by Joan Lennon
Market shook his head. ‘I guess we just weren’t thinking Kelpie enough!’
‘No,’ said Gladrag. ‘It was only when I saw that blob of acid that I suddenly realized. She’d already tried to drown them in the future and freeze them in an Ice Age – this time she was aiming to incinerate them!’
‘Instead of just getting them shot, the way I did,’ muttered Market bitterly.
‘Now, now,’ the other two reassured in unison.
‘So that could have been them,’ said Interrupted, pointing at the blackened patch, which still smoked a little. ‘But it isn’t. We’re sure of that, right?’
‘Come,’ said Gladrag. ‘See for yourself.’
Interrupted Cadence peered over her shoulder into the viewing disc for a long while, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Gradually the lines of worry on his face eased away, and he breathed a sigh of relief and a single word.
‘Paradise,’ he said.
14 The Sixth Tide
‘Wake up! Wake up! I think we’ve died and gone to heaven!’ It was a female voice calling, much too loudly.
No, groaned Adom to himself. Not more girls! Leave me alone…
He was lying on a soft bed and the air was warm and he could feel the afternoon sun on his back, but what was he doing in bed in the afternoon?
He opened his eyes, shoved himself up on his elbows and peered about stupidly. There was Eo, hugging his knees and looking inexplicably delighted, and Jay, leaping about like an over-excited puppy, and Hurple, rolling over and over in the golden sand, and the air was all strange-scented and the trees were wrong…
‘Where are we?’ Adom croaked. He didn’t even notice he wasn’t throwing up, which was a nice change.
Jay flopped down beside him. ‘In a tropical paradise, that’s where! I take back everything I’ve ever said about being indoors. This is fabulous!’
‘But we should be in Dalraida – in Scotland – the Western Isles!’ This place felt wrong, alien. ‘We’re not supposed to be here!’ he wailed.
‘The boy’s absolutely right, of course,’ said Hurple, ‘but not for the reasons he thinks.’ He was lying on his back with all his legs in the air now, and still managed to pontificate. ‘As far as I can tell, the time we have come to pre-dates humans of any description by a fair few million years.’
Eo joined them. ‘You’re not serious!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is pre-human? Is that why it feels so…’ He waved his hands about, at a loss for words to describe how delicious it all seemed.
Hurple smiled benignly at them. ‘It is pleasant, isn’t it?’
But Adom wasn’t feeling it. ‘How can you all be so happy?! What is there here for us? What can this Tide give?’
Hurple rolled over and put a paw on the boy’s leg. ‘There’s no one here to give us anything, Adom. This Tide there isn’t going to be a Gift. It was the Kelpies’ throw and this is where they sent us, where we couldn’t receive any help because there’s nobody to receive it from.’
‘The only thing we can do is catch our breath, gather our strength, gird our loins, that sort of thing?’ said Jay hopefully. ‘Please say it’s true, Professor! I’ve heard about places like this in history classes, about beach holidays, and, oh, bonfires on the sand, and all kinds of wonderful things. I never thought I’d ever have the chance at one.’
Eo didn’t say anything, but the look on his face said it all.
‘Happy holiday children,’ said Hurple, and Eo and Jay immediately leapt up, hooting delightedly.
‘Who’s for a swim?’ cried Jay.
She started to strip off without waiting for a reply. Adom looked away quickly and gulped. Eo didn’t notice, as he was busy pulling his own clothes off as well. To Adom’s relief, both of them stopped at underwear.
‘Why is it so hot?!’ Adom muttered.
‘Could it have anything to do with a certain young lady’s sudden display of skin?’
Hurple’s amused comment was not helpful. Adom turned and glared. Fortunately, the others hadn’t heard.
‘Last one in’s a rotten egg,’ shrieked Jay.
Giggling madly, the two sprinted for the water, spattering sand all over Adom and the ferret.
‘Don’t mind them,’ Hurple chuckled. ‘You know what the young are like, first day of the holidays.’
Adom just looked at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sometimes I don’t know what any of you are talking about,’ he said sadly. ‘Honestly, half the time I haven’t a clue.’
And you think they do?!’ Hurple looked up at him with his mad, bright little eyes. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘Me, daft?! Look around you, ferret of Scotland, at your native land! This –’ Adom waved a hand – ‘this is daft.’
Hurple gazed around at the exotic scene. ‘You’re right,’ he said, nodding. ‘Totally crazy. But it makes a great story. Listen…’
So, as Eo and Jay messed about happily in the warm sea, Professor Hurple explained to Adom how the world is a changing place, slowly, inexorably, always on the move, and how once, long ago, the land that would be his home was thousands of kilometres to the south, bound by a shallow tropical sea.
Because of the wrist computer, Adom had all the vocabulary he needed to follow the ferret’s explanations. What he didn’t have was the blasé familiarity with wonders that let Jay and, in a different way, Eo easily accept ideas like floating continents, unimaginable lengths of time, animal kingdoms that thrived and grew and then would someday completely disappear. For Adom, it was astonishing in a whole new way and, without noticing it, the story left him ready to be enchanted by their surroundings.
There hadn’t been a lot of the afternoon left when they arrived, and now the setting sun drew the swimmers back on to the beach, puffing, a bit pruny and thoroughly content.
‘Look at those colours – they don’t seem real!’ said Jay, awe-struck.
The oranges and blood reds flared across half the sky, making huge twisted hook-fingered patterns against the darkening blue.
‘I’ve never seen a sunset like that before,’ said Eo.
‘I suspect it has something to do with our location, so close to the equator,’ murmured Hurple, but there was an uneasy note in his voice.
‘It looks like the sky is on fire,’ said Adom.
This was so exactly what it did look like that no one spoke for a while. And it was into this silence that a new sound came. It was a bumbling, rumbling noise, with now and then a kind of throaty trumpeting thrown in for good measure. It seemed to be coming from the left, out of sight around the curve of the beach. It seemed to be coming closer.
‘May I suggest we move a little towards the tree line?’ said Hurple softly.
No one argued.
They crept up the beach and, from the shelter of the trees, looked out on an amazing sight. Around the headland came a wall of enormous beasts, not shaped like anything any of them could ever truly have seen before, not hairy or furred but with skins like lizards, patterned and coloured as surreally as the sky they walked under. All sizes – small editions that skittered ponderously around the edges of the herd – huge males that eyed the interlopers by the trees and discounted them as any threat – females that flirted or fussed depending on whether their attention was on their men or their children – hundreds passing at a stately pace –
‘Dinosaurs! breathed Jay, and Eo gave a strangled yelp.
Adom had the word in his brain, but it didn’t mean anything to him. ‘What are they?’ he whispered. The beasts of hell – Brother Drostlin’s voice blared in his mind –monsters of the apocalypse – see, this is what St John saw, his vision in Revelation –
Abomination!
But Adom knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Brother Drostlin was wrong. Whatever these creatures were, hell had nothing to do with it.
The procession lasted many minutes, as the great herd flowed past them along the beach and on round the next headland. For a long moment after they h
ad disappeared, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. And when they did, they looked at each other shyly, as if they had just shared something unspeakably precious and intimate.
FAQ 943: If the dinosaurs died out long before any humans existed, why is it so many human societies have independently come up with the idea of dragons?
HURPLE’S REPLY: Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Soon after, the fiery display in the sky also was over and, with the suddenness of the tropics, all at once it was night. Adom set about making them a fire, more for comfort and light than warmth. They shared out the last of Jay’s food packs and refilled the water bottles from a stream that wandered out of the trees. Adom, Eo and Hurple sighed with contentment and lay about feeling comfortably full. But Jay couldn’t settle. She fidgeted and squirmed and finally jumped up.
‘That fire’s not big enough,’ she said emphatically. A place like this – a night like this deserves a… a bonfire!
That’s what they always had on beach holidays.’ She’d never seen a bonfire in real life but she’d seen pictures, and she knew what she wanted.
Eo and Adom groaned. Surely the fire was fine as it was? The air was like soup, and made them feel boneless and lazy, but it seemed to make Jay more and more energetic.
‘Come on!’ she cried, prodding them with her feet. ‘Let’s build the biggest bonfire this beach has ever seen.’
‘How about the only bonfire this beach has ever seen?’ grumbled Eo.
‘Even better!’ she yelped. ‘Then we can dance naked around it and howl to the moon!’ She laughed at the expression on Adom’s face. Just kidding! But the moon will rise soon, won’t it, and when it does I want it to look down on this world with no people and be amazed!
‘She’s mad,’ said Eo flatly to Adom.
‘Completely,’ he agreed.
But they got up anyway.
There was no shortage of fuel, though Jay still wasn’t very good at distinguishing between what was burnable and what wasn’t. They fed the fire until it was leaping high into the night sky, scattering trails of sparks on the warm breeze and roaring like a river in spate. Jay got them to dance round it – fully clothed – and they were so busy jumping and laughing, and their eyes were so full of the glare of the flames, they didn’t see the moon rise until it was completely clear of the hills.
The Professor was the first to notice. ‘Look!’ he called to the others. ‘What do you think? Amazement sits upon its brow!’
The moon was huge and perfectly round, and the face of the Man in the Moon as it hung over them really could not have looked more surprised.
‘YES!’ yelled Jay, punching the air. ‘We did it!’
Everybody grinned, panting slightly.
‘So, what now? Anybody for a walk, this fine moonlit night?’
‘Not me.’
‘No, thanks.’
Jay looked at them for a moment, then shrugged. ‘OK. Hurple, you’re with me.’ And then she scooped the ferret up and draped him over her shoulder. ‘See you in a while.’
‘What was that all about?’ said Eo, coming up on one elbow to look after them.
‘No idea,’ said Adom.
‘Fair enough,’ said Eo with a shrug, and lay back.
∗
The air was like velvet as Jay and Hurple strolled quietly along the shore.
‘You’re missing the patches, aren’t you,’ said Hurple suddenly, and he wasn’t asking a question.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Jay spluttered at first. ‘I don’t need to patch – I’m not a saddo, you know!’
‘I know,’ said Hurple.
She sighed. ‘Well, yes, all right. I am. But, I’ll tell you something, Professor. I can’t believe how much more alive I feel. I mean, who would want to feel sad or scared or sick if they didn’t have to? But I’ve been feeling all those, and hungry and wet and cold and cross and lost… and I still feel like I could “leap tall buildings at a single bound” like those superheroes in the olden days! Daft, eh?’
‘One might even think there was a moral in there somewhere,’ said the ferret mildly.
There was a short silence. For a moment, Jay thought she might talk to him about what Circe had said to her, and how churned up it made her feel… but she wasn’t ready to yet.
Instead, she said, ‘You know what, though, you still haven’t told me about you. Before, I mean, before you started living with the G – and don’t try and put me off with just any old rubbish!’ She shoved an imaginary microphone under his nose with her free hand. ‘Tell me, Professor Hurple, tell me about you.’
The ferret smiled, and then licked his foot. His fur showed fabulously silver in the moonlight. His beady eyes were black pearls. They’d been through so much together that Jay had forgotten how different he was from her. In some ways he had more in common with the strange, impossible creatures of the world around them than he did with her. In some ways he shouldn’t really exist at all. Not outside a story, anyway.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked softly.
For a moment, he didn’t speak, and she thought he wasn’t going to. But then, still not looking at her, ‘Two words,’ he said. ‘Two words say it all.’
Two words? she wondered. Cosmic tilt? Inescapable fate? It’s just a clever disguise – no, that’s more than two…
‘Library closures,’ said Hurple.
Jay stopped walking. ‘This sounds like a story I want to be sitting down for,’ she said.
Hurple didn’t argue, and she headed further up the beach to where a mossy log stretched invitingly on the sand.
‘Right. Library closures,’ she said, setting the ferret down on the log beside her. ‘I’m all ears.’
For a moment, Hurple paused, gathering his memories. Then he began to talk… about the Librarian.
She was a short, blobby sort of woman who wore comfortable clothes.
‘She had a favourite old sweatshirt with the words “So Many Books, So Little Time” printed on it –I remember that.’
Hurple didn’t know how old the Librarian was, or whether she’d ever had a life before the Ardnamurchan Library and, if so, what that life could have been. Jay gathered she was a bit mad – ‘three steps to the side, you might say’ was how Hurple put it. He called her D. D. Hamilton, because that’s what she called herself. Apparently the initials stood for Doris Delores, but Hurple spent his kittenhood assuming they were short for Dewey Decimal.
Jay let that pass, and tried to come to grips with the important stuff.
‘So, you used to live with a librarian?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Who was a human. A human librarian in a library. For humans.’
Hurple nodded.
‘You were her pet?’
‘No. I was her colleague.’
Jay stared at him for a moment, but he didn’t elaborate.
‘But what on earth did you do in a library?!’ she asked.
Hurple looked surprised at her surprise. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘during the day I kept the Librarian company, and at night I read the books.’
There was a pause.
‘Isn’t that a bit… unusual?’ asked Jay carefully.
Hurple shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But I didn’t really know what ferrets usually did. To begin with, I mean. Not till I’d read up on them. I hadn’t ever met one. The Librarian was the first being I opened my eyes to. All I can think of is I imprinted on her somehow.’
‘Imprinted…’Jay frowned. ‘Like chickens that are hatched under ducks and grow up thinking they are ducks until they go on to the farm pond and drown? Like that?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ said Hurple indignantly. ‘I’m an excellent swimmer!’ There was a pause. ‘Not, of course, that that’s relevant. I just thought I’d, you know, mention it.’
‘I guess we have to accept it. You’re…’Jay paused, looking for the right words, ‘kind of unique.’
‘No one can be kind of unique, but I take your point. I am not an ordinary ferre
t.’ He paused for a second. ‘D. D. Hamilton always seemed to appreciate that.’
For a moment the slightly incongruous figure of the Librarian filled both their minds.
‘So, did she know what you were doing? Did you talk to her?’
Hurple shook his head. ‘I only discovered speech afterwards. And though I think she suspected I was not an ordinary beast – maybe even the fact I could read – it was as if she didn’t want to look into it all too much, you know? In case it wasn’t so.’
Jay nodded. She knew what that felt like.
‘We were very happy. It was a wonderful library in a spectacularly beautiful place – which of course has long been underwater in your time. You’ll just have to take my word for how beautiful it was. Much better suited for luxury holiday flats or a posh hotel, or so the developers thought. You could hear them grinding their teeth every time they drove by in their big cars.’
He sighed. ‘But we didn’t worry. We thought nobody could touch us. After all, what could be more important than books?’ He stopped talking. He looked as if he didn’t want to start again.
Jay stroked a finger down his head. ‘You don’t have to tell me, you know. If you don’t want to –’
‘No. No, I do,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s just… I haven’t spoken of this to very many people…’
She stayed still, letting Hurple gather his thoughts. Then he took a deep breath and continued.
At first nothing happened. But it wasn’t the sort of thing you can easily keep a secret. When the developers heard the government had cut off our funding they couldn’t believe their luck. There was a lot of squabbling about exactly who was going to get our site, and that gave us a bit more time, but eventually the highest bidder rose to the top like scum, and was ready to kick us out. Problem was, we weren’t ready to go.’
‘But I thought you said you had no funding!’
‘We didn’t. But she was never a big eater, the Librarian, and I’d been catching my own rabbits for years and… she’d decided to gamble.
‘She thought that if she refused to remove the books, the developers would never dare destroy the building. She thought that everybody respected books the same way she did. That they might consider hurting her, but they’d never consider hurting the books.’