Good Omens

For an instant Adam's mind swam with visions of circuses. Circuses were boring, once they were set up. You could see better stuff on television any day. But the setting up… Of course they'd all go down there, and they'd help them put up the tents, and wash the elephants, and the circus people would be so impressed with Adam's natural rapport with animals such that, that night, Adam (and Dog, the World's Most Famous Performing Mongrel) would lead the elephants into the circus ring and…

It was no good.

He shook his head sadly. "Can't go anywhere," he said. "They said so."

There was a pause.

"Adam," said Pepper, a trifle uneasily, "what did happen last night?"

Adam shrugged. "Just stuff. Doesn't matter," he said. "'Salways the same. All you do is try to help, and people would think you'd murdered someone or something."

There was another pause, while the Them stared at their fallen leader.

"When d'you think they'll let you out, then?" asked Pepper.

"Not for years an' years. Years an' years an' years. I'll be an old man by the time they let me out," said Adam.

"How about tomorrow?" asked Wensleydale.

Adam brightened. "Oh, tomorrow'll be all right," he pronounced. "They'll have forgotten about it by then. You'll see. They always do." He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellissed Elba. "You all go," he told them, with a brief, hollow laugh. "Don't you worry about me. I'll be all right. I'll see you all tomorrow."

The Them hesitated. Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants. They left.

The sun continued to shine. The thrush continued to sing. Dog gave up on his master, and began to stalk a butterfly in the grass by the garden hedge. This was a serious, solid, impassable hedge, of thick and well-trimmed privet, and Adam knew it of old. Beyond it stretched open fields, and wonderful muddy ditches, and unripe fruit, and irate but slow-of-foot owners of fruit trees, and circuses, and streams to dam, and walls and trees just made for climbing…

But there was no way through the hedge.

Adam looked thoughtful.

"Dog," said Adam, sternly, "get away from that hedge, because if you went through it, then I'd have to chase you to catch you, and I'd have to go out of the garden, and I'm not allowed to do that. But I'd have to… if you went an' ran away."

Dog jumped up and down excitedly, and stayed where he was.

Adam looked around, carefully. Then, even more carefully, he looked Up, and Down. And then Inside.

Then…

And now there was a large hole in the hedge—large enough for a dog to run through, and for a boy to squeeze through after him. And it was a hole that had always been there.

Adam winked at Dog.

Dog ran through the hole in the hedge. And, shouting clearly, loudly and distinctly, "Dog, you bad dog! Stop! Come back here!" Adam squeezed through after him.

Something told him that something was coming to an end. Not the world, exactly. Just the summer. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this. Ever again.

Better make the most of it, then.

He stopped halfway across the field. Someone was burning something. He looked at the plume of white smoke above the chimney of Jasmine Cottage, and he paused. And he listened.

Adam could hear things that other people might miss.

He could hear laughter.

It wasn't a witch's cackle; it was the low and earthy guffaw of someone who knew a great deal more than could possibly be good for them.

The white smoke writhed and curled above the cottage chimney.

For a fraction of an instant Adam saw, outlined in the smoke, a handsome, female face. A face that hadn't been seen on Earth for over three hundred years.

Agnes Nutter winked at him.

The light summer breeze dispersed the smoke; and the face and the laughter were gone.

Adam grinned, and began to run once more.

In a meadow a short distance away, across a stream, the boy caught up with the wet and muddy dog. "Bad Dog," said Adam, scratching Dog behind the ears. Dog yapped ecstatically.

Adam looked up. Above him hung an old apple tree, gnarled and heavy. It might have been there since the dawn of time. Its boughs were bent with the weight of apples, small and green and unripe.

With the speed of a striking cobra the boy was up the tree. He returned to the ground seconds later with his pockets bulging, munching noisily on a tart and perfect apple.

"Hey! You! Boy!" came a gruff voice from behind him. "You're that Adam Young! I can see you! I'll tell your father about you, you see if I don't!"

Parental retribution was now a certainty, thought Adam, as he bolted, his dog by his side, his pockets stuffed with stolen fruit.

It always was. But it wouldn't be till this evening.

And this evening was a long way off.

He threw the apple core back in the general direction of his pursuer, and he reached into a pocket for another.