Campion's Choice

The Evans house stood empty. Jack let himself in the blue front door and rushed up the staircase to his room. There wasn’t much to pack, just the clothes he arrived in and he hastily bundled them into an old pillowcase. Standing under the low-beamed ceiling he was looking out through the windows over Hanston, thinking it really was a picture postcard English village, when he heard footsteps.

Petra pattered along the landing and darted into the bedroom.

‘Hi.’

She tried hard to stop from grinning.

‘Hi,’ Jack said. He was going to miss her. She was … what was the right word … sweet? The girl finally gave in, smiled widely and held a letter out.

‘My brother Michael asked me to give you this. He was too embarrassed to come and see you. He says he’s sorry for calling you a Chem and he can never thank you enough for returning his Kharis. He thinks you’re very brave and he says he’d be honoured to have you as a friend.’

Jack took the note. For the first time in ages his heart jumped. He could do with a friend.

‘Thanks,’ he answered gruffly with head down to hide his red cheeks. Petra bounced on the bed.

‘We’re having a party! In Crow Hall! All the Crow are taking a day off to celebrate. It’ll be fantastic. My father says this is the biggest day in Crow history and he’s over two hundred years old. No Crow has ever done anything like this. You have to come to the party. Everyone wants you there!’

‘Great,’ Jack said but he knew he sounded flat.

‘Is it the ring?’ she asked, coming close and touching his arm.

‘What?’

‘You and Anax arguing about the ring?’

‘No.’ He hesitated before saying, ‘I’m leaving. I’m going home.’

He hated the look on her face. It was like a cloud blotting out the sun. She went from happiness to sadness in a second.

‘I miss my Mum and my Dad. I even miss my little sister, Lettie. I miss my normal life,’ Jack admitted quietly.

‘Well then,’ Petra shrugged and turned to leave.

‘I’ll come back and see you,’ he said quickly, but she was gone.

Until he said that he had thought he would never see Hanston again but he meant the words. He would return. The Evans were his second family now. For a moment he looked down at the floor for fear that he might begin to cry. When he looked up there was Petra, again, in the doorway, holding something in her outstretched hand.

‘I want you to have this. I’m sure my family would feel the same.’ She opened her fist to reveal a small blue trinket.

‘What is it?’ he asked, looking at a flat little metal case that was slightly larger than a pillbox.

‘It’s a watch,’ she explained and when, he touched the side, the blue timepiece sprang open. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

‘It’s more than a watch, though. It’s a family Kharis.’

She sat down on the bed before adding, ‘the first time that a Nomas child is thirteen, they choose something that has belonged to their family for hundreds of years. It can be anything. It reminds you who you are. It keeps you connected to your family. It’s probably the most important thing you own, your most precious possession. Michael was ashamed and angry when he lost his. It’s the same if you’re Huras or Gamelin, except their Kharis are different colours.’

‘Colours?’

‘Huras are red, Gamelin are green, Crow are blue,’ she explained.

Jack remembered how Ursula had panicked when she lost her green scarf at Clamp’s house. That must have been her Kharis.

‘So it can be things like a scarf?’ he said, just to make sure he understood.

‘It can be anything that we can carry, a scarf, a belt, a necklace.’

‘I can’t take this as a gift. It belongs to your family. It’s too precious to give away. And I’m not a Nomas,’ Jack said quickly.

Petra looked hurt.

‘I thought you were a Crow?’ she said. Jack smiled.

‘Look, this must be very rare. You must keep it for your children,’ he said.

That seemed to make things worse. Petra dropped her head and began to cry.

‘What is it?’

Jack waited and listened carefully. When the girl spoke he could barely hear her words.

‘We may be the last children, the last Nomas,’ Petra barely managed to say.

Jack held the blue watch in his open palm.

‘Look, I’ll keep this present, but just for now. I’m sure things will be okay. The Nomas will be fine. One day, when you need it, I’ll give this back. Until then it will be my most precious thing, my Kharis.’

‘Thank you.’

She threw her arms around the boy and hugged him until they fell backwards onto the bed. Jack sat up.

‘Look, dry your eyes and get to the party! You and the others made history! Join the celebrations!’ he ordered, hauling her up straight and pushing her off down the landing towards the stairs.

He picked up his pillowcase and left the bedroom just as someone knocked on the front door. It soon became clear that Ursula was waiting outside the house.

‘I was just leaving,’ he said and tried to push past the old woman.

‘I know and I understand. But I think we should talk.’

‘Well I don’t.’

Jack slammed the front door and swung the pillowcase over his shoulder in a wide arc. Ursula took avoiding action. Even so she just missed being struck by the bag of clothes.

‘I can see that you’re angry. I’m here to help you.’ She caught up with him between a row of neatly clipped privet hedges.

‘I don’t want your help.’ Jack quickened his pace.

‘Well, what will happen when you turn up at your home and there are two of you?’ Ursula panted noisily.

Jack stopped. They had reached the end of the lane and stood on the corner of the High Street. Ursula was puffing and red faced. Jack placed the stripy pillowcase on a nearby stone wall and stopped to listen.

‘My double is your problem. You explain it,’ he said defiantly, folding his arms and staring at the old woman.

‘Well, what happens when the person who put a camera in your bedroom comes looking for you again? Or, what will you do when Inspector Criel comes calling?’

Her words made Jack feel lost. Why was his life such a mess?

‘What can I do?’ he said helplessly.

‘Well, you can’t do anything on your own. But we can help you.’

‘Help? I’ve seen the way you help people. Kidnap them, lock them up, lie to them, try to kill them!’

Ursula leant against the old stone wall and lifted her face to the sun.

‘Okay. First, I will admit that this has not been our … how can I put it … finest hour? We have made some mistakes. We were wrong,’ the old lady admitted.

‘You weren’t wrong! It was Anax. He’s your boss. He’s like some kind of mad king.’

Ursula shook her head and said quietly, ‘Anax has seen the error of his ways. He really did admire your resourcefulness on Night Wood.’

She looked up to the heavens as if seeking inspiration.

’Please, believe me, when I say that we are all truly sorry for the way we have behaved.

‘So you should be.’

Jack grabbed his pillowcase and clutched it tight. He was confused. What should he do? The old woman was right. He couldn’t just turn up on the doorstep of his house if he was already there in the shape of Fake Jack. His mother would freak out. And the thought of Criel turning up again made his blood run cold.

‘If I let you and the Nomas help me … what do you want in return?’ he demanded.

‘A partnership.’

‘Why should I trust you lot after what’s happened?’

Ursula rummaged around in her handbag and pulled out a rather large mobile phone.

‘Watch this,’ she said. Jack pulled himself up on to the stone wall and Ursula tapped the mobile screen. Finally she handed him the phone. The picture was immediately familiar. It was a video taken on the banks of the river around Night Wood.

Jack tried to get comfortable as he watched. At first, nothing happened. It was just trees and water. Suddenly a naked creature walked out of the undergrowth. It was a boy. It was naked Jack. It was Jack sitting down at the water’s edge, dipping a toe in the water and then dancing around like a madman. Oh no. The cameras had filmed the crayfish episode.

He thought his eyes would jump out of his head as he watched himself dance like a maniac before twisting, falling and then hovering over a thorn bush. Obviously the cameras hadn’t picked up the Dadster. Which meant that Jack looked like some sort of levitating naked weirdo.

‘Urrrghh!’ he winced. His hands trembled as he handed the phone back.

‘Okay?’ Ursula said. She pressed a few buttons and said, ’It’s gone forever. If we wanted to be horrible, and embarrass you, we could have put this on ‘YouTube’ and, for the rest of your life, you’d be known as the ‘The Famous Naked Floating Boy’.’

‘Great.’ Jack cringed.

‘Now do you trust me?’

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and felt the little Kharis, the gift from Petra. In his minds eye he saw the shiny blue timepiece. He remembered the girl’s sadness.

‘Okay. This is the deal. You said you’d help me. I want my Dad back. I want him fixed.’

‘We can’t do that,’ Ursula shook her head.

‘Yes you can. You just don’t want to.’

‘No. Really. It is too dangerous. You saw Anax save Mister Clamp but that was fixing a wound. Fixing a damaged brain is almost impossible.’

‘It’s isn’t impossible. My dad is fine. He’s just trapped. The doctors said, if they knew what happened, they might be able to cure him. Please?’

Ursula stood in front of the boy with her palms open as if making an offering.

‘I promise we will do our best to help your father.’

Jack sighed and skipped down from the top of the wall.

‘I can’t believe I’m going to say this but … it’s a deal. Where do we start?’

‘I think we should begin with another trip to Night Wood. There are a couple of things I want to show you.’

On the way to Night Wood Jack plucked up the courage to ask Ursula about Niamh.

‘That girl, and her friends, the mad skinheads who crawled over to me with Michael’s Kharis, they freak me out,’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘It sounds like they want to rule the Earth!’

Ursula shook her head and took a deep breath before answering.

‘They do.’

‘What?’

’Yes. The truth is that some Nomas believe we will never leave here. They think that, if we find any Alzen, we should use it to cleanse the Earth. That’s where the phrase, ‘take the coins and take the earth’, comes from.’

‘Like in the book?’

Ursula nodded and squeezed past a five bar gate into the next field.

’The Nomas who think like that are called ‘Takers’,’ she said.

‘So, some Nomas want to run things? They want to take Earth away from people?’

’The Takers believe they will be saving this planet and, when you argue with them, they say that this planet does not belong to humans it belongs to all life. They believe humans have stolen the planet for themselves and are destroying it.’

Ursula stopped speaking as they arrived at the log cabins in front of Night Wood. Jack was reluctant to cross the bridge.

‘Is that what you think? Do you want to stay here and rule the Earth?’ he asked.

The old lady smiled.

‘No. I want to leave Earth and continue our journey. Most Nomas want to leave.’

‘Well, just so we’re clear, no way will I help Niamh and her bunch.’

‘Good choice,’ Ursula agreed.

Jack still hesitated.

‘Night Wood gives me the creeps,’ he said, pointing across the water.

‘Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. I can protect you here and, anyway, you can protect yourself with the coin. You’re safe on the island.’

They crossed the bridge, hand in hand, like a mother and child, but once in the forest Jack found the courage to let go. He was about to say that the place they were walking through seemed familiar when Ursula stopped. She bent down and brushed twigs away from the floor to reveal a wooden cover.

‘The trapdoor,’ Jack said.

‘You found it when you were here?’

‘Yeah.’

The old lady prised open her leather bag. She took out a large iron key, which fitted with a nice, snug click into the rusty old lock. She pulled up the trapdoor and Jack peered over her shoulder into the gloom. A flight of stone steps disappeared underground.

Ursula led the way and he followed. He half expected it to be pitch black down there but, for some strange reason, the room below was filled with a pale glow, the light coming from a large black shape huddled down at the centre of the underground cavern.

At the bottom of his climb Jack paused on the last step. That strange shape in the corner could be anything. At a distance, with it’s humped back and bony ridges, it looked like the body of a dead whale.

Ursula tapped the wall and immediately a tar tipped stake sparked into flame. In the glow of the smoky torch Jack could see that the shape was, in fact, an old and battered, upturned boat. It looked like an archaeological find. Maybe this was a Saxon burial chamber?

‘This is ..’ Ursula said but she was too late to stop Jack from leaning over the boat’s hull. He bent forward. The ban liang, on its silver necklace, slipped from under his t-shirt and swung to touch the boat’s curved, wooden surface.

He felt a tremor and heard the scraping sound of stone on stone. Then the cavern disappeared. The ground fell away beneath his feet and he was surrounded by deep space. The ancient boat grew and grew. It twisted and turned. One moment it looked like the scaled body of a dragon. Then it looked like an armour-plated dinosaur. Its shape shifted, curling in emptiness like a huge flock of starlings, swirling and spiralling.

Jack felt weightless, floating in space. He was looking at some kind of craft. But it was unlike anything he had ever seen in books or in the movies. This space ship, covered in shining steel plates, twisted like an alligator, curled in space like an eel but was transparent, like an infinite number of spinning, electric jellyfish. The thing seemed to be alive.

The vision passed in a flash and Jack staggered back. With relief he felt the dusty floor under his feet and stared, in wonder, at the antique wooden boat, unable to get the monstrous vision out of his head.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Our home,’ Ursula said. She stood quietly by the boy but seemed distracted.

‘I don’t understand. Is it a spaceship? I mean, it just looks like some fossilized old antique. But when I touched it….’

‘It’s more than a spaceship.’

‘Are you telling me that you lot came to earth in a rowboat?’

‘Appearances can be deceptive. This room has been here for a thousand years. We built the cellar, in Night Wood, to keep our vessel safe. We will keep it here until we can leave.’

Even though Ursula sounded calm Jack sensed that something was wrong. He turned to watch as the woman wandered away towards the far wall.

She seemed to speak half to herself, half to Jack.

‘When the boat was touched the wall opened.’

Jack came to her side. Together they stood before an opening that revealed a dimly lit, oval room. Strange, scattered objects glowed in different colours. It reminded Jack a bit of an untidy version of Bob’s office at the dump.

‘This is all very, very strange. I come here every day. This has never been open before. No one knows about this room. I didn’t know this room existed. I need to get back to Hanston, and then go to Cancellarius. There’s only ever been the boat here.’

Ursula’s wobbly voice trailed away. Jack couldn’t tell if she were frightened or excited. He pushed past her.

‘Wait,’ she said sharply.

Jack ignored her. The room looked like something from a space movie, with banks of lights and tables covered in screens. Up close it looked like it had been ransacked. Chairs were knocked over and broken. Papers and books were thrown into corners.

‘Jack …’

On one table there was a round container, a strange thing that looked like an upturned pie tin. A small, triangular door, on the lid of the tin, lay open to reveal an empty compartment. Jack closed the tiny door.

‘Deathstalker,’ he said quietly.

‘What?’

A pattern was etched and coloured across the top of the tin: a yellow scorpion.

‘That’s the Deathstalker scorpion. I saw it on the hand of the man who was with Criel when she tried to shoot me.’

‘Please, Jack, we must leave,’ Ursula begged, taking the boy by the arm and steering him back towards the boat room.

When she snuffed out the torches on the walls the tangy smell of burnt tar hung in the air. They climbed the stone stairway and came back into the sunlit world of Night Wood.

‘We have to get back,’ Ursula said hurriedly.

‘Okay. We can see the other thing next time,’ Jack said and, when the woman looked confused, he added, ‘Only you said you wanted to show me a couple of things here in Night Wood. Or was it just the boat?’

The old woman fidgeted with her bag, untied and re-tied her scarf and finally spoke. She was definitely excited.

’No. There is something else I wanted you to see. It’s on the way back. I think it will really impress you. If I go straight back now I’ll only start to burble. It will help to calm me down. This way. But we need to be quick and you need to be very, very quiet. The family are usually out and about now. They play in the sun and then stay in the shade for the rest of the day.

The old lady led him into the undergrowth and every time a wisp of grass brushed Jack’s ankles he squirmed nervously.

‘The surprise isn’t snakes, is it?’ he whispered.

He almost bumped into her back when she stopped and held up a hand for silence. It was a stretch to look over her shoulder into a sunlit, woodland glade.

Fifty feet away a big cat family filled the sun-drenched space: a father, a mother and three cubs. They were the size and colour of lions but bulkier with rippling muscles and they all had two, long, pointed teeth.

‘Wow!’

‘Impressed?’ Ursula whispered.

‘Sabre toothed tigers!’

Even these quiet words were enough to alert the large male who swung his massive head to stare into the bushes.

Jack froze. He felt fear, pleasure, excitement and elation all at the same time and watched as the big cat parent shuffled on its huge feet, sniffed once and then gently shepherded the cubs back into the shadows.

On the way back to the Old Manor House, as they hurried across the fields, Ursula filled in some more details. Her voice was fairly breathless.

‘Lately Night Wood seems to have taken on a life of its own. After we built the cellar, and put the ship underground, we knew it would protect itself. But, in the last hundred years, the animals have begun to appear. First the snakes, then bears and wolves and now the tigers. But this is the first time anything has happened in the cellar.’

‘What does any of it mean?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. That’s why we need to get back. And it’s the dinner tonight. Maybe we should talk about tonight’s arrangements?’

Not for the first time the old lady’s athletic abilities were impressive and she pulled ahead. Jack had to run to keep up with her fast paced walk.

‘What arrangements?’ His question sounded like a dog panting.

‘For swapping you back. We thought we could do it, tonight, at the Wolf’s Paw Dinner.’

Jack stopped on the hard rutted surface of the ploughed field and bent double to ease the stitch in his stomach.

‘Can’t I just go home? Why does everything in my life have to be so complicated?’

Ursula reluctantly slowed down, ‘It’s just a meal, with friends, at the college. Then you get to go home.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Sort of. There are a couple of other things. Do you want to talk about them now? I’m sorry to rush you but …’

Jack wiped the sweat from his brow. He shrugged. He was exhausted. He shook his head and lifted his weary legs, trying to catch up with the old lady and finish the rapid march, up the hill, back to the Old Manor House.

Anax was waiting for them, by the French windows, at the back of the house. He held out a hand and offered Jack a ring.

‘The Council have spoken and have decided that you deserve this. Please, I hope you’ll accept it this time and that you will forgive me.’

‘Thank you Mister ..’

Did he call him Anax? Or Mister Mahan? Or even Peter?

‘I also hope that Ursula has managed to persuade you that we can be friends?’

Anax smiled, a crooked smile, the smile of a man who found smiling hard work. He was actually quite old, his face was grey and lined and his shoulders were slightly stooped. He looked a bit like Grampus. Jack slipped the ring on his middle finger.

‘Friends,’ he said and held out his hand. Anax recoiled.

‘It’s the coin isn’t it?’

Anax looked queasy and nodded.

Jack took off his ban liang and hung the chain over a nearby gatepost.

‘Okay?’

When they finally shook hands Jack tried not to shudder. Anax’s fingers were like bones. After bending towards the boy, the old man straightened, squared his shoulders and began to speak quickly.

‘No doubt Ursula has explained all about the Wolf’s Paw Dinner? Tia, Liam and you will be made honorary members of Cancellarius College tonight. And afterwards you will return home with your parents.’

‘Great,’ Jack said, slipping the ban liang back over his neck.

‘Then we can help you with the house and you can go to Cambodia.’

‘Cambodia? Really? Do I have to go half way around …’

‘Anax, I have some news. It’s rather urgent,’ Ursula interrupted and pointed towards the house.

The two adults disappeared inside the Old Manor.

‘Don’t forget to tell him about the tin,’ Jack called out.

His eyelids felt heavy. His head felt well and truly scrambled. What was all that about a house and why did he need help with it? Had he actually agreed to go to Cambodia?

Seeing, hearing and doing weird things was exhausting.

‘I have to sleep,’ he muttered. He leant against the timber doorframe. There, in the back garden of the Old Manor, still standing upright, he began to snore loudly