“Yes,” said Joseph.
“A little knowledge and we all become scientists,” she sighed.
“Be silent!” said Voss.
“Oh, do calm down,” Gwilanna said
coldly, “you’re upsetting the bear.”
Voss’s response was to turn and attemptto kill Kailar for good. But the blast ofdark fire he’d gathered in his throatemerged as a slowed-down plasmabubble. Gadzooks had to duck as it
clawed at the air, then retreated with a sucking noise into Voss’s mouth. The Shadow Prime grimaced in pain. “What’s hap-pening?” he said, though the words were difficult to speak. He gurgled slightly and the corner of his mouth began to bend inward. One of his thorny hands went to his throat.
“You’re imploding,” said Gwilanna. “Is that the right term?”
“Yes,” said Joseph. “All dark energy is being restored to permissible levels.”
A searing oval of violet light swept out
from the island at sea level. At the same
time, one of Voss’s knee joints buckled. The line of his waist began to warp. Zigzagging cracks appeared in his chest.
“I don’t understand it either,” said the sibyl, noting the perplexity in Voss’s gaze. Or was that his skull beginning to compress? “You must hate me, Father. This is all my fault. I can’t even offer you a decent
skirmish
because you’re going to
struggle to fly.”
Fittingly, his wings wrapped into his body, pressuring his ribcage against his organs. He cried out as something burst in his gut. It bulged for a moment, then was sucked back in. A shoulder joint failed. A hip caved in. The tail began to wither and shrink. Gadzooks, still caught in the tail,
began to struggle.
Joseph tapped his grandmother’s arm. “It’s time, Grandma. The guardians are waiting.”
“Gar… dy… ans?” Voss slurred.
Gwilanna pointed to the sky. The stars that had formed, and were still forming, were popping like fireworks, exploding into sparkling, colourful dragons, no bigger than the size of Gadzooks. One of them dropped down and hurred on Voss’s tail, freeing the grateful Pennykettle dragon. He tipped his snout and hurred back at it. Every one of ‘the guardians’ suddenly gained a pencil.
“They’ve come to restart time,” said Gwilanna. “They’ve allowed us to keep this sector of the universe as long as time
begins in its proper place.”
“At zero,” said Joseph. “All that Is will
be restored, with some minor
differences.”
Voss’s legs were suddenly sucked intohis middle. His head began to slide intothe whirlpool of his body.
“That’s got to hurt, hasn’t it?” Gwilannamuttered, pulling an expression of mildabhorrence. “You’ve probably realised, Father, you won’t survive. I don’t supposethere’s any chance that I will, is there?”
“No,” said Joseph.
Gwilanna sighed. “Ah, well. I had goodrun. I met dragons. I commingled with thefinest one on Earth. I even lived to see
where they really come from.” At her back, a silver fire star rose above the
island. She stared at Voss, who was now just a howling scrunchbag of darkness. “I’m glad the real villain wasn’t me in the end.” And with a whoosh that threw up a minor blizzard, Voss disappeared into a point of no return.
Gwilanna opened her hands. A beautiful fire tear blossomed inside them.
In the sky, the sparkling guardians of Quantum all held a fire tear of their own. “So this is it, boy. This is the end for menow?”
“For me, too,” said Joseph, taking her
arm.
“Will it be painful?”
“No. Just strange. Think of it as your
gift to the world.”
“I will see Elizabeth again, you
promise?”
“I promise. I believe she’s expecting
us.”
Gwilanna extended her hands, lettingthe fire tear bobble within them. “A new
ice cap. It doesn’t seem much of a gift.”
“It will to him.” Joseph nodded at
Kailar.
But the bear had closed his almond eye.
And as the north wind stroked his fur and
mourned, it was all Gadzooks could do not to shed his spark into the waiting
ocean.
Even Gwilanna shuddered. “Stupidlump of fur,” she chuntered. “Couldn’teven stay alive for my moment of glory. He was the one who freed me from an ice
block when the Ix turned me into a raven,
you know.”
“Then now is your chance to thank him,” said Joseph, “and earn the respect of Gaia.”
And so Gwilanna walked over to
Kailar’s body and clamped his ear in herone free hand. “Here you are, ice bear,this is for you. Let me be an angel once inmy life.”
And legend would record that as thetear of Gawain fell into the ocean, thebear, the sibyl and the boy who took herhand became immortal.
Frozen in the ice and fire of time.
Part Eight
The Loaf Everlasting
Wayward Crescent
In the timeline set by the Guardians of
Quantum
“David, it’s nearly half-past ten. The cars
will be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Still looking through the albums,” he
called.
A floor below, he heard Zanna sigh. “Lexie, go up and fetch him. No. Wait. What’s that on your head? How’ve youmanaged to get
orange peel
stuck in yourhair? I don’t care. Never mind, just go andget Daddy.”
Feet pounded up the stairs. Secondslater, Alexa ran into the study and plonkedherself onto her father’s lap, facing his
computer screen.
“You look pretty,” he said, adjusting her so he could still read his manuscript. She was wearing a violet-coloured dress and shoes. A green bow wobbled in her wayward hair. “Hmm, oranges,” he said, sniffing her curls.
“Mummy says you’ve got to hurry up.”
“’Twas ever thus,” he hummed.
“What’s this?” She jabbed a finger at the screen.
“A new story. Well, the start of one.”
“About Bonnington?”
“Not this one, no.”
“Daddy, you
promised
you’d do a story about Bonnington.”
He pinched her round the waist and said, “It’s not your birthday, yet, is it?” He
checked the desk calendar. Dangerously close, though.
She dropped her shoulders and simultaneously lifted her perfect chin. A gesture that always made Zanna cry, ‘Action!’
Alexa picked up a pencil and chewed
the end.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why?” she demanded.
“You’ll give yourself…pencil
poisoning.”
“Mummy says
you
do it.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why are there teeth marks here
and here and… ?”
He took it off her and dropped it in his
cup with the others.
“Who’s Rosa?” she asked, shaking her hair imperiously. She touched the name on-screen, denting her finger. In a separate window, the character’s avatar appeared.
“She’s a girl. You’d like her.”
“She looks like Mummy.”
“Ten years ago, maybe.”
“Do you love her?”
“Who, Mummy? Of course I love Mummy.”
“Nooo,
Rosa
.”
“She’s a character, Lexie.”
“Yes, but Mummy says when you write about
heroines
you’re really writing about
her
because you find it easier to tell Mummy you love her in a story than when you’re… out shopping.”
“Shopping?”
“Or something.”
There was really no answer to that.
I love you, Zanna. Do we need eggs?
“Where did you learn a word like ‘heroine’?”
“Mr Henry taught me.”
“Oh, him again.” Mr Henry was her ‘computer tutor’.
“Aren’t you tired of the Mr Henry game? Don’t you want to play some adventure games like… ” ‘Normal children’, he almost said. “… The ones Aunt Lucy makes?”
“Aunt Lucy’s games are
all right
,” she said, dragging her finger along the edge of his desk. “But Mummy says
‘Librarimum’—”
“‘Librarium’,” he corrected her.
“—is good because it
teaches
you things.”
“Not if it gives you a better vocabulary than me.”
“Anyway, you haven’t answered my
question.”
“Which one of the multitude did I
miss?”
“The one about Rosa.”
“What about Rosa?”
“Do you
love
her?”
David looked at the avatar again. She did bear a strong resemblance to Zanna, though he wasn’t sure Zanna would wear a bracelet made of daisies. “I love them all
in a way, even the baddies.”
“The baddies? That’s silly.”
“Well, when you write your first…
blockbuster you’ll probably feel the
same.”
“David, ten minutes!”
The welcome relief of maternal
authority. “We’re on our way!”
Though they clearly weren’t.
Alexa rolled her eyes.
“Okay, guilty as charged.” He scrolled the story off-screen, tapping it to bring up the albums database. He double-tapped one called ‘Mum’. “You can help me choose a picture of Grandma.”
“All right,” said Alexa, re-setting herself.
“I’ve narrowed it down to six.” He
showed her a montage.
She looked at them carefully and
pointed to the one in the centre at the
bottom.
“Yes, I like that one as well,” he said. It was the oldest picture of the bunch. His mother must have been in her mid-
twenties. Slim and green-eyed. A beautiful waterfall of red hair was falling halfway to her waist.
“Is that you?” Alexa pointed at the baby
in Liz’s arms.
“No, how could it be me? That’s Aunt Lucy. And that’s your Great Aunt Sibyl standing behind Grandma – looking like she’s chewed on a lemon, as usual.”
Alexa drew her lips in but didn’t smile. “Why isn’t Grandad in the picture?”
Without thinking, David said, “Grandad Arthur wouldn’t have been there, then.”
“Why not?”
“Well … ” Hole. Shovel. Deep dark pit. Fortunately, she threw him a rope in her very next sentence.
“Was he in his labradory making spells?”
“
Lab-ora-tory
. A labradory is… a posh person’s dog. And Grandad Arthur doesn’t do spells – no matter what the scientific community believes.”
“What does he do then?
“He swivels in his chair and thinks
about things.”
“What things?”
“Oh… little things, mostly. And how the little things make up bigger things, like… toast.”
“Toast?!”
There was a half-eaten piece on a plate
on the desk. Not the best example David could have come up with.
And she wasn’t going to let it go. “Grandad Arthur goes to work and thinks about
toast
?”
“Well, no, I might have been exaggerating there. But if he did think about toast, he’d think about it in a very special way.”
She gave him that ‘explain to me’ scowl.
This was getting worse. He took a deepbreath and looked along his bookshelf forinspiration.
The Five-yearold’s Guide to Quantum Physics
appeared to be out onloan again. Drat. “Well, in Grandad’suniverse the loaf of bread the toast came
from would have an infinite number of
slices.”
“What does ‘infinite’ mean?”
“Lots. Everlasting. As many peanut butter sandwiches as you can think of.”
“Grandad’s got an everlasting loaf of bread?”
“Well… ”
“I thought you said he didn’t do spells?
He’d have to be
magic
to make a loaf go
on for
ever
. And, anyway, that’s stupid because lots would go stale.”
“Yes. Good point. I’ll mention that to him. He might want to dismantle the entire foundation of theoretical physics based on that conclusion. Anyway, you like this picture?”