Magic Parcel

by Frank English

  As Jimmy was now ‘older’ than when he had first visited Omni (well, a couple of months, at any rate) he felt able to shorten his version of events. However, when he reached the point at which he confronted Dwayne and Billy, and where everything stood still, Reuben silenced Jimmy with a gesture and ushered him into his study.

  “Why have we come in here, uncle?” he asked, quite puzzled. He knew it must have some significance and importance, as a visit to Reuben’s study was not an everyday occurrence. Reuben didn’t offer to answer until the door was fast shut behind them.

  The room hadn’t changed at all save the desk top globe, which was no longer there. As Reuben opened his mouth to answer Jimmy’s question, the room slid away from them, leaving them standing on a hillock amidst warring factions they did not recognise. They were there, but not there physically. All the smells and sights of the countryside invaded their nostrils and eyes, but they could not be seen other than by the Powers of the land. No sooner had they been, than they were back in the safety of the study. Reuben was obviously disturbed, but tried to hide it. Jimmy took it in his stride, and continued what he had been saying.

  “ And when I got back, I could focus much better on what was important,” he went on. “I was top of my maths class after break. Surprised my teacher, Mr Bolam.”

  “You must be very careful, my boy,” Reuben continued, quietly and seriously, “not to allow anyone of this world to guess what might be happening in your life.”

  “I won’t,” he replied, “but why is it so important? No one else knows about Omni but us, do they?”

  “It is important to make sure no one else does,” Reuben replied, evading Jimmy’s direct question. “There are still those who are watching and waiting for the right opportunity to attack.”

  This left Jimmy stunned. Uncle Reuben hadn’t spoken like this before, either about Omni or about the possibilities of aggressive powers being anywhere other than in Omni. He had never seen Uncle Reuben anything other than jovial and good-humoured. ‘Serious’ and ‘worried’ were not words usually associated with him. Reuben, in fact, was rather concerned and quietly alarmed that Jimmy was developing the power to cross to Omni almost at will. This had never occurred before, not in all the years he had been associated with that world. Such power in one so young needed to be nurtured and protected, and to that end he would confer with the Powers for good in Omni. It needed a great deal of concentrated thought and will for even him to be able to use such power. If possessed by Seth or any other force for evil, all worlds linked to Omni would become ensnared and enslaved by evil.

  “Uncle?” Jimmy went on after a moment or two’s thought. “Could you explain why this Senti circlet has become so heavy and warm? In fact, it often glows in the dark.”

  “Circlet?” Reuben queried, a note of barely concealed alarm entering his voice. “What circlet? Let me see it.”

  Jimmy delved deep into his coat inside pocket, and drew out the trophy he had brought back the first time he was there, and guarded carefully since then. By now, it was glowing only sullenly.

  “Where did you get it?” he asked, urgently, catching his breath, “and how long have you had it? Does anyone else know of its existence? Truthfully now!”

  Jimmy explained its history, at the end of which Reuben’s shoulders dropped and he slumped into the big swivel chair behind the great oaken desk. “This is the worst news I have heard for many years and could prove our undoing.”

  “But it’s only a ...” Jimmy butted in.

  “You don’t understand,” Reuben interrupted again. “The circlet was not only a badge of office for the Senti you vanquished, it allows the power that made it to track its whereabouts. It could in part explain why you have had dreams and flashbacks since your return.”

  “In part?” Jimmy asked, puzzled.

  “The other part is within you,” Reuben said slowly. “Being in Omni over a prolonged period affects different people in different ways according to their inner power. Those with little inner strength or power are not affected. The stronger you are, the greater the effect. Ultimately, the ones with the greatest internal power learn to come and go between this world and Omni, and other worlds for that matter, at will. They are the people upon whom all our hopes are founded.”

  Jimmy sat in stunned silence throughout, recognising the importance of what his uncle was saying, and that the last bit referred to him. Yet, how could he, little ten-year-old Jimmy Scoggins, be this important person who held the future of this world, and, for that matter, others in his hands? Surely Uncle Reuben was mistaken in his assessment of Jimmy’s capabilities. However, somehow, somewhere deep inside he knew he was right. He did feel different, strange.

  “The circlet,” Reuben said, jolting Jimmy back to reality, “you must not carry it again. Prolonged exposure to it will build into you dependence, and eventually it will turn your mind to the evil that made it. It must be destroyed, and the only person who can destroy it is you, I’m afraid, old man, in Omni itself.”

  “Destroy it? In Omni?” Jimmy exclaimed aghast. He hated the thought now of being without it, but Uncle Reuben was a wise old man. If he said so, it must be the only way. “But I don’t know how or where in Omni.”

  “The Chieftain will know,” answered Reuben, “and I will help you to get it to him, have no fear.”

  “Until then,” Jimmy added, “can I keep it?”

  “Only if you promise not to bring it out again,” said Reuben. “You must not leave it anywhere, and don’t touch it!”

  As Reuben stopped talking, the great tapestry behind his desk began to descend slowly, silently. As they watched, a telecast of the battle they had witnessed first hand what seemed like moments before, began to roll. What was apparent to them was that it might have been an exact rerun of what they had witnessed, but they were not to be seen. Their little hillock was there, but they were not. Jimmy understood instantly, and started to explain to Reuben what he thought was happening. Reuben simply looked at him, in his own inimitable fashion, over his half-moon spectacles, not in any admonitory way, but with new wonder and respect in his eyes.

  “You have grown indeed, old chap,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “The power of Old Omni is beginning to wax in you, and that is a sign for hope.”

  Jimmy listened carefully to what his uncle was saying, whilst watching the battle. “Look Uncle Reuben!” he burst in. “The battle’s moved to Tarna’s village!” At that moment, the telecast was lost, and the tapestry started to recoil.

  “You must remember,” Reuben added quietly, “that what you see is only one possible outcome. It may happen as you have seen it, but not necessarily.”

  Once again in the lounge, over a steaming cup of hot chocolate and piece of date and walnut cake, they watched the autumn light slip away over the back fence ahead of the blue dark of early evening.

  “Time you were off, Old Chap,” Reuben sighed. “Your mother will be nattering that you are late.”

  Jimmy’s visit had given Reuben much to think about. He felt he had brought a new dimension to the fight against the evils of these worlds so much earlier than he had expected. He had always known there was something different about the lad, but he had not expected so much potential so soon.

  Jimmy made his goodbyes and see-you-soons as he left the bottom-most step of his uncle’s front path. He reached the gate on his way to catch his bus, and turned around to wave to his uncle, to see his own front door in front of him, and his hand on the latch of his own front gate. Slightly puzzled, but not enormously surprised, he turned to tread the short way to his home. Even though he thought he had only just had hot chocolate and one of Reuben’s enormous doorstep slabs of cake, his stomach felt curiously empty. That smell, as he unlatched the door, which assailed his nostrils was remarkably like cooking bacon and eggs, and that was designed to start his gastric juices flowing in anticipation. H
e had long stopped questioning how his mother was able to forecast at what time he would arrive for his tea, but that was mothers for you!

  Tarna’s village was beset by enemy forces. They fought against near impossible odds, but their defences held, just. Inside the Chieftain’s hut the atmosphere was charged as in the build up to a catastrophic electrical storm. In the centre of the hut, in the deepening gloom, sat the Chieftain, eyes closed, hair cascading over his shoulders, hands grasping the deeply carved arms of the Great Chair. To the untrained observer, he was resting; to those who would know, he was engaged in an intense mental joust with some other, equally powerful being. Suddenly, he slumped forward, released from the contest, sweat coursing down his forehead. The gloom lifted, and the storm had passed, for now. The defenders had repulsed the enemy, but he knew that this was only the beginning of a much more intense onslaught which would follow in its wake.

  The Chieftain’s eyes drew slowly open, and then he knew they had been betrayed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jimmy had yet another fitful night, with vivid dreams of Omni invading his subconscious. So vivid were they that he could feel the sun on the top of his head and experience those smells that were particular only to that world. For the most part, his presence there was disjointed and illogical, but it also wound a thread of truth, a reality which could not be doubted. Mostly, he re-enacted and revisited previous experiences and places, but generally out of sync with everything else.

  He saw their approach to Algan’s cave, but he was the one who was injured at the threshold. Dwayne Davis, who was substituted for his brother, was looking down at him as he came to. Within moments, he awoke in Oompah’s castle, where Dominic was the toad and Oompah turned into Grumblin’ Grainger. This in turn gave way to the Chieftain’s hut, but the Chieftain was not in his Great Chair, or at least he didn’t recognise him as such from behind. The gloom and mist surrounding the chair and its occupant masked his upper body and head, until the room revolved around the chair, and revealed – Tarna! Tarna? What was he doing there? And to whom was he talking?

  “It shall be done master,” Tarna muttered, but seemed unable to move whilst visibly struggling to disengage from the conversation.

  Jimmy seemed held, enthralled by what he had seen and heard. The over-riding questions in his mind were – why was he in the Chieftain’s chair, and at who was the comment directed? Only the Chieftain of All Omni was permitted to sit in that chair. Was he talking to the Chieftain? No, it couldn’t have been, as he would not have allowed him to be there. Was this a presage of the future, with Tarna as Chieftain? But the lineage of that position was unbroken father to son, and the Chieftain had five sons.

  Jimmy dismissed it as part of the nonsense of a dream, until he heard Tarna’s last words.

  “Yes, my lord Seth, I obey,” Tarna croaked whilst bowing his head.

  The visions of Omni slowly faded and drifted away, leaving Jimmy once again restlessly tossing and turning in his bed. The light of dawn was beginning to sneak through the chink in his curtains, as he started to resurface. He awoke with a start to the milkman’s crate rattling on their top step. Eyes blearily open, the night left him with only one enduring impression; Tarna, a traitor?

  School was almost a relief after the disturbing dreams of the night before. He had tried to share his experiences with his brother, but Tommy had no longer any interest in Omni, and so refused to listen or talk about it. His mind was firmly on other, more important, things like his friends, football, and girls. Jimmy and he were no longer co-adventurers in a dangerous and exciting world.

  “Grow up Jimmy. This place ‘Omni’ lives only in your imagination,” was Tommy’s parting comment, making Jimmy believe that Tommy was in some sort of denial. How could he feel like that, after all they had been through together?

  The first faces he encountered on entering the playground at a quarter to nine were, of course, Dwayne and Billy, their sullenness casting a shadow in their ‘skulking corner’, as Mr Bolam called it. He was aware, was Mr Bolam, of what they were like but hadn’t had any complaints from other children to allow him to do something about them. That had begun to change, Jimmy had seen to that. As soon as he saw them, he began to ‘feel’ their animosity towards him. It was a similar feeling to those he had experienced, when he and Tommy were overwhelmed by the Senti in Seth’s castle, and when they had almost become stuck in the Foggy Land of Four.

  He had had these feelings around Dwayne for a little while, only now were they beginning to become clearer. Although Dwayne was wary about Jimmy, his thoughts betrayed his inner feelings; thoughts that Jimmy could read and understand! Don’t ask how he could do it, he just could, and he was even more surprised when he realised that Dwayne’s thoughts would suddenly stop when Jimmy anticipated them. He had somehow stumbled on the way to intercept thoughts from other people. He couldn’t do it for every thought; just the aggressive ones came through to him. He had developed the ability to redirect or change or interrupt or divert them, making the ‘thinker’ lose track of what he was thinking.

  “Hello,” came a small voice just behind. He turned sharply to see a raven-haired girl, dressed in a black skirt and bright red cardigan. She was smaller than Jimmy, who had grown somewhat since the summer; all that good food, according to his mum. Her eyes caught his, and dropped him into deep inner pools he had experienced only when he had been in Omni. He had neither seen nor met her before, certainly not here; or had he? He stared at her, trying to place her.

  “It’s rude to stare and not speak. My dad always says so,” she interrupted his thoughts.

  “I’m sorry,” he excused himself, “but I don’t think we’ve met before. Are you new? I’m Jimmy.”

  “No,” she returned deliberately. “I’ve been here a long time. It’s just that you’ve never noticed me before. I’m Ursula.” There was something about Ursula that struck a chord within Jimmy, so that he knew instantly they were going to become friends. Along with many other things, Jimmy seemed to have developed a very sharp instinct when it came to people.

  “I like you,” Jimmy said, rather disarmingly. “Can we be friends?”

  “I think so,” Ursula replied, seeming to give it an age of thought and consideration, but within that split second, they both knew that their embryo friendship was cemented. They had been, and would be friends forever.

  “Are you sure you’ve been here for a long time?” Jimmy asked simply as they filed into class once the bell had sounded. “It’s just that I’m sure I would have noticed you....I think.”

  Ursula smiled and inclined her head slightly. “Yes,” she thought, “I am going to enjoy being with you.”

  She was the sort of person who could easily be missed in an otherwise busy school. She was small and almost invisible because she didn’t put herself out to be noticed. It’s not that she lacked confidence because of some learning difficulty – she was incredibly bright with an innate ability to adapt quickly to different learning environments – she just didn’t see the need to be ‘noticed’ for the sake of it.

  Still unsure of the veracity of Ursula’s insistence that she had always been part of his class, Jimmy settled in his desk to his morning’s work. Despite giving a much more successful impression that he was concentrating closely on his work history was not where his heart lay. The love life of Henry VIII and the lives of the Tudors in general just didn’t do it for Jimmy. All that waste of ...

  “Just you wait, Jimmy Scoggins,” he felt in his mind. “I’ll catch you when you are least expecting it, and ...” Dwayne Davis just didn’t understand how uncomfortable his life was about to become by popping into Jimmy’s mind in that quasi-kamikaze fashion. Jimmy turned his mind towards the intrusion, and his face towards Dwayne, just in time to see him wince and recoil physically as if warding off a blow, and to hear him screech loudly in pain. Jimmy knew it wasn’t him because he had only just caught Dwayne’s in
tent. Then who? What? He noticed a slight movement from the corner of his eye, over by the filing cabinet at the back of the room. Ursula? A slight, almost imperceptible smile played at the edges of her lips, and as Jimmy turned back to his books and the lesson, he was convinced Ursula wasn’t of this class, or of this world either, for that matter.

  Dwayne continued to hold the sides of his head, whilst whimpering pitifully, until Mr Bolam snapped at him, “For goodness sake, Dwayne Davis, either stop being so soft or go home. I’m sure no-one will think any less of you if you do.” The sarcasm lay heavily on the last sentence.

  There were several sniggers from the back of the room, which, of course, made his decision for him. He spent the rest of the day sulking silently, as far from the others as he was able to get.

  Jimmy couldn’t wait for lunchtime to talk to Ursula about what had happened, but she wasn’t to be found anywhere. He hadn’t seen her leave, and he was sure she didn’t have an appointment anywhere. Where had she gone, and, more urgently, where had she come from in the first place? He thought he might have the answer to that one, but he needed to confront her with his suspicions.

  At the end of the school day, he hung around the yard for a little while, hoping to catch her on her way home, but to no avail. It was only when he heard the familiar almost inaudible “Hello” that he spun on his heels, to find her behind him.

  “Ursula!” he blurted out. “Where’ve you been this afternoon? I missed you at lunch. Did you have an appointment? I wanted to talk to you.”

  “No appointment,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I’ve been in school all day.”

  Jimmy stopped abruptly, a puzzled frown growing on his face as he stared into her eyes, not quite believing what he was hearing.

  “Now hang on a bit!” he burst in. “I’m not that stupid. You were supposed to be in art this afternoon, and I didn’t see you there.”