Syren (42 page)

What the jinnee hated was its Dreaming Time in the cramped gold bottle—an indescribable boredom combined with the unbearable urge to expand. But once the jinnee was out in the world, Dreaming Time was forgotten and life began again. Jim Knee knew it was too early to judge his new life, but one thing he did know—so far, it had not been boring.

V
ILLAGE
C
HIEF
: T
HE
G
AME

The game can be played by two, three, four or six players. If played on sand any higher number of players are possible, but it must be an even number. Just add more huts to your village.

The game is played as a series of rounds. You can decide in
advance how many rounds to play, in which case the winner will be the person with the most huts, or you can play until someone has won all the huts.

For a normal-size game (maximum six players), you will need: forty-eight small pebbles, beans or shells of similar sizes and wet sand. You can either play on sand left by the outgoing tide or wet it with your WaterGnome, as Beetle did.

Use your fist to make two parallel lines of six depressions in the sand—these are the huts. The collection of huts is known as the village. Place a family of four pebbles/shells/beans in each hut. Allocate an equal number of huts to each player.

The aim of the game is to capture pebbles. Each family of four pebbles will give you one hut in the next round.

How to play:

Moves are made from right to left, counterclockwise.

The first player picks up all the pebbles from one of her own huts and, going in an counterclockwise direction, drops them one by one into each consecutive hut. If the last pebble lands in a hut that already has pebbles in it, the player continues the move by picking up all the pebbles in the last hut and continuing to drop them one by one around the village. At the
beginning of the game, when there are a lot of pebbles in the village, the move may continue in this way for several runs.

If any hut becomes four pebbles during play, the pebbles are removed and kept by the person who owns the hut. The exception to this is if the player’s final move makes a hut of four—those four pebbles then become the player’s property.

The game continues with each consecutive player taking a turn. All players must start their turn in their own hut. If they have no pebbles in their hut then they miss their turn and wait until it comes around again.

When there are only eight pebbles left on the board, play becomes much slower. The winner of the next hut of four wins all eight pebbles, so the last hut is a double win. Each player then counts their pebbles out into huts of four around the village again to see how many huts they have won. If you have no pebbles you are out of the game. The next round of the game continues with the new huts. The more huts a player has, the easier it is to gain even more. It’s a tough life.

S
TANLEY

Stanley was overjoyed to receive a personal message from the Princess, albeit delivered by a messenger wearing a very odd yellow hat, which he hoped was not the new Palace uniform. The message was as follows:

Stanley walked around in a daze of delight for some hours, clutching the message to him—
he was still a friend of Royalty
. For a brief moment he wished that he could tell his ex-wife, Dawnie, about it, and then he pulled himself together. It was
none of Dawnie’s business—it was his business now and his alone. Actually, thought Stanley, that was no longer completely true; he now had four orphan ratlets to think of.

Stanley went over to a little basket in the corner, where four brown furry creatures with little pink tails were asleep. He had only found them the previous night, but he already felt as if he had known them all his life. Sydney was the quiet one. Lydia, small and snuffly; Faith, large and confident; Edward, boisterous and a little silly. He loved them all a hundred times more than he had ever loved Dawnie.

Loath to go, but knowing he must, Stanley placed a large bowl of milk and some porridge scrapings beside the basket. “Be good,” he told them. “I will be back soon.” He tiptoed over to the door, hopped out of the rat flap, locked it and set off for the Port with a spring in his step.

Jacket art © 2009 by Mark Zug

Jacket design by Joel Tippie