The woman gave a heavy sigh. “What’s the little bleeder done now? I swear I’ll swing for ‘im one of these days.”
NOTES
CHASTENED; TRICERATOPS; APOLOGY TO KIERANS AND DEANS; TERRIBLE LIZARD; THE YUCATAN PENINSULA; PALPABLE; I’LL SWING FOR ‘IM
Chapter 11
Designer Dreams
Gordon stood on the mountain-top and gazed across the valley. It was a place where sheep might safely graze: green and peaceful, dappled in shifting light; but on its other side were deep, dark woods. Gloomy rainclouds crowded over them. You would not want to be lost in such a place without some means of leaving a trail.
He could see an impressive castle in the distance. It had ramparts and a drawbridge, crenellations and guard towers. “I have a dream,” he thought. Taking a short run, he spread his arms and launched himself into space, soaring on air rising from the promised land below. He was a fair flyer for a five-year-old.
Seconds later, he plunged into the cold, wet mist that drifted in demented wisps below the clouds above those murky woods. Brrrrrrrrhh! But just as quickly he was through and out again into a sky of brightest blue. He left the wood behind.
The castle was much closer now. Countless crenellations topped the guard towers and the outer walls. Gordon slowed down to admire them, allowing Zack to overtake him and streak on ahead. Zack was dressed all in green like Peter Pan, which made Gordon realise he was still in his pyjamas. Something would have to be done about that.
There was a bit in the centre of the castle that looked like a cathedral. It had a magnificent rose window, very like the one in Westminster Abbey. Zack flew straight through it as if the lead-lined glass had not been there. Gordon followed and landed neatly beside him on a narrow stone balcony. He was now dressed for the occasion in a lacy white shirt, gold breeches, and a coat of many colours. There were silver-buckles on his knees, and diamonds on the soles of his shoes. He looked down at the congregation bustling below.
“You must give me the name of your tailor,” Zack said, a little put out. Peter Pan had expected Gordon Darling still to be in his pyjamas. “Whose fairy tale is this anyway?”
Gordon grinned at him. “It’s ours” he told him. Instantly Zack began turning in the air, surrounded by twinkles, just like Princess Fiona in Shrek. Gordon heard a faint “Whoah!” from inside the magic haze. When his guardian angel reappeared, he was dressed like a fairytale prince in scarlet hose and a royal purple doublet trimmed with lace. He looked down at himself, then across at Gordon.
“Way to go!” he said admiringly.
They seemed to have gatecrashed a royal occasion. Below them on a marble dais sat an unmistakable King and Queen. A large number of very well-dressed fairies were sitting on either side of a wide central aisle. Gordon knew they were fairies - they pulsated with psychic energy, and those wings were a bit of a giveaway.
He found that by concentrating on a particular spot he could actually zoom in. It was as if his eyes had developed a bionic zoom lens that he could operate at will. How useful was that?!
His Fairy Highness sat on a cushioned throne of green-veined stone. He was of slender build with remarkably fine features, and dressed in crimson and gold. A magnificent, cut-crystal crown turned in the air above his head. Light streaming through the rose window fractured in the facets of the crown, bathing the dais in all the colours of the rainbow. “Richard of York gave battle in vain,” Zack murmured.
The Queen sat next to the King on a closely woven, high-backed basket chair. It was lined with white silk, and wreathed in roses, leaves and twisting vines. Seeming to float in a dress of forest green, she was so beautiful that just to look at her took Gordon’s breath away.
An imposing male figure, dressed in solemn black, stood at the foot of the dais. He raised a long staff and banged the floor with a single, reverberating thud. The buzz of conversation ceased immediately. Trumpeters raised long-throated instruments and blew an impressive fanfare.
The King stood up. He was about a metre in height – tall for a fairy - and his voice was surprisingly deep. Magically it filled the awesome space. He spoke with sadness and authority.
“We welcome you not as subjects but as friends. This is a time of crisis in our realm. The news is grave. We face a fearsome foe: a danger that could devastate our land.”
Zack was staring at Gordon with his mouth open. Where was this stuff coming from? Gordon was giving the king his full attention.
“A terrible dragon roams our hills where once our sheep could graze. All who see it flee, and who can blame them? Who would not choose life over certain death?”
The king made a grand gesture stage left. The eyes of his audience swung to a dejected figure in battered armour. It was standing in the place reserved for the bravest of the royal knights.
“Witness our champion, brave Sir Nicholas!” the king declared. “No heart is more steadfast! How oft has he defended us from harm? Who is there here who does not owe him thanks?”
He looked sadly at his courtiers. “Yet even he is humbled now before a mighty foe,” his voice faltered slightly, “a monstrous lizard of astounding length.”
Sir Nicholas hung his head even lower.
“He battled with it time and time again!” the king went on. “Stroke on stroke he slashed across its lines, as if to blur its shape from common view.”
His audience murmured its admiration of Sir Nicholas’s bravery.
“But the great beast could not be so subdued. With formidable strength, it flung him down.”
So that’s how he got those dents in his armour.
“Now sadness wraps him in its dismal shroud, and deeper than an ocean’s salty depths his spirits sink, to drown in cold despair.”
The great warrior had his visor down, so Gordon couldn’t see his face. He was smaller than your normal champion, but you didn’t need to be big to be bigger than a fairy. The crest on his shield was strange as well - two crossed crayons, one red and one purple.
The king raised both arms towards the rose window. “Who will now rid us of this wicked worm,” he thundered in a final appeal, “and live forever in our history as a saviour of our honour and our realm?!”
Gordon vaulted over the balustrade and leapt into the intervening air. He and Zack soared over the congregation and landed on the royal dais. Dropping on one knee before the astonished king, Gordon had no hesitation in offering their services.
“Sir Gordon and Sir Zack, your Majesty. We hear your plea, and fly now to your aid!”
He leapt up, and swifter than an arrow from a bow he zoomed: out through the window and round the sky like a rainbow in his technicoloured dreamcoat. Zack had trouble keeping up with him.
NOTES
WHERE SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE; “I HAVE A DREAM…”; A ROSE WINDOW; A COAT OF MANY COLOURS; SILVER-BUCKLES ON HIS KNEES; DIAMONDS ON THE SOLES OF HIS SHOES; DOUBLET; BALUSTER; ROYGBIV; “AND WAS SO BEAUTIFUL ...”; INTERVENING.
Chapter 12
Reading Between The Lines
“SLOW DOWN!” Zack telepathed to Gordon up ahead. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Does it matter?” Gordon beamed back. He was having far too much fun to worry about little things like that. In any case, he’d been to Dreamworld before, and knew the story would come to him.
There it was, on the other side of the mountain. That had to be the “dragon”. It was enormous; but something was dreadfully wrong with it. Its outline was all blurred and fuzzy. It was swinging its head blindly from side to side. Gordon spotted the problem right away.
“That’s not a dragon!” he yelled. “That’s a dinosaur! It’s a peaceful diplodocus. That idiot, Sir Nicholas, has slashed it all over with his stupid red and purple crayons. Look at all that gunk in its eyes! He’s blinded it!”
His heart went out to the gentle creature below him, torn through time and tossed into a world that believed in dragons. Now it was covered in red and purple, and did look as though it was on fire.
“We have to help it Zack” Gordon said. “There’s got to be something we can do!”
Problem-solving: maybe that’s what this was about. Zack waited ...
“I know!” Gordon yelled. “We need a downpour, sheeting rain, lots of it!” He looked at the clouds above the murky woods and then at Zack. “Can we bring those rainclouds over here, and make them deluge right above its head?”
Zack zoomed away so fast he could have put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. Gordon felt the wind pick up, and soon the clouds came scooting. Huge drops began to fall, as they nearly always do on mountaintops.
“NOT YET!” Gordon yelled. He held his hand up and they seemed to hear; they held on! Over his head they drifted to hover directly above the troubled beast.
Its eyes were shrouded, yet it felt the wind. It scented the flood. Eager and bellowing, it stretched its neck towards the waiting rain. “NOW!” Gordon cried.
He thrust his right arm up at the clouds like a young Thor in training. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Obediently, the bucketing began. The water pelted off its two-foot head and down its sinuous neck. It washed in sheets along its massive sides. The creature flicked reptilian eyes to bathe them clean. Its ancient tail splashed in the pools that deepened on the saturated ground, and the colour came off!
Gradually, the clean, grey lines of an unmistakable diplodocus emerged from behind that clueless daubing. The purple and red soaked into the grassy plain, after which the wind changed direction, blowing the clouds back towards their preferred spot above the woods. Contentedly, the great beast lowered its head and began to graze on the long grass.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Gordon asked in awe. No wonder he wanted to be a palaeontologist.
“It can’t stay there,” Zack said. Gordon nodded. In this kingdom, as in his own, it was never long before some clown turned up and spoiled things. It could easily be Mr. Benn, Red Knight next, or that other idiot, St George.
“It will need both of us,” Zack said. He held out his hand and Gordon took it. They joined forces. Power streamed from them like a beacon, enveloping the dinosaur in the glow that normally precedes time-travel in films and television series …
The diplodocus began to fade. It would have to take its chances in a world red in tooth and purple in claw, but at least it wouldn’t have to contend with people and fairies. Gordon was sad to see it go. He could have watched it for hours, but he knew it was for the best.
“Let’s go and tell the King his dragon’s gone” he said.
NOTES
GIRDLES ROUND THE EARTH; THOR; MR BENN RED KNIGHT
Chapter 13
The Bigger They Are …
They were flying back over the dark forest when a massive disturbance erupted below them. Trees shook, branches broke and the canopy trembled. Something gigantic was ploughing its way through that dense tangle. It swept the wood aside like blades of grass. Bushes were being torn out by the roots. Tell-tale signs of its progress rippled towards the forest’s jagged edge. For the moment, it was hidden; but it would not be long before whatever it was smashed its way into the open.
“That is big,” Zack beamed to Gordon.
Gordon agreed. “Let’s get ahead of it.” A burst of speed put them a safe distance from the wood before they skidded to a halt in mid-air. It was an impressive manoeuvre, much like the one used by ice-hockey players when they run out of rink.
A shaggy giant was tearing itself free from the final tangle of vegetation. It must have been at least forty feet high. Its shoulders were an impressive eight feet wide. It was green and brown all over, and gnarled like a tree come alive. Its arms were massive branches and its legs enormous roots.
Zack let out a long, low whistle. “Whoah! You’ve outdone yourself there, partner.”
Was it a forest troll, or maybe some kind of ogre? It brandished a club the size of a battering ram. In its other hand, it held some kind of gun. The barrel on it stretched a good twelve feet with the thickness and bore of a cannon. It was attached to a wooden stock some six feet long. The whole thing must have weighed three hundred pounds. One of the creature’s clumsy, woody fingers was wrapped around a trigger the size of a small child’s slide.
Raising its foot, it stamped down with a thud that shook the ground and echoed through the air. Its roar rattled the inside of Gordon’s skull. It was definitely angry about something. It turned towards the castle, and set off with a grim, determined air.
Gordon and Zack flew on ahead and touched down on the ramparts. The soldiers on sentry duty gave them a hearty cheer. Alarm bells clanged, and the air was filled with whirring wings in flight. Fairies darted in all directions, but mostly the opposite one, having realised this wasn’t a social call.
Gordon stared at the approaching catastrophe. They didn’t have much time, but there was something about the club that jogged a memory. He zoomed in with his newly acquired bionic lens. “That’s a giant Action-Man it’s got there!” he yelled. “That weapon is a mega ping-pong gun! It’s a Ten-Ton-Tom, the Terror from Next Door!”
Zack laughed. “So it is. I recognize that brain-dead expression now. I know just what to do with him.”
“That’s it, Zack”, Gordon thought, “you sort him!”
His trusty companion leapt down from the walls. Gordon poured all his power into him, and Zack grew rapidly, bracing himself to meet the mega-lump. Of course, Tom couldn’t see him. He was intent on harm.
“WHEEEAAAOOOUUU!!” he yelled. The terrible cry rent the heavens. Gordon heard screams of terror from behind and below. His attention stayed with Zack, who straddled the narrow ground like a Colossus.
As the tree troll raised its huge right arm, ready to drive its awesome action-ram into the castle wall, Zack placed both hands on its chest and gave it a massive shove. The forty-foot figure toppled backwards. Its momentum turned the tumble into a backward roll. Its two-foot head met the earth with a satisfying thud, and its massive bottom landed on a pile of rocks.
There was silence for a few seconds, the dust settled, and then with a howl of pain it struggled up. There was a small crater where its head had been. Noticing Gordon standing on the ramparts, it drew back its lips in a snarl of rampant rage. It snatched up the biggest rock it could find at a moment’s notice. “YOU PUSHED ME!” it roared, and drew back its massive arm. Clearly it intended to hurl the boulder right at Gordon.
“NO!” yelled the sentries on either side of him, but they need not have worried. Zack had wrapped both hands around the rock-filled fist, and the stone stayed where it was. Momentum carried the arm down in a perfect arc and drove the rock into the ground, fingers first. The grievous howl that issued from it then easily broke all previous records.
The ogre had no clear idea what had happened. What was clear was that it had a sore head, a sore bottom and sore fingers. It seemed to pause for thought – or at least the closest form of that mental activity it could manage. Lumbering to its feet, it began to shamble back towards the wood where the other wild things were. Gordon heard it muttering: “I don’t like it there. ’E’s weird!”
“He won’t be coming back here in a hurry,” Zack said. “What now? Shall we receive the praises of the king, and fly in triumph over Fairyland?”
“No,” Gordon decided, yawning suddenly. “I think this dream has lasted long enough.”
The scene dissolved, and soon the senses of the tired little boy were safely steeping in forgetfulness. He knew Zack would get him home safely. He always did.
NOTES
“YOU SORT HIM”; COLOSSUS OF RHODES; SHALL WE RECEIVE THE PRAISES OF THE KING, AND FLY IN TRIUMPH OVER FAIRYLAND? STEEPING IN FORGETFULNESS.
Chapter 14
Using The Force
Gordon drew up his own job description in the Infants: assistant teacher in the classroom and deputy sheriff in the playground. He enjoyed the challenges Mrs Jones threw his way. He plunged himself into Zack’s rigorous training programme and discovered there were interesting ab
ilities he hadn’t known he had. Telepathy was the tip of an iceberg.
When he was six, his mum found out about an after-school activity called Enjoy-A-Ball. The sessions took place in a local sports hall and were good fun. It gave him and Zack a chance to practise his speed and power control. It also gave him a bit of one-to-one time with his dad, who made an effort to get home on that day in time to take him.
One sunny afternoon in late September, they arrived at the Sports Hall car-park five minutes early. Victor was never late for anything if he could help it. There was no point in waiting in the car when they could wait outside in the fresh air and sunshine, so they clambered out and shut the doors. Victor was struck by how tall Gordon was getting. He seemed to have shot up recently. The time was flying! How could he be six already?
An ice-cream van pulled up at the pavement by the entrance. The driver switched on its cheerily amplified jingle. It announced his presence to all children within a quarter of a mile.
“NO KIERAN, I SAID NO!” yelled his mum. That was the normal volume she used when arguing a point with her son. She had Dean in tow as well. She and Dean’s mum took it in turns to lug their equally naughty boys to Enjoy-A-Ball. Where was the point in both of them being inconvenienced?
“But I WANT one!” Kieran howled, “I really really DO!”
“AND I SAID NO. WHAT ARE YOU, DEAF?”
“BUT YOU SAID WE COULD HAVE AN ICCCE-CREEEAAAM!!”
“I SAID ARFTER ENJOYABAWL, NOT BEFORE!”
“I want one NOW! He might not be here THEN!!”
Gordon was well aware that Kieran could keep this up all day.
“OH, ALL RIGHT THEN, THERE! She shoved some money into his greedy little paw. “GO AND GET YER BLEEDIN’ ICE CREAM!” Several adults within earshot shuddered and turned away.
Kieran handed one of the cones filled with Mr Whippy’s creamy concoction to Dean. They smirked their self-satisfied way through the car-park entrance, ready to take their first triumphant licks. Kieran already had his tongue out and his eyes closed in anticipation. Gordon couldn’t help himself. From twenty-five metres away, he sent a quick pulse of power through Kieran’s elbow. It was just enough to drive the ice cream past his mouth and up his nose.