“What’s the matter?” petulanted Susie. “Adversity not work so well on the way down?”
“On ‘e thother hand …” mused Cam.
“Joking,” said O’Nestly quickly. “Sure, your young lady, she was only joking.”
“We could get down quite well by ourselves,” said Susie, still sulking.
“Fine,” said Ox with a broad smile.
“Do you remember what it was someone not a million miles away was saying about learning from adversity?” asked O’Nestly.
Ox and Cam were setting about leaving. “It was nice to see you again, Susie,” said Ox.
“Just a moment,” said Miss Chief. “She’s being hasty. You’re being hasty, aren’t you, Susie?”
“I’m being hasty,” Susie sulkily agreed.
“You’d appreciate a lift down the mountain. Seriously appreciate one, am I right?” asked O’Nestly rhetorically.
“Seriously appreciate it,” Susie agreed. “Sorry,” she said to the polo-bears. There was even an edge to the apology of sincerity.
“Sometimes the best help is indeed no help,” Ox told her gently. “We were always there. Just know that, Susie.”
“Thalways we were ‘ere, Susie,” Cam told her gently.
“Yes,” said Susie unsurely. She was in her heart less sure than in her voice, but the prospect of being carried down the mountain was one too tempting for her to risk losing it. She suddenly remembered how tired she was, how sore were the cuts on her hand and the sun’s stroke on her face, how much her ribs ached and her lungs. And her legs.
“We tid dry to yet lou know,” said Cam.
“And I heard,” exasperated Susie. At herself.
“Me as well,” said Nespa.
“I thought I was going mad,” Susie confessed.
“Me as well,” said Nespa.
“I’m prepared to wager we all heard you,” O’Nestly confessed.
“And we all ignored you,” confessed Mimimi.
“And if we hadn’t?” Bluemerang asked.
“We’d have had to ignore you,” Ox agreed.
“It’s cetting gold up here,” shivered Cam.
“Let’s get snowing,” punned Ox. “Lift anyone?”
“There’s no catch in all of this?” Susie asked suspiciously. “No more brushes with adversity?”
“Oh no,” said Ox, with a gentle laugh. “This, Susie, is a hitchless hike!”
Chapter 55
“Wait,” said Bluemerang.
“What?” chorused the others, some impatiently, none curiously.
“We’ve got to plant something, a flag or something. Show we’ve blueming been here.”
“Ye-es,” mused Susie. “How would the Snow-it-alls know? If, I mean, we’ve made it here or not.”
“Oh, they know,” Ox told her enigmatically.
“Bluemerang, he is right, n’est-ce pas?” said Nespa.
“And wouldn’t you know it?” said O’Nestly. “There’s me having left my best flag in my other pocket? … This might come as a serious shock to you guys, but we have no flag.”
“Miss Chief’s scarf?” delicately suggested Mimimi.
They awaited Krakatoa. Nothing. A silent muse. And then a smile. A soft smile, a delicate one. “Do you know,” Miss Chief finally said, “we … I think that’s rather a good idea. My scarf. I can think of no better use to put it to.”
“It did also save my life, Miss Chief,” Susie reminded her.
“Which is why, child,” Miss Chief told her, “it should be punished by being abandoned in a frozen desert.” She uncoiled the garment from her neck. They could find no stick to which to attach it, so they buried three quarters of it in the snow, and packed the snow tightly about it.
“A good storm and the whole thing will be buried,” said Mimimi.
“Only the scarf,” Miss Chief told her. “Only the symbol. The event, our triangle, that can never be buried. That’ll always be with us.” She noticed the other Sufrogs looking at her. They were astounded. “What?” she asked. “What?” And then she realised that their astoundedness was one of admiration. “We am … I’m not just a pretty face, you know.”
They started their descent.
And Ox was right, the hike they had, it was hitchless.
They took another route down to that by which Susie and her frogs had arrived. The polo-bears felt it would be prudent to return them beyond the IAO’s border. They weren’t suggesting that the Snow-it-alls would act dishonourably, and re-arrest Susie on her return, but … Well, why set temptation before them?
Hurdles which for the Sufrogs would have been of the most taxing and gruelling, for the polo-bears were the snapping of a twig. Crags and fissures were merely lolloped over, canyons and chasms popped over, ravines and gulches lollipopped over. And as they returned closer and closer to ‘sea level’, so their lungs started again to suck in – and in great gulps – the increasingly oxygenated air.
To begin with, this felt uncomfortable, as if the breaths were too big for their lungs. A sort of indigestion, almost. But then the light-headedness they’d felt at the top of the mountain seized them again, and they all became giggly and a bit silly. A bit drunk, almost.
The bite in the wind seemed to nip less and munch more. Then to munch less and to sort of gently chew, the braindeer’s ruminating sort of chew. The snow seemed less razor-bladey and more doughy; the blood seemed again to flow through the arteries rather than chug.
Each giant step of the polo-bears brought them substantially closer. The ice was becoming more brittle now, it was a skin now shedding a texture beneath; now icicles were starting to drip.
Closer. Closer.
Now they could see ants again. The same ants it had been such a relief to say goodbye to. They’d now be laughing on the other side of their faces – that was for sure.
Slowly, inexorably, the ants took on forms: to begin with anonymous forms: Emos, I-knew-its, pengrins. But, like a telescope racking through focus, slowly the pengrins became Terry and his colleagues, the Emos became Dremo and his. There was IKI 31 & 32, there the Snow-it-alls. There the Vis-all-seer. And there Corniun.
Who was being held by two pengrins. They couldn’t hold her, though, when she gave a series of joyful springs. She neighed in celebration of their return.
They could see now that Dremo was in chains.
The atmosphere emanating from the crowd was so electric it could have made of Glasgow a Glasglow. There was an awe skitting through it (and through each member of it) which was sparring with the hatred each had been told to feel. The more sophisticated amongst them saw this as the emotional equivalent of vanilla ice-cream topped with a dark chocolate sauce: a succession of apparently contrasting sensations (cold and hot, sweet and bitter, solid and liquid), the essence of each one of which enhanced precisely by that contrast. But the more down-to-earth just felt confused.
They were descending into no man’s land. Of that there was now no question.
Indeed so evident was it, that the Vis-all-seer was seen to walk. Across the IAO frontier, into the no man’s land separating it from the Fowork Forest.
The Vis-all-seer was seen to walk.
It was a day of wonder, all right. For all of the IAO’s inhabitants. Neverrest had been scaled – and by a high traitor – and the Vis-all-seer was leaving IAO territory and on foot.
For the Vis-all-seer too it was a day of wonder. She looked with wonder at the returning forms of Susie and her frogs. It wasn’t the wonder of a Second Coming, but it was close to the wonder Adam must have felt the first time he gazed on Eve. Even as she walked, even as the bridge’s pengrins stepped aside to let her pass, her gaze never left the Sumountaineers. Still enpawed, they were now approaching the nursery slopes of the mountain’s base.
Slowly, very slowly, the action exploding with sarcasm and ill humour, Elaide started to clap them. She continued in like strain for two or three claps.
Dremo heard her, though. Fettered, he started to jangle
his chains in the same rhythm. But somehow he managed to change the lilt from sarcasm to rejoicing. And, almost simultaneously, the rhythm of rejoicing was taken up – of all unlikely creatures – by Terry, the orbuttieler.
No sooner had he started his private ovation than it was taken up by IKI 31 & 32, and then by the other I-knew-its. Then by the remaining pengrins and Emos. Finally by two of the Snow-it-alls. Finally there was only one Snow-it-all failing to clap: Susie’s defence counsel and Justin Case.
The applause started to gather its own momentum. Soon it was threatening, itself, to cause an avalanche. And then, to both accompany the rhythm and to complement it, a chant started to yodel around the peaks: “Su-sie,” it went: “Su-sie; Su-sie; Susie.”
She heard it. She looked around. No, her ears were not deceiving her. She was being feted. And it was she who was being so.
She started to glow.
And then she started to love the glow. And to bask in it. In the chant, in the applause. She started to hearthrug in it.
Oh, she supposed it was all very noble, doing things just for the sake of doing them, finding reward only in the knowledge that a goal had been attained or an objective met.
But there is no pleasure quite like that which comes from public acknowledgement of a job well done ... or of a dragon slain.
“Tell me,” O’Nestly asked Susie, his anyway broad grin now stretched to the very limit of its elasticity, “does this feel good to you?”
Susie answered him with a smile to rival his. “It feels … great.”
“Why is it then that we’re so generous with our criticism?” asked O’Nestly, “and with our praise so stingy?”
“Do you know, I’ve also been wondering that?” said – again to everyone’s amazement – Miss Chief. “I’ve decided it’s to do with power.”
“Power?” asked Nespa with an uncertain chuckle.
“It’s not an answer that can be spoon-fed, Nespa. You have to work it out for yourself,” said Miss Chief.
Still around them the cheers echoed and the chants cantata’d and the applause rattled.
The polo-bears set down their charges that they might walk the last hundred metres or so by themselves.
“We’ll say ‘so long’ here,” said Ox.
“Say ‘bood-gye’,” said Cam.
“It’s your moment,” Ox told her. “Yours and the Sufrogs’.”
“You sould all shavour it,” Cam told her.
“Thank you,” said Susie. “Not just for that. You know … well …”
“We know,” said Ox.
“Funny,” Susie said. “There’s so much I want to say, so much I could. That I probably should. ‘Thank you’ is all I can think of.”
“Thank you says it all,” Ox told her.
“Nothing nore meed be said,” Cam told her. “Ever.”
The Vis-all-seer was looking towards them. The scree was here no more severe than the shingle of many Earth beaches.
Corniun could take no more. She broke from her two restraining pengrins. Another four sought to regain possession of her. But she had started to gallop (backwards, of course) towards the frontier. There was no pengrin quite so foolhardy as to stand in the path of a galloping unicorn. Likewise on the bridge.
She rushed to greet Susie as she sort of scree-boarded down the last few yards. “Done well, Susie,” the unicorn told her. “Done well, done WELL, done WELL.”
“Thank you, Corniun,” she replied. She looked around to wave her final goodbye to Ox and Cam. But they had already gone.
“Come back with me,” Elaide said. But not as an order, nor unkindly. More as an invitation scared of its lavishness.
“You said you’d let Dremo go,” Susie reminded her.
“We can’t possibly do that,” Elaide replied. “It would give out entirely the wrong message. Dremo’s a criminal. Oh, you’ll cause a flurry for bit. You’ll enjoy your ten minutes of fame. If we let Dremo go, though ... well, the message would be unconscionable.”
“I don’t know what that means, but … ” Susie started to say.
“It means … ” O’Nestly tried to tell her.
“I can guess. We had a deal. What message does it send out, not sticking to a deal?”
Elaide side-stepped the question. “You’d become a Snow-itall,” she tried to tempt her. “Almost guaranteed.” She knew Susie wouldn’t accept the invitation. She had to let Susie know that that saddened her.
“A Vis-all-seer, perhaps?” Susie asked.
“Maybe even that,” Elaide replied. “Given time.”
“Would you let Dremo go?” “We couldn’t, Susie. However much we might want to.”
“In that case, thanks … ” said Susie. “But no thanks?”
“Right,” Susie confirmed. “Nip?”
“Your choice,” Elaide told her. “The lid will come off easily.”
“Nip’s not a criminal, then?”
“He’s just fresh air.” She started to walk back to the IAO. Over her shoulder she said sadly, “Goodbye, child.”
“Be gentle with Dremo,” Susie shouted after her.
“To be gentle with those who seek to destroy us is to suckle the scorpion. If you want to change situations, Susan, you have to remain within that situation.” She nodded to the pengrins guarding Dremo that they should take him away.
“Nooooooooooooooooooo!” he screamed. “Noooooooooooooo!”
Susie had to turn her back on the noise.
Chapter 56
For minutes, and what seemed like hours, afterwards, Dremo’s “nooooo” kept bouncing between the mountains. For years, for most of her life indeed, Susie would be haunted by the sound. The most delicate of nudges would cause her head again to be booming with that scream.
In an attempt to strangle that noise, Susie opened Nip’s jar. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Other than being not what she got.
“Right,” he said, brushing himself down. “Fowork Forest.”
“Excuse me,” Susie replied, still trying to block out Dremo’s echoing scream. A sense of responsibility for him was lobster-clawing at her; conscience was singeing, burning, sizzling her.
“Fowork Forest,” Nip repeated as if addressing a dunce. “Come on, come on. Best foot forward. Onwards and upwards.”
“I don’t mean to make a big thing about this or anything, Mr Nip, but I did save your life.”
“Good,” said Nip.
“Good?”
“That you don’t mean to make a big thing about it.”
“Good?”
“I won’t make a big thing about it either.”
“And Mr E?” Susie asked.
“Why would he make a big thing about it?”
“You don’t think, maybe, me saving your life means you owe me a favour or anything?”
“Of course not.”
“Not?”
“It could mean you owe me the favour. But, as I said, … ”
“You’re not going to make a big thing about it?”
“Exactly,” said Nip. “Well?”
“I really want to go home, Mr Nip,” Susie pleaded exhaustedly. “I really need to.”
“Just as soon as you get me to Grammar Castle,” Peatur said, menace starting to sheen in his pea-eyes as if they had been coated with glycerine.
“We all need to go home for a blueming bit.”
“All of us, n’est-ce pas?” They had started to trudge a desultory path towards the black, black forest which lay someway before them.
“Think,” Corniun murmured to Susie. “Remember.”
“Sure, we’re in serious need of a rest.”
“It’s a major deal.”
“Even amphibassadors need a rest sometimes,” said Miss Chief.
“Think,” again Corniun hisspered to Susie. “Remember.”
“Wait a second,” Susie suddenly announced and slew to a halt. “Wait a blooming second.”
“We haven’t time for this,” Nip tried to tell her
. “We have to get on. Have to get …”
“When we were choosing – who should come, sort of thing,” said Susie, meandering a bit clumsily through the labyrinth of her memory, “he said, Mr E, when I picked him, ‘You don’t have to’.”
“‘Don’t you know’?” O’Nestly mimicked.
“Probably,” Susie agreed. Corniun winked hugely and conspiratorially at her.
“And?” asked Mimimi.
“Don’t you see?” Susie asked. “Don’t you? If I didn’t have to pick him, then it means we can whoosh without him. It has to mean that. Doesn’t it?”
“It has to mean zat, Susie,” Nespa agreed.
“He was being polite,” sneered Nip. “You know how he is.”
“Yes,” said Bluemerang. “Not blueming polite.” “
We’re wasting time,” Nip insisted.
“We’ll give it a go,” said Susie. “If nothing happens, what’d we lose?”
“He’ll suffer horribly,” Mr Nip announced, his eyes now aflame with malice. “Mr E. No more cosy Dunster Fryin dungeons. Dungeons, they’ll be, the other way round: eons of dung!”
“I’ll come back,” Susie assured him. “I will come back. And we’ll get you to Grammar Castle. Sure as eggs is eggs. I really want Mr E back with me. It’s just …”
“Worry don’t,” Corniun told her and added, mostly for Nip’s benefit, that she’d explain it all to him once the Sufrogs had gone.
The Sufrogs formed their magi circle. They incanted the magi words. “… Our dreams will come together.”
Whoosh!
They were off. Whooshing. Back to Earth. Away from the clouds.
Whoosh.
The bright blue of the Grammarcloud day slithered into the velvet black of Earth night, a train whooshing into a tunnel.
Except that this tunnel was full of bursting light.
“A firework display!” Susie gushed.
Around them clusters of pyrotechnics exploded into a zillion sparkling shards, an Aladdin’s cave of tinselled emeralds and rubies and more diamonds than had ever been seen – ever – in the whole history of the universe.
“They’ve heard about us here on Earth, guys,” she whooped. “We’re famous. They’re welcoming us home, celebrating our triumph.”
Susie and the Snow-it-alls Page 24