“They’re innocent!”
As the words came out of him, a rage in Ned’s chest burned bright and true. He didn’t care about fear, he didn’t care how old or evil the beast in front of them was, and of its own accord his ring fired. He struck at the creature, using slabs of stone flooring, ripping pillars from their bases and hurling them with abandon. Atoms fired and fizzed, blasted and crackled, as Ned filled the air with his rage. The more he struck, the more the beast changed, morphing from one shape to another, striking at the ground with black spears for claws.
From the corner of his eye, Ned saw a streak of light. Benissimo’s whip tore through the air, and next to it, Barbarossa’s cleaver struck out, both aiming at the creature, deep at its core.
“EnNouGhH!”
A hundred arms poured out of the beast like a swarm of giant insects. Again the two brothers were knocked to the ground. One of its claws was about to hit Ned, when Gorrn tore up from the ground, defiantly blocking its path.
“UNT!”
And a second later, Gorrn was no more.
“Gorrn?!”
The beast now filled the room entirely. Two great arms and legs clearly formed, the rest of its hideous body still snarling and twisting to find its final shape. All daylight from the window was blocked, the room now lit only by the flickering fire from the butcher’s hearth. In its folds of black upon black Ned could see two great eyes, glowing and cruel.
“DdieE!” boomed the monster and its blackness closed all around them. Ned held his breath, all light and hope extinguished … and then Lucy took his hand.
“Stop,” she said quietly, her eyes shut tight, and the beast recoiled.
For a second everything was still.
“Take it,” said Lucy, and put the Heart Stone in Ned’s hand.
“What did you do?”
“I’m still doing it.”
A tear was rolling down Lucy’s cheek and her hands were shaking. Ned watched in horror, as did both Bene and Barbarossa from the other side of the room.
“Y-you’re in its mind, Lucy! It will kill you!”
“You’re going to have to do this bit without me, Ned.”
Benissimo took Barbarossa’s arm and together they faced the source of their curse and power, each knowing what they must do. The strangest thing of all, beyond the united brothers, was that Benissimo was smiling as truly and calmly as the old goat knew how.
Ned looked at the Heart Stone. What could he say? What words could he use? How could you control a thing so powerful? Perhaps that was the point – perhaps he couldn’t control it. When Ned worked his ring, he controlled it with his will, but the Heart Stone couldn’t be forced, it had to agree, and for that to happen, it would need to be asked a question.
And then he heard the voice of Tiamat in his head, when he’d asked him for help: “DO NOT ASK ME – ASK THE HEART STONE.”
And quite suddenly Ned Armstrong knew exactly what he had to do.
The room shook and Lucy wavered. Ned took one last look at his friend, at Benissimo and Barbarossa, and then closed his eyes.
In the depths of his mind he felt the Heart Stone’s wordless voice again, and his ring finger thrummed with power. From his lips poured four letters, and as he said them, Benissimo and Barbarossa lunged at the beast.
“Help?” asked Ned in barely a whisper.
And his ring fired.
Light and Dark
eeing, Telling and Feeling. These were the foundations of an Engineer’s powers. How they split and reformed atoms to their will. What coursed now through Ned’s mind and body had no beginning or end. It was pure power, a surge of blinding energy amplified not only by his ring but by the Heart Stone and the magic it drew upon, and as it did so, the rock in his palm grew hot, breaking away like particles of flowing dust till the Heart Stone was no more. Energy, light and sparking, burning atoms poured out of Ned, from his hands and eyes and mouth.
“NoOoOoo!”
He looked for just long enough to see the monster screaming with a hundred misshapen mouths, its form across the walls, the ceiling and floors retreating, shrinking and cowering till in a final violent shockwave of light and dark, there was nothing left of it at all.
The room became blurred and strange. Ned was barely aware of Lucy bending over him, tears pouring readily down her cheeks. She was shaking him, her hands frantic across his face, but her words were distant and soft. The walls around them were crumbling, the great window shattered, and where Benissimo and his brother had lunged, there was only an empty hole, dark and quiet and empty.
The last thing Ned saw was a heavily panting Alice. The old girl had come running and was trumpeting wildly, her trunk now tight round his waist.
Presents
ed did not see how the Demons and their Darklings fled. How, one by one, Barba’s remaining Daedali raised their white flags. He didn’t see the faces of the fair-folk or their new allies rejoicing. And long after the fires had smouldered their last and King Antlor had reclaimed the forest, he did not see Lucy watching over him with George.
Almost two days later, the very first things Ned Armstrong did see were the faces of his mum and dad.
“Mum, Dad?”
No sooner had he opened his mouth than they pulled him in a human tug-of-war, each of them hugging the arm or shoulder nearest, till the Armstrongs were sitting at the edge of his bed, in quiet, well-earned joy.
“Lucy and George, are they—”
“They’re fine, son. It’s over – it’s over!”
And though he knew his dad was right, that it really was over, he couldn’t hope to truly believe it.
“Are you sure? Please tell me you’re sure.”
He looked up to his mother’s eyes and she smiled. “Barbarossa’s gone, darling, and so has his monster.”
And what had started on a birthday with the scratching of nails at his sitting-room’s patio doors had finally come to an end. But just as he was beginning to believe it, his parents turned quiet.
“Are you two all right?”
“Bene would have loved this,” his dad finally managed.
Ned thought back to the fortress and the look on Benissimo’s face. “Be happy for him – he got what he wanted in the end and he was smiling. I think he was relieved. Barba went willingly. It’ll never make up for what he did, but Bene found peace in it, I’m sure.”
Benissimo had given his life for them all and he had done so asking for nothing in return. Despite Ned’s words and the truth of them, he knew that he had lost one of the greatest and most noble men he would ever meet and that he and the world that the Ringmaster had saved would be poorer without him.
He looked around his once bare quarters in the Nest. Every part of it, from the walls to the desk to its polished concrete floors, was covered in the strangest assortment of objects he’d ever seen. Marble busts, oil paintings and letters. Flowers, pastries, locks of hair and rare silks. The largest pile by far was of actual gold and next to it stood piles and piles of cash in almost every currency.
“What’s been going on?!”
His dad laughed. “You, my boy, are really rather famous. When Fox contacted the jossers, they sent their tanks and troops, but they also sent word to just about every news outlet on the planet. Everyone knows what’s happened, what you and Lucy did, and they’ve been sending gifts from both sides of the Veil for the past twenty-four hours.”
Ned saw a particularly strange object lying on his desk. “Is that what I think it is?”
“The Stag King’s great horn. Apparently if you blow it he’ll come to you, no matter where you are – he and the herd will hear it.”
“They’re actually pretty scary – I think I’ll leave it where it is, thanks.”
“There’s more. We’ve heard from Lemnus. Seems his people have forgiven him for ridding them of the Heart Stone. Turns out they’re grateful too, and want you to visit them in Dublin, which by the way, we absolutely forbid.”
“So the H
eart Stone – they don’t want it back?”
“It’s gone, Ned – whatever you did unmade it. No one’s getting it now.”
Ned thought of the dragon in the cave. How desperate and full of anger it had been.
“What about Tiamat?”
“According to Antlor’s herd, the dragon let out a cry when the Heart Stone was destroyed. Whether it was a source of Tiamat’s power or its actual heart, we’ll never know. The dragon is solid rock now, a part of the mountain it lived in.”
Before he could ask what had happened to his parents and the Tinker, or how they beat the Central Intelligence, his door slid open.
“Hello, old bean,” smiled George.
There was a crack by the great ape’s side and Lucy jostled him out of the way.
“Now you look here, young lady, I got to the door first!”
“Button it, monkey. Ned, you are never going to believe what’s happening in Gearnish.”
Mr Fox
r Fox quit his job with the BBB shortly after his return to Dover. He realised an hour or so later that he had nowhere to go, no family to return to and no place to call home. Having been a man who handled stress rather well – in fact, better than nearly every operative the BBB had ever had – he took to the realisation well enough.
Unfortunately, despite having saved Siberia from a nuclear bomb and playing a key part in preventing the end of the world in general, there were issues with his decision. Mr Fox had no name, no proof of identification, no dental records or public records with his name on them of any kind. Because of this, he had no way to open a bank account, which wasn’t as bad as it sounded, as he had no money to put in one anyway. So when the prime minister tracked him down and offered him a job (“on behalf of the entire world”), he was happy to accept. It turned out that there were other ways to save people that did not involve violence.
Within a week, he became one of the most famous people in the world, not because he was magical or special, but because those who were, trusted him. Needless to say, there were a lot of emails – several hundred million, in fact – and had it not been for the diligence of his team, led by Mr Badger, the one he really cared about might never have found him.
Her name was Elizabeth and she had loved him, apparently with all of her heart. But the Darkling that had snatched her had dropped her in its escape and she had sustained a bump to the head that for a while had lost her her memories.
Months later, just as they were slowly returning, Mr Fox had joined the BBB to have his own removed. Better to live without knowing anything about her than to live without her. Elizabeth had searched for him year after year so was rather shaken to find out not only that the world she lived in was one filled with magic but that the love of her life had been a part of keeping it whole.
Mr Fox looked in the mirror. He was wearing a dark blue suit. He could get away from grey, but suits would take months to get out of his system. Tonight he would re-meet Elizabeth for the very first time and unsurprisingly she knew his real name. Mr Fox was not one to flap, not even when facing down a twelve-foot ogre. But today and now, as the butterflies formed in his tummy, Mr Fox realised that he was pleasingly and giddily terrified.
George and the Jungle
ed, George and Lucy stepped through the mirror and into the beating heat of the Amazonian jungle. George was unnaturally quiet, especially for him, and both Ned and Lucy knew he was suffering from a terrible bout of nerves.
“George, you really don’t have anything to worry about. Stop being so silly.”
“Easy for you to say, madam. You aren’t about to be reunited with your missing species.”
Of the many things to have taken place since the discovery of the Hidden and their subsequent reintegration with the rest of the world, Mr Fox’s discovery of George’s fellow gorillas had been, at least to Ned and his friends, the best. Using the Tinker’s surveillance network, which had been greatly expanded with the cooperation of several global powers and independent corporations, a city hidden deep in the rainforest had been spotted from satellites high up over the earth’s atmosphere. On contact, the gorilla citizens living there had asked to be left alone but had expressed great excitement at the thought of meeting George, and two of its more elderly apes believed that they not only knew how he had come away from the city as a baby, but exactly who he was.
“If they really are your parents, George, you have nothing to fear. I should know, eh?” said Ned. “And besides, you’ll have so much to talk about. You do know they have six varieties of banana here, right?”
“Actually, old bean, I do. There’s Prata, da Terra, Maca and Caturra, Danica and my personal favourite – Ouro. Ouro means ‘gold’ by the way, and—”
“Hush, George, they’re waiting,” said Lucy.
The great ape leant down low and hugged his two wards.
“I shall miss you, you know.”
“We’ll see you soon, George. I promise,” said Ned.
And with that, George stepped towards the jungle. Ahead of him there was a loud grunting of joy in the leaves and bushes. George turned back to them and smiled that great big toothy smile of his, and then he ran – ran to meet his past and future with every bound.
Toys
he factory of the Central Intelligence was as hot or hotter than the Brazilian rainforest, though much improved since their last visit. Now freed, minutians walked and worked busily, and gone were the thundering pistons of its great and terrible machine. It still controlled a great part of the city’s more complex workings, but the day-to-day running of its production lines had been happily handed back to its citizens. Gearnish no longer made weapons, or Guardians; no longer made anything capable of causing harm. That lesson had been learnt and at a high enough price. Today and for evermore, the city of Gearnish made the very thing that had brought it its fame and fortune in the first place.
“Toys, master and miss – toys, toys, toys! We’ve orders all over the world now, thanks to Mr Fox and his whistle-blowing. The jossers’ll pay a fortune for our wind-up marvels, and if it weren’t for my great-uncle Faisal here, we’d be well behind schedule.”
Ned turned to the newly cast face of the Central Intelligence. It had a rather fatherly sort of look and, aside from the numerous cables protruding from its head, reminded him of the mild-mannered Cogsworth he had met in Amsterdam.
“Master Ned,” steamed the great machine, “I’m afraid Whiskers’ body was melted down to ashes before I could do anything, but, like me, his soul was transferred to the machine-mind instantly. In any case, he’s been rebuilt from top to bottom and we’ve added a few enhancements I think you’re going to like.”
Ned didn’t want any enhancements – he just wanted his old dog-mouse again, and by his side.
The newly formed Debussy Mark Twelve came running out to meet him, tail wagging, and ran through Ned’s legs and right up into Lucy’s arms.
“Err, thanks, I think,” grinned Ned. “It’s good to see you, boy.”
Everywhere
last push through cool glass and they stepped into Ned’s old bedroom at Number 222 Oak Tree Lane. On Ned’s request it had still not been touched.
“I can’t believe you were ever this messy, Ned.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad. I think it’s going to be a project for when I get back.”
Outside they heard the flapping of Terry and Olivia Armstrong.
“Livvy! Livvy, I can’t find my shoes – we’re going to be late for work.”
“Well, where were they the last time you saw them?”
“On my blasted feet!”
Ned and Lucy stepped out on to the upstairs landing. It was hard to believe that the world owed Ned’s parents such a great debt; that they, along with Ned and Lucy, had played such a key role in saving it. What Ned and Lucy saw now was chaos, and the black fumes of burning toast coming up from the kitchen.
“Ned? Lucy!” said Terry Armstrong. “Good Lord, I’d almost forgotten. Have you seen m
y shoes?”
Lucy blinked her eyes shut and smiled. “Bathroom, under a pink towel.”
“Thank you, dear. Livvy, they’re here!”
Ned’s mum came out of the master bedroom wearing a smart grey suit. She had rarely looked more elegant in her life.
“Darlings, how were George and the Tinker?”
“Great, thanks. George calmed down once we got there. And look what Faisal made us!”
Ned’s mum looked at Lucy’s shoulder, where Whiskers sat, wagging its tail like a dog about to play fetch.
“Whiskers, welcome back! I must say, I’m very happy to see you out of that machine and back to your old self. Ned, Lucy, are you sure about this?”
“Yes, Olivia.”
“Quite sure, Mum. Do you have it?”
“Terry, go and get them the jacket, would you?”
Ned’s dad walked to his bedroom and began rifling through the closet.
“Are you two going to be OK, Mum?”
“Well, it won’t feel quite right without you, but at least we’ll be busy. It really was very kind of Mr Fox to give us both jobs.”
“You and the rest of the troupe. Poor man needs all the help he can get. What was the title the UN gave him again?”
“Chief liaison and president of josser–Hidden affairs. It’s going to take years to integrate them properly, but if anyone can speak for them both and fairly, it’s Fox. Besides which, no one else would step forward to deal with what was left of Barba’s Demons or their Darklings.”
“Self-imposed exile … do you really think they’ll stick to it?”
“If they know what’s good for them. Fox explained the effects of thermonuclear weaponry in detail to them and how he stopped the bomb from being dropped. They’ve agreed to stick to their side of the Veil permanently in return for being left alone.”
Ned’s dad returned with the jacket Ned had asked for. Of the many gifts he and Lucy had been given, it was without doubt the best. The Glimmerman’s jacket had countless rectangular mirrors all over it and would open just about every mirror-portal in the world.
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