Robin Rainbow

By Donald McCrory

Robin Rainbow is a contemporary work of fiction written for young adults. The discovery of a casket that contains a map with a riddle sends Robin and his school friends on a quest that leads them to encounter the ever-present forces of Evil that lurk everywhere.

Dramatic turning-points that include their capture, escape, recapture, their rescue via celestial beings and their return to ‘everyday reality, dictate the novel’s narrative arc.

When at war with the powers of evil, concern at their disappearance from home and school soon becomes global. To find the missing children, huge rewards are offered that tempt bounty-hunters from across the world.

Their disappearance is taken more seriously than any illegal invasion of another country or outbreak of Covid-19 and its variants or any alleged alien abduction!

Conversational in style, the text both challenges and entertains. The element of surprise, a deep thirst for adventure, the search for knowledge and happiness sustain the reader’s interest throughout.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035837168

Donald McCrory

Dr McCrory has written historical biographies of Miguel de Cervantes and A. von Humboldt, four novels, several academic texts and essays and has won national and international awards for his poetry. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He took early retirement from his post as Head of Hispanic and Germanic Studies at the American International University in London to focus on 1) creative writing, 2) further study of Eastern Languages, especially Sanskrit, Hindi and Mandarin, as well as of Eastern philosophies and religions, in particular Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. Donald enjoys studying languages, travel, opera and classical theatre and currently lives in Spain.

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About the Author

Dr McCrory has written historical biographies of M de Cervantes and A. von Humboldt, four novels, several academic texts and essays and has won national and international awards for his poetry. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

He took early retirement from his post as Head of Hispanic and Germanic Studies at the American International University in London to focus on 1) creative writing, 2) further study of Eastern Languages, especially Sanskrit, Hindi and Mandarin, as well as of Eastern philosophies and religions, in particular Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism. Donald enjoys studying languages, travel, opera and classical theatre: he currently lives in Spain.

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this text to all my former students and colleagues but in particular to Mr Leon Maclaren, former leader of the School of Economic Science in London and also to Benjamin Crème, former chief editor of Share International in London and spokesperson for the return of Maitreya and The Second Coming.

On a more personal level, I have to mention my niece, Annette McCrory (née Foster), Julie Perigo and her husband Dan Dumitrescu, who reside in Barcelona, Elena Airini Alexandru, Antonio Fernandez-Luna Pont – my mentor in all things to do with modern Spanish and with life in today’s Spain and Colin Clarke—who, as far as I know, is the only person to have read almost everything I have written and the creator of the novel’s front-cover. All are enlightened beings and have become my best of friends over many years.

Copyright Information ©

Donald McCrory 2024

The right of Donald McCrory to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035837151 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035837168 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the School of Economic Science in London, The School of Meditation in London, Share International Magazine, The British Wheel of Yoga, White Eagle School of Astrology and Healing in Liphook in Surrey, England and the SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies and part of London University) where I studied both Hindi and Sanskrit. In addition, I’d like to mention the publishers, Austin Macauley in London, who kindly agreed to publish the novel.

Synopsis

Robin Rainbow is a contemporary work of magic realism written for young adults. Set mainly in the Outer Hebrides, the narrative arc follows the exploits of Robin at home, school and when on his quest, in realms beyond the physical.

Mystery surrounds his birth and when given a Superman suit, he acquires ´strange powers´. At primary school, his questions unsettle his teachers but thrill his peers, especially Conchita from Peru, who knows the secrets of herbs and plants. Both are neighbours to the McBride children who live on property that sits on sacred ley-lines.

The discovery of a casket with a map and riddle sends Robin and his friends on a quest that leads to a series of adventures in which Good versus Evil.

The novel charts their ‘progress’ via dramatic turning-points:

Their meeting with HEBS (Highly Evolved Beings)

Their capture.

Their bid for freedom.

Recapture.

Sentence to deathunless…?

Their last-minute rescue.

The resolution and their return to so-called ‘normality’.

Throughout all is the charismatic figure of Grandma Fairchild who tells the children ‘unheard of’ stories and encourages them to tell to the others their own story and asks them to consider what it is that makes for a ‘good tale’.

When the Robin 5 engage in the war against Evil in otherworldly realms, their ‘absence’ from home sets off alarm bells; overnight parental and local concern becomes international. The government declares days of ´national mourning´. Huge rewards are offered, tempting bounty hunters from across the globe.

In brief, their ‘disappearance’ is taken more seriously than any outbreak of COVID-19, or war in the Ukraine.

Conversational in style, the text both challenges and entertains while offering multiple perspectives. The element of surprise, the thirst for adventure, the search for knowledge and happiness sustain the reader’s interest throughout while driving the novel forward into sequels.

Their quest (what is it that we all really want from life?) is now yours. Follow them and see what happens.

Part One

Chapter 1

Robin Rainbow at Home

Doesn’t the wind make funny patterns? Robin said to his mother one day when walking in the woods near their home. He was very young and loved to play in the open.

What do you mean? she asked, puzzled.

I can see the shapes the wind makes, he replied.

No, said his mother laughing, "you can hear the wind, but you can’t see it!"

But I can, he said, somewhat upset, I see it move over the ground and across the fields and way up into the sky! I see it all the time. It’s my friend. Watch me.

He then began to run after it, calling out to it as it skipped across the pathways, weaving and turning and sometimes coming back on itself. And friendly Robin, with his pale cheeks flushed with excitement, sprinted after it as if trying to catch a rabbit or a spider. And as he ran his mother noticed that his tiny feet didn’t actually touch the earth but rather skimmed the surface, as birds do when landing on water.

Fortunately for him and for his worried mother, who was watching his every move in case he fell and hurt himself, it was a calm day and the wind, tired from its long trek across the oceans during the dark winter months, had no wish to race and so danced a slow waltz under the shades of trees instead. Finally, it stopped and so did Robin and then suddenly, in his spanking new sailor suit, dived headlong onto the footpath laughing loudly and looked as if he had caught something and he had. It was what he called the wind-spirit.

But Mrs Moira Rainbow, a down-to-earth Scottish mother in her mid-thirties told him to stop being silly and not to mention such a thing at home to his brother and sister and certainly not to his father. He would be laughed at and no child wants that, right? And so, Robin, about to cry, held his peace and never said another word about holding the wind-spirit or seeing the strange shapes it made. And yet when at home he’d often look out the window and follow the wind as it moved across the landscape. And its movement was always changing, now slow, now fast, sometimes in a frightening rage and then, especially in summer, lovingly soft and light as a feather. And—and this is significant—it sometimes brought him secret messages but more about those later.

His mother’s remark not to tell anyone about his friendship with the wind-spirit really annoyed him. He wanted to tell everybody and he wanted everybody to join him in the chase because it was such good fun. But no! He had to keep quiet about it and then he realised he had to keep quiet about other things, too. He didn’t tell her, for example, that to catch the wind he sometimes had to run in-between the raindrops. Many a time when it had been raining or just drizzling, he had chased after the wind and although he rarely caught it, had arrived home bone dry.

If the wind can carry the rain without getting wet, he said to himself, then I’ll follow it and keep dry. It was a skill—but also a thrill—picked up from playing with the wind; the more they played the stronger their friendship became. It was a fun and games association and because Robin learnt quickly, seeing wind patterns or running in-between raindrops soon became as natural as breathing or washing hands before meals. He had never known a time when he couldn’t breathe or when he wasn’t a friend of the wind. He knew when it was tired, angry or in pain and when it just wanted to be left alone.

When the trees shook and violently waved their arms and legs that we call branches, everyone could tell the wind was angry or even furious and so took measures to avoid it and left it at that. But not Robin: at such times he would look outside from his bedroom window and stare at the colossal power of his friend wondering what it was that had upset him so much, hoping that it was not in pain. Because deep down, Robin knew the wind had no real desire to uproot trees, turn over cars and caravans, tear off the roofs of houses and even capsize fishing boats and yachts.

But it happened and seemed to be happening more and more. And yet there were other times when he sat on the grass in his garden at home—or in the gardens of friends and neighbours—and he felt immense stillness and peace because nothing moved, not even the tiniest leaf or blade of grass and that happened when the wind was at peace with itself or resting from its journeys across the deserts and oceans and was probably asleep.

He felt a special thrill when the wind blew the rain everywhere; against the window-panes, the chimney tops, lamp-posts, cars and against buildings tall and low, especially against shops and houses. (It should be said that on very windy nights he did feel sorry for the twin family cats, Rum and Whiskey, who would run for cover under the kitchen table or leap into their baskets near the fire.) And he loved to watch films where ships at sea, even ocean liners, were tossed against the waves as if made of cork.

For him, at such times whether on land or sea, the wind was not crying but washing the planet, cleaning the forests and singing to the fish. He was certain that fish and all sea creatures love storms at sea; for them, the more water that fell, the happier they became. Why else, he used to ponder, would huge blue whales weighing up to ten tons leap for joy like the dolphins and why would some fish, alone or in shoals, even fly above the surface for hundreds of yards unless they were happy?

Bees don’t complain of an excess of honey. Apple trees don’t groan when they produce a super crop of apples. And fish don’t cry when they hear storms, or feel the icecap melting or swim close to vast subterranean geysers or even when swept off-course by tsunamis. ‘The more the merrier!’ is their motto and is known to every creature that lives in water, especially in the seas and oceans.

Such thoughts as these, however, he had learnt to keep to himself. One day he would meet someone with whom they could be shared. He couldn’t explain why he thought that but he just knew it would happen and that was good enough for him.

Now here’s something strange he’d observed about the wind; it sheds tears but never in the rain. What would be the point of that? Nature is super-abundant but never wasteful. Better than most forest animals, tiny Robin knew when the wind cried and sobbed and that’s because he knew its voice and spoke to it. Its voice, like its movement, was constantly changing, and yet, somehow, was as constant as the stars. But why, Robin can hear you, the reader, ask, why should the wind cry?

The answer is one of Robin’s deepest and best kept secrets. The wind revealed to him that its prime duty, a duty that was eternal because no other elemental force could do it, was to carry in its arms all the world’s pain and suffering to spheres light years away from the earth and release it into the black holes of outer space. It had to be done annually, that is, once a year, and it was a task that took all its strength and skill. You have no idea, the wind-spirit said to Robin one day, how heavy the load is. It’s immense. We almost break our backs to carry it. But we do it because we love humanity. In fact, it went on, all the winds of the world join forces to achieve this, if not, my task would be impossible.

And when the task was over, for that year only, all the winds had to rest and then was the best time to catch the wind-spirit. And that’s why we have days when the wind seems to be in a coma, sleeping like a log. In fact, the wind once told Robin—and it was said to him in the strictest confidence — because the weight of the world’s suffering was increasing almost daily, it had been decided to remove the earth’s burden not once but twice a year.

The decision had been taken by the four major winds, north, east, south and west after an extraordinary meeting held in private on top of Mount Everest. The dates chosen to remove the world’s pain were the 1st of January and the 1st of July and so on these days Robin, unknown to anybody else, held a special vigil in his room.

The wind doesn’t blow, he once said to his parents, it sings just like any baby fairy born inside a buttercup or hazelnut; girl fairies in buttercups, boy fairies in hazelnuts.

How he knew anything about the birth of fairies or of leprechauns—because he spoke of them, too—was a mystery to them. They assumed he learnt about such things in the children’s books and comics that they gave him to read and so never questioned him about why girl fairies should be born in buttercups and boy fairies in hazelnuts. It was something so zany that they immediately threw it out of court. But there were times when the things he came out with made them crease up with laughter or sometimes embarrassed them or—and this happened not infrequently—completely bamboozled them.

But they didn’t mind and they tried not to laugh at his ideas and comments when he was present. He was growing up and all children say and do things that seem crazy to adults, don’t they?

When on holiday in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, (South Uist was his favourite island) he would watch the waves and would watch others looking at the waves, too. He really enjoyed looking at the boats in the distance and at the brave souls who swam in the icy cold waters of the Atlantic. While his brother and sister made sandcastles or played beach tennis he would watch the birds flying across the sky high over the sea and then wheel landwards to secret nests.

They built their nests close to the fields that surrounded the sandy bay where the Rainbow family pitched their little tent. Inside the tent were the children’s buckets and spades and towels as well as lots of things to eat and drink. But when Robin looked at the birds flying there was a difference for when everybody else saw birds flying through the air, he saw air flying through the birds! Without air—and for him wind was air—a bird’s wings would mean little and as far as Robin was concerned, would then be best employed as fins to swim the seas.

In his more fanciful moments, he thought that there should be an Olympics swimming competition just for birds. He even imagined records being broken in freestyle, butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke but there would be no synchronised swimming events or water polo. Diving would be a major event and there would be a special category for seabirds. He sometimes wondered what his teachers, especially of sports and drama, would think of such imaginings and one day he planned to ask them, point blank.

His father would always bring binoculars to the beach and spend happy hours looking at the surfboarders, paddleboats and in the distance at the passing ships and, just now and again, he even tried to look over the horizon. And while he did this his wife, Robin’s patient mother, would play with the children, read a newspaper or magazine and sometimes listened to her favourite music using headphones.

On very hot days—and these were rare—she would listen to past recordings of Desert Island Discs hoping one day to visit one and get a real suntan. But her prime task was to provide Robin, Peg and Tim with drinks, nibbles and sweets. Mr Rainbow would never eat outside mealtimes although occasionally, if it was very warm, he would succumb to a jumbo choc-ice.

And when he did so, Mrs Rainbow would look through her husband’s binoculars and claim to see mermaids dancing in the sunlight combing their long hair on half-hidden rocks. Robin never saw one mermaid but the others thought they did. While the family tried to spot the mermaids—for some reason they were always the same ones and always on the same rocks—Robin preferred to make out what the shadows were on the wall around the bay. He loved looking at shadows but no one ever asked him why. Maybe his family and friends assumed they knew.

After all, his parents would say after looking through the binoculars, it’s natural. We all look at things we can see and we listen to things we can hear. That’s why we have eyes and ears!

And because his parents and apparently everybody else had been told that the wind can be heard but not seen, they believed that to be the truth. But not Robin: his eyes and ears saw other things as well. So, how could he go against his own knowledge? He couldn’t and he wouldn’t and so, for a little time every day and longer at weekends he would stare out from his bedroom window and be at one with the wind, the trees and the shadows.

But during school holidays when he should have been doing homework, he would spend a good hour, longer when the mood took him, looking at the shapes the wind made over land and sea and sometimes he, well, you’ll have to wait a little longer to learn what he sometimes did when the wind was in a rage.

But true to mother’s demand and because he loved her more than anybody else, he never mentioned anything about his friendship with the wind to Peg his older sister by eighteen months or to Tim his younger brother aged three, born on the same day as his mother, the twenty-first of January, Aquarians by the skin of their teeth.

But all the family knew—because mother was fascinated by star-signs and astrological charts—that to understand the character of any person, one also needs to know that person’s rising star sign. Robin had been born in late June and his rising star was Libra. From that, if you have the interest and the time, you can work out the type of individual he was destined to become.

Love for his star-bewitched mother meant that he kept silent about his other skills, too. If he could see the wind and the patterns it makes, why should his vision of things stop there? And so, he experimented. He would stare so hard at shadows that he actually came to believe he could see through them and, sometimes, even touch them. He longed to be able to see straight through things as if he had x-ray vision. And if you asked him what sort of things, he would immediately answer and say, ´rabbit warrens, beehives, birds’ nests and underground caves´.

He also loved staring into rivers because he believed that, sooner or later, he would acquire the skill to see fish and other ‘watery’ creatures that with our normal eyesight we can’t see. He was also fascinated by the night sky, especially in winter and yearned to see through the thick cloud cover and look directly into the moon. If there’s a man on the moon, he’d say to his mother and sometimes to his father, too, I’ll find him!

And his parents, for some unknown reason, actually believed he would find the moon-man, as they called him, if he at all existed. They had serious doubts, however, saying it was folklore; they knew that when the Americans landed on the moon nothing was seen or mentioned of the legendary moon-man.

But above all (and this may sound crazy) Robin Rainbow wanted to be able to see inside people, especially into their heads and read their thoughts. He had no idea where such a desire came from (most likely he’d been born with it) but he also somehow knew that actions spring from thoughts and not vice-versa. He believed in telepathy although at this stage in his life he didn’t know how to spell the word or what it meant or even that it existed. So, you see; our Robin was different from other children and no one knew that better than his poor mother, Mrs Rainbow.

What he liked most was sitting in the dark during those long winter nights when it was unwise—because too cold and spooky—to go outside; whether he had cat’s eyes is not known for sure but he certainly had a cat’s vision in the dark. Years later, when he went camping with his classmates, they all used torches or would light matches but not he; he had no need of such contraptions. Besides, such things were very inconvenient. He was at one with the dark and once wrote a poem entitled, The dark is light enough! that was published in the school magazine and was later stolen by a jealous class mate who, donkey´s years later entered it in a national poetry competition and won first prize.

No one but he knew who the real winner was and because Robin had long moved on, the thief kept his prize and became quite famous and now has a column in a popular daily newspaper. Robin would have been happy to learn that his poem had won top prize but he was so busy doing other things in other places that when it happened it was irrelevant. But he wrote other poems when at school one of which he thought was much better than the one his classmate had stolen. It was found long after he had left the school inside a library book that had been mislaid. No one but he knew that originally the poem had been 36 lines long but now only 12 lines remained:

EYES OF HEAVEN

Sun and moon, orange and lemon,

day and night, fruits of heaven.

Gold and silver, silver and gold,

fire and ash, hot and cold.

Sun and moon, circles of light,

orange and lemon, day and night,

fruits of heaven, gifts from above,

freely given, the work of true love.

Honey gold of day,

water-melon at night;

the planets will roll and sway

so that the stars can shed their light.

Had he been asked how he came to write it; he would have replied that ´it wrote itself´, he hadn’t actually done anything. He picked up his pen and suddenly it began to write and when it had stopped writing he ‘discovered’ the short poem, title included. Yes, it was his pen that had done the writing but nothing else; he couldn’t honestly claim that the work was his even though written by his hand. That’s what he would say and it would be the truth.

His mother, Moira Tucana Rainbow from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, had told him if not once then one million times, ´to be like other children´. But with his unusual interests and special friendship with the wind-spirit how could he be like other children?

For him, other kids enjoyed jigsaw puzzles, comics, bikes, conventional toys, computer games and sending text messages. And even on holiday while other children including his brother and sister searched for sea-shells or crabs and ate candyfloss or played beach tennis, he far preferred to do other things. But when it came to nursery rhymes, he was in his element, more so than any other child in his school. But why, he hears you ask? Simple; he loved to experiment with sounds and would produce what many described as mumbo-jumbo.

One fine day Mrs Rainbow decided to tape-record the sounds for her husband and neighbours to hear. And what she picked up—and is still on tape for all fans and any future biographer of Robin Rainbow to listen to—were sweet sounds, as if set to music, and which baby Robin seemed to know by heart. It began and ended with this refrain, ‘jana, gana, mana, jaya hai’ and as he sang, he would smile like an angel.

There was a great deal more but no one had ever heard of such strange mutterings and put it down to ´baby-speak´, a language that none but babies can make sense of; at least that’s what most mothers believe. Robin’s parents would listen, smile at each other and accept it as ‘baby Robin’ growing up. When, years later, two female research students from Harvard University, one of Linguistics who had a passion for ancient civilisations, and the other of Musicology made a thorough analysis of the tape they made a number of astonishing discoveries.

So far, they’ve refused to divulge their findings saying that Robin, who appeared to them in a shared dream, asked them to wait until the sequel to this novel had been completed. But this doesn’t mean that readers of Robin’s exploits can’t play around with these sounds and perhaps discover the hidden meaning behind them for it is certain and guaranteed that there are clear and well-established meanings behind the sounds once made by Robin when a tiny tot.

Moira Tucana Rainbow was a loving mother but she didn’t find life with Robin at all easy. But she had to laugh when one day he told her that the sequence of letters in the English alphabet was incomplete and therefore invalid! It was a strange claim to make and more so when made by a child and so she dismissed it as ´idle chatter´. After all, she hadn’t studied languages, the origins of sounds or even the origins of writing. But she did remember at school that when studying basic French and German there were certain sounds she found difficult because they weren’t ‘English’; but she didn’t take it any further.

How he came to make such a claim is not clear although the two students from Harvard said that it must be connected to his experiments with sounds when an infant. Not much has been