Authors: Cerberus Jones
The Dark Giants
TABLE OF CONTENTS
‘Grawk!’ Charlie bellowed through the bush.
‘Grawk! We’ve got more sausages for you.’
‘Forget it, Charlie,’ said Amelia. ‘If Grawk wanted to come, he’d have come by now.
Plus, I think he can tell we don’t have any sausages.’
‘Not
with
us,’ Charlie said to Amelia, then yelled again at the bush: ‘Obviously
the sausages are in the fridge at the hotel, Grawk! You don’t expect us to trek around
in the sun with
raw meat
, do you?’
Amelia kept walking, picking the least-spiky
way through the undergrowth. ‘Maybe
it’s sausages that made him sick in the first place.’
That would make sense. They’d last seen Grawk a week ago, when the hotel’s old chest
freezer had conked out and all the contents went off. Dad had thrown the lot onto
the lawn at the back of the kitchen, and Grawk had slunk around and gorged himself.
The little alien creature had been acting strangely for weeks by then. Instead of
being his usual funny, affectionate self, he’d started ignoring Amelia, then avoiding
her, and then finally once or twice
growling
when she tried to talk to him. He’d
never actually snapped at her, but after seeing him bring down a Hykryk time-shifter
and bite the holo-emitter off her neck, Amelia wasn’t about to push her luck.
Watching him wolf down three icy chickens, two legs of lamb, two catering packs of
mince,
and
eight kilograms
of organic sausages, though, Amelia had wondered:
Maybe
he was just hungry?
She’d never imagined that he might need to eat so much. Poor thing – this whole time
he’d been living with her, she’d been starving him! No wonder he was angry with her.
But how was she meant to know what a grawk needed to stay healthy? None of them did,
and there was nobody she could ask. Somebody at Gateway Control might have been able
to help, but Amelia was too scared to find out – she was pretty sure that ‘help’
from Control would end up with Grawk being taken away and put down.
So maybe it was better for Grawk to stay out here in the bush. She missed him badly,
but at least he was free.
Charlie wasn’t having it, though. ‘You’re being really slack, you know that, Grawk?’
he bellowed again. ‘It’s Amelia’s birthday today, you jerk!’
It was! Despite everything with Grawk, Amelia grinned to herself. Her actual birthday
with an actual party at the hotel. She could hardly believe it – for the first time
since arriving at Forgotten Bay, she was going to have her friends over.
‘We’d better go back to the hotel,’ she said to Charlie. ‘I don’t know how long we
have before the Sophies get here.’
‘Oh, that’s OK. You go,’ said Charlie, politely. ‘I’ll just stay here in the bush
a bit longer, getting bitten by bull ants and horseflies. Or maybe a red-bellied
black snake. Or a funnel-web spider. Or a red-bellied black snake
and
a funnel-web
spider.’
‘Charlie …’ Amelia said warningly.
‘I mean, I’m not saying I’d rather die of venomous animal bites out here alone than
see Sophie T –’
‘
Charlie
…’
‘I’m just saying it’s a risk I’m willing to take.’
‘Charlie!’
‘Well, come on, Amelia! Are you for real?
Both
Sophies at your party is bad enough,
but asking Sophie T to stay for a sleepover …’
‘Now who’s being slack? It’s my birthday, remember?’
‘Yeah, but Sophie T?
Sophie T!
’
They might have had a real argument then, but instead they both froze as a tremor
shook the ground beneath them. A flock of crows flew from the trees, crying out to
one another in shock and disgust, ‘Gah! Gaah! Gaaaah!’ The cicadas fell silent at
once and the ants seemed to race along their trails twice as fast as usual.
Amelia and Charlie looked at each other and grinned before breaking into a sprint.
Another arrival at the gateway! They crashed through the bush, scrambling over rocks
and pushing through branches until they burst into the clearing around
the groundskeeper’s
cottage.
But as they neared Tom’s little house, Amelia felt the hair on the back of her neck
prickle, and she slowed, approaching more nervously than usual. New alien guests
were always interesting – educational, even – but that didn’t mean they were
safe
.
And since that time-shifter had messed around rewinding time over and over again,
the wormholes that brought new visitors to Earth were behaving more erratically than
ever. The disruption to his schedule was driving Tom crazy.
‘I hope it’s another blowback,’ puffed Charlie. ‘A good one, I mean.’
‘You would.’
A blowback was when something accidentally slipped through a gateway – it happened
now and then, when the wormholes were particularly unstable or stormy. Grawk was
the first blowback Amelia and Charlie had come across, but
he hadn’t been the last.
Two days ago, Tom had found the whole stairwell from his cottage down to the gateway
filled with strange jelly-like fruit. He’d got both kids to help him clear them out
and dump them in the compost, and Charlie – against Tom’s strictest orders – had
tried one and discovered they were delicious (like lychees in lemonade) and made
your eyes turn pink for an hour after.
Some of the other blowbacks had been less pleasant (a puddle of alien sewage), less
useful (nearly seventy books, no pictures, all unreadable), and far less simple to
clean up (a cloud of sticky foam belched up all over the stairwell walls and steps).
But from the noise up ahead, it didn’t sound like a blowback this time. As they reached
the front door – Charlie sniffing his way forward, in case it was sewage again –
Amelia heard raised voices.
‘Go ahead,’ Tom said loudly. ‘Call Control – ask them yourself, but I’m telling you,
there are
no
exceptions.’
A mangled chirping came in reply, but by now Amelia was so used to listening to non-human
versions of English, she could make out the words quite easily.
‘But I’m a scientist! An exobiologist. Look at my papers – I’m here to study local
Earthling wildlife and how it interacts with a gateway. I
need
my equipment.’
Amelia and Charlie peeped through the open doorway and saw Tom, his hands on his
hips, standing his ground before a thin, orangey-grey creature that looked something
like a centaur, with four legs on the ground and then an upright body with two arms.
If, that is, centaurs weren’t huge, noble horsepeople, but extremely scrawny little
fox-people.
James, Amelia’s older brother, was keeping his head down, getting on with packing
the alien’s equipment into a storage box.
‘That belongs to my university,’ the alien yipped. ‘It’s highly sensitive, state-of-the-art
– aaaargh!
Don’t
tip that one upside down!’
‘Sorry,’ muttered James, turning the object the right way up again.
‘Give it to me,’ the alien snapped.
‘No way,’ said Tom. ‘Nothing leaves this cottage that hasn’t been registered ahead
of time with Gateway Control. Since the Guild –’
‘Do I look like Guild?’ he shrieked.
‘
Since
the Guild started rearing their heads again,’ Tom went on stubbornly, ‘
all
alien technology must either be registered with and approved by Control
before
leaving
your home world, or left secure with us for the duration of your stay.’
‘
Secure?!’
James taped up the lid of the box and offered the alien a clipboard and a pen. ‘Sign
here, here and … here, and keep this receipt here with you as proof of ownership.’
Amelia watched as the alien signed over his equipment, clearly fuming. Then it tucked
its hand into its fur, into what must have been some sort of pouch like a kangaroo’s,
and pulled out a small bronze cylinder.
‘I have no idea what you expect me to do now,’ he seethed, attaching the cylinder
to his neck. ‘Just
remember
the animals I see? Draw a sketch of them in the dirt
with a stick? Perhaps I should –’
‘I’ll need to take that holo-emitter, too,’ said Tom, holding out his hand.
‘What? You don’t expect me to believe Control will let me stroll about on a non-stellar
planet without a holo-emitter.’
‘You will need to wear one of
our
holo-emitters. All our images have been registered
with Control, whereas yours …’
‘Fine!’ The alien snatched off his holo-emitter and slapped it onto Tom’s palm. ‘I’ll
wear yours. But if you think I’ll submit to any more of Control’s outrageous abuses
of my liberty – an honest academic!’
Tom sighed heavily. ‘I’m going to need you to turn out the contents of that pouch
…’
The alien shrieked again, scandalised. He grabbed a holo-emitter from Tom’s desk,
fixed it to his neck and switched it on before Tom could finish his sentence. Immediately,
the scrawny fox-centaur disappeared a scrawny, ginger-bearded man in a shabby corduroy
suit appeared.
‘I’ve never been so insulted in my life,’ the man snapped, his voice human now, but
still high and furious. ‘Is there no courtesy at all in this
wretched star system?’
He walked past Amelia and Charlie, out the door, and up to the hotel.
‘Another satisfied customer, Tom!’ said Charlie.
Tom glowered at them both, but said nothing (it was Amelia’s birthday, after all).
‘Is it really Control’s orders?’ asked Amelia. ‘I mean, they don’t even know about
the canister the Guild tried to steal from –’
‘And they don’t need to,’ said Tom, glancing warily through his still-open front
door. ‘They know the Guild were here, and that’s more than enough for anybody to
tighten border security.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Amelia, ‘but –’
‘Don’t you have a party to go to?’ Tom made
party
sound like it was a form of torture.
‘Ugh, that’s right,’ said Charlie. ‘Come on, then, Amelia. Let’s get it over with.’
‘Oh, thanks a lot, Charlie. Happy birthday to me, huh?’
Amelia and Charlie had only made it halfway up the hill when Mrs Flood’s car crunched
along the gravel driveway. Amelia waved at them from across the lawn and began to
run, but neither Sophie F nor Sophie T noticed her. Through the car windows, Amelia
could see that they were staring, white-faced, at the hotel.
‘Ha! Look at them – they’re totally freaking out!’ Charlie grinned.
Amelia stopped and turned on him. ‘Don’t you dare, Charlie Floros. I know you can’t
stand
them, but the Sophies are my friends. And,’ she fixed him with a look, ‘It.
Is. My.
Birthday
.’
‘Relax,’ said Charlie. ‘Everything will be great.’
‘I mean it, Charlie.’
‘So do I.’
‘Be nice,’ said Amelia. ‘Just until the party’s over. Please?’
‘I’ll be better than nice.’ He smiled what he thought was his charming smile. ‘I’ll
be adorable.’
Amelia groaned, but didn’t waste any more time arguing with him. Instead, she hurried
to the hotel, little bubbles of excitement making her skip up the steps to the big
double doors. Her birthday was today,
and
she was having a party,
and
the Sophies
were finally visiting her place for a change. OK, it
would
have been even better
if Shani could’ve come. And sure, it was a pity that Sophie F couldn’t stay for the
sleepover. And no, she wasn’t confident about what Charlie’s idea of
‘adorable’ might
be – but
still
, it was her birthday!
She let herself into the lobby, Charlie only a step behind, and saw Mrs Flood standing
under the old chandelier, looking around in wonder. The two Sophies were whispering
together.
‘Hi, guys,’ Amelia called. Not too loudly: Mum was busy at the reception desk, checking
in the cranky alien in the corduroy suit, and several other guests (the usual mixture
of holo-emitter-disguised aliens and unsuspecting humans) were milling about, wandering
out from the dining hall or into the library or up the broad marble staircase on
the right to the guest rooms.
Sophie F turned at the sound of Amelia’s voice and smiled back. ‘Happy birthday!’
Sophie T smiled too, but then her eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Are we early?’
‘No,’ said Amelia. ‘Right on time. Thanks for coming.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Sophie T frowned slightly. ‘Only – did we dress right?
‘What? Oh!’ Amelia realised that both Sophies were wearing their good clothes: Sophie
F was in her new purple jeans and high-top sneakers, and Sophie T was in a floaty,
sky-blue sundress with a matching Alice hairband, whereas Amelia …
Amelia put a hand to her hair and felt a sort of bird’s nest of knots and tangles
and bits of leaf and twig. She looked down and saw the rip in her T-shirt, the scratches
and dirt on her legs, and the hundreds of grass seeds on her socks. It was how she
always looked after a day playing on the headland, but now –
‘Cookie,’ said Mum, coming out from behind the reception desk and crossing the lobby.
‘Why don’t you hurry and get changed while I take the Sophies through to tea?’
Amelia nodded gratefully and sprinted up
the left-hand staircase to the family wing
of the hotel, determined to have the quickest wash and change in the history of parties.
She dragged a brush through her hair, scrubbed her face and hands and knees with
a boiling hot flannel, and pulled on the first dress she found in her drawer. The
whole lot took less than ten minutes.
Ten minutes too long, though. As she pattered down the stairs and across the lobby
to the dining room, she saw three things straight away.
One: that Mrs Flood was laughing and talking happily with Mum.
Two: that Mary and Dad had done a beautiful job setting up her birthday tea – a five-tier
cake stand rose in the middle of the table, each level crowded with a different type
of afternoon snack: tiny sandwiches on the bottom, tiny pink-and-chocolate fairy
cakes at the top, and scones and macaroons and sausage rolls in between.
And three: that Charlie was, from the looks on the Sophies’ faces, being totally
Charlie. She went over in time to hear him saying, ‘No, she’s great. Seriously. I
think all girls should be more like her. She has these awesome black leather hiking
boots, because she spends all day out in the bush working, and she has this amazing
scar from her shoulder all the way down her arm, and –’
‘Hello, Charlie,’ said Amelia quietly. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, hey, Amelia.’ Charlie grabbed three tiny sandwiches in one go and shoved them
all in his mouth. ‘I’s jus’ tellin’ the Soph’s abou’ –’
‘About some ridiculous imaginary person he calls Lady Naomi,’ Sophie T spoke over
the top of Charlie’s disgusting mumbling, and slanted him a withering look. ‘As if
any
lady
would have a scar and work in the bush. What is she, a lumberjack?’
Amelia shook her head at Charlie, who raised
his hands helplessly. ‘What did I do?’
he asked, swallowing his mouthful. ‘They were getting spooked about maybe seeing
Tom tonight, and all I said was that apart from his missing eye, missing finger,
gold tooth, limp and foul temper, he’s basically a really nice guy, and
they
said
this sounded like a horrible place to live –’
Sophie F blushed, but Sophie T held her chin high.
‘And I was just trying to tell them all the other great things about living here
–’
‘– so you told them about Lady Naomi,’ Amelia finished for him.
‘And every word was true.’ Charlie crammed two fairy cakes in his mouth.
Sophie T rolled her eyes, then decided to ignore him. As Amelia sat down beside her,
Sophie T said, ‘Well, you do have a lot of room here, anyway. You could easily get
a rabbit
and
guinea pigs, if you wanted to.’
‘It’s true,’ Amelia said. ‘But then I got a dog instead, remember? And I don’t know
if Grawk would get on very well with a rabbit.’
‘Yes, where is he?’ asked Sophie F. ‘I want to see some of his tricks.’
‘Oh, uh …’ Amelia gulped and stalled for time by pouring a glass of vanilla milkshake
from the jug on the table. ‘He’s …’ She felt her friends watching her, concerned.
‘He’s lost, actually.’
‘Oh, no,’ Sophie F moaned. ‘You poor thing, when? You must be so worried.’
‘I am.’ Amelia was relieved. Even though her friends couldn’t ever know the full
story, they understood how she felt.
‘Do you think he’ll come back?’
‘I hope so. Actually, that’s where Charlie and I were when you arrived – out in the
bush, looking for him.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Sophie T. ‘If Arabella Moonglow went missing’ – that was
her white rabbit – ‘I wouldn’t do anything else until I found her. I wouldn’t even
go to school.’
There was a sad little pause in the conversation out of respect for Amelia’s situation,
and then Sophie T, who didn’t like silence very much, patted Amelia’s hand and said
brightly, ‘I know! I can help you look for him tomorrow. We’ll do a proper search
party.’
‘Thanks, Sophie.’ Amelia smiled. As much as Charlie thought Sophie T was the biggest
pain in the world, she really was a good friend. After all, anyone who
hated
getting
dirty, thought all bugs and insects were repulsive, only ever wore the nicest clothes
and yet
still
volunteered to go bush-bashing to find an (alien) dog she’d never met
before was pretty special.
Suddenly, both Sophies’ heads swivelled
around as though magnetised and Amelia saw
James walking toward them. She looked at her tall, gangling, super-sarcastic brother.
What did the Sophies see that was making them blush and sit up straighter, she wondered.
‘Hey, sis,’ he said, plonking himself down in the chair next to Sophie F. ‘Who’re
your friends?’
Amelia introduced them, and watched as Sophie F shrank into herself and tried to
become invisible, while Sophie T flicked her blonde hair back over one shoulder and
made her eyes so big and focused on James that Amelia blinked twice as fast to compensate.
Luckily, before it got too weird, Mum signalled Mary in the kitchen. A minute later,
Dad came out with an enormous sheet cake covered in lit candles. He was singing ‘Happy
Birthday’ and one by one, Mum, Mary, and the kids at her table joined in. Some of
the guests did too – the human
ones, anyway. The guests eating tinned spaghetti with
ice-cream just observed, fascinated.
‘Hip-hip,’ said Dad, setting down the cake in front of Amelia.
‘Hooray!’ shouted all the humans in the room.
Amelia took a deep breath and blew out her candles. And there were a
lot
of candles,
spaced out unevenly all over the surface of the cake. By the time the last one sputtered
out, Amelia was gasping.
Sophie T did a quick count. ‘
Twenty
candles? But you’re not twenty!’
Amelia grinned. ‘No, look – it’s marking out the constellation of Sagittarius. My
star sign.’
Mrs Flood gave Dad a funny look. ‘I thought you were a science man.’
‘I am,’ said Dad eagerly. ‘Astro-physicist, actually, and Sagittarius is a great
set of stars to have in the sky for your birthday.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Mrs Flood, politely.
Mum smirked and started handing out spoons as Dad got going.
‘Oh, yes!’ he beamed. ‘Did you know, Sagittarius is one of the forty-eight constellations
described by Ptolemy in the second century? And, even though we can’t see it with
the naked eye, it contains possibly the brightest star in our whole galaxy!’
‘Uh-huh.’ Mrs Flood nodded, unblinking, as Dad picked up the ginormous carving knife
and suddenly stabbed it into the cake.
‘Right
there
!’ he exclaimed. ‘The Pistol Star! Hidden by cosmic dust, but a blue
hypergiant so powerful it emits more energy in twenty seconds than our sun does in
a whole year! Not only that but –’
‘It tastes delicious, too,’ Mum finished smoothly.
‘Eh?’ Dad blinked, and then looked in surprise at the poor cake he’d just murdered.
‘What?’
‘Amelia’s birthday cake, dear,’ said Mum. ‘You were about to cut it up?’
Sophie T’s eyes were as round as saucers. She had flecks of whipped cream on the
front of her dress from the force of Dad’s blow with the knife, but Sophie F was
giggling quietly to herself and looking at Dad with great interest.
‘Well,’ said Dad, pulling the knife out and handing it to Amelia. ‘I think you’re
supposed to make the first cut.’
Holding her breath, Amelia sliced into a corner without candles. What had Dad dreamed
up this time? She sighed with relief as a perfectly ordinary slice of vanilla sponge
came away. It was such a large cake that everyone in the dining room had a slice
(Amelia talked very loudly to the Sophies, hoping they wouldn’t notice the family
of five who were squirting ketchup and mustard over theirs).
Sophie F had another slice of cake and Sophie T said, ‘Hang on – presents!’ and handed
Amelia a gift bag. ‘It’s from both of us.’
Lifting out a framed photo of the three of them together, and a box of flavoured
jellybeans,
and
a new adventure book, Amelia thought this might be her best birthday
ever. Back in the city, before they’d moved to Forgotten Bay, the Walkers’ old flat
had been so small Amelia had always had her parties at the park, or ice-skating,
or the movies. Now, for the first time, she had a home that had room for everyone
– her family, her best friend, her friends from school, and even random guests from
other galaxies, if they wanted to. Even –
The room went silent. Someone had walked through the door, and this time it wasn’t
only the Sophies who turned to look.