The boy turned to them with a look of horror on his face. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Did my father send you?’
Up close they could see he was a thin boy, with a long forehead and a ragged scar along his jaw. His eyes were pale blue and his skin had the patchy appearance of one who easily reddens.
‘No.’ Alice shook her head. ‘My name is Alice and I have been watching you. I know you are planning to run away.’
‘What I’m planning to do isn’t any of—’
Alice raised her hand, her eyes kindly, her head slowly shaking. ‘We’re not trying to stop you. We want to help.’
The boy’s eyes narrowed with distrust. ‘Why would you want to help me?’ he asked.
‘Because you can help us,’ Alice replied.
Arlo marvelled at her easy confidence, at the way she could so quickly make her demand sound reasonable.
‘If you run away now, how long do you think it will be before your father will hear that a boy called Will never arrived at the Academy?’ she continued. ‘But don’t look so worried. This boy will take your place. Just give him whatever it is in your bag that the Academy asked you to pack. We will trade it for a sharp knife and three gottacakes. And your father will hear tales of his son competing strongly. This is Stefan and he is a powerful candidate. His efforts will give you a real chance to get away.’
‘Gottacakes?’
Of all the details of the deal, this was the one that caught Will’s attention. Arlo had no idea what such a thing might be, but thought this a poor time to ask.
Alice nodded and took out of her pocket a piece of thick brown paper. She unwrapped it carefully, revealing three small unremarkable-looking square slices.
The boy reached out cautiously and took a small crumb between finger and thumb. He sniffed it, then placed it carefully on his tongue. A smile spread across his face.
‘I won’t ask you where you got these,’ he said, ‘because you would only lie. But you have a deal. Take my bag. Everything is in there. I have stashed my runaway pack further down the track.’
Alice nodded her approval, from one runaway to another. ‘Good plan. Go well, Will.’
‘And good luck to you,’ Will said to Stefan. He turned and hurried quickly off, gottacakes in hand, bounding with a new purpose and energy.
‘What’s a gottacake?’ Stefan asked.
Alice smiled and fished into her other pocket, producing another package. ‘These three are for you. They carry magic with them. Put them in your bag. If ever you find yourself in desperate need of help, and you can see no other way of prevailing, eat one, but never more. Do you understand?’
Stefan nodded.
‘What about me?’ Arlo asked.
Alice grinned and said nothing.
Later, sitting in the shadow of a large tree and watching his brother stand lonely and nervous at the side of the road, Arlo felt Alice’s hand take his. In his palm she placed a small portion of the sticky cake, no bigger than a dollar coin. She smiled at him, as if she understood how hard it was for him to be separated from his brother. Arlo put the cake to his mouth and it immediately exploded with the most delicious sensation he had ever experienced, more delightful than any taste had the right to be. He felt it popping and fizzing, in his throat, his stomach and behind his eyeballs.
‘What is this stuff?’ he whispered.
‘Gottacake,’ Alice replied. ‘It’s a delicacy here, but it’s hard to come by. Most people never get to taste it. So you’re lucky.’
‘You’re an excellent thief, aren’t you?’ Arlo smiled.
‘Yes,’ Alice replied, pleased with the compliment. ‘Yes I am. Don’t worry about your brother, by the way. He’s a survivor.’
Stefan held up his arm as the carriage approached, half hoping the driver would ignore him and flick the horses on. But the carriage pulled up to a dusty stop and the driver, a large man with thick arms and a generous belly, leaned down from his seat to examine his passenger.
‘Name?’
‘Will,’ Stefan lied.
The driver’s eyes narrowed, as if checking some dark corner of his memory, and he nodded. ‘Hop in. You’re the last on this run so hold on tight.’
The carriage was a rough cart with a hooped iron frame over which canvas was stretched tight. Stefan moved to the back to climb in just as the carriage began moving. He was forced to run quickly, throwing his bag on board before reaching to the back board and pulling himself up. A pair of helpful hands grabbed at the back of his belt and hauled him in.
A small voice, nervous and distant, spoke gently inside his head.
Go well, brother. You’ll be fine.
Thank you, Stefan silently replied, hoping the words would find their way back to Arlo. A second later Stefan felt a warm calmness spread over his body, the same feeling he got when somebody hugged him, and he knew his message had been received.
Stefan looked around the cart. There was seven others, all about his age, dressed in the same rough clothes: hand-me-down trousers, some too big by three sizes, pinched in at the waist by string or tied together shoelaces, or a thin torn strip of material,shirts that were neither white nor coloured, just pale and grimy, and cloth caps. Some had their hair trimmed short above the ears, but others had grown theirs long, so that it bulged beneath their hats. They were seated on two bench seats running along either side of cart, so that there was nothing to look at but the floor or the person opposite. Stefan chose the floor. Small bursts of dust exploded through gaps in the boards as the horses gathered pace. Stefan felt suddenly small, like a solitary figure on a wide beach.
‘I don’t know you, do I?’ asked the boy opposite him. He had oddly pointed ears and a face full of freckles. He spoke quietly, as if he hoped to keep whatever information Stefan gave him just between the two of them.
Stefan shook his head, remembering Alice’s advice. The less he said, the better.
The boy nodded, as if respecting his decision. ‘Fair enough.’ He sniffed and turned his gaze to the back of the cart.
Next to him a second boy, taller than the rest, sat with straight back and still head and a mouth held only a curl away from a snarl. He ran his eyes over the newcomer.
Stefan caught his eye and immediately looked away. Too late.
‘You’ll be gone in the first round,’ the tall boy announced.
‘Maybe,’ Stefan muttered, immediately regretting opening his mouth.
The tall boy leaned forward, reaching across the open space and taking hold of Stefan’s leg, just above his knee, using his thumb and finger like pincers, and squeezed.
Stefan squirmed.
‘I tell you what. How about you and I have a little wager? If you are still there in the second round, I’ll give you an item of your choosing. But if you are gone, you leave me your boots.’
Stefan realised that all of the children in the cart were now looking carefully at his boots. Although too big for him, the boots Alice had stolen were far newer than any of the others. The laces were intact, there were no patches where the leather had worn through, or places where the sole had been roughly restitched to the upper.
‘All right,’ Stefan answered, wanting the conversation to be over and the focus shifted away from him. ‘You have a deal.’
‘But you haven’t named your price,’ the boy said. Too late Stefan understood what this was, a way of getting him talking, of making him divulge the thing he wanted. The boy was looking for his weakness.
‘If I’m still there,’ Stefan said, looking him in straight in the eye, as he knew Alice would have done, ‘you owe me a gottacake.’
At this the whole cart erupted in laughter, all except the tall boy, who scowled, certain he was being mocked.
‘Okay then,’ he said, pulling himself even straighter. ‘I can see you are too afraid to make a serious wager. But you have made a mistake today. You have made an enemy of me when you could have had a friend. You don’t know who I am, do you? You haven’t even done your res
earch.’
Stefan shrugged and looked at the floor, hoping that something else would take the boy’s interest. The boy next to him gave him a friendly poke with his elbow.
‘That’s Malcolm Strawbridge,’ he whispered. ‘This year’s favourite. And a bully too, just like his sister was.’
‘Speak up, we’d all like to hear!’ Malcolm called out.
‘What we like, Malcolm, and what we get, are often very different things.’ The voice belonged to a girl. Stefan looked again at the passenger beside him. Her eyes were unusually blue, and when she smiled her eyebrows arched like two small rainbows.
There was silence then, as if the whole cart was holding its breath, silently calculating the next move. But then they moved as one, each tightly gripping the seat below them. Only Stefan was slow to react, and so found himself sliding into the girl as the horses and carriage rose into the air.
‘Sorry,’ said Stefan, struggling to pull himself back to his end of the seat.
The girl smiled. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘I’m Harriet.’
‘I’m Will,’ Stefan replied. He couldn’t guess at the things that lay ahead of him, but he was sure they would be easier with a friend.
THE NEXT MORNING Stefan woke to a high-pitched screech rising and falling through the semi-darkness. The long dormitory, with its fifty beds laid out side by side was suddenly a bustle of activity. Stefan moved groggily, pulling back the covers and feeling the morning chill touch his skin. Like all the other children, he had gone to bed in his clothes—so that we’re ready when they call us, Harriet had explained.
‘Better hurry, you don’t want be late for parade,’ his new friend called cheerfully from the next bed. She was already on her feet, straightening her cap and checking her buttons. She bounced on her toes, like an excited child at Christmas, clearly a morning person. Stefan preferred to wake up slowly. What he really wanted now was some toast and a hot chocolate. And maybe some quiet time sitting down somewhere drawing. He was pretty sure he wasn’t about to get any of those things. The annoying siren—that’s what he now realised it was—faded away to almost silence, then screeched into life again, somehow even louder.
‘Cheer up,’ Harriet whispered, winking at him. ‘Everybody else is nervous too. They just know how to hide it.’
Stefan was tired and hungry and thirsty, and aching from the exercise drills they had been put through the evening before. And now a man with a thick moustache, dressed like some old-fashioned army officer with heavy black boots, green fatigues and a red beret, was striding up and down between the two lines of beds, shouting at them.
‘Two feet on the floor, boys and girls. Stand straight when I come by you, boy. Are you looking at me? At you looking at me, young sir?’
The Major, for that is what Stefan decided he would call him, had singled out a small boy and was leaning over him, shouting at the centre of his forehead. The boy clearly didn’t know where he was supposed to look. He squirmed, first staring at his own feet, then peeking sideways at the tip of the Major’s large red nose.
Bully, Stefan thought to himself.
Immediately the Major straightened and looked menacingly about the room, eyes narrowed and nose raised, as if sniffing out the enemy. ‘Who just called me a bully? Come on, show yourself.’
Stefan’s face burned hot, and he felt his pulse racing. He looked at the ground as the Major came ever closer. Stefan screwed his eyes shut and tried to keep himself from thinking anything else.
The Major stopped.
Stefan looked up, aware that every pair of eyes in the dormitory were now staring at him.
‘What sort of state is that shirt in, boy? Tell me you are not thinking of attending parade dressed like that.’
Although Stefan had done his best to brush the shirt free of the dried filth from his time in the chute, looking down he now saw only a patchwork of grime.
‘Ah,’ Stefan stammered, ‘I was going to—’
‘He was going to change last night, sir,’ Harriet interrupted, for the second time coming to his rescue. ‘But my shirt got dirty during kitchen duty, so he lent me his spare.’
The Major stared at Harriet and she held his gaze, just as she had held Malcolm Strawbridge’s. Stefan had never met anyone with this sort of confidence before: steady and quiet as a rock.
The Major looked at them both suspiciously. ‘Well, let’s see how quickly the threat of elimination takes the shine off your little friendship,’ he sneered. It was only the second day, and already Stefan had made two powerful enemies. At this rate he wouldn’t have time to miss Arlo, he’d be seeing him before the day was out. Still, two enemies and one friend. It could have been worse. He leaned close to Harriet and whispered, ‘Thank you.’
They watched the Major move off down the line, studying faces, searching out any weakness.
‘Don’t mention it,’ Harriet answered. ‘No one wins this thing alone. Trust me.’
Out in the courtyard, Stefan was relieved to see the Major had stepped back to let somebody else lead the ceremony. A very tall woman, with a long thin face and a smile that made Stefan forget the feeling of cold stone beneath his feet, stood before them. She was older than Stefan’s mother, but not as old as his grandmother—fifty seemed like about the right number—and she was dressed in a flowing purple robe, with gold embroidery at the cuffs and neck. She held a short stick, like a conductor’s baton, and her eyes seemed to take in every detail of the children before her. Her voice was soft and kind, yet carried crystal clear even to the end of the row where Stefan waited. The Major stood to attention throughout her speech, his moustache twitching with self-importance.
‘Now, children, you must relax,’ the grand woman soothed. ‘The challenges you face over the coming weeks will be difficult, it is true, and many of you will not succeed, but you will do no better if you’re feeling nervous. In fact, you will do considerably worse. My name is Madame Latitude, and I am the chief assessor here at the Academy. Before we start, we have only three rules. Anybody who breaks any one of these rules will be expelled from the competition immediately. Do you understand?’
All along the line heads nodded.
‘Very well. Rule number one: No child shall do anything to harm the chances of another during the competition. Rule number two: All children shall do their very best at all times. Rule number three: No child will communicate with anyone outside the Academy in any way during the competition period. And now, I hope you have all had a very good night’s rest, because our first challenge, before breakfast, is a test of stamina. The twenty of you who do the least well will be packing your bags this evening.’
There was a collective gasp at the announcement of this number. Even Harriet appeared to have momentarily lost her calm and was leaning forward to get a better view of her competitors, seeking out the twenty luckless souls she would be able to beat, no matter what the competition.
‘That’s right,’ Madame Latitude said. ‘Twenty of you will be saying goodbye. There is no dishonour in that if you try your best. You will return to a softer bed and a heartier meal and the knowledge that, when the time came, you offered your best self to the Academy.’
She was a type, Madame Latitude. Stefan could think of at least one teacher at his school who operated in the same manner, soft and calm yet immovable. The sort who never raised her voice, because she never had to, because no one was ever stupid enough to test her. She possessed the kind of power that did not need to announce itself. If she was the thing standing between them and Jackie’s rescue, then he was certain they would fail.
‘Now, look behind me,’ Madame Latitude continued. ‘On the ground are a number of pieces of wood. Although their sizes are irregular, their weights are identical. Let it not be said that the competition was not fair.’ She smiled quietly at a joke that Stefan could not quite see.
‘Take a piece of wood from the pile and place it at the base of the wall in front of you, and then return to your places.’
‘All right, the first thirty children to lift their logs over the wall will go on to fight another day. Good luck. On three, two, and go!’
Stefan didn’t rush forward. If part of the magic these children possessed was spectacular strength then he had no hope. But then he noticed something strange. None of the other children were rushing forward either. It was as if all of them had decided the task was beyond them. Stefan looked at Madame Latitude, to see how she would react to their rebellion, but she smiled, as if nothing unusual was happening.
Then something unusual did happen. One of the logs at the base of the wall began to twitch on the ground, as if possessed, exactly as the small branches at the river had. Stefan looked again at his competitors. All had eyes only for the logs before them. Some stared, some blinked furiously, others were shaking, but they were all trying to force their huge piece of wood into the air by the sheer power of their magic. Stefan knew at once he would never be able to get his log in the air. The stick he had moved yesterday must have been less than a hundredth of the weight of his log, and moving that had felt close to impossible.
Others, it seemed, were more advanced with their magic. One piece of wood rose gracefully a full thirty centimetres from the ground and hovered there. He watched it, mesmerised, as it lifted a little higher, and then a little higher more. Stefan found himself willing the log’s success. The log held its position for another agonising thirty seconds, and then crashed back down. A child let out an anguished cry.
One by one, the other logs began to twitch and dance. Some floated in the air, others collided with the wall or each other, but they all fell back to the ground. Stefan could see that this was not just a test of magic, but of endurance too, and perhaps even one of cunning. Try as he might he could see no way to do this. Perhaps an idea would come to him, although he doubted that. In the meantime, he thought it wise to pretend to make an effort. He scrunched his eyes and clenched his jaw and recited the periodic table backwards from xenon, the hardest thing he could think of doing.
The Tunnel of Dreams Page 5