Sascha Martin's Ripping News, the Podcast: Episode 6

The story so far.

You’ll recall that Mary-Alice stole a prototype, a broom, being built by Sascha Martin in his very secret room, and the broom conveyed the sooty girl to somewhere very high, where she briefly made acquaintance, having fallen from the sky, with these: a pile of coal, a man who spoke in Latin, and a cat.

Exit, feline, broom, and heroine together after that.

Last we saw, the girl was falling from the sky again, bereft, and the place that rose to meet her was the one she’d barely left.

‘Stop descending!’ she commanded, in the tone of voice she used to convey that saying ‘No’ to her would never be excused.

But the broomstick disobeyed her, and she squeezed its skinny girth.

Then a thought struck Mary-Alice, and she nearly fell to earth.

‘Oh, I know! Bifana has to be the first word out of two, and it has to go before the thing you want the broom to do!’

So she tried, ‘Bifana, stop!’ But nothing happened, so she said, ‘Bifana, pause! Bifana, back! Bifana, do not make me dead! Bifana, please, abort, evacuate! Bifana, fly away! Bifana, listen what I’m telling you and do the things I say! Bifana, wait! She caught her breath. ‘Bifana, pull up now and quick, or I’ll rip out all your bristles and I’ll snap your skinny stick!’

No reaction.

Down she plummeted, with so much déjà vu.

‘Oh Bifana spiteful broomstick!

‘Oh Bifana stupid POO!’

Once again the broom spun out between the islands, whereupon,

Mary-Alice clenched with everything:

the cat clung grimly on.

‘Oh Bifana!’ Mary-Alice wasn’t liking what she saw.

She was back to where she’d been, but it was nothing like before.

It was so completely different.

It was horrible and harsh.

All the fields had gone to brambles, and the orchards were a marsh. And the villa, it was missing.

Mary-Alice was aghast. But a goat looked up with interest, and observed her as she passed.

Then a little hut that stood above the marsh got in the way.

Mary-Alice hit the roof, and it was only made of hay, or something like it.

In they tumbled, to the little space below, with a caterwaul of screeching like you wouldn’t want to know.

And that was only Mary-Alice.

Then the cat began as well, and the people in the hut were screaming.

‘Eek! It’s just like hell and all its furies!’ … which was probably something Aggie’d said at school,

so, for once, she must have listened, though she didn’t as a rule.

Then she hit the wall and landed, so ungainly, on the floor.

Being winded, she was silent, which she hadn’t been before.

Then a shelf that hung above her in the corner toppled down, and the noise around her faded like the furies leaving town.

In a fog, she muttered things she didn’t hear beneath the shelf, as she mumbled and she moaned about Bifana to herself.

But from moments of bewilderment, she stirred and looked around, seeing people on a palliasse, and piglets on the ground. And a pair of goats, some chickens that were perching on the wall, and a scruffy little dog that didn’t frighten her at all.

Every one of them was staring, just, regarding her in awe.

Mary-Alice found it pleasing, and she gave them all a four.

Then she took off both her socks, because the coal was stuck inside, and she pulled another piece out that was digging in her side.

Then she paused.

A block of stone beside her, holding up the wall, had a portrait that was fading, and a face she could recall quite well.

The face was Mr. Toga, not the shadow of a doubt.

Mary-Alice sat a moment as she tried to work it out.

But the cat attacked the chickens, and the dog attacked the cat, and she rather thought she prob’ly should be leaving after that.

But she didn’t want the broom to blow up there, with her inside, so she held it by the bristles and she took the broom outside.

As she mounted up, a sooty something landed on her back.

Mary-Alice reached behind her to expel it with a smack.

But the cat remained unmoved, and dug its claws in out of spite.

Then the broom exploded loudly, and it launched them in the night.

From below them, foreign words pursued.

‘Bifana’ sounded key.

Mary-Alice turned and shouted, ‘Oh my god, it’s not an E!’

‘They are asking you,’ the broom said,

‘this Bifana that you said - is it your name, or the cat’s name?

‘Is it something else instead?

‘And he says, you came from nowhere, and you’ve made a gaping hole in our roof, and scared the children, but we thank you for the coal.’

‘Oh, I left my socks behind!’ said Mary-Alice with a frown.

Then they travelled through the darkness, to the light, and headed down.

Now, reluctantly, we pause.

But let us solemnly depart, with our thoughts on she who plummets, and our hands upon our heart.

Might we possibly illuminate her fate with what we’ve learned?

Will the villa reappear and can the cat not be returned?

Will she get her socks back?

None of this can Mary-Alice know.

And she wonders, as she plunges, what awaits her now below.

To be continued.