The Game Page 8

  “I’m all right,” Hayley assured him. “I had to live with Grandpa. He’s all right, but Grandma isn’t. Can’t you leave here now, so that I can live with you?”

  “No,” said her father sadly. “I’ve tried to leave over and over, but I always find myself back at this desk, whatever I do.”

  “But it looks awful!” Hayley said.

  “It is,” he said. “You know what it feels like? It feels as if I’m rolling a huge stone up a hill, and every time I get it nearly to the top, it rolls straight down to the bottom again.”

  Hayley thought of the man she had seen crashing down the hill under the boulder. That had been her father too. This was the way the mythosphere worked. Things got harsher and stranger the further out you were in it. “Oh!” she cried out. “Isn’t there any way I can rescue you from here?”

  Cyrus Foss smiled at her. It was a harrassed smile, but Hayley had seldom seen a nicer one. “I don’t think you can,” he said. “But maybe your mother could.”

  “So where is she?” Hayley demanded.

  “Somewhere else in this hell,” he said. “She—”

  He was interrupted by an office lady carrying a neat pile of shiny plastic files. “These are all wrong,” this lady said. ““They all have to be done again.” She dumped the files on top of the stack already in the IN-tray. The stack was too high to take them. Every one of them slithered off sideways and fell on the floor, taking half the rest of the papers with them.

  Cyrus Foss gave a moan of despair and bent down to collect them. Hayley dived down under the desk to help. Face to face down there, her father whispered, “She’ll be in a women’s strand, somewhere much wilder than here, I think.”

  “Right,” Hayley whispered back. She crawled across under the desk and stuck her head out beside the office lady’s neat feet. “Can’t you help?” she said.

  “Not my job,” the lady said coldly.

  “But you made them fall down,” Hayley pointed out.

  “I don’t want to ladder my tights,” the lady retorted. “And you shouldn’t be here. You’re interrupting this prisoner in his work. You’d better leave here before the manager finds you.”

  “Cow!” Hayley’s father murmured, with his face still under the desk. He added loudly, “Yes, better leave Hayley. We don’t want you in trouble too.”

  “All right,” Hayley said. “See you.” She scrambled violently out past the lady’s neat feet, hoping she would ladder the tights as she went, and stood up among the other desks. “I’ll be back,” she told the lady. “So watch out.” But the lady simply turned and walked away.

  Hayley threaded her way between the busy desks and came to a door. She turned round there to wave to her father, but he was frantically at work again and did not look up. Hayley sighed – the kind of sigh you seem to drag up from near your knees – and pushed her way out through the door.

  Outside, the strand leading away in front of her was cloudily transparent now, like smoked glass. Hayley hurried along it, blinking back tears and refusing to look at any of the dreary scenes happening on either side of her, until the strand suddenly turned almost as clear as air underneath her feet. She found herself walking high above the jumbled roofs and turrets of Aunt May’s guesthouse. She could see the gutter and the window she had squeezed out of the day she arrived. Ahead of her and below her were the grounds of the place, full of racing figures as the Tighs and the Laxtons all hurried towards the paddock, where Harmony was standing by the card table. Hayley could hear the clock, chiming out Over the Rainbow, but very slowly, as if it had almost run down. And Tollie had almost won. He was halfway up the paddock, pushing and rolling an immense egg. This reminded Hayley so of the man pushing the boulder that she stood still and shuddered.

  Then, Hey! she thought. I can win!

  She ran. She came charging down the almost unseeable glassy strand, brushed past Tollie and his egg and landed panting in front of the card table. Tollie screamed with fury.

  “That does it!” he yelled. “I’m telling!”

  “I’ve got one – a golden apple!” Hayley panted to Harmony.

  Harmony seemed to have got over her bad temper. She smiled and said, “Let’s see it then.”

  Hayley unzipped her pocket and fetched the apple out. For a moment it glowed bright as a small sun and smelled wonderfully of apple. But as Hayley held it out towards Harmony, it was a plastic Christmas ornament just like the ones Harmony gave out as prizes. “Oh!” Hayley said. “But it was! It really is!”

  “I know,” Harmony said. “They go like that here.” And she passed Hayley another apple just the same. “Your prize,” she said.

  “I hate you both!” Tollie snarled, leaning both arms on his vast egg. “Still” he added smugly, “I stole a lot of diamonds too. And I’m still telling of Hayley.”

  James arrived then, waving what looked like a spike with threads of silk streaming off one end. “Is this it?” he asked Harmony. “It was on her spinning wheel. But it was a real closie. She sort of half woke up and said ‘Kiss me!’ and I just ran!”

  Lucy pushed up from the other side with a dry-looking slice of cake in one hand. “Out of her cottage wall,” she panted. “She saw me and she chased me all the way back here. I don’t think I want to play this game again.”

  “I’ve got a roc’s egg!” Tollie said loudly.

  He went on saying this as the others began arriving, waving peculiar objects and jostling Hayley about as she carefully zipped both apples into her pockets. “Do these look like thumbscrews?” she heard someone ask.

  “I know it looks like a handful of jelly,” said someone else, “but it really is an eyeball.”

  “I’ve got a roc’s egg!”

  “This card really was the Queen of Hearts, honestly. It’s alive. It sort of squiggles.”

  “I caught the fox, but he bit me and got away. Do I need an injection, Harmony?”

  “I’ve got a roc’s egg!”

  “Sorry about the blood, Harmony. He’d just killed her when I got there. It was horrible.”

  “I’ve got a roc’s egg!”

  “Oh, be quiet, Tollie!” Harmony snapped. “What’s the matter, Troy?”

  “And I’m telling,” Tollie mumbled, as Troy arrived last of all, very quiet and dejected.

  “I couldn’t find that garden anywhere,” Troy said. “So I came back and the strand took me through the house for some reason. Mercer’s on the phone in the hall. He’s telling Uncle Jolyon all about the game.”

  “Isn’t that all we need!” Harmony said. She scooped the cards, the markers and the clock into her coloured bag and snapped the table together. “Everyone go and put their stuff in the trophy cabinet. It’ll be open for you. Tollie, you’ll have to leave that egg there and hope Uncle Jolyon doesn’t notice it. Troy, Hayley, come with me. We’d better find Aunt May.”

  Aunt May was hurrying out of the house as they came to it. She let Tollie, followed by the crowd of Tighs and Laxtons, rush indoors past her and stopped Harmony, Troy and Hayley.

  “Quick,” she said. “Jolyon’s on his way here already. I wish Mercer wasn’t so damn dutiful, but Jolyon is his father, you know. Jolyon had no idea that Hayley was here with us, and he’s furious. We’ve got to get her away.”

  “Does he know about the game?” Harmony asked.

  “No – if he knew she’d been playing that, he’d go berserk!” Aunt May said distractedly. “But I’d get her away even if she hadn’t been. Hayley, you’re a darling and you saved us from the flood and what’s been done to you is a shame. Harmony, Troy, think what to do, quickly.”

  “We were supposed to be taking her to Mum when we left,” Troy said. “To go to school in Scotland, Pleone said. We could take her now.”

  “Yes, yes, take her to Ellie. At once,” Aunt May gasped. “Go upstairs and pack your things, all of you.”

  Troy and Harmony wasted no time. They dashed indoors and raced up the stairs in long strides. Aunt May, looking perfectly di
stracted, with her hair unrolling in long lumps, seized Hayley’s hand and rushed her upstairs in a rattle of necklaces. When they reached Hayley’s room, Aunt May dragged Hayley’s little suitcase from under her bed, shook her head – causing more hair to unroll – and hunted in a cupboard until she found a big duffel bag. Into this she crammed all Hayley’s new old clothes as fast as Hayley could pass them to her. She was just forcing Hayley’s brush and comb in on top of Hayley’s washing things, when Troy and Harmony arrived at a gallop, Troy with a huge backpack and Harmony carrying a bulging airline bag.

  “Got everything?” Aunt May said.

  “Not quite,” Harmony said. “I had to leave my good dress. Can you hang—?”

  She was interrupted by the crunching of wheels on the driveway outside.

  “Oh, my God!” gasped Aunt May. “He’s here already!”

  She tore aside the blowing white curtains. They all looked down from Hayley’s window at a taxi drawing up by the front door and at Mercer and Tollie going out to meet it, followed by Aunt Alice, Aunt Geta and Aunt Celia. Somehow they all managed to look like important people coming to meet a visiting president. Mercer actually bowed as the taxi door slammed open and Uncle Jolyon climbed out. Uncle Jolyon’s blue eyes glared and, among his white beard, his mouth was almost a snarl. Hayley had never seen anyone look so thunderously angry. She backed away as Aunt May gently let the curtain fall back across the window.

  “I’ll go down and hold him up as long as I can,” Aunt May said. “Do your best, Harmony.” Necklaces clashing, hair flying, she ran out of the room.

  Hayley listened to Aunt May’s slippers thudding away down the stairs and wondered what they could do. At the very least, Uncle Jolyon was going to send her back to Grandma. But now she knew some of the things Uncle Jolyon had done and could do, she was quite sure she was going to be punished in a worse way than that.

  “It’s too late to get to the back door,” Troy said. “He’ll see us coming downstairs.”

  Chapter Ten

  “I know what,” Harmony said. “We need a science fiction strand. Find me one, Troy, quickly.”

  “The one I came back on just now,” Troy said. “It was all futuristic stuff. Some of it’s out on the upstairs landing.”

  Harmony said, “Right!” and seized Hayley’s hand. Troy heaved up the duffel bag and they all three scurried out of the room and up the next flight of stairs. There at the top, almost exactly where the waterfall had started the night Hayley had arrived, stood a tall glass thing like a telephone box – or, even more, like a shower stall. Harmony pulled open its door and helped the other two to cram themselves and their luggage inside with her.

  “A transportation booth?” Troy said. “Clever!”

  “More than that,” Harmony said, pressing away at a set of buttons beside the glass door. “It’s a time booth too. I hope neither of you mind missing two days. We’re going to catch the plane we were going to catch anyway and I hope we can do it before Uncle Jolyon realises. I’m hoping he doesn’t know how good I am with the mythosphere and spends the next two days hunting for us. There!” Harmony said, pressing the large green button marked ENTER.

  Without any feeling of change or movement, the view outside the glass door became the busy airport concourse that Hayley remembered from when she came to Ireland with Cousin Mercer. Troy slammed the door open and they ran. From then on it was all running, to the check-in, then up to Security and through the X-ray machine, on into the departure lounges and from there a race to the gates. As Harmony explained, waving their boarding passes as they pelted to where a loudspeaker was telling them that the flight to Edinburgh was now boarding, she had brought them here at the last minute to give Uncle Jolyon the smallest possible chance of finding them.

  “And let’s hope he’s not waiting at the gate,” she panted.

  Hayley was terrified. Though she didn’t at all understand why, it was clear to her that she was the one Uncle Jolyon wanted to catch. She was so frightened that she somehow put on comet speed and arrived at the desk in front of the gate long before the other two.

  “They’re coming! They’re just coming!” she told the man behind the desk. Then she was forced to wait, hopping from one leg to the other and anxiously scanning the little rows of seats and the wine shop opposite, in case Uncle Jolyon came storming along to get her. She was not happy until Harmony and Troy arrived and they were all allowed to hurry through a gangway and on to the plane itself. Then she did not dare move from the doorway until she had looked along the length of the plane and made sure that Uncle Jolyon was not sitting in one of the seats, waiting.

  An embittered-looking stewardess hurried them along to the front, where there were two pairs of seats facing one another. Harmony and Troy sat together with their backs to the pilot’s cabin. Hayley sat opposite them, next to the empty seat, beside the tiny window. While the plane thrummed and hummed and started slowly rumbling out towards the runway, Hayley kept looking at that empty seat, expecting any moment to see Uncle Jolyon sitting in it. While the pilot spoke to them – something about going north to avoid a thunderstorm over the Irish Sea – Hayley could hardly listen.

  Then, to Hayley’s terror, the plane stopped, waltzing in place somewhere out in the middle of the airport. The stewardess came and stood by their seats and told everyone how to use the oxygen and the life jackets. Oh, go, go, go! Hayley thought, clenching her hands so that her nails dug in. She craned backwards out of the tiny window, expecting any second to see a taxi with Uncle Jolyon in it racing after the plane. She was still craning when the plane started to move again, rushing along the widest strip of concrete. It took her quite by surprise when she found she was looking down at the concrete and down at trees and tiny fields, and realised they were in the air.

  “So far so good,” Harmony said, unbuckling her safety belt.

  The stewardess came round and contemptuously gave them each a cup of orange juice and a bun.

  “I wish I could have wine,” Troy said, looking at the bottles on the stewardess’s trolley.

  “Don’t provoke her,” Harmony said. “She’ll say we’re all too young.”

  Troy bit into his bun, grumbling, “I’m a thousand times older than she is.”

  “Hush,” Harmony said. “Are you all right, Hayley?”

  “Scared,” said Hayley. She did not feel like eating her bun. “Why is Uncle Jolyon so angry about me?”

  “Because you were supposed to stay with our grandparents,” Harmony said.

  “For ever, I think,” Troy said. “Can I have your bun if you don’t want it?”

  Hayley handed it to him. “Why?” she asked. “Really for ever?”

  Harmony nodded, with her smooth pretty face screwed up in distaste. “A long time ago,” she said, “thousands of years ago, in fact, around the time your parents decided to get married, Uncle Jolyon went to a seer called the Pythoness and asked what would happen if they did get married. He disapproved, you see, because your father was a mortal man—”

  “Just as if he wasn’t having love affairs with mortal women all the time!” Troy said, tearing the wrapper off the bun as if he were skinning it alive. “Old hypocrite! He has love affairs all over the place, mortals, immortals, you name them! He’s my father, you know, and Harmony’s, and the father of all the cousins – old goat!”

  “Yes, well,” said Harmony. “Let me tell her the story. The Pythoness said that if Merope – your mother – ever married a mortal man, their offspring would strip Jolyon of his power. Jolyon was horrified and went storming back to stop the wedding. But he was too late. Your parents had been married while he was away seeing the Pythoness and gone to Cyprus for their honeymoon. Jolyon couldn’t get at them there—”

  “Cyprus belongs to Aunt Venus,” Troy put in, munching.

  “So he had to wait until they came home to Greece,” Harmony said. “And while he waited, he made plans. He knew that nine-tenths of his power came from the mythosphere, but he also knew that
our power comes from the mythosphere too, and he knew that we were all going to be on Merope’s side, all Merope’s sisters and their children and our grandfather, Atlas. Between us, we have almost as much power as Jolyon does. So the first thing he did was to order all of us to leave the mythosphere and live the way we do now, as ordinary people, and we obeyed him, because we didn’t understand what he was after—”

  “Jupiter, bringer of joy!” Troy said bitterly. “We’ve been pinned down like this for more than two thousand years now. And all because he was afraid of a baby!” He crunched the bun paper up savagely.

  “Well, he was head god in those days,” Harmony said. She sighed. “Nowadays, his power is in money as much as in the mythosphere. Grandpa has to hold up the world economy for him and Jolyon makes sure we’re all in debt to him.”

  “But what about me?” Hayley demanded.

  “The moment your parents came home with you,” Harmony said, “he took you and planted you on your grandparents, with orders that you were not to grow up and not to know anything about your family. Grandma always does what Jolyon says – it’s part of her strict outlook. And at the same time, he shoved Merope and your father off into the mythosphere and told everyone they were being punished for disobedience.”

  “Though, in actual fact,” Troy said, “he never did forbid them to marry – or not that we ever heard.”

  Hayley thought, in a stunned way, about all her time living under Grandma’s strict discipline. It had seemed like years and years and years. And this was not surprising, since it had been years and years. And she had thought it was just life. “I met my dad in the mythosphere,” she said. “Being punished. He looked so tired, Harmony. I wanted to rescue him, but he said only my mum could do that. He thinks she’s in a women’s strand, somewhere wild.”

  “Then I think we should do our best to find her,” Harmony said. “We could hardly be in much more trouble now Tollie and Mercer have told Uncle Jolyon about the game. Blast Tollie!”