On his first visit he would have been offered rest, shelter and sustenance in one of the friendly dwellings hereabouts. Now it might have been an alien village, where a body could perish without anyone taking too much notice. And fear; there was the overwhelming scent of fear in the air, which was strengthened by a liberal dose of uncertainty and confusion. Would anyone offer him sanctuary or, better still, help and advice as to which way to go?
“You are the Otherworldling Scoggins,” a deeply guttural voice jolted him out of his thoughts. Jimmy spun on his heels to see a gathering group of villagers he had not seen before. They were swarthy and bore none of the characteristics of the people he had met in Omni before. Although Jimmy was now only ten, he had built up a sophisticated value system in his short time and so he recognised antagonism and aggression when he saw it. The group approaching him was not a welcoming gathering and they were not about to offer him succour.
“You are not welcome here!” the leader growled, “and we have ways of making sure you do not return.” They shambled slowly towards him in an alarmingly threatening way, obliging Jimmy to retreat as quickly as he could without running – just yet. He knew by their demeanour that discussion about the finer points of friendliness and hospitality would be futile, so he turned rapidly on his heels once again and took flight. Only three paces into his escape, he bounced off a wall of muscle and sinew, as villagers from the other side of the river closed in, to be gripped by a pair of hairy, muscular hands on his rebound. At that moment, a high piercing screech rose sharply into the air, to be answered almost immediately by another somewhere the other side of the village.
Jimmy screwed his eyes tight shut as if trying to wish away a nasty dream, knowing in his heart that Seth wouldn’t let him escape a second time. He screwed himself up even tighter, expecting the inevitable. When nothing happened to him for several minutes, he unclenched his fists and unscrewed his nerves, to have the hissing and screaming in his ears replaced by – silence, and a slowly increasing wheeze. Now that sound he had heard before. One eye gradually opened to reveal – blackness. The other eye joined the first to show – even blacker blackness, turning slowly to deep grey.
“The Foggy Land of Four!” he groaned. “Have I escaped that fate to be thrust into this one?” His companions, the owner of the hairy arms and the one to whom the acrid and nauseous smell of stale, unwashed sweat, had let go of their prisoner to become captive themselves. They would become Whispering People along with countless others trapped here. Jimmy screwed his eyes again, and immediately felt a sharp corner in the small of his back and the smell of baking in his nostrils. The intense light of a bright autumn day almost blinded him as he opened his eyes again to be greeted by Ursula’s concerned face, not two metres from his as he sprawled against a kitchen unit in her house.
She made a lurch for him to keep him there but to no avail. The kitchen unit was replaced by something infinitely larger and considerably harder. He had landed amidst the legs of Por’s Imperial Guard, with his face squashed against a giant kneecap. He had hoped to remain in the kitchen at Ursula’s house, where the smell of baking had caused his stomach to lurch in anticipation, but the Imperial Guard in his situation was a close second best. At least he would not be attacked by crazed Seth supporters and followers.
“Well!” Por, the King of the Wandering People said at last, once Jimmy had been placed upright and taken to his audience. “We meet again young master Scoggins. I can see you are in need of sustenance once more, which is fortuitous as we are about to dine. Please join us.”
Those words “dine” and “join us” had become Jimmy’s favourites in a world where he never knew where or whence his next meal might arrive, so he had learned to fill his belly as full as he might without bursting. This he set to doing with a vengeance. Por had recalled his appetite from the last time they had met, and so allowed him to finish before plying him with the inevitable questions, “Where did you come from? Why here, and why now? Who are you trying to escape from?”
“I need to see Oompah as a matter of some importance,” Jimmy urged Por after he had dined. The usual fare was more than enough to satisfy his empty belly, which now, of course, was as full as he could have made it.
“I have learned,” Por began his slow reply, “to listen seriously to your pronouncements however crazy they may sound. And here you are once again, appearing unsought for in my land at a time of great strife and need. You are beginning to acquire the reputation as something of a harbinger of doom and dismay. Why do you need to see His Majesty Oompah?”
“I don’t know whether I ought to tell him this before I tell you,” Jimmy replied seriously, “but here goes ...” and with this, he launched into his experience with Tarna and the villagers. Once he had finished his story, Por sat in deep and brooding silence for several long minutes, brow furrowed and shoulders hunched.
“This does not come as a complete surprise to me,” Por answered finally. “We have had concerns about his people for quite some time and we had heard rumours about the true Chieftain’s disappearance. The news about Tarna, however, is a shock. Relations between our peoples had always been convivial and robust, until the shadow from the north had begun to stretch its icy fingers towards us. We are on our way to our western realm and will escort you towards Oompah’s castle beyond Lake Soon. We should be there by mid-day tomorrow so you need to rest now.”
Rest was a luxury Jimmy had not experienced much lately, and the idea of rest whilst travelling Wandering People-style appealed to him enormously. The problem was that this sort of rest, although refreshing and invigorating in the extreme, didn’t seem to last long; no sooner asleep, than being woken at the end of the journey. This was their fashion, and so it was that “moments” after Jimmy had settled he was being awoken, close to the southern-most shore of Lake Soon.
“Here we must bid farewell,” Por said to Jimmy, as the Wandering People prepared to strike out south and west. “We have prepared further rations for you so that you will be sustained until you reach Oompah’s castle. Fare well until ...”
The trap snapped shut! The Wandering People had not expected to be ambushed by such a large force, laying in wait so quietly and patiently, with such targeted precision. They were always ready for such an attack, but three of the Imperial Guard soon lay on the ground around Por, with black-feathered arrows sprouting from their sides. They would not die but would be incapacitated for a while.
A blaring of brazen trumpets signalled a further attack from the right flank from man-high creatures clad in black breastplates and ghoulishly fashioned helmets. By this time, the remaining Guard had formed a tight ring around their king and would neither yield nor break rank. They would not allow their king to be harmed! They left sufficient space between each Guardsman to allow swing and slash of their mighty swords, which they used to devastating effect. The rest of the Wandering People fought like demons, decimating the enemy forces as they cleaved through their ranks. That was the effect Seth’s forces had planned for, for indeed it was the Lord of Evil who had designed the diversion. Jimmy was left in the open, an unguarded ten year old in the midst of a raging battle of hardened and seasoned warriors each more than twice his height. This was not good, Jimmy thought once again. At its fiercest the battle raged, ploughing over heaps of dead and wounded, when a small group of enemy warriors broke away from the skirmish they were involved with, and headed for the unguarded and unprotected youngster. He turned to flee but ran into a wall of sinew and bone closing in from the other side. A strong bony hand clamped itself painfully around his upper arm, and another silenced the cry in his throat. He was taken!
At that moment, a terrible and terrifying crash of thunder and flash of bright blinding blue light split the air. The two groups of would-be captors lay at Jimmy’s feet scorched beyond recognition. All hostilities ceased in that one instant with most of the enemy forces either dead or in rout. The Guard and all the Wanderin
g People simply stood, frozen in action, mouths open in disbelief. For, on one small hillock in the middle of where the hottest battle had raged, stood the diminutive figure of a slight, raven-haired girl, her right hand held above her head, palm outward in warning. A power of significant intensity, which this age of Omni had never witnessed, emanated from her to a great distance around and beyond her. Four enemy warriors made a last desperate lurch to capture their goal but were utterly destroyed by this young girl. They were crushed as an elephant stepping on a small insect.
It was Ursula, and no sooner had she appeared than she had gone.
With only a few injuries and no fatalities, Por viewed the attack as a mere skirmish in his terms. However, the mind-blowing intervention of one so small, wielding seemingly limitless power, was entirely a different matter.
“That level of power we have never seen before,” he said to his gathered elders, “not even from Algan of the Enchanted Forest. She is not of this world either.”
“It was prophesied that such an infant would appear,” replied Feisor, his chief adviser and elder. “That time is at hand. We must find where it is and ...”
“Hang on a minute,” interrupted Jimmy. “If you don’t mind, the ‘it’ you are talking about is my friend, and she’s called Ursula.”
The king and his advisers stopped their discussion and turned slowly to face the source of their interruption.
“You were not invited to this discussion,” Por said quietly but with authority. “However, seeing as you are here, perhaps you might like to help us to find your friend?”
“She’s not here,” Jimmy replied, “and I’m not sure she’d come if you asked. Besides, I would like to see King Oompah, and we’re not quite there yet.”
“As a matter of fact,” continued Feisor, “if you look over your left shoulder, you’ll see ...”
“Oompah’s castle,” Jimmy continued under his breath, following his direction. With that, he struck out towards the drawbridge linking the castle to the mainland. The castle hadn’t changed at all, or so he thought, but it was a while since he was last here. Nonetheless, it felt strange stepping onto the solid bridge. Solid bridge? Shouldn’t he have felt springy planking under his feet? This didn’t feel right ...
Immediately that thought took shape in his head the light went out, blackness took over, to be followed almost instantly by a swirling snow effect; the sort of effect you get when a TV goes off station. The only difference was that this was snow, real snow, and with the snow came a keen, bitingly cold north wind, which whistled through his clothes as if he had nothing on at all.
To Por, the Wandering People and all other onlookers, Oompah’s castle simply disappeared and Jimmy along with it. This was immediately replaced by – Oompah’s castle! The one Jimmy had stepped into had been an illusion, an exceedingly clever and realistic projection from the mind of the master of deception. He was taken once more, and this time there would be no escape.
About The Author
Frank English
Born in 1946 in the West Riding of Yorkshire’s coalfields around Wakefield, he attended grammar school where he enjoyed sport rather more than academic work. After three years at teacher training college in Leeds, Frank became a teacher in 1967. He spent a lot of time during his teaching career entertaining children of all ages, a large part of which was through telling stories, and encouraging them to escape into a world of imagination and wonder. He found some of his most troubled youngsters to be very talented poets. Frank has always had a wicked sense of humour, which has blossomed during the time he has spent with his present wife. This sense of humour also allowed many youngsters to survive often difficult and upsetting home environments.
Recently, Frank retired after forty years working in schools with young people, most of whom had significantly disrupted lives due to behavioural disorders and poor social environments, generally brought about through circumstances beyond their control. At the same time as moving from leafy lane suburban middle class school teaching to residential schooling for the emotional and behavioural disturbed in the early 1990s, divorce provided the spur to achieve ambitions. Supported by his present wife, Denise, he achieved a Master’s degree in his mid-forties and a PhD at the age of fifty-six, something he had always wanted to do.
Now enjoying glorious retirement, Frank spends as much time as life will allow writing, reading and travelling.
Coming Soon
Magic Parcel: The Gathering Storm
Want to find out what happens to Jimmy in the next instalment of the Magic Parcel series?
Well this is a dilemma and no mistake! How is Jimmy going to escape this one? Miriel helped him and his brother escape when Seth caught them in their last adventure, but there’s no one to save Jimmy this time, except, perhaps, for Ursula. She is determined that her new friend will not become a lost friend.
She has shown flashes of her raw and unrefined power already, but how can she save Jimmy if she can’t find him or control her new found talents? What would happen if she unleashed her power in its full force now?
Jimmy and Ursula are Otherworldlings, and not the only ones needing help in Omni. How would ordinary (and extra-ordinary) Omnians react to the emergence of a new and potentially more destructive threat, not only to their stability but also to their very existence? Is the answer in Omni itself, or in some other place?
Find out in Frank’s thrilling sequel, coming soon!
Updates and more information can be found about ‘The Gathering Storm’ at www.frankenglish.co.uk
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