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"We're going to be OK, boy," whispered Aunt Bea, releasing her grip. Our backs were pressed against the trunk, our knees touching, like friends waiting for a bus. "You were very brave. I'm not sure the Doctor would have had time to sedate that madman had you not diverted his attention."
"Thanks, Aunt Bea," I said. I was anything but proud of myself.
The room was full of smoke, and stunk of musky, sour incense. Lights flickered on and off, and the room popped and fizzed with live wires that had been ripped from the roof by the blasts. I twisted to the right and craned my neck around, peering over the trunk to survey the damage. Doc Vassel was lying on his stomach next to Mrs Kroker's chair, trying to loosen the ropes around her wrists.
Lying on her side, Mrs Kroker's eyes were closed, like she was praying. Near the door, beneath a mound of rubble lay an unconscious - or worse! - Mr Seth. And, where the back wall of the conservatory had until moments before stood, obscured by smoke, four bulky shapes stood motionless, as if awaiting an invitation to join us.
"Something's not right," whispered a sonorous, but worried voice behind my right ear.
"Uncle Gerry?" I whispered back.
"What's that boy?" asked Aunt Bea, staring at the figures.
"Shh!" hissed Uncle Gerry. "It's me. I'm invisible. But you're not the only one here that knows I'm here."
"Nothing," I said to Aunt Bea.
"Something's wrong," repeated Uncle Gerry, this time silently, inside my head.
"Um, I don't mean to be rude, Uncle," I thought-whispered. "But I would have thought that was rather, well, obvious. What, with Mrs Kroker tied to the chair, Doc Vassel pricking Mr Seth with a syringe, then the exploding wall and - ."
"Don't be obstinate," said Uncle Gerry. "I've been monitoring the perimeter of the house. Nothing in, nothing out, except the Smith, Platto and you. The Blackgum have got us surrounded. There must be a hundred of them within a mile of the house. But they're not moving - not even testing my defences. They're just standing around, waiting."
"So?"
"No-one attacked Sub Rosa. It's like the house attacked itself. Someone inside. But that's impossible. The only people inside are you and Beatrice, your mother, a disabled Scattersmith, and a couple of civilians. So unless you think the woman tied to a chair in the indecent frock or the stammering doctor who can't even untie a blood-knot is the Zealtor, I don't know who is."
"It's Mum," I said, ashamed. "She's a Witch."
"Of course she's a Witch." said Uncle Gerry. "One of the very best."
"You knew?
"Of course," said Uncle Gerry. "But Witches don't normally go around the place destroying their sister's houses."
"But she is not just a Witch. Mr Seth says she's a Zealtor."
"What!" thought-shouted Uncle Gerry. My temples throbbed, as his thoughts ricocheted within my skull, and cupped my head in my hands.
"Then we're done for!" said my uncle.
"Headache?" said Aunt Bea, patting my shoulder, like she'd soothed Mum earlier. "It's just the explosion."
"Yes," I muttered lamely to Aunt Bea, forcing a smile. Silently, to Uncle Gerry, I thought: I know what you're thinking.
"I'm thinking you were a fool for helping the doctor take out the only force strong enough to have given us, my wife included, enough time to escape. I'm not a fan of his methods," said Uncle Gerry. "But there's a time and place for blunt force, and if your mother is a Zealtor, a full on frontal attack by a Scattersmith would have been our only way out of here alive."
"But you're a ghost anyway," I said. "What do you have to fear from a Zealtor?"
"Imagine eternal existence without a soul, wandering around unseen without a purpose. It's the closest thing to hell you could imagine."
I shuddered. "But she's not the Zealtor. She's just sick. I mean did you see her tipping out the flowers, babbling about scissors and rocks? Doc Vassel was right. She just needs treatment at Mental - I mean Avonlea Farm."
"Like the game?" said Uncle Gerry.
"What?" I asked, my eyes settling on one of great granddad's lemon trees. It had been shredded by the explosion, and was denuded of fruit.
"Scissors. Rocks," said Uncle Gerry, the faint outline of his hands forming the actions. "You know."
Much, much too slowly, it all clicked into place. Scissors. Rocks. Lemons. "Uncle Gerry, you can make yourself look like anything you want, right?"
"Of course, not that it's going to help, mind you. Even if I turned myself into a box of washing detergent, the Zealtor would still hunt me down. I'd rather run a mile, but I can't leave the house and, anyway, I won't leave Beatrice."
"That's exactly what I want from you."
"What?"
"I've got to go and check something up in my room. But I don't want to leave Aunt Bea. You pretend to be me for a few minutes."
"All right, Paddy," said Uncle Gerry starting to form, my perfect mirror image right down to the mud-stained jeans and old T-shirt. “Just let me do something first. Get ready to run."
He blew on his now visible hand and about a cup of silver-white powder appeared. He blew again, and the white powder started to glow and crackle. He hurled the dust at the wall. Mid-air it shimmered and seemed to melt into a discus. It smashed into the wall with a deep metallic crash like a gong.
Aunt Bea jumped, and turned to look at the wall. "What in the heavens was that?" she cried, as I caterpillar-crawled across the room and out into the smoke-filled dining room.
"The explosion must have knocked some of the saucepans out of the cupboard," said Uncle Gerry using my voice. "Stay calm. It's going to be OK."
"Thanks, Uncle," I mind-said as I stood up and bolted out into the hallway then up the stairs.
"Hurry," said Uncle Gerry. "I hate lying to my wife. What are you doing, anyway?"
"No time now. I'll tell you later. I can't believe I've been so stupid!"
22. RETURN TO ENDER
Like a hyperventilating chicken trapped in a hutch, I careened around my room. I threw open drawers and kicked over my hamper, then got down on my hands and knees and rifled through everything I owned. Under my bed, in my schoolbag, I found the orange girly exercise book Mum had given me on the eve of the maths test. I flicked through it, past the maths homework and Blackgum table I'd transcribed from Mr Seth's scribbles on the library whiteboard. I ripped out the page embossed with the plump baby unicorn knighting the princess and stuffed it into my back pocket. Mum would never have bought me such an embarrassing book, unless she was ill. Or trying to tell me something!
At the bottom of my hamper, I located my smelly school shirt. The pack of cards was still in its cotton pocket, right where Mum had stashed them Monday night during our roast dinner. I'd forgotten all about them. I unsheathed the box and fanned the cards out on the floor, like a casino croupier.
One card, sticky and slightly bigger than its sisters, stuck out from the pack. I plucked it from the deck and inspected its face, sweeping the rest away. It showed a crowned queen. She held a golden sceptre, and was enthroned atop a globe of the world. The words "The Empress" were typed in wavy black letters at the bottom. Someone had obliterated her mouth and chin with childish black fangs scrawled in texta.
I pulled out the torn pink unicorn page and the vandalised Empress card and held them up to the light: nothing! I pocketed them both and continued to hunt.
Almost five minutes later, under the card table, I finally found the little yellow wad of paper, scrunched up into a tiny ball against the skirting board. I uncrushed the note and pressed it flat against the floor next to Joke’s carving: Tim Kroker was murdered. Lest we forget. I flipped it over and re-read the typed words: "BEWARE. LIKE SATYRS GRAZING ON THE LAWNS SHALL WITH THEIR GOAT FEET DANCE AN ANTIC HAY."
"How could you have missed that one, dummy!" I muttered to myself. The reference to 'dance' should have given it away, especially after the Giant had run amok. But I finally remembered why the poem was familiar.
<
br /> Antic Hay was one of my parent's favourite books. It was an old novel, even for Mum and Dad, and they'd first read it at university together when they were teenagers. Mum re-read it every couple of years, and had packed a battered copy of the paperback when we moved to Quakehaven. I must have seen it on her side-table a hundred times. I hadn't read it yet - Mum said I was still too young - but Dad had once summarised it for me: it was about a man who disguises himself, and loses himself in the process. I held the yellow paper to my nose and inhaled deeply. It stunk of citric acid.
I punched the floor with frustration. Mum had taken a big risk with such an obvious warning - a warning her dimwit son had still missed! Disgusted, I balled up the yellow leaf and shoved it into my back pocket behind the card and started to back out from under the card table.
Suddenly, directly above my head, glass shattered: the window. Something strong seized my leg. I kicked as hard as I could, freeing myself, and rolled over, cutting my hands on shards of glass as I pushed up onto my side.
Apart from Nicky's head, and the absence of a jelly-belly, the creature resembled the thing that had taken Joke and gulped down Mark. It had been badly injured in the effort to break through Uncle Gerry's defences - scores of small silver pentagrams were branded to Nicky's face, and soupy gouts of blood streamed from its torso and flanks like a chocolate fountain. The creature stank of vinegar and brown paper. Behind it, four additional sucker-digits waggled through the window like nightmarish chorus dancers performing spirit fingers.
Despite the threat, my first thought was that I didn't have time for them! Too much was going on downstairs. I called out to my shadow. But it didn't respond. I called again, but got static in return. Perhaps it had fallen asleep - or unconscious - in the relative safety of the moon-faced trunk where I'd left it.
As I stood up, the Nicky-monster slapped me across the face. I felt blood trickle from my left cheek, where its sucker finger had connected. "Platto!" I cried. Moments passed. Nicky's head grinned: her teeth thankfully still white; her gums the same flamingo pink as the monster's body.
I was scared. But my trusty helper, wearing serrated wings of glinting steel, hurtled through the window like the loose blades of a malfunctioning food processor, and sliced through two of the twinkling sucker fingers. The chorus line of monsters snatched their remaining fingers back as Platto's bloody wings grew a sheath of moist black leather, mid-air, and clamped themselves around the Nicky-monster's face like a gas mask. The monster's screams were muffled for a moment. Then, as if attached to an invisible fishing line, Platto flung itself backwards, dragging the thing back through the window by its nose.
Two new monsters clamoured through the window. They were adults - one man, one woman. Both dwarfed the creatures that had possessed Joke and Nicky, and appeared to be fully infected. As their grille-mouths snapped open and shut, sharp rows of tea-stained teeth appeared, embedded in stinking black gums. The room was sprayed with aniseed-manure scented spittle as the Blackgum sounded their battle cry. I almost wet myself.
The male was twice my size, a purple crest adorning his otherwise bald head. It lunged for me with its remaining sucker-finger. I sprang back from it, then jumped forward and somersaulted under and between its legs, rolling back under the card table. "Platto," I shouted. My helper, now in the form of a stumpy but bloodthirsty goanna, ran up the female monster's left chicken leg, and burrowed his claws into its guts.
Despite Platto's valiant efforts, I was trapped under the flimsy card table, with no exit options. Another stroke of tactical genius from Novice Lee! The male monster hunkered down and roared with what sounded like pleasure and smelled like death. It lowered itself onto its side, reaching for me with its terrible sucker. I scrabbled back as far as I could go and braced my spine against the side of the silver safe, kicking at the monster's grasping finger.
On the other side of my room, more glass splintered as the female beast pelted Platto into Uncle Gerry's framed town plans. She turned and lumbered across the room to her mate.
I was done for, and for just a moment almost gave up. Then I saw the carved words on the floor:
'Tim Kroker was murdered. Lest we forget.'
Two heads, and four blackened gums closed in on me. The light of my tear drop chandelier caught the plume of the male monster. His head looked like a canon, or an android king's crown.
Crowns! "Uncle Gerry," I mind-blurted, holding my breath as I pedalled furiously at the monster's ruined mouths.
"What is it?" answered my uncle. I felt his thoughts probing my skull. "The perimeter is breached. You're in trouble. I'm on my way."
"No time. Aunt Bea needs you more. What's the combination to the silver safe?"
"Huh?" said Uncle Gerry, rather stupidly.
"The SILVER safe," I repeated, poking the toe of my shoe into the female beast's eye. "The combination. Quickly." My lungs burned, the pressure of the stale air sending globs of red and green across my vision like a school of tropical fish trapped in a tiny aquarium. Battlefish, I day-dreamed.
"12345," said Uncle Gerry. I almost laughed. His secret combination, the one Aunt Bea had spent all these years protecting, was so monumentally easy to crack!
The Blackgum pressed forward, and I retreated pushing myself into the small gap between the safe and the wall. I pretended to sob. Their mouth-grilles sliced into my feet like cheese graters. I screamed – not pretending this time - then seized my rocket-money box, propelled myself head over heels in a hunched cartwheel, slamming the amber neck of my alien space ship/soda bottle across the faces of my attackers like a club.
The bottle's base shattered and I ripped up savagely tearing at the monsters' necks with jagged spikes of glass. Screaming with pain, the Blackgum backed up and I pushed forward, still swinging. At the male struggled to its feet, Platto launched himself at its head, slashing its ruined face with his spurs, until the female managed to prise Platto from its mate and throw him out the window with a howling bellow.
I tossed the remains of the broken bottle at the female. It glanced off her head and she fell down, momentarily stunned. I turned away from her and squatted down in front of the silver safe. "12345," I muttered and dialed in the combination with my shaking right thumb and index finger. It took me two attempts to get it right. The safe door swung open. A dozen thick black books filled the safe. I pulled the one on top onto my lap and opened it to a random page. It was crammed with stamps of kings and queens.
"Crowns! Battlefish!" I commanded. The tissue paper separating the open pages vibrated like a reed, and squadrons of small squares of paper flew out, in perfect V-formation. They ascended and did two laps of the chandelier, then zeroed on the dazed Blackgum. I thumbed through the stamp album, and pages and pages of stamps joined the first detachment. It was hard to see - there were so many - but each stamp bore the head of a King or Queen of Europe. And each monarch featured a single row of sharp, triangular teeth in each jaw, tightly packed and interlocking, like piranha dentures.
Two Vs of stamps orbited each thrashing Blackgum, like spitfires sizing up King Kong. Then, as if in response to some silent signal, the stamps descended and tore the Blackgum to pieces like corn chips at a kid’s party. The stink of vinegar and brown paper bags worsened and I ducked back behind the silver safe, lest the stamps became confused about their target in their bloodlust. I watched them work, my hands splayed in front of my face. For blue-bloods they lacked all sense of decorum and table manners.
It was over in less than a minute. When I was finally brave enough to stick my head out from under the desk, nothing remained of the Blackgum but a pile of gnawed upon bones. The floor was covered in red-sodden bits of square paper. From a distance, the blood-sated piranha princes and princesses looked just like confetti at a wedding.
Gingerly, I padded on cut feet to the window, careful not to stir up the now bloated stamps. "Tree," I whispered. "Protect this window, and hold out the Blackgum. In return, I'll grant your saplings earth an
d light. You will have immortality through your children. Smith's honour."
The old Pomegranate shuddered with delight, dropping fruit with heavy thuds. The tree twisted its boughs thatching the window, and tightening its hold on the unconscious Nicky. Platto patrolled the base of the tree's trunk, obviously recovered from his fall.
"Keep her still, but do not kill her," I ordered both tree and helper. Then I ran for the stairs. Time was very short, if I had any at all, and I prayed I was not too late. If I registered Joke or Mark's absence then, I didn't dwell on it. I was too focused on Mum.
I limped downstairs and into the conservatory, clutching the unicorn page, the Empress card, and the Antic Hay poem like weapons. In a sense, they were.
In the time I'd been upstairs, Doc Vassel had managed to free Mrs Kroker from the chair. The couple was in a tight embrace near the fireplace. As the doctor patted her bare back, Mrs Kroker snorted nosily into Doc Vassel's tuxedo lapels.
Everyone else was pretty much where they'd been when I left them. Mum lay flat on her back on the day bed, staring mutely at the singed ceiling, her eyes wide and unblinking. Mr Seth was presumably still snoring beneath the pile of rubble in the centre of the room. Aunt Bea huddled behind the trunk next to Uncle Gerry, who was still disguised as me. As I edged into the conservatory, I caught my bare foot on a slightly raised floorboard at the door. Startled, Aunt Bea looked around and spotted me. Uncle Gerry saw me too and stood up, but it was too late to hide. Aunt Bea screamed.
"What's going on?!" shouted Doc Vassel, releasing Mrs Kroker. He swung his head repeatedly from me to Uncle Gerry and back like a tennis spectator watching a particularly enthralling rally. With a slurping pop, Uncle Gerry vanished and Aunt Bea screamed again and buried her face in her hands.
"Sorry, Aunt Bea," I grimaced, walking into the room on my wounded feet. "It’s me. No time to explain."
I lumbered towards the fireplace, my arms outstretched, the clues in my hands like an offering to the gods. Doc Vassel must have thought I was running for Mrs Kroker, and kicked me, hard, in the shins. I yelped and fell flat on my face, almost losing the clues as my arms hit the edge of the heath.
For a moment, I lay sprawled, keenly aware of the six eyeballs fixed on me. Gritting my teeth, I pulled my knees under my stomach and crawled towards the hearth. I was less than thirty centimetres from the flames, when Mrs Kroker jumped on my back and wrapped her hands around my throat.
"I don't know what's going on," she snarled. "Today's just been one of those days. I wouldn't even have been here if your Aunt hadn't asked me to help look for you. But I'll be darned if I'm going to let you throw those things on the fire. What are they? Explosives?"
"Metaphorically, correct," rumbled a muffled voice. As if someone had plugged an industrial strength vacuum cleaner into the roof, the pile of rubble in the middle of the room was suddenly twitched and was then sucked back up to the ceiling in a mini-twister of rubble and dust. Mr Seth, one eye open, windmilled his bent arms twice, and Mrs Kroker flew backwards across the room, landing softly on the base of Mum's bed. Without a further word, Mr Seth tipped forward onto the floor and started to snore again.
Everyone froze gawking in the wake of Mr Seth's typically dramatic flourish. I took my chance, inching forward on my hands and knees. Sitting back on my calves, I held the three bits of paper, pink, laminated and yellow, to the flames. There was no time to muck around with barbecue forks or pokers, and my hands, already cut, blistered as I held them to the fire.
A few seconds passed, and I pulled the papers back. The pink paper had darkened red, and revealed its hidden message in yellow-brown ink:
"Send word to the Smith. She walks amongst us. She is one of us. A Witch has betrayed us Witches."
The laminated card had melted, and the Empress' golden gown and sceptre had warped and flaked off, giving up its secret:
"She suspects I have found her out, and I am her prisoner. Tell the Smith to act quickly, without fear or favour. To kill us both, if need be. I love you, my son. This is too much for my baby to bear, but you must shoulder it."
The top edges of the yellow message paper had caught alight, obscuring the original words of the poem. The lemon juice ink beneath it had browned and revealed the final message:
"The Smith must come. There is no time to delay. She has summonsed a Giant to kill her enemies, and yoke the town to her cause at the dance. She keeps me captive here in chains, while Quakehaven and my friends fall to shadow. How can this evil thing call herself my -"
I gasped at the last word, and pivoted to face, at long last, the Zealtor.