‘Whoooooah,’ she said as she was bundled upside-down and downside-up and caught moments before she hit the ground, and swung on and on. It seemed to take only minutes before she reached the other side of the forest, from which she could see the route to what was surely the centre of the nearest village.
‘Thank you, noble tree-oids,’ she gasped, then looked back into the forest. Among all the greens and browns and mud-mix in between colours she expected to see, there was an ominous grey, and a frightening orange. A second more and the smell hit her. Wood smoke.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You’ll all be killed.’
‘Run, girl,’ said one of the last trees to have handled her. ‘It were always gonna come down to him or us. Might as well be today. Run.’
‘But I-’ said Celeste. ‘I can’t let you-’
‘Beggin’ your pardon, Miss, but how many talkin’ trees have ya come across in your life?’
‘Erm...’ Actually in her travels in the fleet, she’d come across quite a few.
‘That daft beggar with the balls of death thinks it’s up to him what we do and what we don’t do. When we fight and when we die. Don’t be makin’ the same mistake, and thinking you get to choose how we spend our lives, eh? Worry about your own, and get you gone.’
The smoke was billowing closer. But it wasn’t the smoke that made Celeste’s eyes water.
She turned and ran, leaving Alpha, the orbs, and the talking trees behind her.
__________
This time it was different.
The crowd was early, and curious, and before Harper had even said a word, they wanted to know about the threat these ‘aliens’ posed. Gunkin and a couple of his friends had made a banner, which they held over Stone Hedge. ‘The Garden For Gardenfolk,’ it said, and some people had already been nodding at it, talking about it with their neighbours.
Harper had received a shock that morning, when the Green Man had told him he wouldn’t be coming to the meeting. Harper was wrong, he’d said, and Celeste, the girl from the teacup, had been perfectly charming. Harper had rehearsed all the arguments in the leaflet. The food, taken out of their mouths. The houses. The...the...the change. Probably, he’d said, when the aliens invaded, there would be no strawberry marshmallows left for honest, decent Gardenfolk who liked them. The Green Man had simply folded his branches, told him he was talking rot, and that he, the Green Man, would never support such fearmongering.
‘Well, I’m sorry you feel like that,’ said Harper. ‘Sorry you’re so keen to be a traitor to your friends and neighbours, that’s all. You remember this when they invade. When they turn you out of your house. Don’t come crying to me then, that’s all. Just...just don’t.’ And Harper had flown off, wondering if everybody would feel the same, and whether he was just a silly owl who was making a fuss over nothing.
Seeing so many people turn up to the meeting did him a power of good. Seeing them curious, and asking questions, and nudging each other and nodding at his banner made him feel like he was among friends. Like he wasn’t silly after all. Like he was right, and clever, and the only one strong enough to take a stand against the coming danger. Harper puffed out his chest and plumped his plumage. ‘I’ll make a start then, shall I?’ he asked Gunkin.
‘Hold on, chief. Never go in front of a new crowd cold, right? Let me go out there first and warm ’em up a bit for you. Give ’em the idea, right? Then you come out and knock ’em dead.’
‘Dead?’ asked Harper, hooting nervously.
‘They’ll love you by the time you say your first words,’ said Gunkin. ‘By the time you’re finished, you’ll have ’em eating out of your hand.’
‘Ah,’ said Harper. ‘I see.’ He wasn’t sure he did, but Gunkin hadn’t steered him wrong so far. Except possibly about not including the worms and beetles on the poster, but that was an argument for another day.
Gunkin went out in front of the crowd. He stood behind Stone Hedge, looking out at them all, taking in their faces, meeting their eyes. To look at, he was a strange creature. Purple, and with a head that curved up into two points, like horns on a bull. And then of course there were his teeth. But he went out in front of the crowd, and just stood there, looking entirely comfortable.
The crowd, which had been talking amongst itself, grew quiet, just watching Gunkin do nothing, say nothing. The hush grew hypnotic, vibrating with an electric expectancy, and still Gunkin was silent.
Suddenly, however, the goblin came to life, and the crowd were not disappointed. His voice was clear, his delivery intense and animated.
‘Gardenfolk,’ he said, ‘you’ve worked hard for everything you have. I know it ain’t much, but you’ve worked for it. Earned it. You deserve everything you have, and you deserve more. There’s no folk like Gardenfolk, and we wear that fact like a badge of pride,’ he said, reaching out a hand to them, as if to touch each and every one. ‘Garden pride. We know who we are, and we all work together. Doesn’t matter what species we are, what colour we are, whether we’re ‘animal,’—he pointed at some humans—‘vegetable,’—he opened up an inviting palm to Old Tom the potato—‘mineral,’—his hand swooped to take in a couple of Gravel Ridge trolls—‘fungi’—he pointed at Alberto Cremini, the Mushroom Don who had bought himself a lift in Old Tom’s wheelbarrow to attend the meeting. ‘Doesn’t matter if we’re witches, wizards, dragons or trees. Even a humble goblin like myself is accepted here. We are all Gardenfolk. And we are all proud.’
There was a loud murmur of approval at his words. They were Gardenfolk, they said to themselves. And they were proud.
‘But Gardenfolk, I am here to tell you, there’s other folk out there. Folk who are not like us. Not proud. Not prepared to work for what they want, but who think they can just come in and take what we have,’ he added, his voice growing in pace and volume.
The murmur turned sharp and sour, a wave of growling growing in the crowd.
‘Aliens,’ he said, letting the word hang there above their heads. ‘Yes, aliens. Outsiders, from Who-Knows-Where, coming to do Who-Knows-What in our Garden. The Garden you live in. The Garden you love. The Garden you’re proud of. Coming, to take food out of your babies’ mouths. Jobs from honest working Gardenfolk, so they can’t support their families. Houses, even—your house. Your house, where your youngest son was born. Your house, where your little girl plays. Your house where you hoped to see ’em married from, raising young ’uns of their own, like proper, decent Gardenfolk. Your house full of weird, outsider, alienfolk, doing weird, outsider, alien things.’
The crowd was roaring now, folk were yelling at him that the things he was describing wouldn’t happen, not while they had anything to say about it.
‘Is that what you want?’ he demanded—the wave of ‘Nooooooo’ hit him even before he’d finished asking the question.
‘That’s not what I want,’ he assured them. ‘So how do we stop ’em?’ He didn’t let them think about it. ‘Harper.’
The crowd fell oddly quiet for a moment. Harper?
‘You all know Harper the owl,’ he told them. It was true, most of them did. Most of them thought he was a bit of a silly flibbertigibbet. ‘He’s an owl of rare brain. An owl of wit and cunning, and an owl of conviction. A strong leader.’
There was an odd murmur in the crowd. Really? Harper?
Gunkin gave a nod, and a handful of his friends in the crowd roared their support, as though Harper was the perfect choice to lead them in this time of crisis.
‘Harper has seen these aliens,’ Gunkin insisted. ‘He’s fought them, single-handed.’
His friends roared their approval again, and this time a few of the crowd joined in.
‘He’s been inside the aliens’ spaceship, and fought them, with all the fierce pride you’d expect of your fellow Gardenfolk.’
More roaring of support came, though now it came from more and more of the crowd. Gunkin grinned to himself—he’d got them, and he knew it.
‘Harper’s the leader we need r
ight now, to say no.’
‘Nooooo,’ said the crowd, echoing his words.
‘To say go.’
‘Goooooooo.’
‘To stand up and say the Garden is for Gardenfolk, and we don’t want no aliens here.’
Gunkin winced—the line was too long, and the crowd tripped over itself trying to parrot it back to him.
‘Harper,’ he said.
‘Harper,’ they repeated.
‘Harper,’ he yelled, throwing a purple fist in the air.
‘Harper,’ they cried back, fists everywhere raising.
‘Harper,’ he roared, pointing sideways with both hands, and ushering Harper himself onto Stone Hedge.
‘Harper. Harper. Harper. Harper. Harper,’ chanted the crowd, and Harper followed Gunkin’s example, waiting a moment till he could be heard.
‘The aliens are here,’ he said. ‘The aliens are dangerous. It’s down to us to tell them to...to...’ He blinked. Blinked his big eyes, looking out at all the faces expecting him to lead them. Then he remembered what he’d been told to say. ‘To go back where they came from, and leave us alone.’
The crowd roared its support.
‘The Garden for Gardenfolk,’ he said, because it had seemed to go down well when Gunkin said it. It worked now too, and the crowd cheered. Gunkin’s friends raised the banner high and waved it a little.
‘Wait,’ said a female voice in among the hubbub. ‘Please, someone listen to me.’
In all the yelling and chanting, no-one had heard Celeste running down the road to the centre of the square. She saw the dimension drive, but for the moment, it wasn’t her prime concern. ‘Skoros is coming,’ she yelled. ‘Skoros and the orbs. He’s got Alditha, somewhere. He’s taken her prisoner.’
Most of the crowd had no chance of hearing her, but owls have extremely sharp hearing, and Harper had heard three important words. Skoros, orbs, and Alditha. He hopped across the Hedge and called to Celeste. ‘What? Did you say the wizard’s got Alditha? And those orb things?’
Celeste, glad that at least someone had taken notice of her, fought her way over to him. ‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘He took her somewhere, I don’t know where. I’ve just escaped from him myself.’ She put her hand on the Hedge to steady herself after pushing through the crowd.
The Hedge began to pulse. It melted out of its stone form, began to thrum with green and purple, red and blue, pink, orange and violet colours pushing their way through its leaves and fronds. There was a heavy ‘worp’ sound, pulsing like a dragon’s heartbeat through the Hedge, and within the crowd, which grew very quiet very quickly, a look of horror on every face. Then they felt it—the tremor in the earth. The ground beneath their feet began to shake, to shudder, to split apart. The crowd began to scream.
Suddenly, with a grumble and a groan and a sigh of resolution, P’diddle’s the baker’s shop disappeared in a cloud of rubble. Ma McPumplewick’s Eatery followed it into oblivion. The townhouse of Major Sprout fell in on itself. At six separate spots in a rough circle around the still-glowing Stone Hedge, buildings collapsed as though they’d never been there. But when the dust cleared, something had replaced every one of them. It was as though the earth had been pushed up from underneath and just wiped the buildings off the face of the Garden, replacing them with six smooth-sided, one-story pyramids.
‘What the heck have you done?’ yelled Harper, who had got off the Hedge pretty rapidly when it started doing its rainbow dance.
‘Erm...’ said Celeste. ‘I know it might not look especially good to you now, but I’ve just raised the Sleepers.’
__________
The multiverse is a strange place.
There are people who think the whole multiverse is made of dimensions, all tangled together like a ball of unruly string. And that’s true—if you happen to have a drive that can extend between dimensions, you can travel between what people call ‘realities’ with the blink of an eye and a careful calculation.
But what people forget is that any given reality has plenty of dimensions, all of its own. Height is a dimension. Depth is a dimension. Space is a dimension. Time is a dimension.
On a fleet of enormous ships like flattened out, brightly-lit planets, they knew all about dimensions. The ships had leapt their way across unimaginable distances since the signal had reached them, from the dimension of There and Then to the dimension of Here and Now. They were getting closer. Closer. On board the ships, drives synchronized once more, branches of causality extending, touching, forming an elaborate invisible lattice connecting every ship. With a sound like roots growing, the ships slipped suddenly through space, like one enormous suit of shining armour.
The fleet emerged in a vacant patch of blackness and lit it up. Far in the distance, the star could be seen. It registered on scanners on every one of the ships, pale, and small, and yellow. The planet was too small to be seen yet, but the drives shut down. The people on the ships knew they were close now—they wouldn’t need to jump across the dimensions of space again. The lattice that connected them dissolved, and they began to advance, pushing space behind them like swimmers in dark water, heading for that star and its tiny, promising little blue-green planet and its Garden World.
14
I love this time of year in my garden. It’s nearly midsummer, and the sun, when it shines, seems to give everything new colours—colours I never see at any other time.
Sometimes I wonder about my garden. Whether I should go and do the Thing, see what that tiny owl is up to, maybe ask him why I see him sometimes, and not others.
And then I wonder whether there are things up there, beyond what I can see, who sometimes look down and see me, going about my business. I wonder how I’d feel if they arrived, to see what I was up to.
I’m not sure I’d be grateful. Would you?
__________
Odiz groaned, and found himself face down in the rich dark earth of the Maze, felt the Blackheart Bindweed slithering over his body. He sent out a thought to prod around, but found no thorns in his mind anymore. The physical pain of having both his hands severed was intense to the point of madness; though he quickly bypassed this by shutting off the parts of his brain and nervous system that screamed blue murder at him.
Foolish boy thinks I’m dead, he thought, and the beginnings of a smirk formed on his lips. Course, not having hands is going to be an inconvenience. It would mean some of the higher level spells were beyond him just at the moment. Still, he thought, ’s’not like we need anything complicated. He did a quick run-down in his head, found a spell he liked, and allowed the smirk on his lips to grow all the way. Aloric’s Lamp should do nicely, he thought, then he closed his eyes, focused on the words of the spell.
Aloric had been a mage in the Garden two hundred years before. He’d had something of a dry sense of humour, and a gift for understatement. As Odiz recited the spell in his head, a bright orange light burst into flame around him, and the Blackheart Bindweed that covered his body recoiled, screeching as the heat caught it, burned it, set it on fire. Odiz tightened the focus of his concentration, and the flame went from orange to red, then from red to white, and finally from white to blue, while all around him, the bindweed burst into flames and writhed in agony. Odiz slammed his arms together, and a large part of Skoros’ Maze exploded.
Odiz nodded as he saw the devastation around him, the bindweed which formed the walls of the Maze burning, screaming, retreating from him in pain and fear.
‘That’s better,’ he muttered. ‘Now then...’
His superior mage body had automatically stopped him from bleeding to death, but Odiz desperately needed a new pair of hands. Utilizing the full power of his mind—and so opening all pain centres once again—he recited the words of Moloch’s Helper in his head, and winced as his arms began to throb, growing longer, growing fleshy pointed stubs at the end. He grunted against the pain, as the stubs grew more and more defined, became blobs, and grew bones. He thought seriously about swearing as the bon
es extended into five points, with joints bending into fingers and thumbs. When his new hands had grown, he waggled his new fingers to make sure they worked.
Wouldn’t like to have to do that every day, he thought. But needs must. Now, the fool said he had the rest of them here somewhere. Hekalion’s Party Finder was a little unorthodox, as spells went—it was technically a bit of mischief used by junior wizards to find other wizards with a mind to do the same sort of thing as them: when they wanted to go and party, it was an easy way for the would-be revelers to find each other. But right now, Odiz was willing to bet the Maze was dotted with people with a similar intention to him—to escape the Maze, to find Skoros, and to have some really rather strong words with him. Sure enough, when he cast the spell, it located five other people. A spinning blue gyroscope appeared in the air in front of him, then zipped ahead, pointing forward.
‘Lead on,’ said Odiz, following the gyroscope, and setting fire to more and more of the Maze as he went.
__________
Magic is an odd thing. It gets inside those who use it, and it changes them. Odiz’ original hands, when the bindweed had severed them, hadn’t hung around to be eaten by the evil plants. They had run away, using their fingers for legs, dragging the stumps of his wrists behind them.
Alditha felt something crawl up her leg. She refused to shudder. Witches didn’t do shuddering, it wasn’t in their nature. The thing, whatever it was, crawled up the front of her, and put a finger across her lips.
A finger. All right then. Her eyes drew in to focus on the hand that pressed itself against her face. Then the hand scuttled up to the top of her head. The bindweed hissed, seeming to sense its presence for the first time. The hand snapped its finger with a loud clicking noise, and Alditha felt her wrists suddenly drop free. Something wet slithered down behind her ears, and when she moved her arms, Alditha found the bindweed had fallen off her. It had turned to wet, black spaghetti. The hand tapped her on the shoulder, and made a gesture for her to creep away quietly. She shook her head briefly. Witches didn’t do creeping away quietly either.
Aliens In My Garden Page 15
