It was the conjurors from Runis that truly sent cold shivers down Milli’s spine. This was not only because of the spangled cloaks they wore as a mark of their clan or the silver horns that hung around their necks—for a purpose unknown to the children. It was because of the way they moved together as one, wands held aloft in readiness. Milli suspected those small sticks possessed more power than the sharpest of swords. Magic was going to be performed this day, she thought grimly, powerful magic of the blackest sort.
The noon-day sun was beating down. All the children wanted was to flop to the ground where they were and enjoy a nice cool drink. Their armour already felt like lead. But neither sitting nor resting featured in Oslo’s battle strategy. Whilst they hurriedly sipped from the flasks of water they had been given, Oslo dismounted and stood respectfully to attention, as if expecting someone’s arrival. Judging by the tomblike silence that fell over the entire army, this someone must be very important. The children broke into goosebumps despite the warmth of the sun.
There was a screech and the beating of leathery wings. Around a bend in the dusty road came a black carriage made of cast iron and shaped like a giant cauldron with metal spikes protruding dangerously from its sides. It was windowless and rusty bolts held its door in place. Four ravens flew above it and Milli had the uncomfortable feeling that she had seen them before.
Some of the younger children began to cry when they saw the creatures that drew the coach. They had the head and torso of a woman and the body of a vulture; their mottled faces were framed by coils of matted grey hair and their skin was a mouldy yellow. They were Harpies—legendary monsters that live in the blackest recesses of the earth. They had curved noses like hawks and their slanted eyes resembled two bloody gashes on their faces. Their razor-sharp talons carved deep tracks in the earth as they approached and their beating wings released waves of an overpowering stench of decay.
The carriage came to a stop and the door opened. Tendrils of grey smoke emerged, veiling its occupant as he climbed out. The first thing the children saw was a boot with a metal tip as sharp as a pencil. It was followed by the swirling hem of a scarlet robe, which was patterned with vipers and scorpions embroidered in gold thread. As the unnaturally tall and misty figure glided towards them, the images on his robe moved too. The vipers flicked out their tongues and spat flames onto the ground. The scorpions opened and shut their pincers like machinery.
The man stepped out of the smoky haze and raised a crab-like hand with ring-encrusted fingers. Milli and Ernest recognised his hair, which was a milky blue and strung with bells that did not tinkle as bells should but emitted frail screams of pain when he moved, as if poor tormented souls were trapped within them. But it was his eyes that turned their hearts to stone. Their colour shifted like liquid in a test tube. One minute they were as red as sunset, the next as black as beetles, before turning a shade so pale they were like water. There was no mistaking their old nemesis, Lord Aldor the Illustrious.
Somehow, the magician was taller than Milli remembered. His features had become even more shrunken if that were possible and there was less flesh clinging to his bones. His eyes were hungrier, as they often are in those whose plans have been thwarted once before. The pallid lips curled in revulsion at the sight of the children. In short, it was the face of what had once been a man but was now a creature without hope of redemption.
When the wizard locked eyes with Milli and Ernest, a demented smile of satisfaction crossed his face. ‘Who is there to come to your aid this time?’ his cold gaze seemed to say.
Despite the proximity of Mirth and the promise of Queen Fidelis’s assistance, the children could not have felt more alone.
A sudden sob broke the silence. ‘Please, sir, don’t make us fight!’ a little boy cried out. ‘We haven’t had enough training.’
Lord Aldor did not so much as acknowledge the speaker by turning in his direction. Instead, he gave a flick of his pinkie finger. Cockroaches wriggled from the boy’s ears, scuttling down his neck and into his clothes until he fell in a twisting heap on the ground. With a puff of smoke and a prolonged moan, the boy’s skin began to blacken and dry out, his legs coalesced to form part of a hard outer shell, and his eyes shrank to pinpricks on stalks. His arms thinned to the size of pipe cleaners, then split and multiplied into spindly bug legs. The boy’s screams turned into a faint rustling sound.
The watching conjurors cackled and clapped in appreciation of this unexpected display of magic.
Nonna Luna crossed herself three times, then rushed forward, pocketed the stunned cockroach and hurried it off to the first aid cart. Although Milli and Ernest were shaking from the injustice of what had just happened, they knew that to speak up would bring terrible consequences. They did not want to be returned to their parents in a matchbox, so they gritted their teeth, lowered their gaze and said nothing.
Lord Aldor turned his attention to the gathered army. When he spoke, his voice rolled over them like thunder.
‘From this point, you children will proceed alone,’ he said. ‘You will march into enemy territory and destroy the advantage the smug Fada fairies have had over us for centuries. The moment you succeed in breaking the spell, the rest of us shall join you in battle.’
He raised his arms and the crowd rattled their weapons and swung their mops as an indication of their fervour. Lord Aldor’s eyes glowed red at the show of support.
‘My comrades and friends, in a very short time we will reclaim what is rightfully ours and at last unite the Realm!’ he roared.
‘One Realm, one leader!’ the assembly chanted.
Aldor waited for the cheers to subside before continuing.
‘With the guardians of human imagination under our control, what is there we cannot achieve? What power we cannot overturn? In the new Realm, you need only wish for something to have it. Each and every one of you has my solemn promise on this.’
The conjurors shrieked their devotion, waved flags printed with Aldor’s image and blew kisses at their leader, who bowed deeply.
He turned back to the children and his tone changed to one of scornful derision. ‘If you wish to see your precious mummies and daddies again, I suggest you follow orders. Think of it this way—Drabville is but a battle away.’
A gentle tinkling like chimes filled the air. It was faint at first but grew steadily louder. Lord Aldor held up a greyish hand for silence. The children turned towards the city of Mirth. Sure enough, its magnificent white gates were beginning to swing open. A rapacious smile spread slowly across Lord Aldor’s face.
‘They are coming,’ he said.
For a moment, nothing stirred inside the gates of Mirth. Milli’s heart soared as she thought the Fada might attempt a peace treaty or simply refuse to appear, but seconds later they came streaming through the gates, a carpet of gowned creatures moving like swans across the battlefield. Leading them was Fidelis in a seashell chariot pulled by golden lions. Her gown, woven from clouds, billowed behind her.
The chariot moved towards them at an alarming speed, finally halting in the centre of the open field. Behind it gathered the entire adult population of Mirth. The children stared, wondering how these seraph-like beings could possibly be equipped to take on Lord Aldor and his vicious followers.
Their hair was laced with wildflowers and their eyes sparkled as if they contained fragments of stars. The Fada looked like they might topple if too strong a wind blew up. They carried weaponry but the hilts of their blades were encrusted with pearls and their pretty archer’s bows looked like toys. Milli and Ernest hoped the weapons were enchanted for they would prove useless otherwise.
The prospect of anyone attacking such celestial creatures filled the children with dread. It might have been a different story had they been facing a horde of warty, lice-infested hags; at least then there would have been some justification in the thought that they were ridding the world of unpleasantness. But the Fada looked perfectly composed and unaware of the violence intended towards
them. The children began to grow agitated, unable to gasp sufficient air. They felt sticky and almost welded to their armour. Beads of sweat formed on their foreheads and their hands shook uncontrollably. Gummy Grumbleguts found he had to tighten his grip on his sword to stop it slipping from his sweaty palms.
Milli herself was torn by doubt. What had happened to Fidelis’s plan? Would now not be a good time to put it into operation? She would have liked to send Fidelis a secret sign to indicate that time was running out and now was not the time for procrastination. Fidelis’s gaze was fixed on Lord Aldor’s face, as if an unspoken struggle was taking place between the two. The firm set of her jaw said she was not ready to surrender Mirth just yet. But perhaps she had changed her mind about helping the children, Milli thought. Perhaps her first loyalty was to her people and she had decided she could not protect them both.
Lord Aldor’s eyes narrowed. He gave Oslo an almost imperceptible nod, which was the gladiator’s cue to act.
‘Attack!’ Oslo roared.
But the children were paralysed by fear and indecision. They stood rooted to the spot, dizzy with the hundreds of thoughts whirring through their heads. Some closed their eyes and tried to recall the terrible things Lampo had held the Fada responsible for. But they just could not bring themselves to believe him.
Oslo stood frozen in a mixture of horror and dismay that his order had been ignored. This was the moment he had imagined for weeks, which had sustained him through the training of such bungling troops. Was glory to be so callously snatched from him? He hissed a reminder to his army about the penalty for failing to follow an instruction, whilst the crowd behind began to shout abuse in the hope of inciting action.
Bombasta and Lampo resorted to threats.
‘There are nastier creatures than piranhas that like the taste of small children,’ the Contessa warned, her face contorted like a gargoyle’s.
‘You will live out your days as floor sweeps for the Lampo Circus,’ Federico shouted, mopping his forehead with a hanky.
Anger blazed in Lord Aldor’s sallow face. ‘Your poor parents are sick with grief, I hear,’ he said with mock concern. ‘They blame themselves each time they see your empty little beds. Your precious town has died. No one sleeps or laughs there now. The only ones who can change that are you. You do not fight for me today; you fight for home.’
To Milli’s dismay, these words seemed to have the desired effect, for many of her peers raised their weapons and took a tentative step forward. Aldor had tapped into their deepest longing: there was not much they wouldn’t do to get home. Milli and Ernest looked desperately around, trying to think of a way to delay the battle, but for the first time in their lives they could not come up with a single idea. Perhaps Lord Aldor’s plans were already coming to fruition because their minds were blank. That was more frightening than the idea of fighting.
The two armies were now only metres from each another. The Fada simply stood there, waiting for the attack. Fidelis was so close that Milli and Ernest imagined they could smell the lavender sprigs in her hair. She did not look afraid, just very purposeful.
Suddenly, all around them, they heard the deadly sound of swords being drawn from their sheaths and arrows being plucked from their quivers. Some of the children had hardened themselves against feeling pity. They sensed Lord Aldor’s presence right behind them, as if he were breathing down their necks. They knew that fighting was their only hope of ever seeing their parents again. Gummy Grumbleguts stepped forward, holding his blunt sword above his head. And at that exact moment, something happened that no one could have predicted. Or, I should say, two things happened.
The first thing was that Queen Fidelis lifted her sceptre and lightly tapped it three times on the floor of her chariot. Immediately fairy dust drifted from its iris-shaped head. Gummy’s sword clattered to the ground as the fairy dust swirled around him and formed itself into a small dragon with shimmering metallic scales. The dragon’s wide eyes looked puzzled and the children shrank back in alarm. Suddenly the dragon’s long snout twitched and his eyes began to water. They watched in dread as the beast threw back his head, opened his mouth and let out a…sneeze. He looked bashfully around before pulling a hanky from behind a scale and using it to noisily blow his nose. But a dragon with a tickle in his nose was not the miraculous part. It was what happened next that was so extraordinary it changed the course of destiny for children all over the world.
The second thing was that deep in the throng of tiny ill-equipped soldiers, someone giggled. It was only a self-conscious splutter at first and was almost camouflaged as a cough.
The perpetrator, Prudence Cackle, was a dark-haired seven year old with her hair cut in a blunt bob. Her second giggle was healthier and actually had some volume about it. The third expanded to a chuckle. Prudence knew her reaction was a little unorthodox given the purpose of the gathering, but she couldn’t help herself. A palpable tension followed. The children made room around her as if they’d just been told she was afflicted with leprosy.
The thing about laughter is that (like leprosy) it is highly contagious. It infected Gummy Grumbleguts next, beginning as a snort but soon growing into a rocking, irrepressible laugh. Suddenly there were five children chortling, then ten, and before long every soldier in Battalion Minor was splitting his or her sides with peals of laughter. The laughter grew to a level where it ricocheted around the surrounding forest and off the distant hills.
Fidelis seized this moment to launch her plan. ‘Play!’ she cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Playing for Victory
No sooner had Queen Fidelis spoken than the battlefield was transformed into a kind of carnival. The Fada withdrew their wands and whirled into action, sprinkling fairy dust everywhere and creating breathtaking sights out of thin air.
One fairy whistled a jovial tune and a stall sprang from the ground complete with a spinning tub that produced whopping great cones of mouth-watering ice-cream drizzled with hot fudge sauce and sprinkles. An elf in a tunic blew up colourful balloons and twisted them into the shapes of assorted animals that paraded around making their own distinctive sounds and jostling one another for air time. A canary tried to peck a worm and the two began to bicker in Balloonspeak, which sounds like a lot of huffing and squeaking. Two sprites pulled little square cushions from their satchels and engaged in a friendly pillow fight. They enjoyed it all the more when the cushions burst and covered them in feathery down. One curly-haired Fada twirled around and from her hair burst a great cloud of exotic butterflies. They landed on the shoulders of the stunned children and tickled them under the chin with their antennae. A little dryad carrying a tin watering can poured water onto the cracked ground and a rosebush sprang up with buds made of fairy floss. The dryad picked some buds and tossed them to the children before trotting off to create a candy-cane shrub.
Some clever dwarves had gathered clumps of dry wood and chiselled and hammered them into clockwork toys. Fidelis herself commanded the clouds above to first darken and then morph into blue whales that spurted water from their blowpipes (aimed strategically at Oslo). Somebody conjured up a slippery slide, whilst others engaged in games of blind man’s buff and hide-and-seek. Instead of the dust and clatter of battle, the air was filled with cheerful sounds and was abuzz with enchantment. The whole place was so riotous with frivolity the children did not know where to look first and simply stood there in open-mouthed amazement.
Fidelis’s dragon was seized by a volley of uncontrollable sneezes and this time streams of white powder flew from his nostrils and rained over the battlefield. Some of Aldor’s supporters hid behind their shields but could not escape being covered in the floury substance. Gummy Grumbleguts cautiously licked his lips before breaking out in a grin.
‘It’s sherbet,’ he announced, ‘and it’s delicious.’
Thus encouraged, many of the children bent to scoop up the powder in handfuls. They lapped it out of their palms like kittens and squealed in delight a
s it had been so long since they had tasted the fizzy sour sweetness of sherbet. And this was no cheaply manufactured sherbet that keeps dentists in business; it was the real deal, unlike anything you or I have ever tasted.
Finn and Fennel were the first to peel off their armour and discard their weapons. They dropped them to the ground without a second thought and marched across to join the Fada. More clangs and clatters followed as other children abandoned their weapons. They seemed to forget their fear and darted from one enticement to another, openly tasting the marshmallow blossoms growing on trees. Oslo, Bombasta and Lampo bellowed threats at the children but dared not cross over into the enchanted province.
When Fidelis summoned them, Milli and Ernest wasted no time in running to her side.
‘So this was the plan,’ Milli said, looking at the mixture of relief and glee on the faces of the children around her. ‘But how did you know it would work?’
‘Fairies and children share the same thoughts,’ Fidelis replied simply.
‘Does this mean your magic is stronger than Lord Aldor’s?’ Ernest asked.
‘Smarter, not stronger,’ said Fidelis. ‘If there is one thing villains have difficulty dealing with, it’s anyone having fun. Innocence can be a very powerful weapon—remember that.’
The Lampo Circus (Strangest Adventures) Page 19
