The Wanderstone — The Stone in the Box

Transcript

Bram: Right now, this very second, a boy named Theo is hanging off the end of a snapped vine, over a gorge with a very long way down, and nothing under his feet but morning mist. Up on the cliff a monkey in a little gold crown is pointing at him and laughing — and holding, in one paw, a small grey stone with a hole worn right through it, glowing gold, which happens to be the only way home. How does an ordinary, scared-of-the-deep-end boy end up dangling HERE? Through a door no bigger than a coin. Hold tight. This is the good bit. Welcome to The Wanderstone — where an ordinary boy and a little grey stone with a hole right through it can tumble out of a dusty attic into ANY world there has ever been. Pirate seas. Monkey islands. The longest night of the whole year. I am Bram, and it is all written down, right here, in my Logbook. Today's page is the very first one — the day the stone woke up for Theo. It began on the most boring afternoon of the whole summer. The kind where the clock forgets how to move. And tomorrow was the day Theo had been dreading all week — his first swimming lesson, in the deep end, where your feet cannot find the floor. Theo was six. On his very first morning of school he had frozen at the gate and cried, and a big kid had called him the baby who cried at the gate, and it had stuck to him like a wet leaf. So when his best friend Nia came thundering up the path — Nia, seven, and afraid of absolutely nothing — he was almost glad of the racket.

Nia: Theo! Theo-Theo-THEO! Otto says we are allowed in the ATTIC. The actual attic. Come ON, what are we WAITING for?

Bram: The attic next door was always off limits. And it held something Theo knew nothing about — an old, quiet hurt. Years and years ago, Grandpa had lost his very best friend, a wanderer named Bram, and had boxed away the one thing left behind: a little grey stone. The stone had never, not once, woken up for careful Grandpa. So he had shut it in the dark and almost let himself forget it. But Grandpa was down in the garden with the beans, and two children were creeping up the ladder — and behind them, wedging himself through the gap before it could shut, came Grandpa's daft old dog, Biscuit, already chewing something he absolutely should not have been chewing. In the dusty hush, on the attic floor, sat an old wooden box. Theo lifted the lid. Inside, on a tatty leather cord, lay a small, sea-worn grey stone with a hole worn clean through the middle.

Theo: It is just a rock. A rock with a hole in it.

Nia: Look THROUGH it! Pirates looked through holey stones to spot hidden things. Everybody knows that. Go on — look!

Bram: So Theo lifted the little hole to his eye. And his tummy did the cold, swoopy thing it always did right before something big. And, very quietly, mostly to himself, he said the truest thing he had said all week.

Theo: I am scared. I am really, really scared of the deep end.

Bram: And the stone heard him. It went warm in his hand — properly warm, like a held hand. And then it did something no rock has any business doing. It grew. The grey fell away like a shell, the hole closing over, and up out of his palm rose a smooth, glowing egg of light, teal deepening into gold, bright enough to light his chin from below. And through it — small, and impossibly far away — Theo saw a whole world moving. Green trees. A hot gold sky. A hundred little shapes, swinging.

Nia: Theo. Theo, what did you DO.

Bram: The glow swelled and steadied into a doorway of warm light, taller than a grown-up. Wet, green-smelling air came pouring through it into the dusty attic. And then the attic floor simply was not there any more. They landed in a warm green heap of leaves, in a place that was extremely not the attic. The air was hot and thick and smelled of rain and sweet fruit, and everywhere — everywhere — there were monkeys. Monkeys arguing on branches. Monkeys hanging by their tails. Monkeys dropping fruit on other monkeys and shrieking with laughter. It was the loudest, most crowded, most chaotic place Theo had ever landed in by falling through his own floor.

Nia: Okay. OKAY. This is the best thing that has ever happened.

Bram: And Biscuit took one long sniff, spotted a hill of ripe bananas as tall as a shed, and dived straight into the middle of it headfirst, back legs paddling, tail a blur.

Nia: Biscuit, NO. Biscuit — okay, fine, YES. Theo, where even ARE we?!

Bram: But the way home was right there — the doorway, already shrinking to a bright little window hanging in the air. And guarding the only path to it, across a swaying rope bridge over that misty gorge, sat a small monkey on a throne of coconuts, wearing a lopsided crown of leaves and twigs, with his chest puffed right out. He shot to his feet, flung out one arm, and shrieked a long, grand, ear-splitting shriek. You did not need a single word to know what it meant. It meant: HALT. This is MY bridge. I am the Monkey-Prince, Guardian of the Gorge, and NObody crosses without my say-so. Then he spotted the last of the glow fading off the far window, drew himself up even taller, and gave a second shriek that plainly meant: also, the shiny thing is mine, because shiny things belong to princes. That was the LAW. He had made it up that very second, and he was extremely pleased with it. But as the children edged toward the bridge, they saw the thing that was wrong. Off to one side, a whole patch of the bright loud jungle had gone grey. Not shadowed — grey. The leaves and the fat little fruit had drained pale, the colour leaked clean out of them, like an old, old photograph. And it was silent. No arguing, no shrieking, not one single bird. A little hole of quiet, right in the middle of all that racket, as if that one corner of the world had simply forgotten how to be alive. Theo did not get long to wonder about it. Because Nia was already moving.

Nia: It is our way HOME, you cannot have it! Theo — we will just RUN past him. Come on!

Theo: Nia, wait, the bridge is —

Bram: Too late. Nia bolted for the bridge. The Prince shrieked and flapped and hopped. Biscuit, startled out of the banana hill, kicked the whole thing over — and a roaring golden avalanche of bananas came thundering down the slope. In all the chaos, a small, cheeky monkey darted in, snatched the glowing stone clean out of the air where it hung in the fading window, and went rocketing straight up into the treetops with it. And the little window home flickered — and began, very slowly, to dim. Now. A woken Wanderstone does not stay awake for ever. Leave the door too long, and the way home closes for good. They had until the stone went cold — and up in the branches, in a thief's paw, it was already going from bright gold toward dull, ordinary grey.

Nia: I will get it. I am the fast one. UP!

Bram: Up she went, fearless, hand over hand after the thief, and Theo — who hated heights, who hated this — scrambled after her anyway, slower, his heart going like a drum. The chase tore through the canopy, branch to branch to branch, every monkey on the island cheering like it was the best show they had seen in years. The thief flung the stone to another monkey. Nia lunged and missed. It flew back the other way. She swung out on a long vine, right out over the drop — — and very nearly had it. And the thief, cornered and panicking, did the worst possible thing: he hurled the stone as hard as he could, clean across the gorge. It bounced once, twice, and came to rest right out on the very last plank of the broken bridge, on the far edge of the gap. And Nia, flinging herself after it, landed with a thump out on the bridge itself — past the Prince, out over the long drop, on a plank that swung and creaked. And there she stopped. Because underneath her there was nothing at all, and three planks in the middle were simply gone, and for the very first time in her whole fearless life, Nia could not make herself move.

Nia: Theo? Theo. I do not think I can move. Everything is wobbling.

Bram: So the first try had not just failed. It had made everything worse. Nia was stranded over the drop, the stone lay dimming on its plank, and the window home was fading from gold to grey. And it came down to Theo. The baby who cried at the gate. Standing at the broken edge of a rope bridge, on an island run by monkeys, his best friend stranded over the drop, the only way home going cold in front of him. His feet would not move. His tummy had gone cold and small and tight, and his hands did not want to work, and every single part of him was saying, very loudly, no. And quietly, not to anyone, just to himself, he heard the truth of it.

Theo: I am scared. My tummy has gone all cold.

Bram: And there was no Grandpa here to fix it. Grandpa was a whole world away, downstairs, with the beans. But Biscuit was here — Biscuit came and leaned his whole warm daft weight against Theo's leg, the way he always did, and somehow it was just enough. And that was when Theo looked up at the Monkey-Prince — really looked — and understood something. The Prince was not a fearsome guardian at all. He was a small monkey, up on a coconut throne, hiding behind a crown of twigs, terrified of his own broken bridge. Theo knew that feeling. He knew it all the way down.

Theo: You are scared of the gap. Same as me.

Bram: The Prince froze mid-flap, caught right out, and gave a tiny, offended chirp that clearly meant: certainly NOT, princes are never scared, was it the DOG who told you that.

Theo: It is okay. I am scared too. So we do it my way. Not a big jump. One small step first. You hold your end of the rope. I will get my friend.

Bram: And the Monkey-Prince, who in his whole grand pompous life had never once been spoken to kindly instead of shrieked at, went very quiet, and reached out, and held the rope. Theo did not leap. Leaping was Nia's way. He put one foot on the first sound plank. Then the next. The bridge swung, and his stomach lurched, and he stopped, and then he went again — out toward the gap, toward the stone lying grey-gold on its plank, toward Nia with her eyes squeezed shut. And here is where a daft old dog earned his supper. Up on the cliff, Biscuit — who had been mistaken by the monkeys all morning for a very round, very hairy sort of monkey — grabbed one last banana in his teeth and, for no reason a dog has ever needed, hurled it clean across the gorge. It bonked the Monkey-Prince square on the crown. The Prince yelped and grabbed his guard-rope with both paws — and that great startled yank pulled the whole bridge straight and still for exactly one second. One second was all Theo needed. He snatched up the warm stone, stretched right across the gap, toes on one plank and fingers locked round Nia's hand — and he did not let go.

Theo: I have got you. Hold on. One small step. Back to me.

Bram: And plank by plank, the scared boy walked his fearless friend back off the broken bridge, onto solid ground. The Monkey-Prince, who had just watched the shakiest one of the whole crew do the bravest thing on his island, felt the last of his pomp drain right out of him. He shuffled over, very small now, and gave a soft, hopeful little chirrup that meant, plain as anything: nobody has ever wanted to mend my bridge with me. Would you help? So they did. Theo, Nia, one sheepish prince and a whole cheering avalanche of monkeys, lashing fresh green vines across the gap, plank by plank, until the broken bridge was a whole bridge again. And as they worked, Theo glanced over at that grey, silent patch — and right at its edge, where his fear had turned into something braver, one single grey leaf blushed, very faintly, green again. Just one. But green. And in his palm, the little stone went the smallest bit warmer, as if it had quietly tucked that brave feeling away somewhere safe, to keep. Biscuit supervised the last of the repairs from a high branch, wearing the crown, looking — Theo thought — extremely princely. Then Theo lifted the warm, gold stone, and the little window swelled back up into a doorway of light. And they stepped off a monkey island straight onto a dusty attic floor, just in time for tea, with green leaves still stuck in Biscuit's fur. And one banana. He had kept exactly one banana. So that is how it went, the very first time. A snapped vine, a stolen stone, a banana avalanche, and a Monkey-Prince who learned to share his bridge instead of guarding it. And that adventure — that one — is done. And somewhere in the middle of all that mayhem, without anyone making the smallest fuss about it, the boy who cried at the gate found something out: you do not have to feel brave to be brave. You can be scared all the way down to your toes, and take one small step first, anyway. That night, the deep end tomorrow felt a whole size smaller than it had at breakfast. But Theo lay awake thinking about two things he could not explain. That grey patch in the trees had been bigger when they left than when they came — wider, creeping, as if it were spreading. And the little stone, when he whispered to it in the dark and asked it, ever so nicely, to please wake up again — stayed grey, and cold, and perfectly ordinary in his hand. However hard he tried, he could not make it work. But next time, on The Wanderstone — the stone wakes in the dark, on a moonless beach, where an old pirate ship lies wrecked and groaning above black water, and something small and frightened is trapped down in the deep, and a tide is climbing that will not, will not wait. So come back, and we will go through the stone together. Until then — one small step first.