__________
Alditha couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Trying not to worry about Harper and his quick exit, she had been circling the wizards’ castle for a good half an hour.
For all Harper’s warnings, she’d known Skoros since they were at school, before her magic had even introduced itself to her. Everybody’d expected Skoros to become a wizard of course, but she remembered him as a lanky, pale schoolboy, too unsure of himself to be noticed if he hadn’t been the son of one of the biggest wizarding families in the Garden. She’d sent a note when his father had died, had tried to express her sorrow for his loss.
He’d never acknowledged her letter.
She’d heard the rumours, the tittle-tattle that said he was involved in some unusual magic. From time to time, whole families of ferrets or birds or rabbits had come to her door, complaining that one of their number had been stolen away by ‘the lonely wizard’ and forced into magical slavery. Alditha wouldn’t believe it. She usually explained that sometimes, bad things happened to good ferrets. It didn’t seem fair to us when we loved those ferrets, or birds, or rabbits, because we felt the loss of them in our lives. But in the turning of the Great Wheel, everything was equal and everything made sense. Next year, new life would take the place of those we loved and the Wheel would turn again.
Now though, as she hovered at what was hopefully a safe distance from Skoros Castle, she wondered if there might not be something to the stories after all.
The castle, which, in memory of Skoros’ father, she privately still thought of as Subracken Castle, was built on a high peak, poking up through a mass of dark, thick trees that had always threatened to strangle its walls and turrets. Skoros’ great great grandfather had planted them, partly, it was said, because he liked to hunt things that went squeak and squished when he hit them, and a forest was the best place to find such creatures, and partly, it was said more loudly and by the old man himself, because if anyone had a quarrel with him they could go and get lost—and nowhere got you more thoroughly lost than a forest.
Alditha blinked. Anyone who had a quarrel with Skoros would have to work extra hard to get lost. The forest appeared to have been chopped down. There was not a single tree left within half an acre of Skoros Castle, meaning the wizard’s home stood cold and looked naked on its peak, like a schoolboy who’d forgotten his PE kit, and was standing there all knees and embarrassment while the landscape laughed at him.
As she watched, she saw a tree fall on the border between the forest and the naked landscape. A few minutes later, another followed it. A few minutes after that, a third fell.
Alditha raised an eyebrow at the mysterious falling trees, and steered the broom downwards to investigate.
__________
The Green Man was still listening, though he could hear nothing yet, despite his exceptional sense of hearing. However, Celeste seemed delighted with whatever it was she could hear. ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘Can it?’
The Green Man shrugged. He had no idea if it could be or not. But then, suddenly, he heard it too. It sounded like nothing he’d ever experienced in the Garden before.
There was groaning and wheezing and graunching and puffing and thudding and squealing and, probably, he thought, a whole range of sounds for which the Garden had never had to think up descriptions. And it was getting closer. Very fast.
It’s coming here, thought the Green Man with a sigh. More visitors.
If he was honest, the Green Man wasn’t happy about the idea. His stash of marshmallows and lemon curd biscuits was running dangerously low. But before he’d had long to admonish himself for the selfishness of that thought, the noise grew deafening. It added clanking and rumbling and hissing and grinding to its repertoire.
‘Excuse me,’ said the Green Man, moving past Celeste and going outside. She followed him quietly, waving her oblong instrument at the space where the door had been. With a zap that neither of them heard, the door reappeared.
The Green Man blinked. It was Skoros, but it was Skoros as the Green Man had never seen him before. He was sitting, high up on the back of a...a thing. It was a big, bronze, thing-that-definitely-wasn’t-a-horse. It had clearly been modelled on a horse—four legs, broad back, long neck, tail. But the degree to which this monstrosity wasn’t a horse was huge and mortifying. It was paneled in strips of bronze, with heavy rivets holding the strips together along its back and up its belly and chest. Where each of the legs joined the body were huge cogs that turned when it moved. Each of the beast’s knees was an intricate shining flywheel, with wires running round it, feeding into what looked like pistons underneath. There were other whirring and ticking and whizzing wheels and cogs along the length of its body, sometimes punching holes in the strips of bronze, sometimes seeming to join them together and turning like clockwork. The most disturbing way in which this thing was not a horse though was that it only had one half of a face. The half it did have had been moulded by someone who clearly thought they knew what a horse looked like, but really, really didn’t. And the other side—the empty side—was open to the air, showing pistons working inside the thing’s head. Skoros was perched precariously on the moving thing’s back, with his wizard’s robes tucked into his riding boots. He sneered down at the Green Man, and even further down at Celeste.
‘Hello, Skoros. Nice... erm... thing you’ve got here.’
‘It’s a horse,’ snapped Skoros.
The Green Man blinked at it again. ‘It really isn’t, you know.’
‘Its Horse 2.0,’ Skoros explained quickly. ‘Better than the original.’ He pulled a lever at the front of the saddle, and the Horse 2.0 reared up on its hind legs, with a creaking, metal-scraping noise that made the Green Man shudder. The enormous front hooves seemed to loom above his head.
One wrong move and they could trample me to matchwood, he thought.
Skoros twisted a dial and the Horse 2.0’s half-finished head raised. There was a horrible hissing sound, a gurgle, a dark, ominous bubbling noise, then twin jets of fire shot out of the horse’s nostrils, setting fire to some petunias, and leaving a dripping, oily smell where the flames hit.
Skoros laughed. ‘See? Better in every way.’
The Green Man’s eyes widened in sadness. ‘Unless...unless you like petunias,’ he babbled.
‘Oh, fab,’ said Celeste. ‘This is just...I mean, I haven’t seen a retro-biological construct built from hand in aaaages.’ The girl ran a hand up the Horse 2.0’s leg. ‘Mmm...bit clunky here and there, but I know how it is—you can’t get the parts, right?’ She looked up at Skoros, nodded at him. ‘’S’that why the face looks so weird? Ran out of plating, did you? Should try incorporating actual bio-elements next time. Trust me, bio-mechanoids are what all the universe is doing this millennium.’
Skoros straightened his spine, sitting stiffer in the saddle.
‘Love what you’ve done with the quirky shape though. I mean it’s not right, obviously, but still...’
‘Big words for a child who lives in a teacup,’ said Skoros.
‘Mmm,’ said Celeste, not listening, feeling her way around the horse, keeping a hand flat against it. ‘Loose rivet there. And your hull stress is all to pot. Ride this thing anywhere near top speed, it’ll shake itself to bits in about ten minutes. Mmm, what?’ She looked up. ‘Oh, the scout ship? Oh it’s not really a whatever-you-said. That’s just a randomly generated image, based on something native to this world. The Council orders us not to scare the local life forms. Oh that reminds me—have you seen any orbs around here recently. Metal? Round? Not in disguise? Erm...probably flying about making a nuisance of themselves? My name’s Celeste, by the way. Hello. What’s your name?’
Skoros was turning an unflattering shade of purple, infuriated at the child’s refusal to be intimidated by his machine. ‘I am Skoros. I am a wizard, thankyouverymuch, and I’ll thank you to keep your grubby little hands off my Horse 2.0. You,’ he demanded, pointing a thin finger at Celeste and narrowing his eyes. ‘Y
ou understand the magic of metal? Then you are my prisoner. Get up here.’ He twisted a handle, and with a grinding noise, the Horse 2.0 bent its knees, lowering to the ground.
Celeste blinked. ‘Well, that’s just rude,’ she said, and twiddled a lever, pointing her oblong instrument at the Horse. There was a strange squiggle of noise, then with an urgent release of steam from underneath its tail, the metal creature rose again.
‘Wait,’ yelled Skoros. ‘Stop. What are you doing?’ He pulled his corkscrew wand from his robe-arm and pointed it at Celeste’s head. ‘You are my prisoner.’
‘Don’t think so,’ she replied, and with an awful metal graunching noise, the Horse 2.0 began galloping backward the way it had come, Skoros’ yells of rage drifting back to them.
‘Stooooooop. Stooooooop, you metal...’
Celeste frowned at the Green Man. ‘Strange man.’
The Green Man thought about agreeing with her, but then thought better of it—you never knew who was listening.
Celeste went and crouched by the burned flowers. She waved her device at them, and it beeped, just once. ‘Alpha?’ she asked. There was a long moment of silence, then her headband glowed.
‘Thermic damage too extreme. Internal structures compromised beyond repair.’
Celeste nodded slowly. She stood up, faced the Green Man, cupped her hands and blew on them, as though blowing him a hundred sad kisses. ‘Sorry for your loss,’ she said. ‘Must have been the landing pulse beam that did it. Astaria is in your debt for their lives.’
The Green Man was about to say it was Skoros who had burned the petunias, but he stopped himself. There was something about Celeste’s solemnity that touched him, as though she understood the pain he felt.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I must get on. Clearly, the orbs are playing hard to get. I am glad I met you, Green Man.’ And she extended her hand to him again, then turned away before he could shake it, marching off down the road, consulting her device, and occasionally firing questions back to Alpha.
This, thought the Green Man, as she disappeared from view, has been a most peculiar morning.
Then he heard a familiar noise. The noise of wings flapping frantically, a yell of ‘Oh bother,’ the rhythmic banging and screeching of an owlish body bouncing along a working surface and clawing its way along an old oak dresser.
Harper had returned.
__________
The orbs were flying higher, one from the east, the other from the west, aiming at a point where, had anyone in the Garden been able to see them through the clouds, they’d have worried they were going to smash together and explode. The eastern sphere was spinning bottom to top as it flew, doing backward rolls as it soared upward. The western sphere was spinning right to left, like a planet with a thousand days and nights passing by in half a heartbeat. They screamed silently up and up, and in a moment that bent mathematics all out of shape, they—didn’t collide. Instead, they began to circle round each other, first the east round the west, then the west round the east, at a speed which grew faster and faster till they were invisible, just a steel-grey blur, glowing yellow, then red with heat as their movements sped up.
The red yellowed out to white, to blue, to sparks that spat from the spinning centre. Then the sparks grew arms—eight long, slow silent lightning bolts that stretched out across the Garden sky, like questing fingers, looking to point out six points on the ground. As the orbs spun, invisible, the lightning fingers wagged, slid streaky through the air, and eventually shot forward and touched the earth at eight points, the lightning crackling and steaming the ground. If anyone on the ground had been able to see it, it would have looked like a giant spider made of light, with a tiny spinning body suspended on eight long legs.
Then, in an instant, the legs vanished, and at each of the eight points where they had touched the ground, there was a small explosion, that threw earth up into the air.
Far, far above the Garden, the orbs vanished with a flash.
5
Something odd is happening in my garden.
Did you see it happen? The spinning thing?
I often see strange things in my garden, when it does the Thing it does. Sometimes—you won’t believe this, but it’s true—I think I see a tiny owl, flying around the place, no bigger than a bumblebee. I sometimes see black bats too, with wingspans no wider than a thumbnail—but when I think I see the bats, I close my eyes until they’re not there anymore.
I’ve never seen a spinning thing before. That must mean it’s new.
In any case, the spinning thing is gone now. It came shooting up out of my garden, like a speck of brilliant dust. It glowed like a diamond and it zipped up into the sky, so small I could barely see it at all. Then it disappeared altogether.
I wonder if that’s a good thing, or bad.
What do you think?
__________
‘Oi.’
Another tree creaked and groaned, then began falling directly in Alditha’s path. She walked forward, the shadow of the tree growing long over her. At the last second, she stepped sideways, then carried on walking along the length of the fallen tree without breaking her stride. She patted its bark and drew her eyebrows together, ready for combat.
‘I said oi.’ Normally, whenever she said ‘Oi’ at someone they stopped what they were doing and looked up. Some of the Garden’s brighter inhabitants had been known to run indoors and barricade themselves in their cellars at an ‘Oi’ from Alditha.
‘Did ya now?’ said a voice from behind the base of the most recently fallen tree.
Alditha grinned. The day was about to get interesting. ‘I did, yes.’
‘Are you my master then?’ said the voice, the source of which she still couldn’t see.
‘Your master is Skoros, yes?’
‘That’s Lord Skoros, to you, stranger, Dark Lord Of All He Surveys, innit?’
Alditha burst out laughing. ‘Is that what he’s got you all calling him these days? Good grief. Anyway, what are you up to? Cutting down all these beautiful trees—what’s that about?’
Gunkin stood up straight, his pointed ears emerging from the other side of the tree trunk, followed by his pronged nose and pointed chin.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said Alditha. ‘Gunkin Pimplebutt, as I live and breathe.’
‘Lady Alditha, white-ish-if-you-get-her-in-the-right-mood witch of this parish,’ said Gunkin, nodding slightly.
Alditha raised one eyebrow at the goblin’s impertinent assessment. ‘I know your mother,’ she warned. ‘They tell me you can talk the shoes off a horse or the teeth off a troll. What’re you doing here, chopping down trees?’
‘Henching,’ said Gunkin, picking up his axe.
‘Well, stop it at once,’ said Alditha, her eyebrows arching.
Gunkin looked up at her eyebrows. He ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘Make me a better offer,’ he said.
‘No.’
Gunkin flung his axe casually behind him—it landed with precision a foot from the base of the next tree along. ‘Sorry.’ He smiled. When goblins smile, it’s a peculiar thing—unless they take the time to arrange all their teeth in a particularly friendly way, it looks like a mouthful of threats.
‘What are you henching for?’ demanded Alditha.
‘For?’ asked Gunkin. ‘Well for money, innit? For a job. For...’ He shuddered, remembering his mother’s words. ‘...career prospects.’
‘Good career prospects, are they? Fancy yourself as a career chopper-down of innocent trees, do you? Stop this foolishness at once, Gunkin Pimplebutt, or I’ll box your ears for you.’
Gunkin took the time to arrange his teeth. ‘It’s not that I don’t see the persuasive, shall we say, force of your arguments, Lady Alditha. But it’s simple—if I don’t stop, you’ll box my ears. If I do stop, Lord Skoros, Dark Lord Of All He Surveys will box my ears—and my head—and send them to my mother for Midsummer Hallowe’en.’
Alditha’s eyebrows went to war. ‘What’s he need
all this wood for anyway? He can’t be that cold, it’s nearly Mid-’
There was a moment of odd silence. Alditha realized Gunkin wasn’t looking at her anymore. She followed his eye line to the sky, where lightning-bolt legs were slowly making their way down towards the Garden. She squinted—there seemed to be a bright spot getting bigger and bigger in her way, like a moon growing out of nowhere. Alditha tilted her head slightly to the side and frowned at it, to get a better perspective. It was—it was heading straight for them.
‘It’s coming straight for us,’ said Gunkin.
‘It’s moving slowly though,’ said Alditha, squaring her shoulders and hitching up her skirt. She straightened her hat on her head, folded her arms and stared at the oncoming finger of light. ‘I’m betting it blinks first.’
‘You’re barking mad, aren’t you?’ Gunkin yelped, looking from Alditha to the lightning and back again.
‘What I am is either right or wrong,’ said Alditha. ‘Madness has nothing to do with it either way.’
Gunkin rolled his eyes. ‘Look, I tell you what. How about I stop henching at once and come along quietly with you? Skoros, Dark Lord Of All He Surveys can chop his firewood, how about that? Only let’s get out of the way of the lightning.’
‘That look like lightning to you then, does it?’
‘Well,’ said Gunkin, frowning at it, ‘mostly. It’s a bit slow, I grant you.’
‘Seen a lot of slow lightning before, have you?’
‘Well no,’ said Gunkin. ‘Not as such, but-’
‘So what does that tell you?’
The bright leg of light was getting closer and brighter and bigger as they watched.
Gunkin shrugged. ‘I give up, what does it tell you?’
Alditha’s eyebrows drove further down as she stared at the ball of light that was inching towards her face. ‘Tells me it’s Something Else Entirely,’ she said, frowning under the brim of her hat.
‘Oh, that’s great,’ Gunkin panicked. ‘I’ll tell them to put that on your gravestone, shall I? Lady Alditha, white-ish witch of these parts, killed by Something Else Entirely. That’ll look good, won’t it?’
Aliens In My Garden Page 5
