Maddy West and the Tongue Taker Read online

  The next man was the most beautiful man Maddy had ever seen in her life. He was completely bald and his skin was dark. He had soft oval eyes and a huge smile that shined like the moon. A makeup lady came and patted down the top of his head with a powdered sponge as Maddy watched.

  The third person was a lady, quite old, with kindly, wise eyes, and her hair was tied back in a long ponytail.

  Maddy wondered what they were going to be interviewed about and was surprised when she found out it was her.

  After some kind of finger countdown from Jacquie, Devron began to talk. He introduced himself and the show and then turned to Maddy. She thought she was probably supposed to be nervous but couldn’t help herself from beaming with excitement.

  “Hello, Maddy,” Devron said.

  “Hello, Mr. Chapman,” Maddy said, as if she was just meeting him and hadn’t been chatting with him for the last ten minutes.

  “You can call me Devron,” Devron said.

  “And you can call me Maddy,” Maddy said, forgetting that he already had.

  There was laughter from the studio audience and another smile from the beautiful man in the middle of the sofa.

  Then she remembered about the green slime and, despite what Darcy the researcher had said, she looked upward to make sure there wasn’t a bucket of slime suspended over her head.

  “Everything all right?” Devron asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Maddy said. “I was checking to make sure I wasn’t going to get slimed.”

  Everybody roared with laughter.

  It took Devron a moment to get his breath back so he could continue, but when he did, he said, “Maddy, it’s lovely to have you here today. I think it’s going to be a surprise for our audience. They have no idea why we are interviewing you today.”

  Maddy just smiled, not sure if he expected her to say something.

  “Firstly, tell us a little bit about yourself, Maddy,” Devron said. “What kind of things do you like to do?”

  “Well,” Maddy said, thinking hard about the question, “I like singing and dancing and cooking, and when I grow up I want to be on TV. Just like you.”

  “That’s nice,” Devron said.

  “Not like you, exactly. I mean, not that I wouldn’t want to be like you, but I want to sing and dance, or maybe do cooking, not just talk to people.” She began to get a little flustered. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  “Let’s start again,” Devron said. “When I welcomed you, perhaps I should have said konichiwa, or hej, or ciao, or kia-ora.”

  Maddy smiled again.

  “Did you understand what I said?” Devron asked.

  “Yes, you said hello — lots of times,” she said and added, “Once is usually enough.”

  More laughter.

  Devron turned to the camera and said, “And now you see why this remarkable young lady is joining us today. Some people are fluent in two languages, others have mastered three or four. Me — some days I struggle with just one.” More laughter from the audience. “But this young lady tells us that not only can she speak English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese. In fact, she can speak any language.”

  In fact, Maddy had said nothing of the sort and rather suspected it was her mom who had told them that.

  Devron said, “We’ve invited Maddy along today to see if it’s really true that she is omnilingual or whether she is just a child prodigy who has managed to learn a lot of languages at a very young age. Today, our other guests in the studio are Magnus Sigmarsson, professor of Icelandic languages at the University of Reykjavík.”

  The audience clapped, and the thin, pale man with the ratty face nodded his head, which made his hair flop around. He smoothed it back with a hand.

  “South Africa-born William Buthelezi, a native speaker of the Zulu language.”

  More applause as the man dazzled the audience with his huge smile.

  “And Annie Whitehorse from New Mexico, USA, who speaks fluent Navajo.”

  The lady bowed her head graciously.

  “I can tell you,” Devron said, “that Maddy had no idea that these three people would be here today, nor did she know what languages they speak. This is the first time she has heard this, so she couldn’t have had a chance to prepare for them.”

  He glanced at Maddy to see her reaction, and she gave him another big smile.

  He continued. “First up, Professor Sigmarsson. Icelandic is regarded as possibly the hardest language in the world to learn. Perhaps you could ask Maddy a few questions and see how much she can understand.”

  The professor nodded his head, smiled a rather gritty smile, and turned to Maddy.

  “Hello, young lady,” he said, in what Maddy knew must be Icelandic. “You probably don’t realize how hard it is to learn Icelandic. Few people, apart from those who were born there, can ever really understand the idioms. Do you understand any of what I have just said?”

  He had spoken very quickly, running the words together almost as if he wanted to make it hard for her, Maddy thought.

  She replied in the same language. “Mostly, but I don’t understand what an ‘idiom’ is. Could you please explain that part?”

  The professor was smiling at the audience, convinced he had outsmarted Maddy.

  He said, “Of course. It’s the . . .”

  He stopped, suddenly realizing that she had asked her question in Icelandic. His eyes widened, and he seemed to go a little paler than before.

  Devron smiled at Maddy, then turned to the camera. “That sounded convincing to me,” he said. “However, my knowledge of Icelandic is pretty much nonexistent. Professor Sigmarsson, how did young Maddy do?”

  The professor ignored Devron.

  “Young girl, where are you from?” he asked in Icelandic.

  “I’m English, actually,” Maddy replied. “I live near Cambridge. But I’d love to visit Iceland one day. It sounds a bit cold though. Is it?”

  The professor looked straight at Maddy with a harsh expression then looked at the studio audience. “She’s a fraud,” he said.

  Maddy gasped.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “A fraud?” Devron asked, giving Maddy a sideways glance. “Why do you say that, professor?”

  “It’s a clever trick,” the professor said, “but you can’t fool me with such trickery. I am a professor of the Icelandic language. I know all the regional variations. Of course this girl can speak Icelandic — she is Icelandic! I can even tell by her accent the name of the town where she was born, Bolungarvík, which just so happens to be the same town in which I was born.”

  He folded his arms and leaned back on the sofa, quite satisfied with himself.

  “Is this true?” Devron asked, a little nervously. “Were you born in Iceland, Maddy?”

  “No,” Maddy said. “I was born right here.” She thought about that for a second, then she smiled at the audience. “Actually, I think my mom bought me in a shop at the Main Street Mall.”

  The audience laughed again.

  “She bought you? In the Main Street Mall?” Devron asked.

  “I think so,” Maddy said with a straight face. “That’s where she usually goes shopping.”

  Devron was struggling not to laugh. He took another deep breath and continued. “But have you ever lived in Iceland?”

  “Never,” Maddy said.

  “She’s not telling the truth,” Professor Sigmarsson said.

  The audience went quiet. Devron, too, not sure what to say next.

  Maddy clamped her lips together. She didn’t like to be called a liar, and especially not on national television.

  “So, in your opinion, Maddy is a native Icelandic speaker,” Devron said.

  “It’s not an opinion — it is a fact,” Professor Sigmarsson said.

&
nbsp; “No, it’s not a fact,” Maddy said. “It’s not even right.”

  “Do be quiet, little girl,” Professor Sigmarsson said. He turned to Devron. “My time is valuable, and if I find out that your program is in on this, and that it’s just a hoax or some kind of practical joke, then I will be very disappointed.”

  Maddy was breathing slowly in and out, trying to calm down.

  “Professor, I can assure you that we have no knowledge of any practical joke or hoax,” Devron said.

  “I’m telling the truth,” Maddy said, quite calmly, although she really wanted to jump up and shout it out loud.

  If the professor had known Maddy better, he might have had an inkling of what was about to happen, and he would have probably stopped talking at that point. But he didn’t. Instead, he smiled at Maddy in a most condescending way.

  “Little Maddy,” he began.

  “No,” Maddy erupted. “That’s enough! I am not lying, and there’s no need to be so rude. I could have said something about you spilling food on your tie or the funny way you brushed your hair, but I didn’t. That’s because I’m not rude like you.”

  She paused for breath, and in that breath, she suddenly remembered the cameras and the studio audience. She stopped, her mouth agape, and looked around.

  Devron seemed frozen in place. Jacquie, the producer, was running around in the background, whispering into her headset microphone. Professor Sigmarsson looked stunned.

  Then someone, somewhere in the audience, slowly began to clap. A few others joined in, and it got faster and faster until the entire audience exploded with thunderous applause.

  Professor Sigmarsson sat back in his chair and turned his head away with a miffed expression.

  When the applause had died down, William Buthelezi said, “Might I be permitted to have a little word with the girl?”

  “Of course,” Devron said with a look of relief.

  “Maddy, it is a great pleasure to meet you,” William said. “And I’ll tell you a secret. I, too, like to sing and dance.”

  Maddy liked William immediately.

  He continued. “It would give me even greater pleasure to know that you can understand what I am saying.”

  It was a strange language, full of tongue clicks and whistles, and when Maddy tried to answer, she had to try a couple of times to get the sounds right.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you as well,” she said. “You have the biggest, nicest smile I have ever seen in my life.”

  William roared with laughter while Devron and the rest of the people in the studio all looked confused.

  William turned to Devron and said, “She says she likes my smile. She most definitely was not born in Iceland. From her Zulu accent, I would say she grew up in Umzimkulu, where I’m from in South Africa. But I rather suspect that she is telling the truth. Perhaps not the Main Street Mall, though — more like a boutique shop on High Street.”

  Everybody laughed. To Maddy, he said in the strange clicking language, “You are a true wonder, my charming young friend.”

  Maddy turned red but beamed back at him.

  Annie Whitehorse, the Native American woman, took her turn to ask a few questions in Navajo, and Maddy answered them too.

  Maddy was quite enjoying the whole thing, although it was clear that Professor Sigmarsson was far from convinced and couldn’t be persuaded that she was anything but a fraud — a fraud who had really grown up in Bolungarvík and was trying to fool him.

  Afterward, as they were leaving the television station, Maddy and her mother met William Buthelezi again in the lobby.

  He took her mom’s hand and said lots of lovely things about Maddy. When they turned to leave, he presented Maddy with his business card.

  “If I can ever be of service to you, please call me,” he said. “I would be honored to be of assistance.”

  Maddy clutched the card as they went into the elevator.

  The last thing she saw as the elevator doors closed was William’s huge, shining smile.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE OLD MAN ON THE TRAIN

  THEY HAD TO WAIT a long time for the train that went back to Maddy’s house. When it finally arrived, it wasn’t very full, and they had a whole compartment to themselves. Maddy and her mom sat silently. Maddy was tired from all the talking she had done in the television studio. Her mom was holding an envelope the producer had given her after the show was finished. She had a strange expression on her face, and she glanced at Maddy frequently.

  Maddy looked out the window at the countryside as it went by. There were lots of hedges and fields with cows and sheep.

  Ahead, the track started to curve, and she could see the train cars in front of theirs. She watched the front part of the train as it curled around the track and disappeared into a hole in the side of the mountain. A tunnel! Tunnels were exciting, she always thought. When you were in a tunnel, you were actually inside a mountain, even if only for a short time.

  Her mom’s eyelids began to droop, and she rested her head back against the seat cushion and drifted off to sleep. Maddy also felt tired and struggled to keep her eyes open.

  Closer and closer the tunnel came, and then everything went black except for the light from the ceiling. All the light bulbs seemed to be broken, apart from the one above her head. The bulb was so bright and everything else around her was so dark that she couldn’t see anyone or anything — not even her mom. That was frightening even for someone who wasn’t afraid of the dark.

  Then, out of the shadows in front of her came a voice. The sound startled her. It came from the man who was sitting on the other side of the compartment. Strange that she hadn’t noticed him when they had first sat down. His voice was low, like Reverend Pritchard’s at church, but even deeper, and it rumbled like a train going across a bridge. He spoke in English, but with an unfamiliar, thick accent.

  “Hello, Maddy,” the man said. “I saw you on television.” As he said it, he leaned forward into the cone of light that was shining down on Maddy.

  He was very old, she noticed. Reverend Pritchard was old — he was at least seventy — but this man was much, much older than that. His hands were gnarled, knotted by age and maybe by arthritis. He wore quite raggedy clothes.

  Maddy didn’t feel alarmed, though. He had a comforting manner, a little like the doctor, and she felt quite warm and cozy just to be sitting near him. It was an odd sensation, but Maddy knew that some people were like that. Other people made you feel cold and prickly and you wanted to move as far away from them as possible.

  “You are a very, very clever girl,” the old man said.

  “Why, thank you,” said Maddy.

  “What you can do is very special,” he said.

  “The doctor said it was extraordinary,” Maddy said, and wondered as she said it why she was telling these things to a stranger.

  “Quite. In fact, I haven’t met anyone who could do that since . . .”

  He leaned back, and his voice disappeared with him into the darkness. There was silence for a moment, and then he moved into the light again.

  “I think you have a touch of the magic about you,” he said.

  “I like magic,” Maddy said. “I once saw a magician at the school fair. He made cards disappear, and rabbits and scarves appear, and . . .” She became excited as she recalled this and told the old man all the things that the magician had done.

  He listened patiently and smiled a lot, but when she had finished, he said, “He sounds very clever, Maddy, but that man was a conjurer, not a magician. He did tricks, not magic.”

  “Do you mean real magic?” Maddy asked with her mouth and eyes open wide. There was no such thing according to her dad, who was usually right about these things.

  The man looked gravely at her. “In days long gone, before schools and books and television and the Internet, there was
a lot more magic in the world,” he said. “Then scientists came along and changed everything.” His eyes dropped to the floor for a moment, then lifted back to Maddy.

  “It wasn’t all bad,” he continued, “because without scientists we wouldn’t have cell phones and coffee machines and satellites and nonstick frying pans. But scientists decided that everything had to be explained by their rules and anything that couldn’t be explained by science simply didn’t exist. There was no room for unicorns and fairies and magic in this new world.”

  “Is there really magic in the world?” Maddy asked, her heart pumping.

  “Just a little left, I think,” he said. “And I think a little is in you.”

  “I can’t do magic,” Maddy said. “I’m just an ordinary girl.”

  “Oh, you’re far from ordinary,” he said. “You’re very far from ordinary. But listen to me carefully.”

  He stared right at her, and Maddy found she was transfixed by the bottomless pools of darkest blue in the center of his eyes. “There are many types of magic in this world. Most of it is small magic, but beautiful magic.”

  “Yes?” Maddy said breathlessly.

  “But there is also a darker magic. The magic of deep, hidden places. Of things which cannot be spoken of. Beware of the black magic.”

  Maddy listened, transfixed.

  The old man got up, very slowly, and moved toward the door. He was unsteady and, Maddy thought, not very well.

  “I think this is my stop,” he said. “I have to go now.”

  He paused and peered out at her from under long white bushy eyebrows. “I’ll do what I can to watch out for you.”

  That seemed a strange thing to say, and Maddy was about to ask him what he meant, but suddenly the train left the tunnel, which had been much, much longer than Maddy remembered from when they went through it the other way. She didn’t think a tunnel could be longer one way than the other, but it certainly seemed like it.