The Beasts of Upton Puddle

by Simon West-Bulford

  Snappel reeled as if she’d been hit by an avalanche, then thundered over the edge of the boat to land on the grass next to the open end of the deflated balloon. With a rush, she flew inside, lifting the vast canvas high above the Copper Celt. There was a moment of thrashing and maneuvering inside before a bright flash of flame illuminated the interior. There was another blast and another until the balloon expanded and rose, driven by the heated air inside it. Soon the Irish flag, stretched in a huge pear shape, dominated the horizon, and the ropes groaned against their fastenings as the Copper Celt struggled against gravity.

  “She needs a little help,” Mrs. Merrynether told Cornelius.

  The red giant bounded to a section directly behind Flarp’s figurehead pole where two lion-sized treadwheels waited. He leapt inside and charged, turning the wheel. Belowdecks, the thunk and clank of machinery fired into action.

  Snappel flew to the manticore’s side, landing inside the other wheel and turning it with her kappa-powered muscles. Responding with the yawn of stretched wood, the six wings lurched, beating the ground and air with a ferocity that grew as Cornelius and Snappel increased their speed.

  Joe jumped and whooped as the huge ark drifted gracefully from the field. Somewhere belowdecks toward the back of the ship, excited animals howled and hooted as a thunderous bang fired up the cannons, propelling the Copper Celt with a burst of speed. Soon he could see the whole of Mrs. Merrynether’s vast estate and the huge wooded area of Ringwood Forest below them.

  “Flarp has seen Pyronesia,” Danariel called above the roar of cogs and pulleys. “Take the wheel, Joe, and I will give you instructions. I can feel which direction Flarp is pulling.”

  “Me? Take the wheel?” Joe felt such a rush of excitement he could barely stand.

  “Of course. Lead the way. Steady as she goes, sou’ by southwest . . . Two turns of the wheel, Cap’n.”

  Joe grasped the wheel. The cool breeze swept across his face and ruffled his hair as the sun sank behind the trees. He knew he was heading into dangers even his dreams could not conjure, yet he had never been so happy in his life.

  “Let’s go and get Redwar,” he shouted as he spun the wheel.

  THIRTY

  Night came quickly. A full moon bathed the deck with velvet white, and the faint but rhythmic creak of the wooden beams of the Copper Celt made Joe feel as though he had sailed into a monotone dream. Even the wind seemed reluctant to convince Joe he was awake. He felt only the faintest of breezes as he rested his chin on the edge of the stern, gazing below at what he believed must be the Mediterranean Sea. He had no idea how high or fast they were flying, but occasionally the silken carpets of cloud far below broke to reveal dark expanses of water.

  Behind him, the others slept. Mrs. Merrynether had said the balloon would keep them on course until morning. Flarp had remained steadily focused in the same direction as the gentle air currents, and so it was an opportunity for all of them to rest. Cornelius lay curled up next to his treadwheel, purring in rhythm with Snappel’s smoky snorts as she lay on her back, claws stretched upright. Kiyoshi, now able to control the flap in the top of his head, lay close to the cabin entrance, dozing and muttering what sounded like algebraic equations as his sticky feet twitched.

  Even Danariel had fallen asleep. Joe had never seen her that way before, and it fascinated him to watch the gentle pulses of light radiate in rippling patches in time with her breathing.

  Joe sighed. This was a time of tranquility, a pause in time granted by the gods before he was plunged into a war he knew almost nothing about. The prospect should have terrified him, but here in the sky, caressed by cool, pure air with an atmosphere of serenity warming him, ugly thoughts seemed too distant to disturb him.

  “A penny for your thoughts?” Mrs. Merrynether drew up beside him, peeping over the edge and folding her arms under her chin.

  A moment later, Archy trotted over to her side.

  Joe cocked his head. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Me? Oh, no. I can’t sleep for longer than four hours a day.”

  “Four hours? I’d be dead on my feet.”

  “It’s been even less than that since . . . Heinrich left.”

  Joe fell silent. He studied the clouds, noticing every pattern as they churned in slow motion, melting into saddened faces that soon became unrecognizable before slipping from view.

  “Mrs. Merrynether.” Joe pursed his lips as he considered his question. “Why do you think Heinrich betrayed us?”

  She stared at the sky for a long time.

  “Truly, Joseph”—she released a long sigh—“I simply don’t know. I thought I knew him better.”

  “Has he ever done anything like this before?”

  “Never. I sometimes sensed a feeling of guilt from him, but in all those years, Heinrich never once gave me cause to mistrust him.”

  “Sounds like you’ve known him a long time.”

  “More than fifty years. We met on an expedition to the North Pole in 1950, and I remember how he held the team together when we lost contact with our base camp. The rest of the team stayed confident for a while, but it was Heinrich who had the real survivor’s instinct. He kept us going, kept us focused.” She nodded, clenching her teeth as a tear shone in one eye.

  “We didn’t stay lost for long, but I knew back then that I would always want that man to be on my team wherever I went . . . Always.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Heinrich to me, Mrs. Merrynether. He always seemed so . . .”

  “Defeated?”

  “Yes, defeated. That’s it.”

  She stared through Joe and smiled, but there was no humor there. “He was never the same after Pyronesia.”

  “Something happened to him on the island?”

  Mrs. Merrynether narrowed her eyes a little and frowned. “Do you remember when I told you how Heinrich got his face so terribly burnt?”

  “You said it happened in a forest fire.”

  “I’m sorry, Joseph. I lied. The truth was too . . .”

  Joe said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

  “Finding Pyronesia was an incredible discovery but there were signs that the trip was cursed right from the moment we left. Soon after we departed, we discovered a stowaway—a boy called James, the son of one of the couples on the team. We should have taken him back straight away but decided against it because it was too inconvenient. We thought he’d be safe if he stayed on the boat: a decision I will always regret.

  “Even when the weather turned and one of the crew almost drowned in the storm, we still decided to go on. There were seventeen in the beginning, every one of us an expert in our field, and between us we’d been just about everywhere you can think of in the world. We thought we were prepared for anything, invincible. But then we landed on the island.” She shook her head.

  “When the island was revealed to us and we set foot on that beach . . . well, you can’t begin to imagine how excited we all were. It was like finding Atlantis or the Ark of the Covenant. The whole island was full of species everyone believed were extinct or mythical. We found dodos, manticores, trolls—just about everything you can think of—and we were all so caught up in our champagne toasts and so engrossed in our plans of success that we became careless.

  “As if it wasn’t enough to make the biggest zoological discovery of the century, we were suddenly the richest people on the planet. The cavern walls were covered almost entirely in diamonds. Most of us were still so excited by the animal life we didn’t much care, but two of the party—Gloria and Donald Merson—decided to fill their pockets. They stocked up diamonds in as many crates and sacks as they could, but they didn’t realize what lived in those caves. Halfway through the fourth crate, they were attacked. Care to guess what by?”

  Joe shook his head, mesmerized by Mrs. Merrynether’s story.

  “Baby dragons, Joseph. Baby dragons attacked us. Before we knew what hit us, five of the team were burnt to a crisp. It was absolute chaos. Some
of the team ran but got picked off on the way out.

  “I . . . lost my husband that day.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Mrs. Merrynether touched Joe’s shoulder. “Oh, it’s all right. I learned to live with that pain a long time ago.” She paused to give Joe a curious look, as if she didn’t quite believe her own words, then spoke quickly. “It’s what we realized next that I find harder to live with. The others panicked. Gloria and Donald shot two of the dragons, even brought one of them down, but what they didn’t know was that their son, James, the stowaway, had sneaked into the cave behind them.

  “That poor boy watched his mother and father get burned alive by one of the adult dragons when it came to rescue its offspring. He was only seven years old.”

  Mrs. Merrynether didn’t look at Joe when she continued. “The whole cavern seemed to fill up with smoke and fire, and I was the closest to the entrance . . . so I ran. I thought they’d all been killed—I really did—but when I got near the cave exit, I heard Heinrich call for help.

  “I knew I couldn’t leave him, so I went back. And, so help me, while I was thinking of only myself and running away, Heinrich . . . he . . .”

  She choked, then looked Joe in the eye. “Heinrich shielded that little boy from one of the dragons. That’s how he got burned, Joseph. He got burned saving that boy’s life while I was running away.”

  She stared down at the ocean.

  Joe waited a moment or two, then asked, “How did you escape?”

  “Escape? We didn’t escape,” she said quietly. “We were confronted by one of the adults. She was only trying to protect her young, but we’d killed one of them. She was about to take her revenge, and if I hadn’t done something there and then, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I used the boy. James.”

  “You . . . used him?”

  “Yes, to my shame, I didn’t consider what that poor lad was feeling. I didn’t stop to think that he’d just lost both of his parents. All I could think of was survival, so I told Heinrich to bring the boy to me.

  “I had no idea whether the dragon could understand me or not, but I spoke to it anyway. I told it I was sorry that one of the young dragons had died but that we also had young. I showed James to the dragon and begged for mercy so that no more innocent lives would be lost.”

  “Did it understand you?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “And it let you go?”

  “Not exactly. It let Heinrich and James go. The two of them were taken to the boat and sent back to England, but Heinrich was never the same after that day. He had to stay in the hospital for a very long time, and during his recovery, he was interrogated repeatedly by the police about what happened. He never broke. Never told them about the island—to protect me, I think. He just told them that everyone was lost in a horrible accident.

  “James was adopted, and both Heinrich and I vowed we should never make contact with the boy. Somehow he had to heal, and our presence would only have kept that wound open. The police told us that James was too traumatized to speak about what happened. Without any more evidence, the case was eventually closed.”

  “And what happened to you on the island?”

  “Do you remember me mentioning to you that many seraphim live on Pyronesia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s who the Conclave are. The seraphim and the dragons are the rulers of that island. As you know, the seraphim are skilled at sensing the thoughts of any living thing, so I was taken to them to face judgment for my crimes. They would know my true intentions.”

  “So they found out you were innocent.”

  “Innocent, yes, but they still held me responsible for what happened, and I was sentenced to a lifetime of servitude. They knew of my skill as a veterinary surgeon and told me I must spend the rest of my days healing their sick to make up for the loss of the hatchling.

  “That’s where I learned my empathic skill with animals. The seraphim taught me how to use my mind in ways I never believed possible, and I learned some amazing surgical techniques during that time.

  “That’s how I met Danariel. She told me how the Conclave had a deep-seated mistrust and hatred for humankind and that our disastrous expedition only fueled their paranoia. She told me plans were being made to destroy the world by fire. Danariel, of course, did not share their point of view, and neither did a few of the other rulers. They wanted to build an army in secret to reform the Conclave but knew they could never achieve this on the island—the rest of the Conclave would surely detect the conspiracy as numbers grew.”

  Joe said, “So they found a way to get you back to England to build an army where you wouldn’t be found out?”

  “Exactly right. Danariel and a few of her friends were able to convince the rest of the Conclave that I would function better in my own environment. There was a lot of resistance to that, but Danariel can be very persuasive when she needs to be.

  “So I was sent back to England, and whenever an animal was sick or injured, it would be sent to me on the condition that if anything ever went wrong, I would be brought back immediately to continue my sentence on Pyronesia.”

  “And how many years ago was all that?”

  Mrs. Merrynether sighed. “Too many . . . and I know what you’re thinking. You want to know what sort of army we managed to get together in all this time.”

  “Actually I was wondering how dragons talk, but yeah, that’s a good question too. What about the army?”

  “There isn’t one. The truth is, everything went quiet. I got back to England, found Heinrich, and we set up the practice in the most secluded place we could find, which turned out to be Upton Puddle. I fooled the clinical community into thinking my ability was a harmless confidence trick intertwined with proper training and called it the Merrynether Technique. I had everything I needed. The Conclave even sent me diamonds to fund the clinic.

  “But anyway, the idea was that sick animals who were not happy with the Conclave would be sent to me. I would heal them, recruit them, and keep them at the Merrynether estate as long as needed. But as the years went by, the Conclave mellowed toward the outside world. They became far more introverted, bickering among themselves, so our plans for a coup faded. I still wanted to help but thought the real danger had passed. Danariel and I decided someone else should be able to continue after I had gone in case things looked bad again.” She raised her eyebrows.

  Joe gulped. “Me?”

  “Yes. You.”

  “But I’m—”

  “Perfect for the job. You’re compassionate, intelligent, resourceful, and above all, you have a love for nature. Anything you don’t know, we can teach you. Besides, Danariel is convinced you’re the one we want, and I trust her judgment.”

  “Will you teach me the Merrynether Technique?”

  “I’ll teach you everything you need to know, but it might not be relevant anymore. We have to survive the island. Redwar’s own army on Pyronesia is sure to stir up the Conclave. They’ll sense his hatred, and I have no doubt their plans for destruction will surface again. And there’s another problem too.”

  “What?”

  “Thumbler.”

  “The baby troll?”

  “Yes. We’ve brought his body with us so that his family can give him a proper burial, but the repercussions may be huge. If they find out Redwar has been taking animals from the surrounding islands and torturing them, there’s no doubt they’ll join the Conclave in wanting all-out war with the rest of the world.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I have no idea yet. It’s a handful of us on a boat and a few sympathizers on Pyronesia against two armies—the Conclave and Redwar’s soldiers. And if I know Argoyle Redwar, he won’t have wasted a moment to start the hostilities. We may already be too late.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Joe slept restlessly that night. The smallest dip in altitude or the faintest stirring of creatures fr
om belowdecks woke him each time he drifted off. And then the questions came again.

  How could they stop Redwar?

  What if they were attacked when they reached the island?

  When would he see Aunt Rose or his mum again?

  Would he even survive?

  No answers came as he stared into the pitch black. Claustrophobic fear pressed against him. Frustrated, Joe switched on his lamp, another one of Lilly’s fascinating inventions. Amber light flickered over the walls of his cabin, generated by tiny, luminous creatures jostling inside a glass bowl. Joe stared at the lamp, rubbed his eyes, and smiled. The switch appeared to start up a clockwork device in the casing that vibrated tiny fibers, which in turn caused the tiny things inside the lamp to leap as though they were being tickled. Joe was sure he could faintly hear them giggling.

  The cabin was surprisingly comfortable, considering it had been designed by the mischievous cluricauns. Joe kept expecting some manic Jack-in-the-box to spring out from the closet or his bed to fold up while he slept, but everything was perfect. Oak beams, brass doorknobs, a minibar packed with every kind of alcoholic beverage, and even a luxurious bathtub.

  Already he missed Lilly. Why didn’t he want to come along? Perhaps the little cluricaun understood the danger that Mrs. Merrynether was heading toward and wanted no part of it. Perhaps he just wanted the mansion and all the wine to himself. Whatever his reason, it didn’t feel right without him. Joe leaned back on his pillow, stared at the wooden ceiling, and counted the cracks in the beams—anything to take his mind off his troubles. It would be a long voyage.

  Three days and nights passed as they journeyed to Pyronesia, but the trip was far from boring. Flarp redirected the Copper Celt on numerous occasions to avoid being spotted by other aircraft, and sometimes they came dangerously close to being discovered. Joe wondered what a giant ark with six wings and a huge balloon would look like on the news. But it was important they were not seen. Any outside knowledge of their journey that revealed their destination would be disastrous, so both Danariel and Flarp had put every effort into staying as far away from land as possible.