‘Bloonland is all I’d ever known before coming here,’ Bozo began. ‘I never knew I’d miss it so much. Well, where to begin? First of all, Bloonland is this huge lump of cheese floating in space. The entire planet is as blue as a Bloon, and it’s full of craters, domes and hills, which make it a great place to play hide-and-seek.
‘It’s got two suns and three moons, so the sky is full of amazing sunsets and moonrises and eclipses with multicoloured light. Though I’ve got to admit we sometimes get a bit scared that one day the suns and moons will crash into each other.
‘But the best thing about Bloonland is that you can eat it. Actually, it’s the only thing there is to eat. The Storyteller says that the blue cheese you have here tastes something like it. You can suck on big rocks or slurp up powdered sand or just start chewing the ground and see how big a hole you can make.’
‘But how can you eat your own planet?’ Theo laughed. ‘What’s left to stand on?’
Although slightly piqued by the interruption, Bozo nodded. ‘We get a bit worried sometimes that we’ll eat too much and then there’ll be no Bloonland left,’ he carried on. ‘Luckily, one of the effects of eating the cheese is that it makes you forget to think about the future. It doesn’t help much with remembering stuff either, come to think of it. Maybe that’s the reason we don’t really know where we, the Bloons, came from.
‘Some think that we were space travellers roaming though the galaxies like nomads until we found somewhere to live. Then when we came across Bloonland and the Storyteller we didn’t see any reason to leave. Others think that maybe we’re actually part of Bloonland itself. That when the Storyteller arrived and began to tell the Story, the planet wanted to listen. So we slowly formed out of the rocks and dust, with big ears to hear the Story.’
‘Like listening is your strong point…’ Theo muttered.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Carry on.’
Bozo turned up his nose and continued: ‘Either way, no one remembers life before the Storyteller. It seems like he’s always been with us and no one can remember when the Story began. We don’t think about time the way you Hoomans do. With two suns and three moons, it gets pretty confusing. No one knows how old anyone is and no one has ever died. That’s why it’s so scary to see the Storyteller this way.
‘Everyone loves him, even though he’s not an easy guy to get to know. He just sits around on his old rock and does calculations on ancient parchments. Sometimes he sings under his breath in strange languages that none of us understands. Maybe he’s talking to the stars, but no one dares ask. Sometimes, when I did feel brave enough to ask him something, he didn’t even answer. I could see from the look in his eyes that he was really far away.’
‘So where does the Storyteller come from?’ Theo asked, burning with curiosity.
‘None of us knows that much about him. Not where he comes from or why he’s here,’ Bozo replied, thoughtfully. ‘There was only this one time he had a visitor. We came down to listen to the Story one day and found that the Storyteller was talking to another old man with a beard even longer than his.
‘We hid behind some rocks and watched them without making a sound. The stranger looked similar to the Storyteller – they could even have been brothers. But he wore a long, black cape and carried a leather bag. He was much more serious and business-like, too.
‘He pulled out some pages from his bag and read them in a stern voice to the Storyteller, who barely blinked. I noticed only that his eyes turned cold and blue. We couldn’t understand a word of what they said and eventually we drifted off to sleep. All through the night we woke to brief snatches of their conversation, especially when they started to argue. Yet it was always the newcomer who lost his temper. It was as though he wanted to convince the Storyteller of something.
‘When we woke with the rising of the second sun, the visitor was long gone. We didn’t know how he came or went, and we didn’t dare ask. We never found out what was going on. We were just happy that the Storyteller continued with the Story again the next evening.’
‘What’s the Story like?’ Theo asked. ‘I mean, obviously I know because I’m in it, but what’s it like to hear it?’
Bozo tilted back his head in dreamy recollection: ‘Ah, the Story! Every day, when the second moon rises, he tells us a new installment. Of course, it’s a million times too big to tell all of it, so he just takes out the funniest, strangest bits. Like how when Hoomans get nervous you start talking about the weather. Or how when you get lonely you worship the Hypnosis-box that every house has in the corner of the room. I still can’t get over the idea that I’m inside the Story!
‘When the Storyteller begins each night, he first closes his eyes and it’s like he sees it all before him. It feels as if instead of making it up he’s telling you about something that’s already happened. Like he’s reading off the headlines for you and he couldn’t change it if he wanted to.
‘But sometimes, especially in recent years, when he finished speaking I noticed that an occasional tear rolled down his cheek in the moonlight. I couldn’t understand how the weird and funny things that happened in the Story could upset him. But each day he seemed a little more thin and weary. He slumped on his rock and his beard turned from golden to grey and, finally, to bright white.
‘Every day before the second moon rose, the Storyteller closed his eyes for longer and longer before starting. It was as though he was having trouble choosing which parts of the Story to tell us. And when he spoke his voice was trembling and weary like he had something stuck in his throat. He’d smile and make us laugh, but I think we all knew deep down that he was suffering. When his coughing started, he couldn’t hide it any more.
‘We knew he was in trouble but we never talked about it. That’s not the Bloon way. Yet even when we were surfing down the dunes or getting drunk on the wine-streams, we knew something bad was going to happen. But we never had any idea he was dying. We’ve never seen anyone die in Bloonland. There was this one time when a Bloon called HubHub ate so much that he got round like a ball. One day he was rolling down the southside of the planet and he fell off the edge and kept on going. All we could do was throw as many rocks as we could after him so he wouldn’t get hungry. We never saw him again.
‘We guessed that it was the Story that was making the Storyteller sick. So we asked him to stop and maybe tell a new one that would make him feel better. He didn’t answer us – he almost never does – but we could see from the look in his eyes that he had no choice. He was so close to the Story that he couldn’t stop. It was too late.
‘Even now I wonder if that’s what the other old man was trying to tell him… .’