by Michael Kerr
CHAPTER TWO ―
WHORTLES AND OTHERKIND
“What are we?” Ben snapped. “We’re people, that’s what we are. And you’re just a dumb bird.”
“Wrong on both counts, people,” the tar-black bird said. If I was dumb, I wouldn’t be talking to you, would I? And I’m not a bird. At least not very often.”
Before Ben could reply, the big bird shape-shifted before their eyes, to become a little man resembling a living garden gnome. He was no more than two feet tall, with pointed ears, a greenish cast to his skin, and large, purple wings.
“I’m Figwort,” he said. “Why have you whortles come here?”
“What is a whortle, and what are you?” Sam asked, a little angry at being interrogated by a grumpy, pint-sized creature that she thought would look more at home sitting next to a pond with a fishing rod in its hands.
“You’re a whortle, which is humankind. And I’m a fairy.”
“You don’t look like a fairy,” Tommy said.
“How would you know? Have you ever met one before?” Figwort asked, folding his arms over the flowing white beard that grew down to his big-buckled belt.
“Well, er, no. But I imagined fairies to look like Tinkerbell, or the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio. You look more like a Vulcan out of Star Trek.”
“A what?”
“Never mind,” Tommy said.
“You’ll have to come to the Oak Palace,” Figwort said. “The King will decide what is to become of you.”
“I think we’ll just leave,” Ben said.
Figwort shook his head vigorously. “You can’t just leave. You know an entrance to this world now.” And having said that, he flew up into the air, and they were drawn up after him and sucked along in his wake.
Sam felt like Wendy Darling, flying along behind Peter Pan on her way to Neverland.
“We’re flying!” Ben shouted at the top of his voice, stretching his arms out and clenching his hands. He felt like Superman.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Tommy screamed, pin wheeling along at the rear, his calliper weighing him down, so that he was in danger of colliding into the tops of trees.
After a short flight, they landed in a heap in front of a mighty oak tree, helped each other up, and followed Figwort to a Norman-arch-shaped door set into the tree’s trunk. The door creaked open at a hand signal from the fairy, and it was then that they realised they were now Figwort’s size. He had somehow shrunk them.
After being taken inside the hollow tree, Figwort led them down a winding wooden staircase to a narrow passage. Thick roots were sticking out of the rough earthen walls, floor and ceiling.
“In here, for the time being,” Figwort said, opening a door made from a single, thick slice of oak.
No sooner had they entered the underground room, than the door slammed shut behind them. Ben tried to open it, but there was no knob or handle on the inside.
“Let us out!” Ben shouted, kicking the door and hammering on it with his fists.
A small flap opened at eye level. Ben put his face up to it, looked out, and instantly jumped back in fright at the sight that met him. What he saw appeared to be a huge rabbit. It was standing upright, staring back at him with small pink eyes. It wore a shabby tunic that could have been made from a potato sack, and a cone-shaped wooden helmet on its head between its floppy ears. Drool dripped from a slobbering mouth that had large ivory tusks curling out from it.
“Quiet, whortles,” the monstrous rabbit growled. “Or I will gobble you up, bones and all.”
“Great. Just great,” Tommy said, sitting on the single wooden cot, which was the only item of furniture in the gloomy cell. “Let me get this right. We set off on a bike ride to Grimwith reservoir, stop off on the way, get lost in fog, and end up at a lake full of warm, turquoise water. Then you two find a gold cup behind a waterfall, and everything gets weird, with force fields, parting of the water, and being taken prisoners by a bird that turned into a green fairy. How am I doing so far?”
“Apart from flying, being shrunk, and having a giant rabbit threaten to eat us, I think you covered just about everything,” Sam said.
Tommy bent his knee and his brace creaked. Usually it squeaked. Ben was always telling him to oil the calliper. He pulled up the leg of his pants and gasped. His calliper had changed. It was no longer metal, but made of wood, with leather fastenings where the hinges had been.
“Check out your glasses,” Ben said.
Tommy took them off and inspected them. The lenses were missing, and the frames looked to be made of the same wood as his calliper.
Ben raised his left hand and examined his wristwatch. It was now a bracelet made of bark.
They went through everything. Anything manmade had changed. Their clothes looked similar, but were made from wool and other natural fibres. And all plastic and metal was gone. Even the bottles in their backpacks – that were now cloth satchels with rope handles – were wooden containers, stoppered with corks and holding water, not Coke or lemonade.
“This could be the Three Musketeers’ greatest adventure,” Sam said, taking off the uncomfortable clogs that had replaced her Nikes.
“This could be our last adventure,” Ben said.
“Where do you think we are?” Tommy asked.
“Somewhere that shouldn’t exist, but does,” Ben said. “We’re in a different time or place. Something seriously spooky has happened to us, or I really am asleep and dreaming.”
Sam began to shiver. The room was damp and cold, and it smelled like a compost heap. She put the clogs back on to keep her bare feet off the dirt floor. “Do you think they’re going to harm us?” she asked.
“Who knows?” Ben said. “We need a plan.”
“Plan! We need a miracle,” Tommy said. “Remember, Figwort can do magic. He could probably turn us into bugs and squish us. Think up a plan to beat that.”
“I think we’re safe, as long as we have the cup,” Sam said. “I’ve checked, and it’s still gold, so Figwort’s magic can’t be able to affect it.”
“Maybe it can help us,” Ben said. “What if we all touch it and wish to be back to where we were before we found it?”
“Sounds good,” Sam said, about to open the woolly bag that had been her backpack, but stopping when the door was suddenly opened.
A very tall, thin figure with a milk-white face, long nose, and eyes as big and white as Ping-Pong balls, walked in. Well, not walked. He seemed to drift towards them with his feet a few inches above the floor. He wore a black cloak, and his hands were huge, with long fingers and thick horny nails that were more like talons. He hovered in front of them and smiled, to reveal a mouth packed full of needle sharp teeth.
Sam, Ben and Tommy gasped and backed away from him, the blood draining from their faces. And as they retreated, the creature seemed to melt and reform into Figwort.
“Impressive, huh?” Figwort said.
“N...Not funny,” Sam said.
“No. You have no right to lock us up like this and steal all our things,” Tommy added.
“I stole nothing,” Figwort replied, looking a little taken aback at being accused of such a crime. “Things that don’t belong here change.”
“Don’t you have glass and metal and plastic here?” Ben asked.
“We have all we need, and don’t want anything from elsewhere.”
“Why have you been so mean to us?” Sam asked him. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You came to where you shouldn’t be. That’s wrong,” Figwort stated.
“Not by choice,” Tommy said. “We found a gold―”
“Shut up, Frog,” Ben said. “We don’t have to tell this little freak anything.”
Figwort puffed out his chest, and his beard bristled and quivered. “You should watch your mouth, young whortle, or I might seal it up as tight as a drum. Or change you all into dragon snot.”
&
nbsp; “You’re not a very pleasant fairy, are you?” Tommy said. “I always thought that fairies were kind, and granted wishes and did good things.”
Figwort made a snorting sound. “Where did you get a silly idea like that?”
“I read it in books.”
“Books are written by whortles and otherkind with vivid imaginations,” Figwort said. “They don’t know the real of what is true.”
“What do you intend to do to us?” Sam asked. “Are you going to hurt us?”
“The king will decide your fate. He’s my nephew, more is the pity. He has the backbone of a peat worm, and less sense than an apple.”
Something struck Sam as very peculiar. Figwort was speaking in English. Would he have been able to talk to them in any language? She thought so. “Where did you learn to speak English?” she asked him.
Figwort stopped insulting the king – which, to Sam, was to say the least a traitorous thing for him to be doing in front of strangers – and smiled.
“It’s like the clothing and objects that changed,” he said. “We only have one language here. Everything but the most stupid of insects, like bogflies, can talk and be understood. It makes things simple. When I speak to you, your minds make it into words and phrases that you can understand.”
“What do you call your world, Figwort?” Ben asked.
“By a name that would have no meaning to you, that means here, as opposed to being anyplace else. We and you live in other worlds to each other, which are linked by portals that can take us from here and now to there and then. We are all only a wing beat away from each other. Does that answer your question?”
“I think so,” Ben said, frowning. “You mean that we’ve somehow entered a parallel universe.”
“I don’t know. You found a hole in time and space and passed through it.”
“So why can’t we just go back, then?” Tommy asked with a pleading hitch to his voice. “You can do magic. You could send us home and make us forget what happened.”
“Not so simple, Frog,” Figwort said, having picked up on Tommy’s nickname. “The portals drift about. They don’t stay in the same place for very long. Some are very small and just wink out like stars, and others are like giant tubes that a forest could pass through. The chances of you finding the right one back to your world are slimmer than a blade of meadow grass.”
Sam listened to the fairy, not convinced that he was telling them the truth. But she felt safe, because of the cup. They had to take it somewhere, of that she was certain. The writing had spelt out: Virtue is its own reward, and she thought that virtue was another word for goodness.
“Let’s be friends,” Sam said to Figwort. “There’s no reason for us not to be.”
“Very well,” he said. “Now follow me. The king is having a banquet, and you three shall be his special guests. When you meet him, you must stand on one leg and bow your heads three times. It’s the custom.”
“That’s daft,” Tommy said.
“Most customs seem daft to otherkind, Frog. What is it you whortles say...When in Rome, do as the Romans do?”
“Can you read our minds, Figwort?” Sam asked.
“A little. And I know what you have hidden in that bag. It doesn’t belong here, and I daresay the king will banish you for having it in your possession.”
“Do you know what the cup is?” Ben asked.
“Only that it was fashioned in the Mountains of Fire by a powerful sorcerer in ancient times. Worlds might collide and shatter if it falls into the wrong hands.”
Figwort turned and went back out through the cell door, beckoning them to follow him. Ben went first, slowly, a little scared of what the tusked rabbit guard might do, but it was no longer anywhere to be seen.
“Was that you in the shape of a rabbit, threatening to eat us?” he called out to Figwort, who was flying along in front of them, his wings a blur.
Figwort paused in mid-air, as still as a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower, and nodded his head, then flew on, chuckling to himself.
They came up through a maze of tunnels in the tree’s roots, to be led through oak-walled corridors that were carved with all manner of creatures and birds, some of which they could recognise, but many more that were mystical and in some cases grotesque. The carvings seemed to move in the glow of wall-mounted flax torches that flickered and drove back deep shadows as soft and as black as a kitten’s fur. Ahead of them, a massive and ornately etched door opened silently as Figwort drew a figure-of-eight sign in the air with his finger.
Entering the grand banquet hall of the Oak Palace, Sam, Ben and Tommy were met by the sight of hundreds of fairies. They were seated on long benches, at tables lining the walls. And at the end of the room – that was bigger than two tennis courts – was another table raised up on a stage, with a figure seated behind it who they knew must be the king.
“Go on,” Figwort whispered. “Walk slowly up to about ten paces from him, and don’t forget what you must do.”
The room became silent. All eyes were on them as they walked stiffly up to where a pencil-thin fairy leaned forward over the table to inspect them. His skin was green like Figwort’s, but his hair and beard were bright orange, and a crown made of what appeared to be some kind of animal horn inset with gems sat precariously on his head at an angle, almost covering his right eye.
Sam felt stupid standing on one leg and bowing her head as instructed.
“Why did you do that?” the king asked in a squeaky voice, looking bewildered at their antics.
“Figwort told us to...Sir,” Sam said.
The king sighed. “He has a very strange sense of humour. I sometimes think he is so old that his brains are turning to mulch.”
Figwort took a deep breath and gritted his teeth. He tried not to lose his temper – which was of the short-fused variety – by silently naming wild flowers; a practise similar to humans counting to ten. It didn’t work.
“I appreciate that you’re the king of the fairies, Ambrose,” Figwort began. “And I respect your position as such. But you are still my nephew, and almost an eternity my junior. So how about you show some respect for your elders, eh?”
Ambrose thought it over. He drummed his fingers on the arms of the throne and flexed his enormous crimson wings. “Very well,” he said. “Point taken. But address me as King Ambrose, or your Majesty. Familiarity breeds contempt, Figwort, and you are without doubt the most contemptible old fairy in the forest. Now introduce me to these whortles.”
Figwort turned his attention to Sam, Ben and Tommy. “This is King Ambrose, ruler of all he can see from the top of the Oak Palace. Tell him your names.”
“I’m Samantha...Sam Craig,” Sam said. “And these are my friends, Ben Cooper and Tommy Scott, your Majesty.”
“And why have you crossed over from the world of humankind?” King Ambrose asked, pushing his crown up a second before it would have fallen off his head.
“We didn’t plan to,” Ben said. “Something forced us to come here. Wherever here is.”
“That’s as might be, young whortles,” the king said, scratching at his beard as he pondered over what to do with them. “Mayhaps I should turn you into toadstools, or have you hung up outside the Cave of Screams for the giant bats. They are partial to a warm-bloodied supper at dead of night.”
“That wouldn’t be a very nice thing for a good king to do,” Sam said.
“True. But being nice all the time would be very boring,” King Ambrose said. “And much as I would like to return you back to where you belong, that isn’t going to happen. It’s the chalice that’s the problem. I can hear it calling out from your bag, Sam Craig. Wherever you found it, you should have left it there. It was cast out of this world in the distant past, and has the power to blow apart all of creation, should he who is all things evil ever get his claws on it.”
“So what do you suggest we do with it?”
Ben asked the king.
“You will have to deliver it to the Keeper-in-Waiting, who dwells in a world of ice in a far-off land.
“Why us?” Tommy said.
“That’s, why us, your Majesty?” Figwort said, digging Tommy in the ribs with his elbow.
“Why us, your Majesty? We don’t want it,” Tommy said. Just the thought of an ice world caused his bad leg to ache. He didn’t like British winters, never mind somewhere that sounded as cold and bleak as the North Pole.
“Because the chalice chose you three,” Ambrose replied. “It called out to you, and you recovered it. You now have a responsibility...A duty to ensure that it is returned to the Keeper.”
“How would we find him, King Ambrose?” Sam asked, knowing that this was fate, and that they had no choice but to try to fulfil what was now their mission.
“After the banquet and a good night’s sleep, Figwort and one of my palace guards will accompany you to the Crossroads of Time, where you―”
“You have got to be kidding!” Figwort yelled, shooting up into the air, where he hovered and stared down at the king. “I’m getting too long in the wing to go on lengthy flights anymore. I’m at an age when I should be taking it easy, not babysitting humankind kids. I’m not some fit young fairy who needs to prove anything. And I’ve got gout in my foot, and a bad back.”
“Get down here at once, Figwort,” King Ambrose ordered. “For nature’s sake, all I ever hear from you are excuses, excuses, and more excuses.”
Figwort obeyed, fluttering down to perch on the edge of the table. “They are not excuses. They are perfectly valid and good reasons,” he said. “I’m unsuitable to take on any jobs that might cause me undue stress.”
“Now hear this,” King Ambrose said with a hard edge to his voice. “This is not a debate or a request. It’s a direct order. If you refuse to comply, then you...you’ll be sorry.”
“Is that a threat?” Figwort demanded, thrusting his face up to within an inch of the king’s. “What if I refuse? What are you going to do, clip my wings and ground me? Or maybe turn me into a cockroach or a centipede?”
King Ambrose started to go bright yellow in the face, which was always a bad sign. Figwort realised that he had pushed his nephew too far, and had the good sense to know when to back down.
“All right,” he said. “You win. I’ll take them to the Crossroads of Time.”
“That’s more like it,” Ambrose said, and his rage began to fade, leaving just a tinge of yellow at the tips of his pointy ears and on the very end of his large, sharp nose. “The subject is closed. Now let’s eat, drink and be merry.”
Hours later, when the banquet was over, Figwort led Sam, Ben and Tommy up a winding staircase to a large room that was located high up in the Oak Palace. It was furnished with three wooden cots. “I’ll be back at sunup,” he said to them, before hurrying away.
There was a square hole in the trunk that served as a window. The shutters were open, and they could see not one, but three moons in the night sky, all different sizes, or perhaps just nearer and farther away from them. One was yellow, the second a dull orange, and the third a luminous green.
Tommy yawned, and without even taking his leg brace off, he flopped down on one of the cots and fell asleep in seconds.
Sam went to the window, looked up at the moons and the millions of stars sparkling in the blackness, and wondered if she would ever see her mum, dad and little sister, Emily, again.
“We’re in big trouble,” Ben said, standing by her side. “We don’t belong here, trapped in this crazy world.”
“It’s all my fault,” Sam said. “I should never have gone after the cup. If I’d left it at the bottom of the lake, none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ben said, patting her on the shoulder. “We’ll get back home, somehow. Let’s try the cup now, and see if we can wish ourselves out of this mess.”
Sam took the cup out of her bag and set it down on one of the cots. It began to glow like a night light, and she put the fingers of both hands on the rim, and Ben did the same.
Nothing happened.
“I’ll wake Frog up,” Ben said. “Maybe all three of us have to do it.”
“Uh, what?” Tommy gasped, as Ben shook him. “Is it morning already?”
“No. We need you to help us. We have to see if the cup will somehow magic us back to the lake,” Ben said.
The three of them gripped the wide rim with their outspread fingers touching.
“Please grant our wish and take us back home,” they said together, then repeated the request four times, half expecting to be whisked back to the turquoise lake. The cup, or chalice, as the king had called it, began to vibrate and become warm to the touch. And as they watched spellbound, a column of blue vapour rose up from inside it, and the ghost-like image of a very old man with snow white hair and beard appeared to them, like a genie from a magic lamp. He was holding out his hands as if to accept something. He faded after a few seconds, and the blue smoke withdrew into the chalice and was gone. The cup cooled and was still again.
“I think that was the keeper we have to find,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Doesn’t look as if a ‘get out of jail free’ card is going to come up.”
Outside the palace, under the soft glow of the moons, Figwort and a much younger fairy, whose name was Speedwell, were sitting in a small glade, drinking mead from leather cups.
“I’ve chosen you to accompany me on what might prove to be a trip fraught with danger, Speedwell,” Figwort said, draining his cup and pouring himself more of the potent brew.
“So tell me about it,” Speedwell said, fixing Figwort with an attentive look in his bright, amber eyes.
“We will have to travel due south for ten turns of the moons, then enter the Living Forest,” Figwort said. “From there, with directions from a wise old tree I know, we will find the pass leading between the twin peaks of Doom Mountain, and make our way down through the Valley of Mist to the Lake of Life.”
“For what purpose shall we be going so far through dangerous lands?” Speedwell asked.
“To take the three whortles to the Crossroads of Time, lad. Once there, we can be rid of them and make the journey home at a steady pace.
“And when do we set off on this trip?”
“At sunup. So pack plenty of nut pie. I don’t want to have to eat berries and roots for every meal.”
“Has anyone ever made a journey like this and returned to boast about it?” Speedwell asked, though not out of fear. He was looking forward to going, having never been outside the forest.
“Only Catchfly ventured as far as the Desert of Storms and made it back. And he’s been heavenward for longer than I care to remember.”
“But won’t our magic protect us from all danger?”
Figwort shook his head. “No. There are powers much stronger than ours between here and where we must go. And many are of a dark force. The truth of it is, we may not survive to tell the tale of what lies in the Outlands.”
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