Verdigris Deep Read online

  ‘How many words?’ asked Ryan.

  Chelle held up one finger, then tugged her ear lobe to mime ‘sounds like’. Then she hesitated and made a vague clutching gesture at the air.

  ‘You’re rubbish at charades, Chelle, don’t even bother. Write it down. Got a pen, Ryan? C’mon, we’ll go find one.’

  When they pushed open the door of the tea shop it struck a trail of wind chimes which hung so low that Josh had to duck beneath them.

  ‘Here.’ Josh put some money in Ryan’s hand. ‘Go get us three milkshakes and a pen – the guy at the till is bound to have one – and I’ll look after the Amazing Mouth here.’

  All the tables in the tea shop had plastic-coated tablecloths patterned in the same bright patchwork colours as the curtains. Behind the counter stood a thin young man with a floppy, blond fringe and shaky hands.

  ‘Three milkshakes . . . take a seat while I make them.’

  Ryan borrowed a spare pen from a pot by the till and returned to the table.

  Fortunately, no one seemed to have noticed Chelle’s strange appearance. A toddler a few tables away was trying to sing along to the radio and was attracting far more attention, and annoyance, from the rest of the customers.

  But as Ryan pushed a biro and napkin towards Chelle, her eyes were mad with surprise and excitement. She pointed towards the man at the till.

  ‘What?’

  She snatched up a teaspoon and waved it triumphantly in her friends’ faces, then pointed across at the songful toddler. They stared at the infant in bewilderment, and then realization dawned. The little boy had a teaspoon gripped in his fist, and was using it to beat time on the coffee pot in a loud and infuriating way.

  ‘That’s what you were talking about before, wasn’t it?’ whispered Ryan.

  Chelle scribbled a few words and pushed the napkin towards him. It read, ‘Man behind the counter – his thoughts.’

  ‘You’re . . . speaking his thoughts?’

  Chelle bounced ecstatically and touched herself on the nose. Charades language: right on the nose.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here and talk about this,’ Josh said under his breath. ‘Looks like you’re right, Ryan – the well-thing’s changing all of us in different ways. Now we just need to work out why she needs Chelle to be able to read minds.’

  On Ryan’s suggestion they left what they hoped was a generous tip even though they hadn’t actually had their drinks. They waited until they were out of earshot of the tea shop before pulling the sodden wad from Chelle’s mouth.

  ‘. . . one decent tip of the day anyway,’ she began, sounding somewhat mollified. ‘Stuff this, though, that sounds like Sarah coming in at the back. I’m due a fag break . . .’

  Ryan glanced over his shoulder and saw the man come out of the tea shop behind them and pull a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his apron pocket. Then he sauntered over towards the front of the neighbouring pub and stood gazing around him while the breeze dragged a streamer of smoke from his cigarette.

  ‘. . . Suzuki toys over there . . .’ murmured Chelle quietly. For the first time her borrowed tone of voice sounded almost happy.

  Josh stopped dead.

  ‘Oh, I’m a genius,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’ Ryan was still trying to lead Chelle away.

  ‘Look how many motorbike stands there are out there,’ Josh whispered. ‘The local bikers must come to that pub all the time.’

  ‘. . . Triumph,’ murmured Chelle softly. ‘Thought I recognized the sound of the engine. And look at that, 1000 cc, what a beast. Honda 500, needs new tyres by the look of it . . .’

  ‘And I bet he comes out here every fag break he gets. I know I would.’ Josh grinned. ‘You see what that is over there? Behind the yellow Kawasaki? C’mon, you can’t miss it. What was it that the well-thing was trying to say again?’

  ‘. . . Harley-Davidson . . .’ whispered Chelle in tones of love.

  7

  A Dream in Steel

  For about ten seconds all three of them felt extremely pleased with themselves. Then the feeling faded.

  ‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Josh, answering the unspoken question, ‘but I’m going to find out. You two stay here and listen to his thoughts.’ Before Ryan could say anything, Josh was striding away with his hands in his pockets towards the man from the tea shop. The man was busy brushing cigarette ash from his limp orange T-shirt and did not see Josh until he was quite close.

  ‘. . . that’s one of those kids who were in earlier.’ Chelle’s borrowed voice sounded anxious and uncomfortable. ‘Hope he hasn’t come to beg a fag, I always feel so feeble saying no . . . got the same sort of face as Donny Sparks back at school, always made me buy cigarettes for him because I was taller . . .’ Tea-shop Man was staring determinedly at the end of his cigarette and looking nervous. Now Ryan could imagine him as a loose, gangly teenager being bullied into a shop by a smaller boy. It made Ryan feel sorry for him and rather guilty, as if he had been reading someone’s private diary.

  Josh pushed his sunglasses up on to his forehead, grinned and said something to Tea-shop Man. Chelle’s monologue paused and then resumed.

  ‘What does he mean, which bike is mine? Does he think I look like a biker?’ The borrowed voice sounded surprised now, but pleased. ‘So that’s it, lucky kid. Having an older brother with a Harley . . . Seems OK . . . Perhaps his brother would let . . .’

  ‘I’ll get a pen ready in case he says something useful,’ sighed Ryan.

  ‘. . . good to talk to someone who actually cares about . . . intelligent questions . . . mmmphwpphh . . .’

  Ryan looked up from his scribbling to realize that Chelle has pushed the leaflets back into her mouth. A female traffic warden was hovering nearby wearing an expression of concern. Wishing that all traffic wardens were as cold and uncaring as they were supposed to be, Ryan took Chelle firmly by the sleeve and led her further down the street so that they could huddle at the window of an antique shop.

  ‘. . . if I had to choose a Harley-Davidson, it’d have to be a Road King Classic,’ Chelle continued in hushed, happy tones, as they pretended interest in pearl-handled cutlery and pink-faced porcelain milkmaids. ‘Though the Ultra . . . what does it matter, I’ll never get one. It’s a dream. That’s the thing about a Harley, it’s a dream in steel. If you’re sitting on a Harley, the horizons must look eager, as if they were itching to swoop towards you . . . I’d give just about anything just to feel . . .’

  After glancing up and down the street, Ryan started jotting Chelle’s comments on a napkin.

  ‘. . . I could tell this kid about that competition in the latest issue of Silverwing,’ Chelle went on, ‘the one with the Ultra as first prize . . . not that I’ll be entering. Even if I won, Mum would never let me keep a bike, let alone a beast like a Harley . . .’

  In the shop window several prints of Victorian posters were spread out in a fan shape. Ryan glanced at the uppermost poster for a moment, and as he did so he seemed to feel something click into place in his brain.

  It was a print of an old drawing, at the centre of which a man in ragged, old-fashioned clothes stood bent backwards in dismay. He was lifting a small round something out of his tankard, and staring at it aghast. Beside him a puff-chested, moustached soldier was pointing with jeering triumph at the object in the old man’s hand.

  The caption’s crumbly woodblock letters read: ‘Slipping Him the King’s Shilling: Liberty Lost for the Price of a Pint Pot’. The man had been tricked into picking up a tankard with the King’s Shilling hidden in the bottom of it. Now he’d be dragged away to fight . . . Ryan remained motionless, as if moving too suddenly would dislodge his thoughts from their new positions.

  ‘. . . well, that’s the last of the cigarette,’ Chelle said reluctantly. ‘I suppose I’d better get back to the till . . . Hang on though, that must be the kid’s brother coming out of the pub there . . .’

  Ryan turned sharply. Four men in bulky leathers had emerg
ed from the pub and were approaching the motorbikes. One of them straddled the red and black Harley and started putting on his helmet. Oh no, Josh, thought Ryan, you told him your brother owned that bike, didn’t you?

  Josh pushed his sunglasses down in front of his eyes, possibly to hide his expression. He gave a long upwards stretch with his arms, then brought his hands down to clasp them behind his head. The gesture always made him appear relaxed and usually meant that he was thinking fast. Then he said something with a grin, turned and sauntered off in the direction of the bikers.

  The biker on the Harley was fastening his gloves as Josh drew close. For a few minutes they stood talking, then the Harley man slowly swung his leg back over the machine to stand beside it and heaved it on to its stand again. Then he stood back with a hand on the bodywork to steady the bike as Josh climbed on to it, getting into the high seat with some difficulty. Josh waved at Tea-shop Man, who still watched from a distance. He waved to Josh and walked back in through the door of the tea shop.

  ‘. . . idiot idiot idiot I’m such an idiot . . .’ muttered Chelle under her breath. ‘I’d only look like an idiot if I went to talk to them what do I know about bikes except what I read I’ve never even ridden one . . .’

  Ryan stared back at Josh in mounting disbelief. In a few short minutes, Josh seemed to have become the bikers’ mascot. They dropped a crash helmet on to his head, laughing when it slid down past his chin and wobbled around. At last Josh climbed off the Harley and strolled back towards Ryan and Chelle. One of the bikers started up his bike, and the engine gave off a tearing rak-ak-ak-ak as if the air was being beaten flat by rapid hammers. Another engine lifted its voice, and another, and another, and then four motorbikes curved carefully down to join the main road, where they became roaring coloured streaks and vanished.

  ‘Did you get all his thoughts?’ asked Josh when he rejoined the pair on the pavement.

  ‘Most of them,’ answered Ryan.

  ‘. . . we’re all out of mustard on this table I’ll swear everyone goes away with sachets in their pockets just to make more work for me . . .’ added Chelle conversationally.

  Josh raised his eyes to heaven.

  ‘Let’s go. We need to find somewhere we can talk properly. Where all of us can talk properly,’ he added meaningfully.

  A couple of streets from the tea shop, Chelle abruptly ‘lost reception’. One moment she was voicing Tea-shop Man’s annoyance with a fly at the window, the next she was in control of her own mouth again, at least in so far as she ever was. Twenty minutes after this all three of them were sprawled in one of the parks, playing Jenga with cooling chips.

  ‘You told him you were there with your brother and he owned the Harley, didn’t you?’ Ryan was lying on his stomach on the grass and wheedling a chip from the unconvincing Jenga tower. He usually won through a maddening patience that the others yearned to disqualify.

  ‘Course. Had to get him talking about it, see if he gave away anything useful.’ Josh grinned. ‘Might even be true. We don’t know, do we? I might have a brother with a Harley-Davidson.’ Ryan was never sure why Josh always grinned when he made sidelong references to his own adoption. Probably just Josh wanting to make people uncomfortable, as usual.

  ‘And he let you sit on it,’ breathed Chelle, still impressed.

  ‘Yeah.’ Josh’s grin grew broader.

  ‘Poor Tea-shop Man, he was so jealous,’ Chelle said. ‘His thoughts felt all different when he was thinking about the Harley-Davidson, all strokey instead of pointy . . .’

  ‘I got his name too, when we were in the tea shop,’ added Ryan. ‘Will Wruthers. He had it on a little badge.’

  ‘Speed it up, Ryan. At this rate the chips’ll evolve and start playing Jenga with us.’

  Ryan tweaked his chip free triumphantly, held it up for general approval, then ate it ceremonially.

  Josh took his turn next, found a chip jutting from the ‘tower’, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then yanked it free with daredevil recklessness, showering chips into Chelle’s abandoned drink.

  ‘Bollocks, they always stick when they go cold.’ As loser, Josh let the others ‘tidy’ the ‘rubble’ of the tower into their mouths and sat watching Ryan narrowly. ‘You’ve got that little flat voice on again. You’ve worked something out, haven’t you? You’ve got something,’ he added with an odd air of pride.

  ‘I might have. Yes. I think I’ve got something. But . . . I’m not sure you want it.’

  They both looked at him expectantly.

  ‘All right. I think it’s like the King’s Shilling.’ Ryan glanced at the others briefly and saw no sign of comprehension. ‘You know, in history people joining the army were given a shilling and if they took it that was like promising to be in the King’s army, and they couldn’t get out of it. And it didn’t matter if they took it by accident, not knowing what it was, they still had to go and fight. They couldn’t just give it back. It wasn’t the coin, it was what it meant. And, well, we kind of did the same thing.’

  ‘And what was that?’ asked Josh quietly, all sign of mockery gone.

  Ryan took a deep breath and held his hands out in front of him, palms towards each other, as if he was holding the space between them steady. Doing that often helped him arrange his thoughts into calm, straight lines.

  ‘OK, wishing wells. People come and drop in a coin and make a wish. That’s what they’re for. So . . . there’s this thing living down the well, a well spirit, and she gets given all these coins with wishes attached, and maybe she’s supposed to grant them in exchange. And then we come along and take the coins . . .’ Ryan gave the others a wince of a smile. ‘There was this word the well-thing kept saying over and over, but it just sounded like she was sneezing through soup. Only I’m starting to think it might have been “wishes”.’

  Josh gave a sudden low groan as if stricken with indigestion and doubled up so that his forehead rested on the grass. Clearly he had guessed what Ryan was about to say.

  ‘I think . . .’ Ryan continued. ‘I think when the well accepts the coins that’s like promising to grant the wishes . . . and I think us taking the coins means . . . that we have to grant them.’

  8

  How to Make a Miracle

  A few seconds passed in horrified silence.

  ‘What . . . all of them?’ squeaked Chelle. ‘Can’t we just . . . give her some more coins instead?’

  With a shudder, Ryan remembered the Well Spirit’s hissing response to that suggestion. ‘I think that’s a definite no,’ he murmured.

  ‘But we can’t grant all the wishes – there were dozens of coins, and we’ve only got three weeks before school starts, and they ought to have a warning sign over the well cos just anybody could pick out some coins by accident . . . maybe the council have to do something . . .’

  Josh heaved himself up into a sitting position with a resolute snort of breath. ‘All right, everyone shut up and let’s think. She sent us to Crook’s Baddock, right? And it must have been to find old Wet Will.’

  ‘He must have dropped a coin in the Magwhite well,’ said Ryan. ‘I mean, you’re not reading everybody’s thoughts, are you, Chelle? If I’ve got extra eyes so I can take orders from the well-thing, maybe your mind-reading is so we can work out what the wishes are and how to grant them. So you’re probably picking up his thoughts because we stole his wish-coin.’

  ‘Yeah, and I don’t need to ask what he wished for,’ Josh muttered. ‘Could have been worse, though, couldn’t it? Could have wished for a moon sandwich. At least Harley-Davidsons exist.’

  ‘Do you think we could just maybe wheel a Harley-Davidson from one of those stands outside the pub and kind of lean it up against the tea-shop door?’ asked Chelle.

  ‘Doubt it. He wants a Harley. Finding one on the step, then getting beaten up by an angry biker who thinks he’s trying to nick it, isn’t really the same, is it?’

  Josh swung his legs around in front of him on the grass, then held out both hands
as if gripping invisible handlebars. With an expression of concentration he clenched an unseen something with his left hand and moved his right thumb as if pressing a button. Then he tapped his left foot on the turf, and twisted his right hand slowly back on itself. ‘That guy at the pub showed me how to start up his motorbike. Just trying to remember the controls in case we need to nick one and change the number plates.’ He grinned as Chelle’s eyes became pools of awe and fear. ‘Relax, I’m mostly joking.’

  ‘Even if we had one, we couldn’t just drop by and give it to him,’ added Ryan. ‘He’d probably call the police.’

  ‘What about . . .’ Chelle hesitated. ‘What about that competition in the magazine that he was thinking about entering, only he hasn’t because he doesn’t think his mum will let him have a motorbike, well, what if we entered the competition with his name and he won, then maybe it would count, wouldn’t it?’

  Ryan was looking for a kind way of pointing out the hopelessness of this plan, but then he wondered if perhaps it was the least silly idea they had had so far. It probably wouldn’t work, but it wouldn’t see them all taken away in a police car either.

  ‘We’d need him to win.’ Josh’s voice was speculative, not scornful.

  ‘But we can’t make him win, can we?’ Ryan pointed out.

  ‘I dunno. Can we?’ Josh narrowed his eyes.

  Silverwing stood out from the other magazines thanks to its bright yellow cover, and the black and silver title with wings built into the ‘g’.

  Once they were back out on the street, they flicked through it until they found the competition page.

  ‘I was hoping we’d just have to cut out a coupon and put his address on it,’ whispered Chelle. ‘I didn’t know there’d be so many questions . . .’

  ‘How big was the engine of the 1902 Harley-Davidson prototype?’ read Ryan.

  ‘We can look that up somewhere,’ Josh murmured uncertainly.

  ‘I suppose we could guess. I mean we could just say, “quite big” or “big as a coconut” and that might be close enough . . .’