Chapter 2
The End of the Rainbow
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An April shower followed Paul out of the village.
He jogged across a field, through a wood and along a narrow lane between two green hills. For the first ten minutes he counted his footsteps. For the next five he counted sheep. Then he counted the number of times he thought about stopping.
At thirty-seven, the rain ended.
Sunlight broke through the clouds and struck the hills ahead. A white line appeared above them, too straight to be lightning and too bright to be mist. It widened into a brilliant arch that stretched from one side of the valley to the other.
Paul stopped counting.
The arch began to change. Red appeared along its outer edge, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The colours pulsed like the lights of an enormous machine.
The nearest end of the rainbow lowered into the field.
Everyone knew you could not reach the end of a rainbow. It always moved away as you approached.
This one came looking for Paul.
It swept across the grass until a white ring of light rested twenty paces from him. A low hum trembled through the gate beneath his hands.
Paul’s sensible thoughts told him to run home.
His curious thoughts asked what could possibly make a rainbow hum.
His curious thoughts usually won.
He climbed over the gate.
The ring warmed his face. Inside the light he could see shapes turning: mirrors, doors and something that resembled a chandelier made from rain.
“Just one quick look,” Paul told himself.
He stepped into the circle.
The field vanished.
For a moment Paul felt as though he had been poured through a drinking straw. He shot forwards, backwards and sideways at the same time. Colours streamed past him. A voice somewhere shouted, “Mind the cushions!”
He landed face-down on something soft.
Paul waited for the world to stop wobbling, then lifted his head.
He was inside a round room beneath a domed ceiling. Eight mirrors alternated with eight tall doors. Seven doors matched the colours of the rainbow. The eighth was brilliant white.
The walls shimmered like the inside of a soap bubble. Paul could see hundreds of reflections of himself, all staring back with the same untidy hair and open mouth.
The white doors flew apart.
A small, smartly dressed man hurried in. His long white coat had pearl buttons. His shoes were so polished that Paul could see his own astonished face in them.
“Paul!” cried the man. “Welcome, welcome and welcome again!”
“How do you know my name?”
“Because we invited you.”
“You did what?”
“Invited you. Chose you. Collected you. There is a slight difference between the three, but we have no time for grammar.”
The man extended both arms.
“I am Rainbow Ronnie, Keeper of the Rainbow Room, Chairman of the Rainbow Council and Emergency Assistant to Nearly Everything. You may call me Ronnie.”
“Where am I?”
“In the Radiant Rainbow.”
“A rainbow cannot have rooms.”
“An ordinary one cannot. This is a PoncoVention.”
“A what?”
“A PoncoVention. An invention invented by a Ponco.”
“What’s a Ponco?”
Ronnie’s smile slipped for the tiniest moment.
Behind him, the seven coloured doors flickered. A dull boom sounded somewhere far away.
“That,” Ronnie said, recovering his smile, “is what you are here to discover.”
He raised his right hand and patted Paul’s right shoulder. Paul did the same to Ronnie, their arms crossing between them.
“A PoncoPat,” Ronnie explained. “Our sign of trust.”
The red door began to glow.
“And now,” said Ronnie, “we begin.”