Attack of the Cupids

by John Dickinson

‘Hurry!’

  Muddlespot tried to hurry. Flesh-coloured footprints wove in erratic patterns on the marble floor behind him.

  ‘Faster!’ said Windleberry, flying above.

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘You must run!’

  ‘I can’t . . .’

  ‘THERE HE IS!!!!’

  A cloud of cupids, buzzing like angry wasps, wove into the lobby behind them. Some of them had weapons. Among them was a very pink looking cupid with a bandage around his head. And also the cupid who had led Muddlespot to the court. He was pointing an accusing finger now, down the columnar perspectives of the Great Hall, straight at Muddlespot’s heart.

  ‘Run!’ screamed Muddlespot, and found that he could.

  ‘Left at the end!’ cried Windleberry. ‘Make for the wall!’

  ‘Oi-oi-oi-oi-oi!!!!’ called the cupids from behind them. ‘Get them! Trespassers!!! Close the Gates!!!’

  ‘Tresp . . .’ (gasp) ‘. . . passers?’ Muddlespot’s legs were going like the running wheel of a hamster on steroids. His breath couldn’t keep up.

  ‘Technical . . .’ (gasp) ‘term,’ said Windleberry, also going as fast as he could. ‘Use it . . . a lot . . . up here.’

  ‘Where . . . were you . . . anyway? Lost . . . you.’

  ‘Had to . . . keep out of . . . sight of . . . cupids. Didn’t want to be . . . recognized.’

  They wheeled out of the corridor into a wide cloister peopled with silent, contemplative robed figures and scattered them in all directions.

  ‘How are you . . . doing on . . . that, then?’

  ‘Oi-oi-oi-oi-oi!!!! It’s Windleberry!!! Unleash the doves!!!!’

  ‘May have . . . blown it . . . Left here!’

  They crashed through a crowd of praying figures, showering the air with scriptures and prayer mats, caught a couple of mats as they fell and ski-ed across a Pool of Contemplation before the mats could realize what they were doing and sink. A line of battlements blocked their way. Towers loomed over them. From the tops figures looked down, pointing. Bells were ringing. The air flustered with fierce and restless feathers. Behind them, the whole swarm of cupids came hallooing into view. Before them . . .

  ‘Jump!’ cried Windleberry.

  . . . was nothing but blue air, golden clouds moving, the wall of the city falling to impossible depths beneath them, the sudden, stomach-sickening feeling of being somewhere very very very high up and the signals firing urgently through Muddlespot’s brain screaming: Don’t Jump! Whatever you do, don’t . . .

  He already had.

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  Thump! as Windleberry’s arms closed around Muddlespot. An explosion of air brakes as his wings battled the terrible pull of gravity. The ground was still rushing closer, closer. Maybe their descent was slowing. Maybe they wouldn’t be vaporized by the impact after all. Maybe they would just be turned into something that looked like thinly-spread strawberry jam. Maybe they’d . . .

  Touch

  down.

  ‘There,’ said Windleberry. That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  ‘My hero,’ said Muddlespot weakly. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Period four, it seems. English Literature.’

  Muddlespot looked around.

  They were standing on a huge, level plateau, broken here and there by large, square-sided outcrops in different colours and surrounded by mountains. Somewhere very far away someone was chanting.

  ‘But with unhurrying chase,

  And unperturbèd pace,

  Deliberate speed, majestic instancy . . .’

  He recognized that voice. That was how Mr Kingsley thought poetry should be read. And how he tried to make everybody in the class read it.

  ‘They beat – and a Voice beat

  More instant than the feet –

  “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”’

  (One of the many bits of advice that Low Command gives its agents on Earth is that the soul is most vulnerable to the little evil whisper when it is under conditions of stress. Therefore, take advantage of this.)

  ‘I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

  By many a hearted casement, curtained red,

  Trellised with intertwining charities . . .’

  (Muddlespot had often thought he should be able to take more advantage of Mr Kingsley’s reading.)

  He looked around and knew where he was. The plateau he was standing on was the surface of a table in room C23 in Darlington High School. The square outcrops were the books of the pupils, scattered here and there and in some cases even open. The mountains were the pupils themselves, huge figures compared to Muddlespot and Windleberry. He recognized Billie, doodling angrily on a pad of paper on the other side of the room. He saw Sally, rising high above him, looking as though she was paying attention to every word of the reading. Probably she really was. The sight of her face looming up there made him almost misty-eyed with thoughts of comfort and safety.

  ‘You go ahead,’ said Windleberry. ‘I’m going to meet someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  Windleberry pointed towards the mountain that was Billie. ‘My colleague. Her Guardian.’

  ‘Ah.’ Muddlespot wondered for a moment if he shouldn’t warn Scattletail that the twins’ Guardians were getting together. But loyalty among fiends is never very strong. At best, it’s more an alliance of convenience. And besides, none of this was really about the war between Above and Below. It was more an internal thing on the Above side.

  What Muddlespot really wanted right now was to go somewhere where people weren’t chasing him, and to get every last spot of flesh-coloured paint off his skin.

  ‘You wanted the arrows for her?’ he asked.

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’

  ‘Improve things.’

  ‘I see,’ said Muddlespot. ‘Are you going to explain how?’

  ‘When I get back. And another thing. If I find you’ve been talking to Sally while I’m out . . .’

  ‘Would I?’

  ‘Yes, you would.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Maybe I would. But just this once, I’ll have other things to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I never thought I’d say this. But I’m going to get washed.’

  High upon the battlements of Heaven the Angel of Love walked. She looked down upon the Earth, upon Darlington High, upon two tiny figures making their way in different directions across a tabletop in room C23. Behind her the Celestial clamour had settled down into a more orderly hum. It was an excited, expectant noise. Souls were trickling into the Appeals Chamber with the steady speed of sand through an hourglass. Swiftly their cases were heard, found to be consistent with the New Precedent, and soon the souls were emerging bright-eyed on the far side with their new satchels and their floor plans and their directions to find their lockers and the classrooms of the Department of Love. Thick, purple clouds were gathering over the Towers of Geography, where the Angel of Doomsday was meeting with his team. The numbers of Heavenly exam markers had been doubled to be ready for when the big rush came. Even now the Heavenly Architects were swaying a batch of Celestial portakabins into place outside the Gates of Pearl to act as temporary classrooms until such time as someone could organize the construction of more permanent facilities. And every one was marked ‘Department of Love’.

  She looked her troops up and down. Every off-duty cupid was present and armed to the teeth. Some had their bows and their arrows. Some had brought their harps and fiddles. Others had bombs of carefully primed rose petals. Still others had machine guns, hand grenades, rocket launchers and garrotting wires, all of which were loaded or tipped or edged or generally reinforced at the business end with gold. Someone had even brough
t out the old wrecking ball. They looked at her, grim-faced.

  Angels do get upset. They do get angry. They call it ‘Wrath’ but it means the same thing. They don’t get much chance to practise it in the normal course of things. But they know how to do it when the time comes.

  Let us go, Erry, the eyes of the cupids pleaded. Give the word. We’ll waste ‘em. There won’t be nuffin’ left. You can count on that.

  Erry looked them up and down. Wrath was in her heart too. Cold, bitter, implacable wrath. It made her jaw ache and her toenails curl.

  ‘We will do this my way,’ she said softly.

  ‘The ways of Heaven,’ said Windleberry, ‘are beyond human understanding.’

  He had returned to the central chamber of Sally’s mind. Sally was there, sitting at her desk, but mentally what she was sitting on was not a chair but a large oboe case, which twitched and glowed and occasionally sent out muffled shrieks such as ‘Thief!’, ‘Guilty’ and ‘Here I am – Come and find me!’

  Muddlespot was there too, wallowing in a large bath of warm water that Sally had obligingly imagined for him. He was scrubbing away at the remaining bits of paint on those areas of himself that it was possible to reach. ‘If they’re anything like our ways,’ he said happily, ‘they’re beyond all understanding. Even we sometimes don’t—’

  ‘They are nothing like your ways,’ said Windleberry frostily.

  ‘Thief!’ cried the oboe case.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Sally.

  ‘So you’ve given the leaden arrow to your man Ismael,’ said Muddlespot, ‘And he’s going to use it on Billie next time she sees Tony?’

  ‘It won’t be that simple,’ said Sally. ‘Not if I know Billie.’

  ‘Here I am!’ chirped the oboe case.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Sally. ‘Someone will hear you.’

  ‘No,’ said Windleberry. ‘The leaden arrow is only permitted in the most extreme cases. Neither Ismael nor I would use it on Billie. I gave Ismael the golden arrow, for him to use as he sees fit. As you said, another arrow, another boy. That was not why we went to Heaven.’

  Muddlespot sat up with a splash. ‘Well that’s nice! What did we go all that way for, then?’

  ‘Guilty!’

  ‘SHUT UP!’ cried Sally, Windleberry and Muddlespot all at once.

  ‘meep,’ said the oboe case. Its lower catch trembled tearfully.

  Muddlespot’s eyes narrowed. ‘So what happened to the arrow of lead?’

  ‘I have it here,’ said Windleberry, producing it. ‘And also this.’ He produced a short bow with curvy ends. He strung it and plucked the string. It hummed. The gentle note lingered in the air.

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘The cupids dropped it when they last came visiting. You will remember that they left in a hurry. They dropped several, in fact.’ Deftly he placed the leaden arrow on the string and drew it back. ‘Stay still.’

  ‘What are you . . .?’ Muddlespot’s eyes widened in horror. ‘No, Windleberry! Not me! You can’t—’

  ‘It won’t hurt – much.’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ cried Muddlespot, frantically trying to hide behind a heap of soapsuds. ‘I love you, Windleberry. Nothing can stop me loving you—’

  ‘Yes it can!’

  ‘. . . Please! I’m nothing but love for you. If I don’t love you I am nothing – don’t you see? You’re my light, my living, my meaning – there’s nothing for me without you. My angel, truly my angel, you can’t—’

  Twangg – THUMP!

  ‘You see?’ said Windleberry. ‘I told you it would work.’

  An oboe case.

  What is it?

  Just a small, black container of hard plastic, with a handle and cheap metal fastenings, and inside something that was once part of a tree. How could it possibly matter so much?

  Skill made the oboe. Music could come from it, stirring the soul to soar or to weep. But there were many instruments scattered in their cases around the Music block, and most were a lot bigger than this one.

  It was the only one of its kind in Darlington High. It couldn’t be swapped for a clarinet or a cornet. But it had spent all this term and last term being unique. Nothing new there.

  The reason it mattered now was because of what it meant to everyone around it.

  Imogen’s family expected her to pass her exam on it this afternoon. Everyone knew they were pushy.

  Imogen had lost it. Someone had taken it to show her how much she was hated in her class. That was big.

  Worse still, the teachers were on the case. Blindly, blunderingly, but definitely on the case. They weren’t going to give up until someone had been punished because of it.

  It was just a black box with a bit of former tree inside it. But right now there was so much hearts-and-minds stuff packed with it that it might have been a bomb. One way or another, between now and five o’clock, it was going go off. Which would be tough for pretty well everyone. Especially for whoever was holding it at the time.

  Unless . . .

  Unless Sally could change what it meant.

  Unless she could change it from a message of hate to a message of love.

  For example, by returning it not just as a case with an oboe inside it, but as a case with an oboe inside it around which was wrapped a piece of folded card with a heart drawn upon it, and in carefully disguised letters, the words i love you.

  And now the bomb was not a bomb any more. It was a cupid’s arrow.

  It was a white lie, thought Sally guiltily. It was a false trail. It suggested a completely different reason for the disappearance of the oboe. Not a bitchy attempt to put a spoke in Imogen’s music career, but a secret admirer, who had stolen it just so that he could return it with a love note. Nothing to do with Billie or Ameena. Nothing to do with the war.

  It lowered the stakes. If things went wrong and some boy got caught with it, the worst that would happen to him would be some sharp words and a bit of embarrassment. But if it worked, the teachers would slouch back to their lairs with knowing smiles and shakes of the head. Imogen would be left in a world not of secret enemies but of secret admirers. She’d have something to think about that wasn’t Cassie-and-Viola. For all Sally knew, she might put in an inspired performance this afternoon and get a distinction from her examiner. And in all the confusion that would follow, maybe all the problems among the girls would have a chance to die down a bit.

  Maybe.

  Anyway, it was the only way that Sally could think of to get the oboe back without pointing the finger of guilt at Janey or Billie or anyone like that, because that would just make things worse. Boys did have their uses sometimes. All she needed was one who would deliver it.

  And whoever he was, the poor sap wasn’t going to get told what was in it either. There was too much riding on this. He’d have to accept his fate and be grateful. Cupid didn’t give you the vote.

  She was lurking round a corner within sight of the door to the boys’ changing room. She had the oboe in her P.E. bag. She was waiting for the football club to finish getting dressed after their lunch-time training. One of them would do.

  The changing room door opened. Sam Wray came out.

  No, thought Sally.

  The door opened again. Jeff Butcher came out, calling over his shoulder to the guys who were still inside.

  Again, no, thought Sally.

  Why not? Jeff was nice. He’d do it if she asked him.

  ‘It’s got to be someone good-looking,’ she said to herself.

  WINDLEBERRY: Is that really why you’re waiting?

  SALLY: Of course it is.

  WINDLEBERRY: You could deliver it. Just make sure no one sees you.

  SALLY: I can’t!

  WINDLEBERRY: Be honest with yourself, Sally. There’s another reason you’re standing here. Don’t you know what it is?

  ‘It’s got to be a boy,’ muttered Sally to herself. She felt quite sure about it. And also, for some reason, angry. And tense. She w
as trying hard not to panic.

  She’d seen Dom. She’d seen Jeff, both Sams, Tim, Tyrone and Louie. And Stevie. She had almost gone for Stevie.

  There could only be three of them left in there.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered.

  The central chamber of Billie’s mind was done up like a gothic temple.

  (A gothic temple is not a cathedral. Definitely not. It is something quite different and it really exists. In Billie’s mind it does anyway.)

  The walls were of black stone, rugged and yet shiny, as if this were a cavern underground and the rocks were filmed with chill waters seeping down through the earth. The ceiling was vaulted, the floor uneven, the chamber lit by lamps of crystal set in niches. An eerie wailing came from somewhere. It might have been mystic chanting, but in fact it was Cindy Platter’s latest being played over and over through hidden speakers. In the centre of the chamber was a great stone altar block and on it Billie lay like a sacrificial victim, because that was what she wanted to be.

  Ismael took out the golden arrow and lifted it high. He was not at ease with the situation. Yeah, sure, if he had to be a priest, then he could be a priest. Organized religion comes naturally to angels.

  It was just that he had never expected to be this kind of priest.

  On the far side of the altar Scattletail looked even more uncomfortable. That was because of his white robes, which were clean.

  ‘Drive it into my heart!’ cried Billie.

  Ismael sighed. ‘You’re really up for this, aren’t you, honey?’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘We, um, doin’ it now?’ said Scattletail. ‘Don’t we have to wait for someone to, er, come along?’

  ‘Anyone you like,’ said Billie, ‘provided he’s good-looking.’

  ‘What about the Tony bloke?’

  ‘I don’t mind if it’s him again. But there might be someone better.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Could be anyone,’ said Billie. ‘Provided he’s tall and trim and a bit muscly, tanned skin, dark eyebrows and curly dark hair – an afro, maybe.’

  Ismael and Scattletail looked at each other. Billie’s could be anyone was sounding a lot like Zac Stenton.