They came to a wood, which was a relief because it provided a bit of shade, and Sunny found some wild raspberries which were horribly sour but at least they were food.
They had to keep stopping all the time so that Dominic could admire the leaf of a fern or rhapsodize about a bird singing. “Can you hear that? Jesus Christ, can you hear that, Phil?” When he found a gigantic toadstool growing on a tree he dropped to his knees and stared at it. The toadstool kept him enraptured for what seemed like hours and Sunny said, “Can we go, please?” because his tummy was hurting, probably from the sour raspberries, but Dominic started leaping about and shouting, “Omigod, omigod, I can’t believe I didn’t see it—toadstools! Toad stools—the toad with the ruby in its forehead—the two are connected!”
“Because it’s a stool for a toad?” Sunny hazarded.
“Because the toad is the king of the toadstools—that’s the secret. That could change everything. We have the secret knowledge. Gnostic.”
“Nosstick?”
“Yeah. Oh, man.”
And so it went on for quite a lot longer. Sunny thought about lying down and covering himself with leaves like a small woodland animal. He could have a nap and then maybe when he woke up he’d find himself back at Jordan Manor, or, even better, Grandpa Ted’s house. But no, they trudged on.
Out of the wood and back into the torture of the hot sun. Dominic had stopped talking, in fact his whole mood seemed to have shifted and slipped into something darker. He was muttering to himself, but the words didn’t really make any sense.
They were walking down a lane now, lined by big hedges, and then suddenly the lane stopped and they came out on to a small road. It was very hot on the road and Sunny’s feet were so sore he didn’t think he could walk any more. There were two white gates on the road. There was a big red circle in the middle of each gate and a little lamp on top of each of them that wasn’t lit because it wasn’t dark. They walked through the open gates and Sunny realized that they were on a railway. At last, something exciting. Was there going to be a train? Could they wait for it? “Of course,” Dominic said. “That’s probably why we were led here.” By whom, Sunny wondered? The king of the toadstools? He didn’t question this, he was just relieved that his father seemed happy again.
Sunny had never come across a level-crossing before. He loved trains. Grandpa Ted took him to the railway museum in York all the time. He said he’d loved trains too when he was a boy.
Sunny was expecting that they would cross over the tracks, but Dominic sat down right in the middle of the road between the two white gates and started to roll a cigarette. Sunny hovered uncertainly next to him. Sitting down on a road, especially one with railway tracks crossing it, didn’t seem like a terribly good idea, even to a seven-year-old, but on the other hand his legs and feet couldn’t take much more.
The tracks were embedded in wood where they crossed over the tarmac and his father patted the wood next to him and said, “Relax, have a seat.” He lit his roll-up and discovered a flattened bag of completely melted chocolate buttons in his back pocket and looked at them in astonishment. “Wow,” he said. “Purple.”
Sunny sat, less reluctant now that he’d seen the chocolate, and the wooden part of the road wasn’t too hot. He could see all the way along the railway track in both directions. “Cool, huh?” Dominic said. “Like a lesson in perspective. Do you know about perspective?” He didn’t.
“You’ve got to paint something smaller the further away it is. It took people, like, thousands of years to work that out.”
Sunny’s leg touched one of the metal rails and he gave a little yelp because it was so hot. “Yeah, the sun, man,” Dominic said. “It’s hot. Like, and you’re the sun, right?” His father wasn’t really speaking sentences, Sunny thought, just jumbled thoughts. “And toad and Todd! Can’t be a coincidence that the two words are so similar, can it? Ra. Apollo. They would have been cool names too, but we called you Sun. Our Sun.” (Or perhaps he said “son.” Sunny’s name always led to confusion.)