This time, miraculously, the children scattered and lay still under the bracken. Aleksey was fairly sure they believed their lives might genuinely depend upon it. The creature emerged fully from the pond. It was pretty hideous—shiny black, bizarre face, awful feet. It waded up to the tree and snarled convincingly at finding its precious ribbons raided, and roared, ‘I’ll find you wee thieves!’ and began elaborately wading, as best it could, towards the bracken slopes.
One by one, it stepped over clearly visible babies, still roaring and puffing, either unable or unwilling to discover their hiding places. Probably the latter, given the slow and careful step over each time it came to a tiny body. Finally, it discovered Molly, who was actually hiding well and keeping utterly silent and still. It produced a huge scream of rage at her, and Ben shouted, ‘Mol Mol, send it back to the pond! Save everyone!’
Possibly slightly awed by this responsibility, Molly nevertheless rose from her position, sword drawn, and struck the black fiend’s belly. Aleksey tried to keep a straight face at the expression behind the diving mask. Molly wasn’t very tall, and the weapon hadn’t caught the monster in the belly. Nevertheless, it turned around, hunched over quite realistically, and proceeded to manoeuvre the flippers back towards the stream.
They must have known! Surely these tiny humans could see a man in a wetsuit with snorkel and flippers! Sure, he’d added a few extra foam shapes here and there, but the ferocity with which they all rose to help Molly, and began to smack him with their swords as they drove him back, led Aleksey to suspect that they genuinely didn’t. The relieved monster flopped with ungainly relief into the dark brown depths and apparently decided to stay there. Although if you were six feet four and thus had a good vantage point, or possibly if you just had some common sense, you could see the end of the snorkel emerge from the peaty water with a small water spout of reprieve.
Gathered once more, once more given back lost shields and bags, and allowed to retrieve all the ribbons now that they’d defeated the swamp monster, they continued.
Aleksey was thoroughly exhausted and wondered if any of the children would survive the ordeal to be returned to their parents that evening.
Now, they followed Molly in single file. They appeared to be alert and all had swords drawn. Emilia, he noticed for the first time, was taking pictures of the whole expedition. He realised he’d been so engrossed in the world Ben had created for these children that he’d not even noticed before. He considered his other half, from his privileged position well in the rear. When they’d first met, and for many years after that significant encounter, Ben had been so self-conscious of his fragile, unformed self that he had never relaxed, played the fool, wanted to be the butt of any fun. Only with him had Ben let this guard down, just ashehad let his down with Ben. They’d somehow understood each other from the first: what you see is not necessarily what you get. But if someone had told him during some of their early interactions that within a few years Ben would be down on the ground, playing with a dozen tiny children completely unselfconsciously, Aleksey would not have believed them. And yet, here they both were…slow step by slow step…
A few minutes further on, they came to a wooden box, half-concealed beneath the bracken. Ben made theget downsignal with his clenched fist, and Molly dropped immediately to the ground. The other children, just copying her, followed suit. Ben beckoned them forwards and showed them the chest. It was secured with a bicycle padlock that required a numbered code. They had to solve it. No one, not surprising to Aleksey, had any useful suggestions. Suddenly, Molly broke from the pack and ran back to him. Instinctively, he swung her up and she cried, ‘What is it, papa! You know! You know everything!’ Flattered, but caught out (not for the first time) by his own vaunting boasts, he was then completely taken aback when he was swarmed by the other tiny creatures, all begging him to tell them the code.
Radulf seemed equally alarmed, and, genuinely concerned that there might be an incident which would be hard to explain to another parent, Aleksey whispered in Molly’s ear, ‘Try your birthday.’
Molly screamed in glee and wriggled to be put down, and her subjects fled back to the treasure with her. She didn’t know her birthday or how to put the numbers in, but Ben pretended she’d got it right and did it for her. The box was full of jewels. Even Aleksey was impressed, and came a little closer, giving Radulf a warning eye-narrowing. Radulf was still recovering from the swarm he’d not foreseen or done anything useful about, so didn’t give his usual snarky muzzle raise back.
They were only toy jewels, obviously, but they looked realistic enough, and the children were so engrossed in filling their bags with emeralds and sapphires, diamonds and rubies that they’d apparently forgotten about the dragon that might be guarding them. This time, it was PB who spotted it first. He’d been mostly wary at these proceedings so far, keeping to Aleksey’s legs obediently. The stream ran down the valley where he always stayed close, always seemed unusually nervous, so Aleksey had not worried too much about his reaction to the fun and games. Now, however, the dog saw something that made the hackles on the back of his neck rise, and he went for it.
To be fair, it was pretty revolting. This dragon more resembled a bloated, sluggish caterpillar—a genetically enhanced maggot. It was greenish brown and humped its way out of the tall ferns where it had lain concealed up to now. A muffled bellow came from within, and the children once more screamed and scattered.
PB was made of sterner stuff however and bit it. He chomped down on what appeared to be a floppy appendage coming off its side, but fortunately this proved to be made of cardboard, for he ripped it off and destroyed it with a shake of his head.
By this time, Aleksey had him by the collar and had gotten him back under control. The dragon swore something under its breath but then continued with its heroic humping movement towards the box.
Ben found Molly and whispered something in her ear. She looked a bit fearful, but approached the monster and then bravely sat on its back. It continued to slide along the ground and when the other children saw this they piled on for a ride too. The poor creature couldn’t take all twelve at once, but they took turns until it appeared to faint with exhaustion, or possibly just lack of air inside the sleeping bag, and then they were able to fill their satchels with treasure and run on.
Aleksey sometimes wondered what he paid their three bodyguards for, given they’d never once had to actually do any close protection, but reckoned they’d earned their pay that day.
Coming around the next bend in the stream was something of a relief, as it appeared they had survived monster territory. Here, the flat grass widened out into a natural meadow besides another deep pool. A cream-coloured yurt had been erected in the middle of the grassy area. If he squinted and used his imagination, he could see it as a palace, but the children apparently did so without any trouble at all. It had banners set up on poles and some bunting, which did surprisingly well in place of turrets and ramparts.
Besides this striking object, a couple of barbeques had been set up and a number of camp chairs put around in a circle. There were a couple of cooks busy frying sausages and burgers. Aleksey literally did a double take and only believed what he was seeing when Phillipa gave him a cheeky wave with a spatula and tossed Radulf and PB a sausage.
The children ignored her completely in favour of a figure mounted on a huge chair on top of a plinth. It was dressed in robes and had a crown, and in one hand a sword, and this was not a toy one like they had but an obviously real one. One by one, the children were led to thiskingto present their bags of treasure. He assessed each squire’s bag’s worth and then fished out a reward from under the dais. Each child was then knighted and departed. Aleksey pictured the return to the parents with two children missing, one savaged by a wolfhound, and one after an unfortunate incident with a sword.
Fortunately, all the brightly wrapped gifts seemed to be of equal value, as one little boy had apparently given all his treasure to Molly, whether because he was just nice and it was her birthday, or because he was terrified of the whole situation and felt some kind of oblation was in order to appease the baby tyrant at the centre of such madness, Aleksey couldn’t say. But even with an empty bag, he was still knighted Sir Oliver and given his reward.
As the children were running around with the giant bubble wands they’d found in their presents, Aleksey went over to Phillipa’s grill. She offered him a sausage, snorting at his expression. He nodded towards Squeezy, apparently now attempting to knight Tim. ‘You could have been the queen—got some practice in.’
She picked up a burger on the end of a fork and turned it over. ‘Apparently it’s not just ceremonial any more—your odd friend has been honing it to a razor’s edge. Ben didn’t trust me with it.’
‘Probably wise.’
She was busy for a while as it was time to eat, and the exhausted, slightly hysterical children were made to sit inside the yurt on the rugs and blankets and accept their food. Some didn’t eat bread, some didn’t eat meat, some didn’t eat anything, some ate too much, but Ben coped pretty well with it all, although when one child declared she only ate her food when it was cut into stars, Aleksey could see he was thinking about helping her to see some.
Finally, they were all fed.
Each child was given a tiny sleeping bag with a different superhero on, and they climbed into them with wonder. Ben produced a piece of paper, sat cross legged on the ground in front of them, and started to read. The story, written by one Lady Emilia, was about the ancient folk who lived on Dartmoor before the coming of men. They had been tiny, and didn’t take up a lot of space, but as the humans had spread out, so the little folk had retreated to the crevices in the tors and to the streams, where they lived still in the deepest of the pools.
At this point, one child declared quite boldly, ‘My mummy says fairies aren’t real.’ Aleksey suspected this might be Jemima.
Ben stopped reading and regarded her. ‘But I’ve seen them.’
This got a few raised eyebrows. Aleksey dropped his quickly, but felt things had taken a bit of a turn for the worse now. Ben didn’t extend his no-lies beliefs to his relationship with his daughter. He lied about everything to her, as most parents did: if you eat that your hair will curl; if you don’t go to sleep, the morning will never come… Recently, conversations had begun between them about her being good for Father Christmas who, as it was October, was already making his lists… But clearly, none of these claims could be proved or disproved, and so the white lies were relatively benign. Now he’d just announced to a yurt full of suspicious babies that he’d seen fairies.
Aleksey couldn’t see this ending well.
