Tuesday 21 December 2010

A Killian isn't just for Christmas...


So there it is - as Gordon Ramsey would say - Dragon - done!
It has been great fun writing this story, and I hope you have enjoyed this little Christmas treat and it has stopped some of you who really, really want to know what happens in the Isle of the Dead hunting me down like the dog I am and demanding "What happens NEXT!"
I've attached the whole story below as a Word document for you to download/print off and read at your leisure, and this will be online until early in the New Year, I hope it passes a few pleasant moments for you.
Trevor will return - unless I get stuck! - at Easter in a story provisionally called Trevor and the Bunnies of Doom. Bob the Dragon will return, alongside Trevor, Chunk and the horrid Boshers - who are hatching a dastardly pre-Easter plot.
In the meantime enjoy Christmas, keep checking my site, and Trevor and I will see you again soon.
connection disabled

Trevor and the Dragon - Part 6

19.

‘How apt,’ said the Wizard, ‘the farmer is a cow.’
‘My name is John Dylan,’ said the cow, ‘I am an Agent of Change, assigned to find the Ring of Argo. A ring which you and your organisation stole. Now – hand it over.’
Trevor goggled at John Dylan. He looked precisely like a cow, only, if you looked closer you saw that beneath his front hooves were two thick grey fingers and a misshapen thumb, and his rear hooves were just a little too long – perfect for standing on your hind legs, in fact.
Trevor also saw that that, Agent of Change or not, he was still a cow in nicked and rusty armour with a dirty sword, surrounded by very large men with very big longbows, and a maniac with a sonic disruptor.
‘I am Merlyn of Persia,’ said the Wizard with a bow, ‘I have heard of you, John Dylan, defender of Prezema, it is an honour to be in your presence.’
‘Then perhaps you will do me the honour of lowering your gun,’ said Dylan, stepping forward and raising his sword once more. All around him bowstrings groaned as the archers drew them back. ‘Unless you would like to explain to the Agency why you are stealing a valuable and dangerous artefact?’
‘I am not stealing the Ring, John Dylan,’ said the Wizard. Smiling his cold, stone smile, he slipped the gun back into his robes and raised both hands. ‘Lower your bows,’ he commanded, and the Dragon Rouge archers obeyed immediately. ‘We are the Army of the Dragon Rouge, and dedicated to the pursuance of peace and truth. We took the ring, Agent Dylan, recognising it as a dangerous artefact, as you say,’ the Wizard reached into his robes and brought out a large, ornate, rather battered ring. ‘But our mission,’ he said, as Dylan took a step towards him, ‘was to find that boy.’ The Wizard pointed at Trevor.
‘Me?’ Trevor exclaimed, as the tent was once more filled with the groan of tightening bowstrings – only now the arrows were pointed at Trevor. ‘What the bleeding hell have I done? I was just minding my own business!’
‘This boy is an agent send from the future,’ said the Wizard. He reached once more into his robes, and brought out a small white tablet, which he threw to Dylan. ‘Look at the readings, Agent Dylan, this boy is a Killian, from over a thousand years in the future. It is my belief that he been sent here to steal the Ring of Argo.’
Agent Dylan stared at Trevor, who spluttered angrily. ‘What a flipping cheek!’ he said at last, ‘That berk over there,’ he pointed at the Wizard, ‘isn’t no Merlyn of Persia, he is—‘
Trevor never finished. One moment Dylan was staring at him uncertainly, and the next there was a flash of blinding light.
When Trevor had blinked away the blinding after image all that stood where Dylan had been was his swords, bent neatly in two and glowing white.
‘As I said, captain, we can not be seen to oppose the Agents of Change,’ said the Wizard.
‘No my lord,’ agreed Thomas Hook.
Trevor caught a momentary glimpse of the Wizard’s cold and grinning face as he lifted his black scarf to cover his eyes once more. Where his eyes should have been were two open pits of white hot blazing fire.
‘Now then,’ said the Wizard Aeoson. ‘What are we to do about you, Sir Lee?’
But when he turned around Trevor had vanished.

20.

‘Right, that is it!’ snarled Trevor. ‘We are getting out of here and we are getting out now!’
‘WHAT ABOUT ROBERT COLCHIS?’ asked the Chunk.
‘Keep your voice down!’ hissed Trevor. ‘Have you got woodworm in your brains or what?’
Trevor was crouched behind the tent. When the Wizard had blasted Dylan he had whipped off his spectacles and promptly vanished while everyone was watching the unfortunate Agent evaporate. After that it had been an easy matter to simply slip out of the tent. He was still invisible - apart, of course from two reptilian eyes, the only part of him he was incapable of rendering not-visible, despite years of frustrating practice – and the muddy field was filled now with confused shouts and the clank of armour, the panicked knights almost as invisible as Trevor now in the rapidly falling snow.
‘Listen, Chunk, I want us out of here right this second,’ Trevor whispered, as two horses flew by, followed by the pale, doughy face of the boy Trevor remembered first encountering in the cowshed. Trevor was tempted to make himself visible again and give the boy a fright, but decided that at this point discretion was probably the better part of valour. Or possibly, in Trevor’s case, it was the better part of stupidity. Instead he turned to the Chunk again. ‘I don’t care where we go, or when we go, just get us out of here right now you stupid piece of junk, or I swear I’ll eat you right here and now!’
‘BUT WITHOUT ME—‘
‘I built you, dozy,’ Trevor snarled, ‘it might take me a while in this backwards place, but I can build another. Now get us out of here, or the next time I see you, will be when I’m sitting on the bog!’
The Chunk was silent, and Trevor, for once, waited patiently. He was, after all, telling the truth. He had created the Chunk on the planet Mab, a place where machines and computer didn’t work; and yet he had still managed to create the most advanced time and space travel machine in history out of, essentially, clever wood. So what if he was in some Dark Age armpit on the outer edges of the 101 Realms? He would find his way to a more advanced world, and rebuild the Chunk. All of that would be immaterial, of course, if the Chunk simply listened to reason got them the hell out of here, or (much less desirable) the Wizard found him and chopped his nut off.
‘BUT ROBERY COLCHIS—‘
‘Is a bleeding Maltrusion Dragon!’ Trevor snarled. It had, he noticed, become ominously quiet, and he imagined – with very little stretch of his extremely limited imagination – the Wizard gathering his archers and firing up his big, nasty gun. Bob can look after himself – and he’s done a runner! So we should do the same, you thick twig!’
‘I DON’T THINK HE HAS RUN AWAY,’ said the Chunk.
‘Of course he’s run away you idiot!’ Trevor snapped, howling in frustration. ‘Wouldn’t you run away you dozy sap?’
‘IF HE HAS RUN AWAY,’ said the Chunk, ‘THEN WHO IS THAT OVER THERE?’
Trevor looked up. ‘Oh … bumholes!’ he exclaimed.

21.

Trevor crawled around the back of the tent. As he crawled through the icy, stinking mud the Chunk kept trying to buoy him up, ‘WELL DONE’, it said, and ‘I AM VERY PROUD OF YOU,’ and ‘YOU ARE A CREDIT TO YOUR PEOPLE.’ Trevor kept a surly silence. He had decided, unequivocally, that he hated the Chunk with every ounce of his being, and as soon as he was on the beach at Halruga, was going to start his barbecue fire with the horrid little thing. His first Halrugan sausages would taste so much the sweeter, knowing that the Chunk had been cooked alongside them.
Bob the dragon had sailed out the snow like a great ship, roaring and spitting flame in fury. The dirty knights had scattered in panic, and in the whirl of snow and the scream of bolting horses the great dragon had landed in the centre of the camp fire, rising twenty feet into the air, its wings snapping open with an ear-splitting CRACK! as campfire sparks flew in a vast cloud mixed with the snow, and it had roared with terrifying ferocity, every nightmare of this simple little land embodied in one terrible, impossible monster.
‘Oh, bleeding hell, not again,’ Trevor had sighed.
This, in a nutshell, Trevor thought, perfectly encompassed his life. He tried to be good, to quietly do his work, and be nice to people, he even – on occasion – shared his chocolate, but there was always some bumhole twit trying to save the world and in the process getting him into trouble. It had happened with his best friend Maxwell Jones, with that pyromaniac Billy Barker, with Barty Pugg, and even the usually sensible Dr Arcania had took into his head to get all heroic – hence Trevor’s current predicament; lost in time, lost in space, and now he too was losing all sense.
Bob Colchis was the latest idiot to lose his marbles over some daft quest. What was it with people and quests? Trevor’s only quest in life was to find a nice beach, lay back and get as fat and sunburnt as Killianly possible. Trevor had watched in deepening despair, and then cold resignation, as Bob had roared into the Wizard’s tent in a whirl of arrows and flame.
‘I suppose now I’ll have to go and rescue that dozy twonk,’ he sighed.
‘I SUPPOSE YOU WILL, YES,’ Chunk replied. ‘AND MAY I SAY THAT I HAVE ALWAYS HAD THE UPMOST CONFIDENCE—‘
‘No you may not!’ Trevor snapped. ‘Shut your word hole!’
By the time Trevor had crawled around to the back of the tent the canvas was aflame, and from inside he could hear shouts, the clang of steel, and, more ominously the high woop-woop-woop of the Wizard’s deadly gun. Trevor blinked twice, vanished once more, and crawled under the tent.
Inside was darkness, and sudden silence. Trevor blinked again, and the darkness resolved into green shapes as his reptilian vision pierced the night.
To his left a number of soldiers was beating at the canvas where a small fire still burnt, the now thickly falling snow clearly visible through the tattered canvas. To his right was another knot of soldiers, their arrows pointing in uniform lines at the far end of the tent, despite the darkness.
Immediately in front of Trevor, his back to him, stood the Wizard, his bald head gleaming green in Trevor’s night vision eyes – and in his hand something else gleamed too. A sword.
‘Ah, Maltrusion, I can’t express enough how indebted I am to you,’ said the Wizard in his deep gravely voice. Flame flared suddenly and the tent was filled with torchlight. Trevor winced and blinked again, and the suddenly intense green light turned once more into the shadowy interior of the Wizard’s tent – and at its far end, lying on his side and breathing shallowly, was Bob the dragon.
The Wizard walked around to Bob’s head, and now Trevor could see that several arrows were sticking out of the dragon’s scaly hide, and at its head stood Captain Thomas Hook, a large axe held in his hands, poised above Bob’s staring eye.
‘I don’t imagine such a brutal creature as you can understand, Maltrusion, but you have played your part admirably,’ said the Wizard, running the tip of his sword up Bob’s snout. Bob, Trevor noticed, did not even shiver, and he felt a sudden flash of anger. He stalked closer, unseen by the soldiers. ‘You led Sir David Hylton to me, and through him I gained this,’ he held up the dirty, ancient ring. ‘But even better you brought the Agent to me, and by returning gave me a convenient monster to hang his murder on. Thank you so much for all of your help, monster. And now,’ the Wizard stopped beside Hook, who stepped back. He raised his sword with a faint smile on his grim white face, ‘And now, I shall deliver your head to these peasants, and become a legend in this world.’
It occurred to Trevor afterwards, as he sneaked, completely unseen, behind the grinning, bloodthirsty archers, around the edge of the tent, and finally right behind the Wizard, that at this point he should have said something witty and cool. ‘Deliver this, sucker!’ would have been good, or perhaps, ‘Feel my wrath, smelly wizard’, or, even better, ‘I’m the only legend around here, bub!’ but as it was Trevor realised that he had probably left it a little too late as the Wizard was just about to hack Bob’s head off, and, anyway, he couldn’t really think of anything clever.
So instead Trevor had leapt forward and bit the Wizard’s bottom as hard as he could.
The Wizard let out an agonising howl, dropped both his sword and the Ring of Argo, and leapt a good six feet into the air. Trevor let go, and turned just as Hook raised the axe in both hands and prepared to bring it down on Bob’s head with all his might. Trevor leapt forward once more – Drop that, sucker, I won’t axe twice, he thought later – and head butted Hook square in the centre of his face. Hook’s eyelids fluttered, and he fell backwards without a sound, the axe still held above his head.
‘Get on your feet dozy!’ he shouted, turning back to where Bob lay.
The Wizard stood in front of him, his sword levelled in one hand, the other held to his bottom. ‘You damned interfering boy,’ he snarled, ‘Do you really think a child could stop me?’
He leapt forward, his sword slicing toward Trevor’s throat in a killing arc – and was suddenly plucked off his feet, his bald head pincered between two enormous talons.
‘See ya, baldy,’ said Trevor with a wave, and Bob, rising up and tearing the tent to shreds, hurled the Wizard over his shoulder and into the night.
‘Climb on my back!’ Bob bellowed.
‘Who made you the boss of me?’ Trevor demanded.
‘Just do it!’
Trevor took a standing jump and landed neatly on the dragon’s back. With an enormous sound Bob launched himself into the air. Arrows whizzed by and the clatter of armour and confused shouts arose – but were lost almost instantly in the howl of the wind as the dragon rose up into a raging blizzard.
‘Thank you!’ gasped Bob. ‘You save me! I knew you were—‘
‘Shut up, death breath!’ Trevor spat. ‘Now, you wooden idiot, will you get us out of here?’
‘OF COURSE,’ the Chunk replied.
Trevor waited, and then, his patience snapping, screamed: ‘Go on then!’
‘BUT,’ the Chunk answered, ‘I ALREADY HAVE.’
And through the whirling snow, rising like a dream in the night, rose the highest tower of the Watchmen Academy, and at its crest, warm light glowing at its windows, was the big green coconut of the headmaster’s office.

22.

Bob landed in the grounds of the Watchmen Academy, and waited while Trevor climbed down from his back. He stepped forward slowly, looking up at the few lights that twinkled in the school’s dozens of towers, and beyond that, unseen except for a glow in the distance, the little village of Virporta.
‘Is it very different in your time?’ Bob asked. Trevor turned and looked at him blankly. ‘The Watchmen Academy, is it different in your time?’
Trevor turned back to look at the tallest tower, rising like a strange lighthouse in the stormy night. In his time the Watchmen Academy no longer existed. He had stood beneath a windowsill on one of those towers, and watched as one by one the towers fell. But before Trevor could speak, the Chunk replied:
‘WE CAN NOT TELL YOU WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE, ROBERT COLCHIS.’
Bob smiled, his massive teeth flashing. ‘Of course not,’ he said.
‘WE ARE SORRY THAT WE WERE NOT ABLE TO ASSIST YOU IN YOUR QUEST, ROBERT COLCHIS,’ said the Chunk.
Bob smiled even more widely, ‘Oh, but you were,’ he said, holding up his massive claws. Between two of his wicked red and green talons, almost too small of be seen, Bob held the elaborate, ancient ring.
‘You nicked it off the Wizard?’ Trevor exclaimed.
The dragon frowned at the word “nicked”, but nodded nonetheless. ‘The Wizard dropped it when you bit him,’ Bob replied. ‘That was an unusual strategy, Killian.’
‘I’ve used it before,’ Trevor replied, remembering with wicked zeal the time had bitten another monster’s bottom and stopped it dead.
Bob the dragon looked at the Ring of Argo, and then closed his hand around it. He looked up the welcoming sight of the Watchmen Academy, and beyond that the village, his home, his friends, and his bed. Being a hero was his life, his destiny, but it was, Bob had realised, a hard and dangerous destiny, and it was nice to be able to come home again.
‘In the end I suppose we made quite a good team,’ said Bob, turning back to Trevor, ‘You know there are more missing pieces of the Key of Argo…’
But Bob found he was talking to a whirl of shapeless snow. Trevor and the Chunk had vanished. He let out a frustrated growl, then lowered his head, shook it, and laughed.
Still laughing the dragon took to the air, and flew home.

23.

Trevor opened his eyes and let out a whoop of delight.
In front of him stretched endless sands that rolled on and on to the horizon as far as the eye could see in both directions. Beyond the beach a glorious, iridescent purple sea rose and fell with a sound that was almost like a sigh of pleasure. Three suns painted golden light across the sky as they set slowly in the north.
‘HALRUGA,’ said the Chunk, ‘AS REQUESTED.’
‘Halruga,’ Trevor replied, ‘At blinking last.’ He kissed the Chunk, and decided, all in all, he could probably find something better to burn for his barbecue.
He was still thinking about his inaugural barbecue – the first of millions – and what he would cook first, when a low rumbling noise made him look up and Trevor saw a massive space ship appear from the sands behind him and rise vertically into the air.
‘What was that?’ Trevor asked, squinting up at the rapidly receding craft.
‘THAT WAS THE SHIP ISADORA DOLPHIN, DEPARTING FOR KHRONOS,’ the Chunk replied.
‘Oh.’ Trevor picked up a likely looking piece of drift wood, and walked down the beach. It was, he thought, strangely quiet. ‘Chunk, why was that ship leaving for Khronos?’ Trevor asked at last.
‘BECAUSE OF THE JICKER,’ the Chunk replied.
‘Because of the what?’ Trevor exclaimed.
‘THE JICKER. THE PERIOD THAT IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWS THE SURF DECADON. THAT PERIOD IS COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE JICKER.’
‘Oh,’ Trevor spotted a circle of blackened stones, and though vaguely that would be handy for his barbecue, but something was bothering him. ‘What is the Jicker, Chunk?’ he asked at last, and even as he said it, Trevor, unaccountably, felt his heart sink.
THE JICKER IS THE PERIOD IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE DECADON, A PERIOD OF TEN YEARS OF SUN AND IDEAL SURFING CONDITIONS—‘
‘Oh well—‘
‘IN CONTRAST,’ interrupted the Chunk, ‘THE JICKER CONSISTS OF THREE YEARS OF HEAVY RAINFALL AND OCCASIONAL TSUNAMIS. THIS PERIOD OF RAINFALL IS FOLLOWED BY BLIZARDS, HIGH WINDS AND THE SEAS FREEZING OVER. THIS PERIOD GENERALLY LASTS FIVE TO SIX YEARS, FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER TWO YEARS OF THAWING, HEAVY RAINFALL, AND THEN, AFTER A PERIOD OF TEN YEARS, THE SURF DECADON BEGINS AGAIN, A PERIOD OF GLORIOUS SUNSHINE AND BEAUTIFUL SURFING CONDITIONS.’
In the silence that followed this pronouncement Trevor felt a large heavy drop of rain fall onto his snout. The sky had darkened perceptibly, and, in the distance, he heard the beginnings of a high and fierce wind.
‘IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME I HAVE EXHAUSTED MY BATTERY,’ said the Chunk. ‘I WILL NOW SHUT DOWN TO RECHARGE,’ and without another word the little piece of wood became still and dead around Trevor’s neck.
Trevor sat on the sands, and watched the sun set.
Very soon the little drops of rain turned into very big drops of rain.
Very soon the calm sea began to heave.
Not long after that sand began to whip along the shore in a stinging curtain.
Trevor reached into his pocket, took out a chocolate bar, and began to munch it. As he ate he picked up the Chunk and looked at it in the dismal wet night.
‘I wonder where I can get some matches?’ he murmured.

End.

Monday 20 December 2010

Dragons, Wizards, Cows and Sir Lee of Chimpchester

Tomorrow (December 21) is National Short Story Day, and, all things being equal, I will have finished Trevor and the Dragon, and publish it online in its entirety for you to enjoy over Christmas. It has been great fun writing, and I hope you have enjoyed reading it.
Between Super Maxwell and the Burning Boys and Super Maxwell and the Isle of the Dead (which will, all things being equal again, published in time for Christmas 2011) 150 year pass, completely unexplained, for Trevor - so these short stories are an attempt to fill that gap, but also serve another important function.
There are, I know, a huge amount of unanswered questions just in the first two Maxwell books - what is Virporta Island, which can grow its own buildings, woods and mountains seemingly at will and is, according to Dr Arcania, literally alive? What happens to the potatoes that are shipped from Virporta to Vir? Why did the Argonauts build the Watchmen Academy, and what happened to them? Where did all the Boshers go when Virporta was attacked? A lot of these questions will, of course, be answered in the Super Maxwell books, but quite a few of them will also be answered in the Trevor short stories. So, do keep looking on this site because Trevor will return again - perhaps with a dragon in tow, perhaps not - you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?
Tony

Trevor and the Dragon - Part 5

15.

The knights sat in a miserable huddle around the guttering fires, drinking revolting-smelling mead and fearfully watching the black skies. It had begun to snow, flakes as big as flowertops that tumbled across the skies and instantly melted on the muddy land below. Most of the knights were little more than farmers, men who lived in lodges made of mud, straw and a little wood who collected taxes for their local king (and, more often than not themselves) punished minor crimes (and occasionally major ones, such as sheep stealing) and kept bandits away from the farmers who looked to them for protection. They knew what those first snow flakes meant. Tomorrow there would be patches of white on the hills, then on the lower ground, and then, before long, there would be drifts feet deep, and these farmer knights, who should be at home eating and drinking and administering minor justices, would be freezing in winter with no food and a dragon roaming the land.
It was the thought of the dragon that kept them here. Not the glory of killing a dragon, glory didn’t keep the lodge fires lit or feed the livestock, but the thought of the beast roaming the lands killing women and children, and, more importantly, eating valuable livestock, kept them huddled around the poor fire.
But they, of course, were not the only kind of knight here, there were others too.
‘Right, you miserable dung-spattered, cow-bothering wretches,’ drawled Sir David Hylton, drawing his sword and staggering drunkenly into the firelight, ‘who wants a dual?’
To Sir David’s surprise one of the dirty knights rose to his feet. But he did not draw his sword, instead he raised a hand and pointed. ‘Look,’ he gasped, ‘look!’
Sir David turned unsteadily and squinted into the darkness, and his pale, arrogant face turned paler still.
Light glowed on a distant hilltop, as the knights watched the light grew brighter and brighter, and then, with a deafening roar, the huge bat wings of the dragon appeared over the hilltop. It roses and rose into the air, its body impossibly long, and spat out a mushroom head explosion of fire.
‘Fetch the archers!’ someone cried among the disorganised clatter of armour and the scrape and clang of swords, short lances and morningstars.
‘Damn the archers!’ roared Sir David, raising his own sword above his head, ‘Stand and fight you dung-stinking women! Saint George! Saint George! Saint—‘
Sir David disappeared in a sudden blinding flash, and when the farmer knights looked again all that was left of him was his breast plate, spinning on its end like a coin, his sword stuck blade up and smoking, and, glittering in the mud, a large ornate ring.

16.

‘Did you do that?’ Trevor exclaimed, peeking from where he sat, unseen, behind Bob’s neck. ‘Good shot!’
‘It wasn’t me!’ Bob replied, looking down at the smoking remain of Sir David Hylton as the soared over the field. ‘I wouldn’t kill anyone!’
‘Oy, Twiggy!’ Trevor barked at the featureless block of wood strung once more around his neck. ‘What’s going on? Did they get another dragon or something?’
‘I FEAR IT IS MUCH WORSE THAN ANOTHER MALTRUSION, TREVOR SMETHURST,’ the Chunk replied, ‘I FEAR—‘
Trevor did not hear the Chunk’s next words. Something hit him in the face with the force of a punch, and he was thrown helpless back. He felt himself sliding over the rough scales of the dragon’s tail, and then, even as he heard Bob shout out in alarm and felt the Maltrusion twist beneath him he slid over the edge and into the dark night.

17.

‘Bring him to my tent.’
‘To your tent? But why? The poor lad is dead, Wizard, and should be buried.’
‘You think to defy me, farmer? Bring him to my tent or my men will shoot you down and take him.’
‘Farmer I may be, but this is my land, and I won’t have a Christian soul subjected to your dark—‘
Trevor let out a groan and opened his eyes, and found himself looking up into an astonished bearded face.
‘Good Lord!’ cried the knight. ‘He’s alive!’
‘Course I’m alive, hairy Mary,’ Trevor replied. He sat up, and felt a bolt of terrible pain shoot through his head. He reached up, squinting, and realised that something was sticking out of his forehead. He pulled it out, and held it up. ‘Which slack jawed yokel fired this arrow at me?’ he demanded angrily.
‘Bring him to my tent,’ repeated a voice as deep and cracked as an ancient tombstone. It was a voice that Trevor recognised immediately, and, for once successfully balancing his immense intelligence against his vast stupidity, Trevor did not cry out the name of the man he would meet and betray far, far in the future.
‘Take him,’ said the Wizard, staring at Trevor despite the black scarf that covered his eyes, and Trevor felt strong hands take his arms and drag him to his feet.
‘It’s the boy from the cowshed,’ said a burly archer Trevor recognised, John of the Dale.
‘He’s no boy,’ snarled a second archer, and Trevor felt their captain, Thomas Hook, draw his sword and put it to Trevor’s throat.
‘That boy was fighting the dragon,’ said the bearded knight, and several voices murmured in agreement. ‘I saw him on the dragon’s back, his sword drawn,’ added a fat knight with a red face who looked on the verge of bursting out of his rusty armour.
‘That’s blinking right!’ Trevor cried angrily. ‘I’m Sir … Lee, Sir Lee of, er… Chimpchester, and I am demand you let me go!’
‘”Surly” Sir Lee of Chimpchester,’ grunted Aoesis the Wizard, ‘You’re no more a knight than I am.’
‘If this boy is of the blood he should be set free,’ said the bearded knight, and he drew his sword. All around him Trevor saw the Dragon Rouge archers appear suddenly out of the gloom, their own swords scraping free of their scabbards, and in reply the farmer knights stepped forward drawing their own rusty, nicked blades. ‘You will set this boy free, of we shall have blood,’ said the bearded knight.
The Wizard glared at Trevor, who grinned back blissfully. Then he stepped forward and, turning his back to the knight, opened his cloak to Trevor. Inside Trevor saw that the Wizard was holding a gun, a sonic disruptor by the look of it. It was more than capable of taking the head off even an almost indestructible Killian. The Wizard grinned humourlessly at Trevor’s expression.
‘This boy is no dragon slayer. He is in league with the dragon,’ said the Wizard. ‘This boy is a demon.’
‘Nonsense,’ barked the bearded knight, ‘Let him go or feel my blade, Wizard.’
The Wizard’s reply was to reached up and snatch Trevor’s spectacles from the end of his nose. Trevor transformed instantly into his t-rex form, and the camp erupted in uproar.
The Wizard nodded to his men, and they dragged Trevor away with no further objections.

18.

‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty apes!’ Trevor cried. The two Dragon Rouge soldiers threw him into the tent and drew their swords, behind them half a dozen archers appeared, their bows raised.
Trevor leapt forward with a roar, and stopped dead as the Wizard Aeoson appeared through the tent flap and levelled his gun at Trevor’s face – it gave a high, discordant whine as it powered up lights blinking menacing all around its barrel. Trevor stopped dead and raised his hands in surrender with a weak smile.
‘You are a Killian,’ said the Wizard. ‘I’ve never heard of a Killian Agent of Change. I thought Killians baked bread and grew posies.’ The archers laughed, Trevor growled. ‘And these,’ the Wizard held up Trevor spectacles, ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like these before.’ He stepped forward and held the spectacles out to Trevor, who snatched them and shoved them into his pocket. ‘Put them on,’ he growled.
‘Shan’t!’ Trevor spat.
‘Put them on,’ the Wizard rumbled, ‘Or I shall shoot off your nose.’ He raised his gun.
Trevor did not hesitate. He put the spectacles on immediately and transformed back into a dirty, tousle haired boy with a turned up nose and a sour expression. He had known Aeoson the immortal king, or Mr Vim, or the Wizard, if you preferred, for many years – or at least he would do in the far future – and he had not the slightest doubt that he would indeed shoot off Trevor’s nose without even the slightest hesitation.
‘That’s better, those peasants out there have no problem believing in dragons and demons, but I’m not about to start explaining dinosaurs and aliens to them,’ said the Wizard.
‘I’m not a dinosaur,’ Trevor grunted, ‘and I’m not an alien neither.’
‘No, but what are you?’ the Wizard leaned closer, and, faintly, under his scarf Trevor could see the red glow of his eyes. Aeoson’s eyes were not eyes at all, Trevor knew, they were deadly pits of flame. Trevor had no doubt that it had been the Wizard’s deadly eyes, and not Bob’s fiery breath, which had disintegrated Sir David Hylton. ‘Not from Earth, and not from Killius either I would imagine. So where are you from, Surly Sir Lee of Chimpchester?’
Trevor did not reply. He thought of the times he had met the Wizard in his past, and he knew that a wrong word could alter that future past in way he could not begin to imagine.
‘Answer me,’ said the Wizard, and he shoved his gun under Trevor’s chin. ‘Answer me now or die, Killian.’
‘I think that is enough, Wizard,’ came a voice from behind them.
The Wizard turned, as did his men, and arrows guns and swords were all pointed at the bearded knight.
They only faltered slightly when he reached down to his belt, and with a heat-haze shimmer transformed into a large white cow, standing on his hind legs, with a sword held in his front hoof.
‘Now, Wizard, you will unhand that boy,’ said the cow, ‘and hand me the Ring of Argo.’

Continued...

Monday 13 December 2010

Trevor and the Dragon - Part 4

12.

‘The Ring of Argo is an ancient ring. It is an object if some power, but it is itself part of a much more powerful object - the Key of Argo, a key which they say can open the doors of time and space, and release from limbo the greatest army the universe has ever known. The army known as the First Heroes.’
‘Hmm,’ said Trevor, ‘That’s interesting.’
‘The Agency of Change became aware that someone was hunting for the Key of Argo,’ said Squire Bob, ‘Though we can not imagine why anyone ...’ Bob paused, ‘Are you listening to me?’ he asked angrily.
‘Muh?’ Trevor looked up.
‘You aren’t listening to me! People are dying and all that you are interested in is your damned chocolate!’ cried Bob.
‘Look, Dragon boy,’ Trevor sighed, putting his half eaten bar of chocolate back into his pocket with a resigned sigh. ‘I’m not being funny, but I’m not that bothered. I told you I’m from the future already, so why should I care what happens to these people? They’re all dead anyway, as far as I’m concerned it’s all the same to me. My time machine will be fixed in a bit and I’ll be off out of your hairy bum hole and you can get on with saving this stupid world, and I can get back to where I belong.’
‘And where,’ Bob asked tightly, ‘Do you belong?’
Trevor reached into his pocket and took out a glossy poster. ‘Halruga,’ he said, his eyes glittering with excitement as he passed Bob the poster, which showed a group of tanned young people surfing beneath a sky with three suns, standing on surf boards while eating cream cakes, ‘It’s the Halrugan surf decadon, ten years of surfing, boozing, chomping and—‘
Bob grabbed the poster in both hands, tore it in half, and threw the pieces over the edge of the cliff.
‘What the ...’ Trevor gasped, watching the pieces of his beautiful Halrugan poster disappear into the distance, ‘I’ve been carrying that around for sixty blinking years...’
‘You must help me,’ Bob insisted grimly, ‘The Key of Argo could spell disaster for everyone on this planet, on all the Realms. Don’t you understand that you’ve already changed history when you killed Dylan? You can’t go back to your time, if history has changed, your time will not exist any more, there is nowhere for you to go back to!’
‘MY POSTER!’ roared Trevor, and he leapt at Bob, who fell back with an astonished expression, and they both rolled over the cliff.
They hit the cliff wall with a jarring impact, and something smashed in Bob’s pocket, letting out a dischordant howl and spitting sparks and pieces of metal into Trevor’s face. Bob transformed into a red and green dragon, smashed again into the rocks, and then with a crack of unfurling wings, flew into the air and vanished. Trevor flew down the wall of the cliff, and let out a resigned sigh. He took of his spectacles, stowed them into his pocket and crossed his arms over his chest and waiting patiently for the impact.

13.

‘You idiot!’
Trevor looked up blearily, and found himself looking into the fierce jaws of a dragon. Maltrusion, thought Trevor. Of course! He remembered it from history now – Maltrusion, a race of intelligent dragons. How could he have forgotten that? Maybe a diet of constant chocolate wasn’t that great an idea after all. Trevor sat up, and a talon as long as his own body pinned him back to the ground.
‘You’ve smashed my Xenomorphic Transubstantiator!’ Bob roared. ‘I’m stuck in this shape now! I can’t change back to my human form!’
‘Ho-hum, never mind, such is life,’ Trevor replied, the dragon’s eyes widened in fury, but before he could shout at – or incinerate – Trevor, the small t-rex grabbed his thick ankle and hurled him back against the cliff. Trevor sprang to his feet. ‘You’ll just have to go home now, won’t you, and let the universe save itself from the hoops of horror, or whatever they’re called. I,’ Trevor snarled, pacing to where the dragon huddled pathetically against the cliff, its feet mired in the thick mud, ‘am picking up my Chunk and leaving for Halruga!’ Trevor wiggled his fingers at the stunned face of the dragon, ‘Ta-ra!’ and he turned to leave.
‘Your Chunk?’ said Bob, ‘Do you mean this?’
Trevor spun back around. Bob held the Chunk between two enormous claws. It looked very small and fragile pincered between his talons.
‘That’s mine!’ Trevor spat. ‘Give it back!’
‘Made of wood, I see?’ Bob exclaimed, he held it closer to his enormous jaws, and blew out a puff of smoke. ‘Very flammable wood, isn’t it?’
‘You put that down or I’ll smash your face in!’
‘You help me and I’ll give it back to you!’
‘I don’t help nobody except me mates and my mum, and you’re not neither one of those, dragon boy,’ Trevor replied. ‘I know what you are – you’re a Maltrusion, a Dragon Pirate, the scum of the 101 Realms and I ain’t helping you!’
Bob let out a growl of anger. Trevor grinned.
‘I know what the Agents of Change are too,’ Trevor continued with a vicious grin, ‘They were the guardians of the universe in ancient times, and they wouldn’t have no Maltrusion helping them, that’s for sure –so what are you doing here?’
‘At the moment,’ the dragon replied, ‘I am holding your only means of escape from this place and time in between my extremely strong talons. And I know what you are too, Killian,’ Bob sneered, ‘Your race are a bunch of scone baking, vegetable munching cowards, so don’t you think you can threaten me!’
Trevor leapt forward with a roar of fury, and Bob held up the Chunk and spat out of jet of flame.
‘IF I MAY INTERJECT AT THIS POINT,’ said the Chunk in its inflectionless voice, ‘I HAVE A PLAN THAT MAY SAVE YOU FROM BEING LOST IN TIME, TREVOR SMETHURST, YOU FROM BEING CHOPPED INTO DRAGON MEAT, ROBERT COLCHIS OF MALTRUSIO, AND PREVENT ME, CHUNK OF MAB, FROM BEING TURNED INTO FIREWOOD.’
Trevor eyed the red eyes of the dragon with loathing, ‘Keep talking, woody,’ he snarled.

14.

‘I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS WHILE POWERING UP, AND IT IS QUITE OBVIOUS TO ME THAT IT IS SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE THAT ROBERT COLCHIS IS HERE ON A MISSION WITH THE AGENTS OF CHANGE. AS YOU POINTED OUT, TREVOR SMETHURST, AT THIS TIME IN HISTORY THE MALTRUSION DRAGON PEOPLE ARE VIEWED WITH SUSPICION AND FEAR, AND A MALTRUSION WOULD NEVER BE NAMED AN AGENT.’
‘The Maltrusions are still viewed with suspicion and fear,’ Trevor snapped, ‘They’re a bunch of thieving, back-stabbing, death-breath ratbags!’ Bob rumbled with fury, jets of flame squirting from his nostrils. ‘Anyway, who gives a fiery dragon’s pump? You’re powered up, so let’s get going, Chunk!’
‘I AM SORRY THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE,’ the Chunk replied. ‘IT ALSO OCCURS TO ME THAT EVEN IF YOU WERE NOT A MALTRUSION, ROBERT COLCHIS, AT THIRTEEN YOU ARE FAR TOO YOUNG TO BE AN AGENT OF CHANGE. I CAN THEREFORE ONLY ASSUME THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT HERE AGAINST YOUR WILL.’
‘Yes,’ Bob the dragon replied in a small voice, ‘I’m not an Agent of Change at all. One moment I was at school, and the next—‘
‘Hang on a sec!’
‘— I was transported here. I don’t know why I was brought here,’ Bob continued, ‘But when I arrived here the Agent, John Dylan, helped me. He helped repair my Xenomorphic Transubstantiator, which had been damaged when I had been transported, but by then of course every knight in this world was turning up at the doorstep, believing that a dragon was attacking their people.’
‘IT SEEMS UNLIKELY THAT YOU WERE TRANSPORTED HERE BY CHANCE, A WORLD WHERE IT IS CONSIDERED A KNIGHT’S DUTY TO SLAY A DRAGON,’ said Chunk. ‘IT SEEMS LIKELY THAT YOU WERE THE CLOSEST MALTRUSION TO THIS LOCATION. WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU DISAPPEARED, ROBERT COLCHIS?’
‘I said, hang on—‘
‘I was at school,’ said Bob, ‘At the Watchmen Academy.’
‘THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION IS THAT SOMEONE WANTED A MALTRUSION, A DRAGON, AND SENT OUT A GENETIC TRANSPORTATION TRAP TO CAPTURE ONE. THEY MOST PROBABLY DID NOT EXPECT TO FIND ONE ON EARTH, NOR DID THEY EXPECT TO FIND A MALTRUSION WHO WAS AN APPRENTICE AGENT OF CHANGE. THEREFORE THE LOGICAL ASSUMPTION IS—‘
‘I said HANG ON A MINUTE!’ Trevor roared. Bob looked around at him startled, even the Chunk seemed to shift slightly where it stood upright in the dragon dung. ‘What do you mean you piece of junk - “That is not possible”?’ Trevor crossed the cave in three quick bounds and picked up the Chunk, ‘I want to go to Halruga, and I want to go now, so let’s get going, wooden top!’
‘Trevor, I need—‘ Bob began.
‘Zip it, hot pants,’ Trevor snarled at the dragon, ‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s toenails what you want, I want to go to Halruga, and this is my machine, my Chunk, which I invented, and it will do what I say!’
‘NO,’ replied the Chunk, ‘I WILL NOT.’
Trevor screeched in fury. ‘Yes you will! You belong to me and you will do what I say!’ He shook the Chunk savagely, and then hurled it across the cave, where it landed with a plop in a heap of dragon dung.
‘I DO NOT BELONG TO YOU,’ the Chunk replied. ‘YOU CREATED ME, TREVOR SMETHURST, THAT IS CORRECT, BUT I WAS CREATED FROM THE SENTIENT WOOD OF MAB, AND AM A SELF AWARE AND SELF CONSCIOUS BEING. I HAVE CONSIDERED ALL OF THE VARIABLES OF THIS CASE—‘
‘Case!’ Trevor screeched. ‘What case! You’re a robot, not private detective!’
‘—AND I HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT IT IS OUR DUTY AS GOOD MEN TO HELP OUR BROTHER IN ARMS, ROBERT COLCHIS.’
You’re not a Good Man!’ Trevor screamed. ‘You’re a twig with a hard drive!’
‘WHATEVER I AM, I AM THE ONLY MACHINE THAT EXISTS IN THIS TIME THAT CAN TRANSPORT YOU BACK HOME, TREVOR SMETHURST,’ said the Chunk. ‘AND I WILL ONLY DO THAT IF YOU HELP ROBERT COLCHIS IN HIS MISSION.’
Trevor swore loudly, and even Bob, who had grown up among man-eating Dragon Pirates, blushed at his language.
‘OK!’ Trevor screamed. ‘I’ll do it! I’ll help him!’
‘VERY WELL,’ the Chunk replied calmly. ‘LOGICALLY—‘
I HATE YOU!’ Trevor screamed, and plonked himself down in a heap on the cave floor.
‘LOGICALLY,’ the Chunk continued after a pause. ‘WHOEVER TRANSPORTED YOU HERE DID SO TO ATTRACT THIS REALM’S GREATEST KNIGHTS HERE. AND IT LOGICALLY FOLLOWS, THEREFORE, THAT ONE OF THOSE KNIGHTS IS THE BEARER OF THE RING OF ARGO.’
‘So how do we get the ring from him?’ Bob asked.
‘THAT IS QUITE SIMPLE,’ the Chunk replied, ‘TREVOR MUST SLAY YOU.’
Trevor looked up. ‘I think I like this plan!’ he exclaimed.


To be continued...

Monday 6 December 2010

Trevor and the Dragon - Part 3

8.

‘You!’ Trevor felt a lump of chocolate that felt like a chunk of brick lodge in his throat. ‘What are you doing here!’
Trevor made a strangulated choking noise and spat out a large chunk of chocolate. ‘Bloody Nora!’ he gasped. ‘Are you barmy, you whey-faced chimp?’
Trevor found himself looking at a wide puzzled face beneath a curl of yellow hair. ‘Chimp?’ said the broad shouldered boy. ‘What is a chimp?’
Trevor goggled at the boy. He was dressed in a dirty jerkin that might have once been white but was so thick in sweat, dirt, blood and dung that it had turned an oddly colourless green-brown. But that, Trevor reckoned, was probably par for the course on this filthy planet – what was surprising about the boy was that his body was criss-crossed with the thick leather belts, and the belts were strung with swords, knives and short handled lances.
‘It doesn’t matter what a chimp is,’ the boy snapped anxiously before Trevor could reply. ‘You must leave here now!’
‘Eh?’ Trevor frowned at the boy. ‘I ain’t going nowhere chuckles.’ He shoved his chocolate back into his pocket, and glanced down at the wooden edge of the chunk that was sticking out of the manure pile, stood up and pushed it out of sight under his foot. ‘Who are you, king of Vir? I was here first, chimp face, and I’m not going nowhere!’ Trevor blew a loud raspberry just in case the boy didn’t get the message.
‘Listen to me,’ he whispered urgently, ‘I am Bob, squire of Sir David Hylton, and if he should find—‘
‘What is this?’ interrupted a loud, strident voice. ‘What is this peasant doing here, squire? Does he not know that this is the haunt of the dread demon dragon? Or,’ there was the snickt sound of steel drawn on steel, and suddenly Trevor found the blade of a sword under his chin, ‘is this serf under their control perhaps?’
‘Serf!’ Trevor exclaimed angrily. He glared at the face which had appeared over his shoulder. It was a ruddy red face, with thick black hair and an impressive handlebar moustache. Pale grey eyes looked disinterestedly from above aristocratic cheekbones. Sir David Hylton, Trevor noticed, had the cleanest face he had ever seen in his life. In Trevor's twenty-first century life the knight would have looked unusually clean – in this mucky, clarty brown and grey world he looked positively obscene.
‘When you’ve finished playing with your little pal—‘ Sir David began.
‘Hold the phone, cheekbones,’ Trevor snarled. ‘What do you mean serf? Eh? Who you calling a peasant, you curly haired gimp?’
The knight lowered his sword and stared at Trevor in dumb astonishment. Squire Bob let out a squeak of fear. ‘How… How dare—‘ Sir David spluttered.
‘I am Sir William Lambton of Killius,’ Trevor interrupted imperiously, taking what looked like a threatening step towards the knight, but was actually an attempt to sink the Chunk further into the enormous dung heap. ‘And I am here to kill your monster!’
‘You?’ spat Sir David, looking the filthy ragamuffin up and down in frank amazement.
‘Oh yes,’ Trevor replied proudly.
‘Really?’ exclaimed Squire Bob.
‘Are you deaf, turnip breath?’ Trevor replied. He reached into his pocket and took out a fresh chocolate bar. He looked around the dung-filled cave as if the dragon where right here, though oddly not only was there no dragon, Squire Bob had vanished also. ‘Now then, where’s this dragon whatsit?’
Sir David raised a shaking finger as a long shadow fell over them.
‘Right behind you,’ he squeaked.
Trevor turned just as a massive pair of jaws opened, and then snapped closed on him.

9.

Hook saw the tent flap rise, and immediately fell to his knees and bowed his head. All around him his men knelt and bowed their own heads, while the knights muttered uncomfortably.
A pair of black leather boots appeared in the mud in front of his face. ‘Rise,’ whispered a gruff voice. Hook stood and found himself looking into the marble face of his king. ‘Walk with me, Thomas Hook.’
There was an angry muttering from the crowd of dirty knights, and Hook saw his men reach for their weapons. He held up a hand to them as they walked away, and they dropped their hands away from the hilt of their swords.
His king, the Wizard Aeoson, reached beneath his cape as they turned their backs on the knights, and brought out a bizarre devise. Lights blinked across its small mirrored surface, and Hook, though he had followed his king across a dozen different worlds, still felt a thrill of fear at the sight of one of Aeoson’s infernal alien machines.
‘The creature is not of this earth,’ whispered Aeoson in his grating voice.
Hook looked up into the king’s pale, thin old face, with his perfectly bald head, his small strip of grey beard, and, wrapped around his eyes, a black scarf. The scarf fooled many into believing the Wizard was blind – but despite his covered eyes Hook knew that Aeoson could see further than any man he had ever met.
‘An Agent of Change?’ Hook asked.
‘Perhaps,’ the Wizard replied. ‘We must proceed with caution, captain, we can not be seen to oppose the Agents.’
‘You still wish us to capture the creature, my king?’
The Wizard grinned his cold, dry, ancient grin. ‘There is no need, my captain,’ he replied.
The machine disappeared beneath his robes, and Aeoson turned to the knights.
‘My brave lords,’ said the Wizard, holding up his hands. ‘My men can not hope to defeat this demon. I call upon you to find this foul creature and send him back to hell where he belongs!’
With a roar the dirty knight raised their sword as one man and cheered drunkenly.
‘Your problems are solved, Thomas,’ murmured Aeoson with a cold grin, ‘Now find the monster, and let our glorious knights loose.’

10.

Trevor closed his eyes and waited for the terrible roar of fire that would mean the end of him.
But nothing happened.
He cautiously opened one eye. It was extremely dark, extremely wet and extremely smelly in the dragon’s mouth. He could feel the monster’s thick tongue pressed against his back, could smell its hot and rank breath, and beneath his feet he could feel the unmistakable, familiar sensation of flight.
Trevor wracked his brain, but, undoubtedly enormous though his brain was, he could not think of a single thing to do – so he sat back, leant against the dragon’s teeth, pulled a chocolate bar out of his pocket and began munching it.
Eventually, after Trevor had munched his way through three chocolate bars, he felt a thud beneath his feet. He swallowed a lump of chocolate, wiped his hands on his top, and prepared himself.
The dragon’s mouth opened and Trevor was shoved unceremoniously forward. Trevor rolled forward, landed squarely on his feet, whipped off his spectacles and sprang forward ready to run, and stopped with a squeak of horror. He was hanging over a cliff on the tips of his toes. He waved his arms, but it was too late, his attempt to escape had unbalanced him too much and he was falling forward—
Something grabbed him from behind and threw him back. Trevor slammed into the cliff wall and fell back fearfully as a shadow fell over him.
‘Sit down before you break your neck, you fool,’ exclaimed Squire Bob.
‘Eh?’ Trevor looked around. They were alone on a small ledge half way up a cliff. ‘What the blink’s occurring, dozy?’
‘Sit down,’ Squire Bob repeated.
‘Look, stupid, that dragon’s going to come back for its dinner anytime now,’ Trevor snarled. ‘You’re main, and I’m pudding, now let’s—‘
‘I’m a vegetarian,’ interrupted Bob.
‘What the flip’s that got to do—‘
Squire Bob reached for his belt and pressed something there. In an instant he transformed in a vast red and green scaly beast, muscular jaws flexing in its hawk-like face beneath fierce red eyes.
‘I said,’ said Bob the dragon, its huge wings unfolding with a whip crack, ‘I’m a vegetarian.’ He grinned, showing teeth the silver of razors. ‘But for you, you murderous little wretch, I’ll make an exception.’

11.

‘Eh? What do you mean, murderous?’ Trevor exclaimed. ‘I’ve never murdered nobody,’ Trevor considered, ‘Well, not on purpose, anyway.’
‘John Dylan,’ replied the dragon, ‘You killed him in the cow shed—‘
‘Cow shed?’ murmured Trevor. ‘That cow I fell on, you mean?’
The dragon let out a roar of fury, and bellowed a jet of flame into the air. ‘John Dylan was no cow! He was the defender of Prezema. He was an Agent of Change, sent here to stop your evil plot. So tell me, you murderous little wretch, where is the ring of Argo?’
Trevor sighed. He looked over the edge of the cliff. It was a long drop. From experience he was pretty sure he could survive the fall, but then again if he landed on rocks, or given his experiences so far, spears or swords, it could turn out very badly.
‘Look dopey,’ he said with a resigned sigh. ‘I’m not a murderer, I haven’t got an evil plot, and I don’t know what the ring of Argos is, okay?’
‘The ring of Argo!’ roared the dragon. ‘Do not trifle with me, boy!’
‘Trifle with you? You roar at me one more time I’ll smash your bleeding face in!’ Trevor shouted. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, and frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff. I fell through time and space by accident, landed on Bob Dylan by accident – who, incidentally, if he wasn’t a cow shouldn’t have been hanging out in a cow shed with cows, the dozy perv – and I am currently stuck on a flipping cliff with a flipping dragon by flipping accident, so flip off, death breath!
‘John Dylan,’ said the dragon.
‘Whatever,’ sighed Trevor.
The dragon folded his wings. For a moment his thick red and green hide seemed to evaporate into thinning smoke, and then Squire Bob stood on the edge of the cliff.
‘Then who in the 101 Realms are you?’

To be continued...

Monday 29 November 2010

Trevor and the Dragon - Part 2

4.

Just moments later the archers flew around the corner and were met with a terrible sight. On the ground, covered in blood, mud and cow dung, lay a small boy. He was groaning pitifully, and the archers saw immediately the trail that led away from the boy and into the woods.
‘Dragon prints,’ said the archer called John of the Dale.
Their captain, Thomas Hook, traced the claw-footed prints towards the woods. ‘Follow,’ he said, and then he crouched by the small boy as his men ran off.
‘Dragon,’ groaned the boy. Hook had seen some scruffy-looking boys in his time – in the countryside in winter it was rare to see anyone looking clean – but this boy was by far the scruffiest he had ever seen. He was dressed almost in rags and wore a most unusual pendant – a featureless block of wood tied around his neck on a length of twine.
Hook picked up the groaning boy – noting with some surprise that he was remarkably heavy, despite his small size – and carried him back into the cow shed and lay him on a bed of hay.
‘Stay there, lad, I’ll send someone to help you,’ he said. The boy nodded, moaning.
Hook ran out of the barn, and after his men, wondering briefly as he went how a boy so scruffy and ill-kept could afford a pair of wooden spectacles.
He had not gone a hundred yards before he met them coming back the other way. ‘Tracks stop, captain, just over the hill,’ said John of the Dale. He added, with a perplexed expression. ‘There’s footprints coming back, captain, but...’
‘But what, lad? Spit it out.’
‘They ain’t dragon prints, captain. They’re a child’s footprints.’
By the time they ran back to the barn the small boy had gone.

5.

Anyone watching closely would have seen a pair of small footprints appear in the mud outside the cow shed. Knights, however, are large, loud and permanently angry, and not by nature observant. And these particular knights, faced with the unenviable task of facing a very large, very angry dragon, had been drinking mead and cider all day long, and were less observant than most. The small footprints stamped themselves into the thick mud in a most truculent way (if invisible feet can said to be truculent) and then after half a dozen steps transformed into large, lizard claw imprints, which promptly accelerated over the fields at a speed which was, as anyone with any common sense whatsoever would have observed, quite impossibly fast.

6.

The bare branches of the dank forest swayed, though there was not a breath of wind, and then, quite suddenly Trevor appeared out of thin air, half way up a tree. Trevor jammed himself firmly in the branches, and slipped on his spectacles. He transformed into the small, horribly mucky boy who the soldiers mistakenly believed they had rescued from the dragon.
‘Chunk?’ Trevor lifted his shirt and wiped the blood from his chest. The arrow, which would have gone right through a normal boy’s body like a hot knife through butter, had merely nicked Trevor’s almost indestructible hide. ‘Chunk? Wake up!’ he grabbed the wooden block in both hands and shook it. ‘Wake up! I need you!’
The Chunk made a loud choking, rattling noise and then fell silent.
‘Wake UP!’ Trevor roared, and then looked around warily at the creaking branches surrounding him. ‘Listen Chunk,’ he continued in a whisper, ‘those soldiers, they’re Dragon Rouge. I saw them. They had the sigil on their chests! They’ve followed me, Chunk! They’ve follow me from Mab!’
The Chunk vibrated unpleasantly in Trevor’s hands. ‘DRAGON ROUGE,’ it grated. ‘THE ARMY OF THE RED DRAGON, ESTABLISHED IN THE NEO-BABYLONAIN EMPIRE IN 547 BC. THE DRAGON ROUGE ARE ALSO KNOWN AS THE IMMORTALS—‘
‘I blinking known all that, you wooden-headed, leaf-brained—‘
But the Chunk did not seem to hear Trevor. ‘THE IMMORTAL KING AEOSON, FATHER OF JASON OF ARGO – argon is a chemical element represented by the symbol AR, and is widely used to feed cats on the planet Falemachorus - IS LEADER OF THE DRAGON ROUGE – rouge – red – red, red was the farmer’s wife’s bottom - BELIEVED TO BE OVER TWELVE THOUSAND YEARS OLD AEOSON, ALSO KNOW AS MR VIM – vim cleans as it sweeps as it cares, buy vim at your local supermarket now - PROFESSOR SIDNEY SILEX AND JANGLE MUMBLES THE GUITAR – swingin’ little guitar – MAN IS NOW BASED ON THE LEGENDARY PLANET MAB – oh planets red and stars of grey oh burning amber space fiends—‘
Chunk vibrated suddenly like a dying animal, and then croaked two words:
‘BATTERY ... MANURE ..’
The Chunk fell silent, and though Trevor shook it, screeched at it and bashed it against the tree trunk, the wooden machine was dead and silent.
‘Marvelous!’ spat Trevor. He pulled off his spectacles, and without a downward glance he ran across the treetops, following his nose.

7.

It had taken Trevor almost five years to create the Chunk, though, in truth, he could have created the wooden machines much faster. He and Dr Arcania had been employed by the Dragon Rouge to create weaponry on the planet Mab, a mysterious world full of mythic creatures such as unicorns, Stympalian Birds and Kraken. Machines did not work on Mab, anything mechanical or computerised simply disintegrated, and Trevor and Dr Lambton Arcania were forced to use steam power and, eventually, to adapt the planets peculiar living trees into computers. Chunks were much more advanced than any computer in history, but their wooden parts made them extremely fragile, but Trevor had come up with a unique solution to this. Chunks would repair themselves when planted in the earth, and, in an emergency, could be planted in manure and would regenerate their broken parts almost immediately.
But, part of the reason why Trevor had ended up in a small dirty village in a small, dirty England, in the dirty Dark Ages was that when he should have been secretly working on the Chunk under the nose of the Dragon Rouge, he had, in fact, secretly been working on a sub-space portal which fitted in his pocket and teleported an endless supply of chocolate bars from the legendary Kissing Cow Chocolate Factory in the Bleak Republic.
And so it was that Trevor almost choked to death on a large piece of chocolate when the small boy popped up from behind the large heap of dragon dung on which he was sitting.

8.

‘You!’ Trevor felt a lump of chocolate that felt like a chunk of brick lodge in his throat. ‘What are you doing here!’
Trevor made a strangulated choking noise and spat out a large chunk of chocolate. ‘Bloody Nora!’ he gasped. ‘Are you barmy, you whey-faced chimp?’
Trevor found himself looking at a wide puzzled face beneath a curl of yellow hair. ‘Chimp?’ said the broad shouldered boy. ‘What is a chimp?’
Trevor goggled at the boy. He was dressed in a dirty jerkin that might of once been white but was so thick in sweat, dirt, blood and dung that it had turned an oddly colourless green-brown. But that, Trevor reckoned, was probably par for the course on this filthy planet – what was surprising about the boy was that his body was criss-crossed with thick leather belts, and the belts were strung with swords, knives and short handled lances.
‘It doesn’t matter what a chimp is,’ the boy snapped anxiously before Trevor could reply. ‘You must leave here now!’
‘Eh?’ Trevor frowned at the boy. ‘I ain’t going nowhere chuckles.’ He shoved his chocolate back into his pocket, and glanced down at the wooden edge of the chunk that was sticking out of the manure pile, stood up and pushed it out of sight under his foot. ‘Who are you, king of Vir? I was here first, chimp face, and I’m not going nowhere!’ Trevor blew a loud raspberry just in case the boy didn’t get the message.
‘Listen to me,’ he whispered urgently, ‘I am Bob, squire of Sir David Hylton, and if he should find—‘
‘What is this?’ interrupted a loud, strident voice. ‘What is this peasant doing here, squire? Does he not know that this is the haunt of the dread demons dragon? Or,’ there was the snickt sound of steel drawn on steel, and suddenly Trevor found the blade of a sword under his chin, ‘is this serf under their control perhaps?’

To be continued...

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Mid-Week Report: Frequently encountered problems with time travel

It has been a while since I wrote short stories. They used to be my stock in trade - in fact the first Super Maxwell book was published because of a short story I wrote for the British Council called "Surf City" - now I find it almost impossible to write anything under 400 pages! But with Trevor and the Dragon I am sticking strictly to 40 pages...well, maybe 50!
The other problem, of course, is that I am living in Trevor's future. The last time you saw Trevor in Super Maxwell and the Burning Boys he was stuck in Mab with Pugg, Bella and Mickey Prickle. The last time I saw him he was in New Paris, a city under siege, eating a chocolate bar and talking to Billy Barker. So I am having to be very careful not to give away any of the plot of the new Maxwell book, Isle of the Dead, and am having to reread the first two books, Last Heroes and Burning Boys to remind me what YOU know about Trevor!
Actually, they're a pretty good read - if you don't have them you should pick up a copy...
More Medieval tomfoolery with Trevor next Monday.

Monday 22 November 2010

Trevor and the Dragon - Part 1

1.

Trevor Smethurst is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most intelligent creature in the whole of the universe.
Unfortunately Trevor Smethurst is also, without the slightest atom of doubt, the stupidest person in the entire universe.
I don’t really need to explain this to you, as Trevor will do his absolute best to prove this himself in no time at all.
But … if you really do need proof…
Trevor has just invented, alongside Dr Lambton Arcania (probably the second most intelligent creature in the universe) a device called a Chunk. A Chunk is a computer made entirely out of wood, but as well as being the most advanced computer in existence it is also a functioning time machine, a compass, can make coffee and cola and knows all the words to every song ever written in existence (including the ones everyone would much rather forget about).
Brilliant, you might think, absolutely brilliant.
But Trevor being Trevor he decided to test the Chunk on himself…
…Which is why he is currently hurtling through time and space completely out of control.
This sounds extraordinarily exciting. It is not. All of time and space, all packed together all at once, is a sort of dirty beige colour, and by far the most interesting thing about all of time and space is Trevor himself.
Trevor Smethurst looks like a small tyrannosaurus rex dressed in a maroon blazer. In fact he is an alien called a Killian dressed in a maroon blazer. In one pocket he has five bars of chocolate, in another he has a Monkey Master Blaster collector’s edition ruler (Trevor’s favourite comic book) and on his right inside pocket he has a pair of spectacles. These spectacles are another astonishing invention (created by Dr Arcania) which transform the wearer into whatever species is on that particular planet in that particular time period – which is just about to come in very handy indeed.

2.

Trevor opened his eyes and found himself looking up at a ragged wooden hole through which white cloud floated across a blue sky. The first thing he noticed was the atrocious smell, the second thing he noticed was the rather odd, rather squishy something he was lying on.
The answer to both the terrible smell and his odd resting place became apparent when Trevor sat up and looked around. He was in a filthy old cow barn that stank of years and years of manure. Specifically he was sitting in a line of cows, the cows to his right and left looking at him balefully – the cow he had landed on was squashed underneath him with its legs sticking out and was … Well, it was as flat as a cow pat.
Trevor wondered briefly if he had landed in Prezema. ‘Hello?’ he said to the nearest cow. The cow looked at him stupidly and licked its wet nostrils with a long grey tongue, and Trevor breathed a sign of relief. Prezemans looked exactly like earth cows, and for a moment he wondered if he might be tried for ungulate slaughter instead of just malicious damage.
Trevor stood and stretched. He took a bar of chocolate out of his pocket, took a bite and looked through the hole in the roof, speculating idly how far he’d fallen when the big beige space time continuum had spat him out. Falling from extreme heights was not at all unusual in Trevor’s experience – he had often woken at the base of a tower or in the middle of a forest with a smashed trail of foliage above his head. Trevor was a Good Man, a sort of teenage superhero, and falling off high things was, he supposed par for the course – and being virtually indestructible falling from very high places didn’t particularly concern him…
‘D-D-D-‘
Trevor looked around, grinding chocolate between his wicked-looking t-rex jaws.
‘D-D-D-‘ Trevor’s eyes met those of a doughy-faced boy with long, limp hair, dressed in what looked very much like a brown carpet. ‘D-D-D-‘ the boy stammered. ‘D-Dragon!’
Trevor looked around. ‘Where?’ he asked – but the boy didn’t answer, he was too busy running out of the cowshed screaming at the top of his voice.
Trevor wondered briefly what a “Dragon” was, and then, as voices joined in shouts of terror outside, sensibly decided this was probably not the time to find out, and leapt vertically upwards through the hole in the ceiling.

3.

Trevor looked around, and found himself deeply disappointed by what he beheld.
He was stood on the roof a ramshackle cow barn, thatch tickling his huge reptilian feet. Oddly, Trevor noticed, there seemed to be more cows outside the barn than there were inside, all lined up in a row tied together by a length of brown rope. The land all around him was flat and brown, with the occasional patch of grey to break things up a little. The only landmarks in this flat and muddy country were a hill in the far distance, surrounded by leafless trees, and the equally distant glitter of a brown river.
Brown was a big colour here, Trevor decided. The land was brown, the trees were brown, the cows were brown, and even the armour on the knights who were clanking towards his with their muddy swords not glittering, was brown.
‘Fie!’ shouted one of the knights. ‘What manner of hideous Satanic spawn art thou?’
‘Eh?’ Trevor replied.
‘Thou mayest speak with the tongue of man,’ roared the dirty knight, waving his rusty sword, ‘but thou art the fire born spawn—‘
‘Do-you-speak-Eng-lish?’ Trevor enunciated carefully to the red faced man in the tight fitting armour.
‘I shalt take my mighty sword and smite—‘
‘Sorry! Can’t hear you!’ Trevor interrupted, taking a bite of his chocolate bar. ‘And I don’t speak berk,’ he muttered to himself.
The knights - there were four of them in all, two very thin and two very fat – clanked about waving their swords and calling for their lances, horses and pages, and achieving very little. Trevor sat on the roof off the barn, wiping cow dirt off his tail, eating this way through his bar of chocolate and watching the knights with disinterest.
He wondered vaguely where – and when – he was, and decided it didn’t really matter much. The Chunk would power up again in a matter of a few minutes and he could head whenever and wherever he wanted. That was a point…
Trevor reached into his jacket and pulled out a small block of wood, tied around his neck by a length of twine. ‘Chunk?’ he said to the featureless piece of wood.
‘YES?’
‘Where are we?’ Trevor asked.
The lump of wood hummed slightly, and then replied, ‘EARTH.’
Trevor sighed, and rolled his eyes. It was the oldest joke in the book among Good Men when you asked them which planet they came from they always replied “Earth” – because all planets were called Earth by their inhabitants, it was only aliens who ever gave them names like Zeta Reticula 5, or Dog Cheek Planet 73.
‘Are you trying to be funny?’ Trevor snapped savagely. ‘Do you want to be turned into a blinking pencil?’
‘SORRY, JUST MY LITTLE JOKE,’ Chunk replied in its flat wooden voice. ‘This is the planet Terra, third planet in the Sol System, located in the Western Spiral Arm of the Milky—‘
Trevor groaned. ‘I get the idea,’ he interrupted.
Monkey town, he thought miserably, planet of the blinking chimps. The knights had now rallied in a line and were marching forward and hacking at the thatch, several feet below Trevor’s feet. Trevor had lived on Earth five years before, surrounded by chimps and monkeys, and had been glad to see the back of the place. He had no desire to return to this particular planet at any point in its past and future – the climate didn’t agree with him, he didn’t like the food, and several people from Earth had sworn to kill him.
‘DO YOU WISH TO KNOW THE YEAR?’ Chunk enquired.
‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff,’ Trevor snapped. ‘Just tell me how long it will take you to power up and get me out of here!’
Chunk hummed thoughtfully. ‘POWER UP WILL TAKE PRECICELY—‘
Chunk vibrated suddenly, and then fell silent. Trevor shook the time machine with a frustrated howl – and noticed that something long and thin was sticking out of its back.
Another long thin thing appeared suddenly between his legs, and he swallowed his chocolate with a heavy gulp.
Arrows.
Trevor sprang to his feet just as an arrow appeared where his stomach had been just a second before. The knights were still noisily clattering their swords and shields and hacking ineffectually at the cow barn roof – but they had been joined by three more men. These men were tall and muscular, and though not dressed in armour, had a distinctly military bearing. In their hands they held bows which stretched from their heads to their toes, and Trevor would not have believed that a human would have the strength to draw such an huge weapon – right up until the point that one of the archers drew back his muscular arm and let loose an arrow that flew true across the rooftop, and hit Trevor right in the centre of his chest.
Trevor stumbled back, and with a howl of pain and despair, he fell backwards off the roof.

To be continued...

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Tyrannosaurus Wrecks


Work continues at a pace with Super Maxwell 3 - the first draft of which I'm hoping to finish by Christmas. In the meanwhile as a little Christmas present to you all (and to celebrate National Short Story Day on December 21) I am going to be publishing my favourite teenage T-Rex, Trevor Smethurst's, first solo adventure - Trevor and the Dragon.
Between Super Maxwell and the Burning Boys (where we unexpectedly find him in charge of Pugg, Bella and Mickey Prickle in Mab) to when we finally catch up with Trevor (eating a rat on a stick in a steam caravan) in Super Maxwell and the Isle of the Dead Trevor claims 150 years have passed. So where has he been? Well - you will find out very soon!
I will start publishing Trevor and the Dragon online next Monday (November 22) over 4 weeks, and then publish the story in its entirety on National Short Story Day on December 21.
I will (honest!) continue writing The Resurrection Bureau in the New Year - but Maxwell started shouting a bit too loud in my ear and I had to get back to him. I want to find out where Maxwell's adventures take him more than anyone - so the search for Excalibur will have to wait a while...

Tony

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Mid-Week Report: A ghastly spectre rising from the fog...

Okay, I'll admit it, it was pretty unrealistic to think I could write the whole of The Resurrection Bureau online in two months. Real life, work, fun and various other inconveniences kept getting in the way. But now The Resurrection Bureau project faces its biggest challenge - a small boy called Maxwell Jones.
I stopped writing Maxwell's latest book, The Isle of the Dead, because I was basically exhausted and stuck in the middle of a web of characters, plots and half glimpsed conspiracies - but I had a revelation last week and finally saw a way I could finish the book.
So, my new plan is this - I will continue writing The Resurrection Bureau while I am working on Isle of the Dead. I will post what I can every Monday - which may not be much, but should whet your appetite, anyway. If all goes well I should be finished the first draft of Super Maxwell and the Isle of the Dead by Christmas, and then I can focus a little more on The Resurrection Bureau. Believe me, I want to know what happens to Halcyon, Eve, Mr Grace and Mr Craft just as much as you do - if not more!
So, stick with me, as always all I can promise you is that I will finish it, though it may take a while - and that after Christmas I will not, hand on heart, I will NOT be returning to Maxwell's world until October 2011 - when I start work on Super Maxwell 4 - The Crimson King.
Tony

Sunday 10 October 2010

The Resurrection Bureau - Part 7

'Hello, I'm looking for Sally Sparks?' looking at the woman's silk flower print dress and cream cardigan Eve was almost certain that this woman was not the person she was looking for - and she was proved wrong a third time.
'You must be from the Bureau,' the woman - Sally Sparks - replied with a smile. She held open the door.
Eve stepped into a large rundown porch. A dusty staircase turned into darkness above them.
'You'd best come up,' Sally Spark said, 'but please be quiet. There are two old gentlemen living on the first floor, and they do so hate to be disturbed.'
She ran up the staircase. Eve noted, with a sinking feeling, that Sally Sparks's feet were bare, and black with dirt. She followed Sally up stairs, barely even able to keep her in sight in the dimly lit staircase; she almost seemed to vanish, to be little more than a flutter of flowery silk and pale legs in the darkness.
At the first landing Eve almost ran into the little woman, who held a finger to her lips and pointed at a large, dark oak door. Sally Sparks's two old gentlemen, no doubt - and, Eve reflected, it looked like they had been undisturbed for time - cobwebs ran in curtains down the door.
Probably been eaten by their cats, Eve thought with a shudder.
At the top of the staircase Sally Sparks stood in a shaft of dusty light thrown by a roof window. It was so dim that Eve could barely see her, and the door she stood in front of looked to small to belong to an adult's apartment. Eve felt another twinge of discomfort - she did not even like to think of what lay beyond Sally's Sparks door.
'Before you come in I must ask you a very serious question,' said the dark shape of Sally Sparks's head.
Eve released a shaky sigh. 'Okay?'
'All right,' Sally Sparks said. 'My very serious question to you is - do you prefer tea or coffee?'
'Um...' Eve blinked in the dim light. 'Tea?'
'That's the right answer,' said Sally Sparks, and she threw open the small door, filling the dark space at the top of the stairs with red light. 'Come inside, Eve.'
Eve stepped past the smiling little woman and into the red room. It only occurred to her afterwards that she had not told Sally Sparks her name.

6.

The rooms were large and cold and empty but for spiders, mice and dust.
Old, thick curtains were drawn across the large sash windows. They had been put up sometime around the date of the Battle of Trafalgar, had been drawn closed, and never opened again. The dust that covered everything breathed in to the room from the open fire, its grate long ago blown clean of any coals. Spiders’ webs wreathed the room, and covered its two inhabitants … because the spiders did not fear the two men. Similarly mice and rats had made nests in the chairs in which they sat, the two men (it is easier to call them men than anything else) did not harm them and the little creatures did not fear them.
The men sat facing one another across a small table. One man was large and the other small, their clothes, in the style of the time, were covered in formerly vivid braid and once shining brass buttons. Now their clothes were little more than dusty rags, held together by cobwebs, dusty and entropy.
On the table between them sat two small spherical objects, deeply buried in dust.
In the dark room the only sound was the hiss of rain against the window, dulled by thick and ancient curtains, and the scritch-scratch of mice living in confident isolation.
Suddenly, with a sound like soot fall in a chimney, the smaller of the two men coughed out a wad of dust and mummified spiders.
He reached across the table, picked up the small spheres, placed them into the dusty, empty sockets in his face, and blinked, two, three, four times.
'Mr Grace,' he whispered to his stirring companion in a voice from a dusty crypt. 'I believe there are good works to be done.'

7.

'Well now, here we are, a cup of tea and a nice fire, what could be better than that?'
Eve smiled uncertainly at Sally Sparks, and took a sip from her tea, taking the chance to flcik her eyes around the room. Sally Sparks's small bedsit reminded of a cave - or perhaps, she reflected, a budoir would be a more acurate description. The ceiling was invisible under swathes of silk that gave the impression of being inside a tent. The walls were covered in paintings of wild landscape and framed pages of yellow scroll, with words written in ancient languages - or perhaps languages which did not exist outside of stories about dragons, wizards and elves. There were also a lot of nude paintings on the walls - some, though not all, of Sally Sparks, and some, had not Sally Sparks's refined demeanor and calming presense made the very idea seem quite ridiculous, verging on the pornographic. There was a large log fire set into one wall that send flickered red light across the room, which was reflected and amplified by red, white and black candles that sat dripping wave on every surface. The carpet on the floor was heavily paterned in a style that Eve reflected was either the height of Boho fashion, or the very apex of bad taste - though very little of the floor was visible beneath piles of books which covered virtually every inch of the carpet, and smelt of old paper, mice and long ago smoked cigarettes.
Eve could see a small kitchen, a very large bed piled with a mountain of multi-coloured cushions, and a doorway which presumably led to the bathroom. Sally Sparks did not seems to have a TV, computer or even a telephone, though Eve could barely comprehend how anyone could exist in the world without a phone and basic broadband.
Oh well, she reflected, this is The North, after all.
'Miss Sparks,' Eve began, putting her cup of tea down on a book the size of a coffee table, 'I've been sent here by The Resurrection Bureau to discuss your case.'
Sally Sparks took a sip of her tea and smiled, 'Have you dear?' was all she said.
Eve opened her bag and took out a pile of papers. 'It says here...' she made a show of rifling through the papers, though in reality only one sheet had any baring on Sally Sparks - the rest were actually her application form and CV which she had taken to the office with her that morning, and forgotten to remove when she returned to his apartment to pick up her belongings for the journey. 'It says here that you have been receiving an endowment from the Bureau for the last six months?'
'No,' Sally Spark replied.
'No?' Eve exclaimed.
'No,' Sally Spark repeated. 'I have been receiving payments from your Resurrection Bureau much, much longer than that.'
'Um...' Eve rifled through the useless papers again. 'How long?'
'Oh, I couldn't possibly say.'
Eve shot Sally Sparks a puzzled look, but she merely smiled, her legs crossed demurely, a tea cup held in both small hands, one dirty foot dangling in the air.
Eve tried again. 'You've recently quit your job at a local DIY superstore, Miss Sparks? Can you tell me why?'
'I don't work,' Sally Sparks replied. 'I haven't for many years. I think you may need to check your facts.'
Eve blinked at her. What was Crichton playing at? Was this a genuine mistake, or perhaps some type of test? Was she supposed to find something out about this polite little woman?
Eve did not know what she would have asked Sally Sparks first, but she need not have worried, as Sally put down her cup, clasped her hands together, smiled, and said, 'You have no idea why you're here, do you, Guinevere?'
'Eve,' Eve snapped instantly. 'My name is Eve. I'm here, Miss Sparks to assess your case. There has obviously been some sort of mix up with the details of your endowment--'
'I very much doubt it, The Resurrection Bureau doesn't make mistakes. It can't afford to.'
Eve didn't even try to puzzle that out, but reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. 'I'm sure if I ring the office they'll be able to send me the relevant documents.'
'Your phone won't work here, Guinevere,' said Sally Sparks.
'My name--' Eve began, and then jerked backwards with a gasp as her phone let out a booming bark in her ear.

To be continued...

Monday 4 October 2010

The Resurrection Bureau - Part 6

Half an hour later Eve sat in the back of a taxi feeling slightly grubby and distinctly uneasy. The taxi driver had done a double take when she had told him the address that the Governor had given her, but then had shrugged and pulled away from the pavement.
The Governor’s brief was short and uninformative. It simply stated:
Sally Sparks, 55b West Green Street.
Miss Sparks has been receiving endowment payments from The Resurrection Bureau for six months. Reports indicate Miss Sparks has recently resigned from her post as a DIY superstore demonstrator.
JJ Crichton

Eve had turned the piece of paper over, but that was all that was written. So she had been sent on a eight hundred mile round trip because a girl had quit her job as a electric drill model. Really?
Outside cold sun filtered through a break in the clouds, revealing large austere buildings and cobbled streets packed with commuters dressed in suits and training shoes. Soon the large buildings gave way to brown, grey, gloomy apartment blocks, stunted, weed filled parkland and dirty single-storey office buildings and schools.
Eve watched the depressing view slide by. As odd as this particular mission was, it was not at all unusual to find yourself in an odd situation working for a charity. Kin her time Eve had found herself running pentathlons, organising bouncey castles and being interviewed by police detectives. Charity work was always, at best, scattergun and chaotic, and at worse a mess of ineptitude and wasted money. But Eve liked it that way. She was never bored, and she was a peerless professional, who took great pleasure in cutting through the bullshit and downright idiocy of her colleagues and got the job done. She had managed, at age only 25, to rise to a position and salary that would have been more fitting for a woman in her mid-forties in private business, and she had done it because charities were mostly run by idiots. Well meaning, affable idiots mostly, but idiots none the less.
‘Here we are, pet,’ the taxi driver said suddenly. ‘You’re sure this is the right place?’
Eve looked out at a dirty red building, the upper stories of which tottered out over the street below. At the top of a cracked cement staircase strewn with discarded beer can was a red door. Holes were hacked into the brick frame of the door, and above one such hole was painted: 55b.
‘Yes,’ Eve answered with a resigned sigh. ‘This is the right place.’
She wasn’t at all surprised that it started raining again as she stepped out of the taxi.

There were no bells or buzzers anywhere around the door. Eve knocked, the sound of her small fist feeble on the thick wood of the old door - but to her surprise her knock received an almost immediate response, the sound of small, quick-moving feet on the bare wood of a staircase.
Eve steadied herself, straightening her suit jacket and running a hand through her frizzy hair. She expected to be met by an overweight depressed hippy, or perhaps a wild eyed teen with piercings wearing pyjamas - and was surprised again. The woman who opened the door was in her mid-forties, her dark hair scraped back into a bun, a puzzled smile on a pretty, olive-shaped face.
'Hello?' she said in a refined, if cautious voice.
'Hello, I'm looking for Sally Sparks?' looking at the woman's silk flower print dress and cream cardigan Eve was almost certain that this woman was not the person she was looking for - and she was proved wrong a third time.
'You must be from the Bureau,' the woman - Sally Sparks - replied with a smile. She held open the door.
Eve stepped into a large rundown porch. A dusty staircase turned into darkness above them.

To be continued...

Sunday 26 September 2010

The Resurrection Bureau - Part 5

Halcyon hesitated. What had he said? When it came to it the old man had pretty much talked nonsense, hadn’t he? But Young Brian nodded nevertheless when Halcyon told him Ambrosius’s odd and convoluted tale.
‘The dog headed men, that was one of the heretical Arthur stories,’ Halcyon shrugged, and Young Brian sighed. ‘Don’t you ever read a book, Ghost? The story of the cynocephali, the dog headed demons, is one of the contended Gospels of Saint Gawain. There was a lot left out of the New Testament, stuff about demons and giants that people would just laugh at now.’
‘And the Titanic, mastermind, was that in Saint Gawain’s Gospels too?’ Young Brian was Halcyon’s best friend, but his condescending attitude sometimes got on his nerves.
Young Brian grinned. ‘Nope, no Titanic in the Bible,’ he replied. ‘But the Gospels do say that whenever Merlin used his powers it was always followed by a great disaster. Remember, when Merlin brought Arthur back from death Avalon fell.’
Halcyon stared at Young Brian for several seconds, and then shook his head. ‘What a load of old crap,’ he said at last.
‘Took the words right out of my mouth, Ghost,’ Young Brian replied. ‘Game of pool? Fiver a frame?’

5.

It rained in Northumberland. It rained a lot. When Eve stepped off the train it rained in vertical rods, when she finally caught a taxi (there appeared to be three to cover the whole county) outside the station the rain was falling horizontally, and as she sat in her hotel room trying to dry off the rain appeared to be falling in curls. She was almost certain at one point, as she looked out of her window at brown, mist obscured streets, that it hailed.
Hadn’t anyone told them it was August?
There had been the usual literature in the cramped hotel room, declaring Northumberland to be “The Avalon of the North” and “The birthplace of Lancelot”. Eve had grown up in Wanstead in London, she and her mother living above The George pub in Wanstead High Street. Chingford was the furthest she had ever travelled north. She had always assumed there were nothing but cows, factories and ruined castles once you crossed the M25.
The view out of her window did little to reassure her that she had been wrong.
She knew very little about Northumberland, accept, of course, as every school child knew, that Bamborough Castle was the birthplace of Saint Lancelot, and that his body, according to legend, had been interred at the nearby holy island of Lindisfarne. From what she had been able to tell from her taxi window, Bamborough was a large and prosperous city, not perhaps the bustling metropolis of Glastonbury – but then again, outside of New York or Paris, where was? – but, she admitted somewhat grudgingly, it was quite cosmopolitan. They even had a Starbucks.
She had very little idea of what lay between Bamborough and North London. There were a few small industrial towns, she knew; Newcastle, Sunderland, Manchester … Or were they north of here in Scotland? Eve wasn’t quite sure.
She had stopped only briefly in the hotel. The Governor had given her a very tight schedule which hadn’t been helped by the train pulling in an hour late and the lack of taxis. She hadn’t time for a shower, but had just enough time to discover that the radio stations listed on the hotel literature had no earthly connection to the stations that were actually available, to try and to fail to connect her iPad to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, drink a mouthful of the most repulsive coffee in existence, and to stare out of the window at the dismal weather.

To be continued...

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Mid-Week Report: A dog ate my novel

Since my last post I have written nothing - this is due to a number of factor, my laptop went phut, I had to go to a funeral and also sat through the longest doctor's appointment in world history (if you look in the Guiness Book of Record you'll find a picture of me there in the doctor's waiting room, under "B" for World's Most Bored Man).
I know I keep saying that I will write more, and I will, honestly, if only because I'll have to stop writing The Resurrection Bureau at the end of November no matter how far advanced it is, and go back to try and finish writing Super Maxwell 3: The Isle of the Dead to get it published by next summer.
But I am, as always, optimistic (you can find me under "O" in the Guiness Book of Records too, for The World's Most Optimistic Man) and I am confident The Resurrection Bureau will be finished by the end of November - trust me, I used to be a boy scout.
Tony

Sunday 19 September 2010

The Resurrection Bureau - Part 4

‘Eddie?’ Betty Weywood’s voice curled out at Halcyon like a cat’s tongue. ‘I had a dream about you last night.’
Halcyon turned and looked into Bettie Weywood’s wicked brown eyes – but oddly, the sensation he felt was not his usual one of vague erotic embarrassment, but a thrill of fear. ‘Um. Right, err...’
‘I dreamt you were speaking to a very old man by a very hot fire,’ purred Betty.
‘And did he have a cat?’ chipped in Emily.
‘A cat,’ Vera cackled. ‘And a robin too.’
Betty nodded, her large brown eyes never moving from Halycon’s, ‘A red, red robin,’ she breathed.
A red, red robin. If you get in trouble, whispered an old voice in Halcyon’s mind, do tell a robin.
The old man in the Titanic deckchair – how had he forgotten that?
‘How did you...’ he began, and a smell so noxious and noisome that Halycon felt his voice melt as if by airborne acid, surrounded him. The Weywood sisters all wrinkled their nose of various sizes and designs and leant back on their exercise bikes. ‘Hello Jack,’ said Emily as cheerily as possible.
‘Sorry son, I missed the bus,’ said Mr Tree. He was dressed in a white tracksuit splotched with grey, yellow and brown stains, a brown woollen suit jacket and a brown cloth cap. Halcyon did not want to guess at how Mr Tree had acquired those stains, but the funky smell that permanently surrounded him was a pretty good indication. ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’ he asked hopefully.

Thursday was always one of Halcyon’s busiest days, with back to back clients, starting with Mr Tree (stroke) then Mr Charles (heart attack) Mr Fyne (fractured pelvis) and finishing with Mr Trump (heart bypass, stroke, arthritis). Inevitably all of their sessions overran, or one or more of them was late, or didn’t turn up at all, which usually meant a 30 minutes phone chase for a nephew, niece, son or daughter who usually managed to stay just on the right side of exasperated and shared all of their woes with Halcyon. Halcyon really didn’t mind. He knew he could get a job at a better gym in town relatively easily, probably with more money, but he liked the old and damaged men who came to see him at Sam’s, no matter how bad their lives outside, once inside the gym it was his job to help them.
Debbie had considered his job demeaning; even though she had grudgingly acknowledged that it was “a good thing” that he was helping out those recovering from various illnesses. That was the thing about Debbie, he had realised, she was ninety per cent horrible – cold, mean spirited, thoughtless and selfish – but there had always been that ten per cent of her that had been thoughtful, kind and forgiving. But, Halcyon had begun to realised even before Debbie met Clive and his black windowed Cleo, it was very hard work loving ten per cent of someone.
So the day had passed at its usual awkward and exhausting pace at Sam’s Gym and Solarium and it wasn’t until Halcyon had stepped out of the Day-Glo green door and back into the rain that he remembered the old man in the deckchair again.
‘Eddie Ambrosius,’ he murmured, ‘middle name definitely not trouble.’
It was funny how he had forgotten about the old man. It wasn’t the usual ten pint black out forgetfulness either. Halcyon, though undoubtedly drunk at the time, remembered what had happened with perfect clarity – the old man and his tale of Titanic, the island of cat headed-women and dog-headed men, his cat Bas and the little red robin – but the memory seemed slippery somehow. The moment he stopped thinking about it the memory seemed to ping to the back of his brain as if attached to the inside of his skull by elastic, and it was very hard to start to remember it again.
Halcyon crossed the road to Sign’s Paper shop and General Dealers, the only other shop or house on the windblown hill where Sam’s gym sat, and bought a local paper. Mr Sign asked him again (as he did at least twice a week) how much it was to join the gym and what the opening times were, and assured Halcyon that he would pop in next week, and Halcyon assured him that he would give Mr Sign a tour round – though both men knew it would never happen. It was just one of those curious conversations you had with people you didn’t know, but, because you saw them every day, you felt you had to be polite to them.
Halcyon crossed back over the road and waited for his bus. He didn’t take his paper out of his pocket – he bought it out of force of habit and barely ever read it – but simply stared blankly ahead thinking about the funny old man with the forked beard and the tea cosy hat until his bus came.
He did not notice the headline on the newspaper hording outside the shop – it read simply:
BRUTAL MURDER OF LOCAL WOMAN – POLICE ADMIT NO LEADS

‘Tetley? Did you see me talking to that old man last night?’
Tetley paused in the act of counting his change (a considerable challenge for Tetley at the best of times) and squinted at Halcyon around his smoking cigarette. ‘What? Old Joe, you mean?’
‘No, not him.’ Old Joe lived a semi-permanent existence under the Bitter Drayman’s dart board, a flat cap on his head and a toothless grimace indelibly on his face, as he strove to completely ignore the darts whizzing over his head, and on occasion landing in his beer. ‘I am that old man I was talking to in the garden?’
Tetley sighed and held out his hand to Halcyon, who quickly counted his change. ‘Fine,’ he confirmed. Tetley dropped his change in his jeans pocket. ‘I didn’t see no old fella. You was sitting in that garden in front of a smoking fire. Did I get those smoky bacon?’
‘In your pocket,’ Tetley gave a grunt as he discovered the crisp packet, and picked up the two pints off the counter. ‘But there was an old man there in the garden with me?’ Halcyon persisted as they walked back to the pool table together.
‘What was that, Ghost?’ asked Jaffa, taking his pint from Tetley.
‘I was just asking Tetley if he saw me talking to that old man in the garden last night,’ Halcyon said.
‘Man, you were steaming last night,’ Jaffa chuckled. He took a slurp from his pint. ‘Where are my crisps?’
‘So you didn’t see any old man?’ Halcyon asked as Tetley threw Jaffa’s crisps to him.
‘These aren’t barbecue beef!’ Jaffa exclaimed.
‘You asked for smoky bacon,’ Tetley replied.
‘You daft git, I asked for barbecue beef!’
‘No you bloody didn’t!’
Halcyon sighed and made his way around the table to where Young Brian sat in the shadowed alcove smoking a yellow cigarette, his hands shaking slightly. ‘Cheers, Eddie,’ Young Brian took his pint and Halcyon sat.
‘Did you see that old man I was talking to last night?’ Halcyon asked.
Young Brian frowned beneath his mop of curling hair. He took a sip of his pint. He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘I don’t remember that,’ he said at last. Young Brian, Halcyon knew, was fiercely intelligent, but took great care to both hide the fact, and also to damage as many brain cells as humanly possible with both alcohol and various other substances. He was sort of odd, but in a relaxed, likeable way. For instance, Young Brian never looked at you when he spoke to you, except when in the extremes of drunkenness (a frequent event) or when being extremely serious (an extremely rare event). But when he did speak it was with such languid humour that no one seemed to mind. And Young Brian was extraordinarily handsome, almost femininely beautiful, and as much as he scruffed down beneath his curly hair, his unshaven chin and his misshapen t-shirts and jeans his good looks were impossible to disguise. Halcyon had known Young Brian since secondary school, had known his dad Old Tom who had been a friend of his foster family, and though he loved him like a brother, could not help but feel slightly jealous of his good looks and easy manner. You could not help but feel slightly eclipsed by Young Brian, even though Young Brian himself would have been mystified and slightly annoyed if you ever told him so.
‘Was there something about a bird?’ Young Brian asked suddenly. ‘A bird sitting on a cat’s head? Really? I thought I’d dreamt that.’
Yes, that cat was called Bas. It belonged to the old man, he was called Eddie Ambrosius.’
‘Ambrosius?’ Young Brian raised an eyebrow, and took a slow sip of his pint, and a slow drag on his yellow cigarette. ‘That was Merlin’s name.’
‘Merlin?’
‘Yeah, you know, Merlin. King Arthur’s court. Merlin, maker of saints, slayer of dragons and witches. Merlin, who put the sword in the stone, and brought Arthur back from death—‘
‘I bloody know who bloody Merlin is, don’t I!’ Halcyon exclaimed in exasperation. ‘Do you think that old man was Merlin, then?’
Young Brian grunted. ‘If he was Merlin I’m Saint Lancelot,’ he replied. ‘Still, it’s not exactly a common name, is it, Ambrosius? What did he say to you?’

Continued...