Freax and Rejex. Robin Jarvis

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СКАЧАТЬ is most fair, isn’t she?” she said proudly. “Two years ago that was the face of Lancashire Pickles. You couldn’t eat an onion in a Bootle chippy without seeing her smile on the jar. ‘Only our vinegar is sour’ the slogan said.”

      Marcus smacked his forehead. “I knew you had to be a model!” he exclaimed. “I said so, didn’t I?”

      The girl’s mother nodded. “Oh, yes, she’s a true professional. Been doing it since she was ten, haven’t you, child? This was going to be a big year for her. We had The Plan all worked out, didn’t we? Still, what a prize she’ll be when she finally awakens to the real world.”

      “Maybe we’ll know each other there!” Marcus suggested hopefully. “That would rock, knowing you here and there as well. So what is your name, beautiful?”

      “Charm,” she answered in a voice of lead.

      “It couldn’t be anything else!” he said with a grin. “I’m charmed to meet you.”

      The girl said nothing and those sunglasses made it impossible for him to read her expression. He tried one of his trademark winks. They had a pretty good success rate. The girl turned back to the stage and he thought he caught what sounded like a bored sigh.

      It was time for the performance to begin. First there was a display of courtly dancing, in which the Jacks and Jills took part. Then there was a re-enactment of an episode from the book, when the Jill of Hearts was kidnapped by a Punchinello Guard, who carried her off to a cave under one of the thirteen hills. The short, hideous creature was realised by a dwarf actor wearing an ingenious costume with built-up shoulders and a large, false head jutting from his chest. The head was suitably repulsive, with swivelling eyes and, when it menaced the captured girl, the younger children in the audience covered their own. But the Jack of Clubs came to the rescue just in time. He sliced his sword straight through the creature’s neck and the head went rolling across the stage.

      “Oh, them fings is well vile,” Charm said to her mother. “I fink I’d scream if I saw ’em.”

      “When you see them,” Mrs Benedict corrected. “But don’t you worry, child. The Punchinellos are usually kept in strict order by their captain, Captain Swazzle, who reports to the Ismus direct. It’s the fiends that go creeping outside the White Castle and in the woods and fields that are to be feared, but you’ll never have to worry about the likes of them, being of such obvious high-born quality.”

      “I dunno… I still wouldn’t like to see them every day. Snow White always used to freak me out. When she woke up an’ all them tiny old bald blokes were pervin’ at her. That was well dodgy, know what I mean?”

      Marcus remained silent. He heard Mrs Benedict speaking about Mooncaster as though it was a real place, in exactly the same way everyone else he knew spoke about it. He could not understand how or why anyone could believe such infantile rubbish. When this madness had first started, he had wondered if it was a massive con and they didn’t actually believe in it at all, but why they would pretend to do so was an even bigger mystery. What were they getting out of it?

      In his darkest moments, and there had been many of those in recent months, when he felt utterly alone and filled with despair, he had questioned his own reason. But his ego was indefatigable and pulled him through every time. He almost wanted this weekend to successfully change him into a believer, just to see what the fuss was about, but he really couldn’t see it happening. How could it? It was only a stupid book.

      Elsewhere in the crowd, Christina turned to Jody and whispered in a frightened voice that she hadn’t liked ‘Mr Big Nose’ and was glad he’d been ‘deheaded’.

      Jody put her arm round her. “There’s no such things as Punchinellos,” she assured the seven-year-old. “They’re only monsters in a story; they don’t exist.”

      “But the Jacks and Jills are in the book too,” Christina said. “They’re real.”

      “Just kids playing dress-up. There aren’t any witches or fairy godmothers, no Mauger beast at the gate, no werewolf and no castle.”

      “My mummy and daddy say there are,” the little girl uttered unhappily.

      Jody glanced over to where Christina’s parents were standing. Mr and Mrs Carter had forgotten about their young daughter and were transfixed by what was happening on the stage. Jody looked away in disgust. She didn’t even wonder where her own mother and father had got to.

      “People are the only real monsters,” she said.

      It was time for the reading. A distinguished actor, who had appeared in countless movies and voiced umpteen CGI characters, stepped on to the stage to appreciative applause. The serving maids made sure every child had a copy of Dancing Jax and the recital commenced. The actor’s voice rang out, with that dry, clipped, resonant gravitas only the best Shakespearean thespians possessed.

      “Dora, poor Dora the blacksmith’s daughter, was a lumpen girl, built like bricks and mortar. When she was ten, she was as tall as her father, at sixteen even he could not have fought her. She could wrestle the burliest farmhand and punch out a horse’s molar. The villagers of Mooncot were justly proud of her prowess, but none of them would court her. Dora, plain Dora despaired how nature had wrought her, so one bright morn she set forth – with ham and cheese and a flagon of well-drawn water. Every young maid knew of magick Malinda, so off she went and sought her. A pretty face and voice of silver was all that she was after. But Dora, dim Dora lost her way, forgetting what her father taught her. ‘Don’t go down the dingling track, where the toadstools grow much taller!’ Down the dingling track she tramped and heard strange voices call her – to Nimbelsewskin’s forest house where soon began the slaughter.”

      Through force of habit, Jody followed the words on the pages. She had learned very early on that rejects who showed willing were persecuted far less than those who rebelled. Marcus was doing the same. He pretended to read along with the rest, but all the while his eyes were flicking left and right.

      The face of every adult was transfigured with rapture as they found their way back into the Realm of the Dawn Prince and resumed their vivid lives there. Soon they were rocking back and forth, their eyes rolling up into their heads. Only the children who arrived that day remained motionless – they and the Ismus.

      The Holy Enchanter gazed out over the sea of bobbing heads. His questioning stare fixed upon each and every one of those youngsters. Which of them? he asked himself. Which of them?

      He saw Charm concentrating, desperately wishing for the power of the book to swallow her up. She even tried nodding her head, but only succeeded in catapulting her sunglasses on to the stage. She let out a squeal of frustration. The Ismus looked further back, to where Lee Charles was moving his head from side to side, in time to the music blaring in his eardrums. He hadn’t been paying the slightest attention to anything and wasn’t even holding a copy of the book. Then the Ismus regarded Spencer. He was fidgeting nervously while trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

      A twelve-year-old boy next to him caused the Ismus to narrow his eyes. There was something unusual and furtive in the way Jim Parker was gently patting his shirt, as if he was hiding something beneath it. Nearby, Tommy Williams was still peering around like a baby bird. He and the other small boys had been put in the same cabin as Alasdair and they were now gathered about him. The Ismus considered the Scottish lad and discovered he was staring straight back. Such deep hatred blazed in those young eyes. Could he be the one?

      When the reading ended, СКАЧАТЬ