Flight of the Girl, Chapter Four

The torrential downpour had been a fun part of Maureen’s outdoor wait, but at least Pat was with her soon after it had started to subside. She gathered at once he’d heard the news.

“Jenny went into town,” Maureen greeted him.

The news about the comet, that was.

“What did she want to do that for?” Pat cried.

“We didn’t know what had gone off, did we?” flung back Maureen.

Then for a second or two she was at a loss as to why her pointing out as much should have made Pat look unhappier still.

But of course, as Maureen apprehended a moment later, that did make it worse. This was supposed to be their last day, and Pat, knowing nothing of the morning’s schemes, must have entertained a certain quiet hopefulness that Mini-Flash Juniper might have been inclined to spend a little bit of it with him.

Was having a brother going to be like this from here on in?

An hour or two of acting as daft as that Jen had been enough.

Maureen couldn’t bear for Pat to look so hurt though, especially not for the sake of some secret which didn’t even matter anymore, so she spilled out to him all the rest of it.

And Pat’s entire world turned, as it hadn’t for any of the other revelations that day.

“You tried your hand at matchmaking?” was as much as he could manage. “Gordon Bennett, Maureen, it’s no wonder the world’s coming to an end.”

Yet that wasn’t the part that was too much for Pat to take in.

By rights, there should have been the biggest smile on his face. His mates at school would have been stumped.

Because here it was at last. After two weeks of it all being new, here it was. And Pat wanted to say he’d known, right from the moment that first night when his path crossed Jenny’s on the way to the theatre. Just now it felt as if he’d known since then. Yet Pat asked himself why, if that had been so, there had also been such unending unrest as to whether what he was discovering might be in any way shared? Had it been because it was new? Or because the only way to learn whether somebody else was feeling as you were was to do the unthinkable, and ask?

The biggest smile couldn’t have caught the local news.

It was doing its best to assert itself, in dumb defiance of everything else.

Pat might even have let it, were it not for the side of the matter he was barely able to confront, but was all too aware he must.

For with things being as they were, well…

He was new to this. Probably didn’t need another reminder. But the way it seemed to Pat was that having learned what he’d just learned of Maureen, and knowing as he now did that something which promised such wonder and joy might be ahead of him, there could only be one outcome if Jen’s trip to town ended with the worst coming to the worst.

He’d never feel this way again.

Pat didn’t see how he could. There wasn’t any chance of it. Not if he lost her after finding out she’d felt the same.

In an instant he was astride the quad-bike. The instant after that, Maureen was behind him.

“Road into town must be mad by now,” ruled Pat, starting up his steed. “Cut across the fields and we might catch up with her bus before it gets there.”

Maureen for reasons she was well beyond fathoming thought of the blue hair-dye. “When we do,” she began, “make sure you tell her how much you like…”

“You what?” came back from Pat.

“Nah, on reflection that’s meant to be a surprise,” decided Maureen. “It’ll add a bit of excitement to the day.”

Pat had been correct about the traffic into town, for every resident by now was attempting an impromptu inland trek, and the modest road-network was at a near-standstill. It resembled a bank holiday in reverse. Consequently buses trying to get in from further along the coast met with tailbacks from the first buildings that appeared, and the double-decker conveying Miss Ugly and Jenny had crawled along ever since, passengers protesting to the driver throughout that he might as well stop and let them off. He for his part had affirmed as many times that to do so would have been more than his job was worth, and what with that and Jenny’s continual insistence she was needed and it was destiny, plus the weather on top of it all, Miss Ugly was starting to wish she’d made it as a prima donna assoluta and owned her own carriage.

They had at long last negotiated the right turn which lined them up on the jammed and motionless seafront, the entrance to the pier glanced at by Yon directly to their left. That was when something large and heavy hit the top deck from townside, lifting both tyres on that flank so the bus underwent a stomach-lurching tilt, then crashed upright again with a judder.

Finally, the driver relented. Which was another way of saying the passengers barely saw him for dust.

Jenny and Miss Ugly joined the crowd now surging for the open doors. They burst out upon the rain-soaked street beneath a sky as black as night, both perhaps feeling a greater urgency even than the panicking public did. For the girls had glimpsed through the streaked and steamed-up windows towards the pier a whiplike flicker of colour, too vivid for either of them to mistake.

It would have been nice if that hadn’t been so.

But it was far too vivid, and far too green.

Their old enemy the robot snake was contorting by the side-entrance to the funfair, in the same state of heightened agitation which had apparently prompted it to leap from the rooftops of town and all but topple the double-decker. It thrashed and hissed horribly at the evacuees, though they gave it a wide berth, but it made no attempt to settle the score with Miss Ugly or Jenny. After another second it started from them and plunged headlong at the deserted carnival, its erratic course roughly in the direction of the clock tower and beyond.

“That thing again,” breathed Miss Ugly. “Now of all times!”

“Somehow it’s connected,” Jenny cried. “I can feel it. Look at how it’s heading for where the first object fell!”

Miss Ugly, as it happened, was ready to accept that. It sounded to her as if Mini-Flash Juniper’s reliable precognition was making its way through the memory-block.

Did that mean the snake all along had been some sort of scout?

Was it needed at what Flashsatsumas had called the radio-beacon, to guide in a marauding multitude made up of others of its ilk?

At any rate, it had to be stopped. Innocent citizens were still milling around.

And speaking of the innocent. Miss Ugly looked at Jenny and made up her mind.

“Then we’re going to need those powers of yours,” she told her in firm tones. “But you’re not going to rediscover how to fly from a standing start like that. We ballerinas understand the importance of elevation. Let’s try over there!”

By the side of the pier was a hump-backed bridge over a little low-walled watercourse, whose two-seater rowboats on this distressing day were still chained and moored along its route. The girls ran until they were atop the bridge’s crest.

There Miss Ugly instructed her companion to climb up onto the railing, which Jenny did, carefully lifting her thigh-length school skirt out of the way so she wouldn’t trip over it. This gymnastic feat accomplished she stood on high with her shoes together, tall and fair and determined, if a little quivery about the long blue nylon legs.

“Right,” she heard Miss Ugly mutter. “Now think flying thoughts…”

“I’m trying to, Miss Ugly!” Jenny exclaimed, holding her arms horizontal. A boat was bumping softly below her toes, and it looked a long way down.

Suddenly she couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder for guidance.

Poised behind was a huge yellow duckling, its bright orange bill gravely set, raising aloft in its vestigial wings the flat of its ivory broadsword.

And Miss Ugly really regretted where it had to go.

But it was the part of Jenny within easiest reach, not to mention the biggest target.

WHACK!

Ethereal luminescent weapons from the netherworld could nonetheless sting when applied just right, as Jenny now knew better than most as she tumbled wailing head over Luttertons and thudded to a landing in the bottom of the boat, breathless and a little bruised but otherwise unhurt. Miss Ugly for her part appreciated it was hypocritical to rely on someone’s powers one minute then take such precautions for their safety the next, but the fact remained that in her Jenny persona Mini-Flash Juniper had yet to display any conscious control over those special abilities, and with the snake on the rampage there just hadn’t been time to find a café that was still open and might have served them chocolate cake.

“Miss Ugly!” Jenny cried indignantly skywards as she struggled to rise in the rocking stern-sheets, the crook of one stockinged knee hooked above the bow. “How could you?”

Granted, Miss Ugly hadn’t done it for thanks, but she couldn’t help hoping all the same that certain girls kept a tighter rein on their tempers when they were at imaginary grammar school. Ruminating on the lengths she went to for her friends, she caused for her fluffy body to fade.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR