Snap

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Then with a sudden cluck, he felt the passing feathers above him, and knew a bird had flown over his head and saw a flutter of white. But they were far too high up for any normal bird, and Nathan peered out, still unable to see anything at all. Only Brewster, sitting opposite with the usual absurd grin, could be seen and even he appeared partially misted.

  Yet then after a long wait, the sky cleared above. From his neck downwards, the cloud persisted and the haze made everything else invisible. Bu from chin upwards the bright blue was suddenly startling, fresh and even warm. Nathan stared around, delighted.

  A thousand dragonflies danced and wavered in the brightness. Huge or tiny, vividly winged or shimmering iridescence, they soared and twisted, hovered or swooped. Some glittered brighter than the sun and others were the gentle silver of moon-glow. Some were quite black, and although translucent, their wings appeared spun from shadow. Nathan had never imagined so many interweaving creatures, and such a variety of dragonflies. Gaping, enthralled, he turned to Brewster. “Are they real?”

  “This,” Brewster answered, “is the veil. It divides Lashtang from other worlds.”

  “A veil of dragonflies?”

  “A veil of disguise. Now, we open the wings of the many-winged, and you will be at home.” Brewster had stopped cackling.

  Standing tall within the basket, he appeared almost weightless. He was so elongated and so thin, that there appeared no space for flesh and bones, but he was energetic, as though pleased to be home. He reached to the flame within the balloon, and with a puff as small as though he snuffed a tiny candle, he blew out the blaze and roar of the fire.

  Immediately the balloon began to twirl, gently as if caught in no more than a breeze, and floated feather-light to the ground. The dragonflies, dizzy within their veil, had been left behind. Nathan had entered Lashtang.

  The sun shone, and the white glowing tips of the distant mountains were as brilliant as the stars. Sloping up towards the cliffs and the mountains beyond was a valley of deep grass and wildflowers. Peacefully unoccupied, the scene reminded Nathan of a postcard, with Wish you were here written large on the back. It was Poppy he wished was there but the countryside was empty except for the beauty of trees, flowers and sunshine. Not only had the dragonflies disappeared, but he could not see so much as an ant, a bird on a branch, or a scurrying beetle in the grass.

  He turned to ask Brewster if anyone else lived there, and found that Brewster had also gone. The balloon had gone. There was no sign of life at all. Calling Brewster, Nathan felt a sudden panic. Having no idea where he was, nor where to go, he felt more alone than when he had been dumped back into 15th century London. Brewster did not reappear, nor did he answer the calls, and no balloon floated high in the cloudless sky. But the surge of panic faded. He had survived the previous adventure with all its threats and dangers, and this land was empty, so he was sure he could survive that as well.

  Nathan began to wander. He headed away from the mountains, since he did not think he would be able to climb them, having no shoes, only woolly hose with a hundred unravelling holes in the knees and feet. Then, as he walked, he heard a vague squelch, and a squeak as of someone speaking very far away. He still saw no person, animal, nor insect, so he continued walking.

  Then he stopped with a surprised jolt. “Help,” said the voice. High, shrill and very, very small, the voice repeated its call. “Please help.”

  A minute green frog, yellow-bellied, large-eyed, but extremely tiny, was gazing up at him from the grass. Nathan said, “You’re a frog.”

  “I’m not,” replied the frog, its voice quavering. “Please help me.”

  Never having been asked to help a frog before, he had not the slightest idea how to do so, and sitting down beside it, mumbled, “How?”

  “I smell the knife on you,” squeaked the frog, hopping closer with some enthusiasm. “Cut the eternal chain. Cut it and destroy it. Then we shall all be free.”

  Patting his waist where the knife that he had found in the smith’s ruined smithy lay hidden, Nathan said, “This one?”

  And the frog blinked, and with a spring of pleasure, hopped onto Nathan’s grubby knee. It said, “Indeed yes. The Knife of Clarr.”

  “I found it,” Nathan explained. “I’m not anyone special. This used to belong to someone else.”

  “If you can carry it,” said the frog, “then you can use it.”

  Leaning back, hands behind his head, on the grass, Nathan gazed at his new companion, smiled, but found he was growing deeply disappointed. His arrival in Lashtang had been puzzling but believable and he had accepted that Brewster, crazed as ever, was taking him on another adventure. But now, talking to frogs he was convinced that he was simply asleep and dreaming. This was not believable. He wondered how he could wake himself up.

  “Go on then,” he encouraged the dream-frog. “Tell me how. Where is this chain, anyway?”

  “In the mountain palace,” replied the frog.

  “Oh yes,” Nathan sighed. “It would be, of course.”

  The frog was puzzled. “I can lead you there. I know the way.”

  He wasn’t bored, but he wasn’t accepting it either. “Maybe later,” he said, yawning. “But it’s hot. I’ll sleep first.”

  The frog became agitated. “No, no, not here,” it squeaked. “You’ll wake up as something else. A toad. A lizard. A sparrow.”

  Nathan wedged himself up on both elbows and regarded his unexpected companion. “So you went to sleep and woke up as a frog. What were you before?”

  “A boat builder.”

  “That’s it,” decided Nathan. “This is all rubbish and I want to wake up, not go to sleep at all. In fact, I just want to go home.”

  “You’ll never get home from here,” said another deeper voice, and Nathan looked around. A cockerel, glorious in his many colours and regal feathers, was looking at him from a small rock. It balanced there, surveyed him with distrust. “Are you a proper human,” he asked, “or have you been turned into one?”

  Clustered around the rock at the rooster’s feet, were six fluff-balls of soft lemon, their round eyes waiting expectantly and their beaks open as they squawked very softly.

  “I’m completely human. But you’re a cockerel,” nodded Nathan. “So why do you have a clutch of ducklings instead of chickens?”

  “Foolish boy,” remarked the rooster crossly. “Mind your own business.” And he stalked off with the six tiny ducklings hurrying after him.

  “Who was that?” Nathan asked the frog.

  “Stanley Blestone and his wives,” said the frog without much interest. “Now, if you pick me up and put me in your pocket, I can tell you where to go.”

  Nathan didn’t have any pockets. He pulled off his cape, since it was warm and sunny and no cape was necessary, tied it into a sack with the ribbons around his waist, hitched it up and doubled the knot, popped the frog into it, and nodded. “Oh very well,” he said patiently. “I suppose I might as well play the game until I actually wake up and find out where I really am.”

  The frog seemed pleased and settled down in the depths of the shadowed cape. While Nathan began, very slowly, to walk towards the mountains. The sun was in his eyes, but the grass was soft, walking was easy, and there seemed nothing to spoil the dream.

  Until the flood.

  Without warning, it was from the mountains that the water came, booming down the slopes in dark torrents. There was no storm, no rain, and no dark clouds, but as though the barriers of an enormous dam had opened, the water tipped and swallowed the sunlight.

  Without lightening but with a roar and vibrating pound of thunder, rushing water pelted towards Nathan, filling the valley and swelling up the sides of the lower slopes. As its black waves cannoned, a wailing of distant voices hung in the sky, like the mournful despair of a thousand drowning souls.

  In absolute confusion, Nathan turned and ran. But you cannot outrun a deluge and in moments he felt the splash of spray against his back, then the soggy mars
h of wet ground beneath his feet, and finally the strength of oceans lifting him up and hauling him from his feet and into the terrible blackness of an inescapable flood.

  Flung up by the waves and then dragged downwards below the surface, Nathan heard the frog crying out, but could do nothing to save either it or himself. Looking down, he saw the frantic swimming of small lizards, fish-like creatures, beetles, and a tortoise with its mouth clamped shut in determination. Looking up, Nathan saw the swirling threat of the deluge, the tiny kicking of webbed feet from the ducks and other creatures attempting to survive, and the sudden eager flight of half a dozen birds freeing themselves from the waters.

  It was as though the flood had been directed at him alone, but had carelessly trapped every small creature around him. A vision of tragic desperation swamped him, the panic and drowning surrounded him. The current sucked him deeper and he was dragged ever downwards. He swallowed filth and could not breathe.

  Then, with a desperate wish to wake from the dream, Nathan closed his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  He woke, exactly as he had hoped, and with every wish granted.

  There was his own bed back in Hammersmith, quilt to his chin, and beneath this he was wearing his own striped pyjamas. Not the ones he remembered wearing when Brewster Hazlett first took him time-travelling, but another pair he had owned for several years. It was warm. It was deliciously comfortable.

  Now he knew it had all been a dream, exactly as he had already guessed. Lashtang had been a remarkably silly one. Perhaps Alice, Alfie, the baron, Mouse and everybody else had been a dream too.

  Blinking, and looking around at his own wonderfully familiar bedroom, Nathan saw Granny Octobr peeping around the door. His answering smile was as huge as relief could make it. “Hot chocolate?” murmured Granny.

  Bliss. “Yes please. Absolutely. Yes please.”

  The mug was hot within his palms as he sipped. And then, although he knew he must have drunk from this same cup a hundred times in the past, he suddenly realised that it was decorated with a large picture of the same knife that he had found in William Octobr’s smithy.

  Nathan sat up a little straighter, peered closely at the big china mug in his hands, drank more of the creamy hot chocolate, sighed, and was about to snuggle down again into the bed, when a small voice said, “Feeling better, lord?”

  A tiny yellow-bellied green frog was sitting on his pillow. Nathan gulped and swallowed so quickly, he burned his tongue. He managed to say, “Ug, u tot nem pobbible.”

  Granny Octobr sat on the edge of his bed, regarded him over the top of her glasses, smiled, and said, “I see you brought a friend back with you, Nathan. While you were sleeping, young Ferdinand Brook and I have had a highly interesting conversation.”

  “Really?” Gulp.

  “Indeed,” she said, with a one finger tap to the little frog’s head. “Clearly I’ve been neglecting Lashtang for far too long. I had decided, you see, that the complications were beyond repair, and that leaving the problems to the Hazletts was the best solution. Now I see I was wrong. The responsibility is ours, and I cannot shirk that any longer. Clebbster Hazlett has turned to cruelty. I must interfere before it’s too late.”

  Nathan had not yet closed his mouth. Finally sinking back against the pillow beside the frog, he muttered, “Am I still asleep?” but knew, now beyond doubt, that he was not.

  “Sit up, dear,” scolded Granny. “It’s time to get involved. There’s a good deal to understand first.”

  “So Lashtang is real?”

  “As real as we are.”

  “And the balloon and Brewster Hazlett and the funny knife?”

  “And me,” said the frog.

  “And Alfie and John and Alice and that horrible baron and his brother?”

  “Really, Nathan,” frowned Granny. “How can you doubt it after living with them for all that time and helping them so much. I’m sure you’d like to know that Alice has now reclaimed her legal home, and the others have moved in with her. But,” she added, increasing the frown, “that doesn’t mean the baron won’t try to get rid of her again.”

  “And,” this time Nathan asked very slowly, hoping against hope for the right answer, “Poppy’s in her bedroom, asleep next door?”

  “Ah,” said Granny, “no. Your sister is sleeping, just as you said. But not next door. She’s in a very large four-poster bed with long green velvet curtains, a lumpy mattress, and a big patchwork eiderdown.”

  “Oh, bother.”

  “Wake up, Nathan, and face the truth,” said Granny, taking his empty mug from him and standing up. “There is a great deal to be achieved as quickly as possible. I have to go to Lashtang and try to put right all the damage done by that terrible flood. So unnecessary. So inexcusable. Clebbster is a brute.”

  Nathan had never previously heard of Clebbster. “Another twin brother? I mean – triplets?”

  Granny shook her head. “No. Their father. A cruel and unforgiving man.” She seemed about to say something else, but changed her mind, and bustled out, turning at the door with a last brief order. “Get up, Nathan. Come downstairs and bring Ferdinand with you.”

  “Who?”

  “Me,” said the frog.

  The kitchen had not changed at all and Nathan wished he could hug it. Instead, he set the frog down on the table beside the teapot and sat on one of the old wooden chairs. Elbows on the table amongst the crumbs of toast, he put his chin in his hands and tried to make his brain work in straight lines.

  Granny was washing the dishes. Over the busy clatter, Nathan asked, “So you actually come from Lashtang?”

  “We all do, dear,” she answered, wiping the soap bubbles from her fingers onto her apron. “Honestly, Nathan, where do you think your parents have been all these years?”

  He had presumed that he could no longer be startled by anything. But he was, and collapsed, burying his head and hands on the table, crumbs in his eyes.

  It was after more hot chocolate, two pieces of toast and marmite, a saucer of something that looked repulsive for Ferdinand, and a few more explanations, that Nathan managed to stagger back upstairs and get dressed. His torn and ruined clothes from old London were neatly folded on the bedroom chair, but Granny had suggested that she could make him some new ones. Nathan thought that would help. In the meantime he put on modern clothes including a warm jumper and faced Granny again.

  “So you’re thinking I have to go back to Alfie and Alice and collect Poppy?” He sighed. “Well of course I want Poppy back, but sometimes I think she’s better at things than I am. What makes you think I’m capable of rescuing her?”

  Granny paused, stared over her glasses, and then said, “Haven’t you realised yet, Nathan, that you are very, very special?”

  He thought she was joking and smiled reluctantly. “Could I,” he asked, “have a couple of days of normal first?”

  “So what do you call normal?” demanded Granny, looking up from her rolling pin. It seemed she was making pastry. “Normal in 1485 London isn’t the same as normal here, and certainly not the same as normal in Lashtang.”

  “Alright.” He sat down again. “Can I have a couple of days without any magic?”

  She set the rolling pin down on the table with a bang, and the frog bounced, coughing flour. “And what is magic anyway? If you told your friends back in medieval London about electricity, they’d call it magic. And what about television and cars and trains and computers and planes and telephones? They’d be terrified. It would all be black magic to them. Magic is simply anything you don’t understand.”

  Nathan gave up.

  After the pastry, Granny got out her sewing machine. More magic, thought Nathan. Within a couple of hours, he had some bright new clothes for his return to 1485 and was ordered upstairs to change.

  Ferdinand was fascinated by these developments and tried to follow what was happening, but he preferred to keep close to Granny. “Till I’m myself again, and back with the boats and th
e rivers and the crabs in the reeds, I shall be safer with the Octobr matriarch,” he said apologetically. I would gladly have followed you, my lord, as the holder of the Clarr knife. But you are travelling elsewhere, I believe, whereas I wish to return to Lashtang and claim back my true identity.”

  Nathan was now eating home-made steak and kidney pie. “So what does Octobr without the ‘e’ mean, anyway?” he asked, mouth full.

  “My lord, you of all people should know that,” the frog replied, shocked. “Each letter stands for the word. ORIGINAL- CLAIMANT - THROUGH - OFFICIAL - BLOOD-RIGHTS. The Octobr family are the true rulers of old Lashtang. Deposed by the Hazletts, of course, but they were usurpers without doubt.”

  On his bed, half in a daze, Nathan spent some time gazing at the Knife of Clarr, holding it up to the light and admiring the intricate beauty of the handle. In the stronger light he could now see that the blade had a goldish sheen and was not plain steel, and on the sharp edge, which curved slightly, the gold was bright. The handle was pure silver, and every wrought detail was stunning. “People with clawed feet, growing funny little wings,” Nathan muttered, “and a serpent bigger than themselves,” and he had a vague idea just who the serpent might be.

  Already he wore the clothes Granny had made for him, a warm tunic, padded inside, in heavy black linen over a neat white shirt. His hose were warm black wool but stayed up far more easily than with the wrap-around ties of his previous pair, for this time they pulled up with strong elastic.

  “You have four secret pockets,” Granny pointed out. “So you can keep that knife safe.”

  “Perhaps you should have it if you’re going back to Lashtang.” Nathan felt a little odd wearing such clothes in his own bedroom, and stared, embarrassed, into the long wardrobe mirror.

  “The finder of the knife is the holder of the knife,” Granny shook her head. “It goes where it chooses. You can’t give it away.”

  “It came from someone called William Octobr, Was he a relation?”