Hugo and the Bird

by Jeff Mills

  “What are you going to do?” she chortled. “Hit me on the head with that?” and again laughed out loud.

  “Not quite that,” Bird replied with a sort of laugh in his voice, “but this.”

  Fully opening the plastic bag holding the bread, he pushed his wing in and withdrew several slices of the brown granary loaf, which he proceeded to scatter around him and the gnomes, throwing the slices as far as he could. The gnomes and goblins were transfixed by what Bird was doing and several minutes went by without anything happening. The laughter of the onlookers was growing until interrupted by a loud squawk. Down from the sky flew a single seagull that fell onto the bread and started to gorge on his new-found breakfast. At its screeching, more and more seagulls descended on this impromptu picnic until the whole beach was engulfed in a screaming throng of birds. Suddenly Barguff realised what Bird had intended and with a cry of,

  “Follow me,” he waved to the gnomes. He grabbed and mounted the seagull closest to him. The other gnomes, on seeing him do this, realised that the flapping grey and white horde in front of them was their ticket to freedom and each raced to a bird closest to them. The seagulls screamed and flapped to try to dislodge their unwelcome passengers but the gnomes were expert pilots. One by one, the birds, some still with huge crusts of bread in their beaks, took off and headed out over the land in the direction of the Gnome Reserve.

  Finally, the noise subsided and the beach was empty, except for a frustrated witch and an array of silent and cowed goblins. Bird slowly looked around and made sure that everyone had left and then, with what might be construed as a smile, he waved his wings, flashed the amulet for one last time and vanished.

  A small scream from one of the goblins broke the atmosphere as a ray of sunlight hit her, slashing a nasty gash on her arm. Morgana looked at her, snatching a glance at the developing dawn. Giving one last look at the spot where that accursed animal and her beloved amulet, for which she had been searching for years, had been within inches of her grasp, she turned and re-entered the safety and darkness of the tunnel, throwing punches at any goblin that came within hitting distance of her, which were few. Sobs could be heard as she disappeared up the tunnel and could still be heard for several hours after from the deepest-most reaches of the cave.

  Chapter 19

  Anne Trembles

  Sue Redwell was getting cold and the morning dampness from the grass on which she was sitting was beginning to penetrate through her jeans. In her haste to buy a new phone and get to the Gnome Reserve to get some form of proof of real live gnomes and their story, she had forgotten to have any breakfast or bring any food or drink with her. Her stomach was beginning to rumble and she was desperate to go to the loo.

  She eased herself off the grass hillock on which she had perched and was stretching her legs to try to get some circulation back into them, when she was alerted by the loud screech of a seagull overhead that was obviously planning to land just a few yards from her. She did not pay the bird much attention until a little voice in the back of her head told her that that seagull did not look quite right. She stopped rubbing her leg and gave it another glance. Yes, this was not an ordinary seagull. She couldn’t tell what was wrong until it suddenly turned and headed straight for her.

  She had to duck as it flew straight over her head and landed about five metres away in a small clearing. She could not believe her eyes, or luck, for no sooner had the bird landed, then a small figure fell off its back onto the grass. It did not look like a gnome, for it was dressed completely in black and had a bald head with no bright red or blue cap that gnomes always wore. She grabbed her phone and was about to start taking photos when the air was filled with the noise of a flock of screeching and screaming birds, every one of which seemed to be carrying small passengers. These did have multicoloured clothes and began jumping and screaming with joy as they fell off their transport. They raced to each other to give their fellow fugitives great hugs and kisses. Sue thought that her camera would catch fire with the number of photos she was taking; she even switched the mode to video so that no one could accuse her of photo-shopping the images. Several of the small people came close to where she was kneeling but fortunately did not see her.

  They talked animatedly about what had happened to them and a lot about a large bird and something about bread. She heard the words ‘witch’ and ‘goblins’ a lot, but what made her prick her ears up most of all was when they started to describe the location of where this had happened.

  Although she had not lived in the area long, she had spent a lot of her time at Westward Ho! surfing and was fairly familiar with the coastline of that area. From what they were describing, she had a picture in her mind of exactly where they were talking about.

  Suddenly she was struck by a very severe cramp in her leg. It took all of her strength and will-power to stop herself from crying out. This was made worse by the fact that her bladder was about to explode. The excitement had made her forget about her need, but changing positions to avoid the cramp and losing her concentration from the events in front of her had suddenly brought the demands of nature back in full force. With her leg still stiff, she pocketed the valuable phone, with its treasure of pictures and videos, in the breast pocket of her anorak and backed away from the still-excited gnomes in front of her.

  Finally, she made it back to her Fiat Panda and gave an audible sigh of relief. This was made even louder as she spied the small picture gallery opposite where she had left her car. Rushing in, she pleaded with the receptionist to use the loo.

  Five minutes later Sue emerged, red-faced, but with a broad beaming smile of relief on her face. Out of respect, she decided that she should look around the gallery while she was there.

  She was two-thirds of the way round, when she glanced at a picture and immediately felt a shiver go through her spine.

  There, in all its glory, was a watercolour of the Westward Ho! sea front showing the very stretch of beach that she had heard the gnomes refer to and, yes, the picture even showed a dark shadow, which might correspond to the entrance to the cave.

  The cold shiver gave way to a warm glow as she exited the gallery and drove back to her flat. She couldn’t stop smiling to herself. She’d done it. The whole world would know about her find. She would become famous. She might even end up as one of those experts you see on the TV and have worldwide fame. She was bursting to tell someone but knew that the first place that anyone should hear about this was on the front of a national newspaper. There was absolutely no way anyone else was going to get in on her story.

  * * *

  Back home, she couldn’t wait to review the photos that she had taken. After grabbing a sandwich and making a cup of coffee, she sat down on her bed and started to gaze at the images and video that she had captured.

  * * *

  It was dark when she woke. The half-eaten sandwich was mixed with her hair, having been inadvertently used as a pillow as it slid from her grasp as she slept. The coffee, still untouched, had a thin milk skin on top and was stone cold. Sue looked at the clock by the bedside and saw it read 2.08.

  “Oh, I must have dozed off for a few minutes,” she thought, trying to remove the butter from her hair left there by the sandwich. She looked out of the window and saw that it was dark. She rubbed her eyes, looked outside again and then back at the clock. Suddenly it dawned. The time was 2.08 in the morning not in the afternoon as she had first thought. Forgetting about the tangle in her hair and dishevelled look, she grabbed her phone, carefully put it in the breast pocket of her anorak again, did up the zip, just in case, and drove her poor car as fast as she could to Westward Ho!

  At two thirty in the morning very little stirs, especially in Westward Ho! even during the holiday season, which was just coming to an end. She parked and locked her car in the car park at the end of the road that runs parallel to the beach and ends where the old Westward Ho! to Bideford train used to run for a
short time before it was abandoned as being uneconomic.

  She had forgotten to bring a torch with her which made her curse, as it is the rule of every journalist to be prepared for unexpected eventualities. Fortunately, there was an almost full moon and the sky was clear. Step by step, she fumbled her way across the large boulders and pebbles that make up the beach there, towards, where she thought the entrance to the tunnel, of which the gnomes had spoken, was located.

  After just a few minutes searching, she saw what she thought might be her goal. Yes, and look, there were still some bits of brown bread lying around which the gulls had not had time to devour but which had become soggy from the recent tide. Finally, she saw what she was looking for. A dark shadow in the cliff, overhung by grass and brambles, which were sporting quite a nice crop of blackberries, though still green at this time.

  Pushing them aside and avoiding the thorns, she manoeuvred herself into the tunnel. She had imagined quite a large tunnel from how the gnomes had described it but she found that to make any progress she had to almost bend double but then it struck her; to a gnome at no more than eighteen inches in height it would appear big but she was five seven and this was not made for people of her stature. Even the miners, who probably had originally dug out the tunnel looking for coal, were much shorter in those days.

  Progress was slow as she could not see where she was going and on several occasions banged her head and grazed her elbows. After what seemed like hours she saw a dim light up ahead which became brighter with every step. Finally, the cavern loomed in front of her. Peering around the edge of the entrance she surveyed the cave, still brightly illuminated by a profusion of lamps and smoky candles. She could not detect any movement and so started to push further inside.

  The first thing she noticed were two empty coffins, which made her give a little shudder, followed by the general mess of broken pieces of wood, decaying paper and intact and smashed jars and bottles. She was a little disappointed at first, as she was expecting much more but, wanting everything to be irrefutable as regards evidence to her story, she took out her phone, set it to camera mode, and started taking photographs of everything she could see.

  Suddenly, she heard a faint noise from the opposite side of the cave and, looking around, saw the other tunnel. Carefully scanning around the cave to ensure that there was no one there, she crossed over and started up the new tunnel. As soon as she entered it, the faint noises that she had heard became louder as they echoed through the stony walls.

  It was not long before the entrance to another cavern loomed in front of her. Peering inside, she noted the table at one end littered with an array of jars and bottles, a large book opened at a page that had obviously seen better days, and at the centre, a huge black cauldron, of the sort you see in picture books typically used by wizards and witches. A dimming fire crackled and sparked underneath it. Her mind jumped to Shakespeare’s play, ‘Macbeth’ and the scene where the three witches were standing by a cauldron like this. Just behind, was, at first glance, what appeared to be a box, but closer inspection showed it to be another coffin but this one was sealed.

  She was just gazing around when there was a rustle from behind the fire and the enormous head of a ferocious-looking animal appeared, hissing and spitting at her. The appearance and just the size of it made her jump back and give an involuntary scream, which made the animal hiss all the more. Sue turned to run away back down the tunnel when she almost bumped into a figure standing immediately behind her. Totally confused, Sue backed away from the figure but was also careful not to go anywhere near the frightful beast.

  “Silence, Snatch!” the figure spat at the animal. It immediately was quiet but still kept its bright orange eyes locked on Sue.

  “I’m… very… sorry,” stammered Sue, “but I didn’t know you lived here. I’m very sorry to have barged in on you. I didn’t mean you any harm.” She started to move towards the exit of the cave but the figure moved to block her retreat. “I really am sorry,” Sue protested, “so if you will excuse me, then I will leave you alone.”

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” the black figure asked threateningly.

  “M… my name is Sue, Sue Redwell. I am a freelance reporter and I overheard someone talking about this cave, and I thought that I would come and see for myself if what they said about it was true.”

  “And what did these people say about it, Sue Redwell?”

  Sue could feel her pulse racing and about to explode but she did her best to appear calm and professional; after all, she was at least ten inches taller than the figure in front of her and, she surmised, a great deal fitter. So pulling herself to her full height to exaggerate her physical superiority, she replied,

  “Well, ma’am, I heard that the cave was inhabited by a strange spirit.” She did not want to use the word ‘witch’ in case it caused offence and made the situation worse. The figure sort of coughed and laughed at the same time.

  “A strange spirit eh. Are you sure that they didn’t call it a ‘witch’ and say that it likes to kill everyone that enters its domain?”

  “N… n… no,” Sue rapidly responded, trying to defuse a situation that was obviously not going her way.

  “Liar!” the figure screamed out and, as it did so, pulled back the hood from its head. Sue gasped in shock.

  Before her revealed the emaciated face, almost corpse-like, of a very old woman. Her hair was thin with several obvious bald spots. The skin of her face was a deep shade of grey and so wrinkled that the folds of skin almost hid her eyes which appeared to be bloodshot. She was completely toothless except for a single black stump in the upper right side, which protruded over her lower lip when she closed her mouth so it looked like a single fang. Sue stepped backwards in horror and, it must be said, terror, at the vision before her.

  “Now, which do you think I am?” came the voice from the curling mouth. “Spirit or WITCH!” The last word was spat out so that Sue recoiled not only from the way it was said but also from the foul stench of the witch’s breath. The witch burst into hysterical laughter, which echoed around the cave and was repeated by many of the goblins which had gathered around her seemingly unnoticed, though much more timidly.

  As the sound subsided and silence returned, the witch pushed out her hand towards Sue’s face which made her back up, until she was pressed hard against the wall and could go no further. The hand came closer and closer then, with an unexpected gentleness, touched and stroked her cheek. The whole demeanour of the witch changed as her fingers slowly stroked and caressed Sue’s face. A tear appeared in the hollow eye sockets, followed by more tears which started rolling uncontrollably down the folds and wrinkles of the woman’s face in front of her. Looking straight into Sue’s eyes, the witch quietly said,

  “So soft, so soft,” and then she touched her own face and a fresh flood of tears ran down her face, leaving a line of whiter skin showing its track. Sue was petrified at the first touch but her heart softened when she saw the obvious distress the person in front of her was feeling. She was almost about to put her arm out to comfort the woman when the spell was suddenly broken and the witch pulled the hood back over her head.

  “Follow me!” the figure ordered in a tone that did not give Sue any choice and so, with the murmuring of the goblins behind her, Sue did as she was told and reluctantly fell into step with her host. As they proceeded across the cave Sue looked and observed every aspect of the space, noting in her mind the potential obstacles that might present themselves if she had to make a dash for it. At the same time, she was impressed how the cave was furnished with bits and pieces that had obviously been reclaimed from the beach: containers made from old jars and bottles, tables, and even the large central bench made from driftwood lashed together with an assortment of multicolour ropes and string, some still encased in tar with broken shell and weed embedded in it. In fact, the only item that did not look reclaimed was the large bla
ck cauldron that was steaming over the fire at the centre of the room at the end of the bench.

  The witch stopped at the far end of the cave in front of a large canvas curtain, which had obviously seen a previous life as a sail as it still had part of a crest on it at one end. Lifting one corner, Sue was ordered in and under the curtain. No goblins followed, as they obviously knew that this area was out of bounds to them. Behind the curtain it was dimly lit by two small soot-encrusted lamps that were positioned at either end of the alcove Sue now found herself in. At one end was a very small table, again made from drift wood, on which stood one of the lamps. The opposite end of the space was completely taken up by a long bench, above which were four long shelves almost collapsing under the weight of the books crammed there. Next to the bench was, what must have been a bed, but it was more like a Japanese futon, as it had no support and was made up of layers of seaweed and twigs which were covered by a thick layer of what Sue thought looked like seagull feathers. Finally, on the top was a thick furry blanket made from what appeared to be some form of animal skin. Then she noticed several white spots in it and she realised that the skins were from rabbits.

  “Sit!” ordered the witch and pointed to an area next to the table where there was a large pillow also covered in rabbit skin. To emphasise her command, she gave Sue a little push which made her trip sideways so that she had no option but to fall onto the cushion. It was remarkably and unexpectedly soft, and having repositioned herself and made herself more comfortable, she gave it a gentle stroke. She noticed the fine stitching that had been used to bind the skins together. Her movement was not missed by the woman, who gave a hint of a smile.

  “And so, my fair friend, I think that you and I need to have a little talk,” calmly crooned the witch but then in a sudden change of tone and volume she grabbed hold of Sue’s hair, pulling her head backwards and sending a bolt of pain through her neck, and screamed, “Who are you and what are you doing interfering in my business and in my home!”