Whirligig

by John Broughton

  Whirligig

  A Parallel World of Fantastic Creatures

  John Broughton

  Contents

  Preface

  I. In The Land of Poverty

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  II. Trials and Effort

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  III. The Quest For Success

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  IV. The Citadel of Wealth

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  V. The Theatre of Pride

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  VI. On The Road of Strife

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  VII. The War of The Key

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader

  About the Author

  Copyright (C) 2021 John Broughton

  Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

  Published 2021 by Shadow City – A Next Chapter Imprint

  Edited by Elizabeth N. Love

  Cover art by CoverMint

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

  for

  my grandson Dylan

  may no fickle elf ever lead you astray

  Preface

  “I thought we were supposed to be best friends,” Jayne complained.

  “We are,” Emily’s tone was anything but friendly, “but that’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “You’re already in the long-jump and the sprint; now you want to take the high-jump from me!”

  Emily, trying not to show the glee welling up inside her, put on her concerned face. “I’m only trying to do my best for the school. You want us to win the cup, don’t you?”

  “But I’m taller than you!”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? I’m more determined than you are. Miss Harrington knows it! You knocked the bar off in trials, and I cleared it by a mile.”

  “I told you, I had a tummy ache that morning.”

  “Any excuse, Janey beanpole. Admit it, I’m the better athlete.”

  Jayne’s naturally pallid face blanched and she glared right into those taunting blue eyes. “You can find yourself another friend, Emily Gasbag!”

  Jayne stormed out of her former friend’s bedroom and out of her life. Gasbag was the nickname her classmates whispered behind her back: Emily knew it. She threw herself on her bed and fought back tears. That band of failures spoke out of envy because she was better than them, not just at sport, either. They hated that she was brilliant clarinettist and the maths teacher’s favourite pupil. Wasn’t she entitled to show off a little? Most of all, they were jealous because she was protective of her gorgeous younger brother, Adam. If any of them tried to chat with him, they’d unmuzzle the spiteful, cutting tongue they all dreaded.

  Angrily wiping her tears with her sleeve, she reflected on the last twenty minutes. Jayne had no idea what went on in her head. All she saw was her friend’s blustering. What did she know about feeling unloved and inferior? She didn’t have a father who only wanted a son, did she? Emily had watched Jayne’s father cuddle her and stroke her long straight hair. She thought that her long, corn-coloured hair was much more attractive than Plain Jayne’s. Well, she could live without her friendship—or anybody’s for that matter. She would just live in her own perfect world and show daddy whose daughter was the best in town.

  Not far from their home lay an extensive woodland where she and her brother played at explorers or simple games like hide-and-seek. Tomorrow, the weekend was theirs. She would go there with Adam and to hell with Jayne!

  In the middle of the woods, a green meadow opened out from an overgrown track. The hidden green, with a slight dome, had a copse at its crown. And, a secret within a secret, sticks barricaded a hole where two bushes met and touched the ground. The sticks formed a door dressed with twigs and grasses, so only the sharpest eye might notice them. This entry led to a space at the very centre of the copse surrounded by bushes and trees. Inside was a den made of branches and scraps of wood put together over time to form a shelter. A board was nailed above the door with a warning: KEEP OUT OR ELSE.

  Little light penetrated the thick bushes, so two electric torches lay next to an old book on a wooden table. Without them, the posters and pictures pinned to the walls could not be seen, and the book could not be read. The book lay open at a new chapter with the title Gateway to the Other World, written in strange flowing letters. Below the title was a set of instructions explaining how to enter this world. The book belonged to the joint owner of the den, and she’d learned the instructions by heart. Today was the real Midsummer’s Day, not June 21 as most people believed, but St. John’s Day – June 24; it was now midday, and on the green beyond the copse, the barefoot girl was carrying out the instructions to the letter.

  The short grass was spattered with daisies, dandelions and other common field flowers. But it also had a strange feature, a place where the grass grew longer, darker and thicker. This curious grass formed a perfect circle: a ring that stood out clearly from the rest of the grass. The local people called these fairy rings, but nobody remembered why. The young girl paced her way around it, never stepping off the thicker grass. Her concentration was so fierce that she didn’t notice the tickly sensation of springy grass under her feet. Her eyes were fixed one step ahead on the ring, and her lips moved as she recited the copied verse she held in her hand. Around her blonde hair, she wore a band of flowers, mainly St. John’s Wort, but woven into the base were exactly 33 harebells, 17 cowslips, and 10 buttercups. The girl had bound them together before midday as instructed by the writer of the book. In her left hand, she held a rowan twig and, in her right, an ash wand. Emily was about to complete her third and last circling of the ring.

  Lying face down in the centre of the ring, reading a football magazine – and truth be told, sulking – was a boy two years younger. He was fifteen. Adam ignored his sister; that is, he tried to ignore her and get on with his reading. But how can you ignore a girl who believes in fairies! And while he thought this ritual was nonsense for girls, he had to admit to being bothered. It troubled him that the ritual was written down in a book, and worse, it was written in a book with strange ancient-style handwriting.

  They had just argued. Emily insisted that Adam’s world of football, computers, television and cinema wasn’t real, but made of illusions. She would show him that the natural world, her world, was real and that there was more to it than met the eye.

  Last weekend Emily had found the Book of Country Lore buried under many others at an antiques f
air. Their parents enjoyed hunting for bargains and rummaging around among old furniture and jewellery, and last time out, their mother had found a lovely Edwardian brooch and Emily had found the book. It was battered and unattractive, and she didn’t pay much for it. At first, she let Adam look at its faded ink sketches and strange writing when he asked, but then she’d become secretive and possessive with it. And now she was supposed to be taking them into another world on Midsummer’s Day! Ridiculous! In any case, he told her she’d got the wrong date, but she wouldn’t have it. Girls! Adam snorted, in the age of satellites and video calls, nobody believed in superstitious nonsense any more: only Emily. Sometimes, he thought, she behaved like his younger sister. He glanced at her with a superior smile and went back to reading about his favourite team.

  Dawn Burgoyne

  I

  In The Land of Poverty

  1

  Adam and Emily saw themselves as if from the outside. The girl watched one of her hands take her brother’s and the other point to a dragonfly, circling their heads so that its wings almost touched Adam’s nose. Emily gasped as she saw something impossible: a woman dressed in white sitting on the dragonfly. Tiny and perfectly formed with a golden crown above her long, silver hair, she smiled at the girl. Emily clutched Adam’s hand tightly and wanted to tell him that fairies exist after all and that she’d been right all along, but her words misbehaved. They came from the world of her imagination. Her words were spoken in another tongue: a lovely sound like tinkling Tibetan bells. Adam understood her perfectly; but as he replied, the air vibrated and whirled. It felt as though they would be swept off their feet and into the air while Emily’s grip on his hand became increasingly painful.

  The trees behind them blurred green as they spun, and the air became opaque like a steamed-up mirror. Then the mirror cracked across, so the gap created widened while all else spun and whirled around it. But the scene within the crack was firm and well-defined, while the outer, opaque part, swirled like an impenetrable fog. Adam and Emily found themselves inside the gap as if sucked in, but she swore she hadn’t taken a step. There was no sign of the dragonfly; instead, all around them, a chilling mist covered the land, cloaking a wilderness of filthy pools dotted among patches of gorse. Bad gasses mingled with the damp air and Adam held his nose and complained. He asked, “What happened to that weird little woman? Where are we?”

  Emily looked around with frightened eyes. This wasn’t what she’d intended to happen when she began her recital. She had no idea and said so in words of a strange, sweet language. Adam stared at his sister, blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. Her long, blonde hair, like her blue eyes, were now shining silver. Above all, she was very pretty indeed; she was still their Emily but like a film star from one of the posters in their den. Of course, he couldn’t see himself, or he would have been amazed. Despite the strangeness of everything around him, Adam had a sense that all was as it should be. He really should be terrified, but he wasn’t. He felt puzzled and curious, but brave as well.

  He asked himself what had happened to the middle of June: it seemed like the end of February. For that matter, where were the woods and their den? As for Emily, her toes were numb and she curled them against the cold. She folded her arms across her chest and, her breath wreathing upwards, told Adam to follow her through the gorse. It snagged their jeans and scratched their arms even when they were being careful so that they cried out several times. The barbed bushes seemed to be waiting, watching and then lunging spitefully at them. Soon Emily was limping and crying from the thorns that pierced her bare feet. Luckily, she was just tall enough to see over the spiny bushes to a track.

  The track was kinder to her feet; determined, they continued along until it forked in three directions. One way led off through the gorse; another wandered discouragingly downhill through puddles and swamp; the last, broadest and best worn, led uphill. They took the easiest path without a word. Twisting slowly, it gave a view from the top over a wilderness stretching as far as the eye could see. And they saw rough, marshy grassland with stagnant pools, broken by mazes of gorse and tangled briar.

  “It’s hateful!” Emily sobbed, “We’re lost and I’m so cold. I’m sorry, Adam, I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to see what the Other World was like.” She shivered and looked so wretched that Adam put an arm around her and told her not to worry.

  “Well, you’ve seen it! And it’s horrible! I don’t suppose you could get us back to Our World now, could you? Please?”

  Emily gasped; she’d been so keen to visit the Other World that she hadn’t thought about finding out how to get back. She fought back tears, looked crestfallen at her brother, then her expression changed to wonder. She’d been so occupied with the pain in her feet and how cold she felt that she hadn’t really looked at him until now. How he’d changed! He seemed taller and older and more handsome, and his blond hair was silver! His eyes were silver, too! Emily looked down at her long hair falling over her chest and gaped. She grabbed it and felt it. It was silver, but very fine and soft like silk. “Adam,” she said in her strange new language, “what colour are my eyes? Am I …am I …pretty?”

  “Silver. You’re not pretty, Em, you’re beautiful like a princess! Have I changed too?” he asked hopefully.

  “Well, yes, you’re handsome!” and tears filled her eyes, “but it isn’t us and we don’t belong here, it isn’t Our World,” and her voice broke into a wail, “and—I don’t know how to get us back home again!” Emily buried her face in her hands; her body was wracked with sobs as she thought of home and her mother and father and her cat, Jasmine. “And I’m so cold!”

  Again, Adam felt brave, like he could overcome anything or anybody. Definite action was needed, so he plunged down into the briar and gorse and began untangling dead stems. Although the thorns scratched his hands, he ignored the pain and carried an armful back to his sister, who was stamping her feet and wiping her eyes. Adam tossed the thorns down beside her at the top of the hill, where he pulled a matchbox from his pocket with a smile. He was glad he always carried a penknife, magnifying glass, string, ballpoint pen, bottle-opener, and so on—you never knew when they’d be needed. Soon, a flame was crackling and dancing across the thorns, sending a thin plume of smoke skywards. Emily leant forward, holding her hands gratefully near the fire.

  “I’ll build it up …” Adam’s words died on his lips.

  All about him on the hill were little people. Thin, hungry-looking, ragged people, standing no higher than his waist. They had long, pointed ears and greenish skin. Their tattered green and brown clothing blended so well with their surroundings that they could hardly be seen. In fact, Adam blinked and rubbed his eyes, thinking that it was a trick of the light. But the strangers were still there, fixing him with yellow eyes dull with defeat and fatigue.

  “Who are you? Who has dared release the Hag’s spell?” One, with a squint, asked in a fluting voice. These curious beings spoke in the same tinkling language Adam and Emily were using.

  Emily moved towards Adam and whispered fearfully, “They’re pixies, aren’t they?”

  Brother and sister were shocked when the creature replied, even though these beings were small, they had powerful hearing!

  “Ay, we are,” the same pixy said, “but who are you, tall as trolls, but fair as elves? You will not harm us?”

  “He heard me!” Emily gasped and, remembering her manners, added: “I’m Emily, and this is my brother, Adam. Of course, we won’t harm you. You see, we are lost—” She stopped because the pixy had taken off his hat and was bowing to them.

  “I am Lar, Leader of the Lostlings. At your service.”

  “At my service…?”

  “Of course, you, who have broken the spell binding us to the Hag.”

  “B-but … we haven’t done anything!”

  “You have burnt thorns on a fairy hill.”

  “Well – er – yes, but—”

  Emily looked at Adam and then stared at the eager faces around th
em. Moments passed, and slowly the look of defeat returned. The pixies murmured among themselves and shook their heads.

  “Look at the confusion you have caused,” Lar accused them, his face growing ever more wrinkled as he frowned. “Strange fate, indeed, it is to be led by one ignorant of fairy lore!”

  “He’s got a queer way of talking,” Adam whispered to Emily. He was startled to see that Lar had heard his words, judging from the severe squint he received. She ignored her brother and burst out: “I know lots about fairies.” Adam looked at her doubtfully. “I do,” she insisted, “you’re the one who’s never believed in fairies and pixies, and now you’re talking to pixies and I’ve read books about them, so there!”

  There was shocked silence at Emily’s outburst. Then Lar said firmly: “Good! Then you must lead us, Emily.”

  “Lead you? Lead you where?”

  “Out of this accursed land. Away from the clutches of the Hag. You must! You have released her spell, now lead us!”

  “But I don’t even know where this land is! I told you, we’re lost—”