Josh and the Magic Vial (41 page)

“He's on Desolation Isle.”

“Desolation Isle!” Millie gasped, forgetting their code of silence and speaking her thoughts out loud.

Mrs. Dempster rarely took her eyes off Josh, but hearing Millie talking to herself, she gave a worried look. “Why don't you and Ian go home and get some rest dear,” she suggested.

“I think that would be best,” Mr. Dempster quickly agreed.

“You've been wonderful friends, you two, but for your sake and Josh's, I think it would best if we called your mother, Millie and got you and Ian home.”

“No!” Millie cried. “Please!”

Mr. and Mrs. Dempster exchanged a concerned look, communicating in their own telepathic language, the code of gestures and expressions only parents can understand.

“He needs us here,” Ian added.

Mr. Dempster frowned. Millie couldn't blame him for being puzzled, even annoyed. The Dempsters wanted to be alone in their grief. They couldn't understand of course, and Millie couldn't begin to explain about Endorathlil and Puddifant and
The Book and Syde
, and the need for all of them to call out to Josh and guide him home.

“There's not much time,” Puddifant said, interrupting her
thoughts. “He
is
weakening.”

“They're afraid he's going to . . . going to die,”
Millie forced herself to think the word.
“They don't want us here.”

Puddifant nodded gravely.

“What are we going to do?”
she cried, not out loud this time, but into the depths of her own soul
.

Sighing, Puddifant stroked his beard thoughtfully. “There are
times when we have to stake everything on our convictions,” he
said after a while. “You must trust your own instincts now, and
not be afraid to do what love and courage bid you.”

“Oh! You're always so vague!”
Millie snapped, exasperated.

Puddifant smiled, captivated by her quick temper, then turned
serious again. “Josh has many allies here now, ready to call out
to him. But four voices must be in the chorus if we are to be
successful: yours, Ian's, Mrs. Dempster's, and Mr. Dempster's. You
must all join in.”

“But I can't ask them to do that!”
Millie balked.
“They'll think
I've cracked. They'll send me home for sure.”

“She's right,”
Ian chimed in
.

“Nevertheless, it's up to you. They can't see or hear me, and
they wouldn't likely listen to me if they could.”

“But . . . ”

“You must get them to hear the chorus once it begins. There's
no time to lose. You must make them join in.”

“But . . . ”

Before she could object, Puddifant vanished. They sensed he was nearby and that others were with him — hundreds of them, circling just outside the zone of seeing.

“What's going on?”
Ian wondered.

Millie shrugged, then took hold of Josh's hand and Ian's too. She simply had to do that. She was waiting for something, but couldn't say what. Then, with a shiver, she knew.

From outside a deep, moaning hum began.

Ian tightened his hand around hers.

They'd never heard a sound like it. Later, the only way Millie would be able to describe it would be as “vibrating souls” — hundreds of them. The sound resonated inside them, and made them feel as if they were the very air inside a cathedral, with the organ booming and the voices of an immense choir moaning and fluting around them.

“Awesome!” Ian gasped.

But the Dempsters seemed oblivious. They were watching Millie and Ian, a curious expression on their faces. And Millie realized that unless you heard the music, it would appear as if she and Josh were acting strangely.

“They must hear it!”
she said to herself.
“They have to, or we
don't stand a chance.”

Then she thought,
“I can make them hear,”
and began to hum in tune with the spirit song — tentatively at first — a thin, quavering rendition which made her blush.

Ian joined in, and she squeezed his hand gratefully. His cracking base complemented Millie's contralto, and they didn't sound half-bad, although their wavering effort was nothing like the gorgeous harmony that thundered in at the window now.

Still, Mr. and Mrs. Dempster stared dumbly, hearing only two children stumbling through an unfamiliar song. Then suddenly Mrs. Dempster twisted round in her chair and looked toward the window.

“What is it?” Mr. Dempster said.

“I — I don't know,” she muttered. “I could have sworn . . . ”

Awestruck, she turned to Millie and Ian, a look of profound recognition and gratitude in her eyes. She was weeping, but through the catches in her breath, she took up the chorus, joining the children and gripping her husband's hand.

Mr. Dempster looked puzzled.

“Sing, Frank,” she pleaded.

He added his voice to theirs, uncertainly. But the moment he started singing, a look of astonished delight transformed Mr. Dempster's haggard expression. Suddenly he too was radiant, and he joined his rich base to the powerful chorus calling out to his sleeping boy.

“What's that?”

Blackstone tilted his head like a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound at the door. He stopped to listen more closely.

Josh heard the music too, a faint, gorgeous sound which might have come from any direction. It hummed on the air, growing stronger by the second — a pure symphony of voices.

“Argh,” Blackstone growled, dropping the boulder he'd been about to throw and covering his ears. “Stop that infernal bleating.”

The wretched creature could not withstand anything beautiful — anything truly beautiful, that he could not sully with his callous, filthy hands. Josh pitied him. He tried not to. He wanted to feel compassion instead. But Blackstone and his son Andrew were beyond the reach of compassion. They were too miserable, too pathetic. The best Josh could do was keep his pity from degenerating into contempt.

“Open yourself to it,” he advised Blackstone and Andrew. “It's as warming as sunlight, as welcome as a breeze.”

“Bah! It grates on the air. Is this what you bring to Desolation Isle? Turn it off! Turn it off!”

Josh laughed.

“What's so funny!” Blackstone demanded..

“I can't switch if off,” Josh answered. “It's not ofmy making.”

“Whose is it then?”

Josh listened intently. He couldn't pick individual voices out of the chorus, but he sensed his mother in the strains, his father, Millie and Ian. Puddifant and Charlie Underwood were there too — and all the spirits that had escaped Syde.

“It's my friends,” Josh answered at last. “They are calling to me.”

Blackstone cackled, his emaciated frame shuddering and wheezing with the effort.

“What's so funny?”

“The notion that an imp like you thinks he might make it off Desolation Isle. Nobody has ever escaped this place; nobody ever will — least of all someone Vortigen hates as much as you.”

Josh let these gloomy words pass through him. He heard them, understood them, but did not allow them to stick to his soul.

Sensing this, Blackstone scowled. “Ah! You're the fine one, aren't you. Turns up his nose at a kingdom, now expects to simply float away. We shall see.”

A scrabble in the rocks behind them interrupted their discussion. Josh had been aware of a presence there, but had ignored it. Now he turned toward the source of the sound as a lanky figure crept out from behind the rocks.

“Quiggle!”

“Well, hello Your Fallen Highness!” the valet cried in feigned astonishment. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“There's no surprise at all in my being here, but how on earth did you end up on Desolation Isle.”

“Well, His most Eminent Eminence has often threatened to send me off on a holiday here, and now I guess he's done it.”

“What for?”

“Consorting with the enemy, I suppose.”

“But why didn't you leave with the others. Why didn't you wish for your freedom along with the rebels instead of letting yourself be hurled into this abominable place?”

Quiggle scratched his head and frowned as if he had trouble figuring that out for himself. “It's a funny thing, loyalty, sir,” he said after a while. “I've always hated the things Vortigen does, and I know you think he's evil through and through, but . . . well . . . everyone needs a friend, I guess, and I was his.”

“You are a remarkable man, Quigs,” Josh shook his head, chuckling.

“Aye,” Blackstone cut in. “Too remarkable for my liking!”

He stepped toward Quiggle, his hands balled into fists. Andrew laughed like a hyena, happy to see someone else on the receiving end of his father's vicious temper.

“NO!” Josh shouted, his word echoing like a clap of thunder up a narrow valley, hurling Blackstone backward, clear off the shelf onto the rocks below.

The warlock lay stunned beside the cauldron of bubbling lava. Andrew gave Josh one startled glance, then fled scrambling over the jagged landscape like a beetle hearing footsteps on the garden path.

“Listen!” Josh commanded.

“I hear it, sir,” Quiggle said. “It's the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. Magic, really. As if the very atmosphere had a voice.”

“We can follow that sound out of here, Quiggle. It's calling us.”

“It's calling you,” the valet said glumly. “I don't think it's meant for the likes of me.”

Josh laughed. “Don't be a fool,” he said. “Here, take my hand and sit beside me.”

Quiggle folded his lanky legs beneath him, settling on the ground the way a heron might settle on its nest. Josh couldn't help smiling at this. Quiggle was such a gentle, wonderful spirit.

“I won't leave without you.” he promised.

“But what if they won't take me sir?”

“Then we will keep each other company here. It's hard to be a good man all alone, but a good man with a good companion, why that makes all the difference.”

Nothing he had ever experienced pleased Josh more than the look of courage and gratitude Quiggle bestowed on him then. “It's why I'm here,” he thought. “That single glance is my whole reason for being.”

“Let's go,” he said. “Listen to the music, Quiggle. That's all you have to do.”

They closed their eyes and listened. Without the distraction of Blackstone, the chorus grew suddenly loud and triumphant. It shook the air around them, overwhelming their senses.

“Oh my!” Quiggle gasped.

Suddenly, the jubilation had a direction. It surrounded them still, but there was a direction in the music which Josh and Quiggle turned their thoughts to. And as they faced it, it took hold, becoming louder and exultant. The vision that had been Desolation Isle began to quiver and quake. Rocks toppled off of rocks and cracks appeared in the hard surface of illusion, then the island folded in on itself, collapsing into a dark void.

They found themselves in what appeared to be outer space. Absolute blackness.

A voice bellowed after them. “Nooo!” it hollered. It was Vortigen — Vortigen shrieking in rage and pain. But even he could not follow them out of the imploding world he ruled. He was caught up in the gravity of pride and evil, which Josh and Quiggle had shed, and so he was pulled into his own abyss.

“I will follow you!” he vowed. “I shall release every evil to track you down! I will not rest.”

Josh thought he heard Blackstone laughing at this, a laugh that would haunt him forever.

“Where are we sir?” Quiggle wanted to know.

“Between worlds, my friend. Nowhere and everywhere at the same time.” Josh thought.

They could move in any direction now, he realized. Infinite and unspeakable possibilities overlapped where they floated. They could choose anything. They had earned that right.

“The music,” a voice reminded him — Puddifant's voice, clear and authoritative as ever. “Find it. Come home.”

Josh hesitated, then agreed. He listened now for any trace of the song that had collapsed the world of Syde. But the icy silence seemed utterly profound - as if you could shout into it and your voice would not disturb it in the least.

“Can you hear it Quigs?” Josh asked.

“No, sir,” the Valet said.

“Relax, then. We must relax and let the music find us.”

With that, Josh closed his eyes and drifted into a trance. He held tight to Quiggle's hand, fearful of losing his companion to the chaos that had enveloped them. But aside from that, Josh stilled his thoughts completely and allowed himself to drift in the void.

How long they were suspended like that, he could not say. But eventually the stillness acquired direction again, and they found themselves drifting like a loosed rowboat on secret currents. Then, way off in the distance, they heard the faintest suggestion of a sound.

“Relax,” Josh said. “Don't try to hear it. Let it find you.”

By imperceptible degrees they turned toward it and floated in that direction. Slowly at first — so slowly that it might have been the illusion of movement, not the reality. But the tendency acquired speed and as they drifted closer, the voices intensified. And as the voices intensified, Josh and Quiggle were pulled more forcefully into their orbit, until the dreamers hurtled like a double comet toward the earth.

Millie sang like she'd never sung before. Her voice harmonized with the others: Ian, Mr. and Mrs. Dempster, Puddifant — but most of all with the chorus that swelled outside and carried everything along on its current.

She wanted to watch Josh, but kept her eyes shut. That was the only way to hold the notes — and she knew, above all else, that she had to hold the notes, and merge her voice with the undulating harmony.