Jeff Madison and the Shimmers of Drakmere (Book 1)

by Bernice Fischer

  This was wonderful. He was really good at this. He ducked under branches and jumped over roots, swerving here and there. He was enjoying himself so much that he did not hear Angie.

  At first, he did not understand. There was this screeching noise behind him, no next to him, oh no wait, above him. Madgwick looked around, and up. It was Angie, she was screaming. She was trying to keep up with him but was screaming in fear, her broom was flying low, then high, zigging and zagging, trying to copy the motorbike’s moves, trying to race the bike.

  Angie’s hands were gripping the handle, trying to hold on. Her hair was flying behind her. At times her screams were interrupted as she got slapped in the face by leaves and branches, spluttering as she spat out an insect or two.

  “Madgwiiiiick, stop! Why a bike? A flying horse, take a horse! Madgwiiiiick!”

  25

  Rhed and Jeff entertained Rig with tales of school, gave detailed descriptions of their secret hideout in the forest and spoke about Matt.

  It was easy to walk and listen. At times the laughter bubbled over. They made good time and had come far since the morning’s camp. Jeff asked about the plan to rescue Matt, but did not notice when Rig skirted around the question.

  They saw a few farmers and travellers during the day but Rig made them wait in the forest out of sight. He explained that not everyone in the land was evil. There were very good folk that lived here, but the problem was that they were ruled by the cruel King Grzegorz and the evil witch Wiedzma, the two who had sent the maremist to capture Matt.

  Everyone tried to stay away from Drakmere castle. It was rumoured that once you entered the dreaded Drakmere you never left and few entered of their own free will. Many people had entered never to be seen again.

  Rhed lagged behind. They had already walked quite far, so Rig let them stop at a small blue pool for some water. He would not let them swim or linger on the bank, because the water looked dangerous to him.

  Jeff watched a ripple start from the middle of the pool, growing towards the bank. He shivered and backed away from the ominous ripple.

  Rig was relentless. He had the energy of a super-charged battery. It was hard to keep up. Rhed leaned against a tree and looked up at it. It was a stunning tree, the trunk was so broad you could not hug it properly.

  “Get a move on,” yelled Rig.

  Rhed sighed and pulled away only to be dragged back against the tree, looking at his hand in surprise and then horror. His hand had disappeared into the tree. He yanked his arm, trying to pull it loose but it was like his hand had grown into the trunk.

  “Rig! Rig! Riiiiiiig!” he yelled. “Help, I’m stuck.”

  Jeff grabbed Rhed’s arm and pulled, but it was no good, the hand was imbedded in the tree.

  Rig tossed dust at the tree. It swirled around, making the tree look like a glittering rope light.

  “What did you do?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. I was just standing here and then I lost my hand.”

  Rig was quiet for a moment then asked, “What were you thinking?”

  “Well, nothing, except that it’s so large that I could not hug it even if I wanted to.”

  “You wanted to hug a tree? We’re in a race to reach Matt and you wanted to hug a tree? For real, Rhed?” Jeff said hotly, his voice rising.

  “Well, it’s a huge tree.” Rhed’s scowl matched Jeff’s as they glared at each other.

  Rig dropped his head and was quiet for a brief moment and then he started chanting in a swaying sing-song voice.

  “What’s he doing?” whispered Rhed, still straining at the tree.

  “Not sure. Maybe he’s talking to the tree,” muttered Jeff.

  The tree started to sway in time to the chanting.

  Rig nodded once at it.

  He smiled pleasantly at Jeff and Rhed and said very matter of factly. “Okay, so, the thing is, Rhed, that tree likes you, and has, as it happens, decided to keep you. It is quite an honour to be adopted by a tree.”

  “Whaaaaat?” gasped Rhed.

  “Nothing I can do about that. What is done is done. He has decided to call you Twigwig, so, well, good luck and we’ll see you around.”

  Jeff’s jaw dropped.

  Rhed spluttered. “But Rig, uhh …”

  Rig grabbed Jeff’s arm and dragged him away from the tree. Jeff was too stunned to put up a fight. Rhed stared at Rig with big brown eyes, magnified by his lenses. Rig stopped and smacked his forehead as if he had forgotten something. Then he turned around.

  He gave the stunned Rhed, or Twigwig, a sheepish smile and said, “Forgot to give you your root, you know.” Rig paused and emphasised the words “The pongsap root that you love so much.”

  The tree shook and released Rhed’s hand, pulling away from him as if he were smelly.

  “I think that now is a good time for Twigwig to run,” yelled Rig.

  Rhed did not need an invitation. He raced away down the path with Jeff behind him and Rig following on his heels. There was huffing and puffing and only after a while did they realise that Jeff could not run anymore, he was laughing too much.

  “You were going to leave me,” Rhed accused Rig.

  “The tree had to release his Twigwig on his own accord,” he grinned. “It worked!”

  They carried on through the forest, both boys careful not to touch any trees or leaves. Jeff was still hiccupping and Rig had a rare grin on his face. Rhed did not feel like laughing much, ignored them and marched on, muttering about being called Twigwig. Everything that had seemed to matter or worried them at home did not seem so important now, not school, teachers or even Jessica.

  Rig glanced over his shoulder every few minutes, watching for the shimmers. He had a wistful look on his face as if he was hoping that Madgwick would magically appear over the horizon.

  “Are they catching up?” asked Jeff when Rig was surveying the countryside again.

  “I don’t see them,” answered Rig. “They can travel fast so I am not sure how long it will take for them to catch up.” He gave a grimace. “But they will, that’s for sure.”

  Rig made camp. They could not risk a fire but that did not matter. It was not cold at all. They ate fruit and berries again, talking about the day.

  “So what exactly is pongsap root?” asked Rhed.

  Rig grinned, “It’s a root, just a normal root.” But neither Jeff nor Rhed believed him. Not really.

  Jeff was scratching his chin, his lips pursed as he thought about being a dream catcher. “Rig, how exactly does the dream catching thing work?”

  “It runs in your family, so it should come easy to you. Let’s see, the best way to explain. Imagine a large filing cabinet with thousands of files in each drawer. Now imagine that each file is a dream that a child somewhere is busy dreaming at the moment. You can access those files and use them.”

  “Access them? How?”

  “Close your eyes, think of a darkened room, go to the drawer, open a file and see the dream, use what you need from that dream.” Rig waited for the information to hit home. “If you think of the item, it be taken from whichever dream it’s currently in. It takes a bit of practice. You just have to try and keep trying.”

  Jeff sat quietly for the rest of the evening, concentrating on a dark room. So far he could not see the filing cabinet that Rig was talking about.

  * * *

  Angie and Madgwick were camping in a meadow. Angie was grumpy again and her hair was full of twigs and leaves and a fair amount of insects that had been caught in her flying mane.

  “Just what is wrong with a graceful trotting horse, Madgwick?” she asked. “I have never been so frightened in all my life!”

  Madgwick was sceptical. “Angie, in all your life, that was the scariest? For me the thought of losing Matt to Drakmere takes the cake, or the thought of Grzegorz or even worse than Grzegorz, Wiedzma!” Madgwick shivered.

  “Bah,” said Angie. “Grzegorz is easy to handle. He is as vain as he is evil. Use that to your advantage.
Wiedzma, well, yes she is powerful but not the most powerful. Not that she knows that! That will be her downfall. You will have to be quick and cunning with her, Madgwick. Don’t let her ensnare you or you will be lost like the other warrior.”

  “No one talks about the lost warrior. How was she ensnared? Trapped by Wiedzma?”

  Angie stopped combing her hair. “No, not ensnared by Wiedzma. She just vanished. She sacrificed her own life for the last child that was taken by the moonglow, the ultimate sign of bravery, very much like you did on the shoreline. I was too late to help her. She was never heard from again.”

  Angie sniffed, and then continued. “She was Rig’s true love, you know. It nearly broke him when she did not return.”

  Madgwick was gobsmacked.

  “True to their plan, Rig escaped with the child. They got separated and Gwyndion did not make it back to the doorway. Rig searched for many years for her. He has never given up on her. Poor lad. Sometimes I wish I could speak with Azghar. He may know what happened to her, but no one has seen him for ages.”

  “Who is Azghar, Angie?”

  “Hope you never find out, Madgwick, because the day you do, you will probably be dinner!” Angie cackled. “Azghar is Azghar. He is the most powerful magical creature in existence.”

  Angie became serious again. “Tell me what you said to Matt just before he vanished. The trees told me about it, but they could not hear what you were saying.”

  Madgwick looked down at his hands. “I did not know what to say to him, except I did not want him to be afraid and I wanted him to know I would come for him. I also recited a small part of the Warrior oath.”

  Keeper of dreams, I fight with all means,

  Keeping dreams pure, mares will not endure,

  A warrior am I

  Angie nodded. She would not say anything more except to moan about Madgwick’s motorbike and scold her broom about its sudden desire to act like a bike. The bristles at the back of the broom kept shaking every few moments as if it was trying to rev its engine.

  The next morning Angie announced that she would be heading in the other direction. Madgwick was sorry to see her go. He thought they would have a much better chance of saving all three children if she was with them.

  He looked into the distance. Somewhere Rig was running with the boys and between him and Rig were a lot of shimmers. He had to reach them before the shimmers did.

  Angie slung her bag over her shoulder, winked at Madgwick and took off on her broom. She promptly started screaming again as the broom decided it liked the bike idea. The tail of the broom quivered as it raced away at full speed, darting around trees, under roots, over branches. It was going so fast that Angie’s screams soon faded into the distance.

  Madgwick climbed onto his scrambler again and took off as fast as it could go. His face was full of determination and his eyes glowed behind his silver dust goggles.

  26

  Matt woke up on his bed. Not his bed back home, but the one in the castle.

  As he lay there, the thoughts raced through his mind. He realised he was thinking clearly. He could remember his mother, his father, Jeff and even Rhed. It was like a cloud had been lifted from his memory. He remembered Holka!

  Sitting up, he whipped his head towards where she normally sat and with a pang saw she was not there. The room was also changed: that warm, colourful room was gone. Now it was just place with stone walls, bare furniture, cold and impersonal.

  The hot air balloons lay deflated on the floor and the aeroplanes that once darted in and out of the clouds were in little heaps on the stone floor. The bedspread was black and the once bright red curtains were grey.

  Matt wandered around the castle, going from room to room. He was startled to see how much it had changed. All the colour and vibrance was gone, curtains faded or missing, tapestries gone. As he walked his shoes echoed on the stone floor as the carpets were gone too. Matt sniffed the air. The smell of bubblegum and choc-chip cookies was gone, replaced with emptiness. There was not even the fragrance of the flowers left.

  Matt could not remember the way down to the dungeons and every passage he tried took him anywhere but towards the dungeon. And it was not like he could ask for directions. So he ended up cross and lonely and bored.

  He found a sword so huge that he needed two hands to lift it. While trying to balance it, he accidently sliced some curtains in half. He stood for a few moments, waiting for someone to yell at him but when no one came he shrugged and went on.

  He was playing with marbles he had collected in one of the rooms, when one of the guards came past and slipped on one. With legs sprawled he hit the floor with a mighty crash and his helmet went flying.

  Matt, who was sitting on the floor, winced as the guard landed in front of him. The man towered over Matt, pulling his uniform back into place as he retied his sash. His red moustache quivered as he yelled at Matt to go back to his room, but Matt kicked him as hard as he could on the shin and ran off in the opposite direction. Hobbling and cursing, the guard followed.

  Matt quickly lost him by running down many different flights of stairs and long winding corridors. By this point Matt felt a little lost himself. Then, at the bottom of a long corridor, was a large wooden door.

  Matt looked over his shoulder but he was alone. He creaked the door open and crept inside. This room was huge. Two wingback chairs flanked a fireplace so large Matt could stand inside it without stooping.

  When he glanced behind a half-open door, Matt saw another room with a white four-poster bed with thick lace netting that draped to the floor. The side table had a matching lace table cloth.

  There was a silence to the room that was broken by the rhythmic tick-tock, tick-tock of a clock on the mantelpiece. Matt stared at the clock. There were no hour hands, minutes or numbers, just a black clock face with two eerie-looking eyes that followed his movements.

  The smell of moth balls hung in the air. Dark beams lined the walls and ran across the ceiling. The stone floor was covered by a carpet that looked like the slimy green stuff they had found in the pond back home. Matt wrinkled his nose at the carpet and walked around it. He was about to go back to the corridor when a counter caught his attention. It was covered with interesting bottles and things.

  Matt hopped onto a chair and looked at the little bottles all in a row.

  Some were filled with liquid, others looked like stars trapped in a bottle. Some contained colourful sand and some had a sparkling glitter. Matt picked up a bottle and held it closer to his face. It was silver and sparkled like diamonds, and whatever it was moved around inside the bottle like a breeze. He loved that one. Another bottle caught his eye: a shiny blue liquid that looked like someone had bottled a piece of sky. Matt looked around and then slipped both bottles into his pocket.

  Matt remembered how his mother had taught him to paint so he looked for paper and found some that had some funny writing on the one side. He nodded in approval. He would paint on the other side.

  Next he opened a few bottles, dipped a stick into a bottle and made a circle, then coloured it in with bright red paint. The two colours started to steam when mixed. It was wonderful and cool.

  Matt mixed different colours, drawing trees and houses and then he painted a castle. Some of the colours went “poof!” and some had a thin stream of smoke trailing up, others made smoke balls in exciting colours that raced around in circles. Matt laughed with delight and used more of those.

  He tried all the bottles to see what would happen, but some really stank. Ooh, lovely, he thought. He pocketed one of these. Every little bottle he opened, eager to see the effect of mixing colours, poured them out, or just letting them drift into the air.

  A laugh came from the corridor and Matt nearly dropped a bottle in fright. Suddenly he had the feeling that he was not meant to be there. He turned around, frantically searching for a place to hide.

  On the balcony was a large flower pot. Matt raced to it and dived in just as the door opened behind h
im. It was Wiedzma, chuckling at something when the sound caught in her throat. She gasped and rushed over towards the table. She screeched in horror. Matt pushed deeper into the flower pot as her screeches filled the room.

  The shouts went out all over the castle. Everyone was racing around trying to find the source of the ear-splitting screams while Matt, hidden from view by some plants, sneaked a look over the edge of the flower pot.

  Guards and officials streamed into the room to find Wiedzma bent over and wheezing, her face red with anger. No one was paying any attention to the balcony … yet.

  The witch was so angry that smoke streamed into the room, appearing out of thin air, swirling, twirling around like a silent tornado. It was terrifying. A guard got caught in the torrent of the dark funnel and promptly disappeared. After that people scattered from the path of the deadly swirling darkness. It moved around Wiedzma as if dancing in tune with her anger.

  Matt lay low, listening to the yelling and screaming in the room. Again he lifted his head to see and looked straight into Thirza’s green eyes.

  The old man was standing by the door. His eyes narrowed and very slowly he moved his head from side to side. Matt understood Thirza’s message instantly. Even though he did not like the old man, he appreciated that he had chosen not to point out Matt’s hiding place.

  He lay quietly for what seemed like forever. The shouts moved out of the room and headed down the corridor. The room sounded empty. Matt lifted his head only to gasp as he was pulled out of the flower pot by his collar.

  Thirza grabbed Matt by the collar and lifted the small frame up out of the flower pot. The kid looked scared and so he should be. If he were caught here there would be no stopping the witch in her anger.

  He had to get Matt away immediately. He was lucky he had noticed the crumpled flowers. Thank goodness Matt had had the good sense to just lie as quiet as a mouse. Then Thirza’s eyes fell to Matt’s shirt and lingered on the potion stains, evidence of Matt’s recent painting session. His mouth twitched. Oh, what a sight. This was priceless.