Rainbow's End - Wizard (50 page)
Read Rainbow's End - Wizard Online
Authors: Corrie Mitchell
Thomas halted before Rudi
, glowering. He was incongruously steady on his feet, as if he were part of, and not standing on the bouncing earth. The leader of the Night Walkers was three or four years older than the young Traveller, and at least a head taller, but dropped his eyes before this green-eyed glare. When Thomas spoke, his voice was soft, but Orson heard him above even the bouncing of the earth, and the grunts and exclamations of the struggling-to-stay-upright band of boys.
‘Tell Bryan Stone,’ he said, ‘the boy he and his bunch of hooligans left for dead in an alley in London, is alive and very well; and that I challenge hi
m to a re-match - or a show-down - in a month’s time. Thirty days from today. Tell him he may bring as many of you…’ and here Thomas crinkled his nose as if smelling something unpleasant, and looked Rudi up and down with unconcealed disgust, ‘…as he feels he will need, but he’s not to forget the boy he took off me. The boy called Eamon. I intend taking him back.’ The young Traveller leaned forward, brought his face closer to Rudi’s, and asked, softer still, ‘Do you want me to repeat that?’
Rudi shook his head and took an involuntary step backwards, getting out of Thomas’ face; and from ten
metres away, Orson and the boy called Orin, could see, and sense, his trepidation.
Sunlight tinted the top of the buildings to the west with gold when the old man raised, and then hammered the tip of his staff into the giving soil at his feet. Seconds later some joggers saw a blinding flash - like the sun reflecting off a huge mirror, and heard a clap of thunder. When investigating, they found nothing but a five metre wide, sucked clean circle of earth midst a small copse of trees, and the smell of burned sulphur hanging in the air...
*
Article on page 3 of The New York News, 29
th
April.
Two boys, sixteen and seventeen years old, were yesterday
admitted to St. Mary’s hospital - both with severe burns to their right hands. It seems they were holding knifes at the time of sustaining said burns, and these (knifes) caught fire, the handles melting into the palms of their hands.
According to the boys, they
were “Just strolling around Central Park, minding our own business, when attacked by a crazy old man and a boy”. They drew their knives (the possession of which, illegal of course) in an attempt at self-defence, and the knifes then caught fire. Attempts to throw them away were not successful; it seems the boys were suddenly unable to open their hands.
This strange phenomenon
(apart from setting their hands on fire) they also ascribe to the old man. Oh, yes, the boy with him apparently made the earth beneath them “hump”, and this tossed them into the air…
An intern at St. Mary’s, who prefers to remain
anonymous, said the burns to the outside of their hands were superfluous - mostly 1
st
and 2
nd
degree. Their palms are another matter altogether: the handles of their knifes (cheap plastic), melted into their skins to the extent that they had to be surgically removed, and will leave ugly scars indeed.
Captain
Willis, police liaison, said both boys are well known to local officers, and both have criminal records. They cannot be named though, because of their ages. He did however; say that their allegations should not be taken seriously until the results of their drug-tests have come back.
In the meantime, police ask that you be on the lookout for a deranged looking old man - around five feet tall and carrying a staff with a huge diamo
nd set into its top; and a boy - around twelve years old with blonde hair and bottle-green eyes…
Mike Kastleman
.
41
The Gobi...
‘The first dinosaur eggs were found here,’ Orson said of the Gobi desert. ‘It receives less than 200mm of rain a year; the Himalayas stop the rain-clouds before they can get here. It gets as cold as minus 40˚ Celsius in winter, as hot as 50˚ in summer. It is 1 300 000 km² in size, and grows by another 3600km² every year. Part of it is in North and North-Western China, and part in Southern Mongolia. It used to be part of the Mongol Empire...’
The two Travellers stood on a large flat rock, which
was the best description for it; three or four kilometres in length and half as wide, turned an unyielding grey by many centuries of merciless sun. It was only eleven in the morning and already terribly hot, and the rock seemed to shimmer in the sun.
Orson nodded, and Thomas took a few paces forward. Gripped the R
ed Crystal and concentrated. After a minute, tilted his head, and then stamped his foot. Pointed with the crystal, and then shouted; and then swayed, almost danced, commanding...
And the rock cracked: hairlines at first... and the boy stamped his foot again... The crack became wider then, and wider... and suddenly - with a thunderclap sound, it ran from him: following the easiest route; zigzagging here, and running straight there, and zigzag again, and straight, and faster... And out of sight: to its end. And back again: splitting and cracking and lifting this time; crushing and crumbling and crackling, to the other end
... And back again...
And finally: a stretch of rocky wasteland some kilometres long and half as wide, consisting of millions - probably billions - of stones and smaller rocks, none larger than a football.
And they Travelled...
*
The Pampas...
‘The Pampas’ said Orson, ‘are more than 750
000km² in size. They takes up almost all of five provinces of Argentina, most of Uruguay; and Rio Grande do Sol, the most southern Brazilian State.
‘They are inhabited by deer, armadillos, foxes, and of course - birds. Dozens of different species. They receive between a half and one-and-a-half metres of rain throughout the year. A lot of different grasses and shrubs; almost no trees...
‘They have a mild to temperate climate, and are probably the best place in the world for animal or crop farming...’
Another nod, and Thomas stepped forward again; the Crystal and the glare again, and the swaying and the shout... And the grass and shrubs seemed to move - to sway. And then to heave. And then to sway and heave and jump - as if a million moles were burrowing in the soil beneath. It ran away to the horizon; far, far away... And then back... and in another direction... and another... And when it stopped, left a huge field with a freshly-ploughed look...
They Travelled...
*
The Great Wall of China...
‘The story that it is visible from the moon is a myth,’ Orson said. ‘It would be the same as seeing a single human hair from 3 kilometres away...
‘It’s built of wood and stone and brick and earth,’ he said. ‘8 850Km long; 21 000km if you include all of its branches. 25 000 Watch towers; running all the way to Beijing.
At Thomas’ questioning look: ‘Don’t do anything here, unless you want
big
trouble...’
They Travelled...
*
The Sahara...
‘Sahara is Arabic for desert,’ Orson said. ‘It is the world’s hottest desert. Also its biggest:
hot
desert, that is.’ He rubbed at his wart. ‘There are two larger, but they are both Cold Deserts: The Antarctic and the Arctic. They are almost the same size; only a hundred thousand square kilometres difference between them...
‘The Sahara is almost 9
500 000km² in size: almost as large as the whole of the United States... or China. Its highest ever recorded temperature was 58˚ Celsius... Half of it receives less than an inch of rain a year, the other half around 4 inches: it has one of the harshest climates in the world...
‘Most of it is rock or packed soil, and some dunes of course. Some as high as 200 metres. It takes up most of Northern Africa, and
if
the Earth’s scientists can be believed, will be green again in 15 000 years. That’s if the Earth survives man’s onslaught for that long, which I somehow doubt...
‘Just goats and camels, and foxes and scorpions and snakes live here...’
A nod and Thomas stepped forward. ‘Just not this one,’ Orson said of the dune they were standing on, receiving a haughty look from his pupil. And the sand ran: wave upon wave, large and small, with almost no sound; and after some minutes flowed together, sliding and smoothing and subsiding... Leaving behind a level field of sand, the size of a small city...
They Travelled. Home.
42
His name was Harun and his uncle had chased him away
from the smallholding he had been working on for sixteen hours a day, the past three years. Since the death of his mother and father and sister in a fire that also destroyed their shack and all of their belongings. He’d gotten a ride on a donkey cart going into town, and then walked to his uncle’s smallholding. Once there - without as much as a word of commiseration - he’d been put to work. And now, after three years, tired to death and emaciated, had been chased off, with nothing but the threadbare clothes on his back, and not as much as even a small crust of bread...
He’d slept beneath the stars that night; something he was no stranger to in any way, and since the morning, had been sitting next to the road outside the small village, watching people pass and go about their daily tasks, hoping for an offer of work, or a crust of bread, anything...
He’d suffered from hunger before, ev
en hallucinated due to the weak - and dizziness it caused; and was therefore not overly surprised when he saw an ugly old man and a boy - three or four years older than himself - materialise on the dirt road about ten metres away, as if out of nowhere. He was surprised though, when the old man, after shaking himself and peering around as if he had an eye problem (which was very possible when taken into account that one of his eyes seemed half closed, due to a lazy eyelid, and both bulged when he focused on something); as he did now.
He fixed Harun with a bulgy stare, and then he and the boy came closer, and stopped in front of the weakened boy. ‘Is your name Harun?’ the old man asked, in Urdu. His grey eyes were also gentle, and Harun nodded. Th
ey both bent to him then, one on each side, and took his skinny arms, lifting him to his feet as if he weighed nothing at all.
They walked slowly back to the spot the two had appeared at, and Harun almost fell twice; from huger or utter exhaustion, or simple hopelessness at the cards dealt t
o him by life, he did not know - or much care. They came to a halt in the middle of the road, broad and swept and trampled clean by thousands of daily feet and donkey cart wheels. The old man carried a shiny wooden staff with what looked like a diamond at its top, and he lifted it into the air... And... ‘Stop, Orson.’ This from the boy.
*
They came walking out of the village, and even Harun - without knowing what this was all about, nor the faintest clue of what was happening - felt their malice... their
arrogance
... They were just boys; a dozen of them, and dressed all in black. One of them, smaller than the rest, was held by two others; by a sleeve and the scruff of his overlarge jersey. Their leader walked a couple of steps ahead; wearing combat boots and swaggering...
*
‘So
this
is him,’ Bryan said, over his shoulder, at his followers, ‘The old goat you are all so scared of.’ He halted just metres away, and stood looking at the Travellers; hands on his hips and smirking.