Modern Magick

Royalty and Ruin: 7

Whitmore is a centre of learning, Melmidoc had said. He had banged on a bit about this point, smugly self-satisfied about all the academics (even from our Britain!) who flocked to the Centre of Government for the North on the fifth Britain. Not only politically effective but scholastically, too. Lovely. Excellent.

Only, when Miss Makepeace pulled up on the cliff-top over the sea for our second visit there, it did not much resemble either of those things.

The first thing that attracted our notice was the music. It pulsed through the floor, a thumping beat reverberating through Millie's crumbly old walls, and somewhere out there was a large crowd of people raucously singing.

Millie approved. I gathered this from the way she immediately began singing along.

I didn't, so much.

Crunch them, punch them, bash their faces in! sang Millie, bouncing along to the beat.

Jay, Alban and I decided in unison to exit stage left. We erupted out of the house at a run, and having put a safe distance between ourselves and the wildly gyrating farmhouse, we stood in momentary, flabbergasted silence.

'Those aren't really the lyrics, are they?' I said after a while. The general tumult made it pretty hard to tell.

'I don't think it's English,' said Alban.

Leave it to Millie not only to make up her own lyrics, but to go all in for violence while she was at it. I began to question the wisdom of having forged an alliance with that one.

'So, party's on,' said Jay, looking around.

'You reckon?' Millie had taken us to the end of the same street we'd run down (a couple of times) a few days before. Apparently it was her favourite spot to loiter in. But the other houses in the row were different today. As mismatched as before — higgledy-piggledy thatched-roof cottages rubbing elbows with elegant starstone properties — they were all decked alike in colourful bunting. This being Whitmore, the bunting did not hang limply against the whitewashed or bluish-stone walls, as they would in our Britain. The bunting floated up there by itself, and it wiggled and bopped along to the beat with as much enthusiasm as Millie.

So did the cottages.

'Oh, lord,' I sighed. I mean, I'm a sucker for life and colour and music, I really am. But when literally nothing around you is standing still, the effect quickly becomes dizzying.

I put my hands over my eyes.

'There's the spire,' said Jay. I dared to uncover my eyes, only to see, when I followed the line of Jay's pointing finger, Melmidoc's spire enthroned at the highest point of the island, swaying from side to side.

'They really like their music out here,' I muttered.

Jay was getting into it. I knew this because he was bopping, too. 'It's like being on a boat,' he said, catching my eye. 'Try too hard to act like you're on normal ground and you'll probably fall over. But when you learn to go with the flow...'

I gave an experimental bop. 'You know, Jay, I think you were made for this place.'

'Told you I wanted to stay.'

Alban had wandered off in the direction of the spire, threading his way through the singing people with surprising ease given his size. Then again perhaps it was because of his size; when Jay and I followed, we frequently found ourselves boxed in, blocked or pushed. I quickly abandoned politeness in favour of pushing back, making full use of my elbows. Jay looked a bit shocked, but he's never been five-foot-not-much. You do what you must. I kept one hand clamped firmly over my shoulder bag en route; the last thing we needed just then was for my over-excitable pup to bounce out and dash away. I'd never find her again.