“That was a mistake, too,” Nick said, jangling at Helga’s chain to get her to move. But she was interested in the papers on the table and would not budge. “Get that paper out of her reach,” Nick said. “She eats anything she can get near.”
“What, books, too?” asked the boy in the outside seat.
“Feed her Fusek’s Panmagicon, then,” suggested the boy beyond him. “I’ve had a bellyful of it. Give the goat a turn.”
He was leaning over and wagging a big, leather-covered book in the goat’s face when a door at the end of the room clashed open and a big, fat man with a beard strode in. He was wearing a suede suit, too, but his was dark and shiny with age and extremely tight across the front. Over it, he wore a flowing black robe. You could see at a glance he was a teacher. From the smug look on the spotty boy’s face, I could tell that he had somehow fetched this man.
“What is going on here?” the teacher demanded, in a big, rumbling voice.
Nick shot me a desperate look. I looked back in equal desperation. Toby and Grundo seemed stunned. We all stood there, wordlessly.
To my surprise and gratitude, the Izzys summed up the situation and took a hand. “Oh!” Isadora cried. “I just love tight, fat tummies!”
“But not with a beard!” trilled Ilsabil. “Get him to shave that beard!”
Both twins twinkled up to the teacher and flung their arms round him. Ilsabil put up a hand to stroke his beard and cried out, “Yuk! Bristles, my dear!” while Isadora nestled her face against his tight suede-clad stomach, murmuring, “Ooh! Fatness!” I could feel both of them fairly pumping out glamour spells.
The teacher, who had been starting on some kind of spell of his own, was entirely disconcerted. He stepped back a pace and gave an uncertain laugh. This gave the rest of us the moment we needed to pull ourselves together and start urging the goat to leave. Leave! I thought. Leave here!
“Come on, Helga!” Nick said. “Romanov!”
Helga raised her head at that name, kicked up her heels, and galloped back the way she had come. Nick was jerked after her. I grabbed Nick, Grundo and Toby snatched a twin’s arm each, and Grundo twined his hand painfully into my hair. We rushed in a bunch into a dark tunnel. Next second we had popped out on top of this world, where Helga was already jumping to another island.
“Thanks, you Izzys!” Nick panted as the island dipped and swung.
Somehow that void was worse the second time. I suppose it was because I knew what I was in for. The bright islands seemed so tiny, and they pitched and joggled so. I tried to ignore them and keep my eyes on the goat’s white rear, unerringly skipping across the gaps ahead of me. Goats are a strange shape behind, almost as if they have coat hangers just above their tails. But it made me dizzy every time Helga’s hooves hung in mid-void in front of me. I tried staring down at the vague landscapes inside the islands instead, and this was worse. The more closely I looked, the more the landscape seemed to pull me in. I found my knees sinking into the glassy surface and the hand I was resting on plunging downward onto a green-brown continent.
“This is awful!” I said.
Nick, ahead of me, having to use both hands on the stake and being towed like a water-skier from island to island, ought to have been hating it even more, but he said, “Oh, come on, Roddy. It’s a unique experience.”
I could hardly believe it when there was a grunt of agreement from Grundo and another from Toby. One of the Izzys said, “We may be the first humans ever to do this.”
It was a shock to find them all braver than me. After that I tried to stand up and look straight ahead, and I really did not know which was worse—crossing the slippery, dipping islands or the awful moments when I had to jump, into nothing and over nothing, onto the next island—though the very worst moment was when I almost didn’t land on one and nearly took the others with me. The journey seemed to go on for eternity.
Then it was suddenly over. The goat gave out a goatish yell, kicked up her white heels, and went down headfirst like a duck into an island no different from any of the others. We all galloped down a green-lit tunnel behind her, past a wood, where a huge spotted cat sat staring contemptuously out at us, and then we were there.
TWO NICK
I knew we were there when I saw Romanov’s spotted cat. The way she twitched just the end of her tail at us was positively jeering, but I was too relieved to care. I just felt a moment of great regret that I couldn’t have my black panther waiting about outside my home world in the same way, and then we were on Romanov’s island. I’d never been so glad of anything in my life. Those islands were amazing, but they were also scary. Roddy looked awful, ready to faint. She knew better than the kids what a horrible, risky thing we had just done.
The Izzys kept squawking about why were the sea and the sky in stripes. I bent down and undid the chain from Helga’s neck. “Oh, do shut up,” I said as the goat went trotting away over the hilltop. “This place is made of a lot of different places, that’s all.”
“You ought to be nice to us,” one of them said. “We saved you from the fat man.”
I didn’t answer. It had suddenly occurred to me—almost like an inspiration—why that goat had taken us to that library in the Plantagenate world. Maxwell Hyde had been there, that was why! And that goat thought the sun shone out of Maxwell Hyde’s fundament (as my dad would say), so she had gone there to look for him.
“Answer me!” snapped one Izzy. “Speak to us, Nick!” cooed the other one.
&n
bsp; “Fleas,” Roddy said, loudly and violently.
The twins gave a gasp of terror. It may have been because of this strange thing Roddy said, but I think it was more because Mini came trampling over the top of the hill just then, with her ears spread and her trunk eagerly stretched out. I’d forgotten how big she was. In fact she seemed huger than I remembered, and gnarlier, and more positive somehow. The Izzys screamed and ran away in two directions. Roddy sat down as if her legs had given way, and Grundo and Toby sort of dodged in behind her. But Mini took no notice. She lumbered straight up to me and stopped, with her legs trampling excitedly and her trunk sort of feeling at me, this way and that, over my face and my front and my sides, like an eager gray snake.
“Nick!” she said. “It really is you! I’ve missed you so much!”
I got in under her trunk and between her tusks—they had smart new golden bands round them that looked magical in some way—and hugged as much of her face as I could reach. “I’ve missed you, too, Mini,” I said out loud. “Like being homesick for you.”