Blueberry Pancakes Forever

by Angelica Banks

  Though there was no sun to guide her, Tuesday sensed the day growing old. She didn’t want to be out on this turbulent sea in the dark. She stared up at the marauding grey clouds, willing Baxterr’s shape to wing its way down to the ship and whisk her to safety. And then she remembered the way Vivienne had stared so deliberately up into the rigging before Loddon threw her overboard. What had she been trying to say?

  Tuesday stood up and, holding on to the railing, made her way along the ship.

  ‘Thinking of a swim, Writer?’ Loddon called.

  She turned and stared at him, then nonchalantly observed the rigging.

  ‘Are you having fun, Writer? Are you ready to tell me a story?’ Loddon called.

  Spotting a tiny movement above, Tuesday quickly looked back into Loddon’s eyes and held his gaze, all the while aware of the tiny pointed face and dark eyes she had glimpsed. Ermengarde, Tuesday thought, her spirits lifting to see Vivienne’s rodent companion. She felt sure Loddon would not like Ermengarde, and she didn’t want to take any chances. If she ever saw Vivienne Small again, she wanted to deliver Ermengarde safely back to her care.

  Tuesday leaned against the mast.

  ‘No, I’m not ready to tell you a story,’ she called, and was slightly amazed that her words came out sounding as confident as they did.

  After a moment, Tuesday felt Ermengarde’s tiny front paws on the nape of her neck. Then her back paws before Ermengarde disappeared inside the hood of Tuesday’s poncho. She was relieved that Loddon was too busy negotiating the ship over a wave to have seen a thing.

  ‘But why won’t you tell me a story?’ he called.

  ‘Well, I’m cold for one thing, and I’m hungry,’ Tuesday replied, feeling Ermengarde settle on her shoulder. She raised her hand as if to rub her neck, gave Ermengarde’s warm body a brief pat, then arranged the hood more closely about her neck as if to protect herself from the sea spray. ‘And you just threw my friend into the sea. Why should I tell you a story at all?’

  ‘Oh, but stories stop the hunger. They make everything better. You know that. On rainy days. Sunny days. On days when there was only shouting in the house. You didn’t want to be inside. So you’d run away and stay under the tree with me and tell me stories. Stories, you said then, were even better than food because they never ran out. You promised they’d never run out.’

  Tuesday frowned. She remembered her father making toasted ham-on-cheese-on-more-cheese sandwiches and her mother saying, ‘Until I met your father, I actually cared nothing for food. I would have been happy to eat once a week. I much preferred writing to eating. But, eventually, his grilled cheese sandwiches won me over.’

  ‘And my macaroni cheese,’ her father had added.

  ‘And your cheese soufflé.’

  ‘And my cheese and chive omelette.’

  Tuesday and her parents would go on, thinking of every dish Denis had ever put cheese in. ‘Bolognaise with cheese. Cheese pretzels. Cheesy pizza. Cheese on bacon on …’

  ‘Loddon?’ Tuesday asked.

  ‘Yes?’ said Loddon, and his smile was like a rainbow appearing. ‘Yes, Writer?’

  ‘Loddon, how long have I been gone?’

  ‘Such a long time. Such a long, long, long, long time. I was down there, in my box, underneath the tree. And then the stories stopped. They just stopped. And it was lonely. I waited. I waited so long, but you forgot me, didn’t you? I got hungry. I got so hungry, Writer. And then the breaking day happened.’

  ‘The breaking day? What is the breaking day?’

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ said Loddon.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will,’ he said.

  He pointed. Ahead, Tuesday saw a shadow of steep coastline. But there was something wrong with it. It didn’t resemble any coastline she had seen before. She squinted, trying to make sense of the irregular shapes and dark patches. And as the ship sailed closer, making its way right up to what had once been cliffs, Tuesday realised that the cliffs had been split open. What kind of force could do this? she wondered. She stared in awe at the giant rocks that lay, shattered and sheared, along the edge of the land. There were others that had tumbled into the sea, and now stood like dark icebergs among the waves. Loddon guided Storm Rider in between the broken cliffs

  ‘What happened here?’ Tuesday asked.

  ‘I dug my way out. And I brought Storm Rider with me,’ he said. ‘All on my own. No one to help. No one to hear.’

  In the lee of the rocks and broken cliffs, the sea was calm at last. The ship’s rigging ceased its creaking and the wind subsided. The deck stopped heaving and Tuesday took a deep breath of relief.

  ‘But what caused this?’ she asked. ‘Was there an earthquake?’

  Loddon said nothing. His gaze was fixed ahead, navigating between the chunks of rock and rubble until Tuesday heard the ship grind against rock. Storm Rider had come to rest, leaning slightly to one side

  ‘We have to go on foot from here,’ he said.

  ‘Where are we going, Loddon?’ Tuesday asked.

  ‘You know where we’re going.’ He smiled. His hair was brighter than ever now it wasn’t being blown about by the wind. ‘We’re going home.’

  ‘But, maybe I don’t want to go to this … home,’ said Tuesday, willing her voice to still sound strong. How would anyone find her if she went wherever Loddon was taking her? How would Baxterr find her? How would she ever find her way out?

  ‘Ridiculous!’ said Loddon. ‘Home is the best place in the world. You know that. You’ve just forgotten. I’ll lead the way.’

  ‘Loddon, I don’t want to go,’ said Tuesday. She forced a smile. ‘I’m happy to stay here.’

  Loddon picked up a rope and wound it about his arm. He walked towards her as Tuesday took a step backwards. ‘If you don’t come now, I will tie you up and carry you.’

  ‘I’ll walk,’ said Tuesday, raising her hands as if she gave up. ‘You don’t need to tie me up.’

  ‘Down you go, then,’ he said with a laugh, indicating the ladder at the side of the ship.

  Tuesday reached up and rubbed her neck again, reassuring the hidden Ermengarde that everything was all right, then climbed down the ladder ahead of Loddon. The shore was dark and lustrous and as soon as Tuesday’s feet touched the ground, she heard a ferocious cracking sound. A great splinter appeared at her feet and zigzagged away. The land was frozen!

  ‘Chilly, isn’t it?’ said Loddon. ‘But not at home. No, no, no.’

  Seemingly unperturbed by the ice on his bare green feet, he scrambled ahead and tied the ship’s bow rope around a large boulder that was high up on the shore.

  ‘I will lead the way, Writer. What was that story you told me? First star to the right then straight on ’til morning!’

  Tuesday was pretty certain it was ‘second star to the right’ but she did not correct Loddon as she observed that the first star had indeed appeared in the sky. Night had come. She searched keenly for a winged shadow, but all she could see was that one star amid a mass of murky clouds. It was bitterly cold and Tuesday’s breath fogged ahead of her. Then she felt something gently, coldly, touch her cheek. It was a snowflake. She put out her hands and soon her palms were dotted with the tiny white slivers of snow.

  ‘Come along, Writer,’ said Loddon. ‘Winter isn’t leaving anytime soon.’

  Tuesday stroked Ermengarde again as she pulled the hood over her head, glad for at least one small friend to be accompanying her on this strange journey.

  They began to walk, Loddon leading the way. The snow was falling in earnest and the world was muffled. The only noise was that of Loddon’s feet crunching against ice and fallen rock, and her own footsteps following behind. Glancing back, Tuesday saw the ship silhouetted against the dark horizon, its white sails turning grey and ghostly in the deepening snowfall.

  Their path was little more than a split between two walls that got higher and higher as they went. It seemed to Tuesday that their thoroughfare had been mad
e by something big and heavy that had passed through with enough force to push aside rocks and boulders. Tuesday wondered what this thing had been, and she was sure Loddon had something to do with it.

  ‘C’mon, Writer,’ he called again, loping ahead of her.

  In that moment, Tuesday knew what every writer knows. That even though you have no idea what is going to happen next, you have to go on. And so she went on, with Ermengarde hidden on her shoulder. After a moment, another little fragment of the verse popped into her head.

  The boy called Loddon underneath the tree.

  I wonder if he calls to me?

  I put him in a box far down below,

  Down where all the stories go.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she whispered. ‘You’re okay,’ she said to Ermengarde. ‘We’re both okay.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tuesday followed Loddon along the crevasse away from the sea. As they walked, the night darkened and the snow thickened until they had to wade through it. After a long time, the deep crevasse ended in the black mouth of a tunnel.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Loddon. He flourished a hand at the tunnel entrance.

  ‘In there?’ Tuesday asked.

  ‘Down, down below,’ said Loddon.

  Tuesday peered around, searching for somewhere else, anywhere else, to go. But there was nowhere else. So she stepped into the tunnel. Inside, it was eerily quiet. Tuesday could hear her heartbeat echoing in her ears.

  ‘Down below. You know. Just the way you imagined it,’ Loddon said, taking the lead again.

  The tunnel had score marks in the ceiling and a single deep rut in the floor. The walls were smooth as if a giant earthmover had scoured them away. Loddon, Tuesday discovered, gave off a faint glow in the gloom, and his smell – a rich, fetid smell – became apparent. Still, the glow was welcome. It was like having a giant glow-worm walking ahead of her.

  When they came to a sheer and icy wall, Tuesday at last understood what had produced this tunnel. The enormous outline of Storm Rider was imprinted in the fractured remains of the wall. Tuesday realised that Loddon must have dragged the huge sailing ship up out of the earth, towing it behind him as he walked. Tuesday felt a chill climb her spine. Just how strong was this grassboy?

  Then something else in the ice wall caught Tuesday’s eye. She stared, then wiped her hand across the freezing, glassy surface. Buried deep inside she glimpsed a large, pale page printed with a few enormous blurry words. It was as if someone had magnified a page from a menu. She made out the beautiful script: Crème Brûlée. Below that Mousse au Chocol … but the rest of the word must have broken away when Loddon hacked his way through. Eyes wide, Tuesday continued on through the ship-shaped tunnel, a few steps behind Loddon. A little further on, poking out of another ice wall, were the remains of a flickering pink neon sign. It read: Sweet Cactus. After that, Tuesday came across an enormous record player. The needle was still on a record, as if the music were still playing.

  On the far side of an ice fissure that seemed to reach down into an infinite darkness, Tuesday discovered a giant pink suit jacket frozen into a puddle. Something about the jacket made Tuesday feel terribly sad. It reminded her of her father, and she realised that with everything that had happened since leaving Brown Street, she had hardly thought about Denis at all. At times over the past year, Tuesday had tried to teach herself not to think about her father. But she had discovered that not thinking about someone was sometimes more painful than thinking about them. So, she gave herself over to thinking what Denis would make of all this.

  ‘It’s a magical mystery, Tuesday. It’s a chilling thriller. Ice is not always nice. It’s winter and the walls of the world are all awry. Keep your wits about you. It’s a puzzle, but possibly not an impossible one.’

  Instinctively Tuesday reached up and stroked the warm bundle of Ermengarde at the nape of her neck. The little rat sniffed at her hand and Tuesday felt her teeth gently nibbling her fingers.

  ‘I’m hungry too,’ she murmured.

  Tuesday found, wedged in a ruptured wall of ice, a bright orange dancing shoe that was several times larger than it ought to be. Then a huge cup with a broken handle and a picture of a camel on its side. Not far after the cup there appeared an enormous set of skis, and much further on – after she had followed Loddon across fissures and skirted crevices and clambered over rocks where the tunnel had subsided – there was an over-sized daisy chain hanging from a curve of wall. When Tuesday reached out to touch it, she realised the flower was made of paper.

  Countless times, Tuesday had asked how much further would it be, and when they would get there, and where were they going, but all she had received from Loddon was the same infuriating answer.

  ‘I had to come such a long way to find you, Writer.’

  Tuesday couldn’t decide whether this was more or less irritating than his constant humming. ‘Hm hm hm, nee nee nee, ni ni ni neee, hmmmm, wa wa waaa …’

  After a while, he broke into a fragment of verse, struggling to find the words.

  I am Loddon, underneath the tree,

  I can’t see you, if you can’t see me.

  I am hidden underneath the tree,

  Have you come to visit me?

  I can see me, I can …

  See see see, me, me, me,

  Down in the garden, underneath the tree …

  He turned back to Tuesday. ‘What comes next, Writer?’

  ‘I don’t know and I won’t know until we get there.’

  He shrugged, and then resumed his tuneless humming. In order to drown it out, Tuesday began whistling, which made her feel strangely happy.

  The tunnel was narrowing, the walls and ceiling gradually closing in. Tuesday could still see the deep groove the keel had made in the path, and the marks the rigging had left in the ceiling above, but it was as if Storm Rider had been smaller down here. The ice was melting and leaking, creating puddles in the path and small rivers in the walls. Tuesday poked her tongue out and tasted a little waterfall. It was slightly salty, but not bitter. She slurped at it, grateful for the moisture in her mouth. Allowing Loddon to go on ahead of her, she lifted Ermengarde out from under her poncho and offered her the water. The little black rat drank some, then looked about, her whiskers quivering. Tuesday tucked her back inside her poncho and they went on, ever downwards, and deeper into the earth.

  Strangely, though, Tuesday had a sense that instead of it becoming darker as they went on, there was actually more light to see by. A pale gleam was seeping towards them from further down the tunnel and the green glow about Loddon was dimming. And Tuesday felt warmer. Soon, she slipped back her hood, and then took off the poncho altogether, draping it around her neck like a beach towel, arranging Ermengarde safely within it.

  The pathway was narrowing further. Soon the tunnel was hardly taller than Loddon. The remnant items that emerged from the walls, or poked out of the ceiling and floor were more life-size. Here was a blue wooden truck, and here a party hat with one or two sparkles still clinging to its blue surface. Tuesday stopped and gently peeled away part of the wall. What she held in her hand was a page from a book. Whatever had been written on it had blurred beyond recognition. Only the faint remnant of an illustration remained: a tree house in a forest.

  The ice-melt and dampness were gone. Now the tunnel was dry and Tuesday could no longer see evidence of the ship at all. Instead, the tunnel looked as if it had been bored out by a large digging animal. Tuesday stared at Loddon’s back. Had he really dug all this way?

  The further they went, the more paper Tuesday found. The wall she was passing was made of an arc of brittle, yellowed notebooks. Soon the walls were made entirely of layer after layer of paper.

  What is this place? she wondered.

  ‘It’s a positively perplexing problem to ponder,’ she heard Denis say in her head.

  ‘What am I going to do, Dad?’ she asked. ‘How am I ever going to get back to the surface again?’

  ‘A question comes befo
re an answer,’ said Denis. ‘All pathways lead somewhere.’

  Loddon dropped to his hands and knees ahead of her, and Tuesday hoped the tunnel didn’t get any smaller. It was clear, though, that they were moving towards a bright circle of light. Tuesday took a deep breath and crawled after Loddon through a narrow opening to emerge in a vast, bright cavern.

  ‘Welcome back, Writer,’ Loddon said with a deep bow.

  The space he gestured to was enormous, easily big enough to hold three or four houses. But instead it held staircases: narrow white staircases, without bannisters or railings. They wound up and up, spiralling, intersecting and then separating. Some of the staircases spanned the arc of the cavern’s high ceiling, crossing and recrossing each other in alarmingly precarious ways. Some of the staircases led to dark openings in the walls. Caves, Tuesday surmised. Others stopped abruptly, or a frightening distance short of the cave entrances, as if you were simply meant to jump.

  Growing in the floor of the cavern, beneath all these paper staircases, was a spectacular tree with pale bark and deep green foliage. Hanging from one of its outstretched limbs was a rubber tyre swing. The grass that grew in the cavern was tall and exactly the green of Loddon’s hair. Sunflowers burst upwards, and other flowers dotted the grass with reds, purples, yellows and blues. Above the tree, in the midst of the highest staircases, hung a great orange and yellow sun with pointed tips, glowing and spinning slowly in a faint breeze. There were also clouds and several birds in flight. But all of it, everything, the staircases, the tree, the flowers, the sun, the clouds and grass, it was all, Tuesday realised, made of … paper.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After the Librarian left her at the boatshed, Serendipity kicked off her boots, curled up on the bed, pulled the counterpane over herself and slept. She slept and slept, and her sleep went on, deep and dreamless, for a very long time.

  When she awoke, the sun was creeping in over the lake, streaking the sky with persimmon red and tangerine orange. She gazed at the sunrise, watching the sky change. It softened into the palest of pinks, and finally became the sort of blue it would be wonderful to paint a room. Serendipity sighed and stretched and thought about a morning walk. On the kitchen table she observed a green pear that she was sure had not been there the day before. She listened and could hear only the songs of birds and the quietest lap of water on the pebbled shore. She picked up the pear and opened the glass door onto the balcony. There were steps leading down to the lake on either side and Serendipity considered if she should go right, or left. Her feet seemed to decide for her, and she went left.