Impossible Dreamers

Chapter 62 (faytwi-deg): A new start

After Ralkino spoke, Tyro, sitting on the corner of the stage, burst into tears. 'Sleeeeech!' he cried. Then he looked at the little puppet of himself that he held in his hand, and cried even harder. He looked out at the people in the audience. 'Go away!' he shouted, 'Go away!'

But people did not go away. Furiously, Tyro threw the puppet away from himself. It spun high in the air. Liana, still wearing one wrist-flyer, jumped and caught it.

She floated back to the stage, holding the model Tyro in her left hand, and spoke to it.

'Well, Tyro,' Liana said. 'This hasn't turned out as you expected, has it?' She turned the puppet to face her. Its mouth started to move. It spoke in Tyro's voice:

'No, Liana, certainly not. This is a very bad day for bullying tyrants like me.' Clearly, Liana was making the puppet speak, but she was doing so without moving her own lips. The audience roared with laughter and joy.

'So shall we watch Herago's Impossible, then? Then maybe you can think about not being a bullying tyrant.'

'Certainly,' said the puppet 'That sounds like a good idea.' The real Tyro looked on in amazement and horror. And a final Impossible was performed.

The final Impossible was the tearing up and restoring of the picture of Greblara. Liana explained all about the mountain, and the Bartyronian people listened carefully. Something had been destroyed; something must be restored. That was the message people understood.

***

Not everybody in Bartyronis welcomed the overturning of the world that Liana, Herago and the others, were about to bring. But for most this festival represented a new beginning, and from that day onwards there was the possibility of people's lives being better. It would take work and understanding, and a lot of time.

The world was to begin again. But there would be much work to come.

Herago found that the Bartys had many books and much information from ancient times stored in the palace. The Barty Himesters were not interested in the content of these things; they were just used as a means of exchange, their scarcity making them valuable. But among the many volumes that were in the cellar of the Barty palace, Herago discovered books devoted to Impossibles like the ones he had devised. But they weren't called Impossibles, they were called tricks – magic tricks. Liana discovered books of jokes – short funny stories, most of which she didn't understand, but she decided that it was time to revive this form of storytelling. She told her stories in Seren-ila, in Bartyronis, in the Shadowlands and elsewhere, and people found that laughter was a protection from the tyrants of the world.

The world was new. People of Seren-ila would never have the perfect land that had existed before, but now they could travel beyond the mountain valley. Some yearned for the old days. But those days could not return.

There is more to know: about Liana's dreams, about the fate of Tyro and Sleech, about the new way of organising things, about the new sorts of friendship in the world. But now, it will be enough to say 'ir, deg, mek, elbissopmi!'