by Gregory Dark
It took less than ten seconds for Nespa to return to the other cell, and only a few seconds more for her to gain silence.
Want to make time crawl along snailly? Jam your heart in your mouth and await a result.
The silence when it fell did so as might an elephant from a jumbo jet – and, like that now flattened elephant, the silence that did fall was heavy and immobile. At its inception such silence was, to Susie, welcoming and relief-making. All she heard was the absence of key-jangling or of lock-rasping.
But soon what she heard was Nespalessness.
And Nespalessness meant no escape. If Nespalessness remained the situation until daybreak, it meant no escape ever.
“Nespa!” Susie hisspered, with an urgency she hoped would compensate for its lack of volume.
Nothing.
“Nespa!” Susie hisspered again. To equal non-effect. She looked at Mr E, who replied, unhelpfully, “Don’t look at me.”
“What do I do?” Susie waisked – to waisk is a combination of to wail and to ask.
“What can you do?” Mr E relied, as unhelpfully as the previous time.
Susie flailed around her, waving her arms in paroxysms of frustration. “Nothing,” she despaired.
“Then do nothing,” said Mr E, and climbed up her bib to its pocket.
“Sometimes, you know, you …” she exasperated at him, “ … you … you …”
“Yes, I do know, don’t you know,” he told her, maybe with a teaspoonful of smugness.
“Neeeeeeeessssssspppppaaaaaaa!” she hisspered to the empty, ice-cold corridor.
“Sorry,” said the frogdog, “Sorry. I was not zinking. I am zinking now. And what I am zinking now is zat I am ravenous.” She saw tears in the corners of Susie’s eyes. “Eh bien, ma petite,” she told her. “All will be okay, n’est-ce pas?”
Chapter 34
“We have to whoosh out of here, Mr E,” said Susie. “And it has to be tonight.”
“Of course,” said Mr E.
“What does that mean?” Susie asked testily.
“It means, Susie, we have to whoosh out of here.”
“And it has to be tonight,” Nespa added.
“Right,” said Susie with windless sails.
“We won’t, don’t you know, make Earth,” said Mr E getting himself more and more comfortable within the bib pocket.
“WHAT???” Susie waisked.
“These walls are very thick. There’s probably a peripheral wall. Possibly even thicker. Penetrating those, don’t you know, that’ll take a fair amount of energy. And we’re in two groups. Less whooshing power. Risky, trying to make Earth with one whoosh. We could get sidetracked, don’t you know, detoured to goodness only knows where. Better, we whoosh in two halves. Whoosh to somewhere way beyond Snow-it Hall. But still on Grammarcloud. Form ourselves there into another group. Whoosh back to Earth from there.”
“Can we please, whatever it is we’re doing,” Susie asked, “can we please do it NOW?”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Mr E objected.
“How can you be tired?” Susie amazed. “All the time I’ve been hard labouring away like a Roman galley slave or something, you’ve been hard snoozing – hard, anyway, doing whatever it is you are doing when you’re not living. What are you doing?” she asked.
“How would we know?” Mr E replied. “We’re not alive enough to know.”
Susie thought about this for a moment or two, but the more she did so the less sense it made. And then it did start to make sense, which really confused her. “This place is horrible, Mr E, gross,” Susie told him. “So much worse than that. You have no idea. If we don’t get out of here tonight we never will.”
“I agree,” he said.
“That’s it?” Susie asked.
“What more would you like it to be?”
“Well, … for a start, … don’t we need a plan?”
“Go and tell the others, Nespa, that we whoosh, don’t you know, on the fourth boing when the clock strikes four. That do, as a plan?” he asked Susie.
“That’s it?”
“Again, what more would you like it to be?”
“I don’t know,” said Susie. “More,” she finally decided.
“Less, Susie, is more.” Mr E looked very pleased with this home-spun homily, plagiarised though it was.
“Like black is white, I suppose.” Susie was not that easily persuaded.
“No,” said Mr E. “More like less is more. Don’t overcomplicate things. Overcomplicate them and you’ll ruin them. Tell the others, Nespa, when the clock boings four, we whoosh on the fourth boing. Come back and tell us, don’t you know, they’ve understood. You’re whooshing with us. N’est-ce pas?” he added he thought impishly.
There was indeed an overall impishness to Mr E since he’d returned to life that Susie had never seen before. She wasn’t quite sure such impishness suited him.
“I go – bah! – I disappear – poof! – I return,” said Nespa, as a coquettish challenge back to Mr E. “N’est-ce pas?”
She did go – bah! She did disappear – poof!
She did not return.
Not immediately, anyway.
This time whilst she was away, Mr E questioned Susie about her time of endungeonment. Susie’s initial reaction was to make light of it. She didn’t want any imp mocking her pain, or making light of it. Soon she saw, though, that – from that point of view – the newly striped leopard was indeed still spotted.
Mr E listened deeply and carefully and intelligently. There is no service you can do a friend of greater value than to listen to that friend deeply and carefully and intelligently. Deeply is gold, carefully is myrrh, and intelligently is frankincense. Like mercy, such listening is a quality twice blessed: It blesses both listener and speaker.
Susie, at the end of her speaking, therefore felt cleansed, even liberated. Much of the hatred she had for the Snow-it-alls and their hench-creatures had lost its sting, much of the rancour its bitterness. In the tale’s telling the clock had boinged one, then two. Because these boings were merely those of boinging Susie barely noticed them, except as punctuation in the narrative.
Until, almost having completed, the clock boinged three. On the next clock strike, it suddenly struck Susie, they had to whoosh. Where was Nespa? Had she passed on the message? Did the other Sufrogs understand it? Where was that blooming dog?
“She’s teaching us a lesson, don’t you know,” Mr E tried to reassure her.
“NOW???!!!” Susie waisked exclamation-markly. “Now, Mr E, when our whole lives hang in the balance?”
“Amazing the times we can choose to teach others a lesson,” Mr E saged.
“Teach us a lesson?” Susie had begun to walk the length of her cell like a caged tiger. “Teach us a lesson? If there’s any lesson-teaching to be done, it’ll be me, Mr E, that does it.” And then she added too heavily for such to be considered impishness. “Don’t you know?”
Which was when Nespa decided to return.
“Miss me?” she asked.
Susie slammed on the brakes of her diatribe. This, amidst burning tantrums and scorching tirades, slew to an inelegant halt.
“Oh, had you gone?” Mr E replied ‘on Susie’s behalf’.
“More importantly,” Susie continued from amidst the still smoking paddyfield, “are you ready to go? And are they?”
“Me, I am French. I am zerefore ready always,” said Nespa. “Zey? Zey are not French and zerefore zey can only be as ready as zey are ever going to be.”
“They know,” Susie continued insistently, “on the next boings, they go on the fourth?”
“It is zat which I have told zem,” said Nespa, whose indignantly was rapidly matching Susie’s insistently.
“Good,” said Susie, catching Nespa’s tone and anxious to appease her.
“When ze clock boing five, zey go on four.”
“NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!”
“How, no?”
“Not when th
ey boing five, when they boing four,” Susie wailed. “Go back, Nespa. Quickly. Tell them. Tell them now.”
“You know what this time isn’t, Nespa?” asked Mr E.
“Isn’t?” The Gallic shrug.
“It isn’t, Nespa, the time, don’t you know, to teach us a lesson. Nor is it the time for practical jokes.”
“Mais zut alors!” Nespa indignated Parisianly. “Zis is no practi- …” And then she saw Mr E’s eyes and capitulated. “I excuse me,” Nespa said as abjectly as it was possible for her. “Bluemerang, he zink zis is a ‘very blueming funny idea’. I excuse me profoundly.”
Susie’s forgiveness, though, was coiled like a rattle-snake, shooting out a forked tongue at anything which came near it.
“Apology, don’t you know, accepted,” said Mr E, he hoped also on Susie’s behalf. Susie’s rattler head whipped round to Mr E, a particularly toxic venom dripping from its jaws. “What?” asked Mr E with cherubic innocence.
“Forgiveness,” she venomed, “is not something you can do for someone else.”
“Isn’t it?” asked the wizard frog. “Isn’t that why it’s called ‘for-giving’?”
Before Susie could fully digest the meaning of that, the clock started to boing.
One.
Further conversation was nixed. They met together in the centre of the cell. Held hands.
Two.
“You can dream and we can dream,” they started to incant together, “And we can dream together …”
Three.
“And if we dream togetherly …”
“HAAAAAAAAAAAALT!!!!!!!!” cried Bluemerang.
Four.
The moment had gone.
“We couldn’t blueming remember whether it was the fourth stroke of four or the fifth stroke of blueming five.”
Susie collapsed into a trough of despair and sank to the palliasse. To ensure continued contact, Mr E crawled up her arm, thence to her bib.
“It would seem,” he said as he climbed, “that that decision has now, don’t you know, been made for us.”
“They unlock me at five, bring me my pearidge. What happens if they’re early?”
“They won’t be early,” Mr E sought to reassure her.
“Oh, you’re going to arrange that, are you? How, may I ask? You’re not even a magician. You deal, you said it yourself, only in magi.”
“They won’t be early, Susie,” Mr E insisted. “That’s all, don’t you know, you need to know.”
“I’ll be here forever. I’ll die here. A wizened old prune. Old years before my time.”
“You have to know it, Susie,” Mr E told her.
“All I know, Mr E, the entire lump sum of things that I know: I know two plus two equals four, and I know life is unfair. Life being the unfair it is, how can I know that the pengrins won’t be early?”
“And if one does not equal one?” asked Mr E.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!” Susie was in no mood for philosophy.
“Observation is not just sight.”
“There are times, Mr E …” sighed Susie, whose exasperation confiscated from her the tail of her sentence.
“Know the pengrins won’t come early.”
“Right, I know it,” hrrrmphed Susie. “I know it, right? Okay?”
“I think I’ll just make my way back, tell the others it’s the fifth blueming stroke.”
“You have anyzing to eat next door?” asked Nespa.
“You asked that when you were there, for goodness’ sake. There wasn’t then. And there isn’t, Nespa, blueming now.” On which blueming note Bluemerang disappeared – presumably back to the cell next door.
“That’s it,” Susie said less than stoically. “If I don’t get out this time, I never will.”
“Tell me about zis pearidge,” Nespa asked.
The time to the next boing was interminable. Each leaf scuttling against the outside wall Susie took to be the start of the boings, each creak from the corridor she heard as the pengrins approaching.
“Go next door, Nespa,” Susie said. “Just double-check they remember. Next boings. The fifth boing.”
“D’accord,” said Nespa.
“Don’t go,” said Mr E pleasantly.
“Excuse-moi?” Nespa replied.
“It’s going, don’t you know, to start boinging. Any moment.”
‘Boing,’ it went, as if on cue.
One.
Susie leapt to her feet, and joined hands with the other two to form a magi circle in the centre of the cell.
At the selfsame time she heard a key scratching in the lock of the corridor’s barred door.
“Oh God,” she wailed.
“Know they will not be early.”
“They don’t have to be early,” said Susie. “Just on time.”
Boing.
Two.
The corridor door squeaked open. She could hear pengrin steps approaching. They halted. The door squeaked again as it was closed.
Boing.
Three.
Again the key rasped in the lock as, from Susie’s side, the gate was relocked.
“You can dream,” Susie said in unison with the others, willing the boings to boing more quickly, “And I can dream/ And we can dream together …”
Boing.
Four.
The approach of pengrin footsteps. A half pause at the next door cell. A shuffle forward. Then the realisation of what had been seen …
“… And if we dream togetherly …”
“OI!!!!!!!!” from the pengrins.
“Our dreams will come to- …”
Boing.
“… -gether.”
WHOOSH.
Chapter 35
Out of the tiny grille. Whoosh. Out into the fresh air beyond. Behind them, echoing like a flea leaping on a drum, the frustrated scream of the pengrins, “OIOIOI OIoi oioioi-i-i-i!!!!” tapering into a staccato quiet.
Whoosh: over a small and angular courtyard. Whoosh: over walls cactussed with razor wire and broken bottles. Whoosh.
Fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-fr-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-eeeeeeeedom!
Whoosh.
The first agonising look was to check whether the others were with her. Whooshing with her.
They were. Whoosh.
Their eyes pulled back over their faces by the strength of the oncoming wind, it was impossible to decipher any expressions. Which wasn’t anyway important. What was, was the fact – whoosh – they were with her. And away.
Over the steppes now they whooshed which they had trudged to Snow-it Hall. There, the polo field. Beyond, to the glaciers and rifts, all sparkled now with the moon’s silver dust, all shimmering with that dust and in it. It was a mirror whose light returned not in reflection but was shattered into a million fairies, whose glimmer danced effortlessly on marshmallow down.
Susie found it hard to keep her face pressed against the wind, but if she moved it to the side, the perfume lost intensity. She was, she now understood, breathing the most beautiful smell in the world – she was breathing cleanness, and freshness, and openness. She was smelling freedom. She was smelling fr-fr-frfr-fr-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-eeeedom!
Above them, though, dark clouds started fusing into each other to form black clouds. It was Nespa who first noticed this. With several jerks of her head she pointed out the danger to her companions.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD DO?” Susie had to shout to be heard above the onrush of wind.
“MAYBE,” Mr E shouted back, “WE SHOULD TRY TO JOIN UP WITH THE OTHERS. WHOOSH DIRECTLY BACK TO EARTH.”
“LET’S GO FOR IT,” Susie said.
They started to manoeuvre towards the other group.
“WE’RE GOING TO TRY AND JOIN YOU,” Susie shouted to the other group. “WHOOSH DIRECTLY BACK TO EARTH.”
“EXCUSE WE,” Miss Chief shouted back huffily, “EXCUSE WE, BUT IF THERE’S ANY …”
“OH, GIVE IT A BLUEMING REST, MISS CHIEF,” shouted Bluemerang. “LET’S DO IT, SUSE.” He started
trying to manoeuvre his group towards Susie’s.
Whose group was likewise closing in on Bluemerang’s. It was a bit like parking a car in a tight space, except that this time the space itself was helping.
What wasn’t were the thermals. They would get close, almost within hailing distance, only to be thrust away from each other again. Again they manoeuvred closer together. Again they were blown apart. Susie started to understand that birds didn’t have it all their own way.
Once again they tried to join together. Slowly, slowly. This time, yes, they were doing it. This time they would do it. Slowly, slowly. Ever closer. Ever closer.
Miss Chief let go of Mimimi’s hand. Susie let go of Mr E’s. Their fingers stretched for those of the other.
VRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOM!
Out of nowhere suddenly the flying figure they’d seen on their arrival on Grammarcloud vrrrooooomed past. Miss Chief was taken aback. She was so startled she found herself letting go of Bluemerang’s hand. Gravity being what gravity is, she therefore plummeted.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” she ah-ed mid-plummet, her arms and legs flailing akimbissimo. “Aaaaaaaaaaaah!” she continued to ah, before plopping into a hillock of freshly fallen snow, like a green egg-yoke jolloping into a basinful of flour. “Aaaaaaaaaaah!” Miss Chief wailed from the ground.
“WE’LL HAVE TO LAND,” Mr E shouted. “WAIT FOR HER TO CATCH US UP.”
“I JUST BLUEMING WONDER,” shouted Bluemerang, “WHETHER SHE’D RETURN THE FAVOUR.”
“NOT OUR CONCERN,” Mr E shouted back to him.
Below them, Miss Chief, now dancing on top of the snow in a pas-de-despair, was seeking to summon the now united whoosh to join her on the ground.
Above them the clouds got blacker and blacker.
VROOOOOOOM! The figure vroooooooomed back again.