by John Mallon
Chapter 19
As soon as they were back in the house his mother insisted that he have medicine. After she had spooned it into him she gave him a hug.
“We can’t have you going sick now, can we?” she said. “We’ve got a holiday to look forward to.”
Alfie waited until she had taken the shopping bags upstairs then headed for the garage. Braddle must have fallen asleep for he did not reply to his calls right away. Eventually, he shouted out “Here. Still here, Alfie.” He sounded dejected.
“Are you ok?” asked Alfie, sitting down on his sister’s child-size garden chair.
“Not really” he replied. “I’m stuck here. I don’t know what is happening. I may never see my family ever again.”
“Well, I’ve got good news for you” said Alfie. “I think I know who the other giant is and I promise you that I will get him to return your friends.”
Alfie could almost sense Braddle jump to his feet and punch the air.
“Really? Who is it? How do you know?”
“It has to be Mr Nicholls, our next door neighbour. There’s no one else it could be.”
“So he hasn’t told you then?” asked Braddle.
“Told me what?”
“That he has them.”
“No, he hasn’t but I know it is him” Alfie replied.
“I can’t go back until we know for certain” said Braddle. “I need to know that you can do what you say otherwise I won’t be able to convince Drostfur and the others that General Stoo can no longer rely on his giant.”
Braddle began to pace up and down the shelf deep in thought.
“I don’t think you should speak to the giant yet, he is obviously evil and we don’t know what he is capable of. So I think you need to sneak over there and see what the spronger has on its web.”
“What?”
“Go over there” said Braddle, sounding each word out carefully as if he was talking to a young child, “and find out, without him knowing, whether he has any of the Carporoo prisoner.”
If a jaw dropping could make a sound then Braddle would have heard what sounded like an earth quake rumbling through the garage. Alfie recovered himself and closed his mouth. He had promised to help. He couldn’t back out now.
“Ok” he said. “I’ll do it later.”
“No. You need to do it now” said Braddle. “We don’t have the time to do it another time.”
Alfie fell silent. It might be better to do it now, he thought. Given that Mr Nicholls was in his front garden, he could get in to his back garden through the loose panel in the fence behind the garage and creep carefully to the living room window without being seen. He might, if he was lucky, find proof of the tiny people within and be back through the fence in no time. It could all be over in five minutes.
“Alright. I’ll do it now.”
Alfie stood up and marched slowly out of the garage.
“Uncle Malik would be proud of you” called Braddle after him.
Alfie crouched down and pushed the fence panel with the palm of his hand. The panel did not move. It seemed to be stuck. He placed both hands on it and pushed hard. The panel moved forward an inch then stopped. When was this fixed? thought Alfie. It had been loose for as long as he could remember and suddenly, when he now actually wanted to climb through it instead of just imagining doing so, it happens to get fixed. Can’t give up now, he told himself. Mr Nicholls was in the front garden still. This was his best chance to get the proof that Braddle desperately wanted. His dad’s favourite saying pointed to itself in his mind: ‘don’t see an obstacle, see an opportunity.’ What the opportunity was here, though, was not clear. An opportunity to give the fence a kicking? An opportunity to use his dad’s saw? An opportunity to give up? He looked upwards. If he couldn’t go through it, he realised, then he would have to go over it. The large wooded panel rested on a small concrete wall and was held between two concrete pillars. Between the panel and the base there was a small gap. If he put…
His left foot crunched down on a small bush as he landed on the other side of the fence. He stepped off it quickly and stood with a garden-statue stillness scanning the windows of the house to his right and listening, as if for a sniper’s bullet, for any sound coming from within it. His intrusion in to the garden had not been noticed. The house was silent and still like a dozing crocodile.
The garden was as Alfie has expected it to be. In contrast to his own, it was neat, tidy and colourful. The grass in the centre was a work of art. In fact, it did not look like grass at all. It looked as if a perfectly square piece of cloth had been stretched on the ground. The cloth had a green, velvety sheen and seemed to exist in two dimensions only, length and width. The cloth stopped about a metre from the fence. In the space in between, there was a border that contained a flaunting of fabulous colour from the many shrubs and flowers. Alfie looked down at his feet and saw that some of this colour was now crushed under his feet. He jumped quickly on to the cloth. Opposite, in the bottom right corner, was a garden shed. This was the same shed that he had seen through his bathroom window. Up close it looked even better maintained than viewing it from afar. The image of how it appeared through the bathroom window came to him and he realised that he was actually in Mr Nicholls' garden. He was actually trespassing on Mr Nicholls' property. If he got caught now, what excuse could he give?
He took a couple of paces forward, stopped and looked toward the house expecting to see a face pressed up against a window or a fist banging on it. Encouragingly, there was no sign of either Mr Nicholls’ face or fist. He continued, slowly, to the paved area in front of the living room window and stopped again. It felt as if the window ledge, the drainage pipe, even the bricks themselves knew he shouldn’t be there and were about to scream out for all to hear. He looked towards his own house on the other side of the fence expecting it to have run off muttering ‘property boundaries are sacred, I don’t want any part in this outrage’. With relief he noticed it was still there. He went to the living room window and crouched down. The room was empty. He noted the television in the corner. A couch opposite. A sideboard with a large fish tank on it. Photographs on the wall. There was nothing to suggest that there were tiny people imprisoned in there. This is stupid, he told himself. If Mr Nicholls has the tiny people, how could I find proof by just looking through his living room window? He realised that it was wishful thinking. He had half-hoped to discover them on the inside window sill either in chains, breaking rocks, or engaging in some other activity that prisoners engage in. Whatever they were doing he had hoped that they would have been easily seen. But no. He decided to head back over the fence and break the bad news to Braddle. He stepped on to the grass and looked at the garden in front of him. I wish dad could make our garden look like this, he thought. He took another step and froze. The sound of a key unlocking the back door ran towards him like a furious, fuming pit bull.
Mr Nicholls was coming! Mr Nicholls was coming! He had to hide. He realised that he couldn’t make it back to the fence. Mr Nicholls would see him as soon as he stepped out. Behind the shed, he told himself. Behind the shed! Go! Now! He made it to the shed before his heart pounded out another beat. There was a gap to the right of it about half a metre wide. He threw himself into it just as Mr Nicholls turned the corner of his house and entered the garden. He crouched down, panting hard. What could he say now if he got caught? What would his parents say? He wanted to cry. He wanted to run. Calm down, he told himself, you haven’t been caught yet. He turned slowly on his heels and peered, carefully, around the edge of the shed. Mr Nicholls was standing there looking towards his roof. He suddenly looked away and turned towards the shed. Alfie pulled back. He’s coming this way. Did he see him? He felt him coming closer.
“AHA” Mr Nicholls said.
Alfie squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the hand of Mr Nicholls to grab him and pull him from his hiding place. The hand, though, did not come. Where is he? Alfie opened his eyes and peered again around the shed. M
r Nicholls was on his knees by the border that ran alongside his fence. He stood up slowly and turned round. In his hands he held a small, clear box. The box was small enough to hold in the palm of one hand but he held it in two. He then walked slowly towards his back door. He was talking to the box as he did so.
“I hope you are comfortable in there” Alfie just about heard him say and then “My, I’ve never seen the box so full.”
Mr Nicholls disappeared in to the house. Alfie, like a pole-vaulter but without the pole, disappeared back over the fence.
“Well, what happened? Did you get the proof?” asked Braddle.
Alfie slumped on to the chair next to the shelf.
“Give me a minute” he said. “I’ve hurt my knee.”
He pulled up a trouser leg and looked at his leg. There was a deep graze on his left knee but, surprisingly, blood was not dripping down his shin.
“I’ve got the proof” said Alfie. “Mr Nicholls does have the tiny…your people, I mean.”
“You were right!” shouted Braddle, triumphantly. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“There’s more though” continued Alfie. “He’s just taken some more now. It looks as if your general has given him a lot of people. I heard him say that the little box he collects them in was full.”
“This doesn’t look good” said Braddle. “I need to go back now. I need to find out what is happening. Uncle Malik and Drostfur might already be gone.”
“It might be better to wait until its dark” suggested Alfie. “You don’t want to be captured now, do you?”
“They won’t take me prisoner again” said Braddle, defiantly. “But you are right. I’ll wait until tonight.”
“What’s the plan?” asked Alfie.
“I don’t know yet but I need to tell Uncle Malik and Drostfur that you can get our people back. You must defeat this other giant and get him to release the prisoners.”
Alfie rested his head in his hands.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“You will think of a way. Tomorrow is Wednesday. So as to give both you and us enough time you need to get the giant to hand over our people on Friday.”
“Well it has to be Friday at the latest because I won’t be here on Saturday. That’s the start of my holiday.”
“Well, that settles it” said Braddle. “It has to be Friday.”
He heard his mother call from the kitchen that his tea was ready.
“Time for food” said Alfie.
“I’ll just help myself to some more of this spaghetti hoop” said Braddle
Alfie didn’t move. How was he going to persuade Mr Nicholls to give up the tiny people? The image of himself crouching down behind the shed, shaking and about to cry, came to him. He started to laugh. Was that actually him? The sound of his laughter filled the garage. Braddle listened to the laughter. After wiping spaghetti hoop juice from his mouth with his sleeve he started to laugh too.