Steve Cole Middle Fiction 4

by Steve Cole

  Maloney gave a disparaging neigh.

  “In any case, metal is our lifeline,” Lady Smyth went on. “Though the interactions are exhausting. I was so worn out with trying to warn you, I had to send Sir Guy along to try to protect you.”

  “And didn’t THAT work out ever so well.” I stooped and tried to pick up the fallen Coke can. My fingertips tingled and the can twitched and shifted, same as when you put two magnets pole to pole. But I couldn’t pick it up. “Wow. Get me.”

  “For a first go, it was outstanding,” Lady Smyth assured me. “To interact with the old world takes time and practice.”

  “And HEROISM!” boomed Sir Guy.

  “Well, not really.” Lady Smyth frowned. “More concentration and—”

  “And COURAGE!”

  “Well, a certain natural aptitude is important—”

  “And LINEN UNDERPANTS.”

  “What? Now you’re just listing your favourite things.”

  “True! It is an old song of war I used to sing on the battlefields of my youth!”

  “Oh.” Lady Smyth looked worried. “Well, that’s nice, but I think we should—”

  “I shall sing to you now!” boomed Sir Guy.

  “No, no,” she said, “you really don’t have to—”

  But it was too late. The silence of the wood was slaughtered and the trees trembled before a sonic onslaught unlike any I had ever heard.

  “OHHHH­HHHHH­HHHHHH­HHHH­HHHH!” Sir Guy began, then burst into tuneless yelling:

  “I asked my mama what will I be

  When I am five times taller than your knee.

  BE A HERO! said she.

  SMITE YOUR ENEMY!

  WITH A SWORD AND A MACE,

  YOU CAN SMASH HIM

  IN THE FACE!

  OHHHHHHHHHHHH

  -oooooo-HHHHHH!

  I asked my papa what will I be

  When I am approximately the size

  of one-sixth of that tree.

  BE COURAGEOUS! said he.

  BE AS BRAVE AS CAN BE!

  WITH AN AXE AND A CLUB,

  YOU CAN MAKE THE

  BADDIE BLUB!

  OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  OOOOOOOOOOOOH—”

  “Thank you, Sir Guy,” said Lady Smyth. “I think you can stop now, before you get to the linen underpants.”

  “Oh . . . ’tis the best verse!” Sir Guy frowned. “But you are right. It is unseemly to sing songs of courage and bravery and underpants when the boy has had such a shock.” He paused. “Though at least he can’t soil his own undergarments any longer!”

  “Thanks.” I glared at him. “I was just trying to find the positives, too.”

  “I shall sing to thee another time,” Sir Guy threatened. “For such great attributes will be needed in our battle against the accursed cur who has brought this fate upon us.”

  “Seerblight.” Lady Smyth’s lip curled. “Yes, we’ll get him, some day.”

  I stared at her. “You’ve, er, had 150 years or so now.”

  “Yes, well.” She looked a bit shifty. “When your mother continued my research into pow-powder, I rather hoped she would discover how to reverse its effects, to make us solid and strong again.”

  “But wouldn’t you just . . . well, shrivel up and crumble to dust or something?” I asked. “You’re, er, kind of horribly old by now, you know.”

  “Thank you,” Lady Smyth said icily. “But I told you – insubstantial and invisible as we are, we do not wear or wither. Time and its various erosions pass us by.”

  “’Tis a pity, though, in a way.” Sir Guy seemed to be staring past the trees, into the distance. “Imagine how fine and heroic my beard would look if it had gone on growing these past 500 years!”

  I did imagine it.

  And then I tried not to.

  “Why has Mum been kidnapped?” I asked anxiously. “Because she can make good pow-powder? Because of the BRIAN™?”

  Lady Smyth considered. “Very likely.”

  “But we’re gonna get her back, yeah?” I felt kind of woozy. “Can we get going now? Find her?”

  “Noah, your body is still in a state of shock.” Lady Smyth gave a sympathetic smile. “We must rest before we do anything else.”

  “Rest? But we’re made of nothing.” I swayed dizzily. “There isn’t anything to rest . . .”

  At which point my nothingness flopped to the forest floor in serious need of rest and everything went black.

  Chapter Ten

  Doctor, Doctor, I’m Afraid of Back-Story! When Did You Find This Out? ARRRRRRGH!

  Excuse me interrupting this narrative – it is I, Lady Jemima Smyth. I thought I had best take over the telling of this tale, since Noah had passed out and I know he doesn’t like to skip anything. Fortunately we shall at least be spared his toilet adventures now, since he is unable to ‘go’ in his invisible state.

  Sir Guy lifted Noah up onto Maloney – for only Invisibles can touch other Invisibles – and together, we transported him back through the woods (literally, straight through them).

  Turning back to the last chapter to compare my writing style with Noah’s, you might be wondering: why did his body fall to the ground if it weighed nothing? Why did it not fall through the ground and drift down to the very epicentre of the planet’s core and out the other side?

  The answer, I believe, is that the human mind is a thing of habit. Our minds know that if we fall over, we hit the ground. If we walk, we walk on the ground. If we go upstairs, we take it a step at a time. Our bodies may have lost all weight and substance, but our minds can’t be bothered to break the habit of what we did when gravity held sway o’er our forms.

  Well, anyway, we took Noah to the wonderful old stately home that was once (and still is, in fact) my dwelling-place.

  Does dwelling-place have a hyphen in it or not? Hmm.

  Anyway! We took the boy to the living room – or what is left of it. Although it was the middle of the night, Noah soon woke up and was able to continue the story himself . . .

  *

  I woke up in the dark ruin of a once grand room. The only light was the moon-glow through the broken windows; it revealed a sad landscape of splintered furniture, sagging drapes and crumbling walls.

  Had I been dreaming? No. I was still pale all over, softly glowing, not completely there. All that terrible, impossible stuff had really happened after all, and now here I was – in the sort of place Dracula might think twice about visiting.

  The wind blew its lonely howl through the crevices, rustling the scraps of wallpaper, but I couldn’t feel it.

  The floor beneath me was covered in grit from the crumbling ceiling, but I couldn’t feel that either. I could feel NOOOOTTTHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIING!

  Lady Smyth and Sir Guy were lying on the ground, silent as shadows. Maloney was silently pacing in a corner of the room, his ghostly tail swishing from side to side. (I guess ordinary horse-in-house rules don’t apply to invisible types like Maloney – you don’t have to follow his back end around with a bucket.)

  I touched my arms and legs and stomach, felt the pressure against my fingers. Then I touched the floor and my fingers slipped through. It was as if I was still solid, but the world had turned into pictures and thin air. When Maloney saw me sitting up, he wandered over, nudged me with his nose and gave me a little neigh. It sounds soppy, but just that brief contact was a comfort to me.

  So! This part of the story is fun, isn’t it? The shocked aftermath of a life-changing disaster – always a laugh to read! I could go on for pages now about how scared I was, how weird it felt not to breathe or swallow or feel hungry or wake up and find I didn’t need the toilet, or how much I missed my mum and where was she now and was she okay . . . I COULD do that.

  But I won’t.

  It’s like in Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker gets home to find his aunt and uncle have been murdered and his house burned down. He looks a bit glum and stares into the distance, and some sad music plays, then WHOOSH! He’s o
ff on his adventure and never mentions his poor old relatives again. Well, my own adventure was lying ahead (and hey, not wanting to rub it in, Luke, but my mum was still alive, even if she was in deep, scary trouble). I know I said I don’t want to gloss over stuff (toilet trips in particular, but they were no longer happening so never mind), but I don’t want to bring you down by inflicting every last sadness on you.

  So. You get me when I say I was a bit like this about things, right?

  Just imagine me doing that from time to time in the background as we carry on with the story. It shouldn’t be hard.

  “Aha! ’Tis time to stir!” Sir Guy opened his eyes, stretched out his arms. “Hello, lad! How do you feel?”

  I did an impression of the picture you see on the previous page.

  “As good as that, eh?” Lady Smyth was also awake and back on her ghostly feet. “I hope you didn’t mind resting on the floor, but all the beds were stolen and sold back in 1874.”

  That was just too weird to respond to. I knew I had to try not to think about things too much. “Can we go find my mum, please?”

  “Of course, you fret for her, mon brave.” Sir Guy thumped a hand down on my shoulder. “But you must learn patience. You know what they say – a hurried plan is but a furtive mickle.”

  “They say that?” I looked doubtful. “Who’s they?”

  “Me, mainly,” the knight admitted.

  Thought so. I rubbed my eyes. “It’s silly, but I still feel tired. How come we need sleep?”

  “Sleep refreshes the mind as much as the body.” Lady Smyth shrugged. “Staying awake for 150 years without a break would drive one batty.”

  “Or, in the case of Maloney and myself, 500 years!” Sir Guy gave a sigh. “Maloney here was Seerblight’s very first victim and I his second.”

  I asked the obvious question: “Who even is Seerblight? He can’t really still be alive after all that time . . . can he?”

  “He is an old and powerful man,” said Lady Smyth, “part scientist, part magician.”

  “You mean he pulls rabbits out of hats and does card tricks while wearing a lab coat?”

  Lady S was not amused. “Seerblight is a master of dark magic and secret science. A gatherer of strange and uncanny secrets, once known only to the wisest of ancients—”

  “And their mothers,” Sir Guy added.

  “No, Sir Guy, not their mothers.”

  “They kept secrets from their mothers?” Sir Guy looked appalled. “This is worse than I thought!”

  Lady Smyth rolled her eyes. “Allow me to explain further.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “Back in the sixteenth century, Seerblight spent decades travelling the world on a quest to find the elixir of eternal life. He was sure it must exist and was determined that he, and he alone, would possess it . . .”

  I was puzzled. “So he’s got eternal life and he wastes it mucking around with pow-powder? Why? Why not just chill out on a yacht forever or something?”

  “Pow-powder is a mighty ingredient when mixed with other potions. What other powerful, as-yet-unknown uses might it have?” Lady Smyth preened a little. “What is certain is that he has sought out brilliant minds across the years to help him with his research. Brilliant minds such as mine.”

  “Your diary ended with Seerblight calling round to see you,” I remembered. “What happened?”

  “He tried to enslave her!” cried Sir Guy. “But he hasn’t bothered trying to do that to anyone else for some time.”

  “I suppose he has found others to help him,” said Lady Smyth.

  “Like Mr Butt.” I frowned. “How did you get away from Seerblight? How did you turn invisible?”

  She cast a sidelong glance at Sir Guy. “I’d sooner not talk about that just now.”

  “Ha ha!” the knight cried. “I am glad that I am no head-of-the-egg! I attacked Seerblight when he made my pony, Maloney, disappear. Quelle horreur! I thought my stalwart steed was dead!”

  “NEIGHHH!” Maloney said, as if denying it.

  “Seerblight realised pow-powder’s potential as a weapon,” said Lady Smyth, “but it was too dangerous, too unstable. He has spent centuries seeking to control it, teasing out its secrets.”

  Sir Guy took up the story. “Somehow he learned that those zapped by the powder live on, as we do – out of sight, and touch, and smell and taste and hearing.”

  Maloney neighed.

  “And out of neigh.” Sir Guy gave a small bow of apology to his horse. “Seerblight found a way to see us Invisibles, using eyeglasses made from a crystal so rare, it has no name. It is known only as . . . The Rare Crystal With No Name (That May Or May Not Be Used For Eyeglasses).”

  “Catchy,” I said. “So, once Seerblight could see you, what did he do then?”

  “He tried to catch us, or control us, or destroy us.” Sir Guy nodded. “Experiments, torture and doom, that has long been the fate of those turned invisible!”

  I did my face again.

  “Isn’t it bad enough we’re stuck like this without him wanting to destroy us?” I sighed miserably. “Like we’re not destroyed enough already.”

  “You must not think of us as destroyed, Noah,” said Lady Smyth firmly. “Invisible we may be, but we still have our minds! Still we think. Still we bide our time and plot!”

  Sir Guy nodded enthusiastically. “Still we sing remarkably long and detailed tales of heroic deeds!”

  “Some of us do,” Lady Smyth said pointedly. “Well, now that we know each other, Noah, please call me Jem.”

  “And you can call me SIR!” said Sir Guy. (I decided not to.) “Now come, Milady Jem, tell the lad the tale of how you became invisible!”

  “If I do,” Jem said cautiously, “do you promise not to sing the 220-verse epic song-poem you wrote to commemorate the occasion?”

  “Um . . . probably.”

  “Very well. As a scientific genius who was also a woman, my fame spread back in the 1850s.” The fire in Lady Smyth’s eyes wasn’t invisible, for sure. “Seerblight came to me, pretending to be a patron of science. He promised me riches if I could make a new batch of pow-powder, here in this very house – one that was more potent and less likely to explode with hideously catastrophic results.”

  “Can’t blame him for trying,” I said. “What happened?”

  “It exploded with hideously catastrophic results,” she said. “I was made . . . invisible. When Seerblight found my lab in pieces, he took out his scrying glass made from The Rare Crystal With No Name and saw me, even in my invisible state. He tried to capture me—”

  “—but I rescued you!” Sir Guy punched the air. “In a very stylish and heroic fashion!”

  Jem lowered her voice. “Maloney basically got a tin stuck on one hoof and accidentally kicked a table over.”

  I winced. “Two hundred and twenty verses about that?”

  She nodded. “Pray you never have to count them.”

  I turned to Sir Guy. “How come you were even there?”

  “Ah. This is because of Maloney’s mighty nose. It can sniff out pow-powder from very far away. So, ever since 1516 when POOF! we were pow-powed ourselves, he and I sniff out and try to rescue those poor souls who are also invisible but lack my skills and heroism.”

  I noticed he’d said “try to rescue”. That suggested a less than 100% success rate. “What did Seerblight use to attack you—?”

  My sentence was obliterated by an echoing BAMMMM.

  Jem frowned. “That was the front door.”

  Sir Guy was already charging out to the hall. Jem and I followed him – me through the doorway (for old time’s sake) and her through the wall – in time to see SOMETHING blow inside: a weird, multicoloured whirlwind with lumps in. Wet, gooey lumps, as big as a person.

  Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, no.

  “These monsters are what he used to attack us!” Sir Guy looked grim and Maloney reared up, waving both hooves. “They are Seerblight’s servants!”

  The lumps grew h
arder, solid as iron, as the swirl of colours faded. Now three towering horrors stood in the hallway, watching us through dark, square-lensed glasses. It was probably a good job I couldn’t still go to the toilet. I was so scared I couldn’t move.

  The creatures walked on pointy claws. They had no feathers, only rusty metal wings with spikes. Their flesh was pink and puckered like they’d been plucked, their tails were like fountains of steel wool and their heads were made extra-horrible by their big misshapen beaks.

  One of those whopping beaks opened up with a high-pitched, menacing, SQUAWK.

  “Poultry-geists,” breathed Jem. “Part devil-chicken, part hunting-beast.”

  I groaned. “But I thought Seerblight wasn’t bothered about you any more?”

  “Indeed, that is so,” Jem agreed. “But perhaps he is bothered about YOU.”

  Shrieking and clucking and pecking the air, the giant, chickeny monsters thumped towards me.

  My knees knocked madly. “I think you’re right, Jem. They’re after me!”

  Suddenly one of the poultry-geists turned round, raised its steely tail feathers – and fired an egg! The egg broke at my feet and a mess like molten metal surged out. It hardened round my ankles.

  “I’m stuck!” I shouted.

  The next moment, another egg was fired – and this one looked to be solid metal. It hit me on the head.

  I heard Sir Guy shout, “Sorcery! Witchcraft! Egginess!”

  None of those sounded much like fun, but I didn’t get to learn a lot more, first hand. My head went PHUT – and switched off.

  Chapter Eleven

  Panic (and Something Else) Amongst the Devil-Chicken-Hunting-Beasts, as told by a Totally Street Victorian Laydee

  Poor, dear Noah! Struck by two evil eggs and out for the count.

  Yes, I’m back to do the narrating as Noah was asleep at the time. I will try my best not to tell you what happened in an old-fashioned manner. Yes, although I hail from the Victorian era, I am rather good with your Elizabethan slang. I have skillz. Yeah! You know it. Ooooh, how liberating it is to boogaloo with language in this way!