The first two chapters of Alan Ganer's Elidor, retold for the storytelling night at Yr Glas Loch (The Blue Bell), Conwy - Wednesday January 15th 2020.
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On the day the adventure began, Mr. and Mrs. Watson were packing boxes and crates at home. The family were due to move house shortly, from the South Manchester suburb of Didsbury, further south again to Alderley Edge in Cheshire, not far from the airport. The children had gone into town for the afternoon to get out of the way. But the day was cold and hostile and they had long ago ran out of things to do. Nicholas, Helen and David sat on a bench in Piccadilly Gardens, arguing about whether to have another mooch around the shops or get the train back home. Roland stood a couple of yards away, twirling the handle of something we don't see in city centres any more - a revolving street map like a glass drum - an A-Z of central Manchester in short, with a street index in a separate panel on the right-hand side.
'Hey,' said Roland. 'Have a look at this. It's brilliant. You can find any street in town.'
The others gathered around. 'Nice piece of machinery,' said David. 'Some pretty smooth gears in there, I'll bet.'
'Let's walk over to the street it stops on,' said Roland. 'I'll let go the handle and point my finger here on the index.'
The street map whirred around, gradually started to slow down, and came to a halt with a click. Roland lifted his finger off the glass and jabbed it down again. 'Thursday Street,' he said.
'It's titchy,' said Nicholas. 'Can't be anything worth seeing there.'
Thursday Street was certainly very small, jammed in the midst of a rabbit warren of streets and alleys at the top end of Oldham Street - so small, in fact, that there was only room on the map for the letters 'Th. St.' But Helen didn't seem to mind. 'Let's get across there,' she said. 'It'll keep us from scrapping anyway.'
So off they went, out of the gardens, across Piccadilly and along Oldham Street. Remembering the map as best they could, they turned left about half-way up, into the shabby realm behind the shopfronts, a world of loading bays and warehouse spaces lit by unshaded light bulbs. After a while, this gave way to the maze of back to back streets they had seen on the map. Old men and women in carpet slippers sat on front doorsteps chattering. A group of teenage boys stood on a street corner talking to a girl with curlers in her bright yellow hair.
'Maybe we should go back,' said Roland.
'No,' said Nicholas. 'They'll think we're scared. Act like we know where we're going, taking a short cut or something.'
They expected a similar scene on the next street, but everything was so quiet there that it didn't take them long to work out that the houses were empty. Some were even boarded up. 'Leave post at Number Four' said a message in chalk on one front door. 'Number Four's empty too,' said Helen, peering through the window.
The streets carried on like this for a while, before they came to an area where the houses had been partially knocked down so that they could see past the broken brickwork into what had once been living rooms and bedrooms. Then the houses stopped altogether and there was nothing at all except pavements and lamp-posts almost as far as the eye could see.
Nicholas put his hands on his hips. 'Where's your Thursday Street now?' he said to Roland.
'Here,' said David, picking up a street sign that had been left on top of a pile of discarded household goods. 'Thursday Street,' read the sign.
'Well, well,' said Helen. Then she pointed. 'Look! There's a church.'
They turned and saw and wondered why they hadn't noticed it before - just a hundred yards away - a black, Victorian edifice with buttresses and a high roof but no steeple. There was a mechanical digger parked alongside it.
'They'll be knocking it down,' said David. 'Let's ask the gang if we can watch.' But when they reached the digger no-one was there.
'The engine's still warm,' said Roland. 'They must be on a break. Here's a football though. Let's have a kickabout.' He pulled out a white plastic ball from behind the digger's front wheel. As he did so, he became aware, out of the corner of his eye, of a fiddler standing on the next street but one underneath a lamp-post. He wore a battered hat and overcoat and looked very shabby. But the tune he played cut Roland to the quick - brooding and dreamy yet wild and fierce too. He knew he hadn't heard it before but at the same time felt like he had always known it and that the music was calling him somehow.
'Here y'are Roland,' yelled Nick. 'What are you waiting for? Kick us the ball.'
Roland punted it over to where they were standing. He meant it to get there on the first bounce but it soared higher and higher instead, right over their heads, until it smashed through the round window at the top of the church.
'Bulls-eye Roland!' shouted David. 'How'd you do that?'
'I ... I didn't. I just kicked it normally.'
'I'll go and fetch it,' said David, and he ran over to the church, tried the big front door, which appeared to be locked, then disappeared around the back.
Roland was shocked by how fast and far the ball had travelled. He looked around. The fiddler had gone. 'Where's the fiddler?' he asked.
Nicholas shrugged. 'Dunno,' he said. 'Maybe he got bored playing to no-one.'
'He looked blind to me,' said Helen. 'Perhaps he didn't know.'
'But didn't you hear?' When I kicked the ball the fiddle got stuck on a note and got higher and higher while the ball went up and up till the window smashed and it stopped.'
'Oh give over, Roland,' grunted Nicholas. 'You're always imagining things.'
Helen smiled. 'David's been a while,' she said. 'I'll go and see what he's up to.'
Nicholas and Roland talked for a bit about the slum clearance going on around them. Then Nicholas looked at his watch. 'They're having us on those two,' he said. 'Hiding. I'll go and surprise 'em.' And off he went in his turn, leaving Roland alone in the wasteland.
Rolan felt isolated and uncomfortable, like invisible eyes were watching him. Then the music started again - a whirling jig this time. But the fiddler was nowhere to be seen. Then it stopped and in the sudden silence Roland felt not only alone but afraid. He ran to the church and found the way in through the back, stepping over a couple of wooden slats, which were all that remained of the back door. 'Nick, Helen, David,' he called, but no answer came save for the echo of his own voice.
The church had been gutted. Stripped of its wood. Above him, at the far end, Roland saw the smashed window but there was no sign of the ball. To his left was a flight of stone steps leading up in a spiral. 'Nick, Helen, David,' he shouted as he climbed. 'Come out. I don't like it.' But no-one came. At the top was a corridor, but Roland hadn't gone very far along it when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He froze. He knew it wasn't the others. 'Who are you? What do you want?' The steps were louder now - ponderous and heavy - then around the turn of the last spiral a figure appeared. The fiddler. He held out his bow for Roland to touch.
'Guide me,' he said. 'The stairs are steep and I am blind.'
Roland reached out and touched the tip of the bow and felt a shock surging through him, from finger to hand to arm to shoulder to neck to head. Lightning flashed in his brain and images flared before him and were gone again instantly.
'What did you see?' said the fiddler.
'See? I ... I don't know ... falling towers ... a golden altar ... a prince singing ...'
'Guide me.'
'Yes.'
Roland took the bow and guided the fiddler down the stairs. 'This way,' said the fiddler, and Roland tooked him from one end of the nave to the other, towards the great Western door, which David had found to be locked. 'Open the door,' the fiddler commanded.
'I can't,' said Roland. 'It's locked.'
'You must try.'
'No.'
'There is not much time.'
'No.'
'Yes.'
'But ....'
'Now!'
And he played the jig again. Lightning flashed through Roland's mind as before. He grabbed the handle and twisted it this way and that but it wouldn't budge. Then he flung himself at the wood with his shoulder and the door broke into two and he was outside again, running on the cobbles and holding his head in his hands because the music was stuck on a note again. Then he saw that the cobbles had turned into pebbles, seagulls were squawking above, the air was keen and fresh, and there was a great expanse of water before him. He had no idea how it had happened, but he was standing on a shoreline. He looked behind and saw a black castle with three half-collapsed towers on top of a rocky cliff face. He felt the water lapping at his feet. The tide was coming in. No choice but to climb the cliff and try his luck in the castle.
Five minutes later Roland was walking through the courtyard, picking his way between masses of fallen black stone. He saw that the fourth tower had come down completely. Before long he came to the keep. Nothing much to see. Just a big empty space. But there were steps leading up to his left. Roland ascended. The first room, which occupied the whole length and breadth of the keep, was a well-stocked armoury, packed to the gills with swords, shields, pikes, halberds, and all kinds of weapons. He pulled out a sword, quickly and easily, from a jewelled green scabbard. No rust, no cobwebs. The ruin which had come upon this castle had clearly been both sudden and recent.
The next room up had nothing in it except a few scorched tapestries. But the third floor was much more interesting. Roland saw a marble table built into the wall, like the altar he served Mass at in Didsbury, with a fine covering of cloth of gold hanging half on, half off. He pulled it back into place, looked up and saw the broken window above him, then the football in front of him, squashed between the wall and an empty candle-holder.
Roland picked up the ball and held it tight. It felt like an old friend. Then he heard someone singing outside, a male voice, young and full of life, and the tune was the same as what he had first heard the fiddler play - that high and noble air that stirred so many deep things inside him. The language moved him tremendously, though it was one he had never heard before. His heart quivered at the sound of it - great syllables of words that resounded like castles, like they were singing of their own volition with the singer as their chosen vessel, flowing through him from some strong point at a distance. Or maybe that there were no words at all, and that what Roland heard was the music of the sun and the stars as they wheel around the Earth day and night far, far above.
He ran to the window and saw the fiddler walking across a drawbridge towards a ring of stones on a green hill. 'Stay!' he cried. 'Wait for me.' And he dropped the ball - bounce, bounce, bounce it went, towards the foot of the altar - and ran out of the room and down the stairs, chasing after the fiddler and following that great yearning and longing for he knew not what which the music and the fiddler - by the presence and quality of his being - had called forth in his soul.
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