The Land of Somewhere Safe

by Hal Duncan

  Cause through all’s this palaver of a cavalry charge and daring rescue, why, flying high in the sky, Peter he’s been tootling every tune he knows from We’ll Meet Again to Over the Rainbow, and as he kicks into Auld Lang Syne now, off to their right... a great geyser erupts, from them lochs between Stour and sea it must be.

  – He’s neffer...

  And she veers her steed to a sharp clockwise turn around Ham Isle, turning west, northwest, back toward the Stour.

  – A shanty, laddie! she cries. Give her a shanty!

  • 9

  Whatever might she mean, scamps? What might that Rake be minding of a chanter’s power so’s she’d click to that scrag’s brainwave? What might’s Peter be figgering his fife could tootle to their aid if only he can chance on the dance it can’t resist, suss out the strain, the right refrain?

  I’ll tell yer what it ain’t, scamps. Whatever he’s mad-fancied to whistle up with the Silver Chanter, it ain’t what rises now – not at Peter’s piping, but at Blackstone’s bellow from his balcony, at canting spittly fanatical as Adolf’s ranted from that eyrie beneath the pediment’s peak.

  It ain’t the Old Man Peter’s playing for, but it’s the Old Man as shudders now, and them nearby juts of rock poking up around, a ring of em sorta, near half a dozen. They judders, then jolts – CRACKOOSH! – and, fuck me, the whole bleeding circle of em pushes ten feet upwards from beneath the earth, clods of muck and gorse ’sploding up and showering down like’s a grenade went off. And KERCKOOOOOM! another thrust, except this one brings a pillar of stone bursting from below, shooting up into the sky, earth raining down as from yer bleeding doodlebug’s detonation.

  Up and up it shoots, high as that pediment, higher, past Blackstone’s hand raised in an upturned claw and echoing it, scamps, this pillar what dwarfs the Old Man as an arm does a thumb – because that’s what it bleeding well is. It’s the fricking left arm of that sleeping giant what has the Old Man for its thumb. And as Blackstone’s hand flattens and turns from palm-in to palm-out, as his arm lowers its angle from straight up to the fucking forty-five degrees of some fucking southpaw Nazi salute, so too does that sleeping giant’s, mate.

  Now Blackstone’s other hand thrusts up in a fist, and another pillar explodes from the earth, its base like’s the first’s on that great looming ridge of the Stour as now looks, with Blackstone sweeping his arms outward, like nuffink less than the shoulders of some grey stone titan hung on a cross or hoisted as puppet, that pedimenty outcrop its bonce dangling limp.

  Not limp for long though, scamps, cause as Blackstone sweeps his arms down, the giant copies him in yer most gobsmacking game of Simon Says ever. And as Blackstone pushes down, the giant pushes itself up.

  • 10

  Oh, scamps, is it Fingumy Cool himself, who built the Giant’s Causeway as stepping stones from Ireland to Scotland? Or that bigger bastard Beenandunnit, what Fingumy had to overcome? Or even Bawler, King of them Fumers, brawnier still, who’d his eye smashed right out the back of his bonce by a stone from Lookit’s sling? No, scamps, this fucker’s bigger and older’n all of em combined, goes back so far, why, some says he’d to use Noah’s Ark as float to survive the bloomin Flood.

  The mighty Gog his grampa, McGog his pappy, it’s Og Mac McGog, scamps, Og himself.

  Fixed back in yer days of the Tower of Babble, tweaked to the biggest bastard ever strode the Earth, first of all hellions to say fuck this for a game of sodjies and escape after Keen and Able to the Land of Nod, settled down on yer isle of Skye for a nice wee kip and been asleep there ever since, dreaming so deep he’s even asleep in his dreams... It’s Og. And he’s still asleep, scamps. Even as he hauls himself up out of the ground to tower over the chasm what was his bed, this ain’t no awakening.

  No, cause as that great outcrop rises to reveal itself as, yes, his behatted bonce, as Og’s face comes clear now, Peter in the air above Loch Leathering and even them scruffs astraddle their kelpies in the sea beyond him, they can see the eyes in it are shut. So what’s steering this Gargantua in his slumber? As that mighty head turns its blank gaze from the chaos of critters fleeing below upon Peter and the others, what sense is turning it as if to see?

  As in some mystical lore of Lily’s mum’s land, scamps, it’s a third eye.

  An hole bored smack dab in the centre of his forehead, a bulge of panelled glass built as some bulbous porthole, why, it’s like nuffink so much as the nose blister of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, with Blackstone inside it where’s the bombardier would sit; but it’s the pilot he is, scamps, and this his cockpit, and he ain’t sat in it but suspended, held aloft by the invisible writhings and slother of the Addanc, every move he makes Simon-Saysed into the sleeping giant’s limbs by that puppeteering executioner of its master’s egomaniacal will.

  Correctomundo, scamps.

  Fuck.

  Part Eight

  • 1

  Aloft in the air like Blackstone, but held there by a power of whimsy and fanciful high-jinks, (as opposed to yer parasitic puppeteering monster-from-the-deep fuelled by delusion and in thrall to fascist zeal, like,) Peter’s so dumbstruck at the sight of this thing, why, if his jaw weren’t attached he’d has to come to his senses and dive like the crackers to catch it before it splashed into Loch Leathering below him and were lost forever. Not a peep comes from his pipe as he hovers there gawping... until he hears the voice crying out below.

  – A shanty, laddie! booms Erin O’Morrigan.

  Charging ashore at Beery Bay – straight in the path of that giant if he strides out seaward to stomp em, scamps – charging over the beach and up grassy slopes, to rear her steed upon a mound at the head of Loch Leathering, the others hot at her heels – or her kelpie’s hooves, rather – she calls up at him with all the two-fisted thigh-slapping gusto of a goddess of war too lusty for life to keep the job.

  – By yer prickety horns, my clever lad! she booms. It’s a shanty she’ll be after!

  But of course! Oh, how could he be so daft not to see it, scamps? Here he is with a chanter as might as well be a bleeding hornpipe in his hands, and it’s that great spout of water what answered his whistleblast facepunching of Blackstone as the light bulb above his noggin went off over. It’s what he suddenly savvied must lie sunken and snoozy under the loch’s calm waters – it’s only that he’s been trying to raise all this time and never once thought to rouse it with a shanty!

  – Oh, I’m the perfect featherbrained chump, says he.

  And with a twirl, he dives, pipe to lips, bursting out with a toot tootle-oot, tootle-oot toot-root-toot what gets a whoohoo! from Flashjack, on account of him reputedly being the very drunken sailor that ditty’s about, with all them verses what says to chuck him in the longboat, or turn a hosepipe on him, or whatever, aktcherly savvy advice on dealing with a scallywag liable to spark powderkegs while’s sober. Gets a geyser what near hosepipes Peter too, scamps, and a mightier steamboaty WHOOHOOOO! with it.

  And hey ho, up she rises: the Good Ship Whimsy.

  • 2

  Oh, how can I conjure it for yer, scamps? Like yer sailing ships of old, sleek as a clipper, but grand as a galleon, and the oddest of any such vessel yer ever did see, for in place of a mast it had a blooming tree trunk – literally blooming, cause blimey, even as its rigging breaks the loch’s surface, all the buds of spring starts opening to minty green shoots; as the water streams from gunwales, half of em’s darkening to summer’s emerald; and as its bows carves its wake, why, there’s the brightest ambery leaves of any autumn too.

  A ship of all seasons is the Good Ship Whimsy, in blossom here but fruiting there, great juicy-looking globes of all colours, like oranges and peaches and plums ballooned up big as a bonce, as a beachball, bigger even, and maybe’s actual balloons, cause that ship don’t just rise out of the depths, but out of the water now. Or maybe’s it’s the great big whirlymajig atop it, with bibbons like helicopter blades reaching out an hundred and three feet wide, ribbons looped and twisted betwixt e
m as if to catch the wind, spin them bibbons like windmill sails.

  Oh, it’s the cunningest queer caprice of a ship, scamps, cause that whirlymajig’s built not just to funnel the wind down for yer helicopter’s lift, but to wangle and quangle it through the branches into knotholes all up and down that tree’s hollow trunk. And all round the ship’s hull, that tree’s flutey roots pops out like cannons or exhausts. Why, it’s a giant pipe organ in its innards, with valves what sends the air to port or starboard, fore or aft, to blast out in great contrabassoony didgeridooy PHWOOOOOPS! what’ll jet it forward, veer it this way and that.

  But that whirlymajig ain’t whirly enough, it seems. She’s afloat, she is, the Good Ship Whimsy, but no more’n a nipper’s noggin above the water’s surface, that elaborate Sunday hat of an external contraption engine spinning lazy as an hungover scofflaw, herself spluttering water from them exhausts but without the oomph to truly clear her pipes, poor thing. She tries, oh, she tries, with all the heart Peter toots into his choruses, but she ain’t that young whippersnap Flashjack with a stripling’s stamina to just belt it out.

  – Whistle up a wind, laddie! comes the cry. Whistle up a wind!

  • 3

  So the up-side of the hurricane Peter pipes from his perch on the bowsprit of the Good Ship Whimsy is its billows and blasts is most effective in battering back an army of midge myrmidons and a stone giant out to stomp that ship back into the depths it came from. The down-side is while’s he’s well over nine on yer Beaufort Wind Force Scale, aktcherly controlling the direction beyond round and round is another matter.

  – It’s awfully good for a beginner, Lily calls up supportively.

  Which don’t change the fact the ship’s in the hurricane’s eye, becalmed.

  – Och, she’s no catching it, bairns! cries Erin. We’ll have to hoik her to the winds. You two, wait here. You two, with me.

  In a tick, with a leap and a swing, she’s hustling up a rope and aboard, Flashjack and Janie right behind. And it’s: into the tree, monkeys; to port, laddie; you to starboard; lash these tight. And in a tock, there’s ropes being tossed below, to Foxtrot and Squirlet – catch and latch em! – and a holler to Lily on the kelpie queen to lead the charge.

  – Now hi-ho and heave, cries Erin. Ride, bairns, RIDE!

  And, oh now, picture it! Thundering hell for leather down Loch Leathering, galloping straight fucking at yer, this wild trio of kelpies with a pirate spurring this one, ninja flicking reins on that one, and one rootin-tootin cowboy otter out in front whooping. Picture it! Hooves pounding water to spray, kicking clouds of it behind, clouds out of which she rises, like the biggest and best kite in the world, the Good Ship Whimsy, rising higher, scamps, higher, her whirlymajig catching the wind now, wangling it, quangling it down into her pipes and out to a mighty steamboat PWHOOOOORRRRRRP!

  It’s a mad scramble then for Foxtrot and Squirlet up their ropes, a Hang on, what about me? for Lily, and a bold leap down for Erin to land astraddle behind the otter as Lily’s steed slows from gallop to canter to trot, snorts great salty spumes from its nostrils, harrumphy as rider.

  – Well, I never! says Lily.

  – Och, yer needed down here, lass, says the Rake. It’s ye and me now, together.

  And a clap on the shoulder fills Lily’s heart.

  – And ye’ve made an auld dear’s century, sonsy lass, Erin winks. I’ve always fancied to ride Keen’s kelpies.

  • 4

  And as Lily, with the Morrigan herself riding pillion, rears her steed for another blast of Keen’s horn, to call the cavalry of the sea – To me! – in the skies above, the Good Ship Whimsy bellows what seems a halloo but’s aktcherly a singalong with her pilot. That wheel on her quarterdeck aft of the mast? Ain’t but a decorative fancy, it seems, when Foxtrot’s spin does nuffink. No, it’s Peter’s hornpipe helms her in call and response of them exhausts – as is cannons too, Flashjack finds with a giant peach scrumped, fumbled butterfingers down an hole, and FffffPWOOOP!

  – Ooooooooooooooooh!

  So it’s Squirlet in the crow’s nest treehouse perched high in a fore-branch’s fork – trust her to spy that hidey pronto and nab it, eh? – calling shots back to her powder monkeys, Flashjack and Janie, aswing on vines, scrambling rope ladders, plank bridges, plucking them humongous fruits to lob em like basketballs, roll em down branches, into this huge knothole, that woodpecker’s nest. And it’s Foxtrot discovering the use of that wheel, spinning three o’clock, nine o’clock, fire away!

  And it’s Peter afore fluting Speed, Bonnie Boat, steering into the whirlwind – and fireworks now, scamps, ‘sploding starboard and port.

  And fuck yer Pickaninny Indians of a groanhuff’s half-arsery, it’s Tiger Lily Furiosa, with her kelpie-mounted tribe of queer freak hellions charging them boys what’s lost in straight white spite, charging Blackstone’s Addanc-driven skeletal droid minions made of umptillion midges each, storming the ack-ack batteries they’s sandbagged up the slopes. It’s her and Erin pointing squads of wolves and ravens this way, that way, into the breach, scruffs’ bestest friends, and crack that wall of insect black! It’s Lily’s Lancers smacking thwack through corpses in the Addanc’s grip now too, dumb groanhuffs’ bonkers bestial dreams. Attack!

  And the starboard guns of the Good Ship Whimsy blast a broadside fusillade, pounding the giant’s bonce with conkers big as cannonballs and twice as hard, every one of em solid as a seasoner baked, boiled in vinegar, and varnished by the sneakiest cheat. The Whimsy’s pipe organ peashooters blasts, but oh, though they rattles that bonce, they miss the blister, and up comes one hand to defend, another to swipe – a near miss, whew! But as Blackstone opens his lion’s gob to roar, the giant’s jaw drops too.

  And out they streams, pale riders, bloodcurdling... Nazi elves on alicorns.

  • 5

  It’s only bleeding unicorn pegasuses, scamps, innit! Unicorn bleeding pegasuses as the steeds of yer high and haughty latter-day Teutonic Templars of the Order of Saint Mithras. And oh, by fuck, if piping Peter in the Land of Nod might be the inspiration for Edwardian fancy or Athenian myth, these fuckers flying in with Mausers rattling might be the veritable bad seed rooted in dreams and sprouted to all history’s fuckery in the name of nobilitude and purity, from Roman legions, through kiddy-scrobbling crusaders, to Ripper Vicky’s waiftakers with their statues in the Stamp’s vault in the Institute.

  Flighty Peter can dart up from the bullets aimed at bowsprit. Squirlet can duck into her treehouse for shelter from the strafing. Flashjack and Janie can bounce and swing to dodge through the thrash of machine-gunned foliage with all the agility of yer harlequin Scarlequin and a Longpins with a spider monkey’s tail. But Foxtrot can only dive from the wheel on the quarterdeck, defenseless. But wait!

  – To starboard, shouts Squirlet. Flashjack, on your two!

  And he looks, he sees, fuck me, glory be, then he’s sprinting down a branch to jump and swing feet-first: Down the hatch!

  And KAPHWOOOOOOOOP! It’s a cannon’s boom and a steamboat’s toot rolled into one, and Flashjack fired as a human cannonball, wheel spun to two o’clock just in time by a Foxtrot what pays a bloody price for it, battered by bullets in his back, and down. Oh noes!

  But it’s Flashjack roaring up into the sky now, oh, astraddle a gorgeous beastie of blue underbelly and green back, as heard them bells what sent yer other beasties mad, and didn’t like em one little bit, come soaring, now roaring, spitting furious to see Nazi knights.

  It’s Spitfire, scamps. That’s right!

  Whooshing to the defence of the Good Ship Whimsy they comes, the dragon spitting fireballs fast as any Mauser, Flashjack with his highwayman’s flintlock – what fortuitously ain’t the one shot wonder and Fuckety fuckety! fumbling to reload as yer actual pistols of that era was, yer Land of Nod being graciously liberal with its ammo and lax with its practicalities, as yer might expect, I s’pose, of summat built in accordance with nippers’ dreams.

  Why, any more fast and loo
se with its How Shit Works, and it might give yer Hollywood movies a run for their money, truth be told.

  • 6

  If Flashjack’s gun has an ’andily inexhaustible supply of shots though, not-so-fortuitously them Mausers does too, and these ain’t yer Hollywood movie Nazis as couldn’t hit the back of a bus speeding away from em down a straight road over a bridge yer groanhuff make-believer wants to go boom with all them pursuing Nazis on it. No, scamps, it’s only the sheer bloody aerial acrobatics of Spitfire as keeps the bullets thwacking into our scallywag to a manageable minimum, Spitfire looping the loop to blast an alicorn from the sky in great hurtling chunks of burning flesh.

  But down on the hills them meteors of flaming alicorn meat hits like fucking mortar shells, a kelpie queen is down, and if an otter might ride a great lolloping whelp of a wolf, a Rake can’t but stand atop a pile of dead stags, spear twirling and stabbing, fighting her fiercest to fend off writhings and slother she can’t see, blast it, except where’s the dragonfire splatters and sticks, them great burning gobbers of gelatinous jet fuel saliva Spitfire swoops down to rattle at the Addanc, as he tries to draw them Nazis on alicorns away from the Whimsy.

  With a blast of his flintlock, Flashjack puts a shot between an elf’s eyes. With a squeeze of knees, he brings Spitfire up from a raking round the giant’s feet – what shows a glimpse of the vast horror of the Addanc wrappling it – to torch the last alicorn worrying the Whimsy, and – hang on! – bank hard, dive again.

  Ain’t often that scallywag has a bright idea, mate, but when he do it’s fucking incendiary. So now, he weaves a wide pendulous zigzag of strafing to see where dragonfire just splatters hillside, where it swirls above it, thrashing.