THREE

Mini stopped and waited for me about fifty yards on. I could see her enormous ears spreading anxiously against the dim sky as I limped after her.

“Are you all right? I haven’t hurt you, have I?” She was a thoroughly considerate elephant. When I reached her, she said, “I’d prefer it if you’d take hold of my harness again. I feel safer that way.”

I think that was considerate, too. I grabbed hold gratefully and practically leaned on her as we walked the last part. It turned out not to be far, just time for my knees to stop throbbing and my toe to start behaving normally. By that time we could almost see the crags at each side of the path. Then a moment or so after that, we sort of came down sideways onto the rest of the world and out onto a wet, green slope, where Mini’s feet went suck, suck, suck in the grass. And we were in wonderful, bright, pinkish light.

Mini went, “Oh! I’ve gone blind in one eye!” and started to panic again.

Her harness turned out to have been pink and scarlet, with silver decorations. Part of it was that kind of flat hat that goes on top of an elephant’s head, and she had scraped it sideways on the cliff, so that it draped across her eye and one tusk. Her tusks, I was glad to see, had been banded with metal and neither of them had been broken.

“No, you haven’t gone blind!” I told her. “Put your head down so that I can reach it.”

She nodded her head down at once. She was really well trained. I hauled the whole wet, heavy lot of harness down across her face and her trunk so that it fell chinking down her legs and she could step out of it.

That’s a relief!” she said, and blinked around with her big gray eyes. Elephants have ridiculously long, shaggy eyelashes. “It’s sunset!” she said.

“Making my third in two days,” I said, turning to look.

The sun was behind me, flaring pink and gold paths over sheets of water as far as I could see. The sound of water rippled and husked and whispered everywhere. Everything smelled of water, softly and strongly.

“Where are we?” Mini said.

“Romanov’s place,” I said. As soon as I was facing the water, I had no doubt of it. The water was all joined up to look like one sea or a huge lake, but the part on my left was clear blue like sea around a coral coast, with little waves frilling on white sand, and the part in front of me was muddy and rippling against rushes. Round to the right, the rushes were taller, but the gray water there was coming in fairly big waves and the rushes were blowing in a wind we couldn’t feel. You could see the lines dividing the different kinds of water if you half closed your eyes. They rayed outward toward the horizon like huge slices of pizza. Even the sun, setting in the midst of red and purple clouds, was divided into an orange part and a smaller slice that was much redder. It looked really odd. I remembered Dave saying that Romanov lived on an island that was made from parts of several worlds, and I knew where we were.

I also knew that if Romanov was here, then we were going to meet his big spotted cat any moment. I was suddenly not quite as glad to have got here as I had been.

“Oh, dear,” Mini said. She was shuffling her front feet, and one of her back legs was rubbing up and down the other. She looked like an enormous, embarrassed schoolgirl. “Do you think there’s anything to eat in this peculiar place? I’m so hungry.”

I remembered reading somewhere that an elephant can be a match for a tiger. I swallowed a bit and said, “We’ll go and ask. But if we happen to meet a whitish creature about so big”—I showed her with my hand halfway up my chest—“er, do you think you can, well, you know, sort of kick it? Or trample it, perhaps?”

“I suppose I could,” she said doubtfully. “Is it fierce?”

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s all right if Romanov’s with it. It does what he says.”

“Oh, good,” she said.

We turned away from the patchwork water and climbed the grassy rise to the high part of the island. My eyes were going this way and that, dreading the sight of that big cat. Mini’s trunk flapped wistfully toward a big clump of trees in the distance that were three kinds of green from the patchwork effect.

“I could eat those,” she said.

“Romanov won’t like it,” I said. “Come on.” We crossed a dividing line into yellower grass and pushed warily through some bushes—or I did; Mini trampled them, and if the cat had been in there, we’d have known, and it wasn’t—and came across the shoulder of the hill beside a high brick wall. I wasn’t tall enough to see over it, but Mini was. Her trunk kept stretching out across the wall and then guiltily curling back. “Is the animal behind that?” I asked her.

“Only vegetables,” she said. “They smell delicious.”

Round the corner of the wall, I peered cautiously down at another piece of water. Deep blue water, this time. There was a long, low house by the shore there, sheltered by some pine trees. It looked really elegant, a bit like millionaire dwellings you see on telly. I could see a diving board off one end, big picture windows, and lots of clean new woodwork. And no big cat, to my relief. “Nearly there,” I said, and down we went.

As soon as we were on the flatter ground near the house, a crowd of hens rushed at us and nearly gave me a heart attack, running and cackling. They got in among Mini’s feet, and she was forced to stand still for fear of treading on them. “I think they’re hungry, too,” she said.

Then a white goat came bounding up and nearly gave me another heart attack for a second, until I realized it was a goat. It was almost exactly the size the scornful cat had been.

“You want me to tread on this goat?” Mini asked dubiously.

I don’t go for goats. I hate their smell and their mad eyes. And they have horns. “No, no, no!” I said, backing away. “It’s only a goat.” At that, Mini’s trunk flipped out toward it, in an interested sort of way. The goat stared in what seemed to be horror and then galloped away yelling. “What did that?” I said.

“She’s never seen an elephant before,” Mini said. “Do find us something to eat!”

“All right,” I said. Since it did seem urgent, I went over to the nice wooden door in the long side of the house.

I had meant to knock, but the door opened inward under my fist. “Hallo?” I called out. No one answered, so I went cautiously into the dusky corridor inside. It smelled wonderfully of new wood, and it was very warm and quiet. There was a door to my right. “Hallo?” I said, and I opened it and looked in.

There was an empty ultramodern kitchen in there. This smelled of new bread and coffee, which, since I could still taste nipling inside myself, made me feel slightly ill. I shut that door and went on to the next one, straight ahead.

I opened that door on a blaze of sunset from big windows looking over the waters and on a splendid smell of leather, wood, and clean carpet. This room was a long, low, elegant living room—really beautiful, just the kind of room I’d like for myself—full of interesting comfortable sofas, low tables that caught the light, a long shelf of books, nice cushions, and almost no ornaments. Lovely. But there was no one in there either.

The corridor turned a corner then and ran through the middle of the house, with light coming in through slit-shaped windows in the roof. My feet went splonch, splonch, splonch on polished wooden floor as I walked down to the next door—broom cupboard—and the next, a very nice bathroom that was so up-to-date I didn’t understand most of the fitments. The next door was on the other side. I opened it, and it was pitch black inside. And I don’t think I could have gone inside it even with the scornful cat after me. Keep Out! it said, like a smell boiling out of the darkness. Somehow, I knew it was Romanov’s workroom. I knew I had no business going in there. I backed off quickly and shut the door on the darkness.

That left just the one door, facing me at the end of the corridor. By this time I was fairly sure Romanov was out, away in some other world, but I opened the door just to check.

There was a big, graceful bedroom beyond, where everything was square and white. Thin white curtains blew inward from the window just beyond the square white bed. Clothes had been dropped on the white carpet, a leather jacket nearest to the door, a shirt beyond that, a pair of soft boots almost on the shirt, and socks after those. Then came underclothes, a towel, and a wallet, and these led to suede trousers not quite draped over the white chair beside the bed. By the time my eyes had been led to the bed, I realized that Romanov was in it, asleep. I could just see a piece of his dark hair on the pillows.

I was horribly embarrassed and nearly backed straight out. You could see that Romanov had come home tired out and just thrown off his clothes and fallen into bed. I couldn’t go and shake him awake and say, “I’m sorry, I’ve got a starving elephant outside.” Could I? But that made me think of poor Mini standing outside in a crowd of hungry hens. I did know elephants needed a lot of food. I didn’t know when she’d last had any.

All right, I thought. And if he turns me into a frog, I suppose she’ll have to eat the trees. I swallowed, all the same, as I stepped over the suede jacket and on past the line of clothes. I leaned over the bed. I put out a finger, but I didn’t quite dare touch the hump that was probably Romanov’s shoulder. Turn me into anything you like, but please don’t kill me! I thought.

“Er, excuse me,” I said.

Romanov rolled over. I jerked back. We stared at one another. He looked a bit more than just tired to me. He looked ill. An unhealthy sort of smell came off him. “Oh, not you again!” he said, thick and groaning.

“Are you all right?” I said.

“A touch of flu, I think,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I came here with a starving elephant,” I said. “Is it all right if I let her eat the trees?”

“No!” he groaned. He pushed his hand across his zigzag of a face, obviously trying to pull himself together. “An elephant? Seriously?”

“Yes,” I said. “I met her stuck in those dark paths. Her name’s Mini. I think her circus got hit by a tornado or something.”

“Oh, God!” He held both hands to his face. “Just assure me you’re not another of these bad dreams, will you?”

“I’m real,” I said. “Honestly. So’s the elephant.”

“You keep turning up in my dreams with a parcel of children,” he said.

When Dad had flu last Christmas, he kept calling people in to tell them about the latest weird dream he’d had. I understood that. “That was flu,” I said. “This is me for real. Have you got anything I can give Mini to eat?”

“I’ve no idea what elephants eat,” he said, and then pulled himself together again. “All right. Third shed along at this end of the house. Ask for elephant food while you’re opening the door.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And your hens?”

“Bin of corn in the same shed,” he said. “One bucketful poured on the ground.”

“What about the goat?” I asked. “She need milking?”

I was not happy about that idea, and I was very relieved when he said, “Helga? No, she’s dry at the moment. Just find her some sweet corn.”

“And, er,” I said, coming to the dreaded part, “what about your big cat?”

“In the forest over on the mainland,” he said. “Takes care of herself.”

I felt such a gush of relief at this that I went all considerate and helpful. I get like this with Dad, too, when he says I can have a day off school. “How about you? Can I get you anything? I know how to cook pasta.”

Romanov shuddered. “No. I’ll be fine. All I need is some sleep,” he said, and he rolled over and pulled the covers across his face.

I tiptoed away out of the airy white bedroom and along to the front door. Mini loomed in front of me there, jigging anxiously inside the crowd of cackling hens. I’d forgotten how huge she was.

“Did you find any food?”

“Yes. It’s under control,” I said. “Follow me, troops, here comes the cavalry.” I went marching away along the side of the house, and the hens, like I’d hoped, rushed after me in a fussy gaggle—stupid things!—and left Mini free to follow me, too.

The sheds were all new and clean and kind of stacked against one another and against the end of the house. When I got to the third, it was just a big garden shed, really, and I had a moment when I thought that Romanov had said the first thing that came into his head in order to get rid of me. But I pushed the door open and said, “Elephant food?” and almost got trampled in the rush. The hens stormed inside yelling. Mini went, “Oh, thank goodness!” and nearly trod on me, hauling out an immense bundle of leafy stuff with her trunk and then some sort of hay bale, while I was edging among hens to get to the wooden bin wedged in there among the stack of fodder. While I was unhooking the bucket from the wall and scooping up grain and Mini was going, “Sugarcane! My favorite!,” the goat came dancing up, too, and helped itself to sugarcane more or less out of Mini’s trunk.

I took the bucket and spilled it a fair distance off, away from Mini’s feet, and looked up to see that goat chomping cane and staring at me like one of Dad’s demons, while it made for the corn, too. I had to bribe it with its own pile of grain. By that time Mini’s trunk was going out, curling round a bundle of fodder, pushing it into her funny triangular mouth and then going out for more, like clockwork. She really had been starving. Maybe the hens were, too. They were all beak down, tail up and busy.

“Enjoy your feeding frenzy,” I said, and went along to snoop in the other sheds. There was a powerful-looking motorboat in one that smelled piercingly of something that wasn’t petrol. Garden stuff in the other. Then I noticed a door in the brick wall up the hill, so I went to take a look inside it.

Mini had said there were vegetables, but that hadn’t given me the least idea of the garden that was behind that wall. It was vast. It was laid out in oblongs, with gravel paths between them, and there must have been every kind of fruit and veg there was, growing there, from every world there ever was. Just standing at the gate, I could see strawberries and apples and oranges, leeks, marrows, melons and lettuces, green, droopy stuff I didn’t know, and okra, and yellow things that weren’t tomatoes. There were even flowers, away in the distance.

That was all I saw before the goat came romping up and tried to barge in past me. One thing I knew about goats: they eat anything they can get near, and I didn’t think Romanov would be happy to find I’d let her into his garden. So I tried to shut the door on her. She pushed back. It must have seemed like Christmas to her, that garden. And she was strong. We had a mighty pushing match, me heaving from inside with my back to the door, the goat shoving madly from outside. It took me five minutes to get that door shut on her, and once I had, I was exhausted.

I did wander down a gravel path, but not far. I ached all over from the various things that had happened to me. My clothes were still damp and beginning to smell of mildew, and now the sun was almost down, I felt clammy. I felt as if I’d been without sleep for a week. So when I came to a tall stand of sweet corn, I broke off a few heads for the goat, and I ate a few of the strawberries, because they were there, but they tasted of nipling to me, and then I gave up.

The goat was waiting outside. I had to slam the door and throw the corn at her in self-defense. She snatched up a cob and stood doing her chomp-with-demon-stare act at me.

“I love you, too,” I told her.

Down by the sheds, Mini loomed with her trunk curled round leafy stuff and her eyes shut blissfully. The hens had guzzled and gone.

“I think I’ve done my bit,” I said, and I went into the house to find somewhere to sleep. There was one particular sofa I had my eye on. I felt about it the way that goat felt about the garden.

A telephone started to ring somewhere down the corridor.

I raced off to stop it ringing. I know the things Dad had said about what telephones did to his head when he’d had flu, and Romanov could probably do all those things that Dad had only threatened.

It was pretty dark in the corridor by then. It took me a minute to find the phone on a table down by the wall. I almost panicked before I found it. I kept imagining Romanov storming out of his bedroom casting spells to left and right and blaming me for not answering the thing.

I found it at last—it was an old-fashioned dial phone—and I fumbled up the receiver.

And about time, too!” said a woman’s voice before I could say a word. “I don’t know where you’ve been, Romanov, and I don’t care, but I want you to listen to me for once!”

It was not a nice voice. To tell the truth, it reminded me of my mother’s. Like Mum’s, it had sweetness on top and beastly, grinding undertones beneath that made you squirm and want to get away. I could tell that this woman was in a really bitchy mood. And, as I always did with Mum, I tried to shut her up. “I’m sorry, madam,” I said. “Mr. Romanov is not available at this moment.”

“But I’m his wife!” she said, cooing and grinding. “Fetch him at once.”

“I am afraid I cannot do that, madam,” I said. “Mr. Romanov will not be available at all tonight.”

“What do you mean, not available?” she demanded. And while I was wondering what I should say to that, because I could tell she was the kind of person who wouldn’t let a little thing like someone having flu stand in her way, she luckily went on, “Who are you anyway?”

Then I was home and dry. “I’m just the caretaker, madam,” I said. “Mr. Romanov called me in to look after the elephant.”

“Look after the elephant!” she exclaimed. “Is he starting a circus?”

“There do seem to be a number of animals here,” I said, “but Mr. Romanov’s plans for them are a sealed book to me, madam. Perhaps you would like to call back when Mr. Romanov can answer your query in person.”

“I certainly will,” she said. “Just tell me when that’s going to be.”

I said, “That’s a little difficult to do, madam, but as he has only hired me for a week—”

“A week!” she said, and then, “Doh!,” just the way my mother used to when I’d got her really mad. I heard her end of the line go clash, click, whirr....

I couldn’t help grinning as I laid the receiver quietly down beside the phone, so that she couldn’t bother me or Romanov again, and crept off to the strange, futuristic bathroom. After that, I remember taking my clothes off and hanging them over warm pipes to dry, but not much else beyond the fact that the sofa I’d been eyeing up was even better than I’d hoped.