Magic Parcel (9 page)

“But ... but ...” he stammered, taken very much aback by its sudden appearance. “It's a ...”

“Grave,” Tommy finished off for him. “Overgrown it may be, but still very much a ... grave ...”

His matter-of-factness quickly evaporated on looking up from the hard, glossy rectangularity of the grey granite grave surround, withstanding the continual onslaught of weed and weather, to catch the shadowy outline of some indistinct figure in his eye corners. He nudged his brother who had already seen their ghostly spectator and was slowly dragging himself to an upright position, eyes firmly fixed on the apparition. Large in the extreme, with huge hairy arms folded across its chest like scaffolding, its unblinking eyes peered out of a face totally surrounded by black, grey-flecked, dishevelled hair, fixing them to the spot as effectively as tying them with rope.

The Old Man of the Mountains sought an explanation from those disturbing his rest!

 

 

 

The darkening storm gathered about the pinnacles and battlements of Seth's castle. Black clouds formed their battalions, marshalling their dark troops ready for battle with the Master of Mystery. Lightening began to flicker and play, adding a silver circlet to the crown of clouds the castle already displayed.

The first rolling clap of thunder startled the surrounding countryside and even rattled the thick stone battlement tops. This would be a conflict to end all conflicts, and one in which the elements, after centuries of perseverance, would crush utterly the upstart magician who had tried - and succeeded for the most part - to tame them to his will.

The crash, although expected and prepared for, still took participant and spectator by surprise, stunning even the hardiest of animals into immediate submission. Yet the castle simply sat, amidst its bushes and trees, like the bones of the earth out of whose rocks it had gradually grown over the years.

Suddenly, when the intense blue flash of the storm had stopped printing tiny replicas on the inner black velvet backdrop of the eye, it was gone! The castle had disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving a deeper, darker gap in the countryside.

Tommy and Jimmy felt instantly the moment the disappearance had taken place.

“But ... Tom ... the par...!” was all Jimmy was allowed to say by his brother, who clapped his hand tightly across his mouth, in the meanwhile whispering to him not to disturb the guest to their homely surroundings.

The figure didn't move. Motionless, his unblinking eyes bored through their minds, searching, probing and asking. Where had they experienced that before? Yes, of course ...!

“Seth!” blurted out Jimmy with the impetuosity of youth. “You're ... !”

“Seth, and not Seth,” came the overriding reply, but the lips did not utter those words; they were not heard but felt. Jimmy was beginning to wonder if in fact the ears were of any use at all in this land, nobody much seemed to use them; at least, not for communication anyway. That was one of the things about this country he would alter if he ever became king; that and things like better catering facilities, and more toilets. Why didn't they ever...? His mind was wrenched unceremoniously back to the attention of their visitor, who was beginning to become a little irritated by the small boy's lack of attention.

Now, that attitude seemed to strike a familiar note somewhere in Jimmy's head; a note of recognition. The face, covered as it was by so much facial undergrowth, where had he seen ...? The thought suddenly struck him between the eyes, in between the probing and dark words.

“Mr Bolam!” he burst out without thinking about the consequences of such impetuous actions.

“You seem singularly intent on distracting by your inattention, young man, so I will fix your thoughts by speech,” the apparition burst in rather annoyed, seeming much less like a ghost than at first suggested.

Yes, that was definitely Mr Bolam, Jimmy thought; that turn of temper, that sarcasm, that ...

His tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of his mouth, making him unable to open his lips or to focus his attention on anything other than the visitor. His eyes were drawn, reluctantly, to his form, which grew brighter as the surroundings became dimmer and more indistinct, drawing in a thick grey mist to form a halo around his shape.

 

“I am Gor-ifan, whom some would name The Old Man of the Mountains,” he said in a voice which seemed to come from somewhere below them, struggling to take form and give substance to its user. “I am - was - brother to the Wicked Lord of Seth. I
was
the Seth before my brother, Tar-igor, banished me to a half-life in the waiting Land of Four, and took my title and my birthright, becoming himself the Seth.”

There was a momentary pause as the mist threatened to overwhelm him, but he gradually reasserted his mastery and continued.

“You two, I deem, may be able to aid my cause. You will come with me.”

 

The change was sudden, unexpected, as the mist darkened and began to move outwards, away from Gor-ifan, like a window slowly demisting. At first, the space behind him was dark and indistinct, but as the mist retreated so the light grew in intensity and colour until it reached its final pale yellow.

The land they walked in was flat, featureless and bare of all save themselves. As they watched, tiny black dots appeared on the yellow land and began to grow upwards, straight and tall, as if making up for lost time. Within a few minutes, a forest of sapling pine trees had sprouted thick and dark before their disbelieving eyes. Within the time it would take to plant one of the trees, a thick forest of black spruce had reached maturity. To the south of the forest, directly before their feet, a bright silver ribbon trickled, grew and flowed in its quest for the sea.

This land creation continued, unchecked, unabated, its virgin birth showing none of the usual growing pains. The plan had been formed long ago, awaiting a trigger; that trigger had been sprung. Nothing could now halt its progress.

As the ribbon of a river reached its destination, the brothers became aware of a darkness creeping over them. Startled, they looked around, to find they were standing under the eaves of a great, dark forest where once there had been plains. Dark, forbidding trees of a type unknown to them formed an eerily quiet body, like some still but watchful beast. For this was no haphazard collection of individual trees, the wood had a corporate life, and it breathed as a single vast being.

Again, as they watched, unable to speak or move, dark mists formed and wove themselves around the tree boles, bringing to the forest a profound feeling of mystery, and to the boys a deep sense of unease.

“Where have you brought us?” Tommy asked of Gor-ifan, turning to face him. His question lay where he had dropped it, unanswered. Gor-ifan was no longer there. They were again utterly alone!

As near a mixture of panic and relief swept over Tommy and Jimmy in a joint involuntary spasm, feeling fear and joy at once again being alone. But were they...?

“I'm glad
he's
gone,” Jimmy finally ruptured the silence.

“Yes, but don't you get the feeling that we're being watched by ... something or other, out there?” Tommy said with a grimace and a vague sweep of his arm.

“I suppose you're right,” Jimmy answered. “There's something vaguely unsettling about a place that doesn't behave as it should. But then that could be said about the whole of this country. I'm beginning to wish Uncle Reub ...”

“Shsh!” interrupted his brother in a low whisper. “Be quiet. I can hear something rustling over there.”

The mist, which by this time had completely enveloped them, suddenly rolled away, leaving everything clear and clean and new. They were now deep in the forest with the feeling that they were standing on un-trodden earth in a place where fear had no substance or place.

Again they stopped, taken utterly by surprise, for in a small clearing, surrounded by hawthorn bushes, was a large flat stone, set on its end against a rock face about man high. Tommy turned to point this out to his brother, but he became somewhat puzzled to find it had disappeared.

“Must have been dreaming,” he muttered, shrugging off his mistake.

“No; look!” Jimmy whispered, nodding towards the clearing again. This time Tommy gasped, for the stone, which must have weighed half a ton or more, had been rolled back to one side, revealing a dark hole. Leading up to this hole were five smoothly cut steps inviting entry to its gloomy interior. Nothing else could be seen.

They blinked, and on opening their eyes again, they were surprised to see the clearing and cave entrance still there, but with one subtle change. A light now poured down the steps making entrance to those secrets beyond a little more inviting.

To Jimmy, the welcome was unmistakable; it said ‘come in'. So he skipped across to the clearing and had set foot on the bottom step before his brother had had time to think, let alone move. As his foot touched the
top
step - the last before the threshold - Tommy suddenly came to life, finally realising his brother was about to disappear again. Mother wouldn't be at all pleased if he lost him again, so he had no alternative but to bound after him.

“Whoa, Jim!” he shouted. “Hang on a bit. Wait for me! We ought to ...”

He didn't manage to finish his sentence. There sprang up a hoarse screech behind him as something whistled through the air. It stopped its flight when it met the back of Tommy's head with a dull sickening thud, pitching him forward onto his face across the flight of stone steps not five paces behind his brother. The lights went out suddenly in his brain, leaving him helpless prey to his unseen assailant.

 

The darkness was total. Jimmy could neither see nor hear anything. The urge to enter had been irresistible, and had seized him from across the clearing. Now he was in the cave, he was not quite as sure, but the urge was no less strong. His eyes were useless to him at the moment, but to compensate, his sense of smell had been heightened, giving him scents he knew and loved – new oak and leather. A thought flicked across his mind, leaving him grasping and unsure. He
knew
where he'd experienced those same smells previously; on one occasion only. A strange sort of light began slowly to well up from the floor as if filling a transparent vessel with its golden warmth.

There was nothing he could recognise at first, but as the light grew, spread and intensified, an image began to clarify in his confused brain. Suddenly the light rang out into its final startling clarity, and Jimmy's confusion was complete. He was as a sleeper gradually surfacing through the various levels of consciousness until the ultimate emergence imprinted a picture of reality upon his mind.

That scene before him now, although experienced once only before, was part of his conscious and subconscious knowledge in such a way that it would never be forgotten. In all details save one, the scene before him was ...

“...Uncle Reuben's study!” he gasped, hardly able to believe what he saw. Had he dreamed
all
his adventures, or had they been part of Reuben's own story? The great desk, the wall trappings, the shelves were those he had indelibly fixed in his mind's eye - everything was exactly as he had remembered. Then his gaze was riveted by the one detail which told him immediately that he was somewhere else... the floor was sawdust and cork chippings, and not the deep pile carpet of his uncle's study.

“You are correct ... and yet not so,” boomed a voice from across the room. It came from a figure that Jimmy hadn't noticed, half-hidden beside one of those panelled book shelves, and it made him start rather. He swung round on his heels to see where the voice had come from, and on locating the person, let out an involuntary gasp of shock and surprise to see ...

“Uncle Reuben!”

“I am Algan,” the voice boomed again, ignoring his statement, “and you are now in my realm.”

Realising too late that he had betrayed the one confidence his uncle had wanted him to guard - the existence of his study - Jimmy's chin dropped to his chest and he stared at his uneasily shuffling feet as they made symmetrical patterns in the oak chippings. Suddenly, he felt his face being lifted, but not by Algan, who had remained motionless where Jimmy had first seen him. Face level with the magician's, their eyes met and the boy's mind was held, and
then
it was that he knew his secret was safe. During that short time, Jimmy's mind was stripped of all relevant information, and his thoughts released as quickly as they had been seized.

“We will talk later,” Algan burst through the barrier of silence. “As much information relevant to your needs I already have, I see no point in continuing for the present, and ...”

“Excuse me for butting in,” Jimmy asked politely, but getting a little more fidgety, “can you tell me where my brother, Tommy, is? You see, he came here with me, and now I seem to have lost him.”

Algan beckoned Jimmy to follow, and they set off at a reasonable speed towards the inner door, which no doubt led to somewhere interesting.

The inner part of the cave was entirely different from anything he had ever seen before. In fact, the two parts were so different that they could have been in separate worlds.