“Then I think a voice spoke. But I’m not sure, because if it was as voice, it was more like notes or chiming. And it seemed to me to tell us Maree could ask first, provided she was in great need.
“I nudged at Maree. She sort of jumped. I whispered at her what to say. She nodded happily and I thought she understood. She pushed her glasses up and said, ‘I ask that my little fat dad should be cured of his cancer.’
“I couldn’t believe it. It was a total waste. I knew I was going to have to ask for the other half of Maree for my own wish and I could have screamed. There was no chance of getting her back if I didn’t, and I would have wasted everyone’s trouble. I think I cried at the waste. But it was pointless to have come all this way and not ask. So I asked for her.
“And there was a sort of chiming. Maree suddenly went the right colour. She even looked heavier. And she seemed to have her mind back properly. Anyway the shape of her face was right again. And I suppose I was glad. Well, yes, I was glad.
“Then there was another chiming, and this one meant we had to go. But I think it gave me a hint too. Anyway, I thought of the stories, Orpheus and so on, and I didn’t look at Maree again. I just turned round and started to go back.
“I’ve no idea how I got so far ahead of her. Maree doesn’t know either. She thinks she had my candle in sight most of the time. I heard her behind me quite often. I heard her scrambling down the moss after me, and I felt it swaying under her. I heard her walking while I was crawling along the ribbon of rock with the precipices on either side. I just don’t understand it.
“Going back was awful. The worst of it was, you knew just what you were in for. The one thing that wasn’t the same was when I was coming down the rocks like the stacks of knives. I never saw the children or the birds there. But the rest of it was all there, waiting. Another difference, now I think, was when I got to the thorns. I kept expecting my clothes to vanish again, but they didn’t. The only thing that did vanish was the shawl made out of the goat’s wool. And when I got to the bridge, there was nothing at the other end, no gateway and no statues. By then I was so tired I almost didn’t notice. I was just glad that nobody tried to stop me, and trudged on. I was so tired that I almost didn’t know I could stop when I got back to Rupert’s room at last.”
[3]
They all listened to me reading, leaning forward, attending to every word. I was so busy reading at first that it took me a while to notice that the sheets of paper were sort of filtering away as I read them. Almost every time I put a page underneath the pile after I’d read it, it went. By the end, I was holding three sheets of paper. I looked. The top one was the part about the birds and the children.
Someone quite a long way down the table asked, “Do you know who those three children were?”
I said, “Yes. They have to have been the Emperor’s other children who were killed.”
“And what do you think the birds were?” another distant voice asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought maybe you did.”
“I wish we did,” the person right beside me at the end of the table said. “This is as strange to us as it is to you.”
Then I had only two pages. The top one was now the bit after I’d come back and we were chasing the quack chicks. My stomach wobbled.
It was one of the people on the side bench against the wall who asked me about that. She was an old, old lady with sucked-in cheeks. She said, “What are your feelings about your mother now?”
I couldn’t answer. I simply didn’t know how – and I’d been trying to work it out ever since Dad and Maree and I went back to Bristol.
The old lady said, “Try to answer. It might help.”
The only way I could manage to answer was to talk about something else. I said, “Last year, I had a boil on my neck. It was quite impressive. It grew and it grew and it was a sort of purple-red. And all the time it was growing it was wonderfully neat and well shaped, quite round and pointed and regular, with a funny little dip in the middle at the top. When I looked at it, I used to think it was such a perfect shape that it almost seemed as if it was a proper part of me and meant to be there. But it hurt more and more, in a dull sort of way, and it made me hold my head on one side. In the end, Dad marched me off to the doctor with it. The doctor took a short look, then he lanced it. That made the most appalling mess and it hurt ten times more. When I got home it looked even more of a mess. It was not even a good shape any longer, and it kept running and felt horrible, but the pain was a much better sort of pain, even though it went on for a long time and I’ve still got quite a mark.”
“Fair enough,” said the old lady.
That left me with only the one sheet. I looked down at it and I sort of clenched. It was the last sheet, and I was absolutely not going to tell them what I’d wanted to wish for. But I wasn’t sure how I could stop them making me.
Somebody right along the table asked. He said, “You’ve left out your motive. You haven’t said why you went through with this.”
“What do you mean?” I said, defending for all I was worth.
“I mean,” he said, “that you’ve made it clear why you hung on to the centaur and asked for the other half of your sister, but there was at least one occasion where you wanted to turn back, and your account shows that you could have done. Why did you go on?”
“Oh,” I said. I tried not to show them how relieved I was. “I went on because I was interested, of course. I wanted to know what would happen.”
That seemed to amuse them all. There was quite a ripple of laughter round the room, and when it stopped, all my papers had gone. Rupert seemed to think we were going to leave then, but they hadn’t quite finished. One of the stern ones in the middle of the table said to me, “One moment. This account of
Babylon contains substantial parts of the deep secret of the Magids that is called Babylon. For this reason, we are going to have to expunge all trace and memory of it from you. Please understand and forgive this assembly for it. It is necessary.”
That is just what they tried to do. I really didn’t remember a thing – though I was puzzled to see that Maree was the right colour again, and couldn’t think why – until I got home and found the note I’d left for myself. Look for disks. So I looked all over and found about twenty of the hundred disks I’d hidden. The rest were gone, and the file wasn’t on my hard disk. But I don’t think the Upper Room realised how cunning I’d been.
You see, after Rupert told me that the computer games people didn’t want my Bristolia game after all – they said it was too complicated! – I decided I’d do a Babylon game instead. Blow that about deep secrets! Rupert and Maree say that the basic job of a Magid is to gradually release all the special knowledge anyway. And besides, I want to remember. It strikes me as one of the best ways of forcing that Upper Room to make me a Magid too. That was what I’d been going to ask for, until I had to ask for Maree instead. Now I’ll have to get to be one another way round.