The Adventures of Sir Roderick, the Not-Very Brave

by James O'Loghlin

  ‘Can you tell me more about the mind-talking now? How does it happen?’ asked Roderick.

  Banfor, who was now much less fidgety, stared at him for a long moment. ‘I am not sure if anyone knows. It is speech of another kind. Some animals can do it, and a few humans. Not many. Some have the ability but never become aware of it. Others, like you, somehow find out they can do it, and then practise and improve. As you have found out, the giant cockroaches can do it. Butterflies also have the ability, but not fish. I’m not sure why.’

  ‘But how did you get your powers? I mean, you can control giant cockroaches. Where does that come from?’

  ‘From my parents.’

  ‘But how . . . I mean, where did they –’

  Banfor held up a hand. ‘I will tell you what I can. My father was a Baronian who lived in a small village near the Nareean border. My mother lived nearby, but in Nareea. Both had similar unusual abilities. From an early age they could sometimes tell what others were thinking, and find things that were lost. By the time they were teenagers they could move small objects with their minds and sometimes even persuade people to do things.

  ‘In their mid-teens they sensed each other. My mother crossed into Baronia and found my father. When they met, they instantly knew they belonged together. My father left his family and returned with my mother to her village. They tried to keep their powers secret, but eventually word reached those high up in the Nareean army, and one day a group of knights arrived and tried to persuade my parents to go with them and help Nareea fight its enemies. They refused, so the knights tried to take them by force. My parents used their powers to get free, and fled.’

  Banfor sipped his tea.

  ‘Where did they go?’ asked Roderick, fascinated.

  ‘They realised that wherever they went, sooner or later the army of whatever country they were in would come looking for them. So they went to a place where there were no people. They sensed the emptiness within the Circle of Mountains, discovered the way in and made their home there. They grew fruit and vegetables and fished, and they were content.

  ‘Then I arrived. I grew up with no other human company but them. The cockroaches did not guard us back then, but whenever someone stumbled upon the entrance to the tunnel my parents, now deeply suspicious of those on the outside, would detect them, and gently persuade them to turn around.’

  ‘And they taught you how to do the things that they could do?’

  ‘Indeed. They taught me how to use my mind to communicate, to heal and to persuade. They always emphasised that having such powers brought great responsibilities and that I must never do harm.

  ‘My childhood was spent entirely within the Circle of Mountains and as I approached manhood I grew restless. I wanted to see more of the world. My parents were not surprised when I said I wanted to leave. They knew the day would come.

  ‘On the day I left I told them I would return soon. I may even have believed it. I doubt they did. As I walked for the first time through the tunnel that led to the outside world, I felt great excitement. I also felt sadness and apprehension. Then I realised that the feelings of sadness and apprehension did not come from me. I was detecting the feelings of my parents.’

  ‘Did they not think of coming with you?’ asked Roderick.

  Banfor laughed softly. ‘They knew that my desire to leave was not just about wanting to see the world. It was about wanting to learn to live without them. It happens to every child.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Roderick, eager to hear more.

  Banfor gazed deep into the flames for a long time. ‘And then,’ he repeated distantly. ‘Things went terribly, terribly wrong.’

  ‘How? What did –’

  ‘That is enough for now,’ said Banfor firmly. ‘It is time to sleep.’

  ‘But the mind-talking. If I can do it, how should I use this power?’

  ‘Like we must use all powers, of course. As best we can.’

  And with that enigmatic comment Banfor headed towards his tent.

  Roderick rose. ‘Please! One more question. Why did Ruby want you to go with her?’

  Banfor gave him a searching look. ‘You have good hearing, Roderick, but I am sorry, I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Because you don’t know or because . . .’

  ‘Because I am going to sleep,’ replied Banfor, irritation creeping into his voice. Goodnight.’

  ‘I have felt someone else’s thoughts,’ said Roderick quickly.

  Banfor stopped. ‘Indeed? Whose?’

  ‘Er . . . well . . .’

  Banfor looked hard at him, into him.

  ‘If you want me be honest with you, Roderick, then you must be honest with me.’

  Now it was Roderick’s turn to fidget. Eventually he said, ‘The Queen’s.’

  A strange expression came over Banfor’s face. It may have contained anger, sorrow, even wistfulness.

  ‘Ahh, the Queen. We shall see her soon, no doubt,’ was all he said.

  ‘Do you know her?’ asked Roderick.

  ‘Oh yes. I used to, at any rate. But I have not seen her for a long time. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone for a long time.’ He looked at Chester, snoring softly on his side. ‘Except for that bear.’

  Later that night, Roderick woke, or thought he did. Banfor was by the fire, leafing through Roderick’s spell book, studying its pages. Roderick tried to lean forward to get a better view, but found that he could not move. He was immobilised, and slowly but firmly felt himself being pulled – or maybe pushed – back to sleep. Just before his eyes fluttered shut he thought he saw a tear run down Banfor’s cheek.

  The next morning he had a dim memory of something unusual happening the previous evening, but couldn’t quite remember exactly what. Before long even that vague recollection trickled away, and the incident was forgotten.

  They travelled all that day and by late afternoon were getting close to Palandan. We’ll reach the city by early evening, thought Roderick.

  ‘I wonder if we might stop soon. I know we are close, but I am very tired,’ said Banfor, as if he had been reading Roderick’s mind. Perhaps, thought Roderick, he had.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he replied. ‘We’ll find somewhere to camp.’

  ‘Your home is nearby, is it not?’ said Banfor.

  ‘Yes, we’re quite close to it.’

  Banfor raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Home!’ said Chester. ‘The best place there is! So much more comfortable and nice and warm than places that are not home. Homes are always warm. And even when a home is not warm, when you are thinking about your home with your thoughts, you always think of it as being warm. Even cold homes make warm thoughts! And after three days sleeping in non-warm non-homes, I would very much like to go to a home, even if it is not my home.’

  ‘Would it be rude to ask if your family might consider accommodating us for a night?’ asked Banfor. ‘Three nights sleeping on the ground has stiffened my back somewhat.’

  Roderick had already longingly contemplated calling in to the farm, but had quickly dismissed the idea. He had an important mission to complete. But if Banfor’s wellbeing was an issue, that changed things. He imagined telling his mother and Sonya how he had overcome cannibals and giant cockroaches to find Banfor and save the kingdom, and then devouring some of his mother’s delicious cooking. Maybe she would even make rhubarb crumble! ‘Perhaps we could call in,’ he said tentatively.

  Banfor smiled. ‘Family is very important, Roderick. Always remember that.’

  ‘Except when you are asleep,’ added Chester. ‘By which I mean that family are still important when you are asleep, but you don’t have to remember it when you are asleep because remembering things when you are asleep is very hard. So when you are asleep, forget that family is important. But as soon as you wake up, remember it again, please!’

  Before lo
ng they came to the Indinwick turn-off and soon after made their way up the dusty track that led to the farm. As always Roderick felt a feeling of peace settle over him as he approached. He couldn’t wait to see his mother and Sonya again.

  He trotted ahead to reassure them that the approaching bear wasn’t going to eat them. As he neared the farmhouse Gwenda rushed out of the front door.

  ‘Roderick, thank goodness! What took you so long?’

  ‘I’ve been away and –’

  ‘Have you any news of her?’

  ‘Huh . . . who?’

  ‘Didn’t you get my note?’

  ‘No. What –’

  ‘It’s Sonya. She’s disappeared!’

  PART 2

  MYSTERY

  CHAPTER 11

  THE DISAPPEARANCE

  Despite his shock, and eagerness to find out what had happened to Sonya, Roderick managed to introduce Banfor and Chester. His mother was so distracted and anxious that he was sure she didn’t take in a word of it. She didn’t even bat an eyelid when Chester said, ‘Hello and nice to meet you and other polite things like that.’

  While Chester rested outside, Gwenda ushered Roderick and Banfor into the house and sat them at the kitchen table, then fought to control herself as she explained what had happened.

  ‘It was twelve days ago,’ she began, ‘the day you last visited.’ Roderick thought back. That was the day before he had left Palandan to search for Banfor.

  ‘She left home early in the afternoon, just after you left,’ Gwenda continued. ‘She said she was going into Indinwick to shop and see friends, but she didn’t come home that evening. I thought she must have decided to stay at a friend’s house. She does that sometimes.

  ‘I expected her sometime the next day, but she didn’t come home. That night I was so worried I didn’t sleep a wink. The next morning I went into Indinwick. None of her friends had seen her. No one had seen her.’ Her voice cracked. Roderick put an arm around her shoulders.

  Gwenda had then raced to the castle only to find that Roderick had left on a mission, and that no one could say when he would return.

  There had been no one else for her to turn to. The only help the town sheriff, Ranald Renfor, could offer was to suggest that at the age of fifteen, it was ‘time a girl got out from under her mother’s skirts anyway’.

  ‘Perhaps she just needed to get away for a while,’ suggested Roderick, as much to try to convince himself as his mother.

  ‘But for nearly two weeks? Without telling me? She wouldn’t torture me like this.’

  Roderick covered her hand with his. ‘What did she take?’ he asked softly.

  Gwenda brushed the hair from her eyes. ‘Just her normal bag. I’m not sure but she may have taken one extra skirt and blouse apart from what she was wearing.’

  ‘Did anyone in the village see her?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve asked all her friends, and everyone else. No one has seen her since she left here.’

  ‘Is there anyone new she has been spending time with recently? She told me that she had joined CAKE, the anti-knights group.’

  ‘She goes to their meetings, and she’s full of their ideas about making the world a better place, but that’s just normal for someone her age.’

  ‘Could the CAKE business be connected to her disappearance? Was she doing anything for them?’

  Gwenda shrugged. ‘She wouldn’t have told me if she was.’

  ‘Had she been talking about anyone or anything else unusual?’

  His mother looked at the table, hands clenched, as if trying to squeeze out memories. ‘She has her normal friends in the village. Sven, of course, but I think she’s getting less keen on him. And I’ve seen him about, so they haven’t run off together.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him. What about at the markets?’

  Gwenda shrugged again. ‘When it’s busy all we do is work. Set up, sell, pack up, go home. When it’s not busy she wanders about, talks, shops.’ She frowned. ‘I’ve been over things a hundred times. The only unusual thing I can think of is that recently we’ve been having lots of arguments about how to run the farm. She’s been talking about all these new ways of farming, and new mixtures and potions we should make.’

  Roderick remembered that Sonya had mentioned arguments. ‘Maybe she’s just getting interested. Were they good ideas?’

  ‘That’s the odd thing. She’s always been a bright girl. Like you.’

  ‘I’m not a girl.’

  ‘You know what I mean. But all her ideas were terrible. She wanted to start growing strawflour, which needs cooler temperatures and a lot more rain than we get. And she suggested we harvest the herbs earlier so we could get them to market before everyone else, but if we did that they wouldn’t be fully matured and the potions wouldn’t work properly.

  ‘And the more I said no – and I explained to her why – the more frustrated she got. Maybe she needed to get away for a night or two. But not for two weeks . . .’ Gwenda broke off and gazed at the floor.

  ‘So where did she get her ideas? Or who did she get them from?’ Roderick asked. Gwenda held up her hands.

  Banfor, who had been sitting back quietly, spoke. ‘When did your daughter usually make these suggestions? Was there any pattern? After she had attended the CAKE meetings? After you’d been to market?’

  Gwenda beat a rhythm on the table with her hand, as if it might help kick her brain into a higher gear. ‘I remember a few times talking to her about it on the way home from market.’

  ‘So she may have been talking to someone there,’ suggested Banfor.

  ‘Maybe. I didn’t see her with anyone, and she didn’t mention anyone, but recently she seemed more eager to get away from the stall, almost as if there was something else she wanted to be doing.’

  Roderick sensed that it was time for him to try to give his mother some hope by at least looking like he was taking charge.

  ‘All right,’ he said as confidently as he could, ‘after I deliver Sir Banfor to the castle, I’ll ask around and find out whether anyone noticed anything unusual Sonya had been doing, or anyone unusual she’d been with, and what was happening at those CAKE meetings.’ He grasped his mother’s hand. ‘We’ll find her.’

  Later, lying in his very own comfortable bed, Roderick thought back to his last conversation with Sonya, held just an hour or two before she disappeared. Had there been some clue in something she had said? Where had she gone? He ran it around and around in his mind, getting nowhere, until eventually he escaped into sleep.

  Next morning, he was woken at first light by a hand on his shoulder. Banfor.

  ‘Roderick. We must go.’

  ‘Hmmmppg . . . gruumpf. What’s the hurry?’ Roderick groaned.

  ‘I seem to recall you telling me that your kingdom is about to be overrun by the Nareeans,’ said the old man drily. ‘We should get to Palandan quickly.’

  Roderick sighed and then reluctantly hauled himself out of bed, scoffed some breakfast and bid his mother farewell, promising to investigate Sonya’s disappearance and return as soon as he could.

  They rode silently and soon came over a rise to see the walls of Palandan; the castle towered over them.

  ‘Oh my goodness, oh my stars, oh my gosh and oh my lots of other things,’ exclaimed Chester. ‘This is a place that is a big place. I have heard about places like this. It is a city, a place where many humans live crushed together as close as they can get.’

  Roderick smiled, and then allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. I did it, he thought. I really did it. I got past the cannibals and the cockroaches, and I brought Banfor back. A wave of something he hadn’t felt for a long time washed over him. Pride. Then he remembered his sister. The smile disappeared. He realised that soon Banfor would be whisked away into the palace. This might be his last chance. As they crossed the bridge
, he turned urgently to him.

  ‘Can you help me find Sonya? With your powers.’

  Banfor looked at the city walls for a few moments before replying. ‘My powers are not what they once were, I’m afraid. You saw what happened to me when we passed the cockroach.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘I will do what I can to help, but it would be unwise to rely on me.’ Banfor turned to Roderick, and fixed him with his piercing gaze. ‘You must search for her. Ask questions. Lots of questions. Use your brain and be bold. Your sister is strong.’

  Roderick looked sharply at him. ‘How do you know? What do you know about her?’

  ‘That is all I can tell you now. Remember my advice. Use your brain and be bold. The answers may be closer than you think.’

  ‘But . . .’ Roderick bit his lip. ‘But I get scared.’

  Banfor looked steadily at him and then said softly. ‘Then, Roderick, you have a great opportunity. For it is only those who feel fear who have the chance to be brave.’ Banfor smiled. ‘Come on!’ He urged his horse forward and it trotted up the hill towards the city gates. By the time Roderick caught up to him, they had nearly reached them.

  Roderick looked up at the city walls.

  Banfor dismounted and turned to Chester. ‘Chester, people may get a bit alarmed if they see a large bear enter their city,’ he said.

  ‘Am I a large bear?’ replied Chester. ‘This city is large and compared to it I am a very small bear. And even if I was a large bear, I am not a large bear who wants to attack people.’ He paused dramatically, and then leapt into a fighting pose, arms up. ‘Or am I? Maybe I would become such a bear if the people attacked me first, or if they attacked you first. But will that happen? And before you answer that question let me tell you something and that something is this: I hope that the answer you give is no.’

  ‘No,’ said Banfor.

  ‘Phew. I am a bear who does not like to fight. Although,’ he added, ‘I am quite good at it.’