Over the next few days Jim made indecision after indecision.
If you asked him whether he wanted tea or coffee he could not tell you. It was as though he made haphazard guesses instead. He repeated the question, ‘Tea? Or coffee?’ as though he’d never had the choice before. Then he came out with ‘Tea! Please! If you’re having some? Or coffee?’
Which was not very helpful. And poor Jim knew it.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you rather play in the garden or walk in the wood?’
Jim looked agonised. Different expressions ran over his face, as if he wanted to play in the garden and walk in the wood at the same time, and at the same time did not want to walk in the wood or play in the garden at all, but felt that he ought to do one of them because Aubrey wanted to, and so was trying to work out which Aubrey would like most – when all Aubrey had asked him was which one he wanted to do!
Asking Jim what he wanted for supper, lunch or breakfast was a great mistake. He simply had no idea. When he dressed he chose his clothes strangely and looked miserable in them. He stayed in bed a great deal, curled up as though he was cold. He said sorry a lot, apologising for being tired, for being sad, for being lost. But no matter how many times you said it was fine, he didn’t have to say sorry, Jim kept seeming sorrier and sorrier and sadder and sadder.
Soon Jim’s pale face and wobbly eyes made him look like a ghost who has spooked himself in a mirror. He took a second week off work, but instead of recovering his bounce he seemed to lose every last scrap of it. His zip was gone; there was no sign of his zing. You would have thought he had never had a spring in his step. Sometimes he seemed so wispy he might have been made of mist. Suzanne took him to the doctor, of course. The doctor said there was nothing physically wrong with him. The problem was in his thoughts.
‘He’s unhappy but he doesn’t know why. You could call it the blues, or the glums,’ Suzanne explained to Aubrey. ‘It happens to lots of people. They just feel very sad. But they get better. He’ll get better if we look after him: he needs food and rest and love.’
Aubrey nodded but he was not really listening to this stuff about blue gums. His father’s gums weren’t blue, they were pink. He was quite surprised his mother had missed that, but he was too busy to worry about it. He was working out what to do about the horrendous spell.
CHAPTER 3
How Do You Break a Spell?
First he looked up ‘Horrendous Spell’ on the internet. He found lots of pages about spelling ‘horrendous’ (but he could do that) and pages about why people’s spelling is horrendous (ignorance, carelessness or disability, apparently) and he found pages on various horrendous spells you could use in games, like Horrendous Shout, which knocks monsters back a bit and stops them hitting you, and Horrendous Desiccation which sounded fantastic. Aubrey read the description: ‘Everything within 300 feet of the spell-caster becomes withered and desiccated.’
He looked up ‘desiccated’. It means dried out: a desiccated plant is a plant that has died for lack of water.
Aubrey thought about learning Horrendous Desiccation. It would be tremendous to see it in action! But even watching his son desiccate a circle of wood 600 feet in diameter probably wouldn’t cheer Jim up all that much. Also, Aubrey had private reasons for not wanting to upset Rushing Wood.
‘Concentrate!’ Aubrey told himself. ‘Stick to saving Dad. You can always learn Horrendous Desiccation when he’s better. Now, how are we going to do this?’
Aubrey narrowed his eyes and thought hard. Supposing we go about it the other way, he thought. Supposing I look up his symptoms on the net, then it can tell me what’s wrong with him, then I can look up what to do. How simple everything is with the net! He found a symptom checker very easily. It asked a lot of questions.
‘Where are you?’ demanded the symptom checker.
‘In the attic,’ Aubrey typed into the box.
‘Postcode not recognised,’ replied the symptom checker. ‘This advice is for people in the UK only.’
‘MUM! WHAT’S OUR POSTCODE?’
‘HX10 8AJ!’ Suzanne shouted.
Aubrey typed it in.
‘How old are you?’ asked the checker. ‘Please confirm you are being supervised by an adult.’
Aubrey wanted to type ‘Sort of!’ but there wasn’t a box for it. You either had to click Yes or No.
He read the instruction again. Please confirm you are being supervised – OK, he thought, if that’s what you want. Since you can’t confirm something by denying it, and since the symptom checker was asking him to confirm something, he clicked Yes.
Now the questions came like a swarm of midges.
Was the sick person’s tongue swelling up? Could he breathe? Was it possible to wake him up? Were the whites of his eyes yellow? Was he drowsy? Were there little red pin-pricks on his skin? Were his feet cold? Did he go to the loo a lot? Did he have diabetes? Was he weak, dizzy or lightheaded? Did he have a rash? Had he been bitten or stung? Did he have a temperature? Was his skin cold or clammy?
Answering these questions meant taking the computer down to his parents’ room and giving Jim a thorough check-up before clicking Yes or No to each question.
‘What are you up to, Aubrey Boy?’ his father asked, as Aubrey peered at Jim’s eyeballs, squeezed his tongue, felt his feet and looked for rashes.
‘Have you been bitten? Do you feel drowsy?’ Aubrey demanded.
‘No – well, not really. What’s biting you?’
‘Have you got diabetes?’ Aubrey asked.
‘No! Well, I don’t think so. The doctor didn’t mention it. Why?’
‘What does clammy mean?’
‘Sort of damp and a bit sticky. Cold and wet but not that cold and – not that wet,’ Jim said, looking a bit embarrassed. ‘Dampish…’
‘It’s OK, you’re not,’ Aubrey said. ‘That’s strange.’
‘Why? Should I be clammy?’
‘I’m finding out what’s wrong with you so that we can cure it,’ Aubrey said. ‘Just keep quiet please. Keep calm. Eat something. Rest.’
‘Oh my wonderful boy!’ Jim cried, sweeping Aubrey up in a hug. His arms felt thin and bony.
‘My wonderful boy!’ he exclaimed again, and he had tears in his eye.
‘Why are you crying, Dad?’
‘I’m not! You shouldn’t be worried – and it’s all my fault! I love you so much, and I’m so sorry I’m depressed, and not a happy Dad, not a sparky Dad – I’m so sorry!’
‘You ARE!’ Aubrey said, ‘Normally you are sparky!’
His father put him down and Aubrey was about to spin back to the computer but at that moment his mother called him to tea. Jim said he would have his later. Jim’s meal times had all moved later.
Aubrey and his mum ate fish pie. It was delicious, with a creamy sauce lathered all over golden potato and lumps of juicy fish. Even so, Suzanne almost spat fish across the kitchen when Aubrey said, ‘Mum, has Dad gone bats?’
‘No!’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘He was almost crying when he said he was sorry he wasn’t sparky.’
‘Oh! That’s OK,’ Suzanne said, smiling seriously. ‘He’s a very loving man and it makes him sad not to be able to be funny and fun for you.’
‘When will he be better, Mum?’
Suzanne put down her knife and fork.
‘The fact is darling, we don’t know. It could last a week, it could last a month, or even more. We just can’t tell. It’s a strange thing, this feeling of sadness. I haven’t had much experience of it and nor has he. But I’d be surprised if he doesn’t start bobbing back up soon. I think he was just over-tired.’
‘So he’s depressed?’
‘Yes – it just means he’s very sad, and he can’t make himself happy in the normal ways.’
Hmm, thought Aubrey, he can’t make himself happy in the normal ways. That means we have to go beyond the normal.
CHAPTER 4
Th
e Secret
You have guessed Aubrey is the sort of child who has secrets. He does not think of them as secrets, exactly. Like many children, he thinks of them as his private business. Secrets are like baby dragons. They are fine as long as they are happy, playful little creatures (I have access to some chocolate no one knows about) and not so fine if they grow into smouldering beasts (I accidentally killed next door’s rabbit during catapult practice). Private business is quite different. Everyone has a right to that.
Listening to his mother, and thinking about Jim’s trouble, Aubrey began to suspect that the answer to his father’s problem might lie somewhere in this private, secret world.
We are therefore about to enter the treasury of Aubrey’s Private Life. We are not going to poke around in here, of course, but we are going to be allowed into one or two secrets: the one or two which made all the difference to this story.
So, here we go.
Aubrey had secret adventures in Rushing Wood at night. He called it Night Venturing. Sometimes, when the moon was high and full, when glades of silver beams glowed between the tree trunks, and sometimes, when the moon struggled to see through flying clouds and the wood rustled and the wind dashed through the sky in a hurry to get home – sometimes, on certain nights, after Suzanne had kissed him and Jim had read him a story and turned off the light, Aubrey went Night Venturing.
His body lay warm under the covers, but in his mind he got up and pushed the window open ever so quietly, and clambered out.
There was an old iron drainpipe next to his window which was very easy to climb. When he went on these adventures Aubrey could even feel the cold smoothness of the pipe in his palms, and his toes finding grip in the rough stone wall as he lowered himself down to the ground. Up to the top of the garden he went, damp leaves beneath his feet, and over the fence, and into Rushing Wood.
Rushing Wood! Was there ever such a place at night? The wood was ghostly silver. The wood was a hush of whispers. The wood had shadows which brushed your legs like cats, and secrets as deep as caves. The wood was tangled with all the wisdom of its ancient trees, and alive with a million creatures. It was a night city of mice and bugs and owls and voles. It was a metropolis of foxes, pine martens, slugs and rabbits, of caterpillars, badgers and wild runaway sheep – and that was if you only believed in the everyday!
If you thought all of life begins with breakfast and ends with a snore, every day, everywhere, for all time…
Aubrey did not believe that for a minute. You did not have to have much imagination, he thought, to feel that there were great stags in the wood too, noble deer whose ancestors had faced down the hunting dogs of kings. And if there were stags there were certainly boar, with tusks so sharp they could shred armour and gore giants. And if there were boar there must be little boar piglets, with pelts like striped pyjamas.
He encountered such creatures on his Night Ventures, when he sent himself out in his imagination from deep within the snuggled comfort of his bed. Aubrey sometimes fell asleep playing Catch Fish! with the otters in the brook, or wrestling with pine martens – the pine martens loved to playfight as much as Aubrey did. As he fell into sleep within sleep he travelled in dreams within dreams to the Enchanted Mountains, where wolves glide under giant fir trees and bears teach their cubs to toboggan by the light of the stars.
And never in any of his deepest dreams, never in any wish or fantasy, did Aubrey think he would have to venture out into the waiting, listening darkness of the night when he was wide awake, in reality.
CHAPTER 5
The Owl
Aubrey was lying in bed that night, after the fish pie supper, and a game of cards with his mother, and a bath, and a few pages of his favourite story, which was the tale of Perseus cutting the Gorgon’s head off. Aubrey loved to read and re-read that story in Greek Gods, Myths and Monsters. Now it was late; he had heard his parents going to bed. The house had fallen silent. As he lay there he was thinking. His thoughts went like this.
‘How do you solve a problem that won’t be solved in the normal ways?’
‘You need wise advice.’
‘Yes! Someone wise. Someone very wise! Who is wise? Who is the wisest person in the world?’
‘Uuum … if only I could look it up…’
‘Think!’
‘Gandalf?’
‘He’s a fictional character.’
‘Merlin, then.’
‘Maybe. He’s a mythical character and myths are partly true.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Rats.’
‘If only I could look up “the wisest person who I can actually find”…’
‘You could, if you had the computer.’
‘Ah!’
‘Computer, computer, bright and small, Who’s the wisest of us all?’
He was not allowed to have the computer in his bedroom after bedtime, but his rhyme made him smile.
Then he remembered something and grabbed for the light switch. There on the carpet, where he had left it, was Greek Gods, Myths and Monsters. Normally it looked like any other good book – a pretty cover, with a dramatic picture (this one showed Odysseus and his crew fighting Polyphemus, the Cyclops) and the title.
But now the book’s colours were especially bright. The single eye of the Cyclops glowed so red it might have been looking at Aubrey and actually seeing him.
Don’t be silly, Aubrey told himself. A book is a book. It’s just my eyes adjusting back from dark to light. He grabbed Greek Gods, Myths and Monsters and opened it. He had a peculiar feeling that there was something going on between the book, whose pages his fingers were riffling through even now, the thoughts in his head, and the problem that could not be solved in normal ways.
‘There!’ he said, aloud. And there she was, in the story of Perseus. The wisest person in all creation: Pallas Athene! Athene who helped Perseus in his quest to kill the terrible Medusa, whose gaze turned people to stone. Athene, Goddess of Wisdom, and many other virtues, including Civilisation, Inspiration, Justice and Courage (with a line-up like that you can see why the Ancient Greeks named their greatest city Athens).
Athene does not live in Athens, Aubrey read. Her home address is Mount Olympus, Macedonia and Thessaly, Greece.
Aubrey slid out of bed and pulled his Atlas of the World from his bookshelf.
‘Right,’ he said to himself, after studying the maps for a minute or two. ‘Tricky.’
Basically, Aubrey saw, the journey from Woodside Terrace to Mount Olympus involved going to London, crossing to France and taking a route through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Macedonia down to northern Greece. It looked about 2000 miles. Admittedly, it had been a few years since he last tried to make a serious expedition without telling his parents, but although he was sure he could do better on a second attempt (he would certainly miss Liebling Trudi this time) a secret 2000-mile trip to Greece would probably put a strain on the family.
FOOTNOTE: Athene helped Perseus get hold of an eye which could see around corners, and gave him a polished shield. When he found Medusa Perseus hid, watched her with the eye, and when her reflection in the polished shield told him she was close enough – swap! He cut off her head.
He imagined it was breakfast time.
His mother has gone downstairs to make tea. She sees a note on the kitchen table. She picks it up.
Dear Mum and Dad, I have just popped over to Greece for a few days to see someone. Don’t worry I have the Atlas. Should be back soon and it’s a straight road love you
Aubrey xxx
ps I borrowed the car
ppps don’t worry, really
Perhaps not, Aubrey concluded.
He shut the Atlas. He felt a bit glum. It was such a good idea! Athene was the right person! But he could not get to her place, and so he was still stuck, and his father too. He climbed back into bed. He picked up Greek Gods, Myths and Monsters again, without thinking about it, and turned over
the Athene page. And there it was, looking at him with huge, wise eyes.
The answer.
‘Whoo hooo!’ cried Aubrey, without thinking about it.
From outside the window, an owl answered.
‘Hooo-Woo!’ it said.
Aubrey jumped in surprise.
The picture he was looking at was a picture of an owl. (Wherever you find Athene you will always find an owl. It is Athene’s bird, the symbol of wisdom, which is why you find so many of them lurking around schools and libraries.)
‘Weird!’ said Aubrey, boldly, aloud, though his heart was beating rather fast. ‘Owls don’t talk to people!’
There was a distinct pause, in which the world seemed to go very quiet.
And the owl answered.
‘We-doo-too!’ it said.
Well, Aubrey thinks, this is different. He opens his bedroom window to a warm and hazy autumn night. The moon is a coppery crescent, cushioned on fine cloud. Nothing moves in the garden. The trees at the edge of the wood are still.
But now something shifts there, a little shape of shadow. Even as he watches, the shape swoops down the garden in an easy glide. So silent is its flight that Aubrey feels no alarm at all as it falls quickly towards him, flares out its wings and lands, with the merest brush of feathers, on his windowsill.
Aubrey’s breath stops in his chest. An owl – a wild owl – just there! If he moves his hand he will touch it. He could stroke the tawny feathers of the bird’s magnificent head.
‘Please do, if you want to,’ the bird says. ‘It is perfectly good manners among owls.’
Aubrey is so doubly surprised that the surprises cancel one another out, leaving him surprisingly cool. Though he hears the words clearly, the owl’s beak does not move. Its words arrive in Aubrey’s head complete, audible but unspoken.
Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot Page 2