Annie glanced at Thomas. He was looking at the same photo as her. She asked softly, ‘Your mother?’
He nodded, ‘Elaine,’ he said. ‘She gave birth to me, yes. But,’ his tone was adamant and Thomas pointed at a photo on the opposite page. Another picture of Rose: older and laughing, carrying a rucksack and walking stick, and wearing a floppy hat. ‘That was my mother,’ he said.
Annie’s voice was gentle and she said, ‘Tell me.’
And Thomas did. His eyes went far away and he said, ‘Elaine - she was Grammy Rose’s daughter, fell pregnant with me when she was just nineteen. She didn’t want me, and Grammy said she was too young to be saddled with a baby in anyway. She - Grammy Rose - took me, and we moved here.’ He turned the page to a photo of a small white cottage with a Mini Cooper standing beside it. ‘It’s called Pine Cottage, and my room looks just like…this,’ He waved a hand at the room around them. Annie gave him an encouraging smile and a nod and he went on.
Told her about Rockham and Firham and Pine Cottage; about summer days and taking walks and having picnics; about the forest and camping and sleeping under the stars; about cold nights in front of the fireplace, hot soup and stories and chocolate and cacao; and watching the snow fall; and listening to music and listening to the silence…
…told her about reading books together and to each other; and laughing together, and at each other; about crying together. About his best friend William, and the school in Firham where Grammy taught maths and science…
…told her about Grammy and leukaemia. And about Grammy and death…
He spoke for a long time and Annie listened and looked at his pictures. And when he was finished, she hugged Thomas for a minute, then tucked him in and said goodnight.
She opened the bedroom door, but before leaving, looked at him with eyes that said she understood. ‘It’s all right to cry, Thomas,’ she said. ‘Even for boys it’s all right. And in here,’ gesturing at the room, ‘no one can see or hear you. Remember,’ she added, ‘Tears are the water that wash our souls.’
She left then, and pulled the door shut, and Thomas, exhausted with pent-up grief, thought off the light and cried himself to sleep.
8
The moon was a huge white lantern: round, with holes and craters that reflected perfectly on its twin, which drifted peacefully in the still waters of Ariana’s Pool. It seemed close enough to touch, turning everything dark to soft gold and shimmering silver. A million stars kept it company, floating and sparkling softly in the water and the sky. Hundreds of shadowy fern-fronds were turned fluorescent-green by clusters of clinging fireflies; they swayed slowly in the invisible current.
There was no wind; the night air a pot-pourri of wild flowers and nocturnal sounds: the hoot of an owl, a chorus of frogs and crickets, and the rustle and scurry of small animals in the tall grass behind the Talking Rock. Big John had left and Thomas was alone on the tongue-shaped stone; sitting on its end with his legs hanging over the edge. He had taken off his sandals, and when he straightened his ankles and swung his feet, his toes ploughed the water’s surface in quicksilver furrows.
Another day had gone and he ran it through his mind again. He - and Annie, he later discovered - had slept late, and only got up with half of Rainbow’s End’s day already gone. He had a huge brunch of cereal and thick toast dripping with butter; and eggs and cheese and wonderful fresh fruit and juice, and then Big John took him exploring again…
*
She appeared, seemingly out of nowhere: barefoot and walking on the water - causing ripples and small splashes that distorted and made the big old moon and its stars go up and down. Said, ‘Hello, Thomas,’ as if they’d just met at the corner shop; and stepped on to the rock, and sat down next to him. Boneless and strengthless, which was probably a good thing, or he might have run off into the night.
She was also very beautiful - even to a boy of eleven, supposedly not interested in girls yet. The light of the moon gave her very black hair a bluish halo, and turned her eyes darker than they really were. Tall, with skin like alabaster; she wore a white, knee-length gown, which shimmered and swung when she walked. Thomas wondered how she knew his name, and then dismissed it. Rainbow’s End was a small place with very few people.
He said then, in a half-whisper, ‘I don’t know if you’re supposed to be here.’
She asked - in the same hushed tone, ‘Why ever not?’
‘Well,’ Thomas glanced at the water. ‘Do you know Ariana?’ The girl nodded and Thomas, still keeping his voice down, said, ‘I’m supposed to see her…’ He hesitated, ‘Speak to her, I mean…’
Wide-eyed, in an awed tone, ‘Aren’t you scared?’
He looked to the water again and nodded. ‘A little,’ he whispered.
Her laugh rang clear as a bell: it echoed across the water and silenced the frogs and crickets, and had Thomas look at her in shock, dismayed at the noise the girl was making.
‘Ssshh!!’ he hissed, exasperated, and he knew, too late - for surely her impertinence had been heard. He turned away from her and scooted up an inch or two to show his displeasure.
She laughed again, louder and longer this time; scooted after him, and then said, ‘My name is Ariana, Thomas, and I am very, very glad to meet you.’
She smelled of jasmine and roses, and Thomas said, dismissively; ‘No, you’re not. Ariana is… Big John said she’s a…a…’
‘A goddess?’
Thomas nodded, mutely.
‘Well,’ she smiled and cocked her head at him. ‘I am…sort of.’
A shake of his head. ‘He also said she’s very old.’
‘He had that right.’ She laughed again, then said, very seriously. ‘I am centuries old, Thomas: many centuries old.’
Thomas stared and saw she was serious, and breathed in soft awe, ‘You are. You really are. You’re her.’
‘I am,’ Ariana nodded. ‘And as I’ve said before - I’m very pleased to meet you, Thomas.’
‘But aren’t you supposed to…’ He frowned, looking at the water.
‘Be in the water?’ Ariana asked and he nodded.
She said, ‘Oh, I can come out if I want. I am not a fish.’ She gave a girlish giggle, and before he could stop himself, Thomas joined her.
Ariana continued, ‘I can come out whenever I want to, Thomas. If I want to. I mostly don’t. I prefer the water.’
Without thinking Thomas asked, ‘But don’t you get lonely?’ He looked away, embarrassed at his own audaciousness.
The shadows of the night hid the shadows on her face and the young woman said, ‘Very lonely, Thomas. But I’m used to it. One gets to be, after a century or so…’ She gave a deprecating little laugh and then went silent for a moment, before saying, ‘I asked Big John to bring you here because there are some things I have to talk to you about. Things I have to explain to you. And some questions I need to ask you.’ Thomas nodded wordlessly and Ariana smiled at him again, then said, ‘But first tell me. Do you like Rainbow’s End?’
Caught off-guard again, Thomas stammered, ‘Well, it’s… different.’ He saw Ariana’s eyebrows lift in amusement, waiting for more; and then said what he really felt: ‘I think it’s wonderful! It’s - It’s beautiful! I never thought… I heard stories, but… I never imagined that there really could be a place like it…’ He felt himself blushing and fell awkwardly silent, embarrassed again.
Ariana smiled and ruffled his hair. ‘I think I’m going to like you Thomas Ross,’ she said.
He felt his face get hotter still, and was glad of the dark.
‘Did Big John tell you about my parents?’ Ariana asked.
Thomas nodded.
‘And Kraylle… Did he tell you about Kraylle?’ Another nod and the young goddess turned her eyes to the water.
‘Then let me tell you about Rainbow’s End,’ she said. ‘And how it came to be the Rainbow’s End you seem to like so much.’
*****
‘Little bastards,’ Orson grunted and studied
the horny nail of the big toe poking through the hole in his threadbare green sock. Izzy had just finished relaying his almost-encounter with Kraylle’s Night Walkers and the two old Travellers sat in silence for a minute, mulling over the gall of modern youth.
The television, for once, had been switched off and the electric light replaced by a soft yellow lantern (just for the night). It created a more companionable atmosphere and made for better drinking. A large sliding door had replaced the logs of one wall (just for the night), and a fresh breeze wafted through every time the comatose Tessie let loose one of her noxious farts.
‘“Little bastards”, is right,’ said Izzy, his speech slightly slurred. He was half-sitting, half-lying in another recliner - which earlier had been a footstool, but had been changed into its present form by Orson (just for the night). A bottle of 12 year old Glenn Morach stood on the small table at his side; it was almost empty and so was the cut-glass tumbler he held in his hand.
Drink had a sentence shortening effect on the billionaire Traveller and he said, ‘Pretty little girl, Maggie…sweetest little thing…stole my heart when…Frieda already head over heels…’
The two Travellers had been drinking partners for more than fifty years and Orson understood his friend’s shorthand speech perfectly; - so when Izzy said, ‘should meet her…’ he asked in his croaky voice, ‘Why? Why should I meet her?’
Izzy shrugged, then picked up the almost empty bottle and splashed its remains into his glass. ‘Damn dog drank half the bottle,’ he said, then, ‘drinks way too much…’
Orson placed his half-empty mug of St. Emilion Shiraz (£ 200 a bottle) on his own little table, and half rolled out of his chair. He was dressed in just his long johns and stumbled twice on the short walk to the kitchen. He swore at the moving carpet, then rummaged in a cupboard next to the huge fridge that served as his wine cellar. A minute later he came back with the full twin of Izzy’s empty bottle, and set it down next to it. He grunted at the other Traveller’s “preciate it”, and then crawled back onto the comfort of his chair. Lay back with a sigh and picked up his mug, took a long swig from it and almost choked, when Izzy said - in a perfectly normal tone of voice, and a perfectly normal sentence, ‘So, Orson, tell me about this boy. This Thomas.’
*****
‘Giants lived here once,’ said Ariana. She had a lovely voice - soft, but melodious and very clear.
‘Big, blonde, hairy people. Not huge, but bigger than Big John - eight or nine feet tall and the same shape as human beings. They were a gentle people - against violence and against killing. A race of oracles, scribes and seers, who talked to trees and flowers and rocks; and only rarely to each other.
‘There were never many of them - just a few hundred; but then, slowly and inexplicably, their numbers started dwindling. More of them died and less were born. Their female numbers were the worst-affected, and although they lived very long, in a few millennia - thousand years - there were none left. After that of course, there were no new births. The men who were left slowly got older and their numbers less…’
Ariana looked at Thomas. He was watching her, the expression on his face rapt. She took a deep breath and looked to the stars again.
‘Kraylle and I were sleeping when our parents were murdered. We were only four or five years old - in terms of your Earth time. Erma, our second mother - or what you would call a nanny - was alerted by one of the planets elders, a good friend of my father’s, that there were plans afoot to kill us as well. It had been stopped but he thought it would only be temporary, and that we were in grave danger.
‘Gods and demi-gods - as in my brother’s case and mine - master the ability of materialising and dematerialising at about the age of twelve. Until then they sleep in beds placed in Astral Pods. These pods are programmed after a god-child’s birth; after his or her god-sign has been determined. It is done by the Ri-Ti-Ri, which means, “They know all”. Once activated, a pod will travel and roam through space, until a place that suits its occupant’s “ri” - or life force is found. Or until “Called” - which is when the pod receives a telepathic invitation to somewhere that is suitable, and hopefully, eventually acceptable to its charge.
‘In case of nuclear war or planetary disintegration, these pods close and dematerialise automatically.
‘Erma manually activated ours, and Kraylle and I left our planet forever: to roam the universe and to seek a place in which to exist. We did so for many centuries; our pods travelling the same path because our god-signs are the same.’
Ariana saw Thomas itching to ask a question and took pity on the boy. ‘Yes, Thomas,’ she asked.
It was a typical eleven-year-old’s question. ‘What did you eat? I mean…centuries?’
Ariana smiled at him. ‘We are gods, Thomas. We do not need to eat - or drink.’ She saw his surprise and continued, ‘Oh, we can if we want… we just don’t need to. As long as we are in touch, or even close to our life element, in our case - water.’ She looked back at the sky.
‘I was between six and seven years old when I was called by Joshi.’ She held up her hand to stop Thomas’ question. ‘Joshi was the last of the Magari - the giant people. My pod responded and it landed here - in the river.’
She smiled at Thomas. ‘The hole it made is now the children’s favourite fishing spot.’
‘The Fishing Pool?’ asked Thomas.
Ariana nodded. ‘The Fishing Pool.’
*
‘I spent almost a century with Joshi, learning the ways of the Magari,’ Ariana said.
‘At the same time I was first mastering, and then strengthening my own powers.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘Today, I think of them as merely formidable, but back then, to Joshi and I - a gentle giant and a girl of only seven or eight, they were astonishing - at times terrifying.’
Thomas was fidgeting again and Ariana said to him, ‘Bear with me Thomas. There will be plenty of time for questions later.’
She continued. ‘Like I said - Joshi instructed me for almost a century before he went over. Rainbow’s End, or Magarius, as it was called then, suited my life force exactly. I stayed and made it my own. I changed it where I thought necessary, but most of it is exactly as it was when the Magari spoke and sang to the trees.
‘I had also - with a bit of subtle nudging from Joshi - discovered a purpose, a reason for being. The Magari have been Travellers for millennia. The Earth’s endless forests, its seas, and especially its giant mountains - they loved them all; but stopped Travelling to them for two reasons.
‘The first was man’s love of war and violence and destruction; and his hate and fear of anything strange or alien. Several of the Magari had been hunted down and killed while on the Earth. The people there called them “Yeti”.
‘The second was the Magari’s belief that the virus, or whatever it was that caused first their women’s sterility and later their deaths, came from the air surrounding the Earth.’ Ariana paused, then interrupted her own story. She said, ‘I believe in the virus theory, but personally, I think their woman died of broken hearts. All woman love children and the Magari adored theirs. To not have any around must have been a terrible thing to bear…’
Her sigh carried the Magari women’s pain and Ariana turned to look at Thomas.
‘The last two ways - or disciplines - of the Magari Joshi instructed me in - initiated me in,’ she said, were the “Love of Children” and the use of the “Seven Crystals and the Rainbow”; the first of which is what Rainbow’s End is all about, and the second, the means to bring the first about.’
The young goddess stopped talking and sat staring at the stars and the moon mirrored in the pool for a long time before Thomas gently cleared his throat. She didn’t move, but said, ‘Ask, Thomas.’
He did. ‘If we are not on the Earth, then where are we?’
Her eyes lifted to the skies and Ariana said, I have told you how Rainbow’s End came to be. Now let me tell you about where it is and what it’s all about.
&nbs
p; *****
The moon seemed to touch the tops of the giant trees and turned their upper branches into ghost and witches fingers, the small stream below into molten silver. The forest floor was a gloamy place of loamy smells and secrets, where small animals scurried and rustled, and searched for food and their young and each other.
The lantern in the cottage had been turned very low, and inside, the two old Travellers lay sleeping in their recliners, locked in unconscious competition. The cacophony of sounds emitting from their wide-open mouths were a mixture of smacking lips and groans and hiccups and snores and coughs, and was too much for even the owls; who had made their nest in the chimney, but had fled for the night.
Tessie came wobbling out of the open sliding door on unsteady feet. The dog felt like death warmed up and needed the fresh air; she went to the furthest end of the veranda and collapsed in a corner, folding her paws over floppy ears - trying to block out the horrendous duet coming from inside, but failing miserably.
9
‘The universe is immense, Thomas. Immeasurable… Full of nooks and crannies and loops and curves and places even gods and demi-gods know very little, or nothing of.’ Ariana’s gaze traversed the glittering night-sky. ‘I should know,’ she said. ‘I have travelled through it for many, many years…’ She fell quiet and seemed to gather her thoughts for a long minute.
Then said: ‘Rainbow’s End is one of those little nooks. It exists in a world that does not exist. To most people, anyway. A parallel world, Thomas. Parallel with where you came from - the Earth. It lies in a different dimension; a different time. A galaxy within a galaxy.
‘We use the same sun and the same moon. Closer to one,’ Ariana pointed to the low-hanging moon, ‘and further away from the other. Some of our stars are the same, most are not.
Rainbow's End - Wizard Page 8