A Seat for the Sun

Behind her sunglasses, the afternoon shone a pleasant pink through Nika’s closed eyelids. She lay along the cloud with one bare foot tucked beneath her other knee, letting the warmth reach the ends of her hair. Below, a dog barked itself hoarse at something which declined to be barked away. Farther off, bells announced the hour. She had no intention of counting them.

Something hissed under her shoulder.

The cloud burst. A pointed red object shot between her arm and her waist, snagged in a lilac ruffle, and hung there, ticking. Through the ragged hole it had made she could see a garden, very small and very green.

Nika sat up. She drew the object out of her dress and held it at arm’s length until it finished smoking.

It was a rocket. Its body was a cardboard tube, its fins cut from something that had once advertised biscuits. One fin was bent, and the red paper round its nose had puckered beneath a prodigious quantity of paste. A folded sheet, fastened to the tube with string, bore a yellow circle with twenty-seven rays. Nika counted those, then untied the string and opened the sheet.

“Please come to my birthday.”

Underneath, in smaller writing: Tebbit. I am eight today.

There was a drawing of a house, a tree, and a table covered in little dots. An arrow pointed to a rectangle beneath the tree. This is your chair. A second arrow pointed to a crooked stick figure. This is me. The figure had eight fingers on one hand.

She turned the paper over. No petition for a longer summer. Not even a request to bless the cake.

Nika bent over the hole in her cloud. Directly beneath her lay a tree with bunting tangled in its upper branches, beside a long, dotted tablecloth. The dog was barking at a string of paper flowers. Seven children were running round the table, and one, wearing a yellow paper crown, kept stopping to look up.

She put on her gold sandals, shook the damp from her white hair, and went down with the rocket.

Her feet touched the grass beside the tree. The barking stopped. A woman carrying a jug stood so still that juice spilled over her fingers.

For a moment Nika had the full pleasure of an arrival. Sunlight gathered round her shoulders and glinted along her bracelets; the round lenses of her sunglasses caught the garden in green, violet, and brilliant blue. The woman set down the jug and raised a hand to her forehead in the noon salute.

“Lady Nika.”

On the kitchen windowsill, below a painted likeness of herself, stood a little bowl of honey. Nika inclined her head to the woman. Then the crowned child appeared in front of her, breathing hard.

“You got it! Where did you find it? Is the fin broken?”

He took the rocket in both hands and inspected the bent piece of biscuit box.

“It found me,” Nika said. “Rather abruptly.”

“Did it hurt?” He looked up at her properly for the first time.

“Only my dress.”

He bent to inspect her ruffles, but another child shoved between them to see the rocket. The others crowded close, all talking. Tebbit held it above their heads.

“It went right up! I told you!”

The tallest girl reached easily over him and prodded the damaged fin.

“You can paste that,” she said.

“I know. Don’t bend it.”

His mother wiped her wet hand on her apron. “We weren’t expecting— Tebbit said he’d invited you, but I thought—”

“I did invite her,” Tebbit said. “She’s here.”

“Yes. Get another plate, please.”

He passed Nika the rocket and ran indoors. The tall girl followed, announcing that she knew where the good plates were. Nika’s hostess looked from the goddess to the little chair beneath the tree. A sun had been drawn on its back in yellow chalk, with a mouth nearly as wide as the seat.

“I can bring you something more comfortable.”

“That one was promised to me.”

“He scrubbed it himself,” the woman said, and went to fetch a cloth for the juice.

Nika leaned the rocket against the tree and lowered herself to a pleasant floating height above the chair. The garden smelled of crushed grass and sweet pastry. Across the table was a cake with eight candles, purple icing flowers, and a yellow sugar border. Someone had attempted a rocket in icing on its top. The red nose leaned to one side.

Tebbit returned with a plate clutched to his chest. His cousin came behind him carrying three, which she set down with considerable ceremony.

“Can you make it all gold?” the smallest girl asked Nika, pointing at the tree.

Nika tipped her sunglasses down her nose. “Watch the leaves.”

She drew the light between them into long golden threads. Every moving leaf pulled a thread sideways, so that the tree seemed to be shaking out a thousand tiny streamers. The children stood beneath it with open hands. Nika let the threads loosen into bright rings, spinning each one down round a wrist or an ankle. A boy tried to catch his ring in his mouth. The tall cousin jumped through hers before it reached the ground.

Nika laughed, and spread the light wider. The bunting shone. Gold edged every plate.

“Lady Nika,” Tebbit’s mother said, “the icing.”

A purple flower was sliding down the cake.

Nika closed her fingers. The rings vanished; the tree became a tree again. She drew in her radiance until the garden settled to ordinary afternoon light, then slipped her glasses up into her hair.

“Will that do?”

The woman nudged the flower back with a knife. “Thank you. Tebbit, leave it. You’ll make a hole.”

He took his finger away from the icing.

“Can we do the chairs now?”

His mother looked at the sky as if some further guest might be descending with an appetite. Then she said they could.

Six chairs were already waiting back to back on the lawn. Tebbit dragged Nika’s over to join them, then retrieved the rocket from beneath the tree. While his mother fetched a concertina, the children spread themselves round the chairs, leaving Nika a gap.

“Am I to play?” she asked.

“If you want.” Tebbit was straightening the fin with his thumbnail. “You go round till the music stops. Then you sit down. Whoever hasn’t got a chair is out.”

“And what happens when I win?”

He went to the table, laid the rocket down, and brought a chocolate sun from behind the jug. Wrapped in gold foil, it was as broad as his palm, with fat pointed rays all round it.

Nika took a closer look. The foil had been pressed into a smiling face. This was a much better likeness than the one on the kitchen sill.

“That’s the prize,” Tebbit said. His cousin reached for it, and he twisted away. “You have to win it.”

“I’m looking.”

“You look with your eyes.”

His mother took the chocolate and stood it against the jug. “Come on, everybody. Eight people, seven chairs.”

Nika counted. The deficiency was deliberate, then. She placed herself behind Tebbit, who tugged his crown straight.

“No pushing,” he told the smallest girl. “And you have to keep going. You can’t just wait by a chair.”

His mother pulled the concertina open.

Nika had expected something ceremonial, perhaps a procession ending in a change of seats. Instead, the children marched round the chairs at an astonishing pace. She followed, lifting her hem above the grass. The tune skipped and doubled back; the smallest girl kept taking two steps to everybody else’s one. Tebbit swung his arms. His cousin watched the concertina.

Nika began to see the attraction. Each chair offered itself and slipped away, and the little golden sun watched from the table. She quickened her pace. There would be a seat directly to her left in three steps, and another two beyond that. If the music stopped now—

It stopped.

Nika folded herself gracefully above the chair with the sun on it, arranging her ruffles with a flick of her wrist. She had secured it well before Tebbit dropped into the one opposite.

Then the smallest girl darted beneath her arm and scrambled onto the seat.

Nika rose to avoid a collision. All seven children were sitting. The smallest girl looked up at her from under a fringe full of grass seeds.

“I was here,” Nika said.

“You weren’t sitting.”

“I was sitting over the seat.”

Tebbit leaned round a chair back. “Your bottom has to be on it.”

Nika looked down at the little girl, whose bottom was unquestionably on it.

“That was not mentioned.”

The little girl bounced on the seat.

Tebbit’s mother set the concertina on her knee. “I’m afraid you’re out, Lady Nika.”

The goddess lowered her feet to the grass. “Might this be counted as a demonstration?”

“We can play another game later.” The woman stood. “Everybody up. We need to take one chair away.”

The children sprang up. Tebbit’s mother carried the chalk sun back to the table and placed it beside Nika.

Nika sat on it. Properly. Her knees came up inconveniently high, and she had to gather her ruffles into her lap. The chair was warm where the little girl had been. She moved one sandal to stop a short leg from rocking.

Tebbit came over while his mother counted the remaining chairs.

“You can watch.”

“I had intended to eat the chocolate.”

“I want it too.” He glanced at his cousin, then hurried back into place.

The music started again. From her low seat Nika had an excellent view of the shoes. The smallest girl’s buckles flashed; Tebbit’s cousin wore soft slippers that hardly left the ground. She stayed very close to the chairs. Nika watched her slip into one as the others were still bending their knees.

The smallest girl came out next. She accepted an apricot tart, sat beside Nika, and immediately asked whether the goddess could make the bright rings again.

“After the game,” Nika said. Someone was going to have to get ahead of that cousin.

More chairs came to the table. A boy complained that the music was too quick. Another protested when it grew slower. One child forgot the game altogether and danced away across the grass; his empty-handed return caused a dispute that Tebbit settled by pointing repeatedly at the occupied seats. Between rounds he lifted the chocolate to check that it was still there, and his mother put it back.

With five chairs taken away, only Tebbit, his cousin, and a boy with red bootlaces remained. The last two chairs stood back to back in the middle of a patch of flattened grass.

Nika leaned forward. Tebbit was doing very well. He had stopped swinging his arms, and his crown had slipped down over one eyebrow. His cousin waited for him to pass, then tucked herself close behind him. The boy with red laces kept to the outside.

The tune came round again. Tebbit peered at his mother. The cousin peered at a chair.

Silence. A scrape. The boy dropped sideways onto one seat and the cousin landed on the other. Tebbit stopped in front of her knees with his hands held out.

“I was going there!”

“I got here.”

He looked at the boy, who planted both boots on the ground.

“But it’s my birthday.”

His mother shook her head. “One person comes out each time, Tebbit.”

“I nearly sat down.”

“Come and sit here. We’re doing the last round.”

She put a chair beside Nika’s and waited. Tebbit kicked a loose leaf off his shoe. Then he trudged over, sat, and pulled his crown up with both hands.

Nika shifted her elbow to give him room.

The two remaining players disputed which way round to walk. Tebbit stared at the patch of grass between his shoes. Nika could have offered him an account of her own treatment, but he had been present for it, and he was picking a hole in the paper at his temple.

“Your cousin is very quick,” she said at last.

“She plays at everybody’s parties.”

“Ah.”

“She won a whole bag of figs at my other cousin’s.”

Nika watched the girl test the last chair, sitting and standing twice. Such preparation seemed excessive. She wished she had thought of it.

Tebbit reached behind him for the rocket. “Did it leave a big hole?”

Nika held her hands apart.

He sat straighter. “That big?”

“The cloud tore. Your rocket went through the place I had chosen for my shoulder.”

“Could you see through it?”

“I could see this garden.”

He looked up. Her cloud had drifted beyond the roof, and the gap had softened into a notch along its edge.

“I made that,” he said.

“You did.”

“She said it wouldn’t get past the tree.” He nodded at his cousin. “The first one didn’t.”

Nika followed his gaze. Something red was wedged in the topmost fork, above the bunting.

“Is that also an invitation?”

“Yes. The same one. Except I had to write it again.” He examined the fin, then pressed it gently flat against his knee. “I wasn’t eight when I did that one. It was yesterday.”

His mother called for quiet. The last round had begun.

The cousin and the boy circled the single chair. The boy tried walking sideways. The cousin copied him. His foot caught a chair leg, he stumbled, recovered, and flashed an alarmed look towards the concertina. Nika held her breath. Tebbit gripped the rocket in both hands.

The music stopped with the cousin almost past the seat. She sat backwards, twisted, and caught the backrest. The boy’s hands landed on her shoulders.

“Won!” she shouted.

The other children swarmed over. Tebbit stayed beside Nika as his mother presented the chocolate. The cousin peeled back a corner of gold, took one deliberate bite from a ray, and carried the rest to her plate.

“She’ll eat all of it,” Tebbit said.

Nika had been thinking much the same thing.

“Cake!” his mother called.

Tebbit was on his feet before she had finished. He took his place behind the candles and beckoned urgently to Nika until she brought her chair round to the crowded side of the table. Everybody sang, badly and with great volume. Nika knew none of the words. She joined on the last note, and several children turned to hear it continue long after they had run out of breath.

Tebbit bent towards the candles.

“Wait!” his mother said. “Your crown.”

He pulled it off and blew. Seven flames went out. He attacked the eighth from closer range, puffing his cheeks, and the children cheered when it surrendered.

Nika applauded with the rest. She was hungry now. The little sunlit rings had taken some concentration, and the musical chairs had taken considerably more.

“Which bit?” Tebbit asked her while his mother cut.

“The flower that fell down.”

He leaned over the cake. “I want the rocket.”

His mother lifted the crooked icing rocket onto his slice. Nika received the purple flower and a thick slab of cake, with a fork much too small for it. She ate the flower first. It tasted of vanilla and a great deal of sugar.

The smallest girl held up her wrist across the table. Nika wound a thin ring of light round it, keeping it pale enough to leave the icing alone. The girl turned her hand this way and that, admiring it, while Nika took another forkful of cake. When the girl reached for a tart, Nika let the ring unwind.

Tebbit put his plate on his knees, set the real rocket between them, and picked icing off its paper nose where he had touched it with a sticky thumb.

“I would do better if we played again,” Nika said.

“Me too.” He glanced at the cousin’s plate. Half the chocolate sun remained. “There isn’t another prize, though.”

“I should still like to see your cousin lose.”

He looked at her, then back at the cousin, who was telling the boy with red laces exactly where he had gone wrong.

“We could do the music,” he said.

Nika considered the empty chairs. “And decide when it stops?”

“Yes.” His voice grew louder. “Mum! Can we do the music for another game?”

His mother was collecting discarded candle stubs. “Can you play a concertina?”

“She can sing.”

She looked at Nika, who took another mouthful of cake and nodded.

“Finish eating first.”

They finished quickly. Tebbit got icing on both cuffs. Nika found crumbs in a fold of her dress and tipped them onto her plate. Around them the other children were already deserting the table, called away from their slices by the news of a second game.

Five chairs went back to the grass. Nika helped carry them. The tall cousin tucked the rest of her chocolate beneath an overturned saucer and inspected the arrangement. Then she took her place among the six players.

Tebbit dragged his chair beside the chalk sun.

“When I squeeze your wrist, stop singing.”

“We must wait until she is between two chairs,” Nika said quietly.

“I know.”

Nika rested her wrist in his hand and sang a brisk tune without words. The children set off. Tebbit followed his cousin with his whole head, waiting. She passed a chair. His fingers tightened. Nika stopped.

The cousin sat almost before the note was gone. Four other children found seats, and the boy with red laces stood looking at an empty patch of grass.

“I can see you squeezing,” the cousin told Tebbit.

He snatched his hand away. Nika looked from her wrist to the cousin’s pleased face. While the players got up and the boy carried a chair out, she stood, picked up the little chalk sun, and set it down facing the cake table. Tebbit watched her sit with her back to the players.

“But you won’t see when to stop.”

Nika reached round and turned his chair to face the table beside hers. “Neither of us will.”

He sat down slowly. His hand found her wrist again, out of sight in her lap.

Nika began the tune. Behind them, shoes scuffed the grass. She could hear the smallest girl’s hurried steps and somebody laughing, but the cousin’s soft slippers made no useful sound at all. Perhaps she was passing a chair now. Perhaps she was very far from one. Nika resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and sang a little louder.

Tebbit’s fingers twitched against her wrist. She glanced at him. He was staring fiercely at the cake crumbs.

More feet shuffled past. Nika felt the hand tighten decisively and cut the note short.

Feet thudded; a chair scraped. Then the cousin cried, “Oh!”

Nika and Tebbit twisted round together. Every chair was full, and the cousin was still standing. Tebbit flung both hands into the air, and Nika sprang up so abruptly that the little sun chair tipped over behind her.