by Pauline Fisk
Mad Dog cupped the tiny figures in his hands. It wasn’t for funeral services that he’d come back up Plynlimon. It wasn’t for burials. If he’d thought it was, he’d got it wrong. He might have failed to rescue his parents once – and lived in shame because of it – but he could rescue them now.
Holding the necklace carefully, Mad Dog inched as close as he could get to the place where mountain and sky went their separate ways. Before him, he could see the silver river making its long journey between the stars. There were colours in that river that he’d never seen before and for which he had no names. Standing on the edge of the world, he watched them twisting, winking and flowing away. Once his mother had seen this river too, and raised her arms to it and wished that she could make its journey hers.
And now it lay in her son’s power to make that wish come true.
Mad Dog threw the necklace as far as he could. It arched over the river and its chains burst open. A thousand silver charms started raining down. One by one, they struck the river’s surface and were carried away. And a thousand silver sighs – including those of Mad Dog’s parents – whispered ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’.
31
The Most Noble Form of Travelling
Afterwards Mad Dog sat on the edge of Plynlimon, as close as he could get to the immense expanse of space, knowing that the mountain’s treasure was his for the night. The river flowed away from him, looping over Plynlimon Fawr, almost touching it before cruising on over other mountaintops like the fiery tail of an enormous comet, and finally flowing away, leaving the earth behind and heading for the moon and stars.
But, for all that it was magical and utterly mysterious, it was a real river too – as real as any Rheidol that Mad Dog had ever called his friend. As it disappeared across the sky, Mad Dog watched fish leaping in its silver waters and kingfishers darting down them along with swans and herons, dabs and ducks, dipping cormorants and tall-necked geese, all heading off towards the stars as if theirs was an ordinary journey on just an ordinary night.
The entire river, it seemed, teemed with life. There were even boats on it, to Mad Dog’s astonishment. When the first went past, he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. There were even people in those boats. Ordinary people just like him. It was incredible. How had they got there, out on that water? And where were they going?
Mad Dog waved, and the people waved back and clapped their hands at him as if they knew about the silver necklace and were saying good for you. Mad Dog couldn’t have felt prouder if a procession of strangers kitted out in red-and-white had stopped to raise their feathered hats to him, or an army of soldiers to raise their standards and helmets.
The river carried them past in dinghies, sailing barges, tugs, trows, rowing boats and even tiny coracles, crewed by every sort of person from the youngest child to oldest man. Their boats were decorated with ribbons and the people called out to each other, laughing like kids on a school trip, and singing snatches of song that burst upon the night, only fading as they disappeared.
But one song didn’t fade – and that was the song of the river itself. At first Mad Dog thought that another boat must be coming along, bigger than all the others, because the sound had the power of a distant ocean. But no boat came along, and the sound only grew, and it was then that Mad Dog realised that the river was making its own music.
The song that Mad Dog heard that night was unlike anything he’d ever heard. As he sat there, drinking it all in, the river swelled like an orchestra. It soared like a choir. It opened out its lungs like an opera diva full of arias. Caught up in the air, Mad Dog heard a hint of blues, a hint of salsa, a whiff of jazz bands, rock bands, gospel choirs and string quartets.
The river’s song was a lover’s croon. It was a folk singer’s ballad, brooding and sweet. It was a child’s lullaby. A soul sister’s funk. Every type of music Mad Dog had ever heard, and every type he was yet to hear, was wrapped up in that song. Caught up in it, Mad Dog could hear electric guitars, tambourines, drums, whistles, cellos, clarinets, piano accordions, backing vocalists – even air guitarists playing in hope. Yet there was nothing discordant about it. All those different sounds, yet nothing was off-key. Nothing clamoured to break free. Nothing was the prisoner of anything else. Everything worked together perfectly.
Mad Dog laughed out loud. How could he not? This was a song of joy for open roads – a traveller’s song for wide horizons and journeys without maps. For new adventures waiting to be had. For uncharted territories and taking risks. For never knowing what would happen next.
By now all the boats had disappeared, one after another like floats on a carnival parade. But Mad Dog knew that if he lived to be a hundred and spent the whole time adventuring, he’d never witness a more noble form of travelling. What a river this was, he thought to himself. What a king and queen of rivers! What a mother, father, sister, brother, aunty and uncle of all rivers!
‘Anything could happen on a river like this!’
The voice behind him put the words into his mouth. Mad Dog turned around to find the sailors standing behind him.
‘Anything,’ he agreed.
No sooner was the word out than one final tiny boat came bobbing along, completely empty as if waiting for a crew. Mad Dog took one look at it and knew what would happen next. Sure enough, the boat began to detach itself from the main thrust of the river, cutting back against the current and heading for the shore.
Mad Dog watched its progress, knowing that it was coming for him. His mouth went dry and his heart began to pound. All he had to do, he realised, was wait until the boat was close enough, then wade out to it and climb on board. It was easy. It didn’t take Trojan blood to do a thing like that. Didn’t take his mother telling him that he’d always be a rover, or that he should trust in the power of the open road.
But, as the boat continued to come closer, Mad Dog broke out in a sweat. Was this something he should do, or was it something he’d regret? What would happen if he got in that boat, and where would it take him? Who would he become, and what would he have to leave behind?
The boat continued to bob his way until it was close enough to almost touch. Here it danced on the spot, impatient to be gone. The sailors waded out to steady it, then turned back towards Mad Dog as if expecting him to be behind them, waiting to climb on board.
But Mad Dog held back. It wasn’t fear of adventure that caused him to hesitate, or lack of readiness for the journey. Faced with leaving them, it was the people that he’d never see again. He had a brother, didn’t he – a brother who, if he went, would have no one left from his old life. Then there were his friends to think about – Hippie, Luke, Rhys and all the rest of them. Then there were Aunty and Uncle. Once they’d wanted to adopt him because they loved him, they said, and he hadn’t believed them, but now he did.
Besides, Mad Dog thought to himself, he’d promised to never run away again, and maybe Aunty and Uncle weren’t that hot at keeping promises themselves, but they’d always done their best for him and clearing off like this seemed a poor reward.
The boat bobbed, increasingly impatient to get away. The sailors struggled to hold it steady but Mad Dog told them not to wait.
‘Go without me,’ he said.
The sailors looked astonished, as if they wouldn’t dream of it, no matter what they might have done only a few hours before, back at the hotel – not on a journey of this magnitude. But Mad Dog had known, from the moment he’d turned round and seen them there behind him, how things would end up. It had been obvious even before the boat had come along. In fact it had been obvious years ago, if he stopped to think about it, sitting round the fire at No. 3, the sailors saying, ‘But there is no journey’s end. That’s what we’ve discovered. All horizons lead to new ones, all discovery to even more.’
‘Go,’ Mad Dog said. ‘I mean it, go.’
The sailors didn’t need to be told a third time. Mad Dog watched them helping each other into the boat. He wished that he could go with them but un
derstood what held him back and knew he’d made the right choice.
‘One day,’ he said, wading out to them, ‘I’ll bring the others with me and we’ll catch you up. At least I hope we will. I’ll do my best.’
He reached the boat but didn’t get in. The three of them looked at each other as if they understood that there’d be no surprise returns this time – no storms to bring them back together, and definitely no possibility of postcards. Mad Dog dug through his pockets, wanting to give the sailors something to remember him by. At first he couldn’t find anything but then his hand pulled out a crumpled feather that had once looked white but now, in the extraordinary light given off by the river, shone like silver.
Mad Dog smoothed it out. He’d made the right choice here, as well. Red stood for blood and earth and tattooed maps and things that had to be possessed. It was the colour of the Manager. But silver was the colour of the river – and it was Mad Dog’s colour too.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Once, someone gave me this. Now you take it.’
The sailors took the feather just before the little boat started moving away. For a moment it trembled as if the greatness of the journey ahead just might overwhelm it. It looked small and vulnerable, like a nutshell about to be caught up in a mighty flood.
‘Don’t you worry about us,’ the sailors called. ‘This isn’t the first time we’ve gone off into the unknown. We’ll be all right. We always have been and we always will. Goodbye, goodbye. We won’t forget you.’
‘You’d better not,’ Mad Dog called back. Then they were gone, swept up in the main thrust of the river, and the last he saw of them was a silver feather, shining like a beacon to point the way.
Long afterwards, Mad Dog stayed on. The sun broke over the hills and the silver river was shot through with gold. Mad Dog watched it shining right across the sky. Then it faded with the stars, and he mightn’t have known what became of it, but here where it arose – here on the mountain where he’d lost his parents, and found a treasure, and heard a song that he hoped one day to hear again – Mad Dog felt the river heal him.
Everything was made right by it. Everything. And, more than right, it was made good.
Also by Pauline Fisk for Bloomsbury
SABRINA FLUDDE
THE RED JUDGE
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 2009
This electronic edition published in December 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
Copyright © Pauline Fisk 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Original poem in Welsh by Lewis Glyn Cothi,
English version from George Borrow’s Wild Wales
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978-1-4088-5247-7
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