Zap!
He appeared in the costume room, and threw on the strong man costume.
Zap!
He appeared at Argus’s side in the barn.
‘You are needed. Hold on.’
For the next thirty seconds both he and Argus soared over the land, Quixote hammering his legs as fast as he could go, breaking his previous speed record. Argus clung on for his dear life as the trip blurred and frazzled him with speed he never dreamt possible.
In the Forbidden Place, Quixote placed Argus by his Lexington.
‘Attend to her.’
Argus could not see anything. His wind-chaffed eyes blurred and only made out fuzzy images. Blobby figures hovered around his sight in a hazy mist. He squeezed his eyes open and shut, rubbing them with his fingers.
By the time Argus had his eyes focusing, Melaleuca and Ari appeared at Argus’s side.
‘Lexington!’
Melaleuca threw herself at her, grabbing her hand. Argus checked her pulse and her breathing, and tried to shake her awake, and squeezed her finger.
‘She is unconscious,’ Argus said, ‘but okay, I think.’
‘Get the doctor’s outfit,’ Ari shouted to Quixote.
Quixote flew out and back, handing it to Melaleuca. She performed a thorough examination, and then relaxed.
‘This is beyond this costume. Her mind has shut down as a protective mechanism.’
The news calmed them all, especially Quixote, whose tears brimmed in his eyes at the sight of his dearly loved cousin lying inert on the earth. Ari placed his hand on Quixote’s shoulder.
‘I’m sure she will be fine.’
Quixote nodded, and said, ‘She could pretend to be a sleeping princess,’ and half laughed.
With Lexington safe, they looked around.
‘What happened here? What was all that noise?’ Ari asked.
Uncle Bear-Nard groaned, his crushed body close to death. As they looked up at him, Quesob stood and cried out, ‘I am sorry.’
Conflicting emotions tore through Quesob, and forbidden tears filled his eyes. He tried to fight them back, but his white knuckles and death-grip on his sword’s hilt belied his desperation. Before him the baby-faced Daquan still sat, stunned. Quesob shoved his sword-tip into Daquan’s throat, though his past loyalty stopped it going all the way in. Tiny trickles of blood oozed out around the pinprick wound.
‘He betrayed me! He betrayed us all!’
Argus stared at Quesob recognizing him as the man he had shot in the cousin’s valley, though he knew to keep quiet about it. The last thing the cousin’s needed to hear was the true fate of their parents. Instead he ignored him, as did the others, choosing to lower Uncle Bear-Nard’s crushed and bloodied body to the ground. His breathing came fast and shallow and all colour had drained from his face.
‘Hold on Uncle, I will save you,’ Melaleuca said, starting to examine him, working out what needed to be done.
Uncle Bear-Nard mouthed a few silent words, before saying, ‘Happy to die......sacrifice...no revenge...’
‘Save your breath Uncle,’ Melaleuca said feeling his body, her hands bloodied, realising most of his internal organs were crushed and that he had lost too much blood.
‘No...’ Uncle Bear-Nard gasped. ‘Take the bracelets...innocence...innocence....’
His body went limp, and his breathing stopped.
‘NOOO! Not again,’ Melaleuca cried out. She turned to Quixote. ‘Think of all weird costumes you have tried on. Could any of them bring him back?’
Nothing came to mind. He shrugged his shoulders, a forlorn expression on his face.
Argus took Melaleuca’s bloody hands, tugging her toward him. Despite all her courage and all her wisdom beyond her years, this brief moment of loss reminded him that she was after all only a youth, as they all were.
‘He is gone, Melaleuca. Gone. Perhaps there is a costume that could help, but by the time you find it, it will be too late.’
Melaleuca sobbed into her hands.
Enraged, Ari drew his sword and stomped over to Quesob and Daquan. Doctor Thurgood sat with his back to the wall, legs scrunched up to his chest cowering and blathering. Ari held his blade out in front.
‘This is your doing!’
Quesob sunk to his knees, removing his sword from Daquan’s throat and laid it down in front of him.
‘Yes. You are right.’ He bowed his head low. ‘None of the events today I knew would happen. I only wanted to free the children of New Wakefield.’
‘Free them! You call all those bodies out there freeing them!’
‘I didn’t know!’
Quesob seemed an altogether pitiable creature now, nothing like the warrior who had accosted them after the High Galelain. Ari’s rage subdued.
‘What happened to my cousin then?’
‘I didn’t see. None of us did. The noise...the noise...so loud...We all hid.’
Argus came and stood by Ari, while Quixote stayed with Melaleuca.
‘Ari. No more killing. Lower your sword. Let him be. We have won this battle. Let us concentrate on getting Lexington back safely.’
‘We shall take Uncle’s body with us, as well,’ Melaleuca said.
‘The bracelet!’ Quixote suddenly burst out. ‘Put the bracelet on Lexington!’
The word “bracelet” shook Daquan from his stunned stupor. He blinked his baby-fat eyes, took stock of all his ruined plans, leapt up, and grabbed Lexington’s yellow bracelet. He hurled Doctor Thurgood onto a horse, jumping on it as well and galloped off out the opening.
The Kockoroc could be heard screeching after Daquan. Daquan’s screaming shattered the air as he uttered a battle cry. Profanity after profanity fell from his mouth, his swearing trailing off into the distance.
Quesob leapt onto a horse and took off after him.
Ari made to go after them, though Argus’s hand on his shoulder held him back.
‘Let them go. If need be when all this is sorted, we can come back and track him down.’
‘I’ll get her bracelet,’ Quixote said. In a flash he had speed-booted it to Daquan and back, returning with the bracelet in his hand.
Ari took it, looking at it and handed it back to Quixote.
‘It’s not a bracelet. Look at it again,’ Ari said.
Quixote inspected it and saw that it looked like a bracelet but was an inferior copy.
‘I’ll be back,’ Quixote said, and again flashed away once more.
Melaleuca’s head hurt, and she ran her hand through Lexington’s hair, feeling a pang of guilt.
Should I have listened to her more?
Seconds passed and Quixote returned.
‘They don’t have it?’
His words reminded Melaleuca she still needed to lead.
‘Enough Quixote. We will find another way.’
‘But Lex will need her bracelet.’
He strode to Uncle Bear-Nard’s body and unclipped one of the green bracelets. Before he could even move toward Lexington’s body with it, Melaleuca blocked his way and held her hand out.
‘Enough. Your ideas always lead somewhere. Right now I need you to be here and doing as I say. If this bracelet does not work, or if it does something else to her, I want to be back at the mansion, not here in this pit of despair.’
‘Okay! You sound like Lexington.’
‘Perhaps if we had done a little bit more of what Lexington had said, this may not have happened.’
Before he could feel slighted by her words, she reached out and tousled his hair.
‘We are a team. Time to start working as one. Let’s just get her back, and then we can search for her bracelet.’
Sounds of shouting and intense yelling drifted in.
‘Wait here,’ Argus said to Melaleuca and Quixote. ‘Ari come with me. I need to get a better idea of our situation.’
For the first time, Melaleuca seemed happy to let Argus be in charge.
Outside Argus beheld a bewildering scene. Hordes of me
n, a few clad in leather amour, and the rest naked and scarred, chased a strange looking bush creature in a weird game of tag. The creature chased the men in clothes and the naked men chased the leaf creature. Bodies of horses and men lay strewn around on the field, a sight he had seen many times before in battle, though the sight of a pile of dead children sickened even him.
‘Who are they? What happened here?’ Argus called to the cousins, his eyes whipping open in surprise as he witnessed the leaf creature catch up with the last, clothed Inquisat and disintegrate their clothes.
Ari took him through the main highlights, explaining everything that had happened since leaving to find Lexington.
With Uncle Bear-Nard dead, Argus knew he now must take over the mentorship, leading and guiding the cousins. A task he knew that without Bear-Nard he was ill equipped for. But then, he thought to himself, perhaps he could learn to wield the bracelets.
Heading south, further into the reaches of the southern wilderness, Daquan fled, with Quesob in tow. Both Ari and Argus watched them dash across a shallow part of the river and head into a southwest valley.
‘I want to pursue them,’ Ari said, a hint of revenge in his voice.
‘Yes you could though your Uncle asked you not too. Daquan has lost his battle, perhaps even his war. He is, as your Uncle said, a madman. The best revenge is too leave him too his madness. It will eventually eat him out……Besides, they will have them to contend with.’
He pointed to a far off mountain covered in snow.
At first Ari could not see them, but then he made out a long line of small black dots moving down from the mountaintop.
‘Who…are…?’
‘Golgotherites. Thar Mountain Men. Men of Ori.’
‘You know them?’
‘Possibly? And look up there. The Kockoroc.’
The Kockoroc dive-bombed Daquan, swung around, caught an updraft and then dive-bombed him again.
‘It looks like he is chasing him into the path of them.’
Argus said with much thought, ‘All along I think I have been a chess piece in a much larger game.’
Ari sensed a real change in Argus. ‘You do remember.’
‘Maybe……but I still have scores to settle.’
Together they went back inside. Melaleuca and Quixote had rigged up two makeshift horse-drawn sleds. Lexington’s body lay on one and their Uncle’s lay on the other. They gathered around them in silent respect.
‘Let’s take them back,’ Melaleuca said eventually. ‘We’ll find away to fix Lexington and then, well, then I guess....’ She sighed, looked around, saying, ‘Then we...carry on...fun n stuff.’
It hardly seemed likely that fun was possible now.
‘Let’s speed boot back,’ Quixote said.
‘Soon,’ Melaleuca said. ‘We will walk for a little.’
Argus could see wisdom in this. ‘Allow yourselves time to process this. Get Lexington better and we can go through what has happened. The fun will come naturally.’
Melaleuca looked at Argus, her sharp eyes piercing him, a keenness of mind trying to slice away the unnecessary.
‘You’ve changed.’
‘I’ll help you for a time.’
‘Good, because we still need to know what this is really all about.’
So much had happened since winning the High Galelain, that the triumph of winning it now seemed soured by Uncle Bear-Nard’s death.
Quixote jigged the horses forward, stopping them again, when Melaleuca said, ‘Wait.’
She put the detective costume on. ‘We still don’t know what really happened here.’
She examined the scene, with Ari and Quixote joining her, trying to piece together what had happened.
The biggest clue lay in the bracelets on Uncle Bear-Nard’s arm and the strange plants growing in a semi circle. No evidence of what created the sound or what the fighting was turned up, nor was it obvious how Uncle Bear-Nard had become crushed in between the logs and not Lexington.
The cave and its mysteries held a haunting invitation toward Quixote, his mind, as ever, churning over adventure and excitement. He shuffled to the entrance. Power, mystery, something secret, something hidden in the cave for hundreds of years, tugged on his imagination.
‘I am going to check on something.’
Through the opening to the Forbidden Place Iam entered, his leafy body curling the vines back even more. Rustling, he walked over to them.
‘Another time, young Quixote. When the time is right you will be ready.’
Fascinated by the creature, Argus could not hold his tongue. ‘What are you?’
‘Many things, all things, and none some things.’
‘Are you animal? Vegetable? Er...human or other?’
‘Seeker of a title, needer of a label, eh? A box is needed to contain me. Let’s see, which one...which one.’ Iam thought, his leaf face scrunching and twisting, his dark chocolate brown eyes twinkling in a shaft of light and then announced, ‘I am a reader of the earth.’
Argus was none the wiser.
‘If you have answers you must tell us,’ Melaleuca said. ‘After everything that has happened, we deserve to know.’
‘What is the question?’ Iam asked.
‘The question! The question is all this needs explaining.’
‘Our Uncle is dead,’ Ari said.
Iam laughed.
‘You have the answers. You just need the help of a reader. Your Uncle is only dead to here and now, but not to there and next.’
Iam reached his leafy arm out and patted Ari. As he did, Ari saw flashes of his previous dream-visions of him and the earth being one. Iam touched the others and they also in turn saw glimpses of their dream-visions. It answered no questions but it somehow it comforted them.
Argus noted the change in them and became suspicious.
‘What have you done?’
‘Reminded them of that which they did not know they knew.’
The cousins all smiled at Argus, nodding queer looks of satisfaction. With his brief touch Iam had stirred in them a deep groundswell of hope. Their dream-visions seemed to plant trust firmly back in their young innocent hearts.
‘You’re just like that bloody Antavahni. I didn’t trust him. I don’t trust you,’ Argus said.
Melaleuca saw the change in Argus, though he pulled his eyes away from her. She noted it, knowing that at the first opportunity she would drill him until she knew what had altered in him.
Lexington stirred, making a small noise.
‘Can you fix Lexington?’ Quixote asked Iam.
Iam chortled some more and went to speak.
‘Wait,’ Quixote said, ‘let me guess. We have the answers. She is hurt, just appears it, something about a dimension, blah, blah, blah.’
Iam squealed with delight and clapped his leafy hands together.
‘Come Argus,’ Melaleuca said grabbing his arm, sensing it was time to ignore Iam. ‘We shall head back now.’
Ari and Quixote each grabbed a horse and led them out of the Forbidden Place onto the battlefield. Argus walked with them, feeling altered but powerless, his mind trying to get a fix on all that had happened.
The battlefield had bodies and dead horses strewn everywhere. The last of the naked Inquisat could be seen fleeing over the pass they had descended down. Captain HeGood was nowhere to be seen.
‘What happened to them?’ Ari asked.
Iam sniggered.
‘I haven’t had this much fun since teaching cavemen how to use bronze and then watching them scrap it out.’
Outside on the battlefield amongst the dead, the cousins could see blue lines of energy flowing across the land. It looked as if mist floated a few inches above the earth. It ran in crooked lines up the hills and some of them headed down the valleys heading west and east, and some of them flowed up the hills toward the south.
‘What are those blue floating streams?’ Melaleuca asked, putting her hand into one close by. ‘They were not there before
.’
She could not feel them, though small eddies whirled about where she stuck her hand in.
Ari and Quixote stared fascinated by them, but Argus unable to see them asked what they were talking about.
‘Very good!’ Iam said. ‘Such fast progress. Not even your parents saw them. Yes, you see the earth’s energy lines. Your first sight is starting to develop. No turning back now. I must warn you inaction will cost you - all that is left for you is right action.’
Melaleuca went to ask a question, though Iam held a leafy arm up to her, stopping her. ‘All in good time. Take these home, and ah...perhaps the kidnapped children might do with some help.’
Drawn by an unknown tugging, thirty children surfaced from their hiding places. They climbed up from the riverbank and crawled out from under bushes. Young boys and girls, badly malnourished with long, drawn faces, hesitantly started walking back toward the township of New Wakefield.
Weariness washed over Melaleuca.
‘Ari, Quixote, go and round up them. Argus and I will walk with the horses. Use the speed boots and take them to Daquan’s Cathedral-Mansion. Come back when you have transported them all.’
Iam headed in the direction that Daquan had fled, crying out, ‘Do not worry about Lexington.’
Melaleuca picked up the ruck-sac, stuffed the costumes she had left by the bush into it, noting that the horse riding costumes were gone.
Chapter 41 - An Unwelcome Return
Argus and Melaleuca led the horses across the battlefield and up the slope, stopping at the top to check Lexington and mount the horses. Overwhelmed and not wanting to talk, she dropped her guard, letting the events of the past few days tug remorselessly at her. She nudged her horse forward and gazed at the blue, misty lines trying to still her mind. They ran in all directions, adding a strange beauty to the barren earth.
Vahn and the Bold Extraction, The Page 26