Читать книгу Arrabella Candellarbra - A.K. Wrox - Страница 12

Arrabella, Langley, Gary and Jim paused before the door at the far end of the gilded golden bridge. Arrabella turned to Lord Langley and with a quirk of one blonde eyebrow, asked the question silently. He shrugged. She turned to Gary with a taut smile, hoping he would have the answer to the question they were all thinking but didn't have the joobaberries to say out loud: What in the name of the Sewerswamp Hens were they supposed to do now?

Gary cleared his throat. 'I believe, Miss Arrabella, that you may have to knock.'

Cautiously, Arrabella untangled her fingers from Lord Langley's faithful, if slimy, grip and stretched her fingers to allow a little blood flow.

With three smart raps, she knocked at the crystalline door that stretched at least thirty feet above them.

Nothing.

She rapped again, this time with more urgency and while murmuring under her breath, 'Oh for Harryhighpants sake, let us in will you?' With that, the gigantic door swung slowly open and the four adventurers tentatively wandered in.

Jim was the first to break their communal awe-inspired silence. 'Ooh, this place is fab-u-lous! My great-great-great-second uncle Freddy used to go on and on about this place. Not that he'd ever seen it, of course, but he liked us young ones to think he had. He heard about it from his own great-great-aunt thrice removed. Apparently, she knew someone who knew someone... but oh my goodness, and I know I'm babbling, we little ones never took any notice. I wish we had - oh wow.' The Little Prince went on... and on.

The roof of Arrabella's mouth was an arid desert; the moisture sucked to the soles of her perspiring feet, where her toes were now slipping in their dainty white slippers.

The four had entered a long, deserted corridor; there was no person, no creature, not even a note to guide their way. This time Arrabella wondered if there were any living beings at all within the Towers, or if they'd all taken off for a night at a tavern, waiting for the Towers to destroy the unworthy? Or maybe the Towers themselves were living, breathing entities, with all-seeing eyes and a huge door for a mouth. Were they about to be devoured?

Some of her questions would soon be answered; in the meantime they passed through an archway at the end of the passage and into a marvellous ballroom. And, once again, it was an utterly fabulistic thing to lay eyes on and like nothing she'd ever imagined.

The opulence of the golden bridge with its grape-like pearls was nothing compared to this amazing room. Every colour of every rainbow, plus ones that had not even been thought of yet, glittered and glamoured before their eyes. Ropes of entwined rose, white and yellow gold supported chandeliers of empyreal diamonds. Thousands of luminous beams radiated from hundreds of the mammoth light fixtures. The fingers of lamplight bounced around the grand cathedral-shaped room, illuminating the lustre of the mosaics that adorned every one of the enormous columns supporting the sky-high ceiling.

Arrabella stared in wonder at the gemstones. She'd seen rubies and diamonds before but these stones were beyond her imagining. She was certain they existed nowhere but within these Towers, not even in the books that she'd studied so carefully.

Gary squinted to better see the colours and textures and dappled, dotted and speckled markings. 'I do believe these to be phentacite, asteria, posterior, porphyry and sardonyx.'

His eyes widened again and he pointed to a stripy, spotty, blotchy, pink-and-red zig-zagged stone. 'And these could only be absurdinite; the only ones left in existence, if I'm not mistaken. The Breakfast Peoples over-mined them centuries ago, for medicinal use and for porridge.'

'Perhaps these are what we seek. Could these contain the powers?' Arrabella whispered, aware that every sound she made echoed like a porpoise in heat in this cavernous ballroom.

'Ooh, you mean they're powerful sparklies? Sparklies are always good; they're just so, so shiny. But powerful sparklies, ooh I want some,' squealed Jim in delight, clapping his hands and clicking his little green heels together to punctuate the point. He danced and skipped toward an intricately-ornate piece of carved lapis lazuli, adorned with star-cut rubelites, amazonites and xenalites.

'Especially this one; I can see this around my neck. It'd bring out the green so well, don't you think?' His fingertips had barely brushed the precious stone when his body was flung backward across the ballroom as currents of electricity zapped and zinged through his body, making his hair stand on end like a back-flipping kelp-cupie.

'The magics of the Towers are more powerful that we'd imagined,' said Gary, ever-wisely. 'All that lies within them are protected by the currents and sultanas of magic; I think it wise that we do not touch anything else.'

'Are you hurt, Prince Jim?' asked Langley. He stood above the fried fairy with his hand outstretched to assist him to his feet, while Jim lay beneath him, flat on the golden floor, his head resting on a pillow of sardonyx sunflowers.

'Hmm, not when I'm getting an eyeful like that,' Jim answered, as he gazed up the Lord's muscular and somewhat oily legs to the treasure-trove that lay beneath the scanty loincloth.

The strapping Lord was spared from reply by a booming yet gravelly Voice that crackled through the air. It emanated from every crevice, every orifice, every transcrystalline fracture in the giant ballroom, yet there seemed to be no direct source or speakers.

'You are all requested to begin a quest at my bequest!' the voice thundered, before breaking into a coughing fit that rattled the great chandeliers and nearly deafened them all. The clearing of its throat also caused the floor to rise in a wave, wobble a bit, and dip back down. Then an altogether new voice filled the space, startling them all in a completely different way.

The peppermint-candy, sickly sweet, mouse-type-squeak of a Voice continued. 'In order to obtain the powers of the sun and the moons, of life and death, of Mother Nature, Father Time and Aunt In-Between, to be in command of all that lives and has lived, you must first prove yourselves worthy.'

Arrabella and Langley exchanged concerned glances, for they had thought their hearts had already proven them worthy. Langley reached for Arrabella's hand once more, needing her touch for reassurance. The only touch he received, however, was that of the still floor-bound prince who grasped Langley's thumb and attached himself to the Lord's muscular leg with a vice-like grip that the dandy little fairy didn't appear capable of.

Meanwhile the high-pitched Voice was still talking. 'You will embark on a quest that will take you to many lands, where you will endure many trials. Only those pure of heart, bright of mind, clear of conscience, fleet of foot, strong of will and nimble of fingers will succeed.'

'Surely this aural torture is a trial in itself,' Arrabella muttered, as they all winced, wishing they'd brought some blissbombs to stuff in their ears, and silently agreed that enduring this Voice should make them worthy of the prize.

'You will find that the entwining of your fates was no mere accident. In order for one of you to be successful, you must all be successful. You must discover what each of you needs most in this world in order to feel complete. Only when you have avenged your losses, found that which has been lost or stolen from you, uncovered truths about your true identities, your true loves and true orientation will the final tasks become clear. Only then may you return here to claim your destinies.'

Arrabella looked at Langley, Langley looked at Jim who still clung to his leg, Jim looked at Gary and Gary looked at Arrabella. Their heads snapped back and forth, eyes bulging, mouths open like Lavatory Lizards seeking a meal of Merlot Munchables.

'What do we do now? How do we begin? Where do we go from here?' Arrabella asked the room at last.

'The power to leave and begin your quest lies with you, fair maiden, seeker of the source, kin to the Cornflaking Queen and possible future ruler of all realms. Simply click your heels together three times and say my name,' said the Voice.

'Um, what is your name?' Arrabella asked meekly, sure that she probably should already know it. Maybe she did. Did she? Was it Ida, Germaine, Alfonze?

Arrabella shrugged - quite eloquently.

'In your heart of hearts, Arrabella Candellarbra, you know my name,' said the Voice.

Erg, Argh, Arrabella thought, mostly because she was speechless. She turned to Lord Langley, her mouth agape. All he could do was shrug his remarkably shiny shoulders and look dumbfounded. He turned to the new growth beside him but even the Fairy Prince Jim, with all his magical abilities, could not dredge an answer from his ancestral stories. With a leaden heart, he too shrugged his shoulders.

The three turned to the wise Wizard Gary who said, 'Don't look at me, I don't know.' In a flash he came to his serious-senses, whereon his beardly icicles and stalactites mirrored the sadness his eyes displayed. 'Methinks our fates rest on your shoulders, fair Arrabella. It seems only you know the name of the Voice, and by naming the name you will lead us to our destinies. You alone are obviously the name-knower.'

Arrabella twisted her hands and tapped her sweaty shoes. She wiped at her tired eyes and willed away the desire to pee. This was it, the beginning of their quest. With one simple name she could begin it all in a moment; or end it all in a flash.

'Waiting, waiting,' the Voice pleaded.

'Well, give me a second,' Arrabella snapped, ever-so-sweetly. 'It's not that easy recalling every name I've ever known. Can you give me a clue?'

'My name is whatever you want it to be. You must name me. Give me a name and save me from the Nothingness. Name me, and your quest can begin.'

Oh, no pressure, Arrabella thought.

Arrabella searched her sizable memory banks for the Worthy Names taught her by the Reginas in her teachings; for good names that had Meaning in the magical communities; or Cute Names or Brave Names. But there was nothing in her memory - not even in the corner where she kept her naming lists - about the naming of a really important but faceless and squeaky-voiced Tower; or three.

Rumpelstiltskin? No, they already roamed the lands of Midas-straw. Falcor? No, she'd have no luck with that one.

While she searched her heart of hearts for the name, her mind began to play a melody - a soft echoing tune, like an overwound jack-in-a-box, rose from the crevices deep inside her subconscious.

So, despite the important task at hand, Arrabella continued to hum: 'Mmmm, mmm, oola la lala... buttercup.'

'Buttercup, baby!' she cried. 'That's your name - Buttercup!'

Arrabella's companions once again resumed their head-snapping routine, as they glanced from one to the other and back again. Surely she could not be serious. What sort of a name was Buttercup?

They stared nervously at their feet, not daring to look at the walls lest their eyeballs melt with the rage that the Tower-Voice would surely show at being insulted with such a name.

Arrabella was serious, however, and even had that faraway look of one who is enraptured by the sight or the sound or the smell of a divine devilation.

She clicked her heels together once, and said, 'Buttercup.' Then she clicked them twice, and clicked them thrice, each time calling out the ridiculous name - 'Buttercup! Buttercup!'

Arrabella fell to the floor, tears of joy cascading freely down her beautiful face.

The four watched - one in raptured glory, the other three in tortured terror - as the patterns in the mosaics began to meld into a giant schwoozh of technicolour, into a swirl of psychedelic wooziness, into a flurry of kaleidoscopic magnificence.

And then the room began to spin; or maybe they began to spin - no one was really sure. Either which way, their stomachs heaved and their limbs flailed.

Langley bellowed, more like a beast than a man, but finally lost the green appendage on his leg as Jim spun in a circle around him like the coil of a cremebriole cobra. Gary and Arrabella slipped and slid like a serpentine slip-and-slide that had lost all sense of direction.

But were they really spinning or was this some kind of test or torture; a decline into madness; or the suck and pull to their new places in the Great Abyss?

Faster and faster they span. The room with all its sparkly, gemmy splendour became a blur, the crystalline Towers themselves faded into an obscure transparent haze like gladwrap on a toilet seat, and all the while that sickly sweet, higher-than-high-pitched Voice was giggling.

It giggled, then laughed and finally guffawed with the delight of a child in a choo-choo bar. 'Buttercup, Buttercup, ooh, la lalalala, Buttercup!' it sang.

Finally, with a thud and a bump and an otherworldly kathump, the spinning ceased and our hapless heroes collided head-on and face-first with the ground. Not the once-mosaiced floor of the Tri-Towers ballroom, but the grass of a lush meadow, green and gold with daisies and dandelions and - oh yes! - buttercups.

Arrabella, feeling a slight draft across her bountiful bosom, righted herself and adjusted her bodice. Lord Langley, who must have felt a similar draft, righted his loincloth to cover whatever secrets lay beneath it; much to the dismay of both Arrabella and the Fairy Prince.

Gary rose with a creak and a crackle, several broken once-beardly stalactites remaining on the grassy carpet, which froze and shivered wildly.

Arrabella, assured that everyone had suffered no more harm than a moment of immodesty, looked about her, seeking the source of the sickly sweet scent that penetrated her nostrils in much the same way that the Tower's Voice had penetrated her ears. She looked at Langley, curious about what he might penetrate to such profound effect.

It took but a moment to realise that it was the buttercups that surrounded them, in particular the rather large, teacup-sized one that Arrabella had landed next to, that was wafting the scent straight up her nose.

Arrabella peeked over the edge and saw that within the buttercup's cup swirled a sticky liquid that looked like nougat-nectar or hedonist-honey.

Arrabella picked the cup from its stem and raised it towards her lips. She hesitated and put it down; lifted it up again and… sniffed. Oh my!

Should she drink from the cup? Was this part of the test or was it mere coincidence that she was presented with the challenge of whether to drink a drink from a flower with the very same name she'd just given the Towers?

Wait. The Reginas had taught her that according to Gibbs Law - Rule Number One - there was no such thing as a coincidence.

But, even so, was this non-coincidence a good thing?

Would drinking from the buttercup's cup move them forward in their quest to find their quests? Or was it, like the oft-talked-about podiatrist's poison, a punishment for petulance?

Arrabella searched her heart once more, deep down into the bloody, meaty and veiny parts of the thumping muscle. She delved further and further inside her instinctual bones. She knew to trust those deep-down fleshy instincts, a lesson the Reginas had entrenched into her since she was but a babe. The Gypsy blood coursing through those veiny bits allowed Arrabella's true nature sing to her, and it sang a singing-sonnet for her spirit - so that all at once she knew the answer, just as she had all along.

'Yes! Yes!' cried Arrabella, lost in the spell being spun by the spirit sonnet.

'YES!' she writhed across to Langley. As she grasped his thigh with one hand - just because she could - the other lifted the buttercup cup to her trembling lips. She upturned the flower and the sickly-sweet liquid slid onto her tongue and down her throat, warm and fuzzy and all kinds of tickly in just the right spots.

'Yes! Oh yes! Ohhh, yesss!' Arrabella's growl - which, in another time and place would have no doubt been embarrassing - swept through her three companions like a gushing downward wind from a salami-eating giant's flatulence.

Lord Langley clung to his love, his hands desperate to wander inappropriately; Gary felt the urge to pucker his mouth; and even Jim was a little excited - their quest, momentarily forgotten - as the vision of the writhing maiden was imprinted on their minds forever.

'I'll have whatever she's having!' said Prince Jim to the Wizard Gary, who passed him an identical buttercup from the lawn of golden blooms. In the wink of a Bell-Frog's eye, he too was twisting and turning amongst the urochrome buds; even if it was in an altogether different manner.

Soon Gary himself could not resist and joined in the fun, confident in Arrabella's training and instincts; or at least indulging in wishful thinking. He too upended the cup of luscious lager and swallowed it in one delicious gulp.

Langley shrugged and resisted bravely, until he realised he was scared to be the straight-laced party pooper, soon he too was squirming like a slippery eel playing in golden powder paint.

It was Arrabella who first noticed the daisies and dandelions and buttercups growing at an alarming rate. Instead of a soft cushioning under her bruised buttocks, the grasses and foliage actually pushed her out of the way as they began to grow around her, higher and higher; the perfectly bright spring sunlight now dappling through the ever-enlargening leaves. The fine stems of the daisies and dandelions were soon as thick as Lord Langley's... bicep; and the ripening buttercup buds threatened to explode and shower them with pollen.

Faster and faster, bigger and bigger, thicker and thicker, harder and harder this obviously-enchanted forest grew, until Arrabella realised she could barely make out the shadows of her trusted companions any longer.

'My Lord! My wisest of the wise, wise wizards! My little Fairy Prince! Come to me, come, come now. You are under a wicked enchantment! Hurry, we are stronger as one; come NOW!' she cried as though her life depended on it.

Together and apart the four fought their way through the jiggling giant jungle until they could at last clasp each other's hands. Gradually, the heaving of the cadium blooms subsided, and the heroes took in their new surroundings. The peaceful tranquillity of the meadow was gone, replaced by a different kind of quiet. They were now in a woodland; again, and always, like none they had ever seen before.

Well, except Jim. Being a prince of the Fey people, he was right at home among the thrusting wood of the trees. And to prove it he clapped his hands and did that strange little jig that he did so often. In fact Arrabella was beginning to wonder if it was actually a tic.

'Ooh, I know where we are! This is the Exotically Expansive Extraordinary Enchanted Forest!'

'The Exotically Expansive Extraordinary Enchanted Forest?' chimed the other three travellers in unison.

'Yes, the E.E.E.E.F. - or eeeef if you're a local - is well known to all who reside in and around and anywhere near the forests and lakes and harrypotted snapes of this land; and the adjoining ones. It's the most magical of all the forests.'

'What's so magical about it?' asked Langley, looking rather unimpressed. 'I mean it's just like any other...'

His voice petered off as he stopped, mid-sentence, mouth agape with the unsaid words still dangling all spittle-like from his lips. He stared somewhere past Gary's frosty shoulder. Jim and Arrabella directed their gaze beyond Gary too. Gary checked his shoulder first, then realised that wasn't the source of everyone's consternation; then he too turned to see what was.

And there - no, over there - weaving and dodging, scurrying and skittling, around and between and through the trunks of the dandelion trees was a nose-twitching, limb-quivering, fluffy, white, very worried, very large, and singing Rat!

'The time. No time. For any silly rhymes.

I'm late, I tell you, late, late, late.

To ring the bell-tower's chimes.'

It had to be said that he sung rather well for a Rat.

Arrabella called after him, seemingly unaware that rats couldn't and shouldn't and usually wouldn't talk. 'My friend, why do you hurry so? What bell tower?'

'No time to talk, no time to walk, I'm late, I'm late, I'm... LATE!' he squeaked, sounding and seeming altogether more Rat-like now except, of course, for the insistent wringing of his little white paws that cupped a timepiece he oughtn't be able to read.

The Rat scurried over the Padalecki Prune bush and dashed towards the thick trunk of the Jensonian Tree.

Langley rushed forth to save the Rat from the impending crash that was almost certain to occur as the oversized rodent ran full speed at the tree. But he was too late. Langley watched in frozen horror as the Rat ran, without slowing one iota, straight at and then into the tree.

But… instead of a crash, or even a bang or a thump, there was a little snap and a creak and the flustered Rat disappeared by way of a door, barely visible in the base of the tree's trunk.

'Wait,' called Jim, to the gust of air that was all that remained as evidence that the Rat had ever rushed. 'He's gone. And we didn't ask him. Wonder if there are more giant talking rats like him in these parts.'

'Young Prince, you have much to learn,' Gary said. 'For all your fairy knowledge and magical oomph, you simply do not have the wisdom to recognise a simple, everyday, common or garden-fork variety Rat when you see one.'

'What do you mean?' squawked Jim, so flustered and confused and agitated that his happy little dance was now more of a busting-for-a-wee hop, 'But you saw it. He was huge. He towered over all of us. Even our hulking great Lord over there,' he said, pointing at Langley.

Arrabella tried to resist the urge to look at Langley but failed; the lure of the lusciously rippling and well-oiled muscles was just too great. Oh, what she wouldn't give to find out just how great and how hulking he really was.

The others continued to talk and to argue but Arrabella barely heard them. After all who wanted to think about a Rat, no matter how unusually sized the rodent was, with Langley in such close proximity. It was all she could do not to throw herself at his feet and attach herself, Prince Jim-style, to his rippling legs.

'A-hem,' Jim cleared his throat loudly. His eyes had turned a luminescent traffic-light green as he watched Arrabella eyeing Langley - and Langley eying her back. 'Would it be too much trouble for you to join us? Or would you two rather have your own private quest in the Quiver bushes over there?'

Arrabella thought about it. Langley clearly did too, as he cast his glance around for a bush to serve his purposes.

'Oh for the love of Sundays on a Monday when it should really be Tuesday,' interrupted Gary. 'Pay attention everyone. As I was saying, I don't believe the fluffy white Rat was large; any more than the trees and plants and flowers suddenly grew tall around our heads. But, I have heard tell of a certain kind of nectar that will actually shrink a person - or a fairy. I believe that very nectar must have been within the buttercup cup from which you drank, my lady.'

'But, but… I don't want to be small forever,' cried Arrabella. 'How can I possibly be the holder of all the powers in all of the lands if I could be defeated by a Froggystomp?'

'We must go on regardless,' said Gary, full of wisdom as ever. 'Only a certain kind of fungus can cure us and it certainly won't be found near here. It grows only in the wilds of the Wackydoo Wanges.'

'But my magic will be diminished to the mere flicker of a match. We may as well just quit now.'

Prince Jim glowered at Arrabella, still not completely forgiving her for putting dibs on the luscious Lord's affections. That thought made him look at Langley and lust overtook him once more. 'Well all I can say, my Lord, is I'd love to see if all of you has diminished in size.'

Gary gave Jim a piercing stare. 'Fair Prince, right now you are being neither fair nor princely. Must you continue with your comments and your overtures, all 1812 of them, toward our Lord when it is clear his devotion lays elsewhere?'

Jim pouted and stamped his foot and hopped and scowled and finally kicked at the tree which, while childish in the extreme, did serve to remind them all of the Rat and, more importantly, the door.

'We must not give up, and we must not quarrel amongst ourselves,' Gary pronounced. 'Our destinies are forever united now; or at least until we fulfil those destinies.'

The wizard stretched his arms out wide, to encompass them all in a big baloo-hug. 'And I believe our destiny begins with that door!'