Rainbow's End - Wizard

by Mitchell, Corrie

  They’d landed just minutes ago, at the back of the little house, and had walked around its front, where they now stood, just looking. It was too early for Marge.

  ‘You stayed here ten years?’ Orson asked, still softly, and Thomas nodded.

  ‘Close to eleven,’ he said, and it felt right, and good, when his grandfather put an arm around his shoulders for the first time, and held him close. And they just looked again: each busy with his own thoughts, each his own memories.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Thomas said after a minute. ‘The key is around back.’

  Thomas was waiting at the kitchen-table when Marge came in the open back door. He’d barely enough time to stand before she was all over him: shouting “Thomas!!” and gripping him in a tight, long hug, then holding him at arms-length and clucking like a mother-hen, inspecting, and then hugging and holding again. When she let go at last, it was to stare at the two steaming mugs of coffee on the table. Marge was a tea-person.

  ‘Who…?’ she started asking, but was interrupted.

  ‘Your car needs a new silencer,’ Orson croaked from the doorway leading into the passage. He’d been in Rose’s bedroom alone for a while, and his grey eyes were red-rimmed.

  ‘Marge, this is…’ and then it was Thomas’ turn to be interrupted.

  Grammy’s old friend screeched and pointed a trembling finger at Orson. She’d gone as white as a sheet, and accused - ‘You’re him! You’re Rosie’s man! You’re the one she ran orf from!’

  Orson could but nod, wide-eyed and astounded.

  ‘Orson’s my grandfather, Marge,’ Thomas said some seconds later, breaking up the two adult’s staring and glaring at one another.

  ‘I know, Thomas.’ Marge looked to the boy. ‘I’ve always known. I just never thought…’ she shook her head, taken aback, ‘I just never thought I’d ever see him. Specially not here.’ She turned from them suddenly, and Thomas shrugged at Orson - nonplussed in the silence that followed.

  They watched as she first checked the water in the kettle and then switched it on; then took a cup and saucer from one cupboard, and a jar of tea from another, a teaspoon from a small glass-bottle in which several stood - all with her back towards them.

  And then her shoulders slumped and Marge said, very soft, ‘She never looked at another man, you know, and Rosie so beautiful and all…’ She swung round and her cheeks were wet, and she said to Orson, ‘She loved you terribly, she did…’ Tears flooded his own grey eyes again and Marge saw his soul then, and also what a young gypsy girl saw decades ago; and then they were holding each other and crying together, and shushing one another and then laughing a little, and Thomas went outside and escaped into the quiet of the woods for a while.

  A long time later, with the sun low in the west, and after a lot of paging through Rose’s old photo-albums (one of which had a duplicate of the photo in Thomas’ own - the one of Rose and Orson in front of her wagon); and a lot of swopping stories - his of times long past, hers of times more recent, Marge had to go. They accompanied her outside, and when she started up the old Mini-Cooper, the noise from its exhaust was deafening. Orson knelt at its side, and after a second’s groping underneath the low-on-the-ground little car, the noise turned into a gentle purr.

  Marge gave him a thoughtful little frown when he stood back up, and it changed into a sad smile as she watched a silent Orson brush bits and pieces of grass from his trouser-legs. ‘Rosie told me,’ she said, and struggling with the lump in her throat, added, ‘I wish I’d believed her then.’

  *

  The fire had burned down to a heap of red and orange coals. It wasn’t necessary, but it somehow gave a feeling that Rose was there, albeit in spirit only.

  ‘Tell me more,’ Orson said, and glanced at the wood-box to one side of the fire; two pine-logs lifted from it and floated through the air, and landed softly on the bed of coals, where small flames immediately began licking at them.

  ‘Grammy seemed to love all things,’ Thomas said, adding, ‘all things good, that is. She loved this house, her garden, the forest… She loved her work - teaching; children, adults, even her little car. The one Marge drives now. She swopped it for her wagon, you know.’ Orson gave an encouraging nod, and Thomas went on. ‘She loved being with people, but also to be by herself sometimes…’ He fell pensively quiet, and then Orson saw him give a happy little smile, as a spark of recall lit up his eyes.

  ‘Once,’ Thomas said, turning to his grandfather - ‘I didn’t know why then… I only realized now, I think - we had a heavy rain-shower, and afterwards a huge, brilliant rainbow to the south. Grammy had only just started her medication and was woozy a lot of the time - it was just after she’d found out about the Leukaemia - and when she saw the rainbow, she began walking towards it. Fast. So fast, I couldn’t keep up and had to turn back after a while. I came home, and a lot later, Mayor and Mrs. Ridley brought her back. They’d found her almost ten kilometres from here - way on the other side of Rockham. She was crying, and I remember she hugged and held me for hours that night, right here.’ Patting the couch. ‘It was as if I was all she had.’ Silence and then, ‘I was all she had, wasn’t I?’

  Orson’s eyes were wet again.

  *****

  Dr. Elston straightened and took a step back, frowning heavily and shaking his head.

  ‘Is it the same boy, Dr. Elston?!’

  The doctor turned to the large group of journalists bunched together at the far end of the boardroom. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, it is. And he’s as healthy as any twelve year old could be. (It was Thomas’ birthday, incidentally.) Healthier than most,’ the doctor added.

  ‘You’re sure it is the same boy, doctor?’ This from a lady reporter with red hair. The doctor gave her an affronted look.

  ‘I said it was, didn’t I? The superintendent of The Haven swept the gathered newspaper-people with a haughty stare. ‘You’ve all seen recent photographs of young master Ross.’ He gestured to Thomas, who had finished buttoning his shirt and was tucking it into neatly-pressed trousers. ‘And there’s the scar,’ Dr. Elston tapped his own temple, ‘although,’ and he shook his head again, ‘it’s healed wonderfully well - and quick. It’s also a lot smaller than I’d expected…’ his voice tailed off.

  ‘Thomas!’ the same red-head shouted, ‘how do you feel?’

  ‘I feel fine, miss.’ Thomas smiled and more than one of the assembled journalists was struck by the very green of his eyes.

  ‘Where have you been, Thomas?’ asked a sandy-haired young man with thick glasses. ‘Do you remember?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t, sir. Not much anyway. I remember the hospital, and being taken from it… After that, very little.’

  ‘Where did they take you, Thomas - the old man and the girl?’

  ‘They took me home,’ Thomas replied, without thinking, and Izzy, who stood behind him, stepped up.

  ‘That’s enough for today, ladies and gentleman, and doctor.’ A slight bow towards Dr. Elston. ‘I’m sure the doctor will agree with me that, whilst apparently healed on the surface, Thomas still need lots of rest.’

  Dr. Elston - who had always been overly aware of his professional status - felt himself puff with importance at being singled out by such a prominent personage as Izzadore Greenbaum, and nodded, sagely. ‘Of course,’ he affirmed.

  *

  Commissioner Harris leaned forward and took Thomas’ chin in surprisingly hard, but gentle fingers, turned the young Traveller’s head so that he could study the sickle-shaped scar that almost touched the corner of his eye. After a second, he grunted and let go, then sat back in the comfortable visitor’s chair. He picked up his teacup and sipped from it, then turned his attention to Izzy.

  ‘You never laid any charges, Mr. Greenbaum,’ he said then.

  Izzy shook his head. ‘And neither do I - do we - intend to, Commissioner,’ he said. ‘This thing has already been overly-inflated, and I think I’m right in saying you are shorthanded enough wi
thout sacrificing more manpower to chase down some misguided youths, who, if you catch them, will go scot-free in any way.’

  The Commissioner finished his tea, whilst thoughtfully contemplating the Billionaire on the other side of the large desk for a silent minute. Then, with a grunt, he set down the empty cup and got to his feet. He shrugged, and with a last pensive look at Thomas, said, ‘Oh well, all’s well that ends well, I suppose.’

  *

  The large television screen went blank, and Izzy tossed the remote on to the empty cushion by his side. ‘I hate open-cast mining,’ he said with passion.

  The three Travellers were in the Penthouse’s sunken lounge, relaxing on soft leather and blonde oak, bathed in gentle yellow light cast from wall-mounted fittings. Dinner had been pizza, delivered an hour ago, and now they were relaxing with drinks: Whiskey, wine, and juice. A soft breeze pleasingly blew through the room. They’d been watching a “Save our World” documentary, which Izzy had just switched off.

  Orson grunted. His short legs were stretched in front of him, shoes kicked off and feet on a leather ottoman. ‘Like a great, ugly sore on the Earth’s crust, innit?’ he agreed, and Izzy watched with disgust as he sipped daintily at his wine. They sat quietly for a while then, and Orson rubbed pensively at his wart while staring into the distance.

  ‘Do you remember when we Travelled to the Amazon, Thomas?’ he asked.

  Thomas nodded. ‘To the tree-cutting site, yes.’

  ‘Forest-raping’s more like it,’ Orson snorted, and meditatively sipped from his wine again, before raising his glass to the darkened television screen. ‘I think it’s time we went back there,’ he said.

  38

  ‘You’re not angry, Thomas.’ Orson sniffed dismissively and his fleshy nose quivered. ‘You’re not even properly annoyed. Now try again.’ He lifted his lop-sided jaw towards the single remaining vehicle on the broken-up cement slab. ‘The bulldozer this time,’ he said, and turning away, added in an offhand way, ‘don’t worry, it won’t hit back. It’s not the little red-haired mongrel who almost killed you, because you are too soft, too trusting.’

  Thomas felt himself flush hotly with embarrassment, and also the beginning of anger, but knowing that was really Orson’s objective, turned to the gaping chasm at their side.

  The mine was open-cast and circular in shape. Almost a kilometre and a half across, it lay like an ugly brown-black sore in the seeming heart of the Amazon jungle of Peru. It reminded of a massive amphitheatre, with six metre high and ten metre wide yellow-and-black-streaked levels cut out of the raw earth; spiralling down, in giant steps, towards the half-a-kilometre-across arena at its centre. In the arena - some two hundred and fifty metres below - were several large tipper-lorries, a bulldozer, and half a dozen huge excavators, all yellow in colour and looking small from the Travellers’ vantage point.

  The buildings were on the eastern rim - a hundred metres away from Orson and Thomas and several metres from the big hole’s edge: first, a couple of pre-fabricated, asbestos walled workshops, with a large, broken-up, oil-stained cement slab between them. On one of the heaved-up sections of cement, tilted at a crazy angle, its nose pointing skywards at almost thirty degrees, stood the bulldozer Orson had referred to. An hour ago, there had been two lorries as well, but one now lay on the mine’s rim, the other on one of the hole’s giant steps, some thirty metres down and on its back.

  The offices were further on; far enough from the workshops to escape their noise and fashioned out of old ship-containers. Another fifty metres on were four long wooden buildings which served as quarters for the workers.

  Behind the Travellers - on the other side of the road connecting the forest and the mine, lay the separating plant and the dumps: large heaps of black coal which had not yet been carted off, and next to them, mountains of brown and yellow soil which, after being separated from their riches, lay cast away to bake and harden in the every-day rain and scorching sun.

  All around was beautiful green forest: seemingly impenetrable with massively huge around and tall trees, lianas and brush, and deep, dark shadows. On the opposite side of the unsightly cavity, many kilometres to the west and far beyond the tallest tree-tops, the snow-capped peaks of the Andes mountain range: grey and white against an azure sky. Birds were singing again just minutes after the last tremendously loud noises caused by the Travellers: the jeering caw-caw of the large blue and yellow macaw’s dominant.

  ‘Take a good look, Thomas,’ Orson said from slightly behind and to his pupil’s left. ‘And listen well. The next time we get here, in a year or so, this… atrocity will probably be twice as big as it is at present. The trees you see now will have been ruthlessly chopped down, their roots pulled up as if they had never existed. Some of their wood would have been used to roast the very birds and monkeys living and playing in them now - the ones you hear. The rest would have been be made into furniture and paper.

  ‘The surviving animals - those lucky, or unlucky ones, who had escaped being killed or captured, would have fled to some other part of this magnificent place,’ Orson waved his staff at the forest, ‘where you can be sure, they barely would have settled in, before finding themselves in the same situation all over again.’

  Thomas turned back to the admin and living area. Orson and he were standing close to the rim of the mine, with the road at their backs, and the workshops and other buildings to their front. The hundred metres of open ground between them and the broken-up cement slab had a freshly ploughed look; it had rained earlier and the still-damp sods lay steaming in the mid-day sun.

  It was the last Friday of the month, and the workers had received their wages early that morning, before being carted into the nearest town to drink and carouse all weekend - some, but not many, to send money to their families. The single man who’d been left behind as a guard, Orson had found sleeping in one of the lorry-cabs, and after the old Traveller “pushed” him, he’d also left for town - trotting down the dirt road bisecting the forest like an ugly scar: on the double and every few seconds glancing over his shoulder.

  Thomas stood looking at the mine and small groups of buildings for a long, silent minute… Imagining the already massive hole twice or more its present size; imagining the buildings having been moved to where currently green trees and other plants grew, where birds and monkeys and other animals played and lived and fed and had their young.

  He looked at Orson, and to the old Traveller his eyes were a haunted green, his face pale and ineffably sad - as if the worlds troubles were all his own. His voice trembled with what Orson mistook as trepidation, but if he’d payed closer attention, he would have sensed his pupil’s anger; a slumbering, smouldering rage in the process of waking, of bursting into flames.

  ‘Anything I want?’ Thomas asked then, and extended his arm - the one holding the crystal - to the buildings. He opened his hand, and the gem was tinged with the deepest red, almost purple, Orson had ever seen. He frowned, perplexed, and his drooping eyelid lifted.

  ‘I can do anything I want with this?’ Thomas reiterated, and lowered his gaze to the now pulsing crystal. His voice was soft, but intensely focused.

  ‘To the earth, yes - the soil, rocks, sand…’ Orson shrugged, dismissively, as if bored. ‘If you’re strong enough.’ He sniffed, and then added, ‘If you’ve guts enough…’ The look he received from the boy had him unnecessary clear his throat, and then fall awkwardly silent. He gripped his staff with both hands, and rested his jaw in the crook of one elbow, taking inordinate interest in the far-away mountain peaks, whilst surreptitiously watching his student from the corner of his eye.

  Thomas turned to the forest again for a long minute, and the distant Andes, and Orson saw several emotions cross his face: a gentleness, sorrow, even love. But then he turned back to the open mine and the buildings, and his expression changed, conveying anger again, and then, finally, resolution.

  The ground just metres in front of them lifted and then subsided slowly, and they with it,
like ships riding a small wave. Orson arched his bushy eyebrows in feigned boredom, and lifted his shoulders in a negligent shrug, as if to say, “How nice - and now can we move on, do you think?”

  But Thomas ignored him and turned his back, and spread his feet apart. He could no longer see the young Traveller’s face, but Orson felt the anger emanate from his tautly tensed body, the growl in his throat seemed impossibly low for one as young. His fingers clenched around the Red Crystal, and his arm - still pointed at the buildings, but like a weapon this time - knotted and bulged with young muscle and veins and trembled with incredible tension.

  The earth began trembling under them then, and the forest went strangely quiet, as if sensing the approach of some cataclysmic event. Unnaturally, deathly quiet.

  Orson’s staff began vibrating - as if resonating in sympathy with the hurt and trembling Earth. He lifted his eyes, and gaped in astonishment then; condescension turning into apprehension. The crystal set at the apex of the wooden shaft was pulsing in a deep, very dark blue hue - almost black.

  And Thomas screamed. He screamed as Mother Earth would if only she could, and stamped down hard with one hiking-boot before grounding his heel into the trembling soil; his free hand pushed in a powerful, shoving-away motion - as if consigning the whole of the human-made atrocity before them to nothingness, to limbo. The ground heaved again: stronger and with a low rumble, causing the unprepared Orson to stagger back several paces and fall to his knees, still clutching his staff with its all-the-time-pulsing Indigo Crystal, gaping open-mouthed in stunned fascination at the scene before him.

  And all the hells broke loose…