Aurelius and I (36 page)

My heart was overcome with an irrational guilt for what I had done to the unfortunate ogre, despite the fact that I had in no way intended for such a fate to have befallen him, and had taken the only course of action available to me if the forest was to survive.

I closed my eyes to the pain once more, unable to witness the loss of yet another close friend.

WOOF! WOOF!

I re-opened my eyes at the sound of Baskerville’s barking to discover that he was, in fact, making sounds of encouragement toward Barry, who was miraculously, magically suspended in his flight toward the portal.

In looked again to discover that the reason for the prolonging of his disappearance was not in fact magic ( or at least, not in the manner I had assumed), but simply the brave efforts of one unexpectedly strong tree elf, who hugged the trailing foot of the great ogre with all her might.

What I was unable to explain was how she herself failed to be sucked into the now roughly shed-sized portal. It was then that I noticed that she too was being held in the grip of a smaller creature, that of king Rolinthor. And the king too was being held by his wife, who simultaneously gripped the firmly grounded scimitar between her legs.

It was wholly unexplainable, the smallest and the weakest holding safe the biggest and the strongest in a stubborn denial of the most basic laws of physics. Surely it couldn’t hold for long.

It didn’t have to.

Mercifully, the winds began to die and the portal shrank rapidly into a close. My companions collapsed to the floor in an exhausted heap of relief and regret.

After the great wall of noise that had been created by the swirling winds, the demanding portal, and the protests of its victims, the silence that followed seemed so absolute that for a brief moment I wondered if I had gone deaf. Only the gradual recognition of the dripping stalactites and the water lapping against the rocks informed me otherwise.

Nobody spoke, for there was nothing left to say.

Ophelia limped silently over to her parents, embracing them in a tearful, speechless reunion. Barry lay on his back, breathing heavily but steadily as he recovered from his exertions. Rain uncaringly nursed her damaged ankle as if on auto-pilot, her eyes simply staring out into space, registering in them no hint of pain. I sat, still, my back against the tablet, rhythmically stroking Baskerville in the pretence that it was he and not I that was being calmed by this action. I could not take my eyes from the outlandishly-curled, court jester’s boot of Aurelius, which stuck out from behind the pillar in front of me as an immediate and constant reminder of my betrayal.

Barry was the first to move, rising to his feet and pulling the scimitar from its place deep in the stone floor as if he were pulling a thorn from his toe (more easily in fact, as I was aware from earlier evidence). His action inspired my own unwilling, uncaring movement.

I rose gingerly to my feet and slowly stumbled over to where Rain sat and lay my hands upon her slender ankle. It was strange, now that I had all the time in the world to heal people and lacked the inclination to care whether or not I was successful in doing so, I found I was able to access my ability without difficulty.

I moved slowly and silently between each of my companions, curing them of everything from serious fractures (of which Ophelia, brave warrior that she was, had more than one) to minor cuts and bruises. By the time I was finished they all looked the picture of health, none of them baring a single physical sign of the hell they had endured. To those that knew them though, the emotional scars would be all too clear.

I didn’t bother to heal myself. It was as though the pain I felt was very much deserved. It was the only thing that in any way helped to temper the guilt I felt at Aurelius’s passing, had I chosen to remove it I would have been left with nothing but regret. Emotional pain, I had discovered, could be far greater than any level of physical suffering one could imagine – and against emotional pain, my power was useless.

It’s useless anyway!
I thought to myself, despair rushing over me like a tidal wave now that there was no imminent danger available for my survival instinct to use as a flood defence.

With the tears whose presence I had been aware of in my chest ever since the portal had closed finally reaching my eyes, I staggered over to the Aurelius’s beaten body, fell to my knees, took him in my arms and wept.

My thoughts were incoherent and illusive as they wandered lost in the desolate desert of hopelessness that had become my mind. I remember thinking
why?
And that I was sorry, and that I would do anything to swap places with my courageous friend. And then all these thoughts were swept aside by the one overriding want that underlined them all, I wished I could bring him back.

And then, slowly, the heat began.

At first it was a familiar heat, felt in my arms, the heat I had felt many times over just moments before as I had healed each of my wounded companions. This time though, the heat continued to build. My arms just seem to get hotter and hotter with no sign of releasing the energy that engulfed them, until I was quite sure they would burst into flame. Panic filled my mind. Part of me was scared of the heat, certainly, but, diversely, my greatest fear was that the heat would stop, that now I was conscious of what I was doing, I would no longer be able to do it.

And then it did stop.

I felt it flood out of my body and into that of Aurelius. I fell back on the floor, exhausted from my exertions and from the stress that they may not have succeeded.

There followed a silence. A silence that lasted no more than a few seconds, but that to me seemed eternal. And then, mercifully, it was broken, broken by the coughing and spluttering of Aurelius-Octavius Jumbleberry-Jones.

The others rushed to his side, disbelieving of their own eyes.

“You did it, Charlie! You did it!” cried Ophelia in a voice of pure, uncontained joy.

“But he was dead,” said the king, stupefied by what he seeing. “I mean, he
was
dead, wasn’t he?”

“He
was
dead, yes, father, but he isn’t anymore,” replied the princess, a smile stretched wide across her face. “You know what this means, don’t you Charlie? You really
are
a protector!”

“Well of course he’s blooming a protector!” Aurelius coughed. “You didn’t think I’d have jolly well sacrificed myself for any old human did you? I mean, who would have brought me back to life?”

I didn’t say anything. I just smiled and hugged my friend, feeling eternally grateful that he had been returned to me.

“Well there’s no need for all that, dear fellow,” he said with all the sincerity he could muster, but without attempting to pull back from my embrace. “It’s hardly as though we’ve achieved all that much yet is it? I mean, all we did was follow the plan.”

“What plan?” I asked.

“You know,
the plan
. The plan where I pretend to have defected to the tundrala, thus allowing them to think they have the correct scimitar, thereby giving you the chance to sneak in unnoticed at the last moment and rescue me, banishing The Professor’s men from the forest in the process while simultaneously saving the Stone of Soolarondoo. The plan. I did tell you the plan, didn’t I?”

I shook my head in joyous disbelief.

“Oh blast, I knew I’d forgotten something. Oh well, I guess it all turned out alright in the end didn’t it? Out of interest, where did you send them?”

“Back to where they came from; to Roobatzi.”

“Excellent! Excellent! Ingenious even! They’ll bother nobody there, and The Professor’s wrath at their failure will be far worse a punishment than anything our side could ever dream up. Well done my boy!”

“Yes, well done, Charlie,” King Rolinthor piped in. “You saved the forest, you saved us all. You did it, Charlie! You did it!”

Spontaneous applause broke out, echoing around the cave. I flushed scarlet with embarrassment, and went a shade further when I received Ophelia’s rather unexpected kiss.

“No,” I said. “
We
did it! We saved the forest. We won.”

There followed more applause and more hugging. Only Mr Jones did not join in.

“What’s the matter, Aurelius?” I asked. “There’s no need to worry anymore. It’s all over.”

“That’s just it, my boy, it is not over. Far from it. In fact, it has barely begun. The Professor and his men will doubtless return, perhaps not here, perhaps not to destroy this forest, but some forest, some mountains, some river, somewhere. He will not rest until all Alundri are either united behind his flag or dead. And it is then that he will begin to destroy the humans. I fear there are a great many battles ahead of us yet, my young friend, and you, Charlie, are the chosen one, and so I am afraid it is your duty to fight them for us.”

“Do you mind if I go home and get changed first?”

This time even Aurelius managed a chuckle. More hugging and backslapping ensued, but now it was I who was wary of overestimating our achievements. There truly was much more to be done and I, as the chosen one, would be the one to do it.

But that would all come later. For now we were victorious, and, I reasoned, I should relish in my hard-earned victory while it lasted. Even protectors needed time to relax.

AFTER THE BATTLE FOR THE FOREST WAS LOST

My apologies, loyal reader, for the bare-faced lie declared in the title of this final chapter of our journey together, but I do so hate those irritating persons who insist upon ruining a perfectly good story by skipping directly to the end without first taking the time to read and understand how such an end came to be, don’t you? In any case, upon further consideration, the title is more of a misdirection than a lie; after all, the battle for the forest was lost, just not by my companions and I.

My story, of course, did not end with the actions described in the previous chapter (indeed, as Aurelius confirmed, it was only the beginning), but it does seem a good point for this particular book to come to a close – especially since, if you are anything like myself, you will doubtless have stayed up well past your usual bedtime in order to discover the fate of the friends you have made over the last few hundred pages.

The purpose of this epilogue then, is simply to tie up a few loose ends, hopefully answering any nagging questions you may have regarding the fate of the characters in our tale.

Firstly, let me put your mind at rest; I did not forget about Grahndel. On exiting the cave, Barry moved the enormous rock that had meant the end for my purple friend, to reveal a sickening, squished mess of a creature, the description of which I shall enter into no further for fear of making you spray your supper all over the bedclothes. I confess that, upon seeing the state of the poor creature, I doubted even the powers of a protector could save him. It was, however, a doubt that turned out to be quite unfounded. Slowly but surely his shape began to reform and, eventually, show signs of life. He returned to consciousness with words along the lines of; “I knew you losers would mess it up without me,” at the sound of which we all burst into laughter, though for most of us this was more an outpouring of relief than good humour.

Whilst the forest was saved, it was by no means unscathed. Though my companions and I had prevented any damage or loss to either the tablet or the scimitar (which was promptly returned to a new, less fellable hiding place), we were at a loss to prevent the changing of the status quo. You see, my father had been right, the ancient ruins (which I had informed the authorities I had ‘discovered’ upon my return) had proved more than enough for the National Trust to declare the entire forest a conservation area, thereby preventing and building on any part of it. The downside to this though, was that the forest was instantly overrun with archeologists, speculating upon the meaning of the writings of the ruins, and searching in vain for further sites.

The above though, was not quite as inconvenient as one may think for the majority of the alundri who inhabited the forest, and was certainly preferable to the alternative. Archaeologists are, perhaps surprisingly, primarily men of science. As such, no matter what great wonders they discover, no matter how many historic references to magic and higher powers they unearth, they stubbornly refuse to believe in anything that the logic of their education is unable to explain. As such, hiding the existence of magic from them was not as difficult as it might otherwise have been, for, as I am sure you will remember dear reader, it is almost impossible to see something in which one does not believe.

As for my parents, they were, needless to say, less than pleased with me upon my return. Their initial relieved hugs and kisses were quickly replaced with an angry interrogation into where I had been and why I hadn’t even had the courtesy to call. Being unable to excuse myself with anything close to the truth, my feeble story of simply getting lost in the woods in efforts to find Baskerville did not go down well as a reason for the wasted efforts of the local police force and half the neighbourhood in the search that had been carried out for me. I was summarily banned from walking Baskerville, or indeed leaving the house unaccompanied at all for at least the remainder of the summer holidays. Some thanks for saving the world, eh?