Epilogue
The taxi wound its way through the slippery New York streets and the driver eyed his passengers in the rearview mirror. Normally, he would have been all over them, asking questions and telling them more about the life of a cabby in New York than anyone could possibly have wanted to know. But since that gravitational anomaly, or whatever it was, things had changed. He didn’t know what was wrong but he felt more like listening than talking these days. He found himself keeping quiet on each ride and soaking up whatever his passengers happened to tell him.
He thought about seeing his doctor, because with every new fare he got more and more curious about the lives of other people. Take, for instance, the family getting in now. Wasn’t that the kid from the TV? Damned if he could make head or tail of what they said, but he’d tell his wife all about it later. She was certainly happy about his new ability to listen.
‘Tell me, lady. Is there anywhere you couldn’t talk yourself into?’ Bozo asked as he climbed in the front seat.
Michelle took her place next to Simon and Theo in the back and laughed:
‘Sure. I couldn’t go anywhere I didn’t want to.’
Theo felt a sense of anti-climax now that his adventure had come to an end. He gazed out of the window and watched the homeless begging for spare change in the snow. One or two swigged from bottles of cheap booze. Some had made their homes in cardboard boxes in the doorways of closed shops. ‘Do you think Hoomans are going to make it?’ he asked.
Simon clucked his tongue. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘You had the guts to explain that it’s up to them. They didn’t listen the last time I tried. But I was on a rock in a desert: you got it across to 500 million at once.’
‘That’s right,’ Michelle agreed. ‘I was never into this whole secret society thing anyhow. Seven people could never hope to keep the Story alive on their own. Now that there’s no one to tell the Story in Bloonland, it’s up to us to keep it going here.’
‘And what about the Enemy?’ Theo asked, a little nervous that a storm, earthquake or possessed Hooman might still have it in for him.
‘I wouldn’t worry about that, mate,’ Simon said. ‘His spirit is with us but he himself died along with the Storyteller.’
Theo noticed that Bozo had gone very quiet and was staring out of the window with tears in his eyes.
‘What’s up, Bozo?’ he asked.
‘Is it really true that the old man is dead?’
Theo nodded and he held the Bloon’s hand to share the grief.
‘It just isn’t real for me yet, I guess,’ Bozo shrugged.
‘You Bloons need to see something to believe it, right?’ Michelle suggested.
Bozo nodded thoughtfully. ‘But what about all the other Bloons?’ he asked. ‘They won’t know how things have turned out. They must be out of their minds with grief. They’ll be lost without the Story. I have to get back there to help them.’ Bozo paused as he remembered the flaw in the plan: ‘But if the Storyteller’s gone, how am I going to get back to Bloonland?’
In truth, they had all been so wrapped up in fulfilling the quest that no one had given much thought to Bozo’s return. Theo was saddened at the idea of losing his friend but he knew how much Bozo missed the other Bloons. How could he hold him back?
‘You know,’ Michelle mused. ‘There are many ways into a person’s psyche, many doors. If the Story is a projection of the Storyteller’s mind, I’ll bet there are a few emergency exits in here somewhere.’
‘And one of them might take me back to Bloonland?’ Bozo asked anxiously.
Michelle reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I have some friends who might.’
The taxi continued to drive through the New York streets, where the slush was beginning to freeze. As evening fell, city trucks were out spreading salt to prevent the build up of ice. Theo sat back and let his mind wander, feeling safe for the first time in a long while. The quest was over, and in the end he had been only a messenger. The Cure for the Story was something he was able to discover but not something he could deliver alone. That depended on the will of six billion other Hoomans and the choices they made.
What more did he expect? The Enemy had been right in one respect: he was a very small person in a very large world. Yet the tiniest stone could start an avalanche. A tree began with a seed. And a movement to save the Story? Well, it had to begin somewhere.
Theo knew that many children of his age liked books that ended ‘And they lived happily ever after’. Theo, on the other hand, preferred the stories that left the ending open for the reader to decide where things might go. After all, what was an ending but the place where the author took a back seat and let the characters continue their lives off the page?
Theo pondered. If his particular story was written one day, would the reader finish the last page, put down the book and wonder:
Could I do anything to save a Story like the one I live in?
