Bozo swung the door closed just seconds before the police motorbike rounded the corner. The officer paused to interrogate the driver of the milk-float, who hadn’t seen a thing but was complaining about a stolen carton of milk. The motorbike rolled on slowly as the policeman scanned the houses suspiciously.
The fugitives heaved a huge sigh of relief and wandered down the hall
way to the kitchen, where they could hear a kettle whistling. Along the corridor ceiling, suspended by thick ropes, hung flowerpots containing bundles of fragrant, dried herbs. Theo inhaled deeply and felt the fear and tension evaporate to be replaced by a sleepy contentment. He was walking through the unknown house of a stranger in a foreign country but he felt as though he was about to visit his grandmother.
They drifted into a large, tiled kitchen with long side windows that let in a leafy, chlorophyll light from the garden. Upon the kitchen table lay baskets of freshly baked bread, piles of cheese, pots of jam and marmalade, and three cups heaped with cocoa powder. The breakfast was accompanied by a note that read:
Theo walked over to the whistling kettle that had been trying to get his attention for some time now, jumping about on the stove. He filled the cups and joined Bozo in making a couple of enormous baguettes. The Bloon had already started but, as he ate half the fillings before they reached the bread, Theo soon caught up.
The usual flurry of questions that would be rattling through Theo’s mind seemed curiously absent. He felt strangely relaxed, and the chase with the police seemed to have happened long ago. He slipped on a pair of child’s leather sandals at the door and strolled out into the garden with the breakfast tray, Bozo at his side. As they emerged, the sun came out from behind the clouds to welcome them.
The grass in the centre of the garden grew high and wild, but the herb patches along the stone walls were in excellent condition. Green, leafy plants competed for space and offered enticing aromas as they passed. A sleek black cat emerged from the wild grass jungle and Bozo flinched. The feline showed no alarm at encountering a Bloon, however, and curled its body around Bozo’s ankles.
‘Looks like you’ve found a friend,’ Theo laughed, taking a bite out of an olive and balancing the cocoa on the tray. Bozo eyed the cat suspiciously and held his sandwich a little higher. The animal flirted with Theo’s feet for a moment before prancing off towards a vegetable patch where there squatted a mass of skirts and blouses that could only be described as enormous. The hefty figure gave a grunt and flew backwards into a bed of wild grass.
‘Help me up, then!’ a cheery voice called.
Theo set down his tray and hurried over. He found a ruddy-cheeked woman flat on her back with a bunch of uprooted carrots grasped triumphantly in her fist. She was a woman who had perhaps never been thought of as beautiful, but her eyes were bright blue and twinkled as she spoke.
‘You too, Bozo,’ she called. ‘You have to work for your breakfast around here!’
Even with Theo and Bozo pulling as hard as they could, it took Lou around five minutes to get upright again, mainly because she refused to loosen her grip on the carrots that had landed her there in the first place. Sweating and out of breath, Theo passed her a cup of cocoa and asked, ‘What would you have done if we hadn’t been here?’
‘But you are here,’ Lou smiled. ‘What kind of fortune-teller would I be if I hadn’t predicted that?’
She adjusted her colourful skirts and blouses as they flared in the breeze, revealing the occasional roll of pink fat. They drank their cocoa in contented silence and Theo couldn’t help but smile at the way Lou slurped her drink: she clearly couldn’t care less what anyone thought of her, and Theo liked her all the more for it.
‘How’s your cocoa?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Nice. Very sweet,’ Theo answered happily.
‘And have you thought, Theo, where sweetness comes from?’ Lou asked, looking down her nose at him like a schoolteacher.
He felt like he was sitting some kind of test and so chose his words very carefully. ‘I suppose sweetness is part of the Story?’ he offered hopefully.
‘Good, good. And where does the Story come from?’
A light dawned in Theo’s head. ‘You mean that if the Storyteller wrote the Story, then sweetness must come from him?’
‘You’re a bright boy, Theo.’ Lou smiled. ‘In fact, everything here comes from the Storyteller. Just imagine – before the old man began to tell the Story, it was all waiting inside his imagination. The source of everything in the world – the oceans and the continents, the skies and the forest, the animals and the Hoomans – it all comes from the Storyteller. Even pain,’ she mused.
A moment later Bozo howled in agony. A bee had landed on his sandwich and he almost swallowed it before being stung three times on the tongue. He jumped up and ran down the garden to the pond, where he plunged his head into the cold water for relief.
Lou smiled and continued: ‘It’s like this. The Storyteller must have woven other Tales before, but this was his most ambitious yet. He opened his mind and poured himself into a luxurious green and blue planet with millions of kinds of plants, insects and animals. So when you see moonlight dancing on the water of a lake, you’re seeing the magic of the Storyteller. When you take a spoonful of honey, you taste his sweetness. And when you see earthquakes and tornados tearing everything to pieces, you’re witnessing his anger and confusion.’
Bozo slouched back to take his seat beside them, his head dripping with water. His face was set in a sulk against all of the tiny, stinging creatures that the Storyteller had created in a thoughtless moment. Theo, on the other hand, looked around the beautiful garden in wonder – the bright colours of the flowers, the scents of the plants, the songs of the birds in the trees – it was all a projection of the Storyteller’s mind. He was speechless.
‘Thing is, it seems the Storyteller didn’t know where to stop,’ Lou continued. ‘He was so in love with the Story that he got carried away with himself and created the Hoomans.’
‘Even I could have told him that was a mistake,’ Bozo growled moodily, nursing his swollen tongue. Theo ignored him and listened intently as Lou continued.
‘Perhaps it was indeed a mistake. At first, though, he was too proud to admit to himself that he had gone too far. He thought the Hoomans his finest creation. Just as the animals and the trees took their beauty from the Storyteller’s imagination, so too the Hoomans were created to take their thoughts and feelings from his mind. Only it seems he didn’t know his mind well enough.’
Lou broke off and glanced up at a cloud formation that seemed to trouble her. As if to confirm a growing suspicion, she downed her cocoa in one and then set it down to examine the residue. ‘Hmm,’ she frowned. ‘I think we had best go inside before we’re seen.’
‘By who?’ Theo asked between mouthfuls of his sandwich.
‘By the Enemy,’ she answered grimly.
At these words Theo’s mellow state of contentment broke up into a fragmented sense of unease. He imagined some evil sorcerer scanning the country for him, and he had the sudden feeling that he was being watched. As he and Bozo followed Lou’s plump figure back to the house, he began to glance about him nervously. The sun ducked behind some ominous clouds and the whole garden took on a haunted aspect. A cool breeze stirred and the leaves on the bushes seemed to hiss. He hurried in through the kitchen door to the sound of the approaching whirr of a helicopter’s blades.
Lou closed the door and looked down at Theo with a frown. Her jolliness was gone, and Theo saw the age and wisdom in her face. He felt rather small in comparison. He was about to speak but the helicopter arrived overhead, drowning out his voice. The air seemed static with fear and, for a long, awful moment, he thought the machine was about to land on the roof of the house. He felt like he was going to scream, but then the drone of the blades passed on to another area of the neighbourhood.
‘Yes, Theo. They were looking for you.’ Lou looked down at him kindly and only when she put a hand on his cheek did he realise that he was trembling from head to foot. ‘Too young,’ she sighed. ‘I wonder why the Storyteller chose someone so small to come and do all this….’ ‘Why are they looking so hard for me?’ Theo asked with a shiver. After all, there were runaway children all over the world and helicopters didn’t come after them.
‘That is something you must learn for yourself,’ Lou announced firmly. ‘It’s time for you to see what’s going on. Follow me. You too, Bozo. This concerns the life and death of the Storyteller himself.’
Bozo nodded and followed close behind Theo as Lou led them along the corridor to a wooden trapdoor in the floor that led to a dark basement. Bozo often went quiet whenever Theo was upset or scared. Fear and sadness weren’t very common in Bloonland, and he didn’t know how to deal with them. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.
The wooden steps leading to the basement creaked loudly and the air was thick so it was hard to breathe. When Theo and Bozo reached to the bottom, Lou closed and locked the trapdoor. Everything went dark. Theo heard a scurrying and he stood absolutely still, convinced that at any moment a rat would run over his feet. In the darkness he could hear the rustle of Lou’s skirts as she passed him and moved around, looking for something. ‘Aha!’ she cried, and struck a match. A lantern began to glow dimly and Lou moved around lighting other candles around the room. Presently their eyes adjusted well enough to the gloom and they could make out a small wooden table with three wooden stools. In the centre of the table was something covered with a cloth. The room’s walls were lined with mirrors which reflected the candlelight, and Theo had the sudden sensation of being inside a church. Lou lit some incense and motioned for the pair to come and sit. They took their places at the table and, though it might have been a trick of the light, it seemed to Theo that whatever was beneath the cloth trembled slightly and gave off a faint illumination.
‘There are some things, boys, which must be seen to be believed,’ Lou began. ‘But believing isn’t enough on its own. You must understand. Bozo, do you remember the very first time the Storyteller sat down to tell you the Story?’
Bozo thought for a moment and then shook his head: ‘No. It seemed like the Story was always there.’ He paused, his brow furrowed deep in thought. ‘I know I haven’t heard it all,’ he said, finally, ‘because some of the older Bloons used to reminisce about when the Hoomans thought the world was flat, and how they were scared their ships might fall off the edge. And how angry they were when someone worked out that the planet was round.’
He chuckled for a moment and then grew wistful. ‘We could only ever remember bits and pieces of the Story…. I wish I could hear it now. I mean, it’s great to be inside it and all, but I really miss the old Storyteller. He seems so far away.’
‘Maybe he’s not quite as far as you think,’ Lou laughed, and, with a flourish, she whipped off the cloth. An explosion of blinding white light filled the room and they were forced to shield their eyes. Gradually, the intensity of the light faded and they were able to lower their arms to see a radiant crystal ball, pulsing with energy.
‘Put your hands on the sides of the ball, Bozo, and think of Bloonland,’ said Lou.
Slowly, Bozo reached out his skinny blue arms, his desire to see his home overcoming his fear. No sooner had his fingers neared the sides than they were sucked in like magnets. His hands were glued to the glass and his entire body began to shake as though conducting a fierce current. He calmed down a little only when the milky white interior of the crystal orb began to take form and colour. The clouds parted and he gasped as the familiar cheese slopes of Bloonland came into view.
The Bloons were gathered around the Storyteller and tears ran down Bozo’s cheeks as he watched: ‘There’s Dizzy, Dazy and Dozy – half-asleep as usual,’ he whispered ecstatically. ‘And there’s Nipi and Lipi in the front row – probably interrupting with too many questions. And the Storyteller is talking but the second moon is going down. He must be nearing the end of tonight’s chapter....’ He looked up at Lou. ‘Does this thing have sound?’
But no sooner had he asked than each of them heard inside their heads the deep, rolling voice of the Storyteller.
And so, hunted by the authorities, Bozo and his Hooman friend, Theo, found themselves hiding in the house of an old fortune-teller in France. Hoomans have always paid handsomely to hear about the future, failing to realise that it comes soon enough by itself. All they have to do is wait.
Of course, there had always been Hoomans who made a living from revealing the secrets of the future that were buried in the present. In a seed there is a tree; in a child a grown man; and so, too, encoded in the moment are a thousand possible futures. Most fortune-tellers soon learnt that it was more profitable to tell Hoomans what they wanted to hear, though. When they told their customers that everything would be fine, they were showered with gold. No one would pay to hear that a long life of bad weather and toothache lay before them.
Yet even most of the talented fortune-tellers failed to see that our intentions and feelings are as much part of the moment as anything. By listening to the compass of our own hearts, the future can be steered in a number of directions….
The fortune-teller who sheltered Bozo and the Hooman boy understood these things better than most, and she gave them the chance to see things for themselves. She took them into the depths of her home, where she revealed a crystal ball – one of the originals molded 10,000 years ago from a tear of one of the last dragons in the mountains of Tibet.
Bozo took the ball in his hands and cried with happiness as he watched his fellow Bloons jump up and down with joy on learning that their absent companion was watching them even as they saw him in the Story…
The Storyteller stopped and his eyes faded back to a neutral amber. The last wisps of his words still floated in front of the Bloons, and they saw a Bloon gazing into a crystal ball that showed a crowd of Bloons gazing at the image of a Bloon gazing into a crystal ball…. When the Story faded in front of their eyes, the Bloons looked around, excited in the knowledge that they were being watched. A whisper passed through the crowd and a suppressed giggle was heard as they agreed on what to do: in one smooth wave, they all bent over and shook their behinds in the direction they supposed Bozo was watching.
Bozo fell back laughing and did a reverse somersault into a corner of the room, his stool tumbling to the ground. ‘Those Bloons!’ he cried. ‘A laugh a minute!’ He picked himself up and resumed his seat. ‘And the Storyteller looked in good shape too, don’t you think? Perhaps we’re doing him some good already.’
Theo nodded uncertainly. It seemed to him that the old man had put on his best face for the sake of the Bloons. The moment he finished speaking, he seemed frail and broken like a dying tree. The image brought a lump to Theo’s throat. He turned his attention to the crystal ball that now swirled milky white again. ‘Can I try?’ he asked timidly.
Lou nodded. Theo stretched out his thin, pale hands and they were sucked in hard against the orb that seemed hungry for his touch. At once the three of them saw the image of Pierre being interrogated by the police in the front-room of his house. He was being shown the pictures of Theo in the newspaper, and his face expressed an artful look of shock and disbelief. He shrugged as if to say he had no idea where Theo could be. It was clear from his eyes that he was thoroughly enjoying all the attention. Theo felt a stab of pain as he thought of his friend’s mangled bicycle back in the street.
‘Don’t worry, Theo. Pierre’s uncle is buying him a new one for his birthday next week.’ Theo looked up at Lou in astonishment but, before he could ask how she had read his thought, the orb again demanded his attention. He now saw Simon preaching from his soapbox to a mildly interested mongrel – yet he delivered his speech with as much enthusiasm and drive as if he addressed a crowd of thousands.
The image faded and they saw Michelle step out of an expensive restaurant with a well-dressed man on each arm. Despite their protests, she kissed them both on the forehead and climbed into a taxi that had pulled up for her without being hailed. Theo had no idea how she could have talked her way out of trouble with the police, but he had the feeling that Michelle could certainly look after herself.
The scene shifted to St Jude’s Hospital, where Nurse Sandra was reading the newspaper on her coffee break. The article was about Theo’s escape and she had a worried look on her face. Theo wished he could comfort her somehow. Suddenly Dr Bunsen snatched the newspaper from her hands and the crystal ball filled with his face. Angry and spiteful, his eyes burnt red with hatred as he read the headlines.
Theo let go of the orb. ‘Why does he hate me so much?’ he yelled. ‘What did I ever do to him?’
‘You exist,’ Lou said calmly. ‘And every time he sees you he’s reminded of all he has lost and all he will never be. He’s a very sick man and he’s not alone.’ She sighed and gave Theo’s hand a squeeze. ‘I know you want the answers to many questions, and today you will learn much – more, perhaps, than you would like to know. The crystal ball will show you many things, and I will try to explain as best I can. But you must know that each of the AOs sees things a little differently. I can only offer you the truth as I understand it.’
Theo nodded, quite sure that any explanation Lou gave him would be good enough. Until now he’d only had a head full of questions: Why was the Storyteller dying? Who was the Enemy? And what on earth could Theo do about it? First things first, he told himself. ‘What is wrong with the Storyteller?’ he asked.
Lou gestured towards the crystal ball. ‘Touch the ball and ask the question in your mind,’ she declared gravely.
Theo obediently set his hands on either side of the milky orb and again they were drawn in with a static hiss. The ball burnt bright red and yellow, and the flames burnt Theo’s hands. He cried out in pain but held on as the vision panned back to show a bonfire licking around the feet of an old woman. She was tied to a wooden stake and her face was wracked with fear and pain. She begged for help but the crowd just jeered and spat.
‘The burning of the witches,’ Lou whispered softly. ‘They threw her in a river and, because she didn’t drown, they decided she must be a witch.’
Theo’s eyes widened, appalled.
The orb now showed an old sailing ship rocking across the ocean. The view zoomed in on the deck and then down to the hold, where hundreds of African men and women were chained to cramped shelves. The air was thick with flies and the sound of people moaning in utter misery. One and all were sick, dirty and dying.
‘The slave ships,’ Lou said. ‘More than half the Africans on board died before they reached America. Those that survived then had to work in the fields for their Hooman masters.’
Tears flowed in a steady stream down both Theo and Bozo’s faces, but they could not tear their eyes from these awful revelations. The crystal ball took them through the gruesome scenes of a hundred bloody wars, and Lou named the worst of them. They saw concentration camps, where skinny, ashen-faced workers laboured until they dropped of exhaustion. Then they were murdered and fed to the chimneys.
They saw naked tribes in woods and deserts being hunted by other Hoomans with guns. They saw vast forests slashed and burnt, chemical waste poured into the rivers and seas, and the sky filling with poisonous smoke. They saw planes flying over jungles and dropping endless bombs on the valleys below.
Finally, they saw one plane drop a single bomb that landed on an island where hundreds of thousands of people died in one moment: the awful, collective scream of the dying rose to an unbearable crescendo, and Theo had to wrench his hands free of the ball and clap them around his ears. The orb filled with a great mushroom cloud, and then grew still and dark.
Theo and Bozo wept for several minutes, leaning upon one another in grief. The world had not seemed a perfect place, but they could never have imagined that such suffering and evil were possible. How could it be true? How could people do that kind of thing to one another? They sobbed without restraint, consoled only by having each other near.
Bozo was the first to speak: ‘The Storyteller never ... I mean, he never told us about any of this.’ He waved his hand towards the dark crystal ball.
Lou nodded sadly. ‘It is as we feared,’ she said. ‘He could not bear to see it either, and closed his mind to it all. He chose to look elsewhere and told only the things that you would find beautiful or funny.’
‘Why doesn’t he do something about it?’ Theo spluttered in rage and grief. ‘Why doesn’t he stop people doing these terrible things to each other?’
Lou leaned close. ‘It is the work of the Enemy.’
‘Simon said that too,’ Theo sniffed. ‘But who is the Enemy?’
‘Do you still not know?’ she inquired, flicking a glance at the crystal ball. Theo turned pale at the thought of consulting that awful orb again but his trembling hands already reached out for the answer. Who is the Enemy? he asked silently, and held his breath as a picture began to form. He halfexpected it might be Dr Bunsen, or maybe the dark sorcerer of his fearful imaginings. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
The crystal ball showed an old man sitting on a rock, his face sewn into a writhing, contorted mask of anger and hatred. His eyes boiled in their sockets and his teeth were bared like a slavering wolf. His skin was screwed up tight and his hair blew wildly in the wind.
It was the Storyteller.
Bozo screamed in dismay and stared at the orb in utter dread.
‘What’s going on?’ Theo cried, pulling his hands away in panic. ‘What’s this supposed to mean?’
‘The Storyteller is the Enemy,’ Lou said gravely. She bit her nails as she looked for the words to make things clear to her young guest. ‘Theo, you remember I told you in the garden that the Storyteller created the Hoomans to draw their thoughts and feelings from his own mind? Well, at first they inherited only his sense of humour and beauty, his feelings of friendship and romance. Alas, however, they went too deep and awoke something terrible. Inside some hidden corner of the Storyteller’s imagination lay a dormant seed of evil. Just as the Hoomans drew their laughter and love from his mind, they also tapped into deep currents of fear, anger and cruelty.
‘As the Hoomans began to embody these dark forces, the seed of evil in the Storyteller’s mind grew in strength until it waged war against his better nature. The Story became the battleground.’
‘So why doesn’t he just stop?’ Theo asked, bewildered. ‘If the Story brings out his evil nature, why doesn’t he stop telling it?’
Lou shook her head. ‘It’s too late. Maybe if he had realised early enough, he could have done something about it. But now he has invested too much of himself into the Story. It has become a part of him. He would never survive putting an end to the Story, and that’s why we guess it can never survive without him.
‘The Storyteller’s mind is split. On one side, he’s his old self, filling the Story with the love and laughter that has kept Hoomans going for thousands of years. On the other, he is the Enemy, urging us to lie, to cheat and to hate. And, if we listen, to hurt, destroy and kill.’
‘But how come we never saw the Storyteller look like that in Bloonland?’ Bozo protested, not quite trusting this strange, ruddy-faced woman.
‘In Bloonland he is his normal self. He would never dream of hurting anyone and loves all of you Bloons more than you can imagine.’ Lou rubbed her forehead with her fingers and sighed. ‘The evil part of his mind that we call the Enemy lives only in the Story. It causes the pain and suffering you have seen today, and each time it does, the Storyteller dies a little more.’
‘So how has he managed to survive all the terrible things we saw?’ Bozo argued, torn up to think that there could be any evil in the old man that he had loved all his life.
‘Until recently, the evils in the Story were distant and sporadic. Sometimes the Enemy grew strong for a while and unspeakable things were done. But then the better side of the Storyteller prevailed and Hoomans made peace again.
‘The technology of the 20th century has changed everything. Fear, hatred and murder can encircle the world in a matter of minutes. A voice on a radio can incite millions to rise in violence. A push of a button can destroy an entire country. The Enemy is stronger than ever before. Greed and abuse fill the Story, causing Hoomans to harm and exploit one another. The Storyteller cannot stand much more,’ Lou concluded, shaking her head sadly. ‘What does the Enemy want? What will happen if he wins?’ Theo asked.
Lou looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘He wants only the end. He is the death wish of the Storyteller, a seed of self-destruction that threatens to kill its host. The Enemy desires to see the Story corrupted, plundered and poisoned from within. If you do not find a cure, Theo, then the Storyteller will die of a broken heart.’
There was a moment’s silence. The room was so quiet that they could almost hear their own minds hard at work. The orb now swirled milky white again as though nothing had happened. The light it gave was reflected in the mirrors and then blended with the rising smoke of the candles.
Lou cleared her throat. ‘The last thing you must understand, boys, is that the Enemy knows you are here. He is part of the Storyteller’s mind and so knows all that he knows. You, Theo, are the one chance to save the Storyteller, and the Enemy will do all he can to stop you.
‘The Enemy can plant thoughts in the minds of people. He can influence the Story just as the Storyteller can, perhaps even more. He has certainly convinced the authorities that you are a runaway child who must be found at all costs.’
From up above they suddenly heard an enormous crash and the sound of many pairs of heavy boots.
‘What was that?’ Theo gasped, his heart trying to break out of his chest.
‘I expect it was my front door being knocked down by the police. Someone must have seen you come in.’
‘Didn’t you foresee that?’ Bozo grinned.
‘No one knows the future, my Bloon. It hasn’t happened yet.’ Lou smiled. She gathered her skirts and rose to her feet, taking a lantern with her to the far end of the basement. ‘Still, we can make some pretty good guesses and prepare as best we can.’
She lifted an old, dusty carpet that was rolled up in the corner, and pulled back a long curtain to reveal two large wooden shutters. She yanked them open and Theo saw to his amazement an earthy tunnel big enough to walk along at a crouch.
‘My knees aren’t what they were – would you help me, boys?’ Lou asked. They pushed as hard as they could and finally she clambered up into the tunnel. They jumped up behind her. They heard the splintering of wood as an axe came through the trapdoor and daylight poured into the basement. They closed the shutters of the tunnel and found themselves in complete darkness. Lou struck a match and a dull glow emitted from a lantern that she held in her hand.
The tunnel was moist and stuffy. They followed her with their heads bent low. Presently, the tunnel began to rise and they could see cracks of daylight ahead. Lou pushed aside a covering of vines and they found themselves at the foot of her garden. The fortune-teller glanced back at the house that was now crawling with officers of the law, and unrolled the carpet she’d been carrying with a flourish. ‘Come on, boys – hop on!’
Theo and Bozo stepped on to the carpet uncertainly. ‘Now what?’ Theo asked. ‘Shouldn’t we try to run or something?’
‘Running won’t get you where you need to go,’ Lou laughed. ‘You’re going by air!’
This was too much for Theo. ‘Oh, come on. You expect me to believe that this carpet is going to fl y ?’ he said, his hands on his hips.
‘Believe. Don’t believe. Your future is yours to make. Either you go with this carpet or you go with them.’ She jerked a thumb back at the police, who had just caught sight of the fugitives. A great cry went up and officers began to run towards them with their truncheons drawn.
‘OK,’ Theo muttered. ‘Carpet – up!’ Nothing happened and his head drooped. ‘I knew it wouldn’t work.’