Aurelius and I (22 page)

Embedded in the wall underneath this cryptic, painted message were five wooden dials. Each had written on it every letter of the alphabet, and at the top of each was an arrow by which you could indicate your selection. Each arrow was currently pointed toward the sole empty space on each of the dials.

***

In case you should like to try to solve the above riddle yourselves, I have declined from continuing my story on this page so that your eyes will not be tempted to drift unconsciously onward to the answer. If however, you’d really rather I stopped interrupting and just got on with the story so that you can hurry up and finish the chapter in order that you get a proper night’s sleep before school tomorrow morning, then please accept my apologies and turn immediately to the next page.

Of course, had I not spent all that time apologising you’d be there by now. Sorry. If you’re teacher asks why you keep yawning tomorrow, you had better blame me.

***

“ ‘I always run, but cannot walk?’,” Grahndel repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense at all! How could any creature who knows how to run be too stupid to work out how to walk?”

“Because its not a creature,” I answered. “It’s a tap.” I was quite confident of this deduction as I had read the same riddle on a lolly stick only days earlier.

“Oooh, good one,” said the dragnor, looking decidedly impressed.

“That can’t be it though, it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Taps aren’t loud, and I can’t see any near us now, can you? And besides, the answer is five letters long.”

“Well, no,” Grahndel admitted. “We must be on the right track though; water runs but cannot walk, and cannot talk. When is it loud though?”

I thought for a moment, then it hit me.

“When it forms a waterfall...or rapids.”

“They’re both too many letters as well,” said Grahndel after pausing to count on his fingers.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “But where do you find rapids near here?”

The dragnor looked at me blankly for a moment before a smile of recognition fell across his face;

“In rivers!” he exclaimed gleefully. “Rivers start and end in distant lands, and there’s one right near here! We’ve done it, Charlie!” And with that he began eagerly turning the cogs to the corresponding letters.

“No, Grahndel, wait”‘ I yelled as his fingers moved toward the final cog. “What if the answer isn’t river?”

“Of course it’s river,” he replied, clicking the final cog into place. “What else could it be?”

“Phale,” I answered solemnly. “The name of the river.”

The dragnor gulped and looked at me with wide-eyes, his hand still on the too-eagerly turned final cog as the room around us began to shake.

“You had to be the one to play with the cogs, didn’t you?” I yelled. “You couldn’t just wait for two seconds.”

The entire chamber was shaking violently now – the punishment for our mistake was clearly imminent and we had no means of escape, for to attempt to ascend the staircase that constituted the only possible exit during a minor earthquake would be suicide.

“I’m sorry!” cried the dragnor above the increasingly loud rumbling.

“Sorry? It’s a little too late for sorry now isn’t it?” I replied, sounding just like my father.

Then, just as I had lost all hope of us escaping with our lives, something miraculous happened...the door began to open. I stood and stared at it open-,mouthed. Grahndel had been right.

“Told you it was river,” said the dragnor, smugly. “Sometimes you just need a little patience.”

“Yes, and sometimes you need a friend on the inside undoing all the bolts while you bicker, now get in here, fast.”

In my determination to solve the riddle, I had entirely failed to notice the lack of Ophelia’s presence.

“I said get in!” she cried as the two of us stood staring at her dumbstruck. Thankfully, this second plea brought us to our senses and we quickly leapt inside the door not a second too soon as the floor below us gave way and fell into the river that had, unbeknown to us, been flowing beneath us all along.

“Wow...it really was near,” said Grahndel.

“You almost got us killed!” I said, turning to the dragnor.

“Look, I’ve said I’m sorry, what more do you want?”

“I want you to listen to me once in a while, that’s what!”

“Why should I do that? You have no more idea of what you’re doing than I do.”

“Er guys,” Ophelia interrupted. “As much as I hate to break up a good bicker, don’t you think we should be working on what to do next, rather than what we could have done before?”

Having by now long since accepted that the tiny princess was always right, I turned and waved the flaming torch I still carried out in front of me in order to illuminate our new surroundings. The corridor before us was long, and narrow, and dark, and damp. It was decidedly unwelcoming. It was also our only option. And so, with tangible trepidation, we began to move along it.

“So how
did
you get inside that door?” I asked Ophelia when we had walked a little way, raising the question as much to try to stave off the fear brought on by the unending darkness of the corridor as out of curiosity.

“The same way the bat did, I imagine. There was a thin gap in between the top of the door and the frame, just big enough for a bat to squeeze through, and plenty of room for a fairy.”

“But how did you manage the bolts? They looked pretty heavy.”

“You forget that I’m a warrior,” she scolded. “Plus I had the help of a little of my Aunt’s special recipe super-strength dust.”

“Is there anything you haven’t got in that bag?” I asked, only half joking.

“Not that I know of,” the princess laughed.

We continued in silence on our journey into the darkness out of an unspoken fear that we might disturb whatever terrible thing we were approaching. While I had been optimistic, and even excited at what we might discover as we descended the secret staircase, that optimism had quickly been destroyed along with the floor in the previous room. After all, surely no creature of good would send a stranger to their death for merely failing to answer a riddle correctly?

While the unrelenting blackness of the corridor had caused it to appear to be unending, we in fact reached our destination after just a couple of minutes trek. That destination, appearing suddenly out of the darkness as if it had simply not existed until that very instant, was a door. A door that would have been identical to the last one but for two things; firstly, this door had no visible riddle or cogs with which to provide an answer; and secondly, this door had a window. It was a tiny, barred window, the view through which was blocked by a tiny wooden hatch that could only be opened from the inside, but it was a window none the less.

Being unable to think of any other appropriate course of action when faced with such a heavy door with no means of opening it, I knocked hard on the wood three times and waited. And waited. And waited.

I was just moving to knock a second time, when a deep and echoing voice came from beyond the door.

“Who goes there?”

“M-my names Charlie,” I said, uncertain of how much information to reveal to an unseen stranger. “I’m with my friends, Grahndel, and Ophelia.”

“What is it you want?” the voice came again, impatiently.

“Well, what we really need right now is a way out,” I said.

“A way out, indeed? Why can’t you just go back the way you came?”

“Because the floor has fallen away and all that’s left is the river.”

“You can swim, can’t you?”

“Yes sir, I can, but I’m afraid that my friends are not so lucky. Ophelia is a fairy who would surely drown in such a current, and Grahndel is a dragnor and would therefore risk death simply from exposure to such vast amounts of water.”

“I see,” said the voice, before pausing for a moment. “And, what, may I ask, are you?”

“I’m a human,” I replied nervously.

“A human indeed. A human who travels with fairies and dragnors nonetheless, how very unusual – suspicious even, some might say.”

“I’m also a Protector,” I added.

I hadn’t wanted to reveal such an important piece of information to someone I had never even seen, but I could see no other choice. The voice on the other side of the door was clearly greatly untrusting of visitors, and it also seemed to be the voice of someone who would know when they were being lied to.

“A Protector? And what is a Protector doing in little old Hanselwood Forest, might I ask?”

“Aurelius brought me here,” I said, recklessly revealing my entire hand to my unseen interrogator in the hope that he may be able to help us in our search for Raymondo, if only by providing us safe passage to the surface. I explained how Aurelius had warned me of The Professor’s plan, and how Blackheart and his men had arrived in the forest and were now working with Aurelius to destroy it.

“...and so we really need to find this Raymondo fellow, to see if he can help us to work out what Aurelius and Blackheart are up to, and how it is we might stop them.”

“I think you’ll find that’s
The Great
Raymondo,” the voice corrected. “And why, may I ask, do you believe that
The Great
Raymondo might be able to help you?”

“We have been told that he is the wisest, and most all-knowing creature in all the forest,” I said, changing my tactics as the identity of the voice’s holder became clear to me. “Indeed, it was he who first knew of Blackheart’s arrival in the forest...”

“No it wasn’t,” interrupted Grahndel. “That was me.” I quickly silenced the reptilian idiot with a light slap around the back of the head, the impact of which made a particularly satisfying noise.

“After all,” I continued, “I’m sure he is not known as
The Great
Raymondo for nothing.”

There followed a long silence, which was eventually broken by the sound of bolts being unbolted and of keys turning in locks. And then, slowly but surely, the thick wooden door began to swing open until there existed a large enough gap for a person to slip through. Filling that gap stood a strange figure, almost as tall as me but clearly fully grown, and far more muscular.

He wore baggy, blue and white striped trousers that looked like pyjama bottoms and an ill-fitting red velvet waistcoat which only served to accentuate his muscular torso. He stood in the doorway regarding the three of us, his eyebrow raised in a deliberately accentuated gesture of suspicion. Finally, after several moments of silent posturing, he spoke;

“I am The Great Raymondo. Welcome to my humble palace.”

Raymondo’s home looked as much like an Arabian palace as it was possible for an underground cave to look. The room was well lit and well scented by the many candles that burned around its perimeter, shedding light upon the intricate tapestries that adorned each wall. A wealth of bejewelled, golden bric-a-brac cluttered every available surface and over-spilled into piles in the corners of the room. The cold hard floor was scattered with large, velvet cushions, upon one of which Raymondo seated himself before inviting us to do the same.

“Tea?” he asked once we had settled.

“Yes please,” I answered eagerly. My two companions politely declined the offer. Ordinarily I wasn’t a great lover of tea, I suspect that most eight year olds are not, but on this occasion, as I sat there thirsty, the metallic taste of unclean stream water still lurking in my mouth, the idea of a sugary cup of good old English tea sounded like pure ecstasy.

Raymondo clicked his fingers and three bats moved from their perch upon the ceiling, and flew off to collect a teapot and two ornate teacups, one for myself and one for my host, and, to my horror, proceeded to pour a strange smelling, green liquid into each. While I tried not to look surprised at either the dexterity and intelligence of the animals, or the lurid shade of the so-called “tea”, my two companion appeared to be decidedly unfazed by either – although I doubted very much that Grahndel had even noticed what had been poured into each cup, mesmerized as he was by the bats that served it and the potential feast they represented.

“Right,” said Raymondo after the tea had been served, “I think it would be best if we start with you telling me what it is that you do know. I will then attempt to use my superior knowledge and intellect to inform you as to what you do not.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the strange looking, miniature body-builder who sat in front of me. He gave off a vibe of being extremely stuck-up and rude. Even when performing what would seem to be the politest of tasks – such as offering guest tea, for example – he had a unique way of making you feel as though he was somehow insulting you through his generosity in a manner that you were simply too stupid to comprehend. In spite of this fact, I couldn’t help but like him. Even now, I find myself unable to put my finger on exactly why this was. Perhaps it was his undeniable arrogance, for whilst I would, under normal circumstances, have regarded this as a character flaw, these were far from normal circumstances, and if his confidence in his ability to be of help to us was justified then I was more than willing to put up with a little self-appreciation.