hands and knees, then push my head inside the bed. I want to pull it straight back out, but I keep my eyes squeezed shut and wriggle further in. ‘Hear me roar,’ I blurt, pulling my legs up behind me. The bed wobbles, then becomes still.
I’m crouched in the middle of the mattress, surrounded by darkness. It feels damp and lumpy and it smells like the PE cupboard at school. The springs from the mattress dig into my skin and I can’t find enough air to breathe. All I want to do is get out, but I force myself to stay where I am while I wait for something to happen.
When Rose and I played Roar I’m sure this was when the game began. I don’t know how it worked, but when we came out the other side we’d be in Roar. I crouch there, the mattress pressing into my face, until I can’t stand it any longer. I crawl forward, my head bursts out into bright light and I gulp fresh air.
I see dusty floorboards and straw and feathers. Outside, the sun is shining and I can hear Mazen Bailey laughing. I pull myself all the way out of the bed, feeling relieved and scared and stupid, all at the same time, then I walk back round to the other side of the bed.
Grandad is still missing and I’m going to keep crawling through this mattress until I find him.
And for the next ten minutes that’s exactly what I do.
Soon my eyes are itchy, I’m sweaty and my hair is massive and crackling with static.
I’m wriggling on to the attic floor for the thirty-second time when I see Rose standing in the doorway, sucking a blue ice pop and watching me.
‘I’ve looked for him everywhere,’ I say. ‘This is the only thing left to do.’
She does a long hard suck on the lolly, then says, ‘I’ll admit it’s strange that he’s vanished.’
I’m so relieved to hear her say this that I jump to my feet and rush over. ‘I told you: Grandad’s vanished inside the bed and somehow we’ve got to go there, go to Roar, and get him back!’
She sighs. ‘Arthur, we never actually went to Roar. You know that, right? The whole time we were playing up here in the attic, pretending.’
‘But when we played Roar, it didn’t feel like we were in the attic. It felt real.’
All the time I’ve been talking Rose has been sucking hard on her ice pop, draining all the blue out of it. ‘I suppose it felt different to other games,’ she admits. ‘But do you remember when I said I could fly? I got you all to come and watch, and it turned out it was just me jumping down the stairs flapping my arms.’ She shrugs. ‘Kids have got big imaginations.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought, before I felt Grandad being pulled into the bed!’ I show her the marks on my hand where Grandad’s nails dug in. ‘And there’s another thing . . . Just before he disappeared Grandad basically said he believed that Roar was real.’
Rose laughs. ‘Arthur, this whole thing is a massive practical joke! I bet Grandad’s had this planned for ages.’
‘Grandad would never scare me like this.’
She raises one eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t he?’
‘No, he wouldn’t!’
Rose shrugs like she couldn’t care less what I think. ‘Suit yourself. I’m going to town. Mazen says there’s three-for-two on at Claire’s. Before I went I thought I should check you hadn’t vanished too.’
And that’s when I realise it’s hopeless. If Rose is more bothered about hairbands and earrings than she is about Grandad, I don’t want her to come with me. ‘Fine.’ I walk back to the camp bed, crouch down and roll up my sleeves. ‘Hear me roar,’ I mutter, as I stick my head back into the mattress.
‘Hah!’ says Rose.
I pull my head out and turn to look at her, eyes narrowed. I am in no mood to hear Rose’s sarcastic hahs. ‘What?’
‘Nothing . . . Only I never said, “Hear me roar” because even when I was five I thought it was stupid. When I got into the middle of the mattress I just shut my eyes and imagined Roar, then when I came out the other side I was there.’ She takes a las
t long suck on her ice pop, then turns to the door. ‘See you later, loser.’
I pull my legs in behind me and I crouch in the middle of the bed, just like before.
Only this time I don’t bother with any magic words. Instead I use Rose’s technique: I close my eyes and I imagine Roar.
It’s hard to begin with. Roar is buried at the back of my mind. Some details like Win’s hat and Crowky’s voice are crystal clear, but most of it is hazy and muddled, like my memories of Nani and the first house we ever lived in.
But then something comes back to me. The feeling of holding a soft creature in my hands. This thing has got wings and they’re batting against my fingers. Furry. I’m holding a furry. I’m not sure exactly what a furry is, but suddenly I know there were loads of them in Roar.
Then my mind is full of furries – I see them hovering like dragonflies and sunbathing on stones, and Roar comes rushing back to me as fast as the furries’ beating wings.
I see me and Win standing on a ship – the Raven – and I feel the spray from the Bottomless Ocean stinging my eyes. I hear a shout to my left – ‘Get back! Before he burns your hair off !’ and I turn to see Rose tossing bits of doughnut to a hovering dragon.
Crowky lands with a thump on the deck of the Raven. His black wings billow around him like a cloud as he grips hold of my arm and hisses, ‘I’ve got you now, Arthur Trout! ’
Keeping my eyes squeezed shut and my mind stuffed full of Roar, I start to crawl further into the mattress. Left hand, right hand. I see Mitch – her blue hair trailing behind her, tangled and encrusted with shells. Left hand, right hand. I smell the bonfire and popcorn smell of Wininja’s cave. Left hand, right hand. Somewhere at the back of my brain I register that I should have fallen on to the attic floor by now, and that this is taking far too long, but I push the thought away and picture Roar’s night sky crammed so full of stars it looked like a bag of glitter had been thrown across black velvet.
There were millions of stars in Roar – blue, green, pink, purple – and their light was as warm as the sun. Those stars used to shine down on me and Rose when we were floating in Mitch’s lagoon. They made patterns on our skin.
I freeze, snapping back to where I am. But something has changed. My hands aren’t pressing into a soft and spongy mattress any more. They’re touching something cold and hard. Holding my breath, I feel around. The mattress has gone. I’m kneeling on stone!
Icy fear rushes through me. This is what I wanted to happen, wasn’t it? I wanted to crawl into the camp bed and for something magical to happen, but now rock is digging into my hands and knees, I’m so scared my whole body is shaking.
I force myself to open my eyes. Thick blackness surrounds me, but far ahead I can just make out a tiny pinprick of green light. And the air isn’t dusty any more. It’s cool and damp, and I can hear rushing water.
I start to crawl towards the green light. My head scrapes against the roof of the tunnel and rocks graze my hands, but I don’t stop until I reach the very end and the green light has become a curtain of leaves with light shining through it. Before I can change my mind I push my head through the leaves and crawl out into dazzling sunshine.
I blink and rub my eyes. I’m on a narrow ledge. I lean forward and see that the ledge is set into a cliff and far below me is a deep round pool. Trying to ignore the terrifying drop, I look straight ahead. I’m staring across a valley with a river winding through it. The river passes forests and mountains and glittering lakes. One side of the valley is bright and alive and bursting with leaves and colour, while the other half is shadowy and barren. The river has a shifting, swirling rainbow shine on its surface and it leads to a wild sea. Far, far away, beyond the sea, are snow-topped mountains.
Gazing at this unbelievable sight, I should feel lost and scared. But I don’t . . . because this is Roar.
Everything is quiet and still. The trees, the pool below me, even my breathing.
There’s a sudden flash of red feathers as a bird explodes from a tree. It swivels its head in my direction, blinks its beady eyes, then flies away.
I laugh and my voice echoes across the valley. Then I stand up on wobbly legs. The tunnel is behind me and the pool is far below me. But I don’t want to think about that. I haven’t got a clue how I’m going to get off this ledge. No way am I jumping.
I fumble in my pocket and pull out the map, thinking it might show me a safe way down, but before I can open it the ledge starts to tremble. Seconds later, a loud rumble comes from high above the cliff. Fear flashes through me as the rumble gets louder and the map is whipped from my hands by a sudden gust of wind. I look up just as a wave of water bursts over the top of the cliff and crashes down. The On-Off Waterfall, I think as the water smacks into me, knocking me off the ledge. How could I have forgotten the On-Off Waterfall?
I somersault through the air before plunging head first into cold, deep water.
My breath is punched out of me and water shoots up my nose. I panic, kicking out with my arms and legs, fighting my way up to the surface where I gasp for air.
I’m trying to work out if any of my bones are broken when something closes round me . . . a net! I struggle against the ropes, but they squeeze tight, forcing me into a ball. With a jerk, I’m whipped back up into the air so fast I don’t even have time to scream.
The net bounces a few times before coming to a stop. Now I’m dangling over the pool with my arms pinned to my sides and both knees squashed into my chin. Looking up, I see that the net is tied to the thick branch of a tree. With a squeak it begins to turn and I try to work out what on earth – or wherever I am – has just happened to me.
I know that I crawled through the camp bed, left Grandad’s attic and arrived here. I know my face is stinging from where I smacked into the pool, that my lungs ache from holding my breath and right now the spinning net is making me travel-sick. Could I be in some sort of camp bed-induced coma? Maybe I had a panic attack in the mattress and passed out?
The net comes to a stop, then starts to turn in the opposite direction. No, this is painfully real. And if I’m trapped like a fly in a web, then it means someone, or something, wants to trap me. My eyes flick to the trees surrounding the pool and my heart speeds up as I try to remember if we ever put any spiders in Roar.
Just then a blood-curdling scream shatters the silence and a robed, hooded figure leaps from a tree and lands on top of me. Trainers dig into my face as the figure yells, ‘SUBMIT OR DIE!’ and starts whacking me with a long stick.
No, I think as the stick smacks my legs and I catch a glimpse of silver. Not a stick: a bokken. Essentially it’s a metre ruler covered in silver foil, and I saw an identical one yesterday in Grandad’s attic. I know who that bokken belonged to in Roar: Wininja, my best non-real friend in the world.
‘Win, stop it!’ I shout. ‘It’s me!’
But he’s enjoying himself too much to even hear me. Instead he keeps hitting me and shouting, ‘SUBMIT OR DIE . . . SUBMIT OR DIE!’
‘I submit! I SUBMIT!’ Thwack goes the bokken right across my fingers. ‘Ow! Win, stop hitting me. It’s me, Arthur Trout!’
Win gasps and the bokken splashes into the pool, then he scampers round the net until we’re face to face. His head is covered by a ninja hood, but I can still see familiar grey eyes staring back at me. ‘Arthur . . . Arthur Trout? Master of Roar?’ He pokes a finger into my face. ‘You’ve come back. I DO NOT believe it!’
‘Neither do I,’ I blurt out. ‘I didn’t think you were real, but here you are: all solid and real, like me . . . or a wall . . . or a tree . . . or a trampoline –’
‘What are you on about, Arthur? Of course I’m real . . . And what’s a trampoline?’
‘It’s a . . . bouncy thing that people have in their garden. You jump on them.’
Win gasps. ‘I saw a trampoline yesterday, Arthur, when I came looking for you!’
The shadow at the window . . . ‘I knew it was you in Grandad’s attic,’ I say. ‘
No one believed me!’
Win nods eagerly. ‘That was me! I came to find you. I couldn’t believe it when I crawled into that room, looked out of that window and saw you and Rose!’
‘But if you came to find us, why did you go back to Roar?’ The net has come to a standstill and is swaying gently over the pool.
‘You and Rose said I was never allowed to visit Home, so I stood as still as a statue until you noticed me, then I disappeared back to Roar. I knew you’d understand.’
I shake my head. ‘Win, you should have written a note or something. You seriously freaked me out.’
‘Yeah, but it worked, didn’t it? You’re here.’
‘I think so . . .’
For a moment we just stare at each other, me curled in a ball and Win clinging to the net, like neither of us can quite believe our eyes.
Suddenly Win says, ‘Hey, do you like my new hood? Watch.’ He grabs the top of his hood and pulls it up, making it form a neat wizard’s hat. ‘WIZARD!’ he cries and I get a glimpse of his round cheeks and grin, before he pushes the pointy bit down and his face is hidden again. ‘Ninja . . .’ he whispers. Then he pulls the hood up. ‘WIZARD!’ Down it goes. ‘Ninja . . .’ Up. ‘WIZARD!’ Down. ‘Ninja . . . WIZARD! . . . Ninja . . . WIZARD!’
‘Wininja, I get it,’ I say weakly. ‘You’ve got a new wizard-hat-hood thingy, and it’s cool, but right now I think I might be sick and I’m struggling to get my head round the fact that I’m actually in Roar.’
He nods solemnly. ‘I know. It’s been a long time, and there have been a lot of changes, right? And the biggest change is me. I’ve buffed up massively. I’ve been doing ten press-ups a day and eating loads of apples because I’ve had to get in shape. You see, since you and Rose stopped visiting us, things have gone a bit . . . dodgy.’
The net creaks under our combined weight. ‘What do you mean, dodgy?’
Win sucks in his breath. ‘First, the unicorns disappeared and then the Lost Girls abandoned their camp. Then the earth wobbles began and sinkholes started opening up and a few weeks ago Roar nearly split in two. Oh, and you hardly ever see furries these days. I reckon loads of them have been eaten.’
The Land of Roar Page 4