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...
Monday, 29 November 2010
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.
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...
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
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...
'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...
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...
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