The Enchanted Flute

by James Norcliffe

  ‘Is there anything there?’ asked Becky.

  ‘Not now,’ said Silenus, a little wistfully, Becky thought. ‘But many years ago, before he passed over, my good friend Faunus lived there. His house remains among his olive trees at the top of the bluffs. But others have dwelt there these many years now.’

  Silenus did not trouble to explain who these ‘others’ were, but Becky stored the information aside for later. These ‘others’ could prove more helpful than Silenus.

  What was more intriguing was the fact that the trike could have been heading towards the old dwelling. Quite fascinating, thought Becky.

  If the person on the farm trike was heading towards Faunus’s old house and if there was a connection between this person’s arrival and their own arrival, then surely the figure could be none other than Dr Faunus himself, having exchanged his wheelchair for a farm trike. Nothing else made sense. They had witnessed the almost sprightly way the once decrepit old man had led them into Arcady House. This resurrected Dr Faunus would surely be capable of riding a motorcycle. And, of course, when he discovered they had escaped through the window he would have followed them.

  There was also her suspicion that he may have even engineered their coming to this place in the first place, by locking the door and leaving the window open. Why? Did he have some other purpose? Did he have further plans for them?

  One thing was certain. If it was Dr Faunus who had driven his trike up the riverbed then they should make every effort to find him, for Dr Faunus would surely know the way back.

  In fact, at this point he was probably their only hope.

  Becky looked up at the huge figure of Silenus who was placing his bow once more over his shoulder. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘What are we waiting for?’

  ‘I like your spirit!’ he grinned. ‘Let’s find this beast and do for him!’

  ‘Do what?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘Why, kill him of course,’ laughed Silenus, stroking his jerkin. ‘I understand the rump of a centaur is quite delicious!’

  Johnny grinned uncertainly, unsure whether or not Silenus was joking. Becky did not grin. She was sure he was not joking, not joking at all. She shivered suddenly, hoping that Dr Faunus would be able to make himself known to his old friend before that old friend levelled him with an arrow. Before worrying about that possibility, though, the important thing was to find him.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Johnny. ‘This could be a long walk.’

  Silenus was already striding along the strand of sand beside the river, and Becky hurried after him, with Johnny hurrying behind her. The path was easy to follow. The tyre marks, so tantalisingly fresh, swerved occasionally into drier sand, but for the most part tracked along a strip of damper mud before the strip gave way to river stones and shingle.

  Silenus was quite correct. Before too long they could see how the valley floor narrowed and they could make out the bluffs announcing the beginning of the gorge. The hills on either side began to close in on them and seemed steeper, often revealing escarpments of limestone. There was no sign of people, though. There were no villages; there was no tell tale smoke. However there was the occasional sign of animal life. From time to time, Silenus would stop and point, with a grunt of recognition, to a hoof print or paw mark in the mud.

  ‘Goat,’ he would say, or ‘faun’.

  ‘You mean a baby deer?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘No,’ said Silenus grinning. ‘Faun!’

  Becky guessed he meant the little woodland creatures with cloven hooves, creatures such as the one Debussy celebrated in his famous prelude. At the thought of Debussy, she was reminded of Syrinx and of the enchanted flute and how everything had started with its discovery in that seedy little pawnshop. While they were lost on the hillside and so stunned to have been thrust into this strange new world, she would have blamed the flute and cursed having found it, for it seemed to have brought nothing but trouble. However, now, striding along this riverbank with the bizarre Silenus leading the way and with the expectation that Dr Faunus would be there somewhere to rescue them, her feelings were different. She was, she recognised, still enjoying herself, pleased to be part of a dream-like adventure. It was almost exhilarating.

  After another hour or so of walking, the bluffs ahead were becoming more and more distinct as was the dark shadow of the gorge between them. The small party paused for a rest and Silenus made his way across to the river proper to fill a goatskin flask with water.

  As he trudged back, Becky asked, ‘Where was Dr Faunus’s place?’

  The big man pointed to the bluff on their side of the river. ‘Up there,’ he said. ‘It is a big old white house with red tiles on the roof. Or, at least it did last time I was in these parts, not that you can see the roof from down here.’

  Becky studied the hilltop critically and thought she could make out some sort of white structure surrounded by a scattering of trees.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked, describing where she meant.

  Silenus nodded.

  ‘How do you get up from the bottom?’

  ‘There is a path,’ said Silenus. ‘It is very steep and something of a zigzag and much of it has fallen away. We will be able to see what remains of it before long.’

  Becky glanced at him, and then again towards the bluff. She tried to imagine the steep zigzagging path. However, if there were steps she realised that there was no way a motor trike could negotiate a pathway like that.

  ‘Are there steps?’ she asked.

  Silenus shook his head. ‘No, there is an olive grove at the top. You can see the trees. The path was made for donkey carts.’

  So a motor trike could possibly get up there, thought Becky.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ enquired Silenus. ‘Do you think the centaur may be there?’

  Becky nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure that the thing you call the centaur is your old friend Faunus,’ she said.

  The big man frowned, passing her the leather flask. ‘I remember your saying Faunus was alive, but that cannot be. And even if he were, how could he be changed into a creature such as the one I saw and the one whose spoor we are following? Faunus had the feet of a goat!’

  ‘He still does,’ said Johnny.

  Silenus frowned and grunted. ‘Drink,’ he said to Becky. ‘Drink up and let’s be on our way. My bow is hungry. It has not had meat for ages.’

  They had not travelled very far, however, before the valley echoed and re-echoed with a sudden staccato whine. There could be no doubt what it was: the sound of a motorcycle starting up and then from the rising volume and pitch, it was equally clear that the trike, if a trike it was, was racing back along the side of the riverbed towards them.

  ‘It is the war cry!’ shouted Silenus. ‘Behind me, little ones!’

  He pulled the bow from his shoulder and hastily plucked an arrow from his quiver. He inserted the arrow and pulled back the string. It was clearly an effort. Becky could see the vein at the side of his temple pulsing. Then, planting his feet squarely astride, Silenus stood facing the increasing roar, his arrow aimed along the line of the trike track.

  Standing some metres behind him, Becky and Johnny exchanged an amused glance before peering again in the distance for the first glimpse of the oncoming motorcycle. Becky guessed that the rider, if it were Dr Faunus, had probably spied them coming along the riverbank from a vantage point somewhere up the bluff and then hurried down to the trike.

  And then they saw it. River dust billowing behind it like a cloudy wake, the trike roared towards them, ever accelerating. They could barely make out the rider crouched over the handlebars, black helmet and goggles gleaming.

  They heard a gasping grunt from Silenus as he steadied himself, but whether it was from satisfaction or apprehension Becky could not tell.

  Then to her horror, as the motorcycle screamed directly towards him, Becky realised that it was not slowing down as it should. That, if anything, it was increasing in speed as if it were deliberately intending to mow the big
man down.

  She gave a cry of warning as the intention of the rider became more and more certain. As she herself leapt to one side, Becky heard Silenus howl with baffled fury as he loosed the arrow and jumped frantically out of the way of the trike right at the start.

  Everything seemed, for some moments, to be in slow motion. The arrow sailed harmlessly into the air, Silenus clumsily arced sideways, the huge machine screaming and reeking of petrol and burning oil, and flashing with shining black and chrome roared along its own trail with a sound of demented thunder.

  Somehow Johnny had managed to plunge in the other direction. Now all three scrambled up the bank and momentarily out of harm’s way.

  ‘Bloody maniac!’ shouted Johnny. ‘You could have killed us!’

  Becky stared at his white face and realised that she was shaking herself. Johnny’s accusation suggested that the rider had simply been reckless. Becky disagreed. What had happened was beyond mere recklessness. She sensed that they had been deliberately targeted, that the intention of the rider had been quite clear. At that moment she knew it was very unlikely to have been Dr Faunus on the machine, very unlikely to have been Dr Faunus come to find his new-found friends and return them to their own world.

  She had been deluding herself.

  Who, in that case, was it?

  There was no time for further speculation though. As they stood staring, the trike braked and spun and pulled up. It had been travelling at such velocity that it did not come to a halt until it had travelled a hundred metres or so along the riverbed. It manoeuvred relatively slowly in a large circle and then paused briefly, facing the way it had come, before roaring into life again and racing back towards them.

  Becky glanced down at the bank they had scrambled up and realised that the trike, with its large fat wheels, was probably designed for country such as this. The bank offered them no protection at all.

  ‘Run!’ she screamed. ‘It can chase us up here!’

  Silenus looked at her wildly and then at the fast-approaching trike. He seemed torn between a desire to let loose another arrow and to escape the trike’s roaring fury. Almost immediately the speed of the trike decided for him. He swung his bow back over his shoulder and then plucked Johnny up like an infant and held him under one arm. Then leaping and bounding like a panicked wallaby, he raced off over the uneven plain back in the direction of his cottage.

  There was reason to panic. The intention of the rider had been clear enough, but the appearance of the rider was chilling: black leather boots, black leather trousers, black leather bomber jacket with silver zips and a huge head like a bulbous insect with a black shiny helmet and a full visor of sinister smoky black.

  As Becky suspected, the bank proved no barrier for the farm trike and its dark rider. It slowed and veered to the left and, engine whining powerfully, nosed its way effortlessly up the slope. Becky, though, was in no mood to watch its progress. Even before it began to negotiate the bank, she had fled, running wildly after the long loping leaps and bounds of Silenus.

  The ground underfoot was now much more uneven and this meant that of necessity the trike had to take things much more slowly. The uneven ground, though, meant that Becky had to take good care as well. The last thing she needed at this stage was a sprained ankle or worse. Silenus, even with Johnny clutched under one arm, was already well away. In her helplessness, Becky realised that trying to follow Silenus would have been futile; she would be easily overtaken by the powerful machine. Her only hope really was to get to some terrain where the trike would not be able to follow her. That meant, of course, crossing the seemingly narrow valley floor and making for the relative safety of the steep forest-covered hills.

  Accordingly, but not without a pang of misgiving, she straightened up and raced directly across the valley. Perhaps, she reasoned, the rider would be briefly confused as to which party to follow and this might just give her a smidgeon more time.

  That hope was quickly dashed. As soon as the machine crested the brow of the bank, it fastened not on Silenus and Johnny but on the prey closest at hand and, lurching up and down at a less dangerous velocity, pursued Becky as she ran pell-mell towards the hillside.

  Deliberately, Becky chose the roughest and most uneven route, reasoning that while this would be harder on her and would slow her down somewhat, it would also make progress more difficult for the farm trike. So it proved and for some time Becky was able to keep ahead of the machine, which whined and roared behind her. At times she knew it had to stop and renegotiate a tricky piece of ground and this gave her a chance to maintain her lead. She knew though, that she was losing all the time. There was no cover, so the rider was able to keep her in sight at all times. The river valley, despite being narrower at this point, was still deceptively wide and Becky was not at all confident that she could continue at the breakneck pace before she developed a stitch or gave in to exhaustion. She was not an especially sporty person and not particularly fit.

  The hillside still seemed an unbearable distance away, and the motorcycle dangerously close on her tail when, to her huge relief, Becky found herself plunging down a much steeper ravine and then clambering up the other side, up a slope so steep she had to clutch at stunted broom trees in order to pull her aching body upwards and onwards.

  There was no way the trike could manage this obstacle. It would have to either follow left or follow right to find a shallower crossing place; either that or the rider would have to dismount and pursue Becky on foot.

  As Becky scrambled up the final metres of the cliff, she heard the trike stop and idle as the rider considered the quandary.

  Oh, God, let him not chase me on foot, Becky prayed to herself. Her breath was coming in great sucking gulps and she could feel the tell tale pangs in her side that prefigured a stitch. She knew that if the rider made after her on foot she would have succumbed within a few metres.

  She finally pulled herself up and over the lip of the ravine and tottered there unsteadily, before beginning her flight once more.

  Then, to her tremendous relief, Becky heard the trike roar into life again and she risked a frightened look over her shoulder. The rider, crouched low behind the handlebars was heading away from her, evidently following the edge of the ravine in search of a place to cross it. Becky, looked along the gully herself, and was comforted to see that the steep defile seemed to continue for as far as the eye could see. With luck, she should be able to conserve her resources and make the relative safety of the hillside before the machine could begin its relentless pursuit once more.

  Gradually, as inexorable as the pursuit had been, the hillside drew closer. Before long the massed green of the forest separated into individual trees and then moments later Becky was stumbling across a small rippling creek and into the safety of the forest.

  She could still hear the whine of the motorcycle echoing about the valley like a frustrated wasp as it sought a crossing. Despite this reminder of the danger, Becky’s relief was immense. She realised that once she was among the trees, the rider would have no way of knowing at what point she’d entered the forest, nor of where she was once she was secure among the shaggy branches and trunks.

  All the same, Becky did not stop until she had climbed well up the gully of the creek, a steep incline punctuated by a succession of pretty waterfalls and thick groves of trees. There was no way a motorcycle could climb these slopes, and there was little chance a pursuer on foot would have any idea where she was.

  Gasping and clambering Becky pulled herself ever upwards, until eventually she found a glade of ferns on a narrow plateau. The ferns looked inviting, soft and bright green in a shaft of mote-filled sunlight, and she sank gratefully into them and their fronds folded over her in a safe embrace.

  For a long while, Becky lay there allowing the tightness in her chest to ease and her staccato breathing to become more regular. The motorcycle’s whine sounded ever more distant and she could now hear, near and far, the murmur of the forest, the tinkling trickle of t
he creek and the sound of birds. Ah, she exulted, safety … and she silently gave gratitude to whatever fortune had blessed her.

  However, even as she relaxed into a sense of temporary security, doubts and fears began to return. Sure, she had outsmarted the sinister figure in black leather for the moment, but what was she to do next?

  It was like some playground game from childhood, except that this time the game was murderous. Hide and go seek was always scary, but it was ultimately fun. She lay there gazing up through the lattice of fern leaves and fronds knowing that she was trapped. Sooner or later the rider would leave the machine and search her out. At that point the cycle would be silent. Shortly after that, she would be fearful of every snapping twig, every moving shadow. She would not know which tree trunk could hide the assailant in black, which noise would suggest the rider’s presence or betray her presence.

  And what of Silenus and Johnny? Her task, really, should be to reconnect with them, to make her way somehow to Silenus’s cottage. There would be safety in numbers, surely: one against three. But to do that with any confidence of finding the cottage would mean leaving the hillside. Once she had left the hillside she would be exposed and an easy target.

  The only answer to these conundrums would be to wait until darkness. Only in darkness would she be safe. But how would she easily manage to find herself down the hill side in darkness, and then how would she find the cottage?

  Those would be problems to confront once darkness fell.

  Becky wondered what time it was, and how many hours she would have to lie in these ferns. Quite a few, she guessed. They had set out after the so-called centaur just after breakfast. It was probably not yet lunchtime.

  She sighed, realising she would have to stay hidden in the ferns for perhaps ten hours.