“Whoa, where on earth did you come from?” Evan exclaimed in astonishment, looking up from his tool box in awe at the huge Shire horse’s head that was peering over his gate.
“I’ve come from Liberty especially to meet with you and your family, sir. It is very important that I speak with you, your dear wife, and your children – except for Grace that is; we’re already very well acquainted.”
Evan’s mouth remained open for a few seconds before he closed it. His mind attempted to speak, but when he opened his mouth again the ability to talk failed him, quite unlike Zavier, who was merrily chatting away over the garden gate.
“I know this is all a bit of a shock, but it really is important. May I come in?” Zavier asked, nodding his head toward the bolt on the gate.
Evan, still gaping, slid the bolt across, opened the gate, and stood aside, all without saying a word.
“Thank you, sir,” Zavier said, as he strode into the garden and made his way down the lawn toward the house.
Evan, still shocked, shuddered with disbelief and hurried after Zavier. He opened the back door and asked Zavier to, “Wait right there!”
Mary was frying the bacon. Catching a whiff of the rashers sizzling in the pan, Dan and Harry had dragged themselves out of bed and followed their noses to the kitchen table, where they were now sitting, eagerly awaiting the soft doorstep bread, filled with hot bacon bathed in melting butter.
“Outside… err… outside… come… come outside!” Evan blurted out, and then he swung himself round and staggered back out of the house.
“What’s up with him?” Dan asked, raising his eyes at Harry.
“I have no idea,” Harry replied, his chair scraping against the tiled floor as he pushed it back and left the table to go and find out.
Mary switched off the hob. “Chyna, Womble, stay!” she commanded. The dogs were hovering around the bacon scent with their noses in the air, and they happily stayed put.
Mary hurried behind the boys. They rushed out of the back door, gathered on the patio and stood beside Evan. Once outside, Harry had an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu.
“It’s you, you are real!” he said, astonished.
“Ah yes. Hello, young sir, we met the night that I came to take Grace to Liberty, didn’t we?” Zavier replied.
“I told you the flippin’ horse could talk, didn’t I? Didn’t I!” Harry said, smacking Dan’s arm gloatingly, while feeling a mixture of relief that he hadn’t lost his marbles the night of the party when he had first seen Zavier, and dumbfoundedness that there really was such a thing as a talking horse.
Mary, Dan and Evan had no such feelings of gloating or relief. Theirs were simply of pure and utter shock.
“Grace and Christian are both very well. They love the beach, and they have made many new friends. Grace is extremely excited to be seeing you all soon.”
“Grace isn’t at any beach! She’s next door at Elsie’s!” Mary snapped, flustered and wondering what the hell was going on.
Ice peered round from where she’d been sitting unnoticed between Zavier’s broad shoulders. “I think we need to tell you why we are here, and explain to you about the cloning,” she said.
The shock of meeting Zavier, and now a talking snowy owl, was all too much for Mary. As reality slipped away from her, so did her consciousness and she crumpled to the ground as if she were a puppet that had just had its strings cut.
* * *
“It’s okay Mary, you fainted. You’re all right, don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Evan said reassuringly, as he cradled his wife’s head in his lap and stroked her long blonde hair.
Mary pushed her elbow into the sofa and sat herself up. “The horse?” she groaned, rubbing her forehead with her hand.
“It’s okay, Mary, we will explain everything in a second,” Evan said.
“We will?” Mary puzzled, and then she spotted the breathtakingly handsome man that was sitting across from her in Evan’s armchair.
“Who are you and why are you wearing Evan’s clothes?” she asked.
The man leaned forward, smoothing back his silver grey hair with his hand. Mary looked straight into his eyes, mesmerised by how ridiculously handsome he was. She felt herself melting into him. He looks just like a movie star, she thought dreamily.
“I am ‘the horse’ I am Zavier,” the man replied. “Let me explain what I am, where I am from and, most importantly, why I am here,” he said, taking hold of Mary’s hand.
Mary, Evan, Harry and Dan listened to Zavier’s condensed explanation. They were absorbing the whole strange situation, when the lounge door was suddenly flung open.
“I’m back!” Grace shouted.
“But she’s sooo real,” Mary cried, looking at the clone of her daughter.
“What’s wrong with Mum, and who’s that man?” Grace asked, looking over at Zavier.
Ice had been perched on the back of Zavier’s chair. Knowing that this was her time to intervene, she flew across the room and landed on the carpet in front of Grace.
“It’s okay, child, I am your creator. Now go about your business as if we were not here,” Ice chanted calmingly.
Grace’s eyes glazed over. “As you wish,” she droned robotically. Then she left the room and ran upstairs to play.
Mary wiped the tears from her face and inhaled deeply through her nose. “I want to go now! Take me to my daughter now! I need to be with her!” she pleaded.
“First we must clone you. It’s a fairly simple enchantment that shouldn’t take too long, but you will need to come outside,” Ice said.
Mary looked lovingly at her husband and sons. “Come on, let’s do this, Grace needs us,” she said, and she made her way back outside.
Ice stood on the patio in front of Harry, who was rubbing his head soothingly where she had just plucked out one of his hairs. Then she began to retch, opening and closing her beak a little, and then she leant forward, opening her mouth as wide as it would go and regurgitated a rat-sized pellet.
“Niiice!” Dan applauded, nodding his head in strange approval of the mushy mass.
Ice pecked off approximately a quarter of the pellet, then looked up at Harry as he towered over her, and decided she better peck off a little more. She took the piece of pellet over to where she’d placed Harry’s hair and began to mix the two together with her beak. When the two were adequately intertwined, she carried them in her mouth over to a flower border, dug a small hole with her beak and planted them, before chanting these words:
“Substance of Human and substance of Asteroidean, mixed together in earth, shall produce the wonder of birth!”
The mud above the planted pellet began to churn and bubble up, forming a mole-hill-like mound, from which a duplicate of Harry rapidly emerged. The clone sprouted out of the earth as if it were a sunflower growing a thousand times faster than its normal rate.
“Whoa, wicked!” the boys chorused, laughing and snapping their fingers.
The clone shook off the mud and moved toward Harry. Harry and his double stood toe to toe.
“Go inside and go about your business as normal,” Ice commanded, and the clone of Harry went into the house.
“So how do you know which one of me is the real me? Don’t you get muddled up at all? I mean that clone is my identical twin.”
“I never get muddled up. As their creator, I can tell them apart instantly, but for others it is much more difficult. The only way that you would be able to distinguish between them is by the sign of a clone.”
“Okay, so what is the ‘sign’ of a clone then?”
“The sign is a regeneration mark, a small baptismal cross that is situated on the nape of the neck. It is a little easier to see on Humans as it is sometimes only partially covered by their hair, but on other creatures – for example, if I were to clone myself – it would be much more difficult to spot the mark under my feathers.”
“Okay, okay, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really would like to go and see my daughter no
w,” Mary said, with real desperation in her voice.
“Of course you would. Ice, please continue with the cloning as quickly as you can. I’ll go into the woodland to transform. I’ll wait for you there,” Zavier said.
Ice completed the cloning of the Darlings, and then they made their way to the woods where Zavier was waiting. Zavier no longer required Evan’s clothes and had strewn them across the newly erected fence panel. Mary looked at the jeans and t-shirt as she approached the gate at the bottom of the garden and realised something important.
“I haven’t packed anything! Do I need to bring anything?” Womble stood inside the kitchen at the patio doors, barking in frustration as he watched his family exiting through the gate.
“And the dogs, oh my goodness, I forgot about the dogs!” Mary panicked.
“My baby!” Evan cried, suddenly realising that he was leaving his beloved little black pug-dog behind.
“Don’t worry about the dogs, they will be very well looked after by your clones. They will be absolutely fine, and there is no need to pack, we have everything that you need at the beach house,” Ice reassured.
Mary grasped Evan’s arm and pulled him through the gate. As Evan turned to pull the gate shut behind him, he spotted his clone. The clone was bent down beside Womble and was giving the bulldog a reassuring pat. In his other arm he held Chyna the pug, who was affectionately licking at his face. Evan closed the gate behind him, knowing that the dogs were indeed going to be extremely well cared for.
*Liberty Realm*
CHAPTER 6
LEAH
Stay away! Leah told herself, but she couldn’t. She’d been photosynthesising on a sun-drenched branch with her arms outstretched to expand the surface of her leaf, ensuring that the warm, nutritious rays of light penetrated as much of her thin membrane as possible, when ‘he’ walked smack bang into her. She was knocked from the branch and sent into the air, gently floating, before eventually coming to rest on his forehead.
* * *
“Are you all right, Harry?” Mary asked.
“Yeah, Mum, I’m fine. That’s the problem with being this tall, always smacking my head on things,” Harry said, peeling the leaf from his forehead and tossing it aside.
Leah did not drift from Harry’s hand to the ground, for she was not like the other fallen leaves that speckled the floor, she was a member of the Woodland Kith. She spread her arms wide, catching a gentle breeze beneath her leaf and coasted on the warm air behind him. There had been murmurs throughout the canopies about the Humans. Superior Leaf Kith had warned her and the other young Kith that they must ‘Stay away, where there are Humans there is bound to be trouble. Let the Berthold deal with them. Keep yourselves hidden and keep yourselves safe.’
But she couldn’t help it, she had to stay near Harry because, from the moment he had pulled her away from his forehead, and her dark green eyes had looked into the swirling blue-brown blend of his, she knew that not only had she fallen from the tree, she had also well and truly fallen for him.
She sailed the air behind Harry for quite some time before catching a gust of wind that propelled her near enough to grab a hold of his grey hoodie. She grasped the thick jersey material that housed the corded drawstring at the perimeter of his hood and hauled herself inside.
* * *
As Zavier, Ice and the Darlings left the shade of the woodland trees and approached the beach, the full warmth of the sun became apparent. Harry lifted his arms, grabbed the shoulders of his hoodie and tugged it up and over his head before tying it by the arms around his slim waist. Leah was tossed around within the folds of the hood as Harry did this, but she managed to grapple her way back up to the neckline and into a wedge of the hood’s material that rested just above Harry’s left hip. She held on tightly, Harry’s hip dipping and rising as he navigated the rocky incline down to the sandy beach. She turned her head, pushing a wisp of mossy hair from her eye and gave a quick glance over her shoulder back toward her woodland home, as it disappeared from view behind her.
Once again, she heard her conscience whispering to her in the voices of her superiors, ‘Stay away!’ they said. ‘Where there are Humans there’s bound to be trouble!’
This is it, Leah, she thought, this is your last chance to turn back.
It was as if she’d been split in two. The sensible side of her pleaded, ‘Go back, you don’t belong here at the beach, go back into the woods, you know it’s the right thing to do,’ but the young, fun-loving, adventurous side of her, the side that was always getting her into trouble, the side that was frequently taking off for days on end to explore the woodland, was shouting the loudest. ‘Stay with him. Youuu knowww youuu want tooo. He’s sooo attractive. Look at those eyes, so gentle and kind. The Superiors must be wrong. This Human doesn’t look like trouble at all. This Human looks like an angel.’
Leah lay back in the soft material, nestling herself inside its folds as if she were laying in a hammock. She breathed in the scent of fabric conditioner, the familiar smell of lily-of-the-valley reminding her of the sweet-smelling bell-shaped flowers that grew near her home. Then she placed her hands on her stomach, partially entwining her webbed fingers and gazed dreamily up at Harry.
“Mmmm, my giant, my guardian Angel,” she murmured, smiling.
CHAPTER 7
GREETINGS
“Mum! Dad!” Grace cheered when she spotted her family walking along the beach. She sprang off the beach house steps and ran barefoot through the sand towards them.
“Oh, Grace,” Mary cried, tears running down her cheeks.
Grace jumped into her mother’s arms, and the pair embraced, sharing a special union, the merging of two hearts. An overwhelming wave of emotion flowed through them both, filling them with a love that only a mother and child could experience.
“Thank God you’re okay!” Mary wept. “I can’t believe you were taken from us and we didn’t even realise. I’m so sorry!” she cried.
“Don’t cry, Mum. It wasn’t your fault. Zavier told me that Ice would make sure you thought the clone was me. You weren’t to know that the real me had gone, were you? And anyway, I’ve been fine here. Everyone’s so nice, I can’t wait for you to meet them all,” Grace said, beaming.
Evan placed his arm around Mary’s shoulder as she carried Grace. Dan and Harry greeted their sister in their usual way, by taking turns at ruffling her hair. “All right, squirt. All right, sis,” they said.
Mary put Grace down and held her by the hand. Then the reunited family made their way up the wooden steps to the beach house where, amongst others, the Berthold of Liberty were waiting to welcome them.
The Darlings went inside the house and into the lounge where they stood like a row of carol singers, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. They’d admired the beauty of Liberty as they’d travelled to the beach, but they hadn’t experienced much else of its magic; well, not since Ice had cloned them, anyway. They’d left the coldness of winter behind in the Human world, travelled to a serene beach where the weather rivalled that of the hottest English summer and now, inside the magnificent wooden beach house with its many verandas and turrets, they were slapped full pelt in the face with what felt like all of Liberty’s magic at once.
Fire Fairies had come to be nosy and were fluttering around excitedly in the rafters. Francis, having returned earlier that day, was seated beside Chester on a wooden beam above the seating area. Aaron, Jazmine, Hazel and Ezekiel were seated on the large sofa, and April and Tobias balanced on the arms at either end of it. Tobias was clutching a cushion to his lap, fiddling nervously with its tassels. Pelagia and his Warriors were fluidly dispersed around the room, melting into their surroundings, invisible except for the occasional shimmer of their rippling water, and the frothing of their sea spray. In front of the fire hearth lay the wolves, Rian, Remus and Romulus, with Takoda their leader standing proudly at one side and Aurora, in her leopard form, stood at the other.
Romulus glared at the Human family, his fierce yell
ow eyes narrowed into suspicious slits that shone out from the darkness of his dense black coat. His hackles rose, his nose crinkled and he pulled his lips back into a snarl, exposing large, dagger-like canines. Then he let out a low, rumbling growl. Takoda responded swiftly, and after a short burst of clashing heads and snapping teeth he had Romulus pinned to the floor by his throat. Romulus rolled onto his side, raised a paw and lowered his hackles. The growling ceased, and he submitted to his leader. Takoda released his hold on Romulus’s throat then turned to the Darlings with a bow.
“Please accept my sincere apologies. Romulus is having a hard time coming to terms with the concept of Humans being welcomed into our land, as you can see.”
The Darlings didn’t respond verbally, but Mary’s hold on Grace tightened, and Evan pulled his wife closer to his side in a protective manner. Grace wriggled her hand free from her mother’s grip and walked toward Romulus.
“Don’t be scared, Mum, they’re my friends. And as for you, you’re a big old softy really, aren’t you?” she said, flinging an arm around the wolf’s neck and burying her face in his thick black coat.
“Grace, sweetheart, come here,” her mum said, holding out a trembling hand as she watched her daughter cuddling into the ferocious-looking wolf.
Grace didn’t find Romulus scary at all. She always saw the good in everyone and everything and she knew that underneath his aggressive façade was an intensely loyal and protective soul. He was just doing his job, protecting those that he cared about. Romulus was nervous and uncertain of the Humans, but his intention wasn’t to strike fear into them, so he respectfully stood, leant forward while stretching out his back legs, and then moved himself away to a less threatening position. He slumped to the floor and rested his head on his paws in the same way that a contented family pet would.
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