Sixth Form Song, Chapter Two

Chap had hit the mark about old Flashshadow’s performance-anxiety, even if it was the only thing he could make out, because she’d pleaded with him to stay by her while she went to get changed. Now they were in a well-lighted corridor, Flashshadow leading the way along cream and oak enclosures which swam in the radiance of glass-cupped flame.

Joe had to have been here once, reasoned Robin, for it to exist at all. Since they seemed bound for some sort of show, to which the public was invited, that at least followed.

Robin even knew that this realm was peopled intermittently by such apparitions as might be needed to facilitate what it was you were doing. Shopkeepers and the like.

But a host of other Flashshadows?

His mind was still reeling when even this amazement was promptly put into perspective. They’d reached a pair of windowless doors which stood side-by-side.

Whispering she wouldn’t be long, Flashshadow opened one and vanished behind it.

Then Mini-Flash Robin nearly did swoon clean away.

For no matter where else in this edifice of long ago a child-Joe might have ventured, it was certain he had never been there. All that lay beyond that hinged wooden barrier was what had so frightened Robin when he contemplated the flimsy walls of the toy department. It was the place untouched by subjective recollection, the infinite nothing which fogged at the edges of this imagined reality.

And Flashshadow had just stepped into it without a care.

What was she?

Robin was deep in the implications when she whose powers had so staggered him emerged, and asked him the silliest question he would have believed possible.

For Flashshadow totes looked a whole lot better than just alright.

She shone softly in silver and blue. Now that they were under the lamps, Robin could better appreciate those they’d encountered outside. He ought to have remembered Mini-Flash Pseudangelos wore Earth-clothes a little like these, though Flashshadow’s stockings turned her slim legs to a midnight-and-ivory sheer, and her tie wasn’t striped but dotted instead with little shield-shaped crests. Dusky hair lay lightly on the shoulders of a blue woollen pullover. Shy as Flashshadow seemed, Robin wondered if she knew what it was for him to look on one so lovely.

She was carrying her lyre. Chap had enough to ponder just now besides where she’d been keeping it. The instrument appeared to Robin one small slice of his familiar galaxy amid so much that was irreducibly different and far away.

It really did seem time now to be making a start. They hurried back the way they’d come, and Flashshadow pointed out which way to go then took her lyre through a backstage door on the left. Robin hastened down four or five steps which led to a huge hall, where rows of chairs had been arranged to face a curtained stage. It was almost a full house, if it could be so called when the audience was only there insofar as the newsagent had been. From what Robin could gather of these spectral humans, they ranged from adults far older than he to children even younger. As, Robin supposed, Joe would have been when he was here.

A few empty spaces were left so Robin quickly sat, tucking his skirt underneath him, as the curtains drew apart and the lights in the hall went down.

There never was such a concert.

Even on a well-illuminated stage, the Flashshadows in their identical blue uniforms looked so alike that it wasn’t easy for Robin to distinguish his from the rest of them. The minute she started playing however, there was no doubt. Her lyre wove its strains in and out of the Earth-flutes and clarinets with whose sound Robin was less familiar, and even at the most portentous phrases of brass and percussion, Flashshadow persisted to ring those lone sonorous notes of hope. Robin heard in her improvisations signatures which she’d plucked that night a while back at the cinema, and then he understood what these were, whether the surrounding orchestral growl was that of the Coming Conflict or some terrestrial war this school had bravely withstood. There’d been no reason for Flashshadow to feel anxious on the way over. Her solo took the hall’s breath away.

She was told so time and again, after the musicians had curtsied amid rousing applause and flittered to the auditorium for cups of tea and little shortbread biscuits. Flashshadow was as aglow as Robin had ever seen her, and he himself just from standing by her side couldn’t believe he’d been unhappy at a party mere hours ago.

Night had already fallen when they set off back for Joe’s, and here that didn’t mean the streetlights and neon of Nottingham’s ten-lane skyscraper-strewn highways. The lanes were lost in a peaceful and all-enveloping darkness like nothing Robin’s galaxy had ever known, where he and his headlamps were the sum of the journey. Flashshadow of course couldn’t be seen at all by now, though Robin knew she’d reverted to her Mini-Flash garb, and acoustically speaking there couldn’t have been conditions more Flashshadow-favourable than the obscure tranquility which had wrapped up the world.

She really did feel it had gone well, and it was important to her it should have done. For, Flashshadow explained, what she admired perhaps most of all in Neetra – not to mention Joe – was that for all their understanding of the role Mini-Flashes such as herself and Robin were destined to play, there was never any talk of what would come after The Foretold One was finally defeated. That was such a difference to The Flash Club, where having been a Mini-Flash, Flash Club was what you stayed. It was no wonder so many of their generation had already chosen to follow instead The Four Heroes’ cause, fundamental to which was a belief your future was only ever your own.

Now, Flashshadow confessed to Robin, there had been talk tonight. She was utterly abashed to have to admit it, but while they were on their own like this, modesty might be so far stretched. Some held that a solo of such quality bespoke Head Girl potential. Many a Head Girl had gone on to teach, and musical instruction would surely always feature on any sensible curriculum. Then after that, who knew? Flashshadow was at pains to stress to Mini-Flash Robin these weren’t her words. But it had been whispered within this very hour, possibly even Headmistress one day.

That, Flashshadow told Robin calmly, she could envisage as her path. Though she freely owned she didn’t give anything like as much thought to the future as she should.

Mini-Flash Robin headed straight upstairs, once Flashshadow had thanked him one last time then slipped off to rejoin the party outside. It was already past curfew for juniors, and Robin like most of Nottingham’s Mini-Flashes had remained strict on such points even after leaving The Flash Club. He himself however wasn’t going directly to bed, for first he had an appointment at one of the spare room doors. This opened when he knocked to disclose Presh, blinking in her nightie and bloomers.

She blinked all the more when Robin curtsied low to her, and apologised for giving her a hard time.

“Where have you been?” Presh demanded, with some warmth. “Fancy upping and leaving like that and not telling anybody. I was…”

She rolled her eyes. Then there ensued a fairly lengthy pause, while in Presh the new seemed to wrestle with the old.

“I was worried about you,” she admitted at last. “Are you OK?”

Robin replied with his widest-mouthed and most reassuring smile. For he was OK, not that he was about to explain the why of it to Presh. Chap had a bit more sense than that. Nevertheless, Robin if nothing else was sure he wouldn’t take it to heart the next time a certain Mini-Flash Juniper happened not to notice him.

After all, there were times he himself didn’t notice Flashshadow.

Yet tonight she’d been the star of the show, and no-one in that audience had been as proud of her as he.

THE END