The man’s eyes widened in shock. He was a tall, handsome man, long–haired and clean shaven except for a curling moustache. The other man, the one they had called ‘the king’, laughed as he was helped to his feet.
‘That’s a lad of spirit, Lancelot. Take care he doesn’t challenge you to a duel.’
‘The prospect terrifies me, your majesty. What shall I do with him?’
‘The king’ climbed into his saddle, wincing as he held his bruised side. ‘Hang him.’ He turned his horse and began to ride away.
Todd felt himself being dragged by the arm towards a nearby tree. He saw that one of home the other riders had found a rope.
‘Ok, Ok, that’s enough, I’m sorry I spoiled your game or whatever but I want to go now, all right?’
‘Sir Lancelot’ ignored him. The other man tossed the end of his rope over a branch. ‘The king’ spoke again as he rode away.
‘Does the brat still defy you, Lancelot? Bring him to the castle and we’ll find a more entertaining punishment for him.’
‘Sir Lancelot’ turned back, dragging the struggling boy along. He flung him across his horse and mounted behind him, then rode after his friends. Todd’s struggles were useless, the man was immensely strong. As he bounced along Todd tried to look around. The house should be nearby but there was no sign of it. What exactly had happened? One minute he’d been in his uncle’s attic, the next he was being attacked by some group of role–playing nutcases. He wasn’t going to let them get away with it. It was embarrassing. What if some of his friends saw him or found out about it? He carried on yelling.
‘Put me down, you moron! I’ll tell my uncle. I’ll tell the police. I’ll …’
The rider’s mailed fist connected with Todd’s temple and everything went black.
Chapter 5
He woke up to a splitting headache and a smell like a hundred unflushed school toilets. Groaning, he opened his eyes. At first he thought it was night time, then realised he was in a dark room, a room with damp, stone walls and a small barred window.
‘Awake at last, are ye?’
Through slitted eyes Todd saw that the speaker was sitting on the cold stone floor nearby, his back against the wall.
‘Not from around here, are ye? Not with them odd–looking clothes.’
Todd tried to clear his aching head. Was he dreaming? If so this was the most realistic nightmare he’d ever had. And how crazy that his companion should call his clothes odd–looking when he himself was dressed in what looked like a sack belted with a rope.
‘Where am I?’ he groaned.
‘The dungeons.’
‘I mean, where am I really?’
‘Like I said, in the dungeons, at Camelot.’
‘Yeah, right.’ He’d wake up soon in his own bed. ‘What is this place? Some kind of theme park?’
‘Don’t know what one of them is. All I know is you and me is getting out of here today, Thank God.’
That at least was good news. He’d go home and shower. He needed to get away from this stink. How could they put people in a place like this? When he got home he was going to report them to … to somebody.
‘Where will they take us? Is the show over? Will they let us go home?’
‘Home? Ha ha. We’re off to the chopping block, you and me.’ Then they put our heads on spikes on the castle walls.’
There was no way Todd would continue going along with their stupid game. They were supposed to ask for volunteers to take part in these things. As soon as they came for him he’d make a run for it. Let them find some other sucker for the rest of the show.
As it happened he didn’t get the opportunity. After three or four hours of breathing the awful stench and listening to the man in the sack dress pretend to be a medieval peasant imprisoned for theft he heard footsteps on the stairs outside the cell. A moment later he was marched up the stairs between two burly men dressed like medieval jailers.
It was a relief to be out in the fresh air after the smelly cell, except the air outside was not all that much better. It smelled of sweaty bodies and horse poo. They took their realism seriously in this theme park. The next part of the show was apparently to be the mock executions scene and about a hundred men, women and children were gathered in the courtyard, all dressed in medieval costume. The executioner was straight out of the movies with his bare chest, black hood and blood–streaked axe. Despite his resentment Todd was impressed, This was one theme park he’d definitely pay a visit to, some other time when he wasn’t part of the act. Even the blood on the executioner’s axe looked real. An old man dressed as a monk climbed onto the platform and stood next to the two ‘prisoners’. He opened a scroll and began to read in a loud but quavery voice,
‘King’s justice case number one. Wat of Northelm is charged with stealing an onion from the royal gardens. King Arthur in his mercy has decreed that he shall lose his head, and that his head shall be displayed on the castle wall as a deterrent to others.’
The man in the sack dress was dragged to the chopping block. Playing his part as the insane peasant to the full he winked and leered at the audience, who laughed and cheered. Without prompting he laid his head on the block. The hooded executioner raised his axe, then swung it down.
That was when Todd finally understood that this was not an act.
Chapter 6
The severed head rolled from the block and ended at Todd’s feet, with the staring, mad eyes looking up at him. The head was real, the blood was real, the cheering crowd was made up of real knights, lords, ladies and peasants. Todd’s mouth went dry. His lower lip trembled. The man dressed as a monk --- no, he was a real monk --- stepped up beside him and unrolled his scroll again.
‘King’s justice case number two.’ He stopped and leaned down to the shaking boy. ‘Your name?’
‘To …To … Todd.’
‘Of where?’
‘Long … Longhurst,’ Todd gulped. The monk continued.
‘Tototodd of Longlonghurst is charged with attacking the body of his anointed king. King Arthur in his mercy has decreed that he shall lose his head, and that his head shall be displayed on the castle wall as a deterrent to others.’
‘I didn’t! Honest! It was an accident. I’ve no idea how I got there. It was … it was magic or something!’ Todd carried on shouting as strong arms on either side of him forced his neck to the block. ‘You can’t do this. You’re King Arthur and the knights of the round table. You’re supposed to be the good guys’. His voice rose to a squeal. ‘You’re supposed to defend the weak. Look, I’m weak. Look how weak I am. Leave me alone. Go and rescue a damsel or fight a dragon or something!’
He twisted his head to the side. Some of the courtyard was blocked from his sight by the edge of the chopping block, but those of the audience he could see didn’t seem interested in helping him. They were eagerly looking forward to the butchery. All except King Arthur who was squinting through the colliderscope with a look of delight. Sir Lancelot sat beside him. On his other side a man who looked like Harry Potter’s Professor Dumbledore, said something to the king. Todd twisted his head the other way and wished he hadn’t. A few inches away the great blood–spattered blade of the executioner’s axe rested beside the block. It disappeared as he watched and he knew it was being raised to chop his head off. He closed his eyes tight.
‘Stop!’
The command came from the king. The executioner rested his axe against the block once more. Everyone waited for the king’s next words.
‘We would know more of this marvellous toy the boy possessed. Merlin suspects it may be of faery origin.’
The Dumbledore character rose and shuffled over to the execution platform. He carried the colliderscope in two hands. Todd sprang away from the block to a squatting position. He was so frightened he could hardly breathe.
‘In all my long years,’ Merlin said in a hoarse voice, ‘I have not seen the like of this. Tell me, boy, is it merely a finely–wrought toy or does it perhaps posse
ss magical properties?’
‘It’s only a t …” Todd began, then stopped. The last thing he remembered before finding himself in the path of the galloping horses was his looking through the colliderscope. Was there a connection? They’d just been pretty patterns until he’d noticed the slide on the leather tooling and switched it across. That was when the patterns became pictures and his world had changed to this new reality. AN ALTERNATE REALITY! That was what his uncle had meant. It had something to do with the edge where different realities joined and collided. Collided? … colliderscope? If he looked through it again would it take him home? He gathered his scrambled thoughts and decided what to say.
‘Um … it’s … I mean, yes! It does have magical properties.’ He said in a rush. ‘I can show you how it works if you like, but … um … I have to be able to look inside it myself first.’ He held out his hand.
Merlin appeared to have taken such a liking to the amazing tube that he seemed reluctant to let it go. In the end his curiosity about a new kind of magic got the better of him. He handed it to Todd who rammed it to his eye so fast he bruised his eyebrow.
‘’You’ll be …you’ll be amazed, Sir,’ he stammered, ‘at what this magical …er … er…thing … can do.’ His fingers fumbled for the slide switch that would make the swirling patterns become scenes. It took his trembling fingers so long that King Arthur became impatient.
‘The boy is playing us for fools, Merlin, to delay his punishment. Executioner, do your work.’
To Todd’s horror the hooded man snatched the colliderscope from his grasp. He handed it to Merlin then dragged his terrified victim back to the chopping block.
‘King Arthur! King Arthur! Todd screamed. A memory from a book he’d read came to his aid. ‘In your mercy grant a dying boy his last wish. That’s what you always did, I mean do, right? Chivalry you call it.’ From the corner of his eye he could again see the axe blade resting beside the block covered in the blood of its earlier victim. To his surprise it was Merlin who came to his rescue.
‘The boy is right, Sire. It is customary …’
‘Oh all right.’ King Arthur replied. ‘Never let it be said that Arthur of Camelot was lacking in chivalry. So, what is your dying wish, boy?’
‘Let me look through my tube while my head is being cut off.’
To his intense relief his wish was granted and the colliderscope was thrust into his hand. Again he banged it against his already sore eyebrow in his haste to look inside. With his other eye he saw the axe disappear from his view as the executioner hoisted it. It was awkward with the block in the way but desperately he scraped his fingers around the tooling. He located and slid the switch. The few seconds before it changed from patterns into a scene seemed like an age as he waited for the axe to fall. The scene showed a modern city. It wasn’t home and it wasn’t his uncle’s attic, but the best thing about it was that it wasn’t here. As he stared at it he heard the swish of the axe blade falling.
Chapter 7
The scene inside the colliderscope lit up and grew larger, filling his whole vision. Todd felt himself being sucked forward, swilled about in a whirl of colours, then spat out.
‘Oof!,’ he cried as he landed on concrete, which was reassuring since it was an ‘oof’ more than he could have said if his head was cut off. Relief flooded his brain at how close he had come to death. Sweat poured down his face. But wherever this was it had to be safer than Camelot. There was the familiar roar of traffic and the tramp of busy feet around him. Good, he should be able to find his way home from here, wherever it was. He looked up.
The buildings were normal city buildings but with huge, high doors. The traffic was normal city traffic but bigger than any vehicles he had ever seen. The hurrying crowds were dressed in normal city clothes. But the people wearing the clothes … Todd blinked … were lizards.
‘Oh look, Mummy, a human.’
The speaker wore the sort of clothes a seven–year–old girl might wear but the head poking from the top was a lizard’s head.
‘Oh, so it is,’ the mother lizard said. ‘And look, it’s wearing a little jacket and trousers. How cute.’
Todd was too confused to speak. He cringed as a lizard in a suit and tie who might have been the little girl lizard’s father leaned down towards him for a closer inspection.
‘I’m impressed, Grofila. I didn’t realise you’d learned how to tell the different apes from one another. I never could at your age.’
By this time quite a crowd of reptiles had gathered to marvel at the human boy. One that Todd recognised as a triceratops from his three horns and neck ruff leaned his big, scaly head close and tousled Todd’s hair with a scaly claw..
“Hello there little feller, Don’t be scared. Who do you belong to, I wonder.’
‘Escaped from the zoo, I expect,’ a duck–billed dinosaur in blue overalls said.
‘Nah,’ Three Horns replied. ‘Not dressed up like this. From a circus maybe.’
‘Here come the police,’ Duck–Bill said. ‘They’ll know what to do with it.’
The most enormous police vehicle Todd had ever seen pulled up at the kerb. A moment later he realised why it needed to be big; the police officer who emerged was a T–Rex. Terrified, Todd looked for a way of escape but the forest of legs, and tails, was too dense. The T–Rex policeman approached the crowd in long, slow strides, hitching up his trousers as he came. The smaller dinosaurs made way for him; as well they might, given his size. As he bent his huge head to get a closer look at the boy the massive tail that poked from the rear of his uniform rose high for balance.
‘Somebody lost a pet monkey, eh? Anyone know who it belongs to?’
‘No idea, Officer,’ One of the lizards said.
The T–Rex gave a huge sigh that enveloped Todd in a cloud of smelly dinosaur breath. ‘Oh well, I’ll take it over to the zoo and let them deal with it. Come with me, little monkey. Don’t be scared.’
Todd was scared. So scared by the monster head inches from his face, and the little beady eyes and the sword–like teeth that his neck hairs were standing on end. But when one of the creature’s ridiculously small arms reached out and grasped him his terror gave him the courage to shout at the top of his voice.
‘Get your hands off me you filthy reptile!’
It was a line from one of Todd’s favourite movies, ‘The Planet of the Apes’. It was what the main character yelled at the apes who had captured him, except he’d said ‘filthy ape’. Those apes had been as shocked at hearing a human speak in their ape–dominated world as these reptiles were in theirs.
‘You know,’ the duck–billed one said,” I could swear I saw the little creature’s lips move.’
This caused general laughter, especially when two or three others said the same thing.
‘Can I take it home, Mummy?’ the little girl lizard pleaded.
‘No, Darling. It probably isn’t house–trained. And anyway it might fight with Fido and Fluffy.’
Todd’s terror and confusion was great, but not so great that he didn’t know what was most important at this moment. He looked about him for the colliderscope. It was in the hands of a small dinosaur about the size of a three–year–old boy. Todd leapt to his feet and snatched it back. The three–year–old squealed and its father dragged it away.
‘Better put that vicious creature back where it belongs, Officer, before it bites somebody.’
‘That’s right,’ a thick–set dinosaur in a business suit said. Its tail ended in a spiked club. ‘These things look all cute and cuddly but as they say, you can take an animal out of the jungle but you can’t take the jungle out of the animal.’
The speaker looked pleased with himself for his wisdom as others nodded in agreement. The police T–Rex leaned down and picked Todd up again, this time more carefully. He took the colliderscope from him and put it in a pocket of his uniform.
‘Come on little feller, back to the zoo you go.’
Chapter 8
Wh
en Todd had finished venting his rage and frustration by banging the bars of his cage and was breathless from yelling he looked around the room. The ceiling was high and the doors necessarily huge to allow access for dinosaur sized bodies. On the opposite wall were two rows of cages, one row above the other. He guessed the side he was on was the same. Some of the cages were occupied. Near him he saw a fox, a meerkat and some kind of bird of prey. The cage on his right he at first had thought empty until he saw something big slither in the straw; a python. He wondered despairingly where his colliderscope was.
He started when a door at the end of the room opened. His hopes rose when he heard the tap–tap of high heels. A human? But no, the newcomer was a lizard. A lizard wearing high heels and a white lab coat. Under the coat was a pretty dress. The effect was totally feminine, but what made Todd shiver with fear was that he recognised it as a velociraptor from the movie Jurassic Park. The female raptor ignored the rest of the shrieking, growling and roaring creatures and headed straight to Todd’s cage. He crouched as far back as he could. She stood in front of him a while, studying him, then said,
‘So you’re the little human who’s been frightening everybody?’
Todd remained silent. Nobody listened to him so why should he talk to them? The lady lizard looked sad. ‘I’m disappointed. They said you could talk. I didn’t believe them of course but I was curious.’ She laughed. ‘Listen to me, I’m talking to a human as if it was a reptile.’ She moved a little closer. ‘Now I’m just going to open the cage and examine you, so I hope you won’t bite.’
Todd noted the multiple rows of teeth she showed when she smiled and he wondered why something with that many teeth would be afraid of him biting. He decided not to let her see his fear.
He said, ‘Can you get me something to eat?’
The lizard lady had been fiddling with the catch on the cage. She took a quick step back and swivelled around, wide–eyed.
‘Who said that?’
Todd sighed. “I’m hungry, and I hate bananas but that’s all they’ve given me. Is there a McDonalds around here? And do you know where my colliderscope is?’
The raptor took another step back, then said in a loud voice, ‘All right, guys, you got me. Good trick.’
When she realised there was no–one else in the room she approached the cage warily. ‘You didn’t really speak, did you?’ Her voice was a whisper.