by Robin Jarvis
Lee shook his head at them. “You all got that outta your systems now, yeah?” he asked warily. “That weren’t cool, you assholes. That furry bullet bag coulda had somethin’ to say – you have no idea what the zoo life is like round here. That coulda been anythin’. That was dumb, guys – real baseline dumb! Trigger-happy ain’t the word; trigger-hysterical is what you is. You need to frost up, right now, ’fore one of us gets capped the same way.”
The guards had no idea what he was saying. They pointed at the squirrel and laughed. It was the only time Lee had ever seen them display any jubilant emotion. Their relieved, joking chatter sounded weird in this place. One of them, the thinnest, and usually the surliest, was the first to become grave once more and lifted the chain that tethered him to Lee’s wrist. Then, with urgent gestures, he mimed the boy taking them away from here.
“You got it, Posh,” Lee agreed. “That’s what I is ’bout to do – take us back over that rainbow. This messed-up Oz has got enough crazy muthas in it already; it don’t need four more with guns, what don’t speak local.”
After several frustrating minutes in which he tried to indicate what he was going to do, he finally had them lined up on either side of him. They were on an overgrown forest path and, by scissoring his forefingers, managed to demonstrate that they were going to run along it a little way and wake up back in the medical room.
“In North Korea,” he said, nodding his head slowly. “DPRK – yeah? That crap heap, ass end of nowhere. We go back there, mkay?”
“Kay!” affirmed Scary and Posh Spice on his right.
“Kay!” chimed in Sporty and Baby on his left.
Lee took a moment to compose himself and crunched his neck muscles a few times. Glancing along the forest path, he reckoned they’d be back in the mountain base before they made it past three trees. What they’d find waiting for them back there, however, was an entirely different matter.
“You’d best be long gone when we get back, old man,” he muttered. “These ladies is burnin’ to shoot something bigger than squirrels.”
Closing his eyes, he tensed and then ran forward. The chains rattled and the four guards ran with him.
After passing at least ten trees, Lee slowed to a stop and took deep breaths as he gazed about, frowning. Why were they still here? What had he done wrong? He didn’t understand it.
The guards looked at one another uncertainly and voiced their confusion.
“I know, I know,” the boy said. “I got me no idea neither. We go again, yeah?”
“Kay!” they said in military unison.
Lee closed his eyes again and concentrated harder than before. He thought of the familiar room, with its monitors, wall mirror and hospital bed. That’s where he was going to find himself this time. No doubt about it.
With a grunt, he ran along the path, leading the eager guards.
When that attempt also failed, followed by a third, fourth and then a fifth, during which they’d held hands, the guards’ keen anticipation had gone and they had reverted to shouting at him angrily.
“We should be gone by now!” Lee declared, holding his hands up. “We should be back in that dump you call home. This is not my fault.”
Posh Spice had run out of patience and he turned his rifle on the boy, prodding him in the stomach to get this most basic threat across in no uncertain terms.
“Hey!” Lee yelled. “You do somethin’ crazy an’ there’s no way you’re gonna get back, stupid.”
The others seemed to agree with him and they shouted at Posh in Korean, pushing the barrel of the Kalashnikov away.
Posh railed back at them and Lee let them bawl at each other. He tried to work out what he was doing differently. There’d never been any trouble getting back to the real world. He had flitted in and out of this twisted place at will. Mind you, he’d never had to take four adults with him, but there hadn’t been a problem bringing them here in the first place.
“Yeah, but that weren’t down to me,” he told himself. “I was dragged here, like when I brought Spencer and Maggie back in the camp. Maybe I got me a two-person max limit?”
“Hey, ladies,” he called, interrupting their argument. “Let’s try this again, but different this time. Just two of you come with me. I’ll bounce straight back for the others, yeah?”
He tried to show them this new idea by pretending to remove one of the cuffs from his wrists and leaving with just two guards. The four men scowled at him, perplexed, as he repeated the actions again and again. It was Scary who grasped his meaning first and he rapidly explained it to the other three. The proposal was not met with joyous approval and they shouted at Lee louder than before. None of them wanted to be left here, even for a short while.
“Then we is stuck!” he told them fiercely. “I can’t think of no other way.”
Lee kicked the top off a toadstool that was growing at the side of the path. Perhaps he was just too damn tired. Maybe, if he gave it a bit more time, his mojo, or whatever it was that made him the Castle Creeper, would be back to full strength and there’d be no problem. He hoped that’s all it was.
“Listen up,” he announced. “We need a time out. I gotta park and recharge.”
But the guards wouldn’t let him sit down. They had got it into their heads that the only way to get home was to keep moving and he couldn’t make them understand that wasn’t how it worked. They were determined to march down the track and see where it led to. Chained to them the way he was, there was nothing Lee could do except be pulled along.
“This won’t get you no place,” he objected, trudging along unwillingly, “’cept mebbe dead. This neighbourhood is full of monsters you never dreamed of. We’re gonna end up toasted if you don’t stop – right now!”
They refused to listen. He had had his chance and failed. Seeking refuge in the familiar, they started singing ‘No Motherland Without You’, the signature song of Kim Jong-il, at the top of their voices in Korean.
“You pushed away the severe storm.
You made us believe, General Kim Jong-il.
We cannot live without you.
Our country cannot exist without you!”
They marched as if they were on parade and Lee groaned. He hadn’t realised just how accurate he had been, referring to this place as a messed-up Oz. Here they were, prancing through the forest, singing and looking for a way home. All they lacked was a yellow brick road. Even their number tallied with the characters in that old movie.
“As long as I’m the dog,” the boy grumbled. “No way am I one of them other suckers. Woah, am I glad no one I know can see me right now.”
When the guards had finished that song, they began another. It bolstered their confidence in this strange place, but Lee’s unease mounted. Whatever lived in this wooded corner of Mooncaster was more than aware of their presence. He was sure they were being watched, but by what?
The third stirring, patriotic song came to an end. The North Koreans were in a better humour and they debated what to sing next. Scary Spice turned to Lee and invited him to start one, signalling that they would join in. The boy shook his head in disbelief.
“You yankin’ me?” he cried. “Ain’t no way…”
Then, in spite of their predicament, or maybe because of it, he was struck by a sudden notion and a slow, mischievous grin spread across his face. He wondered if he could remember the words…
Presently he was leading the guards in an excruciating, out-of-tune rendition of the old Spice Girls song, ‘Wannabe’.
“You wann be ma lovah, you got get wi’ ma frenn,” the guards sang heroically, repeating what he had taught them, but not understanding any of the words. “I wann-ah, I wann-ah, I really really really wann-ah zig ah zig hah!”
Lee was in creases. He couldn’t believe he had got them to do it. It was so surreal and he wished Maggie had been able to share this; she would have got such a kick out of it, seeing them march in their uniforms, mangling those lyrics. No one would ever take his word f
or it. But then he probably would never see any of the other refugees again. For all he knew, they might be dead by now. Gerald’s pathetic escape plan never had a chance.
“Hell,” he hissed, pushing that thought away and returning his attention to the guards. “This makes me Geri, don’t it? Man, that blows!”
The meandering path gradually began to take a steady downward course as the land dipped into a valley. Lee guessed they were skirting round one of the thirteen hills, but he was completely lost. Along the edge of the track, the toadstools now grew in dense clusters. They were large and ugly, with greyish-brown, leathery caps, dotted with pale spots, and, as the terrain sank lower, the toadstools grew taller.
A glimmer of recognition sparked in the back of Lee’s mind. He was sure he had read about this in Austerly Fellows’ book. This exact place was mentioned – but he couldn’t recall why or what happened here.
“Where is you when I needs you, Sheriff Woody?” he muttered, knowing that Spencer would have remembered without hesitation. Geeks really had their uses. But Spencer was probably lying face down on the mountainside back in the real world, his body peppered with bullet holes. Lee ground his teeth together. There was nothing he could have done to stop that. He just had to keep focused on what he wanted.
Some of the toadstools were as high as his waist now. Up ahead, they loomed over the pathway. The afternoon was slipping into evening and, beneath the trees, the shadows deepened.
The guards stopped singing. They too were growing uncomfortable and they stared at the oversized fungi with suspicion. Sporty raised his rifle and tapped one tentatively. A cloud of bloated flies came buzzing from the gills beneath the cap and everyone sprang back.
“We come the wrong way,” Lee declared. “This ain’t takin’ us no place good.”
He was about to signal the others to turn back when a high, squeaky voice began to sing.
“Tra la la, tra la lee.
Who is this that I can see?
Five fine fellows on a strolling spree,
finding their way to merry me.”
On to the path leaped a strange little creature. It was a long-legged goblin, wearing striped woollen stockings under a soft leather tunic, over which was a waistcoat of orange velvet. A hooded cape was fastened under his chin and a pair of pince-nez was balanced on his sharp nose.
It was like an Arthur Rackham illustration come to life. Both eyes were bright green, but one was larger than the other. They gleamed in the gathering dusk and the golden buckles on his pointed brown shoes glinted as he capered in a dainty, twirling dance.
“We shall play some games, but I shall win,
for my name is Nimbelsewskin.
I like to snip and stitch and mend.
Each of you I shall make my friend…”
The four guards opened fire simultaneously – yelling as the AK-47s blasted the goblin back down the path.
When the shooting was over, they were out of breath and smiling at a job well done.
“Oh, you dumb, dumb asswipes,” Lee uttered in shock and disgust.
The guards pulled him over to where the goblin’s body lay across the path and they stared at it with intense curiosity, prodding and nudging it with the toes of their boots.
“Hey, the guy’s dead, OK?” Lee said, suspecting that if one of them had a camera they wouldn’t waste any time in getting snapshots of themselves with their fresh kill. They were so excitable they’d be plastering any such photos all over Twitter and Facebook. But social media didn’t exist here in Mooncaster – or back in North Korea.
“Silver linings,” the boy commented dryly.
He glanced down. The goblin had been about the same height as little Nabi and there was a look of blank surprise on its face. He felt sick and wanted to get away, but the guards were still gawping.
“Dokkaebi!” they exclaimed several times over. “Dokkaebi!”
It was the Korean word for a mischievous sprite. Posh was sceptical, but Sporty whistled through his teeth and his eyes opened wide with amazement. He had always loved those old stories his grandmother had told him when he was very young.
He and the others pointed to the uncanny features, the like of which they’d never encountered, then scrutinised the clothing. The waistcoat lapels were stuck through with a collection of threaded needles of different shapes and sizes and, strapped to one knobbly wrist, was a large and crowded pincushion. Cotton bobbins of various coloured twine had tumbled from the waistcoat’s many pockets and a tiny pair of scissors was strung across the stomach, looping about the gold buttons on a fine chain. A silken tape measure was draped round its neck.
“Congratulations,” Lee said bitterly. “You done murdered some kinda tailor. Guess that explains why you people dress like crud. We done here now? Show over, yeah?”
The guards were satisfied and Sporty was still grinning. They were about to retrace their steps along the path when a new sound came bellowing through the trees.
“What the hell is that?” Lee whispered.
It was a deep, baying howl. None of them had ever heard anything like it before. Some large beast was crying mournfully, back there, behind them.
Even though the efficacy of their rifles had just been proven, the guards didn’t like the sound of whatever this new creature might be. There it was again – a bass lowing like a nightmarish mongrel of cow and bear.
“I don’t think we should go back after all,” Lee said quietly. “Your gats work just fine on midgets, but that thing out there – that sounds way bigger. I don’t wanna be around when you find out there’s some things in this place tougher than Kevlar.”
The guards appeared to understand and agreed, with worried nods.
Leaving the dead goblin behind, they hurried on down the sloping path. The toadstools soon towered over them and mossy roots criss-crossed the way, forming a natural, uneven staircase as the ground sloped ever more sharply. Then, abruptly, the trees and the toadstools opened out and they stumbled down into a wide, grassy glade. The sun was hanging low in the autumn sky, just dipping behind the surrounding treetops, its slanting light drenching everything in a deep amber glow and vibrant purple shadow.
“This damn place is made of weird,” Lee muttered, staring ahead at what stood in the centre.
The guards gripped their rifles a little more tightly as they exclaimed in wonderment.
In the middle of a closely clipped lawn that was freckled with daisies and buttercups, bordered by the vivid colours of hollyhocks, lupins, foxgloves, snapdragons and loosestrife, was a picturesque, circular cottage made from woven hazel twigs and roofed with bark. It was built around three enormous toadstools that reared up between two stone chimneys and whose broad, domed caps provided extra shelter from bad weather. The chimney pots had been fashioned in the form of comical, expressive faces and the smoke that curled from the top of their terracotta heads was pale green and smelled of burnt sugar and fried onions. At the front was a low wicker door and here and there were little windows of leaded glass, whose diamond panes winked in the sun’s failing rays. It was an idealised, child’s vision of a fairy dwelling.
Behind this twee building rose a gnarled and ancient oak, the greatest in the Realm of the Dawn Prince. Its serpentine boughs twisted over the tops of the three toadstools and were heavy with golden leaves. But other things were hanging from those branches. Bundles of garments of every sort – jerkins, hose, scarves, kirtles, cloaks, tunics, hoods and hats – dangled down like cloth fruit.
“Must be laundry day,” Lee muttered. “But that’s gotta be a year’s worth of wardrobe up there.”
He lowered his head, remembering that Charm’s mother had been a laundress in this world. He wished he hadn’t been so consumed by grief after escaping the camp in England. If he had only taken time out to help her deal with her despair, Mrs Benedict might still be alive. Even though he’d dreamed about it most nights since, it was going to be real tough to finally tell Charm her mother was gone, when they wer
e reunited here.
The North Koreans were hesitant about stepping out on to the lawn and venturing near the strange cottage, but they stared, entranced, at the abundant flower borders. They were the loveliest they had seen. Even in Pyongyang there were no blooms to match the intensity and perfect beauty of those growing here. A sea of heavenly perfume flowed out from them and the four members of the People’s Army breathed deeply as memories of their childhood began to stir and they recalled things that had been suppressed or forgotten and dreams that had been forbidden. Even Posh’s perennial scowl lifted.
Another roar behind them wrenched them all back to the present and they hurried over the grass.
Lee wasn’t happy about approaching the cottage either. There was no telling who or what might live there. The woods in this Kingdom were full of peculiar creatures that weren’t even mentioned in Austerly Fellows’ book and he’d learned that the most innocent and sweetest-looking places could harbour the worst dangers. But what other choice was there? As they crossed the lawn, he strained and concentrated, trying once more to return them back to the real world, but it was no use.
Stepping on to a central path made from wide, flat stones, they passed beneath the shadow of the radiating oak branches and moved cautiously closer to the cottage.
There was no movement behind those leaded windows; no sharp little face peered out through the half-open door. The stillness and silence were even more unsettling.
“Hey!” Lee called. “Anyone in there? We just wanna find out where we is. We got ourselves lost.”
There was no answer. Sporty Spice was gazing up at the laundry dangling down from above. He said something to the others and they too stared upwards.
“Is you in there?” Lee continued. We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble or aksin’ for nuthin’.”
He waited but there was still no reply. Turning to the guards, he found them pointing and chuckling at the branches.
