Baxterr growled again. ‘Rrrr.’
In a rush she wrote – Each morning Baxterr walked Tuesday to school. On Mondays,Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, they walked home after school together.
But although the silvery thread was stretching across the back of Tuesday’s neck and down her right arm, her sentence wasn’t quite long enough for the words to reach all the way down to her right wrist, so Tuesday turned the full stop into a comma, and added – usually stopping to play frisbee in the park – which almost did the trick – and buy liquorice allsorts – which wasn’t the least bit true, but the silvery letters were encircling the fingers of her right hand and drifting towards her middle.
But on Fridays, she continued, Tuesday and Baxterr flew home, because Baxterr was a magic dog with magic wings.
Still, the typewriter was producing two kinds of words – the black ink ones that were staying on the page, and the silver thread-like ones. She typed faster and faster: Tuesday had always thought it was lovely to have a magic dog with magic wings, but a day came when it was more than just lovely. It was essential. Because on this particular day Tuesday had discovered that her mother was missing and although her father (who was wise about many things) said she would soon be back, Tuesday felt sure that something terrible had happened. Wherever her mother was, she must be in need of help and it was up to Tuesday, and Baxterr, to find her and bring her home.
The thread looped once, twice, thrice around Tuesday’s chest and she was feeling quite lightheaded, as if she had spun around on the lounge room carpet several times. Soon the letters cocooned her, growing larger and brighter. Tuesday continued to type, her eyes fixed on the page: The tricky part was knowing where to find her mother. Tuesday had only two clues. 1: her mother had left the window open. 2: her mother had left two words –The End – in a silver box on her desk. Tuesday knew that although the story her mother was writing was very nearly at The End, it wasn’t quite there yet.
‘That was it!’ Tuesday thought. Her mother must be stuck, somewhere near The End, wherever that was. The more she thought about it, the more she felt sure that this was exactly what had happened: her mother was having trouble at The End. Everyone knew it was hard to begin a story, but much harder to actually finish one.
At that moment a long silver thread snaked upwards as if it wanted to pull Tuesday into the air. She pulled it back and tucked it firmly into her pyjama pocket, then continued typing. She wrote: But just as Baxterr was no ordinary dog, Tuesday was no ordinary daughter. She was determined to find her mother, no matter what it took.
There was no mistaking it. Tuesday was in a swirl of silver threads so fine and sparkly that it was like being inside spun toffee and she was lifting up out of the chair. Her feet were off the ground and she was rising up, up, up.
‘Oh, Baxterr,’ Tuesday giggled. ‘Look at me! I’m taking off!’
Baxterr barked loudly. Tuesday twisted and turned, gasping at the novelty of floating above her mother’s desk.
‘I’m flying. I’m really flying,’ she said in wonder. ‘Oh, Baxterr, don’t just bark. Jump! Jump!’
And in a moment of moonlight and silvery letters in a room full of books all higgledy-piggledy, Baxterr took an enormous leap right up into Tuesday’s arms.
‘Tuesday!’ came her father’s voice, and there was Denis McGillycuddy, standing at the doorway in his tartan dressing gown.
‘Tuesday, come down from there,’ he called.
But Tuesday felt deliciously happy, as if she’d just jumped into a swimming pool on a hot afternoon. Baxter was panting in her arms as if he too felt the delicious, giddy feeling that was sweeping over Tuesday. He did not appear the least bit worried about floating with Tuesday towards the open window.
‘We’re going to find Mum,’ Tuesday said to Denis.
‘Oh, dear,’ said her father. ‘I saw it coming, but I didn’t expect it quite so soon.’
‘What?’ Tuesday asked.
‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘You’re off! You’re off! A story has got hold of you. There’s no denying the undeniable, no dilly-dallying with the un-delayable. Off you go then! Follow the words, my love, that’s what a writer does. Just follow the words.’
‘But I’m not a writer,’ Tuesday called to him.
She and Baxterr were pulled gently over the windowsill by the thread. She could see the streetlights on Brown Street far below. She turned back and saw her father pluck her page of writing from the typewriter and examine it.
He nodded and called out, ‘Oh, I think you are, my love. I think you truly are. But you mustn’t stop. Keep on!’
Her father and the window grew smaller and smaller as the thread drew Tuesday and Baxterr on, away from the house and up into the sky. Denis McGillycuddy called out one more time. Tuesday couldn’t be sure, but she thought he said, ‘Blueberry pancakes for breakfast!’ Then she turned towards the silvery thread that stretched out as far as the stars ahead of her. She smiled, and let the air rush over her.
If you had been watching from where Denis McGillycuddy stood, then what you would have seen is this: a girl and a dog disappearing, as if a door had opened and then closed in the vast darkness of the night sky.
Chapter Three
All at once, there was nothing but night. Tuesday’s house was nowhere to be seen. With a shiver of fear, Tuesday realised that Brown Street itself had disappeared, as had City Park, and her school too, and indeed the entire city in which she had spent her life so far. She was swimming in darkness.
An enormous moon lit up remnants of cloud, and stars that were bigger and brighter than she had ever known stars to be blinked in the endless black. It was very quiet other than a low, rushing noise as she and Baxterr were swept along behind the silver thread. The giddy feeling that had gripped Tuesday as she had been lifted into flight was evaporating, and Tuesday was beginning to worry about the fact that she was drifting high in a night sky with nothing more than a string of shimmering words and silvery sentences to keep her aloft. Baxterr planted a reassuring lick on her cheek, then turned his face into the breeze with the same expression of blissful freedom that he had whenever he stuck his head out of the car window.
If Baxterr wasn’t afraid, Tuesday thought, then perhaps she ought not to be afraid either. Maybe, her mother did this all the time. Perhaps, on those occasions when Tuesday had believed her mother to be curled up in her red velvet chair, Serendipity had actually been up here, flying away to … where?
There was no doubt that this was an adventure, Tuesday thought, and it occurred to her that she hadn’t any first-hand experience in real adventures. All the adventures she had ever been part of had been with characters in books. She’d never actually had to scale towering cliffs or fight ferocious pirates or take a flying fox across a gaping ravine. She didn’t like snakes and she certainly couldn’t use a sword. She could swim, but she’d never tried to swim a rushing river. She couldn’t shoot an arrow from a bow and she’d never sailed a boat or even caught a fish. It was very hard to learn any of the things you needed for an adventure when you lived in a city. The one thing she could do was run quite fast. She usually finished second or third in the school races. That might come in handy if she had to run away from danger. Although she wasn’t sure running away was going to be much use in getting her mother back from wherever she was stuck. She might have to be braver than that.
Soon Tuesday was approaching a vast cloud shaped like a moonlit lake. It was dark at the edges, but light was spilling from the middle. As they flew closer Tuesday could see that in the centre of the lake of cloud was a small green hilltop with a single broad leafy tree. The thread of silver words stretching ahead was diving down towards the tree. It was as if the tree below had caught the long thread and was reeling Tuesday and Baxterr in like fish on a line.
In hardly any time at all they made landfall. Tuesday tumbled onto the grass beside Baxterr, who came to rest gracefully on all four paws. Hanging from the tree’s branches, just above
Tuesday’s head, was her silver string. It rolled itself swiftly into a neat and compact ball that fell into her outstretched palm. It looked, now, like an ordinary ball of silver twine. She took a length of it between her hands and tugged. It was quite strong.
Tuesday looked around. All there was to see was the tree, and a hilltop covered in green grass and tiny white daisies. Whatever lay beyond was obscured by cloud. Tuesday examined the tree more closely. It seemed to her to be very old indeed. She walked a circle around its amazingly broad trunk, but she did not find her mother sitting up against it with her notebook in her hand. She peered up into the tree’s wide and gnarly branches, but her mother was not perched among them.
It was very quiet, as if Tuesday and Baxterr were the only people in the universe.
‘Hello?’ Tuesday called out. ‘Mum?’
No answer came, not even an echo of Tuesday’s own voice.
‘Hello? Hello? Mum?’ Tuesday called again.
Still no answer came. The tree’s bright green leaves rustled, whispering to each other in some leafy language that Tuesday did not understand.
Tuesday dropped the ball of thread, willing it to unravel and lead the way, but it fell to the ground. She nudged it with her foot, hoping that it would roll purposefully in one direction or another so that she might follow. But it simply sat there, glinting slightly in the pale light.
‘What do I do now?’ she asked the thread as she picked it up and rolled it about in her hands. ‘Follow the words. That’s what Dad said. But how can I follow the words if they don’t go anywhere?’
Tuesday looked to her dog for an answer, but he was busy sniffing out smells in the grass.
‘Oh, I don’t know what to do,’ she moaned.
Then a single leaf floated free from the tree and twirled down in front of Tuesday’s face. She caught it by its stem and flattened it out on her palm where she could examine it carefully. It was a heart-shaped leaf, and like every other leaf Tuesday had ever seen, it had little veiny lines on it. But unlike the little veiny lines on any other leaf, this leaf had lines that had arranged themselves into what appeared to be writing. It was writing! Tuesday peered closely. She had to squint to make out the words written on the underside of the leaf.
Begin, start, commence, set off, strike out, she read.
‘Baxterr!’ she called. ‘Doggo, look at this. Maybe these are the words we’re supposed to follow! Begin, start …’
But Baxterr’s gaze was fixed on the sky. He gave a sharp bark as another silver strand of words appeared above them. It had been fashioned into a lasso, and it was whirling rapidly towards the tree. Tuesday instinctively ducked behind the tree trunk and called Baxterr to her. With her arm around his middle, she could feel how his little body was tensed up, ready to spring into action if necessary. The loop of the lasso circled an outer branch of the tree and pulled tight. A person streaked through the air at great speed, turned a tidy forward flip and landed on his feet.
‘Yes!’ he said, pumping the air with his fist. He looked to be only a few years older than Tuesday, a teenager with dark blond hair, long gangly legs and arms, and a wide, square face. He was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, runners and a backpack.
Peering cautiously around the tree, Tuesday watched as the boy attempted to free his lasso from the branch.
‘C’mon,’ the boy said, yanking at the thread, and at last, in a blur of silver, the thread wound itself into a ball, just as Tuesday’s had done, though Tuesday noticed that the boy’s ball of thread was much bigger than hers. The boy shrugged his backpack off and slipped the thread into one of its pockets. Evidently thinking himself to be alone, he then buried his index finger in one of his nostrils, picked out a bogey, and chewed it off the end of his fingertip. Tuesday pulled a face.
When she sneaked another look, the boy was facing the tree. Tuesday drew back, grateful for the size of the trunk. She wasn’t sure why she was hiding, but it seemed like a good idea until she knew a little more.
‘Action-packed thriller,’ the boy said, as if he were speaking to the tree. ‘Heroes, bad guys, radical plot twists, plenty of explosions.’
One of the tree’s lower branches sprouted a russet-coloured pod that burst out into a weather-beaten leather jacket and a pair of commando-style boots. The boy sat on the other side of the tree and slipped off his runners. He struggled to loosen the laces of the enormous boots and wedge his feet inside.
‘Couldn’t you make them with Velcro?’ he asked, as he got himself into an awful tangle involving the various holes and metal hooks that the laces had to be poked through and wound around.
After hearing this struggle go on for some minutes, Tuesday slipped from her hiding place.
‘Would you like a hand with those?’ she asked.
The boy looked up and stared at Tuesday, who found herself acutely aware that she was wearing pyjamas: her favourite cupcake pyjamas that she had mostly grown out of at the ankles and the wrists.
‘It’s just that I’m good with laces,’ she continued, ‘and you seem to be having trouble.’
The boy shook his head decisively.
‘No way,’ he said.‘I don’t have girls in my books. Look, the dog maybe,’ he said, eyeing Baxterr. ‘But no girls. So, be off.’
He flicked his hand at Tuesday as if she were an annoying insect to be shooed away.
‘I’m sorry, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding,’ said Tuesday. ‘I don’t want to be in your book.’
‘Good,’ said the boy.
He stood up, leaving his laces wound haphazardly about the tops of his boots.
‘That will never do,’ said Tuesday. ‘You’ll trip over. Sit down.’
To her surprise, the boy did sit down. Tuesday made short work of weaving the laces in the necessary crosswise pattern and finishing off with a sturdy double-knot.
‘Hah. Thanks,’ said the boy, looking down at the boots, pleased. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘I’m looking for my mother,’ said Tuesday, sitting down beside the boy. ‘She didn’t come home last night, you see. So I was fiddling with her typewriter, and then this silvery thread …’ Tuesday pulled her mysterious ball of thread out of her pocket, and the boy’s eyes grew wide.
‘What the … you’re a … oh, I see. Hey,’ said the boy uncertainly.
‘Hey,’ said Tuesday, not sure what the boy was saying.
His expression was curious, cautious even.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Tuesday,’ said Tuesday. ‘Tuesday McGillycuddy.’
‘Never heard of you,’ he said suspiciously.
‘Why should you have heard of me?’ Tuesday asked, confused.
‘Okay,’ he said slowly. ‘So this is your first time here, right?’
‘Yes,’ Tuesday confirmed.
The boy raised his eyebrows and gave an unfriendly little chuckle.
‘Well, you’ve got a long way to go then,’ he said. ‘Just so you know, I’m Blake Luckhurst. The Blake Luckhurst,’ he added, pointing a finger at himself.
His name did vaguely ring a bell, but Tuesday couldn’t quite place it.
Seeing Tuesday’s blank face he continued, ‘First published at twelve. Million books sold by the time I was thirteen. Two films in the making. Jack Bonner – my hero – bestselling action figure last Christmas, in case you’ve been living on the moon.’ Blake Luckhurst had a very annoying way of speaking as if having to converse with Tuesday at all was wasting both his time and his intelligence.
‘Oh, so you’re a writer,’ said Tuesday, thinking out loud.
‘Oh, Yesterday, you are so fast,’ said Blake sarcastically. ‘And I guess you’re thinking of becoming a writer, too. Or is it him?’ he snorted, pointing at Baxterr. ‘Got a shaggy dog story, fella?’ Baxterr gave an offended ruff and cocked his head.
‘It’s Tuesday,’ she corrected, in case he had somehow misheard her name, though she suspected he hadn’t. Tuesday was used to being teased about her
name, but she had learned that if she didn’t get upset about the teasing it eventually stopped. ‘And this is Baxterr,’ she continued. ‘As a matter of fact, neither of us is a writer. My mother is the writer, and we’re here to find her.’
‘Well,’ said Blake, ‘if you’re lucky, your story might not completely suck. Meanwhile, I’ve got a publisher breathing down my neck, so I’m off to The End. Ciao,Yesterday.’
With that, Blake Luckhurst picked up his backpack and walked away.
‘The End?’ Tuesday asked, jumping to her feet and following him. ‘I think my mother’s at The End. You see, she’s lost and I’m trying to find her. Could I come with you?’
Blake looked at Tuesday incredulously. ‘Yeah, right,’ he said, then strode away in earnest.
‘Wait!’ yelled Tuesday, racing down the hill after him. ‘Blake, wait! Please wait!’
Baxterr, picking up the scent of a chase, hurtled downhill, overtaking Tuesday and barking excitedly. Just as Blake was about to step into the whiteness of the cloudbank ahead, Baxterr caught the ankle of his jeans neatly between his front teeth.
The boy shook his leg, trying to loosen Baxterr’s grip on his trousers, but Baxterr only stared up at him stubbornly. Blake ran his fingers through his mop of blond hair and tried to smile at Tuesday, as if he thought that might help.
‘C’mon, we’re all friends here, Yesterday,’ he said. ‘Tell your dog to let go.’
‘First tell me the way to The End,’ said Tuesday fiercely.
‘You don’t know anything, do you?’ said Blake.
Tuesday glared at him.
‘Well, I know two things,’ she said. ‘You pick your nose and eat it, and you can’t even tie your own shoelaces, so I don’t know why you think you’re so great.’
Blake Luckhurst’s face reddened.
‘Okay, fair enough,’ said Blake in a softer voice. ‘But it’s like storytelling kindergarten – you can’t get to The End unless you’ve been to The Beginning and The Middle. I mean, that’s how books work.’
Finding Serendipity Page 3