Sophie T made a small noise of distress and put her hand on Amelia’s arm.
‘Oh, sorry, Soph,’ said Amelia, immediately contrite. ‘I’m being so rude. You’re the guest – would you like to shoot the bad guys instead?’
Walking back onto the hotel grounds, the moon was bright and indifferent above them as Charlie tried to help Sophie T look on the bright side.
‘I know the last part was a bit rough,’ he said, ‘but at least you were totally unconscious for most of it.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ she retorted.
‘Yeah, with the petrifying ray and stuff. You weren’t aware of anything then.’
‘I was paralysed, Charles, not asleep.’
‘You mean –?’
‘I saw and heard and felt everything. And it was the worst experience in the world.’
‘Oh, no …’ Charlie groaned.
‘Yes, that’s awful,’ said Amelia. ‘You must have been so frightened.’
‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘Not that – but, Tom saw me look under his eye-patch!’
‘Ugh, Charlie,’ Amelia scolded, and shoved him in the shoulder.
‘So, what do we do now?’ Sophie T asked, a little cautiously. ‘I mean, what do we say to your parents?’
‘Ah,’ Amelia grimaced. ‘About that … you see, they sort of …’ There was no way around it. ‘They know everything. About aliens and stuff.’
Sophie T goggled at them both, then turned to stare back at Foxy behind them, and Grawk who was walking very closely behind him, escorting the miserable scientist as his prisoner. ‘So,’ she said slowly, ‘this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened to you.’
‘No,’ said Charlie.
‘You knew there were aliens all this time?’
‘Yes,’ said Amelia.
‘And you still invited me for a sleepover!’
‘Well,’ Amelia didn’t know the right answer to that. ‘It was my birthday … and I really like you … and …’
‘Plus, we had no idea this was going to happen,’ Charlie finished. ‘Amelia only planned the cake, pizza, and movie parts.’
Sophie T shuddered and crossed her arms tightly.
‘Sophie?’ Amelia said gently.
Sophie T didn’t answer.
‘Well, she asked the right question, anyway,’ said Charlie. ‘What do we do now? Go back to the hotel?’
Amelia looked up the hill and imagined her bed still warm and waiting for her. ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘We’d better go down to Tom’s with Grawk and Foxy.’
‘But what about –’ He nodded at Sophie T.
Amelia shrugged. ‘It’s a bit late to worry about secrets now.’
To their relief, all the lights were on in Tom’s cottage when they arrived, and it was full of people. Tom was sitting up with a mug of black tea between his hands, the crocheted blanket still around his shoulders, and glowering. Mum was on the phone (the cord clumsily repaired with electrical tape) and asking impatient questions, and James was poring over a stack of re-organised charts. Mary was in the kitchen, closest to the front door, and so the first person to see them arrive. ‘They’re alive!’ she gasped, waving across the room to get the others’ attention.
‘As usual,’ said Charlie, squirming to get away as his mum swooped in to try to kiss him.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ cried Mum, ignoring the muffled voice coming out of the phone. ‘If only there was some way to let Dad and Lady Naomi know you’re safe.’
‘Guess what?’ said Amelia. ‘We’ve got Grawk back. He saved us again.’
‘Where is he?’ James asked.
‘Grawk?’ Amelia called.
Foxy came in first, cowering a bit.
‘You!’ said Mum, slamming down the phone.
Grawk padded in after him, and everyone sucked in a breath, shocked.
‘Did you do this to him?’ Mum asked Foxy.
‘No!’
‘It’s true,’ said Amelia. ‘Grawk was like this when we first saw him. It’s because he’s growing up on Earth, or something.’
Mum and Tom swapped anxious looks.
‘Amelia …’
‘It’s not his fault,’ she said, and without thinking she stepped close to him and laid a protective hand on his neck. As her fingers sank into his velvety fur, she realised this was the first time she’d touched him since before he’d disappeared. And from the looks on everyone’s faces, they were just as uncertain of Grawk as she was. True, he’d defended them from harm, and she was sure he was still basically good, but did that mean he was safe? Maybe not.
She felt him vibrating under her hand, and when she heard the deep grinding noise, she nearly snatched it away. Then she recognised that this was his purr, not his growl, and she dared to scratch him behind the jaw.
‘See?’ she said, trying to sound more positive than she felt. ‘It’s still Grawk. He’s just bigger.’
‘We’re going to have to tell Ms Rosby,’ said Mum.
‘Oh, but –’
‘She’s already on her way,’ Mum spoke over her. ‘As soon as we saw your beds were empty, Dad called Tom. And then, with his line being cut, we knew there was trouble. Lady Naomi had heard a scream, and she and Dad went out to see if they could find where you’d gone. That just left me and Mary in the hotel, so of course we called Control. At the very least,’ she smiled sadly at Sophie T, ‘we have to own up to letting one more person into the gateway club.’
Sophie T looked warily at all the faces suddenly turned to her. Amelia felt thoroughly bad for her. Sophie T had been so worried about being laughed at, but they’d done worse than that – they’d lied to her. And for all her fears of being left out, now she was stuck on the inside of a secret she’d never wanted to know.
James seemed to recognise what Sophie T was going through. ‘Come on,’ he said, getting up from the charts and coming over to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll make you some really sweet tea and you can ask me anything you like until this starts to make sense to you.’
Sophie T nodded forlornly and followed him to Tom’s kitchen. ‘I don’t think this will ever make sense.’
‘Maybe not,’ James admitted. ‘But after a while, your brain will sort of stretch enough to fit it in. You’ll see.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Sophie T, tiptoeing past Grawk with a little shudder. But when she got to the kitchen, Mary wrapped her up in a huge motherly hug, and fussed over her.
‘Oh, you poor child, oh, manari mou, come and tell me all about it.’
Charlie rolled his eyes in sympathy, but Amelia saw Sophie T snuggle deeper into Mary’s arms, and thought Sophie T was in just the right place.
‘As for you,’ Mum said to Foxy, ‘you’re under house arrest until Ms Rosby gets here.’
Foxy huffed at the news, but didn’t look too sorry to be taken out of Grawk’s custody.
She handcuffed Foxy’s wrist to the leg of Tom’s desk, and then turned to Amelia. ‘We really are going to have to do something about
Grawk, cookie.’
Amelia stood closer still to the warm black body, amazed at both his familiarity (his smell, the softness of his fur) and his newness (he sat down, and his head was now level with Amelia’s), but determined not to let her doubts show.
‘Mum, without Grawk we all would have been killed, captured or lost in a repeating time bubble about six times already. We don’t need to do anything about him. We should just be glad we’ve got him.’
‘I am,’ said Mum. ‘I’m grateful to him every day, and I know he’s kept us safe ever since he got here. But how long can we keep him safe? How big will he eventually grow? And how will we – no, don’t worry about keeping him secret – how will we even keep him fed?’
‘I don’t know.’ Amelia had never felt so miserable so soon after surviving an adventure.
‘Yes!’ said Mary, at the mention of feeding. ‘These children have been out all night – they must be starving. Let’s take them back to the hotel so I can get something warm into this little bird.’ She gave Sophie T a protective squeeze, and Sophie T smiled shyly.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Charlie. ‘What about Amelia and me? Aren’t we little birds, too?’
Mary grumbled at him in Greek, and Charlie laughed in reply.
‘Hang on,’ said James. ‘Aren’t we forgetting something? Was this guy,’ he pointed at Foxy, ‘the only alien out there tonight?’
Sophie T shivered, and Amelia said, ‘No, there were some other guys, but trust us: they’re not going anywhere.’
‘Stunned and netted,’ Charlie nodded. ‘And Foxy was nice enough to show us how to turn the guns up to maximum, so we know they won’t escape.’
‘OK,’ said Mum, looking a little stunned herself at the answer, but happy enough to accept it. ‘Mary’s right. Tom, if you’re OK baby-sitting this fellow, we’ll take the kids back up to bed. And –’ she added quickly, as Charlie opened his mouth to protest, ‘– get them something to eat.’
Heading out of the cottage, Amelia and Charlie walked with Sophie T, one on either side of her, just in case she still felt bothered by the dark, even with Grawk, James and two mums with them.
‘I really am sorry,’ Amelia said again. ‘I promise you, tonight wasn’t on purpose.’
‘And I’m sorry about my mum,’ said Charlie. ‘She can be such a pain.’
To Amelia’s surprise, Sophie T giggled. ‘You should have heard what she said about you, Charles.’
‘Huh?’
‘In the kitchen,’ Sophie T went on, sounding quite pleased with herself. ‘She told me you were the naughtiest, most disobedient, reckless boy she’d ever met in her life, and it would serve you right if you ended up eaten by space monsters one day.’
‘That traitor!’ Charlie yelped. ‘My own mother! Well, I suppose you loved hearing that even my mum agrees with you that I’m an idiot.’
‘But I don’t agree with her,’ said Sophie T.
Charlie’s jaw dropped.
Sophie T went on, ‘I told her you were very smart and very brave and it wasn’t just Grawk who saved us. You did too, Charlie.’
He gaped at her. Amelia couldn’t believe what she was hearing either.
‘Seriously?’ he asked. ‘I thought you thought I was stupid.’
Sophie T snorted and tossed back her hair. ‘Oh, Charles, you really don’t know anything, do you?’
The Dark Giants
published in 2016 by
Hardie Grant Egmont
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com.au
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
A CiP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia
eISBN 9781743584163
Text copyright © 2016 Chris Morphew, Rowan McAuley and David Harding
Illustration and design copyright © 2016 Hardie Grant Egmont
Illustration by Craig Phillips
Book cover design by Latifah Cornelius
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