Maddigan's Fantasia

-1- LOSING FERDY Hello, this is Garland Maddigan writing things down. I don't know why Iam writing them down, because when you write it's mostly because you'retrying to tell somebody else something, but right now I'm telling myself --me! -- things I already know. Or maybe I half know them, and writing themdown finishes them off in my head so that I know them properly. Written-down things seem true. Weird! Stretched out among the ferns on the small tangled hillside, her red curlsburning among the green leaves and fronds, Garland Maddigan closed thecover of the book she had been writing in, though still holding her writingplace in it with one finger. She looked at its battered blue coveradmiringly. No doubt about it. A book! A thick book of actual pages...paperpages...empty pages. Closing her eyes, she rippled her thumb across theiredges. Once, she knew, the world had been filled with paper, but theDestruction turned most of it to ashes. These days, even though theDestruction and the Chaos that followed it were times of the past, eventhough the world had been slowly remaking itself for years, paper was notalways easy to come by once you moved out of the cities. And inside thecities it was often expensive. Here she was with a whole empty book of it,found in one of those ruined houses, those empty shells twisted in gardensgone wild, lasting on in the tangled forests on either side of the road.She could move her secret thoughts from inside to outside, and then, byclosing that blue cover, she could trap them before they flitted awayfrom her. After all, soon she would be thirteen and her childhood (alongwith all the things that had patched her childhood together) would befading into the past. Better write the days down before they got away fromher altogether. These pages -- these white spaces -- were hers and hersalone. She was going to tell her secret thoughts to that mysterious readershe felt taking shape on the other side of the paper. Down at the bottom of the hill a little plain, slightly scooped like abegging hand, reached out of a small forest of old trees stretching barebranches toward the next hill. (After all, though the sun was shining sowarmly, it was winter.) And there, on the edge of scrubby bush thatfringed the true forest (trees that never lost their leaves), Garland'smoving home, the Fantasia, was laid out like a strange garden set withina crescent. Its tents, old and sometimes patched, had the look of gallant,colored flags. There was her home -- half bus, half caravan, a crestedtower pointing upward from its roof, rather as if a little castle werestruggling to hatch itself out of the old van. The Fantasia dressed notonly its clowns and acrobats in astonishing clothes, but turned thevehicles that carried it along the leftover tracks of the wild world intoa bright and shifting village on wheels. There was the food wagon, hungwith pots and pans. Bailey, the map reader, was carefully wiping dust outof them. He turned as Maddie, Garland's mother, walked by, and shook hisduster at her. It promptly turned into a bunch of flowers, which he heldout to Maddie. It was a trick they were both used to, but she laughed andBailey laughed with her. The wind crept in under the canvas of the tentsso that the canvas rose and fell, and the whole Fantasia looked as if itwere laughing along with them. Below there, in that strange garden, peoplewere working hard: checking the horses, practicing their routines, packingand repacking, fixing the frills round the necks of the dogs, thenclapping their hands for them to leap through their hoops, dance on theirhind legs, or spin like barking tops. Vans and wagons were parked in a wide semicircle. Garland now saw hermother join her father, Ferdy the ringmasMahy, Margaret is the author of 'Maddigan's Fantasia ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416918127 and ISBN 1416918124.