Magnus and the Jewelled Book of the Universe

by S. L. Browne

  Chapter 5

  “You can’t tell them facts,” said Marlo through gritted teeth. “They can’t cope with facts. You just have to tell them they can’t do it.” They were sitting on a wall in the sunshine by the bank. Someone had brought them a cold drink and some vegetable paste sandwiches.

  “I am amazed you have managed to get away with it for so long. You taught me facts, why not them?” Magnus was staggered. The people were like children. No wonder that at the first sign of something interesting, they fell for it. “Is that what you did on the other Earth, just shouted at the humans?” he asked.

  “Well, yes, at first; but then I realised things were out of control so I suggested recycling and clean energy, but things happened faster than I could cope with. If I was in England and there was an invention in Italy, by the time I got there it was too late. Look at here, for instance. They have put the children in the mines already. It took the other Earth a lot longer to do that.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem,” Magnus suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you saw how much they liked their handbags and their shiny things; they aren’t going to give them up now. Maybe, before things get out of hand, you should start them off with technology that will ensure the planet isn’t spoiled. The next thing they will want is some kind of vehicle. If I were you, I’d suggest a bicycle. For long distance travel what about a hot air balloon?” Magnus folded his arms and looked at the old man’s puzzled and hurt face and let his wise words sink in. “I know you feel they have let you down, but tending vegetables day in, day out must be very boring after a while. I have to agree with them there. And new inventions are exciting. Remember when you came home with your new computer? We couldn’t get you off it for six weeks.”

  There was silence for a few moments and then Marlo smiled.

  “Maybe you are right. My method has certainly been a failure. It wouldn’t do any harm to find a compromise. How are we going to power these electric bikes?”

  Magnus shrugged. “What about making some generators and rechargeable batteries? What about building some wind or water turbines?”

  Marlo jumped up, enraged again. “I will not have those vile things spoiling the countryside!”

  “Well, you have to make a compromise somewhere,” said Magnus. “Birds, bees and butterflies; or windmills. It’s up to you.”

  They were disturbed by the arrival of a recently extracted Finlo on a stretcher. The crowd brought him straight to Marlo, who looked him over and prescribed bed rest, herbal tea, a few plasters, and no more mining. The small child was carried home by his anxious parents, who, Magnus noted, were wearing some lovely new shoes.

  A large man, wearing a gold trimmed tunic, came over to Marlo and introduced himself. “My name is Figus. I am the manager of the mine. I believe you told these people to shut it down. I am afraid that is not going to happen.”

  Marlo, who was in no mood to be spoken to by a jumped-up servant of the Manges, took out his knobbled stick and bonked Figus smartly on the head. The unconscious man was removed from the dusty floor and Marlo ordered the people to close the mine directly, because there were other ways to extract gold that didn’t involve children, and he would call a meeting tomorrow morning and give them instructions on how they could have their lovely new things and look after the planet as well.

  This pleased the people of the town very much and they drifted away, chattering in groups and showing off their new purchases with renewed enthusiasm. Out of the corner of his eye, Magnus spotted the Troodon lurking in the bushes nearby. He threw a few pieces of sandwich in its direction and it gobbled them up enthusiastically, only to spit them out again immediately with a disgusted snort. Then it wriggled into a small hole under the bushes and went to sleep.

  “They are quite tame,” said Marlo, who noticed what he had done. “I think you have a friend for life.” Marlo stood up. “I have to get that sign down. Come on, Magnus, help me. That word is an insult to my old eyes.” Magnus bent over and let Marlo use his back as a step. Marlo climbed up the wall of the bank and started bashing the sign with his knobbled stick. It fell off eventually and broke into three pieces.

  “I feel better already,” he said.

  “I wonder where my parents are,” said Magnus, who looked around sadly. He had hoped they would have heard he was here by now.

  “Hmm, yes, it is puzzling,” said Marlo, dropping down and brushing building dust off his tunic. “It’s not like them. Come on, let’s go and see if we can find them.”

  They walked in a southerly direction along the straight main road and stopped at a small house with an overgrown garden. It looked neglected and abandoned.

  “How strange,” muttered Marlo, and then he spied a neighbour weeding his vegetable patch and went over to find out what had happened.

  “They weren’t happy with the mine and the factory. After a year or so they left. They said they were going to find the stranger who came that day and try to stop him before he did any more damage.” The old neighbour leaned on the fence, trowel in hand, and chatted happily. “Are you their son? My, haven’t you grown up. You were just a chick when I last saw you. You used to chase butterflies in my garden and once you caught a lizard and carried it home by its tail to your mum. I heard the screams.” The neighbour chuckled and Magnus smiled.

  Magnus couldn’t remember, but he did feel a warm pride that his parents had left to try and stop Murdamond. He wished he could remember.

  “We will find them. Don’t worry, Magnus,” Marlo said gently. “Just as soon as we have sorted out this mess, we will go ourselves and stop this once and for all.”

  Magnus nodded, but he still felt sad.

  Marlo went through the little gate and into the overgrown garden and wandered around, kicking stones and muttering to himself.

  “What are you doing?” Magnus asked. “Please don’t do that to my garden.”

  “Ah! Here it is!” cried Marlo, and he picked up a long bronze key. “Come on, let’s go inside. We have nowhere else to stay. I am sure your parents wouldn’t mind.”

  Magnus suddenly felt excited. They would be going into his home. The one where he was hatched.

  He started to walk towards Marlo when he was interrupted by a shout. A group of agitated men came rushing over. They stopped in front of the gate.

  “We think you should come quickly; there has been a disaster. We have found three dead Spinosauruses and we think it has been done on purpose.”

  “Where?” asked Marlo.

  “To the west of here. And someone says there is news of a great building plan to the far north. There is activity in the Telux region, by the sea. They say someone is building a huge house, with a swimming pool. All the dinosaurs have been cleared from the area. They have either been moved or killed,” one of the younger men said. His words were hurried and he was clearly distressed.

  “Well, that is terrible news,” said Marlo. He sat on a large rock outside Magnus’ house. “It looks like Murdamond is here to stay. The Telux region is at least two months’ walk from here and winter will soon be upon us. We can’t risk going north till the spring. However, we will come and look at these poor dinosaurs. Come on, Magnus,” Marlo urged him. “I think you might be interested in this.”

  Magnus was very interested; however, he was also very unhappy. The Spinosaurus was his favourite dinosaur. He wanted to see living ones, not dead ones. And it looked like these ones had been murdered. Magnus was starting to dislike this Murdamond character with all his heart.

  Chapter 6

  It took Marlo, Magnus and three others half an hour to walk to the place where the three dead Spinosauruses lay. It was the saddest sight that Magnus had seen in his short life.

  The dinosaurs lay in a meadow filled with colourful wild flowers and very tall trees. Butterflies danced over the carcasses of two adults and a
baby. Whoever the killer was had wiped out a whole family. Magnus felt sick with disgust. He walked over to the larger of the two adults and saw the brightly-coloured frill and the long beak-like snout filled with small, sharp teeth. There was a small wound near the dinosaur’s eye and it looked suspiciously like a bullet hole. Magnus stroked its hard, cold skin and two large tears welled up in his blue-green eyes. He was angry too and it felt difficult to hold in the rage, but he tried because he knew it wouldn’t do any good to let it out. The beasts were dead and nothing could bring them back to life.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the little dinosaur move. It was ever so slight, but he ran over to look. Yes! It was definitely moving slightly. He bravely laid his head on the baby’s chest and there, ever so faintly, he felt the soft tick tick tick of a tiny heartbeat.

  “Quick! Marlo, the baby is alive!”

  The men sprang into action. Marlo, who had brought his medicine bag, set to work and looked the baby over. “I think it is just stunned. Maybe the mother knocked it as she fell. Look at the bump on its head, there.” Marlo pointed, and sure enough Magnus could see a large red swelling above the baby’s eye.

  “We need to get it back to the village,” Magnus said. “Can we carry it?”

  The other men looked concerned. “What if it wakes up? Even the babies have a wicked bite.” None of them seemed keen to go near it, never mind pick it up.

  Magnus had an idea. He took some tourniquet cloth from Marlo’s bag and tied up the small beak so if the dinosaur awoke it wouldn’t nip them. Then he asked the men to help him make a stretcher out of two large branches and a huge leaf he found on the floor that had dropped from the very tall trees that grew in the area. The leaf was so big the little dinosaur could easily fit on it, with room to spare.

  The stretcher took a little while to make, and while it was being completed, Marlo and Magnus went for a walk to try and find clues to what had happened.

  “They look like they have been shot with a gun,” Magnus said grimly.

  “Yes, it looks like it could be the work of a Mange. They must be about, but there won’t be many and he or she will be well hidden. They don’t like to come out into the open unless they are in large groups, for protection, you see?”

  “You mean they could be watching us now?”

  “Very probably.”

  Suddenly out of the bushes swarmed some large bird-like dinosaurs that Magnus didn’t recognise, a huge flock of them, and they waddled downhill into some bushes, making honking noises as they went.

  “There must be a lake through there. The Spinosauruses are fish eaters,” said Magnus.

  Marlo nodded.

  “Yes, it is Lake Marlo. They named it after me,” he grinned. “Come on, let’s get the patient back to the hospital. We have a special place in the village where we care for all sorts of injured animals. We’re used to this sort of work.”

  They carried the baby Spinosaurus back along the track, every one of them nervously keeping an eye out for large predatory dinosaurs. Marlo said that the lake area was the most dangerous place to be. All the dinosaurs of every type congregated there because all the dinosaurs needed a drink from time to time.

  The baby dinosaur stirred occasionally and made low, sad whimpering noises, but it didn’t open its eyes. Magnus stroked its head and whispered soothing words of comfort, and the baby seemed to calm down when he did that. He was thrilled that the baby was alive.

  At the hospital there was great concern. The three surgeons set about helping it straight away. “It’s a male,” said Luna, the chief surgeon. “Look at his crest; it’s starting to change colour. Baby Spinosauruses have downy grey frills and then the little feathers drop off to reveal the colours underneath. This is an especially beautiful pattern. It looks like a moth’s wing.”

  “So, that’s made up my mind. I will name him Moth,” said Magnus.

  “We don’t usually give them names,” said Luna, “but as he’s an orphan you can give him a name if you like. I hope we’ll have him back at the lake after the winter. We will need to keep him warm and safe until he is fully recovered.”

  Suddenly the little dinosaur opened one eye and the surgeons stepped back in fright, but Magnus was not afraid. He stroked the Spinosaurus and it didn’t bite him, or even try to nip him. It actually licked him and nuzzled Magnus’s arm with its snout.

  “Well, I never!” said Luna. “I don’t think I have ever seen anything like that before.”

  “Didn’t you know?” said Marlo softly. “The boy is a Trancer. That’s how we knew he was special.”

  Magnus didn’t know what a Trancer was, but he knew something: he loved this baby Spinosaurus and the Spinosaurus rather liked him too.

  *

  When they finally left the hospital it was growing dark and Magnus’s stomach gave a low growl.

  “Oops, someone’s hungry,” laughed Marlo. Magnus realised he hadn’t eaten anything since the sandwiches earlier that morning. Pattering feet and a short squeak alerted him to the fact that they were being followed. The little Troodon was back and he bounded near to Magnus. It started to jump and flick its tail.

  Magnus laughed. “Come on, Frolic,” he said. “Let’s go and find something to eat.”

  Marlo smiled. “Do you know what a Trancer is, Magnus?” Magnus shook his head. “It means that no animal will harm you. They are yours to command. It is quite a gift and I only know of two. Francesco from Assisi, and yourself. Use it well, Magnus. It is an amazing power to have.”

  “And quite useful too,” Magnus added, his eyes shining, “in a land filled with man-eating dinosaurs.”

  They both laughed.

  “Come with me,” said Marlo. “Before I take you back to your house, I will take you to a good, friendly place that serves hot, tasty food.” That was just what Magnus wanted. The two friends, followed by the small dinosaur leaping and snapping at passing butterflies, wandered along the small road and back into the village.

  They did not see the tall, dark-haired stranger, with the scar on his left cheek, hidden beneath a silver cloak in the bushes behind them. Neither did they see him place a short message into a small tube and tie it to a little Pterodactyl’s leg. “Fly fast and swift to the Master,” he whispered. “I think he needs to know about this boy and his unusual powers without delay.”

  The Pterodactyl made no sound. It had been trained well. Silently, on its thin, leathery wings, it soared into the evening sky and headed northwards. The stranger in the silvery cloak slipped away into the forest and disappeared.

  Chapter 7

  Magnus woke up in a small bed still wearing his clothes and covered in a faded grey blanket. He had no idea how he got there. The night before was a blur. He vaguely remembered eating a hot, tasty vegetable stew and baked potatoes in a noisy room filled with laughing people. It seemed as if the day had caught up with him and he had nodded off at the table, because he couldn’t remember anything else.

  He heard clattering and banging in another room somewhere, so he stretched and climbed out of bed and looked around. A slender crack in the shutters allowed the morning sunlight to ooze into the room, so he could just see that he was in a small, tidy bedroom. Reaching up, he opened the shutters and he was momentarily blinded, but as his eyes adjusted he saw that the room was a child’s bedroom. The walls were painted a soft yellow and there was a little wooden chest of drawers and a homemade dinosaur mobile dangled from the ceiling.

  Magnus had a feeling that this, at one time, had been his room.

  He found Marlo in a little kitchen, frying the breakfast vegetables in a pan on top of a little stove. Magnus saw that the old man was frowning.

  “I miss fried hens’ eggs,” he muttered. “Even though eating an egg took some getting used to.”

  “Is there nothing we can eat other than vegetables and fruit?” asked Magnu
s, equally as unhappy with a plate full of fried beans. “What about fish?”

  “I suppose there are fish in the lake, but fishing there is a dangerous pursuit. You could be gobbled up at any minute.”

  Magnus hadn’t thought about that.

  “No small mammals?”

  “Only that squirrel rodent thing that the Troodon ate.” Marlo cast a glance at Magnus, who shuddered at the thought.

  He went to look around his house. His breakfast of fried vegetables and rice could wait.

  It was a small cottage, with a couple of wooden chairs in the living room, plus a few vases, a couple of jars and trinkets on the windowsills and a colourful handmade rug laid on the floor in front of a little fireplace. He noticed some pictures on the wall. They were sketched in a type of thick black pencil. One was of a smiling baby with a cheeky face and hair that stuck up. He wondered who had drawn them, his mother or his father and, not for the first time, he wondered what they were like. He also wondered where they were. He really hoped they were safe.

  He found a larger bedroom with a double bed and a little bathroom and that was it. So he wandered back to the kitchen and found Marlo deep in thought studying the Jewelled Book of the Universe which he held up open in his left hand while he ate his vegetables with his right.

  For the first time Magnus took a proper look at the book. It was an exquisite cover. There were jewels of every description covering every spare bit of it. They sparkled in the morning sunlight and cast coloured lights on the ceiling and the window.

  “Who wrote the Jewelled Book of the Universe?” Magnus asked. “And what’s it about?”

  Marlo was jolted out of his thoughts suddenly. He closed the book and handed it to Magnus.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “No one knows who made it, or what it says. I was studying it then, to see if I could decipher it. I think it is more of a key than a book of information, as such. It seems to do the right thing at the right time, if you understand me.” Marlo smiled and watched the boy study the jewels. Magnus was fascinated. “The cover holds every jewel that can be found in the universe. The stones are impossible to remove. The book can’t be burned or lost or stolen. It turns up in the right place with its keeper when required. At the moment I am its keeper, but I sense my time is nearly up. I think it rather likes you.”