Avion Symphony, Chapter Six

It was an August night that resonated magic. If they didn’t make them like that anymore, at least 4-H-N remembered them. For her they were bound up with friends and fun, evenings at the takeaway when you could eat as much as you pleased, and of course, songs playing on the video-walls such as this very one. Villanelle was in her human guise, and Chester was still a boy. Each held in both hands one end of the map, as side-by-side they studied it together.

They were taking the trail marked on her father’s map.

Round the soft undulations of hills that same dusty trail rambled as did the refrain, each turn disclosing dells where a pair of youngsters might delight to be, as they made their uneven and unhurried ascent to purple peaks touching an indigo sky. Wistful accordions were firefly-song, and gentle percussion the rustle of crops. That rolling growing land, silver under the stars, was Villanelle’s and Chester’s alone.

She’d been of a family with traditions. Let’s face it, her Dad even had a title. It figured he’d have known about somewhere like this.

Somewhere that stayed the same and you could count on, even at times when the old name itself may have become more than a little tarnished.

This was where Villanelle came from, whatever workshop or furnace or forge might stake a similar claim. Here she could wear that dress with her flowered hat, smile to Chester and say, this is me. This is where I’m from. Broken treehouse and all.

It seemed to 4-H-N there might be more to it still. Did we all have somewhere secret inside to which such a trail would reliably take us, winding away through the years until we were back again at that one special place, that one special summer’s night?

She didn’t know. But of one thing 4-H-N was certain. She was glad Chester and Villanelle had found their way there.

Gradually 4-H-N came back, not of course to either the present or reality, but to where she was at any rate. The elderly gentleman was watching her thoughtfully.

“May I deduce there is a good deal weighing on that young mind?” he ventured.

4-H-N sighed. Talk about coming back down to earth.

“You’re not wrong about that,” she declared. “There’s a murderer on the loose.”

“My dear,” returned her host, as profoundly shocked and horrified as his gentlemanly bearing would permit.

“Yep, it’s not kids’ stuff anymore,” 4-H-N pronounced grimly. “The person he killed was bad too, but that doesn’t make it OK. And there are other ways he’s dangerous, worse ways. He wins people over, convinces them he’s in the right. Like my sister. You didn’t meet her, but I’ve got lots. Other girls too – some of whom are annoying,” 4-H-N freely owned, “but they don’t deserve that. He’s a real threat to girls, one you’ve got to take seriously. No offence,” she added.

But the old gentleman merely laughed his lovely laugh and waved this away. 4-H-N drank deep of her milky tea until the last drop of it was gone.

“I tried to teach this one girl not to follow him,” she said slowly. “And I’ve been trying to help with the big picture too. But it all keeps going wrong.”

Her benign companion finished off his cup in turn. He looked as if the gravity of her predicament was something he well apprehended.

“Look about you, my dear,” he commenced. “You see the peace and contentment I have finally found. Do you suppose it could have been mine, had I not put aside my old hate?”

He’d been so generous, and made her feel so at home, that 4-H-N hadn’t liked to be the one who brought that up. Carefully she considered how to phrase her reply.

“We didn’t absolutely understand your old hate,” was what she settled on.

No need to add that it hadn’t in fact made the slightest bit of sense. Nor to enumerate on the hundred speculations as to what might have befallen him in the past to make him feel that way. These had bounced back and forth enough amid the giggles of a hundred pyjama parties with her four Avion friends. Above all there was surely no need for any good guest to dwell on what had been the final clinching absurdity, that even if his grand design had somehow met with success it would have accomplished nothing, save the eventual depopulation of the planet.

But as wakefulness neared and 4-H-N surveyed the kindly sincere features of her host, she had a feeling these were truths he already knew.

“When hate is a reason unto itself, such questions cease to matter,” he softly said to her. “So if an old man may offer his advice, my dear, by all means administer justice unto this cad you speak of, as I of all people have known you to do. You wonder at the man I was. You always shall, and I will be glad of it, so long as you strike only from that purity of heart I saw in you then. Do otherwise, and I fear you will find there is danger too in the course you have chosen. It may even so fall out that one day still farther off than now, a generation shall wonder at you.”

This time when 4-H-N woke, she knew at once it was for real. The here and now, Planet Grindotron, her bedroom, the middle of the night.

By the dressing-table stood a Special Program Mini-Flash.

“You,” 4-H-N said to her. “You did this.”

She wasn’t a total stranger. They’d curtsied together at the Arch of Titus awards.

“The last name I went by was Attack Priority,” announced this peculiar Jacob Marley. “But I am Mini-Flash Pseudangelos.”

“The other one suits you better,” 4-H-N told her bluntly. “What gave you the right to put me through all that?”

Mini-Flash Pseudangelos looked nothing short of hurt.

“It was done for your benefit,” she informed 4-H-N. “The Special Program’s gift to you, because we owe you our freedom.”

“Do you want to run the last part by me?” requested 4-H-N, as civilly as she felt Mini-Flash Pseudangelos deserved.

“On the brink of our fleeing The Flash Club, we saw you,” that one began. “We saw your animosity towards that side of The Four Heroes’ schism where Petunia sat.”

“So to speak,” agreed 4-H-N.

“We saw too which symbol would be disfigured,” Mini-Flash Pseudangelos went on. “That is, not hers, but the one in which you believe. It was our impetus to escape at last. For you can well imagine what we read in it.”

“Don’t start up with the Four Heroes superstitions,” 4-H-N warned her. “You’ve come to the wrong girl. If that’s what you’re into, go to Nottingham and join Joe.”

“Three of us have,” the other replied, very seriously.

And if Mini-Flash Pseudangelos had wanted to do the same, 4-H-N would currently be enjoying a restful night’s sleep. She didn’t need telling that.

“You keep using the plural,” 4-H-N observed at length. “Does that mean there are other Special Program runways you’re speaking for?”

This generated a vaguely affirmative response. For a little while longer 4-H-N surveyed her unannounced visitor.

“You get ten out of ten for trying, Sue,” she then declared, in a gentler voice than she’d used before. “Only it’s no gift to go round intruding on people like that. Some things are better kept private. And this whole idea you’ve got ahold of, that final authority resides in you…do you even need me to tell you why half the galaxy’s scared of you girls? Whose side everyone’s afraid you’ll end up on? Well, power equals wisdom and strength breeds deference…that’s The Foretold One’s way of thinking right there.”

As for The Foretold One’s father, and partner-to-be for what 4-H-N’s opinions were worth, she had to give the devil his due. Clearly the Special Program were very much in need of training and guidance, wrong as Joe was to conclude that these should come from him. For all their powers, they were like 4-H-N had been at the very beginning. Girls who knew nothing and had done nothing yet, out there all on their own.

Looking at the lone Mini-Flash before her, 4-H-N saw herself standing in an earlier bedroom of hers. This one was far smaller, pink, and with a sloping roof. The younger her who was in it waited shyly on the morning of her first day at school, unable to keep fidgety fingers from her new navy-blue uniform skirt. She already had several friends to thank who’d strictly speaking been strangers, even if they’d mistaken her for someone they knew. Now she was moments away from meeting the four best friends she was ever going to have.

Many times 4-H-N had reflected on how lucky she’d been. Indeed, these days she was ready to conclude it was kindness that kept the universe ticking over.

She saw something else too, which was that for all Mini-Flash Pseudangelos’s big talk about wanting to help her, she was here tonight because it was the other way round.

In spite of herself, 4-H-N was starting to smile.

“Then maybe you’ve come to the right girl after all,” said she. “Go get the rest of your Task Force.”

THE END