Life as a stowaway had always seemed a romantic idea to Theo. In the comics he read, it was one way to be sure of an adventure. The trouble with adventures, he had come to realise in the past few weeks, was that they were often dangerous, uncomfortable and even downright boring at times. Staying hidden meant that he was stuck in the hold for most of the day, and all he could do was count the hours until nightfall. Then he risked a stroll around the decks. Each night he went to bed later as he watched the waxing moon set. Before it melted into the ocean, the grapefruit moon cast a silver bridge across the waves and the chinks of light danced upon the water. More than once Theo thought he saw the Storyteller in the dazzling collage of images – but he was gone in the time it took to blink.
Bozo spent a great deal of time chatting with Raj below decks and Theo felt a little left out. He couldn’t follow the silent discourse the two shared, and when they broke into laughter he forced a smile but had no idea what was so funny. When Bozo wasn’t talking to Raj, he was on the prowl in the kitchens, and the head chef grew more enraged by the day. ‘I’ve lost seven Swiss cheeses, three bags of cakes and a case of wine in the last three days,’ he complained to the captain.
As the circus performers were the only passengers on board the cargo ship, they were summoned to account for themselves.
‘As if I were even capable of eating so much. With a figure like mine,’ Parvati sniffed. ‘I should have thought you would be more sensitive to a lady, captain.’
The captain, an old sea dog from Portugal, sighed: ‘To be honest, ma’am, I couldn’t care less about the food. But the wine – that’s another story.’
‘Are you suggesting that my princess is an alcoholic?’ Marv yelled, turning red in the face and puffing out his stout chest.
‘Your princess?’ Parvati sneered. ‘Let me tell you, you miserable little trickster, that’s something I will never be.’
‘You ungrateful harlot! You’d be doing back flips in the street for spare coins if not for me.’
‘Sir, please…’ the captain interrupted.
‘And my prospects would be better than they are now, I expect. My mother would die of shame to see me in such a fleabag circus as this.’
‘Madam, please…’
‘I have it on good information that your mother did die of shame.’
‘SILENCE!’ the captain shouted at last, and both Marv and Parvati turned to stare at him in shock.
‘Why, captain, I wonder if it wasn’t you who drank all that wine,’ Parvati remarked. ‘You’ve certainly got a bad temper from somewhere.’ With that she sauntered off to her cabin to try out a new hairstyle.
The captain, Marv and Buntee watched her depart in awe. Whether or not she was of royal lineage, they agreed with the clown when he concluded that she certainly acted like one.
Buntee finished the banana he was eating and tossed the peel over the edge but the wind blew it straight back on to the deck. ‘If we’re all done here, I’ll go and check on Raj. He seems to have something of a headache today,’ he said. He turned around, slipped on his own banana skin and was prevented from falling overboard only by crashing on top of Marv.
‘You fool!’ the magician yelled from beneath him. ‘Get off me or, for my next trick, I’ll turn you into shark food.’
After that the captain lost patience and ordered the entire ship to be searched. The crew went through every cabin and cargo hold until at last they reached Raj’s trailer. There they discovered 12 empty wine bottles, a hungover elephant and a rather well-fed young boy.
‘What have we got here, then?’ the captain laughed.
‘A freeloader! A stowaway!’ Marv yelled. ‘I’ll throw him overboard myself, captain!’ He dashed at Theo but a grey trunk wrapped around his waist and flipped him ten metres across the deck of the hold. He landed in a heap and began to moan with pain but no one paid him any attention.
‘Poor darling,’ Parvati cried. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Erm, I ran away to join the circus?’ Theo offered, not knowing quite where to look.
‘Oh, how cute!’ she cried. ‘And what can you do?’
‘What could a brat like that possibly do?’ Marv grunted, pulling himself to his feet. ‘He’s barely old enough to blow his nose.’ He lurched forwards menacingly but then caught Raj’s eye and held back. No one messes with an elephant with a hangover.
‘Tell him you can do magic tricks,’ Bozo mumbled from his bed in the straw. From the tone of his voice, it was evident he’d had his share of the wine the night before.
‘I can do magic,’ Theo repeated, to the amazement of all.
‘Oh, really?’ Marv sneered. ‘I suppose you know how to make a bag of cakes disappear in record time?’
‘Now, now, give the young chap a chance,’ the captain intervened. ‘After all, everyone has to start somewhere. Go on, young man. Show us what you can do.’
Bozo raised himself and picked up a squashed, black banana. ‘Er, I can make bananas fly through the air,’ Theo declared, pointing at Bozo. His audience gasped: all they could see was a banana being peeled as it floated through the air. They watched, mesmerised by this stunning display of telekinesis. Marv froze in horror and disbelief as the banana grew closer and then squashed all over his face.
‘Bravo!’ the captain cheered.
‘Yes, what a talent,’ Parvati smiled. Then she turned her beautiful brown eyes to the captain: ‘Captain, might we not find a cabin for the young sorcerer?’ She accompanied her request by batting her long eyelashes in a way that few men in the world would have been able to refuse.
The captain was not one of them. ‘I …I don’t see any reason why not,’ he said. ‘Come along, young man. Let’s find you a change of clothes. It looks like you’ve been wearing those for about a fortnight.’
After that, life on board the ship changed dramatically for Theo. Parvati took every opportunity to spoil him and gave him lessons in acrobatics each morning on deck. ‘Life will make you turn cartwheels, my dear, so you might as well be prepared,’ she laughed, when she came to rouse him each morning.
Marv did little but send him dagger glances and Theo did all he could to avoid the magician. From the puzzled but hateful look in Marv’s eyes, it was clear he was dying to know how Theo had pulled the trick with the banana. Sometimes Theo felt a chill run down his spine and would turn to see Marv glaring at him from the other side of the deck, muttering darkly under his breath.
Bozo still slept in Raj’s trailer and the two were getting along famously, although it was quite impossible to know what they were saying.
‘I’m learning all about India,’ Bozo announced one day. ‘It sounds like my kind of place. They have the same word for “yesterday” as for “tomorrow”; their cows walk freely everywhere, causing traffic jams; and, best of all – get this – their gods have blue skin. Just like Bloons!’
Buntee often accompanied Theo on his visits to Raj’s trailer. The clown enjoyed Theo’s company as much as Theo appreciated his. Buntee was just a little too foolish to make friends with the other adults on board.
‘Judge a man by the company he keeps,’ Buntee laughed. ‘And if I’m to be judged for hanging around with elephants and kids, then that’s fine with me.’
Buntee cleaned out the straw each day from the trailer, and made sure the elephant had enough water and food. Theo often helped him wash the creature with buckets of water and a broom. Sometimes Raj picked Theo up afterwards and gave him a seat on his back. Theo grew a little more used to the elephant but his heart never failed to skip a beat in sheer awe when Raj drew close.
‘I’m so glad our tour is over,’ Buntee reflected on the last day of the voyage. ‘It was great to see the world, yaar, but I love my India.’
‘What did you think of Jerusalem?’ Theo asked from his seat behind Raj’s ears.
‘Tcssh! All those religions fighting over one place – and all certain that they’re right. In India we accept everything. For example, the Elephant God, Ganesh, rides upon a rat. So even the rodents are sacred.’ Buntee gazed into the eyes of Raj as though he saw a god there.
‘But these mad desert religions,’ he continued. ‘They think they have the only way. In India we tell a story about this way of thinking. There is this elephant, and one day five blind men come to visit. They each grab hold of a part and are asked to say what they think it is:
“It’s a snake,” the first says, holding the trunk.
“No, a tree trunk,” says the next, grabbing a foot.
“Are you crazy? It’s a silk sheet,” the third concludes, feeling the ear.
“More like a piece of string,” the fourth argues, holding the tail.
“Guys, it’s just an old bone,” the last one insists, running the tusk through his hands.’
‘But it’s the same elephant,’ Theo grinned.
‘Exactly,’ Buntee agreed emphatically, before getting his foot stuck in a bucket and tumbling backwards into the straw.
The best part of the voyage was getting to hang out on the captain’s bridge. Each day, the captain invited Theo to come and check their position on the radar screens and read the weather forecast. The ship was an old junk but some of the navigation devices were quite modern.
‘In the old days we navigated by the stars,’ the captain told him. ‘But that wasn’t much use when it was cloudy. Now we’ve got GPS and computerised maps to make sure we don’t get lost.’
The sun was setting after yet another glorious day, and Theo stood by the captain’s side as the golden orb sank into a fiery bed. On the screen Theo could see the Indian coastline wasn’t far off. The captain reckoned they’d be there by early the next morning.
Just then a small alarm sounded and a message arrived on the computer screen. The captain frowned and checked the radio for any weather warnings. There were none.
‘That’s odd,’ he murmured, looking out at the eastern horizon. ‘There’s no mention of a storm on the airwaves but the monitor shows some heavy rain coming our way. It must be the last gasp of the monsoon.’
‘The monsoon?’ Theo asked.
‘Where you come from, rain is something you can count on all year round,’ the captain explained. ‘Here in the tropics, it has a season to itself and then all but disappears for the rest of the year. You can imagine the trouble it causes when it doesn’t arrive on time.’
The captain spoke calmly but it was clear from the look in his eyes that he was nervous about the incoming storm. The waves were already getting choppy and a strong wind had begun to blow. The sunset still glowed in the western sky but to the east the clouds were dark and ominous.
‘I think you’d better run along to your cabin, young man.’ The captain smiled grimly. ‘It could be a rough night coming up.’
Theo didn’t want to be alone during a storm, so he headed in the direction of the cargo hold to join Raj and Bozo. But before he could reach the steps, someone jumped out and grabbed his arm, twisting it painfully up his back.
‘Nasty storm on its way,’ Marv hissed. His breath stank of whisky and old tobacco. ‘Some big waves. No one would notice if a little stowaway washed overboard. Tell me, what good would your banana tricks do you then?’
‘Leave me alone!’ Theo yelled, struggling to break free, but the magician was strong and he tightened his grip, causing Theo to gasp in pain.
‘Leave me alone,’ Marv mimicked in a squeaky voice. ‘In this world, boy, there are the predators and the prey. The hunters and the hunted. The eaters and those that get eaten. And right now, I guess you know on which side you find yourself.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Parvati shrieked as she emerged from her cabin, somehow managing to look chic in a plastic raincoat.
Marv gave Theo a Chinese burn on the wrist and let him go. ‘And that, my boy, is how to do a half-nelson. It looks like it’s getting dark now, so we’ll continue the wrestling lessons tomorrow. Good evening to you, Parvati. Quite some weather we’re having.’
Marv bowed to Parvati and walked off down the deck, making a slitthroat gesture to Theo as he departed. Parvati glared at the magician and hurried down to comfort Theo. She found him nursing his arm and trembling with shock, but she mistook it for cold. ‘Come, my little stowaway. You’re going to need a jacket on a night like this.’
A driving rain had begun to fall and the waves were capped with foam as the wind began to howl. The ship started to heave and pitch, and the crew ran around, fastening hatches and securing the decks. Parvati found a waterproof jacket for Theo, and they would have stayed in her cabin but Buntee arrived and persuaded them to come down to the hold.
‘But it smells of elephant down there,’ Parvati whined. However, given the choice of staying above deck alone or getting her new raincoat dirty, she pouted and followed them below.
‘This is all very cosy,’ Bozo laughed, as he watched them arrive. I don’t suppose anyone thought of bringing anything to eat?’
No one else had food on the brain for the next couple of hours, though. As the ship reeled and lurched and swung about, Buntee’s face turned bright green. Parvati grew more faint with each creak and roll. They could hear enormous waves buffet the sides and spray across the deck. The rain hammered down above like it was angry, and the wind screamed eerily about the ship.
Then there was a long, jagged fork of lightning that seemed very close and a few seconds later a drum roll of thunder followed. After that, every few seconds they could see through the portholes that the sky turned electric-blue with lightning. The thunder was so loud they clapped their hands over their ears.
No one spoke in the hold. They had instinctively drawn closer to the warmth and protection of Raj, who stood passively throughout the show. Parvati began to sob and Buntee dared to wrap an arm around her shoulders in comfort. A fork of lightning hit the sea not far away and there was an enormous hiss as the electric was absorbed. The thunder that followed was a deafening monologue and seemed as though it were some ancient language.
‘What does it want from us?’ Parvati wept. ‘I just want to be home again.’
‘Easy, princess. It will soon be over,’ Buntee murmured, stroking her hair.
‘And the salt spray will ruin my hair.’
‘We’ll find you a hat or something until you can get to your beauty parlour.’
‘And has my little stowaway got his jacket on?’
‘Theo? Why he’s …hey, where’s he gone?’
While the others had heard nothing but pounding drums in the thunder, Bozo and Theo heard the message loud and clear. This time Theo needed no translation as the storm clouds called out: ‘Theo! Theo! Come out and meet your maker!’
They exchanged grave looks and crawled out on to the deck to meet the challenge. Bozo lashed them to a pole with his tail and, though huge waves crashed over them, he held firm. The rain drove into their faces but they squinted up into the dense black skies in search of the voice. The storm clouds began to shift and mould into the shape of a face. They swirled and merged until they formed an unmistakable profile.
It was the Enemy.
In every way he resembled the Storyteller, but with none of the kindness or love in the face. His eyes were swirls of angry black clouds and his expression was gaunt and grey. Lightning danced around the edges of his cheeks and cast long shadows over his face. The lips moved and a thunderous voice bellowed, ‘Fool! Do you really think you can undo in a few weeks what took me thousands of years to create?’
‘What do you want?’ Theo cried, steeling his heart for the encounter. The Enemy’s face contorted in a sneer of black vapour and the sky rippled as he spoke: ‘Do you not know? I want to see every tree rot and fall, every stream poisoned and the skies filled with toxic fumes. I want all laughter and joy to be choked. All love and trust to be betrayed and broken. I want the Story itself to shrivel up and die.’
‘But why?’ Theo shouted. ‘Why do you hate the Story so much? The Storyteller…’
‘The Storyteller is an old fool,’ the Enemy interrupted. ‘He is a pathetic dreamer and he is going to die. He denied the dark side to his mind and now he will pay the price.’
‘He is not going to die,’ Theo yelled furiously into the air. The rain increased in strength so that it pounded on his head like nails. The wind bit viciously into his neck.
‘Oh really? And I suppose you’re going to save him? You and that blue food monster. What makes you think you have a chance? You’re a very small child in way over your head. Your mind has been filled with the lies of the so-called Awakened Ones. But what do they know about anything? You found your face in a book written by a madman and you call it a prophecy?
‘Do you really think that I’d let a few meddling Hoomans thwart my plans laid over millennia? It’s too late to save the Story, Theo, and it’s too late to save your friends. Like the Sandman buried in his own dust, all those who have helped you have met with terrible ends. They’re dead, each and every last one of them. You were like the touch of death to them, Theo, as I laid waste to everyone who came in contact with you.’
‘No, no!’ Theo sobbed, biting his lip.
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Bozo urged. ‘Can’t you see he’s lying? He’s telling you your worst fears so that you’ll want to give up.’
‘Lies?’ The Enemy cackled in a long, rumbling clap of thunder. ‘Do I need to lie? I, who can summon winds and storm, hail and lightning? I, who can inspire dread and hatred, greed and madness in the minds of the pure?’
In his heart, Theo knew Bozo was right, but his head span with the fears and doubts stirred by the Enemy’s taunts. ‘It’s not over yet,’ he found himself shouting defiantly. ‘There’s still time.’
‘But why bother?’ And now the Enemy spoke with a gentle menace. ‘Don’t you see how much easier it would be to lie down and surrender to the inevitable? To let the ocean claim you and to rest in peace? The Storyteller is going to die anyway. How much longer do you think you’ll live without him? ‘I have fear and dread at my disposal, anger and lust. What do you have?’
Theo shivered in the rain and gritted his teeth as he yelled back, ‘Hope!’
‘And friendship!’ Bozo shouted, breaking free. One look at the contorted features of the Enemy in the clouds sent him darting back behind Theo, however.
‘If I wanted to speak to Bloons, I’d spread my poison in Bloonland instead of within the Story,’ the Enemy sneered. ‘Hope? Tell me, what kind of madness is that?
‘And what good are hope and friendship when you’re lost at sea?’
With these words, a blinding bolt of lightning surged from the sky and struck the ship’s bridge. Masses of glass and wood came tumbling down and a fire ignited above. The Enemy’s face melted back into a storm cloud and lightning struck the ship’s hull and aft, causing the vessel to shudder ominously. The ship rode up an enormous wave and then careered down the other side into a dark valley of swirling ocean. The next wave crashed on to the deck with such force that it put out the fire, but the ship began to take in water.
‘Say, “Bye, bye boat,” ’ a new but familiar voice hissed. Theo turned to see Marv standing at his side with an iron bar in his hand. The magician had a mean, possessed look in his eyes and his mouth formed a snarl: ‘They say that death by drowning is very peaceful. Now jump!’
Theo froze in horror and closed his eyes as Marv swung the iron bar behind his head. But as he waited for the blow to fall another huge wave swamped the deck. Marv gripped his weapon so tightly that he’d forgotten to hold on to anything else. With a terrible cry, he was knocked off his feet and swept overboard.
Theo leaned against the railings to look over the side but the magician was gone. As the storm raged, the boy stood and stared at the convulsions of the furious ocean. One minute, Marv had been a pulsating, murderous presence at his side; the next, no more than a terrible memory under the unforgiving mountains of waves.
Bozo appeared at Theo’s side and wrapped his tail around his friend. ‘That was a pretty good disappearing act for a finale,’ he remarked.
Theo stared back at him, badly shaken from the ordeal of the last half an hour. He opened his mouth to reply but in the same moment the ship was struck again by another bolt and everything seemed to happen at once. A clap of thunder sent them to their bellies in fear, and the main structure of the bridge tumbled down, narrowly missing them. The entire ship shook and it began to list to one side. Waves swept over the deck and the air was full of shouts and screams from various parts of the ship.
The skies flashed with electric and the moments became strobe-like, each following the next in an awful slow motion. The captain crawled partly out of the remnants of the bridge and yelled, ‘Abandon ship! Man the lifeboat!’
But though the crew began running to and fro to get the lifeboat in the water, the captain simply lay where he was. Theo ran over to help but found that the old man was trapped under a pile of rubble too heavy to be moved.
‘I’ll run and get help,’ Theo cried, but the captain shook his head.
‘No, no, my boy. Leave me be. My body is broken and soon my spirit will be free. Save yourselves and the others while there’s time.’ He winced in pain and coughed as a wave broke over his head. He summoned all his strength to give Theo a final smile: ‘Be brave, young man. Don’t you know every captain should be proud to go down with his ship?’
Then the captain shouted something to one of his sailors, and Theo felt a pair of arms lift him from behind and carry him to the edge. There, he was shoved down a rubber chute to the lifeboat that bounced around on the waves below. A cheer went up as he landed. Buntee pulled him into a seat and Parvati clutched him close to her chest. ‘We thought we’d lost you for ever,’ she sobbed, quite hysterical. The lifeboat tipped up and down precariously, and bashed against the ship as the sailors endeavoured to untie the ropes and cast off.
With a sudden stab in his heart, Theo realised that Bozo wasn’t with them. He looked up in horror. On the edge of the ship he could see the Bloon waving frantically.
‘Jump!’ Theo yelled desperately.
‘What about Raj?’ Bozo cried, tears running in torrents down his face, as his eyes overflowed.
‘An elephant can’t fit in a lifeboat,’ Theo shouted back.
‘Poor Raj,’ Buntee moaned, realising the extent of the tragedy for the first time.
‘Theo!’ Bozo cried plaintively. ‘I don’t know what to do. I’d follow you anywhere but how can I leave Raj to die?’
The sailors cast off from the ship and Theo ran towards the front of the lifeboat to hurl himself at the ladder. He was restrained by the powerful arms of the sailors, who assumed he had gone quite mad. Theo felt a piece of his heart crack in agony as the boat pulled away from the ship. He screamed in anguish. The Bloon seemed on the verge of throwing himself into the water to come after Theo, when he heard a long, plaintive trumpet from below decks. The lifeboat surfed down a large wave and they lost sight of the ship for a moment. When it reappeared, Bozo was nowhere to be seen.
Theo was handed back into the arms of Parvati, who clutched him to her chest and wept into his hair. Buntee gazed sadly back at the ship, thinking only of Raj. ‘Poor fella,’ he moaned. ‘But what could we do?’
There was a powerful motor on the lifeboat and they soon put a good distance between themselves and the sinking ship. A few minutes later, they saw it keel over and the waves engulf it with a passion.
Theo’s heart was ready to burst out of his chest. He fought desperately for a view of the ship. But as the lightning died away, the storm grew in intensity and soon there was nothing to be seen but the driving rain.
So in the midst of a boat full of friends and sailors, Theo was alone in his quest for the first time since Bozo had found him in St Jude’s Hospital, ten days earlier.