Flight of the Girl, Chapter Six

Local history happened here as loudly as it might have done in any town that existed for real. There would be new picture-postcards, and a display in the library charting the efforts of a brave population to recover and rebuild, people and things alike all made of the mistiness that constituted whatever this place was. It was somehow apt that those who were there to see it would still be telling the tale in seaside pubs long after sun and wind and sand had taken the shine off sparkly new brick, and the replacement tower was as much a part of the familiar landscape as its beloved predecessor had been. What stories, but timeless ones, could better suit a realm where there was no time?

Stone and ice met weathered Earth-masonry and most of the latter ended up flung as far as the indoor play-park and the fountains by the fair.

It was an ear-splitting impact such as that stretch of shoreline had never known.

And Pat wasn’t even any great distance from it, so the din was barely a decibel diminished when it made its way over to him.

It ended his battle, for the snake required only the narrowest window of opportunity to do as it desired. Though smouldering from Pat’s cannons and scored at a dozen different points by his saw, one last leap in the moment of distraction was sufficient to barge bike and rider back. Over the rim of the ravine shot the slippery one, stretching itself to the shape of a plumb-line and descending at a comparable rate, or more so, first an acid-green arrow then a dart and then no more than a sliver. The fathoms splashed once and the snake was gone.

Pat did everything he could to keep himself from the same course, but he had been knocked too near the edge, which was already cracking and crumbling under the weight of his vehicle.

He felt his tail-end tear through police tape.

All four wheels were rolling in nothingness, and the quad’s open saddle was already sliding away above as Pat fell…

Jenny arrived, soaked through and panting round the corner of the dunes.

And neither the weariest state of exhaustion, nor the wettest school uniform in the world, could have prevented her from starting off again. Her flat-soled shoes might have slapped sparks from the seawall, and for the first time that day there was no pondering what it all might mean, no deliberation, no hesitation. Two of her friends were on the dune but Jenny barely heeded them as she hurtled by. She’d seen what had just happened to Pat. She knew Pat, and any actual memories of him she might have been able to muster felt a mere fraction of what he meant.

She reached the crevasse and dived headlong into the dark.

A second after seeing that, Miss Ugly and Maureen had to fling themselves flat on their faces as the comet blasted by, seemingly near enough for either one of them to reach up and touch. Both however could do no more than goggle on the inorganic organisms cavorting in its vapour-trail. Within an instant the cacophonous whole was horizon-bound, and although girl and duckling alike had started to doubt today in general and the most recent minutes in particular could possibly throw any more surprises at them, this latest development confirmed that yes, in fact, it could.

For the comet clearly wasn’t going to land where the first object had fallen.

It was coming in too high for that. It must have levelled-out.

Yet its smaller forerunner might still have been a beacon of some sort, for as the two friends looked on and marvelled, its patch of sea began to glow.

The plummeting Pat felt two slender arms in sodden sweater-sleeves wrap around him with ferocious strength, crushing him to the warm body which beat beneath the wool.

Had Jenny defied the laws of physics and fallen faster than him?

Miss Ugly and Maureen, insensible of what was going on beneath their feet, watched agape as their serpentine counterpart emerged from the luminescent depths. With the tip of its tail tucked into its maw it was enacting the motion of Ouroboros, revolving again and again around a large smooth-sided sphere whence the pulsing radiance emitted.

This miniature star rose steadily, its light growing brighter.

Faster and faster span the snake.

Watching from their sandpile, Maureen and Miss Ugly had to shield their eyes as two forms in motion melded and became a bolt of dazzling green, which streaked for the skies as though to illumine the preternatural gloom which reigned there.

Jenny raised her head, and did much the same.

The sheer canyon walls ceased their swift upward scroll and suddenly were planing on either side, as one girl hugging her boy to her bosom swept low over the black ocean trench then broke free for open skies. She swept over waves which she parted in passing, wild breezes streaming through her hair, the prevailing lightness thereof accented by a single blaze of brilliant blue. Pat couldn’t but be reaffirmed in his conviction he’d never known anyone like Jen, and he held on tight, though by now he knew no fear. She was gripping him as to never let him go.

The green beam arced at the comet’s dwindling tail, dropped into it, mingled with it.

None beheld this but the duo on the dune, and they were not near enough to observe what transpired next, in the gaseous envelope where certain interplanetary denizens opted to range their infinite domain. If however the freshwater microbes these ones resembled threw parties to greet late arrivals from some forgotten pipette, then such was the species of celebration, as a wanderer was welcomed back to the circulations that spawned him. For no purpose other than this had these roamers detoured by Earth, and the device they sent on ahead had moments ago displayed its one and only function, and nor had there been any impulse in the snake but to put it to use. Miss Ugly and Maureen, though too far off to bear witness, were finally starting to understand.

“I don’t think there was ever any good to it,” was the former’s conclusion. “But you can’t fault it for wanting to go home.”

“Yeah, times on this holiday I’ve known the feeling,” Maureen told her in reply.

Now the comet had commenced heaving itself back to its celestial track. The gradual ascent ground through fields of gravitational friction, resulting in an incandescent rain whose high piping notes and booms and bursts lived aloft like bright blossoming fireworks and then cascaded to the steaming sea. Amid this were Pat and Jenny, now upright and face-to-face but each still enfolded in the other’s arms. They twirled together as though playing out some skybound slow-dance, while the airy parquet they trod rejoiced all around them.

And Jenny was Mini-Flash Juniper. Mini-Flash Juniper was Jenny. For the first time, it had happened without chocolate cake.

This moment had made her complete.

“We don’t have to say goodbye, Pat,” she breathed to him. “Tomorrow won’t be the end. I’ll make sure it isn’t.”

For Pat, this was wonderful news. He took her meaning to be something along the lines of what Maureen had suggested to Mini-Flash Juniper at the start of that long day, and pictured himself and Jenny exchanging addresses, staying in touch, and before the summer was over taking trips to see each other by bus or train. Pat pictured his hometown, and himself bursting with pride as he introduced Jenny to the gang, and then the lot of them at the burger bar, and after that the cinema with just Jen and him. No doubt it would all be a little different to anything she was used to, but that thought only made Pat want to grin, and all the more so when he considered what her friends from the girls’ grammar school would make of him when he paid a visit in turn. Could it really work out for such a couple? More than once they’d talked about the future, and although that particular question had gone unspoken, both had asked it secretly. Nothing could have made Pat happier than to know he and Jenny now had the chance to find their way to the answer.

And maybe that had been what Mini-Flash Juniper meant by it.

Maybe.

Or, maybe she had shared with Pat at last that hers was the power to rework the very world he inhabited, such that their holiday need never end. No-one had to leave tomorrow, which might instead be as happy a day as any of the fourteen that preceded it. So Mini-Flash Juniper could have it go on, an eternal summer of sun and rainy Wednesdays and the plaza and the pool and the camp, lovingly crafted as if only for them. She knew this realm, and knew she could do it, knew indeed that the realm would make it only too easy for her. There lay the danger, and the dreadful limit to any power Juniper ascribed to herself.

For in truth, the power was the realm’s. Juniper had been lost here before. To choose this path was to take the risk her second time might be forever.

Had she intended Pat to understand, through those few whispered words, that she would surrender all of herself and venture to that unknown which existed beyond the bounds of even subconscious memory and sentiment, just as long as she could do so with him?

They’d only known each other a fortnight. And they’d met on holiday.

Yet here and now, high above it all, the day saved and the comet heading home, not to mention fireworks…

Things being as they were, who could have said?

At any rate, whatever pact the pair entered into was subsequently sealed, in the only way that might have been expected of a girl and boy.

With a kiss.

And the colour in Mini-Flash Juniper’s hair was gliding, gliding, shining blue.

THE END