The Omega Children - The Return of the Marauders (A young adult fiction best seller): An Action Adventure Mystery (30 page)

Aunty Gertrude rushed at Quixote drawing her hand back to strike him. Ari leapt forward blocking her way, while Quixote ducked. Pembrooke, Uncle Bear-Nard, and Jeeves all gasped in surprise and yelled out, ‘Quixote!’

With his body shielding a sniggering Quixote, Ari said, ‘You’ll have to come through me first.’

Aunty Gertrude halted, composed herself and backed away, still glaring at them; her face poker-hot red with great distaste.

Melaleuca stepped up beside Ari.

‘We decide what’s best for us.’

Aunty Gertrude mocked her words with a sneer, giving her a dirty look. She pondered the moment.

‘Have this round if you must,’ and one by one she looked them up and down.

She froze her eyes on Lexington and said, ‘When the full flock of your cascading hair has become matted with the mud of Disciple Park...,’ and then glared at Ari, saying, ‘...and when your strength has failed you in the Unforbidden Forest...,’ and then to Melaleuca, ‘...when your forthrightness has been tucked away as a distant memory...And...’ She saved the most disdainful look for Quixote, glaring at him with great repugnance, ‘...when your stupidity has been smashed from your bony frame by the deep reaches of the southern hills, then we will see who laughs, who plays, who comes, who stays.’

Quixote played with his bracelet. Pembrooke reached down and grabbed Quixote’s wrist with the invisible bracelet on, steadied him, and said, ‘Choose your battles carefully with this one.’

Aunty Gertrude took a step back. All emotion left her face and she said, ‘Bear-Nard, these children will fall under our ways, or go to the borstal, or to the southern reaches.’

Unfazed Melaleuca shot back at her, ‘Perhaps we should like to leave, in that case.’

Aunty Gertrude smiled as if she had caught Melaleuca in a trap.

‘How unfortunate. Those few that come to New Wakefield never leave. Sorry, I guess someone forgot to tell you.’

She walked away happy at the displeasure she thought she had created.

‘Please children,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said in a beaten down voice, ‘Go to your rooms and rest. Some food shall be sent up. Please, we will talk soon.’

None of them wanted to hurt him anymore and so they wandered to their rooms.

***

The cousins gathered in the girls’ bedroom, discovering that both their clothes and their costumes they had hidden sat on the floor. A note sat next to them.

Quixote grabbed it, reading it out loud.

‘By all means keep your identities secret. Let no one know that you have the costumes. For the time being keep away from other people. Learn to use the costumes. By the time your parents get here you should be skilful enough for the next stage.’

‘See,’ Melaleuca said, ‘as I said. First learn to use the costumes.’

Lexington put her detective costume on, letting its deductive powers augment her need to know why. As she flitted through the facts, thinking about Iam, the Borstal, the statues, the bracelets, and the costumes - one overriding conclusion occurred to her.

‘I bet our parent’s were attacked for the bracelets!’

The looks of her cousins demanded an explanation.

‘The Captain guy said we, or the Marauders had been here 30 years ago. We know our parents lived here, or at least one of our mothers; makes sense our fathers did as well, but I bet our parents used the bracelets, and...’

Quixote leapt in and said, ‘Yeah. That explains Dad’s powers eh!’

‘...er...no. They did not have the bracelets.’

Ari pulled his toga on.

‘I’m not sure that makes sense, Lex. The bracelets were here, not in our valley. Surely if they had used them once, they would have kept them on.’

‘Or the bracelets only work here, or with the costumes,’ Lexington said.

‘Or,’ Melaleuca said, ‘it could be one of many reasons. These we will discover as we move forward, playing.’

Lexington placed her hands on her hips.

‘And I suppose you already knew this?’

‘It had occurred to me, yes.’

‘I won’t play. I will pretend instead.’

‘Good,’ Melaleuca said ignoring her dig. ‘One more thing though. We make contact with people only when I say so. Quixote? Is that clear?’

He nodded.

‘Rest and clear ourselves. We start tomorrow morning.’

‘But why not start now,’ Lexington said. ‘The note said to give regard to no others.’

‘I feel it,’ Melaleuca said. ‘Besides I think it wise to make our Aunt think we have calmed down.’

‘You know that whatever it is we have to do,’ Ari said,  ‘will probably involve taking her on.’

Aunty Gertrude burst into the room, throwing the door open. A little freaked at the timing, they waited for the inevitable scolding. She shooed the boys out of the room, while Pemily gave the girls bowls of gruel. Petruce escorted the boys to their rooms, serving them with similar muck. Within minutes of her leaving, the boys climbed into the secret passage and wound their way to the girls’ room, finding them staring at the disgusting slop.

‘She said it would make us hard from the inside,’ Lexington said. ‘It smells like vomit.’

The door creaked open again, and Uncle Bear-Nard’s nervous head appeared around the edge checking who occupied the room. He beckoned them to follow him. Trundling behind, the cousins followed him through the wall-door and down the back stairs. Just before the bottom of the stairs he pushed on the wall and it flipped outwards, hinged on an angle.

‘Come through,’ he said.

They squeezed through into another staircase.

Before they could ask, Uncle Bear-Nard explained, ‘Some of the interior staircases have flip sides to them.’

‘Why?’ Lexington asked.

‘Not really sure.’

After walking up two flights of stairs, they came to a narrow corridor leading left and right.

‘Not all the floors have them,’ Uncle Bear-Nard further explained. ‘M..m..most puzzling. Corridors l..l..leading nowhere, but some rooms. Follow.’

They trotted off down the narrow corridor to a small door. Inside, a small table had been spread with a cloth, and dishes containing hot food, and sweet looking ale sat. Around it four, old, rickety chairs sat. Plain walls faced them with four small candles hanging off the wall, burning away and emitting a weak yellow light.

‘I do a..a.a.apologise. Your Aunt has a good heart, a strong heart though. I had Mrs Whibberry chuck t..t.t.this together.’

‘Yum,’ Quixote said

Both he and Ari tucked in without question.

‘Who is Mrs Whibberry?’ Lexington asked.

‘Our cook,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said back. ‘Best not m..m..mention this feast to anyone.’

He scurried out the door before any more questions could be asked.

The cousins did not hold back. They engorged themselves, stuffing food into their mouths and tasting its delectable sumptuousness; chomping and chewing until their bellies could fit no more. They ate so much that weariness came over them. Once finished, they clomped back to their respective rooms, a need to lie down befalling all of them.

***

Quixote flopped around on his bed feeling frustrated. After all he had a bracelet that could bring his imagination to life. He jumped up and looked out the smeary window. Like small dots, the rooftops of the town could be seen down on the valley floor. Maybe there were some children like him down there.

Ari lay on his bed, too full to worry about Quixote’s restlessness, though he too felt restless. Now that he lay still, the silent sensation he had dubbed the “Ethmare” called to him again, though every time he moved or focused on it, it disappeared. Only stillness of his mind and body brought it back. What was it? What around here could command such a feeling inside him?

Lexington’s mind felt too crammed with questions and possibilities to even contemplate trying to sort them out. Stuffed from eating too much, she lay on her bed. Without letting Melaleuca know, she took her advice; relaxed and tried to think of something fun and enjoyable.

As the food gurgled through her intestines, demanding more energy from her body to help digest it, her thoughts slowed down, helping her to relax. Smiling, she pictured herself in an archaeologist’s costume examining the statues in Hirad’s Forest. She thought of Argus videotaping them, the photaic wall, silverquick and Antavahni, and of course the odd creature Iam. She thought of the words that Aunty Gertrude spoke a few days before, about them being descended from Throughnight nobility and wondered if it was connected to what Jeeves said about them inheriting the Cathedral-Mansion. If it were true, then Aunty Gertrude would probably want to stop them. Was the end of age Antavahni spoke of, and the end Iam mentioned, one and the same thing?

As sleep tugged at her, she felt a pang of excitement, realising she would need many different costumes to solve all of these mysteries.

Melaleuca lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling. In her grew two gardens of thoughts. One was heavily fertilized by the exhilaration of the bracelets and costumes. They had separated her from the earth’s gravity, giving her a great sense of lightness and freedom. Even now as she lay down, her body could still feel the sensation, like stepping off a boat on to flat land and still feeling it swaying.

Yet in the other garden of her thoughts, grew a sinking feeling; a feeling that what they had seen and experienced so far, was only a taste of events to come. She felt the edges of seriousness way off in the distance, held back for the time being. Shapeless and making little sense, she knew eventually they would have to face this thing, whatever it was. On her own instructions she tried not to think about it, but needed to find something to laugh about.

Keep moving forward and play
.

As ever she resolved to steel herself to follow these instructions no matter what.

***

‘You have two weeks,’ Aunty Gertrude said in another rant. ‘Two weeks to prove to me I should let those brats stay. Or I will alert the high council that my plan to bring outside children to New Wakefield is starting.’

Uncle Bear-Nard looked as defiant as his meek, round face could muster. ‘They need more time to adjust. Children from the outside world are different.’

‘They are weak!’

‘They could be strong.’

‘They should be sent to the Southern Wasteland. I do not want them leaving here until they can act like they should. I forbid it. Hence forth they are house bound.’

‘But ─ ’

‘No BUTS! Do you realise how precarious this is? Do you? With the sighting of the Marauders and your sisters association with them last time, we will be lucky if these children do not finish this great house off.’

He went to speak, but she hushed him, and stormed out through the bedroom door, her hard soled shoes clattering down the corridor.

‘Two weeks,’ she yelled back.

Lost, Uncle Bear-Nard sat on the edge of the bed; the large castle-like room swallowing up his thoughts.

The small creature with changing skin colour appeared in the corridor, morphing into a dirty urchin boy, before stepping into the doorway.

‘What’s wrong?’ Scout asked.

‘That I should be the last of my forebears to witness how empty and forlorn this house has become.’

‘Every great civilisation falls,’ Scout said, offering cold comfort.

‘Perhaps, but if we fall, history shall never know us and any of our past greatness.’

Scout scratched its head, flaky skin falling from it like snow. ‘Is that why you let the children come here?’

‘Someone has to be left behind to remember us. I only hope it was not a mistake.’ He looked at Scout. ‘You have kept away from them, haven’t you?’

Scout nodded.

‘Good. Keep it that way until I say otherwise. And why are you dressed as a tramp?’

Scout darted its eyes left and right, looking guilty.

‘I think the Harbinger might have something to say about this,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said. ‘Didn’t the Harbinger tell you to stay out of the costume room?’

***

The Harbinger watched the cousins fall asleep. He felt bad. He had slipped sleeping potion into their food while no one watched. The cousins rapid discovery of the costumes and the ease at which they took to them both pleased and disturbed him. Pleased because the cousins were everything he had hoped for, but disturbed because events were moving faster than he could control.

***

That night Aunty Gertrude heard dogs barking and baying from a distance. At first she tried to ignore them, but then they got closer and closer. The last time she had heard them, the Inquisat had tracked some escaped children to one of the sheds at the back of the Cathedral-Mansion. That’s all she needed now, was another bothersome child.