“So far so good,” she muttered.
“Ready, High Tollin, sah!” Daryl said, saluting. His friend Herbert looked impressed and added, “High Tollin, ready, sah!” The two guards smiled at each other proudly, while Wing rolled her eyes. In more ways than one, this was going to be a long trip.
“I feel I should make some sort of speech on this historic occasion,” her father said from the depths of the string hammock.
“Make it as we go, please, sir,” Sparkler said. “It’s time to move.”
The tiny group of six Tollins lifted into the breeze. If any humans had been there to see them, without blue glasses, all they would have seen was a pair of dragonflies flitting about on the banks of Darvell’s Pond—carrying string bags.
“It was just two years ago that we met our Dorset cousins for the first time. I remember thinking then…” The High Tollin’s voice faded with distance, thank goodness.
CHAPTER TWO
WOLFENSTEIN PROVES HIS WORTH
T TOOK FIVE DAYS JUST TO REACH THE SEA. All Sparkler and the others could do was get to the coast as fast as they could, but the dragonflies were laboring under the weight and Wolfenstein had taken his place in harness many times, allowing one of the others to rest. Sparkler was proud of him and gave him a bluebottle he’d caught during a rest stop.
The biggest problem they faced was that none of them actually knew where the Dark Tollin tunnels were. The emergency radio broadcast hadn’t given a location before it was cut off. The Dark Tollins they’d known had never mentioned their home except to say they were close to the sea. As the weary group struggled down to a sandy shore, Sparkler began to realize Dorset had an awful lot of coast and an awful lot of sea. He’d read about the sea in books. For once, that hadn’t prepared him for just how completely enormous it actually was.
He stood with Wing and Grunion, staring at the immense blue watery thing. Somewhere beyond it, perhaps there were Tollins who wore berets and strings of onions. They’d all heard the legends. Perhaps in the past, Tollins had stowed away on ships, or been trapped on one by accident. Sparkler could see ships out there in the haze, like floating buildings. He felt his curiosity twitch.
“One day, Wing. We’ll cross the blue bit and see what lies on the other side.”
“Just the two of us?” Wing said, without looking at him.
“And Grunion, obviously,” Sparkler replied. He thought for a moment. “Not your father, though. He’s a lovely, sweet old Tollin, Wing, but he’s not really a traveler, if you know what I mean.”
Both of them turned to where the High Tollin was lying facedown on a sandy clump of grass, groaning. One of the guards was stretching the High Tollin’s legs for him.
“Let’s get started then,” Sparkler said. “We’ll have to split up and search.”
The one thing that might help was that Tollins didn’t hide themselves. Before the whole blue-glasses problem they’d never had to. Outside of the fireworks factory in Chorleywood, that still wasn’t well known. Sparkler thought they had a chance of spotting the Dark Tollins in the open.
“I’ll go with you and Wolfie,” Wing said.
Sparkler nodded. “All right. Herbert, you go with Yellow Peril, down that way.” He pointed to a distant cliff that reached out into the sea. “Grun, take Daryl and Blue Thunder. I think your father could do with a rest for a while, Wing. He can stay here while we look for signs of Tollins.”
If you are searching for deer, you look for deer signs. Sometimes that means deer droppings, but Tollins clean up after themselves when it comes to things like that. There are also deer prints, which Tollins don’t leave because they are so light and spend so much time in the air. In short, tracking Tollins is a real problem. However, they do leave a trace of dust when they touch the ground. That slight smudge was what Sparkler and the others searched for, up and down the coast near a town named Lyme Regis.
It was Wolfenstein who found the first trace of dust. He was flying out ahead of them, enjoying the salt spray and abundant flies when they saw him bank and turn sharply, then hover over a spot on the rocks. There were no humans nearby to notice, not in winter.
Sparkler and Wing raced towards him.
“I trained him, you know,” Sparkler said breathlessly. “It’s like he understands every word I say. He even tries to roll over when I give him the word.”
“Don’t you start,” Wing replied. “I get enough of that from Grunion and his Dragoneers. Why not Damseleers, that’s what I want to know!”
“Whose ears?” Sparkler said in confusion.
Wing gave him a look. It was quite a complicated look. In essence, it was a look that said, “You may be very bright, Sparkler, but not that long ago we kissed as Romeo and Juliet and while I realize that’s a play and not real life, I honestly thought you’d have asked me on a date by now and you haven’t.” It really was a complicated look. It involved waggling the eyebrows quite a bit.
They reached Wolfenstein, still quivering over a smudge of golden dust on a stone.
Sparkler wasn’t sure how he had annoyed Wing, but the sight of the dust put everything else out of his mind.
“That’s it, all right,” he said. “Tollins don’t usually go far from home. They have to be somewhere close by.” Slowly, he and Wing became aware that they were at the foot of a huge cliff. They looked at each other and then they looked up.
Above their heads, the cliff seemed to stretch almost to the sky, a mass of black stone about as heavy as Chorleywood. Far up on the sheer rocks, Dark Tollins were staring down at them.
“Oh,” Sparkler said.
CHAPTER THREE
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
O SAY ENTERING THE DARK TOLLIN TUNNELS was a new experience would be something of an understatement. As far as any of the Chorleywood Tollins knew, no one from their colony had ever traveled this far from home. There were those ancient legends of Tollins who said “Bonjour!” a lot and enjoyed soft cheeses, but Sparkler half thought they were a myth. Cheese, as anyone in Chorleywood will tell you, should be firm.
The Chorleywood Tollins walked into the Dorset tunnels. The sun was setting outside and they left the light behind them, so that Sparkler wished he had brought a lamp.
“This is very…homey,” the High Tollin said, trying to be cheerful. It wasn’t. The Dark Tollins didn’t go for much in the way of comfort. The tunnels had been carved out of bare, gray rock and as they went deeper and deeper into the cliff, a heavy silence descended. All Sparkler and Wing could hear was their footsteps and slowly dripping water.
There were lights of a sort, once they were far from the outside. The Dark Tollins grew a rubbery kind of fungus that gave off a blue light in the tunnels. It hadn’t been noticeable at first, but as Sparkler and the others went down and down, their eyes adjusted. In the dim glow, each of them could see how worried everyone else looked.
They’d had to leave the three dragonflies outside. Dragonflies are unable to fold their wings and the tunnels were just too narrow. It would have been childish for Wing to point out that damselflies would not have had that problem, but she did it anyway, with enormous satisfaction. Sparkler had looked back as he entered the tunnels and saw Wolfenstein peering in from outside. The dragonfly didn’t look worried, because, well, they don’t have expressions. He looked just the same as always, but he felt worried, somehow. You had to know him, that’s all.
The Chorleywood Tollins knew they were nearing the Dark Tollin hall by its light. It appeared first as a golden glow somewhere up ahead as they trudged on and on with their silent companions. It was hard to know if they were being escorted as guests, or taken as prisoners, but with the return of light, they all felt their spirits rise.
The High Tollin had not enjoyed the journey into the cliff. He’d kept asking questions and no one had answered him. Even his own guards had felt oppressed by the trip and they were usually the ones who did all the oppressing, so they knew a bit about it.
One by one, they cam
e out on to a ledge and shuffled along it to give those behind room. Before them was a vast orange-and-cream-colored cave, hung with stalactites and stalagmites. Lamps swung from thin threads across the open space and stone steps led down to the distant floor. It did not look like something Tollins had made. The walls were rough and unpolished, bare of any decoration.
“What an extraordinary place,” the High Tollin sniffed. He was a little bit put out that the Dorset Tollins had such an impressive Great Hall. He had assumed they’d be simple folk, living in rustic surroundings. Instead he was in a cathedral of orange stone.
“This must have taken them ages to build,” Grunion said softly.
“Centuries,” said a gravelly voice from behind him. They turned ever so quickly. A Dark Tollin had appeared out of the gloom. Like Wangle, he wore dark clothes and a small hat that seemed to be just the shape of his head, with a small brim, so people would say, “That’s a hat,” and not, for example, a skullcap or tea cozy. There was nothing cozy about this Dark Tollin.
“Centuries?” Grunion repeated nervously. “Those spikes are very nice.”
“Stalactites and stalagmites,” the Dark Tollin said in his deep voice.
“Gosh! So which of them are stal…actites and which are stal…agmites?”
The Dark Tollin opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again.
“I’m not sure,” he said reluctantly. Off to one side, Wing shared a grin with Sparkler.
“Shall we go down then,” she said to no one in particular. “After all, we are expected. You did send the radio message, asking for our help.”
The Dark Tollin guard gave her a look. It was the sort of look you might see in someone allergic to nuts who has just discovered he’s chewing a bit of peanut brittle. Like Wing’s look at Sparkler earlier, it was a complicated one and involved a lot of lip movement.
“There are some of us who wish that message had never been sent,” the Dark guard muttered. “Some of us believe we should handle our own problems.”
“Some of us, like the one who’s standing and talking at the moment, in fact?” Wing asked innocently.
The High Tollin had watched the exchange, his eyes switching from his daughter to the guard. That little battle could go on all day and he was tired. The High Tollin decided to take charge.
“Let’s just go,” he said. “Put me down on the floor, lads, somewhere close to a chair, or a chair-like outcropping of stone.”
The High Tollin was lifted into the air by his guards, flown gently off the ledge and across the chamber. Sparkler, Wing and Grunion watched them go.
“After you then,” Wing said to the grumpy Dark guard. He glowered at her before going back to his post in the tunnels.
“I hope the welcome gets a bit warmer than that,” Sparkler said loudly. There were other Dark Tollins nearby. None of them looked away. They just stared, their eyes as cold as a Dorset winter.
“Someone must want us,” Grunion said a little mournfully. “I mean, they did send the radio message. That Dawlish seemed all right. I wonder where he is.” The others nodded as they remembered the Dark Tollin who’d risked his life to warn them of invasion that summer. It was true. Someone had to want them there.
“Come on, let’s go and see,” Sparkler said. The three of them buzzed up and spiraled down to the stone floor, far below. Grunion almost hit a stalactite, or it could have been the other kind, he had no idea.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE IMPORTANCE OF HOT TEA AND TOAST
Y THE TIME SPARKLER LANDED, Dark Tollins were coming out of the walls and lining up on either side of him, so that he found himself in a sort of corridor of Tollins, leading to, well, nothing, really, just an empty space on the stone floor. As Sparkler walked down the rows of silent figures, he saw a rather nice-looking sofa and armchairs being carried out of a side cave and placed carefully at the end of his path. He looked over the heads of the Dark Tollins and saw something similar was happening to his friends. Wherever they landed, they were being shepherded in the direction of the sofa.
As Sparkler came closer, he saw the High Tollin and his guards were already there. In fact, the High Tollin was sitting on the most comfortable-looking chair.
Sparkler remained on his feet and so did Grunion and Wing. The guards took their usual positions behind the High Tollin, though they looked far more nervous than usual.
Without warning, the rows of Dark Tollins roared, a noise so great that Sparkler leaped back and the High Tollin clutched his chest in shock.
“Hail, Tollin Magnus!” they shouted as one. It was a very old-fashioned name for a High Tollin and Sparkler looked around for the one they meant.
“Steady on, lads, steady on,” came a voice. Sparkler saw a Tollin about as wrinkled as the High Tollin. Sparkler looked behind him for the Tollin Magnus and then in astonishment, decided he was it. He was dressed in a slightly grubby robe and slippers and munching a piece of toast.
As Sparkler watched in surprise, the Dark Tollin Magnus wandered up to him and shook his hand.
“Good of you to come, dear boy. I hope it wasn’t too much of a trial, getting here? No? Good, good. Nasty business. Sorry about the wind-bag. The string just broke, you see. Still, you got the message.”
“Um…” Sparkler managed, but the Tollin Magnus was turning away. He’d spotted the High Tollin on the sofa and gone straight up to him.
“Move up, old lad. That’s the way.”
It was not what Sparkler had expected. In fact, it was almost the opposite of what he had expected. He realized he had only really known Wangle. Perhaps not all Dark Tollins were quite as grim. He remembered the unpleasant one up on the ledge above the chamber, but in comparison, this Tollin Magnus seemed quite genial.
“Do gather round, room for everyone,” the Tollin Magnus went on. “I do dislike having to raise my voice.”
Wing, Sparkler and Grunion all took seats, not meeting each other’s eyes. He had authority, the Tollin Magnus. It was the sort of authority grandparents sometimes have, which can be more powerful than shouting. It’s not that you are afraid of them. You just don’t want to disappoint them. The High Tollin was watching in openmouthed fascination.
“Shall we do introductions?” the Tollin Magnus went on. “Is anyone hungry? I’ve only had a bit of toast and it’s about that time.” He made a gesture and a Dark Tollin officer marched forward in a clatter of heavy boots. He saluted sharply and then stood to attention, practically shaking with eagerness.
“At your command, Tollin Magnus!” he shouted.
“Good lad. Would you mind fetching me a few slices of toast? Jam in a side pot? Anyone else? Shall I go the whole biscuit and order tea? What do you think? I’m so sorry, I haven’t done names yet; how very rude. I am the leader of this merry little band, ahaha. Tollin Magnus is just a title, of course. Real name’s Charles, but do call me Magnus, practically everyone does.”
The Dark officer looked absolutely crestfallen at this little speech.
The Tollin Magnus peered a little closer at Wing and blinked.
“My dear girl, I didn’t see you at first. I have heard all about you, of course. Wing, is it?”
“Yes, sir,” Wing said, smiling shyly.
“My son was very taken with you, I seem to remember.”
Wing looked shaken.
“Do you mean Wangle, sir?”
“Ahh, poor Wangle. Such a terrible accident. I did warn him about that cat, you know. Still, least said, soonest mended, I always say. No, no, I meant young Dawlish, my dear,” the Tollin Magnus went on: “He’s talked of nothing else since he came back with that radio thingy. I’m surprised he’s not here to greet you. So that’s a pot of tea, toast for um…seven and perhaps two different kinds of jam. I think you’ll find a little plum left in the pot near the pantry, captain.”
“Right, sir. Tea and toast, sir! Two types of jam, sir!” The Dark officer looked ready to burst into tears, but he swiveled on his feet and marched away.
The rest of the introductions went quickly, despite a pause from the High Tollin, who didn’t like to reveal his true name of Albert. He gave way in the end and the tea and toast arrived with military speed. For a time, there was no other sound except crunching and the squeak of a knife getting out a last dab of jam.
“It’s such a pleasure to see our town cousins in the flesh, I can’t tell you,” the Tollin Magnus said at last. He sighed loudly. “I’m just sorry it’s all too late.”
“Too late?” Sparkler echoed. The old Tollin peered at him too. “I’m afraid so. The charges have all been laid, you see. We’re already beginning the evacuation. By tomorrow morning, this entire cliff will be destroyed. All our homes with it. Most vexing. It’s a crisis, you see. That’s why I ordered the tea and toast.”
“That’s why you ordered…? I don’t follow,” said Sparkler.
“Oh, I always have tea and toast in a crisis. It doesn’t affect the crisis, of course, but afterwards, well…you’ve had tea and toast.”
CHAPTER FIVE
A TIME TO BREAK THE RULES
IGHT HAD FALLEN across the Dorset countryside. Magnus had agreed to an emergency meeting in his own home and Dawlish had shown up at last, red-faced and flustered from moving his family possessions to an old hollow oak in the fields. He had greeted Wing with obvious pleasure and Sparkler had taken an instant dislike to him, for reasons he could not completely explain. Wing seemed to be enjoying his company, oddly enough.
The meeting was going on late into the night. Around them, Dark Tollins were removing every last item from a thousand years of residence. They’d been at it for days and many of them were red-eyed with weariness.
Tollins 2: Dynamite Tales Page 5