‘What a strange world we live in,’ Alditha said to herself quietly, biting her top lip this time. ‘Oh Harper, I do hope you are safe, dear bird.’
__________
Harper had, in fact, been busy in the two weeks since giant teacups full of monsters and flying balls with wings had come into his life. Indeed, since leaving Alditha, he had been making plans—plans to save the Garden from the invasion.
He’d already achieved Step 1—Protect Myself From Seeing The Monsters. It’d taken him several nights to weave himself a visor out of bright green leaves, which he now wore everywhere—the leaves stopped him getting distracted by the horrors that still plagued him every time he looked up, the beetles and worms and other unspeakable giant creatures trying to burrow down to him and eat the world alive.
Now it was time for Step 2—Tell Everybody About The Monsters.
He landed on Stone Hedge with his usual accuracy, bounced, squawked and fell off it again with an ‘Oof.’ Shaking himself and pushing his visor of leaves back into place, he flapped carefully, rising up into the air just enough to feel the Hedge’s rough stone surface underneath his feet, then he stopped flapping. He strutted up and down on the Hedge a little, as if to say, to anyone who’d seen him, that his falling off had been on purpose, and that was how owls in the know were landing these days.
He gazed around the crossroads that served the Middle Garden as a village green, a few shops and rows of posher houses lining each leg of the cross. There weren’t many people about, but as he looked around, Harper began to worry for the first time that he wouldn’t be able to do what he had to do. He was only a little owl, how could he save the Garden from the monsters? He suddenly felt hot and stupid. He stood on one leg, then the other, trying to relieve the feeling of pins and needles that was reaching down to his claws, but it didn’t seem to work. He’d thought about what he’d say, thought about it long into the night before, but now, as a couple of people nodded in his direction, he felt his throat tighten, and his tongue dry up.
‘People-’ he said, but it came out in a high-pitched squeak. He swallowed hard and tried again. ‘People,’ he called, louder, and in something a little closer to his normal voice. He cleared his throat. It’s now or never, he told himself firmly.
‘People of the Garden,’ he started, and more people turned his way. Harper could feel their eyes all over him. Don’t think about it. Don’t stop. ‘I have something to tell you.’
People started wandering over to him.
He swallowed again. ‘The Garden is in danger,’ he almost yelled, going squeaky again.
‘Oh aye?’ said an older man who, to his surprise, Harper didn’t recognize.
‘Err, aye. I mean yes,’ said Harper, flinging a wing out. He’d meant to do that when he’d said the thing about the Garden being in danger. It didn’t have quite the same dramatic effect now. ‘From monsters.’
‘Monsters?’ demanded Moria P’diddle, the baker—a woman who’d been treating bread dough like it was her worst enemy in the Garden for years, and who had forearms like a wrestler to show for it. She crossed those arms and Harper gulped. ‘Monsters like what? I mean, we’ve got a dragon rules the biggest chunk of forest round these parts, how much more monstrous can ya get? Or d’you mean Big Red?’ Big Red was technically a demon, but everybody knew he only used his powers for evil when he had no other option—most of the time he was as peaceful as a pussycat. ‘Brave,’ sniffed Moria. ‘Not sure I’d call Big Red a monster. Not if there was a chance of it getting back to him, anyhow.’
‘Nah,’ said a voice from the crowd, and Harper saw it came out of Old Tom. ‘Oi reckon ’e means the trolls over at Gravel Ridge.’ Old Tom stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around, then pulled it out and stared at what was stuck on the finger, as though he had no idea where it might have come from. He shrugged, sucked his finger and then pronounced ‘’s’fair enough. Never trust a troll, that’s what oi say.’
Harper blinked his big owl eyes. He’d never had a problem with the trolls at Gravel Ridge. He’d never had anything to do with the trolls at Gravel Ridge. For one horrifying moment, he wondered what the trolls at Gravel Ridge might do to him if they heard he was calling them monsters. ‘No, no,’ he stuttered. ‘Definitely not the trolls.’
‘Told you,’ said Moria. ‘Must be Sagar. I mean, fair’s fair, who ever heard of a dragon ownin’ a forest. ’tain’t natural.’
There were murmurs of agreement from a few anonymous people in the crowd.
‘I don’t mean Sagar,’ Harper squeaked, having had quite a complicated vision of the Blue Dragon eating him alive. ‘Look, listen-’
‘Ohhhh,’ said Mellifluous Turnipflower, the milkmaid from Daisychain Dairy Farm. ‘I know who he means. Means the beardless wizard, don’ ’e? Tha’ one’s a prop’r monster, I reckon.’
Moria nodded, her muscular arms flexing and tightening. ‘Always been a couple of dinner rolls short of a dozen, that one.’
‘No, look, the monsters are-’
‘What’s ’e been up to this time?’ snorted the baker.
‘Well, Jefferson Smallbritches, the blacksmith’s boy, stopped in with us yes’erday to take measurement for shoein’ the new carthorse,’ the milkmaid gossiped, ‘an’ ’e said there’s barely a few acres of forest left up at the castle.’
‘Monstrous,’ snarled the baker, and a few members of the crowd mumbled in support of her view. Harper could see a few more members of his suddenly gathered crowd were losing interest and starting to drift off.
‘But that b’aint the worst of it,’ said Mellifluous, almost whispering, but with a glint of excitement in her eye. ‘’e told our Fandango what calls ’erself the cook but really can’t do more’n boil an egg without cuttin’ ’erself, ’e told ’er them trees as is still standin’ ’as got ’emselves...’ She looked around, as if to keep the information to herself. ‘...Personalities,’ she whispered. The crowd gasped, hustling around the delighted milkmaid to learn more.
‘Ladies?’ said Harper. Nobody paid him any attention. ‘Ladies? People?’ he tried again, but the moment was lost. Everyone seemed more interested in Skoros and his talking trees, and what the Green Man would say about it, than they were in Harper and his tales of monsters.
Well, almost everyone, anyway. As the crowd dispersed into small clusters, each with their theories about the talking trees, Gunkin the purple goblin sidled up to Harper.
‘You’re not good at this sort of thing, are you, chief?’ he said bluntly, watching the crowd dissolved.
‘No,’ said Harper miserably. ‘I don’t think I am. But I have to be. There really are monsters. I’ve seen them.’
‘Have ya now?’ said Gunkin, rubbing his chin. ‘Have ya now indeed? Well, I tell you what, chief—how about you stand me the price of a hazelnut coffee and a sardine sandwich, and then you tell me all about it? Reckon I might be able to help you get your message across.’
Harper blinked, seeing the last remnants of his crowd had gone back to their business. ‘Alright then,’ he agreed, flapping his wings and heading to Ma McPumplewick’s Eatery. Whistling to himself, Gunkin followed close behind, the possibility of a short-term money-making scheme already forming in his mind.
__________
Witches and wizards are similar in many ways, but they’re not by any means the same. Witches have a tendency to live alone with their familiar animals, and have no need to prove their witchiness, or see who’s the witchiest of them all. In fact, witches usually only get together in covens in the event of dire emergency, juicy gossip, the death of another witch, or mischief. Mischief is a big thing among witches—it is a truth whispered by the survivors of many an apparently natural disaster that there is nothing more dangerous than a bored witch.
Wizards, on the other hand, love to get together with other wizards. They love to boast of their new spells, show off their new robes, add diamonds and emeralds and rubies to their wizarding hats, compare the length of their beards, and
slyly make out that they’ve picked up new and amazing spell books that they can’t possibly share.
And while witches don’t have a hierarchy so much as a lot of hard stares and raised eyebrows, wizards love nothing more than knowing where they stand in the order of things. Especially when it turns out that other wizards stand lower than they do. It’s the sort of thing that makes witches raise their eyebrows and mutter about ‘stupid wizards.’
The easy way to advance your position in the wizarding world is to read more and practice more than any other wizard. That usually means that simply by having had more time on their hands, the older a wizard is, the higher up the rankings he (or she—the requirement to have a beard becomes less of an impediment to female wizards as time goes on) is likely to be. There are regular degrees of advancement too—from a one-star novice all the way up to a Grand High Universal Wrangler of the Infinite. Each time a wizard goes up a level, they’re allowed to sew on a new badge, showing their new rank and status, with whole different classes of robe at regular intervals along the way. It keeps them keen, and it keeps them reading, and wizards, by their nature, want to get higher than their fellow wizards, so for the most part, they keep at it.
Above the rank of Grand High Wrangler of the Infinite though, there is a whole other class of wizardry, only ever reached by the brightest, the best, the most dedicated or the most devious of wizards.
The mages.
And in the Garden, at the top of the wizarding tree, there was Odiz. Odiz the mage. Odiz the magnificent. Odiz the eater of huge lunches and dinners, and just at this moment, Odiz the snorer of loud snores. He’d had a big lunch, and it was afternoon nap time.
Odiz was an old man, and though no-one would call him fat exactly, his dedication to big dinners in recent years had led one or two of the other, braver mages, to nickname him Odiz the Chunky. No-one could quite remember what had happened to the mages who had started that nickname—no-one thought it was wise to quite remember. His beard was long and grey and he’d long ago grown tired of tripping over it when it tangled around his feet, so Odiz had permanently enchanted it—now it almost had a life of its own, and would move out of the way of his feet whenever he walked anywhere. While he slept, his beard would twitch and curl in the air, wandering about and getting into mischief without its owner’s knowledge.
The beard stopped curling. It quivered, as though it had heard or felt something on the air. There was a disturbance in the house, a voice, a distant scream. Odiz had a large house, as was fitting for a mage of the highest standing, and he slept high up in a turret—something about the career of wizardry leads those who practice it to build towers and turrets on their houses, which is another thing that makes witches raise their eyebrows and mutter.
Odiz kept snoring, safe in the knowledge that his house had more magical charms and alarms and traps on it than any other in the Garden—assassination was not unknown as a pathway to advancement in the world of wizards in the Garden, but it had a couple of catches. The first catch was that you didn’t simply take the place of the wizard you’d killed—you had to write an essay about how you’d done it, and demonstrate the method in front of a panel of leading wizards. The second catch was that you had to be inventive about it—no wizard would get on if they simply conjured a troll out of the air and clubbed their superior to a pulp. Any wizard who tried that would find themselves on the wrong end of a disapproving panel.
The disapproval of wizards tends to involve fireballs and being rather deader than you thought you were.
There was a knock on Odiz’s bedroom door. He didn’t hear it under the noise of his snoring. The beard stood up straight though, then formed itself into a hairy question-mark in the air. Odiz snored, long and deep and snotty. The beard formed a point and snaked back, to prod him in the shoulder.
Prod, prod, prod.
Odiz snored again, snorting. ‘Mmmmsausages...’ he muttered, then turned onto his side.
The end of the beard softened to a brush-point and tickled Odiz under the nose. He sneezed, rubbed his moustache, breathed —and then began to snore again.
The beard-tip sagged, then shot straight up his nose. Odiz woke up sharply, coughing and snarling and scrabbling at his face.
‘Eh, what, what, eh?’ demanded the mage. ‘Confound ya, ya wretched hairy blighter. Can’t a feller get a decent afternoon’s kip around these parts anymore?’
The knock came again, and Odiz leapt out of bed, spellcasting hands at the ready. He might be old and a little chunky, but you didn’t get to be the world’s greatest mage without a healthy set of instincts.
He twiddled his little finger, and the bedroom door shot open, slamming against the wall as if pinned there by a bully. Odiz had lived long enough to know that he who hesitates is lost. In fact, in wizarding circles, he who hesitates often just becomes a greasy smear on the floor. He blasted the unknown intruder with a shot of yellow, crackling energy that should have torn their flesh from their bones.
The orb slid greasily, a little unsteadily into the room. The energy hit it, rippled over its surface, searching for flesh to tear from bones. Eventually, as if embarrassed, the energy fizzled out.
Cunning, thought Odiz. It was the only thought he wasted, blasting a stream of blue-white fire at the sphere with his other hand. The beam was searching for nuts and bolts and things it could unscrew. One or two fell out, and the sphere stopped for a moment in mid-air.
Gotcha, thought Odiz.
The sphere shook off the blue beam though, dodging out of the way. Then it fired a soft red spray-like beam of its own, and the old mage was caught, paralysed in it.
‘Ungrrkf,’ he grunted, which would probably have been quite rude if he’d been able to get the whole words out.
Skoros stepped into the doorway. ‘Ah, Odiz,’ he said, smiling a thin smile. ‘Lost for words?’ The thin smile thickened. ‘Don’t blame you. I must admit, I’m rather impressed myself. Paralysis beam. Perfectly harmless—unless I decide it shouldn’t be.’
The old mage’s eyes were trying to widen in fury and indignation, but his muscles simply wouldn’t allow it.
‘Don’t panic, old man, I’m not here to kill you. If I were, believe me, I’d have thought of something far more creative. Oh, sorry about your housekeeper, incidentally—she would keep on. Her, I had to kill. As I say, apologies. I know how you appreciated her dinners.’
Odiz tried to moan, but his throat wasn’t obeying his commands.
‘I need your help, Odiz. I need your knowledge. As long as you continue to be useful to me, you continue to live. Do you understand?’
Odiz tried to say that not only did he understand but that one day he’d tear Skoros a new nose, but none of the words would come out. ‘Nnnnnyyymmmmmnnnnnsss,’ was as much as he managed.
‘Splendid,’ said Skoros. ‘Oh I know what you’re thinking, by the way.’ He stepped closer to the mage, to look deep into his old, ice blue eyes. ‘You’re thinking “But how has this happened? All my traps, my alarms, should have stopped any magical attack,” aren’t you? Yes, I know you are. But you see, you’ve overlooked one beautiful thing, o magiest of mages.’ Skoros was snarling now, the spit flying from his lip and hitting Odiz in the face. ‘I’ve got something better than magic now.’
‘Raaark. Oh, Skoros? Lord Skoros?’ said Razor from the doorway.
Skoros couldn’t hear his bird, he was enjoying himself far too much.
‘Oi. Dark Lord Of All You Piggin’ Survey.’
Skoros smiled, turned to look at Razor. ‘Yes?’ he said, sweetly.
Razor gulped. ‘Might be time we were off?’ he said, nudging his head towards the rest of the house.
Skoros thought about it for a moment. He could kill the bird right here and now for his continuing insolence. He hitched his smile wider. No. No, not yet. ‘You’re right, of course. Not going to be terribly dignified, this bit,’ he said to the mage, pulling out his wand and aiming it at the sphere.
‘Walk,’ he comma
nded.
Against his will, Odiz’ legs began to move, and the old man was led down the grand staircase of his home, still in his sleeping-robe, past the dead and bleeding body of Mistress Fazackerly the housekeeper, and out into the sun-drenched afternoon.
9
‘So,’ said Gunkin, chewing his sardine sandwich with a mouthful of teeth that looked almost guaranteed to one day cut his face off, ‘monsters, eh?’
Harper was mesmerized by the sight of the goblin’s teeth—they had a hypnotic awfulness to them that was almost worse than the thing he’d seen in the teacup.
‘Hmm?’ he said, snapping out of it. ‘Yes. Monsters.’
‘Shhh,’ said Gunkin, spraying tiny bits of minced fish in the owl’s direction. ‘Don’t want to panic everybody, now do we?’
‘Yes,’ said Harper urgently. ‘I do. I want people to panic, because there’s something to panic about and nobody’s paying the blindest bit of notice.’
Gunkin swallowed and looked at Harper keenly. ‘Well, let me ask you this,’ he said, ‘do you want them to just panic, which involves lots of running around and screaming, or d’you want them to panic and do something about the monsters?’
Harper blinked, thinking about it. ‘The second thing?’ he asked, not entirely sure.
Gunkin smiled, in that disconcerting way he had. In this case, the effect was made even more awful by the bits of sardine between his teeth. ‘Yes, the second thing,’ he agreed. ‘That means we don’t let them just overhear the danger they’re in. We don’t fly about the streets, shouting about monsters, because when people panic, that’s when other people start finding their houses and their barns and their fields on fire. Right?’
‘If you say so,’ said Harper, who was no longer sure he knew what was happening in this conversation.
‘We have a message,’ explained Gunkin. ‘We want them to hear the message and act on it. That, my feathered friend, requires presentation. It requires packaging.’
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