Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

‘Come! Don’t be like that! If you’ve got troubles, why not share them? Can’t make things worse, can it?’

Chegory hesitated.

‘What say we go to the dining room? Hey? Talk it out? You can tell me all about it over a cup of coffee or something. I’ll pay. Money’s the least of my problems, for the moment at any rate. That’s what I think, anyway — my bank manager no doubt would beg to differ.’

Still Chegory hesitated.

‘What have you got to lose?’ said Odolo. ‘If I wanted to make you prisoner I could rouse the whole slaughterhouse with a shout from my window. You’d never get away. Come. I won’t say I’m your friend, but that scarcely makes me your enemy, does it? What have you got to lose?’ ‘Okay,’ said Chegory, taking a deep breath as he eased up on the knife. ‘Okay then. Let’s talk.’

Then the two of them went down to the dining room. This was virtually empty, for most of those denizens of Ganthorgruk who were in regular employ had left for work, while those who were alcohol addicts had slipped off to speakeasies already, unless they were still sleeping off the debauches of the day (and night) before.

‘Like the view?’ said Odolo, gesturing to a window from which one could see all Lubos, the Laitemata, Jod, Scimitar, the Outer Reef, and vistas of blue and green sea beyond.

‘It’s okay,’ said Chegory, without enthusiasm.

And sat himself at a table while Odolo went for some coffee.

Then the two began to talk.

Both had been, till then, lonely individuals totally isolated in their individual predicaments, effectively bereft (at least for the moment) of any friend or confidant. Both found it a deep relief to indulge in confession.

Young Chegory told of his arrest, of Shabble’s untoward intervention and his consequent escape, of rearrest, of his deportation to the pink palace to face the squealer in the treasury, of riot, of his unwitting escape through a hole in the wall of the treasury, of his long wanderings Downstairs and of all that had taken place in that underground realm.

For his part, Odolo told of his strange dreams, some of which had prefigured (or caused?) transformations in the world itself. He told of dreaming (or creating?) the krakens in the Laitemata. Of his breakfast bowl which had come alive with boiling blue scorpions. Of other transformations, transfigurations and transubstantiations which had taken place since. Of a breadfruit which had turned of sudden into a brief-lived globe of red ants. A writing brush which had grown wings then flown away. A hash cookie turned to a cherry.

‘A cherry?’ said Chegory.

‘A stone fruit. From trees, a special type of tree. Nice enough. I’d plant the stone itself except I doubt it’d grow in this climate. That’s not all there is to it, either. There’s these words, words, my head’s crazy with words, whenever I’m not thinking hard they run amok, all kinds of words just scrambling through my head.’

‘Well,’ said Chegory, ‘maybe you’re… well, you know what I mean. Or maybe someone’s fed you zen, you know, I told you all about that. Different people, it, well, I’m not setting myself up as an expert or something but it does weird things to some people. Or then, what if you’re a wonderworker? But you just don’t know it? Or the wishstone, doesn’t that do magic? Couldn’t you, like, pick up magic? Since you’ve, you’ve looked after it so long.’

‘There’s nothing magic about the wishstone,’ said Odolo. ‘It’s, it’s beautiful, yes. It’s got a kind of soft music about it, and inside there’s all rainbows, never still but always moving, a brightness amazing when you get it in the dark. But no magic. Else what would it be doing in the treasury? Injiltaprajura’s rulers would be using it from dawn to dusk to wish and rule.’

‘You’ve tried it?’

‘I…’

‘You have!’

‘Yes,’ admitted Odolo, unaccountably embarrassed. ‘But the wishes never came true. I knew they wouldn’t. The thing is a — well, let’s just say it’s an old thing. Very old. The people here, they, it’s because it’s unique that they’ve got it locked up, I mean had it locked up. A toy. A bauble. That’s all it is, at least to them. A jewel among jewels.’ ‘You speak lightly of things most valued!’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Odolo. ‘What’s all that — that gold, jewellery, junk? What does it do? It sits there, that’s all. That’s all it can do. That’s why you people never get anywhere, you’re infatuated with accumulation, things, substance. What you don’t understand is that it’s process, that’s everything. Energy! The interplay of energy!’

He was staring not at Chegory but through him. Looking at something. A vision, perhaps. A vision distant in time and space.

‘I don’t know that I understand what you’re saying,’ said Chegory, ‘but I do know when I’m being insulted.’

‘Sorry,’ said Odolo. Then shuddered. As if a ghost had walked over his grave.

‘What is it?’ said Chegory. ‘Flashback?’

‘What’s that?’ said Odolo.

‘If you have taken zen,’ said Chegory, ‘then you’ll get these flashbacks, like me in the dark, you know. Sudden visions, that’s what they are.’

‘Oh,’ said Odolo, ‘I don’t think I’ve taken zen. I don’t — I don’t know what to think.’

But speculating about such unknowns took them most of the rest of the morning. Their conversation got steadily deeper and deeper as they made their way through (to give here their combined consumption rather than a breakdown by individual) seven cups of cinnamon coffee, four cups of tea, three plates of popadoms, two bowls of goat’s meat soup, a bowl of shrimps and then (it was not yet noon, but they were ready for lunch) two bowls of cassava and a couple of plates of fricasseed seagull with more coffee to go with it.

They had just finished the last of their seagull and the last of their coffee when the noon bells rang out to announce the end of istarlat and the start of salahanthara.

‘Well,’ said Odolo, pushing back his chair and rising from his table, ‘let’s be off, then.’

‘To where?’ said Chegory in surprise.

‘To the pink palace, of course. The Petitions Session starts shortly.’

‘I’m not going there!’

‘Of course you are. Where else can you go? You’ve no friends left to turn to. You could run away, flee into Zolabrik, take up with Jal Japone again. But you’ve told me already you don’t want to do that. So there’s only one thing left to do. Petition the Empress.’

‘But I’d get arrested if I-’

‘You can’t get arrested if you’re-’

‘Oh, if you’re a petitioner, fine, usually, but there’s a State of Emergency, there’s-’

‘Relax, relax,’ said Odolo. ‘I’m known to one and all at the palace as an imperial favourite. You won’t get into trouble, not when you’re with me. You’ll do good for yourself and good for me as well. You’ll get a pardon from the Empress, I swear to it. Better, when you tell of the pirates with the wishstone then the soldiers can start searching in earnest.’

‘Well,’ said Chegory, ‘maybe, maybe…’

‘Definitely!’ said Odolo.

Then the conjuror hustled young Chegory out of Gan-166 thorgruk and into the noonday heat through which they went, at a pace appropriate to the heat, up Skindik Way and then up Lak Street towards the pink palace standing in all its glory atop Pokra Ridge.

‘If this doesn’t work,’ said Chegory, as they sweated up Lak Street, ‘then I’m finished.’

‘Relax,’ said Odolo. ‘Whatever her faults, Justina’s merciful, I’ll give her that. You’ll get your pardon.’