by Rhys Hughes
“I don’t see any stolen houses,” remarked Paddy.
“Me neither,” confessed Harris.
Castor was bewildered and he leaned on his pole and frowned deeply. Then he noticed a ship in the distance unloading cargo onto the wharf and he clapped his hands in delight. “Of course! Venice may be bursting with wonderful bridges, but where do they get their bridges from? They import them! There’s a vessel depositing new bridges right now. Can you see its flag? One yellow stripe, two blue…”
“With a black trident in the middle,” squinted Harris.
“The flag of Barbados!” cried Paddy.
Castor roared with laughter. “Why didn’t I think of that myself? We’ve come to the wrong place! The most suave and fashionable trolls must live where bridges have their origin, for it’s an accepted fact that every bridge comes from Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados! That’s why it was given the name Bridgetown in the first instance, and that is where we’ll find our stolen houses. Come on, friends!”
And he started punting with incredible speed and dexterity out to sea. Soon Venice was far behind, then it dipped over the horizon. “Too far for a gondola!” protested Paddy Deluxe.
Castor winked. “Another short cut, another parallel dimension. I saw a map of this area once. Left turn at the next wave. There we are. That tiny smudge in the distance is Barbados.”
“Remarkable,” conceded Frothing Harris.
“I might as well reveal,” mumbled Castor, “that the handle of my pole is hollow and filled with brass tacks. That’s how I planned to frustrate the bicycle-centaurs if we had met any.”
“They can’t swim, can they?” blinked Paddy.
“Nope,” secretly winced Castor.
As they approached the docks of Bridgetown they saw that the streets were thronged with promenading trolls and it was immediately apparent that these trolls were different from ordinary and more familiar examples of the species. Unbelievable as it may sound to sane people, they weren’t naked but dressed in clothes. And now Paddy and Harris understood the allusion their friend had made to silk.
“Makes perfect sense if you think about it,” Castor said.
“Clothes woven from houses can’t be sensible,” protested Paddy. “I’m watching a troll with brick trousers and round windows for pockets. That one over there has a log cabin shirt and a gabled tie. His friend is wearing cement boots made from bungalows.”
“Why are they doing this?” cried Harris.
“Just extend the silk analogy,” continued Castor blithely.
“Do it for us, will you?” pleaded Paddy.
Castor sighed. “A silkworm spins a cocoon for itself to dwell in. After it transforms into a moth, humans come along and make clothes from its vacated home. Well, trolls have started to do the same with us. Any rock-based lifeform is bound to view the domestic human abode as a desirable source of raw materials for their textile industry. So when we aren’t inside our houses, they gather them and tease them into threads from which they weave garments for every occasion.”
Paddy spluttered, “You mean…?”
Castor nodded. “We are their silkworms.”
They digested this, then Harris ventured, “If we return to Porthcawl it won’t be easy convincing Collective Will of the truth, unless we take an item of troll fashion back with us, something I’m not sure we can manage. And as for Karl Mondaugen, he won’t enjoy being upstaged. Nor will the other eminent citizens precisely be endeared to us, and they might even unleash some diabolical reprisals.”
“Those are all loose ends,” acknowledged Castor, “so something must be done about them, but I’m not sure what. Let’s put off thinking about it until after the end of the story…”
“Very well,” readily came the reply.
The intrepid trio sailed up the nearest inlet and came to rest by the side of Chamberlain Bridge. They leapt onto dry land and proceeded through National Heroes Square and up Palmetto Street, completely failing to find the famed Waterfront Café, where steel pan music can be heard live every Tuesday. Suddenly Castor stopped in his tracks. He was staring at a troll with a mixture of frustrated rage and overly strained stoicism, but the troll in question barely seemed to notice.
“Of all things, an item of casual headwear!”
“Beg your pardon?” asked Harris.
“With flaps and a peak too!” moaned Castor.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Paddy, and with his eyes he followed the accusing finger. Then he licked his lips, slowly lowered his gaze and muttered to himself, “Hideous taste.”
“Wherever he lays his hat, that’s my home,” said Castor.
All in a Flap
Castor Jenkins slid on his belly through the dunes, feeling the warm sand on his elbows as he used them to propel himself forward. Marram grass rustled as he passed; each blade was tough and sharp enough to cause him a certain amount of discomfort even through his clothing. He resembled a mutant seal stranded in the desert, desperately seeking the sea, but in fact his objective was bluer and more slippery than water. He licked his lips in anticipation as he crested the final dune.
Squinting down at the beach, he repressed a gasp of delight. Yes, there it was! An azure sentinel bird stood on a jagged rock near the wavelets of the incoming tide. Castor was aware that his heart was racing too fast but he could do nothing to calm it down. No sentinel birds had been seen in these parts for twenty years and the azure kind was the most elusive of all, practically extinct according to the textbooks. This was the apotheosis of his career as a dedicated ornithologist.
Raising his binoculars to his eyes, Castor adjusted the focus until it seemed the bird was no more than a few feet away. Then he recoiled in amazement and dropped the optical instrument. Frowning and sweating, he picked it up, blew the sand off the lenses and took a second look. Was this some sort of joke? Had one of his more mischievous colleagues made a wooden model of the bird and fixed it on the rock as a joke? But no, the sentinel bird suddenly moved. It was alive.
It was holding its own pair of binoculars to its own eyes!
* * * *
Castor fought down a rising panic. Was he going insane? Never in his life had he heard of such an occurrence. He decided it was essential to capture the bird as proof of the remarkable phenomenon. As cautiously as possible he slithered down the steep slope to the beach, and because the bird was so engrossed in its observations he believed he had a chance of catching it; he tiptoed across the soft sand towards the rock, his grasping hands reaching out to seize it from behind.
Something crunched underfoot; the shell of a dead crab. The bird flew away instantly, a reflex, its binoculars dangling from its neck on a cord. A frustrated Castor shook his fist at it. Then a wave lapped over his feet and made his shoes and socks wet and he stumbled backward. For several minutes he stood aimlessly, watching the bird shrink among the clouds; it was soon no larger than a dot. He was about to head for home with defeat weighing on his soul, but then he had an idea.
Ignoring the sensation of the glutinous water, he waded to the rock and stood in the same position as the bird. With his binoculars he studied the spot on the horizon that had intrigued the bird. The sails of a ship loomed into view. Castor could make out very few details at this range but the word ‘pirates’ flashed through his mind. He shook his head to clear it and looked again. No, the flag wasn’t a skull and bones but a complicated symbol on a yellow diamond framed by green.
The ship was a large barquentine, an old type of clipper.
What was such an antique vessel doing off the coast of South Wales? Was somebody making a film? That was the only plausible explanation. A movie director had arranged this scenario, including a bird trained to use binoculars, and he, Castor, had wandered accidentally onto the set. Probably his presence had spoiled the filming, but that was their fault for failing to notify bystanders, not his. He waded back to shore, sat on a driftwood stump and waited for the ship to approach.
The barquentine
dropped anchor a mile offshore and a longboat was lowered into the water, crewed by half a dozen men dressed in elaborate but ragged uniforms of a strange design. They rowed with efficiency to the shallows near where Castor sat. They jumped out, dragged the longboat onto the sand; and one of them, evidently the leader, planted a flag on a pole into the beach. Then they all fell to their knees and began praying, as if giving thanks for deliverance.
“You’ll have to do this scene again, I’m afraid,” said Castor. “It just isn’t very convincing, you know.”
The leader of the men turned to face him and his lips curled in a snarl. Then he sprang to his feet and advanced on Castor, drawing a sword from a scabbard at his belt. Utterly flummoxed, the birdwatcher recoiled and fell off his stump onto the ground. Then the snarling man babbled something unfriendly at him in a rough voice. It was a foreign language and Castor didn’t recognise any of the words. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender and pleaded for mercy.
Another man from the longboat ran forward. “I speak English! I even have an English surname. I am José Bandão Pepys and my grandfather came originally from a town called York. Do you know it? He taught me to speak his language as well as Portuguese. I will be your interpreter! You have made Captain Ribeiro very angry by interrupting his prayer. He has claimed this land for the Empire.”
Castor blinked. “Who are you people?”
Pepys grinned. “Refugees from Brazil. We left in two ships after the Empire was abolished. We were loyal subjects, you understand, and had no desire to live in a Republic. We decided to colonise some other land but bad luck dogged our ships. Our other vessel sank, in fact, and this one was tossed about the oceans for rather longer than we had anticipated. Yes, we have been at sea a long time!”
Castor was very hazy on the subject of Brazilian history. “When did the Empire become a Republic?”
Pepys said casually, “In the Nineteenth Century. Don’t worry, my friend, we aren’t the ghosts of the original refugees! The men who fled took their wives with them. We are the descendants of those exiles. For more than one hundred and twenty years we have been lost on the belly of the ocean, but now at last our faith has been vindicated! Captain Ribeiro has christened this land the New Brazilian Empire and you are now subject to our decrees. Disobedience will be treated as treason.”
Castor laughed. “Are you insane? You can’t claim this country; it already has a government. You’ll be arrested and sent to jail. We have an army equipped with modern weapons and—”
Although unable to appreciate the substance of Castor’s protests, the outraged tone of his voice was enough to persuade Captain Ribeiro that action was needed to forestall further resistance. He used the hilt of his sword to knock Castor unconscious.
* * * *
When Castor awoke it was night and the Brazilians had built a vast and illegal fire among the dunes. Surely the wild flames would attract the attention of the coastguard? His skull pounded and he sat up with some difficulty. All the other men from the barquentine had arrived in the other longboats. Captain Ribeiro leered and passed him a bottle of clear liquid and laughed as he gulped it down and began spluttering. It wasn’t water as he had expected but some fiery spirit.
“Cachaça rum!” laughed Pepys as he slapped Castor on the back. Then the Captain made a short speech.
“What did he say?” croaked Castor.
“You are one of us now,” explained Pepys. “You work for us. Your first job is to act as a sentry. You must keep a close watch all night and fight the urge to fall asleep. You must not shirk your duty to the New Brazilian Empire or it will be bad for you.”
“What am I supposed to be watching out for?”
But Captain Ribeiro was tired of talking. He growled and rumbled and pointed at the crest of the highest dune; and Castor had no option but to leave the circle of firelight and stumble in the gloom along the paths to the steep sandy slope and climb it to the top. He reached the summit and caught his breath, then turned slowly to look in every direction. The camp of the Brazilians was a fiesta of fiery mayhem, full of drunken, singing sailors and laughing women. He sighed.
Although he could see them easily, it was unlikely they could see him with the same clarity. What was to stop him sneaking off? The town of Porthcawl was only a few miles to the west; and the village of Ogmore was even closer, just on the other side of a shallow river. There was no moon and the gleam of the sea was muted; dark clouds full of greasy rain scudded across the stars. He decided to wait five minutes and then edge slowly towards the far side of the dune.
If he slid down this, ran towards the woods to the north and managed to reach the cover of the first trees, he would surely be safe; then he could flag down passing cars on the main road that lay just beyond. A lift into Porthcawl; and after alerting the police an armed response unit could be sent out to deal with the lunatics, and within a couple of hours the absurd nightmare would probably be over. The minutes passed with excruciating slowness. He squinted at the Brazilian camp.
Nobody was looking in his direction. Gritting his teeth, he made his move, rolling and tumbling down the dune. He reached the bottom and crashed through a thorny bush, cursing the commotion he was making. A low whistle just ahead caught his attention. He looked up to see Pepys on the crest of another dune, aiming an old-fashioned rifle in his direction. The Brazilian said, “Captain Ribeiro wants you to know that an attempt to leave your post will be punished by death.”
Castor sagged. It had never occurred to him that a sentry might be posted to watch over the sentry. He replied thickly, “I just need to relieve myself. I didn’t plan on going anywhere.”
Pepys nodded but his eyes twinkled mischievously and he didn’t lower his gun for an instant. Castor was forced to pretend to urinate, his back to the lethal observer. Then he climbed resignedly back up the dune and resumed his position on the crest. He stood there silently, the ache in his legs gradually becoming almost unbearable. Still he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking out for. He turned to the south, the west, the north, the east; but nothing new appeared.
* * * *
The hours passed and he suddenly remembered the bird. He wondered if it was normal behaviour for members of that particular species to use binoculars on a regular basis. While he pondered this question, a breeze ruffled his hair. Then something thudded into the sand just ahead of him. Was Pepys shooting at him? But there had been no sound. He stooped to examine the object. Was it a crossbow bolt? Similar objects fell out of the sky between his dune and the sleeping camp.
The fire had died down but the embers were still bright enough for Castor to see the ensuing chaos. Figures jumped up and began tearing at themselves; others screamed or groaned. What was going on? An aerial attack of some kind, obviously. Castor gazed up and saw only clouds and a few stars. More iron missiles fell out of the sky. Was this some new kind of deadly rain? A word entered his brain, a word he had encountered once in an encyclopaedia of military history.
Flechettes. Sharp metal rods dropped from aircraft onto entrenched infantry positions. A well-aimed flechette could build enough inertia to puncture the hardest helmet; and the Brazilians wore no head protection at all. Who could be dropping them? Surely the coastguard or police had no mandate to do so? Then the clouds briefly parted and he caught sight of the beak and wings of an azure sentinel bird. More followed. They were turning to make a second bombing run.
The combined flapping of their wide wings had created the breeze that disordered his hair; now it fanned the dying fire back to life. Someone discharged a rifle vertically. Others snatched up their own guns and did the same thing. Captain Ribeiro hopped about, his trousers around his ankles, his sword in his hand. A flechette penetrated his skull and with a cough he sank to his knees, then keeled over. The storm of iron continued until every Brazilian was dead or dying.
Castor trembled, fearful for his own life, but the birds had decided to ignore him; perhaps they hadn’t even noticed him on his isol
ated dune. The flechette that had dropped at his feet might have been an accident. He held it close to his face and saw that it resembled a long nail. Then he ran down to the Brazilian camp and stumbled among the bodies. The smell of blood nauseated him; he lurched away, remembering Pepys and hurrying back to the dune where the fellow had stood.
As he climbed up the slope, he questioned his motives. Why didn’t he just return to Porthcawl? Why expose himself to more danger by going to see if Pepys was alive? He realised it was because he wanted answers to the odd questions posed by the night’s events. Why had the sentinel birds attacked the Brazilians? They had gone now, but would they return? The fear of them churned thickly in Castor’s blood. At the top of the dune he almost tripped over the body of Pepys.
* * * *
The Brazilian was still alive, though his injuries were serious. Leaning close, Castor softly asked about the birds. Pepys rolled his eyes and coughed blood as he tried to prop himself up on an elbow, but he failed in this endeavour because he was too weak. Yet he wished to comply with the request and began speaking softly, with considerably difficulty, teeth clenching spasmodically, muscles in his neck twitching. Castor was forced to lower his ear very close to his lips.
Pepys drew a deep shuddering breath and hissed:
“So much for the New Brazilian Empire! It lasted less than one night. But yes, I will tell you about the birds. In the winter of 1889 we set off in two ships, but almost immediately we were caught in a storm that blew us off course. Even after the storm abated we were lost for months and our supplies ran low. Finally we sighted land, but it wasn’t a place where we could put ashore. The cliffs were unbroken in both directions as far as the eye could see; a towering wall of sea-battered rock, but it was no ordinary rock. It was magnetic ore, lodestone, which confuses compass readings and can even pull loose nails out of planking.”