Free Maddigan's Fantasia by Margaret Mahy

can still find bits of it. And because we’re driving vans it’s much easier going this way than going over the hills.’
    Both Timon and Eden looked down at the moss and leaf mould, then up at the hilltops which, from here, looked dark against the skyline.
    ‘We have to pay a toll at the other end of the gully,’ Garland went on. ‘There’s a tribe there. We usually pay with a little performance … but the last couple of times we’ve been through here they’ve asked for something they can sell in Gramth, which is the town we’re mainly making for, or for pieces of silver which they can spend. We do sometimes getpaid in silver or gold – or horses. So we sometimes have money or an extra horse or two we can barter, and they let us through. And now it’s my turn to ask you something. Are you being followed?’ She saw their faces grow suddenly sharp and serious . ‘You are, aren’t you? You’re being followed by those two men – the ones that were asking about you back there. There’s things you haven’t told us.’
    Eden looked sideways at Timon. Timon stared straight ahead.
    ‘Yes,’ Timon said at last, speaking rather unwillingly. ‘We do have enemies – two enemies – who are following us … the Nennog’s messengers. Ozul and Maska! Have you seen them?’
    ‘A while back,’ Garland said, pointing upwards. ‘When the top of the gully was a bit more open I looked up and saw them riding along up there. They were keeping watch on us. And they don’t have vans. Riding that way they’ll get to the head of the gully a long way ahead of us in spite of the hills.’
    ‘I know you don’t believe us,’ said Timon, ‘but what we told you was true … we come from another time – a future time – and we came here to get away from my uncle the Nennog. And he wants us back as quickly as possible. Because everything we do here alters the future. A little thing changed here could alter whole histories out ahead of us. We’ve told you that. And if we’d got our time shift exactly right in the first place … if we’d saved your father … which is what we meant to do … well, things would probably have changed in our own time. I can’t explain it all because I don’t understand it myself, but we’re fairly sure the Nennog would have lost power. He might have even stopped existing. But you need computers and screens and time-jump units to explain it properly …’
    ‘Be simple! Be simple!’ Eden interrupted his brother. ‘Ozul and Maska are our enemies, and if they take us back I think theNennog will kill us. He killed our parents. And Ozul and Maska might kill us for him.’
    ‘Why are you so important?’ asked Garland, who found herself believing this fairy tale of theirs.
    ‘Because when we came we brought something with us,’ Eden said. ‘We didn’t steal it. It was ours in the first place, though we don’t quite know what it is. We only know …’
    ‘Eden!’ said Timon warningly. He looked apologetically at Garland, and opened his mouth to say more. But before he could explain or apologize or say whatever it was he was planning to say, the sound of angry voices came back to them from the head of the Fantasia procession. There was something so urgent about those voices that Garland forgot the boys and their strange tale along with the mystery of what they had stolen.
    She ran towards the argument, sliding and edging, jogged towards the head of the procession, aware that the two boys were sliding and edging close behind her. She came alongside her own van, saw Maddie and Yves standing and gesturing, looked on beyond them and saw they had almost reached the mouth of the gorge. There it was, leaping up and spreading its arms of rock wide, making a dark ‘V’ against the cloudless sky beyond. But the lower cleft of the ‘V’ was closed in. The way ahead was blocked with rocks and branches and this blockage was not an accidental one.
    A crowd of people stood there, confronting the