She looked quickly around to left and right, then nodded. She pulled an oblong metal box out of a pocket he couldn’t see. It looked complicated to him, lights flashing and winking and throwing colour on her otherwise pale face. She pressed a button, and with a deep fizzing noise, a slide made of blue pulsing energy appeared, leading from the slab of blackness to the ground. The girl checked again to see if anyone was watching, then-
‘Wheeeeeeeeee.’
She slid down, giggling and gurgling all the way, kicking long, probably-girl-person legs in the air. Once she reached the bottom, she stood up quickly and pressed a button on the device. The slide disappeared. She looked serious now, her grin gone. Then she waved the device around, left and right, and spoke.
The Green Man, who had excellent hearing, listened in wonder.
‘Nice going, Alpha. You’ve put us down in the wrong zone. There are no orbs here.’
Despite his powerful, branch-like antennae ears, The Green Man couldn’t quite hear the response from ‘Alpha’, but the girl frowned, whatever it was.
‘Well, next time, maybe I will,’ she said. ‘Right, let’s get started. What? No no, we’re here now. I’m not trusting you to do shorts hops. You’ll probably hop us all the way into the next galaxy by mistake.’
Again, there was a pause while the girl listened to the reply.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘You can talk about quantum fluctuations in the dimensional and spatial harmonics and the planet being “bigger on the inside” till the g’zunk come home. We all know your problem. Honestly, what kind of bio-mech doesn’t know left from right?’
There was another pause, then-
‘D’you mind? I’m trying to be all official and important here? Right. Commander’s log, planetary phase, first entry. We’ve landed on the planet designated the Garden, though in the wrong location, due to a navigational error by bio-mech Grey Alpha Squiggle Wiiirm 456. Am surveying the area to discover and re- Yes, you did.’
The Green Man narrowed his eyes behind his open window, wondering what she was talking about.
‘Are we where we’re supposed to be? Have we made contact with the orbs? Thank you, didn’t think so. So, I have to put it in the log, don’t I, or they’ll only ask questions. Now quiet, I’m nearly finished. Am surveying the area to discover and re-establish contact with the orbs. There appears to be a dwelling of some kind here, which is strange because there wasn’t meant to be any significant life on this planet at all. Anyway, will investigate. Am hoping to make contact with some examples of the dominant life-form. Log ends.’
The Green Man darted back from his window, looked around his kitchen. The yellow paint had spilled quite far over his wooden floor. He sighed. The quick way wasn’t the right way to do things like this, but with his visitor intending to knock on his door any moment, there was no alternative. He reached out some roots and touched the paint-spattered floorboards. The paint bubbled, turned to a soft yellow wisp of gas, and disappeared. He closed his eyes and blew out his cheeks, and the paint that had covered him simply dissolved, as he put out his brightest bark, and forced fresh foliage out of the top of his head and along his shoulders. The kitchen still looked a little too sparse to receive new friends, but he decided, on this occasion, they would have to excuse him.
He’d no sooner decided that than his door went ZZZAP and disappeared. The girl with blonde hair and strange violet eyes stepped over the threshold and held up a hand.
‘Hail, Gardling,’ she said. ‘I bring you greetings from the Astarian High Council. I am Commander of the Scout Ship Gol HuR 87.’ She waved her little box of tricks in his direction. The box spoke in a soft, velvet-covered voice. ‘Arboreal life form with regenerative capabilities and some highly developed folkloric undercurrents. Basically, a tree-oid. Sorry to disappoint you, but it looks like we’ve discovered the Planet of the Woodentops this time.’
‘Hail, noble tree-oid,’ said the girl, quickly hiding the machine behind her back.
‘Err...well, yes. Erm...hail,’ said the Green Man. ‘Around these parts, we say hello.’
‘Hello,’ said the girl with gusto and without a second thought. ‘Are tree-oids the dominant life form in the Garden?’
‘Err...’ said the Green Man. ‘Well, I don’t know about dominant. Come to that, I’m not entirely sure about tree-oids. I’m called the Green Man.’ He extended an arm-branch, so his hand went out towards her.
‘Hello, the Green Man,’ she said, grinning, but ignoring the hand. ‘My name’s Celeste. I don’t suppose you’ve seen any orbs lying about the place, have you?’
3
Old Tom was a potato farmer. In fact, he was both a potato and a farmer, and he worked the land down at Mill Farm. He didn’t want for much in life, potatoes generally not being given too much in the way of ambition, but when he’d seen the teacup streak across the Garden sky, he’d been seized with a strong desire. A desire to dig up the starball he’d found.
Most of Old Tom’s life, since the days when he’d been Young Tom and had grown the roots and shoots that served him as arms and legs, had been spent digging. He’d dig by day and he’d dig by night. He’d dig by feel and he’d dig by sight. Many of the Garden’s farmers hired Old Tom to work their land, because most of them didn’t like digging at all, and digging was Old Tom’s thing.
That meant he’d spent most of his days looking down at the ground, as spade or blade turned the earth inside out, as he dropped in seeds and covered them up and dug another hole before the last one had settled. He looked up if you spoke to him directly of course, and over the years he’d learned to be as sociable as a potato ever needs to be; but most of the time, if you talked to Old Tom for more than a few minutes, you got the feeling he was getting fidgety, and his eyes would start to drift to the floor, and you just knew that his mind had gone back to his favourite occupation.
Which made it all the more strange that a week before, while much of the Garden was going about its business, Old Tom had looked up suddenly. Walking home from a visit to Brangle the elf, he’d been meandering by moonlight round the outskirts of Blue Dragon Forest when he’d felt a change in the wind, and as he looked up, he’d seen what looked like lots of new stars in the dark sky, twinkling like diamonds and rubies and a rainbow of other colours, all winking at him to keep their secrets. And then, from somewhere in the middle of the jewel-coloured stars, he’d seen something coming towards him, something falling out of the sky, like a big dead bird with no wings to fly. Old Tom had run, as fast as his wrinkly old roots would carry him, away from the falling star, but it had overtaken him and hit the ground with a boom that knocked him off his feet and sent his finest straw hat spinning.
When he’d remembered which way was up, he’d seen the trench the star had made when it fell—it was about forty feet long and disappeared some six feet into the ground. And there, stuck at the bottom of the trench, had been a glowing silver orb, steaming hot and blinking with yellow lights that flickered a little while, then died.
‘Well that’s right peculiar an’ no mistake,’ he’d muttered to himself, stepping into the trench to take a closer look at the fallen star. The steam had stopped wisping up into the night off the orb’s surface, and he was able to get close to it without any danger.
‘Fallin’ stars,’ he’d said, rubbing his brow. Then a thought had struck him. Ragbag, the scarecrow of West Field, was always bragging about the strange things he’d seen, or found—a frog with three legs or a conker he swore was as big as his head, or some such stuff and nonsense. Bet he ain’t never seen a fallen star before though, Old Tom had thought, smiling as he calculated how much rosemary ale he’d be able to winkle out of the scarecrow for a look at a thing like that.
Without another thought, he’d buried the orb right there in its trench, getting a good hard bit of digging done in the process, and taken note of where it was, between the two big trees, fifty paces from the sign that told people that trespassers ran the risk of being eaten or ro
asted by Sagar, the Blue Dragon.
But truth be told, Old Tom hadn’t given the orb much more thought. He’d meant to brag about it to Ragbag the next time he’d seen him, but the thing about having potato where a brain should be was that even things you especially wanted to remember sometimes leaked out and disappeared until something particularly reminded you of them all over again.
Old Tom had felt the wind change again that morning, and had looked up in time to see a giant flying teacup streak across the sky, heading for Mill Bottom and the Green Man’s nook. And then he’d remembered his fallen star, and been gripped with a certainty that he should go and dig it up. That this mysterious orb had something to do with the flying crockery that had just arrived in his world seemed obvious, for it wasn’t every day—or even every year—that the skies surrounding the Garden had produced so many strange portents.
‘Somethin’s afoot,’ he muttered as he stomped towards the burning-trespassers sign again. ‘Somethin’s a great big stinky-socked foot, so it is.’
When he saw the large round hole in the ground where his fallen star should have been, he frowned and pushed his straw hat further up on the brown-skinned dome of his head.
‘Stinky blinkin’ socks,’ he said, staring into the hole. ‘Some beggar’s nicked me star.’
__________
Alditha sighed and pulled her eyebrows together. Other than an itch she couldn’t quite reach, there was nothing more irritating than knowing she knew something, but not being able to remember what it was. She stared at the bookshelves, hoping they would reveal the riddle of the red star with wings, but the harder she concentrated, the further away she seemed to be from finding the memory. She knew it was an old thing, somehow associated with a book with yellowed, oddly smelling pages, rather than anything she’d seen in the last few years. But when she tried to reach out and touch the memory, it skittered away like a mouse under the floorboards of her mind. Her shoulders sagged.
‘You can talk again,’ she said.
Harper said nothing.
‘I said you can talk again.’
‘Nothin’ to say, particularly.’
‘Oh, don’t sulk,’ she said, reaching out a finger and scratching him under the chin. He resisted for a moment, then turned his head, to let her get to just the right spot. ‘Maybe if I saw it for myself,’ she pondered, ‘it might trigger the memory.’
Harper shuddered. ‘It’s Skoros, I tell you. He’s up to something devious. Why does nobody believe me?’
‘Oh I don’t disbelieve you,’ said Alditha. ‘It just doesn’t seem his style, that’s all. He’s always been one for grand gestures, granted. But flying teacups? Hmm.’ She paused and thought, placing a long finger onto each side of her head as if for inspiration. ‘Okay then,’ she said suddenly, having made up her mind. ‘Guess what? We’re going to pay the Green Man a visit today. Won’t that be nice for him?’
‘Erm,’ said Harper. ‘He mentioned something about polite guests sending messages ahead of time, so their hosts can tidy up the place and make sure to get in some strawberry marshmallows and lemon curd biscuits.’
Alditha raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m a witch,’ she said. ‘The normal rules don’t apply to me.’
‘I shouldn’t think the normal rules would dare,’ said Harper without thinking.
Alditha grinned a broad grin. ‘Good.’
Harper flew out of the library, heading back towards the kitchen. ‘I suppose you’re going to make me go on that wretched broom of yours again, are you?’
‘Only way to travel.’ Alditha called after him. She went and stroked Dramm’s cover. ‘You be a good book while I’m gone, you understand?’ Dramm jumped up and down, nuzzling his cover against her hand. ‘Sssshhh,’ said Alditha softly.
‘Ha,’ said Harper. ‘So says you. I’m an owl, I am. Fearsome airborne king of the night. Well, morning. Well, y’know what I mean. I hate that broom. I swear it doesn’t like me.’
He stopped suddenly. Alditha kissed a fingertip and planted it softly on Dramm’s cover. ‘Be good,’ she whispered.
‘Alditha,’ cried Harper. ‘Alditha, come here. You’re really gonna wanna see this.’
She smiled. Harper was one of the dearest friends she had, but he did get his talons in a twist occasionally. ‘What is it?’ she called.
‘It’s...it’s...well, it looks familiar,’ he replied. Alditha rolled her eyes and went back to the kitchen, stopping suddenly when she saw it. The orb, the metal ball she’d found and had been trying to make sense of for days, had sprouted metal wings either side of its body and appeared to be hovering there, in her kitchen, without even needing to flap.
‘Hello,’ said Alditha when she’d recovered from the shock. ‘Can we...help you...at all?’
The yellow lights on the orb flashed and it made a chittering sound.
‘Is that a yes?’ Alditha asked.
The orb made some more meaningless noises, then turned and shot out through the open kitchen window, at a speed Harper could only envy.
‘Damn,’ said Alditha. She grabbed the handle of her broomstick out of the miniature cone of power in the corner, barely stopping to recognize her cleverness in putting it on charge overnight. She grabbed her hat from the hatstand and jammed it firmly on her head, where, if it had the sense it was stitched with, it would stay until she took it off. She ran out of the door, threw the broomstick in the air and wasn’t in the least surprised when it hovered there. She jumped up and threw a leg over the broomstick, crouching low over the handle for take-off. ‘C’mon Harper, before it gets away,’ she said, and the owl reluctantly perched on her shoulder.
‘Please state your destination,’ said the broom in a neutral, wooden tone.
‘I don’t have a destination,’ said Alditha. ‘Just, oh I don’t know, just follow that orb.’
The broom slid forward, slowly at first, then it rose higher and higher into the air, moving faster all the time.
__________
‘Can’t,’ said Skoros, scowling. ‘What do you mean I can’t?’ His wand-hand twitched.
Gunkin swallowed, regretting for the thousandth time listening to his mother. ‘Henchmaning’s a respectable career for a goblin,’ she’d said, over and over again. ‘Plenty of prospects,’ she’d added. She’d been right of course. Being the henchman to a wizard like Skoros did bring plenty of prospects. It was positively brimming with the prospect of being turned into nothing more than a pair of boots and a wisp of smoke, for one thing. Then there was the prospect of having holes drilled into your head and being converted into a RoboGoblin. There were plenty of prospects of that, too.
Plenty of prospects. Thanks, Ma, thought Gunkin bitterly.
‘Well?’ Skoros demanded.
‘I didn’t mean “can’t”, as such, your magical eminence,’ Gunkin groveled. ‘You can chuck the Green Man in the furnace. I mean, course you can, someone as powerful as yourself. Only...’
‘Only what?’
Gunkin gulped. He felt the sweat prickle on the back of his neck. Goblins generally didn’t sweat—it wasn’t something they usually had a need for. But since entering Skoros’ service, Gunkin had discovered a talent for it.
‘Only, why would you do it, lord? I mean, you cut down an acre of ordinary trees, nobody says a word, nobody much notices. You burn fifty acres, who really cares? You burn The Green Man, and no-one’s really sure what happens. Y’know...he’s connected to the seasons, ain’t he? To regrowth and renewal and all that gubbins. You burn him up, who knows? Maybe all the trees die overnight. Maybe it stays Summer. Like, forever. Disturbs the fundamental...y’know...balance of things, dunnit?’
‘The fundamental...y’know...balance of things?’ Skoros scoffed. ‘Believe me, Gunkin, when my plans are activated, no-one will care about the fundamental y’know balance of things, ever again.’
‘Yeah, well, of course,’ said the purple goblin, still sweating. ‘When your plans get up and running that’s all well and good, your lordshi
p. But...till then?’
Skoros sighed. ‘Perhaps I should throw you in the furnace in his place.’
Gunkin laughed, a high-pitched, nervous, stuttering laugh. ‘Oh my lord, you’re in a fine fooling mood today, oh my word aren’t you though?’
‘Raark,’ said Razor.
Skoros tried to raise one eyebrow. It was something he’d never quite mastered, so both eyebrows raised at the same time, making him look more surprised than menacing. He sighed again. ‘Very well then. You, Gunkin, you personally, and you alone, will cut me down two acres of trees while I’m out investigating the new arrival in our world. Cut them, portion them, and feed them into the boiler. Do it by the time I return, or I’ll come looking for you. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Oh yes sir, your lordship, absolutely, clear as raindrops.’
‘Good then. See to it.’ Then he swept out, heading to the stables.
__________
‘Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh,’ squawked Harper, clinging on to Alditha’s shoulder for all his talons were worth. It was rare for Alditha’s broom to travel lightning fast, but she seemed determined to catch the orb, which was flying, still without having flapped its wings even once, some thirty feet ahead of them, zigzagging around and over trees and buildings. In the occasional moments when he took a break from being terrified for his life, he had the distinct feeling the orb was playing with them, like a game of Chase The Mouse, only where the mouse was in charge of the game.
Hanging on for dear life, Harper felt the night air surge around him. Alditha’s cloak streamed out behind and flapped about his face, threatening to knock him off his precarious perch. The owl nestled himself into the hollow of the witch’s slender back as they sped on, faster and faster, further north, towards Blue Dragon Forest.
Peering out from behind Alditha’s cloak, Harper saw the Garden change from a landscape of meadows, hills and open countryside mixed with the ornate lawns and flowerbeds of the South Garden, to one of unknown shapes and dimensions. Its magic worked deeper and stronger, and, suddenly, he could distinguish the broad treeline of Blue Dragon Forest ahead of them, merging with vast rivers and mountains, oceans and fairy castles. The interchanging masks of the Garden clung to the owl, and, for a moment, he felt like they were flying over unknown distant lands, wondrous and fair.
Aliens In My Garden Page 3
