“I thought not!” the Sergeant exclaimed. “What the hell’s wrong with you, boy?”
“But I wanna... I always... It’s important,” Eddie started, but then slowly backed off, kicking at a broken chair. “Shit!” he repeated.
Knight One returned to Tucker, thrusting a pistol into his hand. “Okay, no more messing around, Apprentice. You take this and you go guard that gate.”
Tucker nodded glumly. He must have known everyone was watching him.
“And I don’t care if a whole damned safari gangs up on you, you got me?” his sergeant continued. “Now our communicators ain’t dealing with these walls so well so we’re gonna have to switch down to one channel. You may not always be able to hear us, but whatever happens you hold that gate, Padawan. Now go!”
Tucker cast a deathly look towards Lord Truth before slouching away. He didn’t say goodbye.
I’m not surprised. This is our most exciting mission ever and they’re giving him guard duty? No one likes guard duty except for Eddie, Six thought. Oh well, someone’s gotta have some fun, I guess.
And, with that, she turned and took a running jump, sprinting past the front bench, vaulting over the ceremonial mace, and back flipping effortlessly into the Speaker’s Chair.
“How about that!” she yelled, just as the golden mace flew into the air, wielded by some invisible force, and struck her solidly in the face.
Chapter Twenty-Four
IT WAS raining in the Other Worlds, big white droplets, like blobs of sherbet, plunging into the black ocean, but Neon barely noticed. She stood up rather dizzily and wandered towards the forest, her feet splashing through pools of water as a hummingbird flew close by.
“Quickly, quickly! You don’t want to get too wet,” it chirped.
But Neon waved the bird away and cradled her throbbing head. She had been sitting on the beach, trying to contact the Seekers again, but her thoughts seemed to rebound like a hard echo. She could no longer tell if she was reaching them or not but she could remember the warmth of her mother’s arms, the comfort of her teddy bear and the joy of playing with her friends.
And she was beginning to miss them.
“Come on!” the hummingbird sang. “You are the princess of this island, and we wouldn’t want you to catch a cold.”
“But it’s never cold here,” Neon answered wearily as water dripped from the curls of her pigtails. “Not like in the real world,” she added, gazing into the black sky as white sheets of rain fell on her face and clothes.
The hummingbird zipped back and forth, its wings beating so frantically they were almost invisible, and pulled at one of the pigtails.
“Ouch!” Neon said, waking from her stupor.
“This world is as real as any other,” the bird admonished, a plucked hair within its beak. “There’s no need to be rude.”
“Sorry!” Neon shouted as she leapt under the protection of a huge rubbery leaf. The rain was pounding now, its sound like a million tiny drums beating through the jungle. Neon stared out to sea where the pirate galleon, moored offshore, rocked in tempestuous waters.
“It’s unusual that we get a storm here though,” a dormouse squeaked as it inched out from under the bushes. “I can’t remember it ever having rained before.”
“But without rain how does anything grow?” Neon pondered as she walked deeper into the forest, thinking of the farm back home.
“I guess things grow because he wants them to,” a lizard, crawling along a branch, spoke before its tongue lashed out to snatch a fly.
Neon kept walking, rubbing at her eyes. “Who wants them to?” she asked.
“Why, your Pirate Prince of course. He is the island!” the lizard called after her as it chewed the unfortunate insect.
“Or, at least, he likes to think he is,” a snake winked coyly, its face looping under another branch as Neon strolled past.
“I think these rain drops are his tears,” the hummingbird added rather dramatically, flitting about Neon’s head as she stomped on the soggy earth.
“Really?” Neon turned, slightly bewildered.
“Of course,” the bird buzzed with its prim little voice, which was female, Neon decided. “You have no idea how long he’s been sailing the Other Worlds, searching for you. He is crying tears of joy because he’s found you.”
“Is he?” Neon was shocked.
“He is! And, do you know what else?” The hummingbird performed a little summersault. “I think he’s in love with you.”
Neon bowed her head and stared at her white feet on the black floor of the forest. She wasn’t sure what to say. “You know I’m only eleven,” she blushed. “I think I’m a bit young for love.”
The hummingbird laughed. “You’re absolutely right.”
Just then, a great blast of wind rushed over the beach. Neon shielded her eyes as sand and driftwood buffeted around her, the gust almost tipping her over. It blew through her damp hair and ruffled her wet clothes, tossing the hummingbird aside. The bird span and darted around some flowers, her song a nervous chuckle, before returning.
Then a jagged fork of lightening streaked through the sky, branching left and right. It bathed everything in blinding white and Neon counted off the seconds - one, two, three - searching for her hands and feet, as if the lightening had momentarily erased the Other Worlds, and everything in them, from existence.
When the flash was over a slow grumble of thunder overtook them. Its low moan gradually built into clamouring blasts that shook the jungle to its very roots and left the ground quaking. Trees crashed to the floor, the petrified animals of the jungle now squawking and roaring in response.
“Maybe I should go to him?” Neon shouted over the din, as a fresh blanket of rain fell upon them.
“Yes, hurry up!” a tree frog croaked beside her, leaping over a fallen trunk.
“Come along then.” The hummingbird flew on a little way and together they skipped through the wreckage, Neon hurdling ditched palms and twisted thickets as the storm slowly subsided.
“Has this ever happened before?” Neon asked as she brushed bits of bark, sand and leaves from her dress, the cuckoo’s egg still safe in her pocket.
“I don’t think so,” the hummingbird said as she zipped through the forest, her long, thin beak like a magic arrow swerving and dipping under fallen branches. She swept past the topiary elephant, still laughing in the wind, and paused to suck syrup from the orchid blooming in the mouth of the dolphin the prince had carved earlier.
The princess stopped to admire the little bird, no larger than her fist. She hovered in mid-air, the liquid shooting into her beak like water from a hose. Although the bird seemed white, Neon could now make out the details of her black chin, speckled chest and tail.
“You’re very beautiful,” the princess said, feeling once again for the cuckoo’s egg. “Not to mention clever to fly like that.”
“Why thank you,” the hummingbird sang. “My wings beat a hundred times a second!”
“That’s astonishing,” Neon gasped. “But do you ever miss, you know…” she struggled to find the right words “…having colour?”
“Why, I don’t know what you mean,” the bird buzzed before flying off again. “Come on!”
By the time they reached the thick curtain of vines the storm had quelled. Neon reached out to the fleshy white leaves in the drizzle that remained, and then stopped. She could hear a voice on the other side but it wasn’t the Pirate Prince talking.
“You’re not coming back, are you?” it growled in a heavy accent.
“I can’t,” the Pirate Prince replied. “You know how this works.”
Neon pushed at the vines and peeked through. The prince was shaking his head, the television’s headphones clamped over his ears.
“What’s left of my spectral form is floating around out there in the burial mounds. A shadow, just as you found me all those years ago, just as we found him, trapped in the rubble of Parliament.”
Oblivious to h
er presence he seemed to be speaking directly to the set. “I couldn’t hold onto your body for long once you had that bullet in your brain,” he smiled at the ghoulish face of the werewolf on the black and white screen. “How was it, by the way? Dying and coming back to life - how’d it feel?”
“How does it alwaysss feel?” the wolf shrugged, frightening but somehow human, his words disjointed, like scissors cutting tin. “It was lonely. But it will be different next time, yesss?” He peered down at the glistening wounds on his body. “Permanent?”
“Probably,” the prince agreed. “But that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
The monster said nothing for a moment but looked up, his eyes blazing. “I could go back for you? Find you out there in the sssssnow?”
“Why would you do that?” the prince played with his sword in the sand. “Besides, he’s promised me a new body, hasn’t he? One of my own. And anyway,” his face became serious, “you’ve got work to do.”
Neon stood static, barely allowing herself to breathe, her heart pounding like an alarm clock in her chest.
The wolf nodded. “Sssssso, who’s next?”
The prince sat up and consulted a long piece of parchment that unfurled below his knees. He scratched at it with a quill. “Well, let’s see. The watchmaker?”
“Dead already,” the werewolf growled.
“Excellent, excellent work,” the prince registered the answer with a tick. “How about Edwin Manifold, the city’s clerk? He’ll be at the council or he’s got a tree house. Definitely worth a visit.”
“Listen to you, ever the delegator,” the wolf roared with approval. “How do you know all thisss ssstuff?”
“The girl, of course. She’s got a hotline to every mind in that city. Or, at least, she did,” the prince held up his remote control proudly before tossing it aside.
Neon closed her eyes and bit her tongue, her hands clamped tightly to the vines.
“With her powers I can surf everyone’s thoughts,” the prince continued, lifting his headphones until they snapped back over his ears. “Not just yours. It’s incredible.”
“So why not interrogate them, why do you need me?”
The prince shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that, you great oaf. These telepaths aren’t that powerful. Fortunately for us, most people’s guilt is on the surface and easy to read. But sometimes you need a more old fashioned approach, and that’s where you come in.”
A serrated smile crossed the wolf’s lips and he glanced back at Six, who could clearly be seen on the monitor, hanging among loops of chain.
“We knew the knight would be a problem,” the prince shrugged simply.
“She isn’t,” the monster leered. “How about yoursss?”
“The princess? She’s a child, Klaus,” the pirate answered airily, “this place is a more than suitable distraction. And if not, well, then she has me, her handsome Pirate Prince.”
“Prince, my arsssse,” the wolf snorted. “Where is she now?”
Neon swallowed hard, her body rigid, and flicked a glance towards the hummingbird. The bird flinched.
“On the beach somewhere,” the prince chuckled. “I told her that was the best place to call her friends.”
The wolf rubbed at his head with the beginnings of his new paw. “You still need them then, the children?”
“He said he needed something from all of them,” the prince shrugged again. “Anyway, you’d better get some rest. It’ll be light soon and you look terrible.”
“Danke, mein feiner freund,” the wolf grinned.
“Hmmm, don’t hang around too long though,” the prince’s eyebrows arched. “I’m not sure how much longer we’ve got.”
Neon watched through white fronds and waterlogged eyes as the werewolf frowned.
“The princesss is disappearing?”
“Of course. She won’t survive an hour after she loses her body in the waking world,” the prince chuckled again. “How about your knight, have you found her glasses?”
The wolf’s nostrils flared, lines creasing his scarred forehead. “No, not yet.”
“But he needs them, you great lump!” the prince blasted.
“Don’t tell me what I already know!” the monster roared. “She will tell me her story. You just sssstay tuned, yessss?”
“Yes,” the prince agreed. “Good.”
The wolf looked thoughtful. “He’s on his way then?”
“Not yet, but he will be.”
He then turned towards the curtain of vines but Neon was already creeping back to the beach, her face in her hands and the hummingbird at her side.
It had begun raining again, a steady trickle of white falling from the black sky.
And slowly Neon realised that the hummingbird was wrong, that these weren’t the prince’s tears at all.
They were her own.
Chapter Twenty-Five
TUCKER woke up in jail.
It wasn’t a completely new experience, as he rolled over and banged his head into the bars of his cell, but it was quite unexpected. As a younger boy, when he survived as a thief working the stalls of Market Place, Tucker would often find his collar felt by the King’s Guards. But not recently. Not since he’d become a knight’s apprentice.
Tucker wiped at his bleary eyes to get a better view of his surroundings. The door to his cell was open, which was a relief, and a pile of clean clothes had been left at the foot of his foldout bed. He swung his legs out of the contraption, his feet landing on the dusty wooden floor next to his trainers. “Just how long have I been out?” he wondered aloud.
His words were answered by a loud snore, coming from the cell next to him where a familiar rotund body lay wrapped under a thick quilt. It was Giles. And, unlike Tucker’s cell, his was locked. Tucker turned away, not wanting to look at him. What the freakin’ hell do I say if he wakes up? he thought.
Deciding not to find out, Tucker picked up his muddy green trainers and his fresh clothes and tip-toed into the next room.
The jail was part of the sheriff’s office, and the two rooms displayed the same rustic decor: both built out of roughly hewn pine with simple furnishings and even simpler accessories. Yellowed newspaper clippings, detailing some of the Justice Family’s most celebrated exploits, were tacked to the walls. A desk was covered with paperwork, spilled tobacco, a broken holster and two marks made by Sir Justice’s boots whenever he slept in its adjoining chair. The rest of the room was empty but for a couple of armchairs and a bath that had been drawn near the mantle, warmed by a dozen yellow crystals laid at its base.
What the macaroni and cheese is going on? Tucker thought, before he spied a note propped up on the fireplace.
“I’m in the bar,” it said, scrawled in big letters, and then in smaller ones underneath: “Have a bath and then put on those clean clothes. You’re beginning to smell worse than I do.”
Tucker snorted, resisting the urge to laugh in case it woke Giles next door. Carefully he closed the partition between them and did what he was told. Fifteen minutes later he was walking up the street towards Market Square, past the statue of the Justice Family, and into Al’s Bar. His stomach groaned as he pushed through the saloon doors. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. The scene inside, however, was less than appetising.
Al the barman was on his knees, scrubbing blood from the floor. A few of the King’s Guards were busy carrying away a mangled corpse. Waitresses were sweeping up smashed pieces of furniture. A decapitated head still sat in the jukebox.
“Why the guards had to quarantine this place for twenty-four hours is beyond me,” Al was complaining. “Apparently they would have been here ages ago if it wasn’t for the city clerk.”
“Manifold, what’s it got to do with him?” the sheriff grumbled from his stool at the bar.
“Health and safety,” Al continued scrubbing, “what little he knows about it. He’s probably holed up in his tree house stroking that flee-bitten cat right now. Meanwhile, I’m
left to clear up his mess. Doesn’t he realise how difficult it is to get blood out of a wooden floor already, without giving it a day to sink in? And this stench, jeez, I’m telling you it’s going to be really bad for business. That’s without all the money I’ve lost through all those barrels that got smashed up in the basement. Whatever that thing did to Six he made one hell of a mess doing it. You should see it!”
“We have,” Tucker said.
“Yes but…” and suddenly the landlord looked up to see the boy staring back at him, glowering. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
“Mister Tucker,” Sir Justice swivelled in his stool. “Good morning, or should I say good afternoon?”
“I guess that depends,” Tucker answered, ignoring Al to skirt past the smashed DJ stand on his way to the counter. “Which is it?”
“It’s the latter,” the sheriff nodded. “But donnae worry. You haven’t missed anything, and after two days without sleep I dare say you needed the rest.”
Sir Justice’s leg had been set in plaster and was propped up on a stool to his left. “Now, come join me and I’ll get you up to date with all the morning’s events. Al, a pint of your finest ale for my friend here,” he said warmly.
The barman looked up, confused. “But we only have the one ale, Sir Justice.”
“I know Al,” the sheriff said, “I know.”
Tucker reserved a chuckle as the barkeep wandered behind the counter and began pouring two pints. It felt like a long time since he’d laughed, and here Sir Justice had tempted him twice already. But he preferred not to, on account of Six more than anything else. She’d been missing for over a day now, and he was desperately worried.
“And some breakfast, you’ll be needing some breakfast,” the sheriff added, wincing visibly as he shuffled his heavy frame on the seat.
Tucker sat to the left of the broken leg. The sheriff wiggled his bare toes, which peeped out of the end of his cast. Tucker’s brow creased. “I see the doctor has been?”
“Aye, he patched me up as best he could. Quite well actually,” the sheriff smiled.
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