Magic Parcel (16 page)

“Hello Jim, old chap,” Reuben started as usual. “How are you? Sorry I was a bit late opening the door; phone call don't you know. Kept me talking rather over long.”

That
certainly was
not
like Uncle Reuben. He didn't possess a telephone; rarely used them. Why would he then not tell him the truth? There was something not quite right. His initial doubts about whether it might not be his uncle were dispelled when he looked into those sharp, bright eyes. That it was Reuben was not in question. However, there was a sign around his eyes that not all was well. Since his return from Omni, he had learned to be wary and careful.

“Come in! Come in!” Reuben urged, as he ushered Jimmy quickly through the front door.

 

“Uncle?” Jimmy began, as he munched his way through his second piece of apple pie and ice cream.

“Yes, old chap, what is it you would like to know today?” Reuben returned, eyebrows raised.

“It's half question, half statement, really,” Jimmy went on. “You know when you've been to Omni, and come back? Well, you see, I've found that
things
have
changed
since I've been back. I wasn't able to concentrate in school for the first week or so, but at playtime yesterday, I ‘thought' my way back ...”

“You
thought
your way back?” his uncle interrupted, quite surprised, or as surprised as Jimmy had ever seen him. “To Omni? How did you manage that?”

As Jimmy was now ‘older' than when he had first visited Omni (well, a couple of months, at any rate) he felt able to shorten his version of events. However, when he reached the point at which he confronted Dwayne and Billy, and where everything stood still, Reuben silenced Jimmy with a gesture and ushered him into his study.

“Why have we come in here, uncle?” he asked, quite puzzled. He knew it must have
some
significance and importance, as a visit to Reuben's study was not an everyday occurrence. Reuben didn't offer to answer until the door was fast shut behind them.

The room hadn't changed at all save the desk top globe, which was no longer there. As Reuben opened his mouth to answer Jimmy's question, the room slid away from them, leaving them standing on a hillock amidst warring factions they did not recognise. They were there, but not there physically. All the smells and sights of the countryside invaded their nostrils and eyes, but they could not be seen other than by the Powers of the land. No sooner had they been, than they were back in the safety of the study. Reuben was obviously disturbed, but tried to hide it. Jimmy took it in his stride, and continued what he had been saying.

“ And when I got back, I could focus much better on what was important,” he went on. “I was top of my maths class after break. Surprised my teacher, Mr Bolam.”

“You must be very careful, my boy,” Reuben continued, quietly and seriously, “not to allow anyone of this world to guess what might be happening in your life.”

“I won't,” he replied, “but why is it so important? No one else knows about Omni but us, do they?”

“It is important to make sure no one else does,” Reuben replied, evading Jimmy's direct question. “There are still those who are watching and waiting for the right opportunity to attack.”

This left Jimmy stunned. Uncle Reuben hadn't spoken like this before, either about Omni or about the possibilities of aggressive powers being anywhere other than in Omni. He had never seen Uncle Reuben anything other than jovial and good-humoured. ‘Serious' and ‘worried' were not words usually associated with him. Reuben, in fact, was rather concerned and quietly alarmed that Jimmy was developing the power to cross to Omni almost at will. This had never occurred before, not in all the years he had been associated with that world. Such power in one so young needed to be nurtured and protected, and to that end he would confer with the Powers for good in Omni. It needed a great deal of concentrated thought and will for even him to be able to use such power. If possessed by Seth or any other force for evil, all worlds linked to Omni would become ensnared and enslaved by evil.

“Uncle?” Jimmy went on after a moment or two's thought. “Could you explain why this Senti circlet has become so heavy and warm? In fact, it often glows in the dark.”

“Circlet?” Reuben queried, a note of barely concealed alarm entering his voice. “What circlet? Let me see it.”

Jimmy delved deep into his coat inside pocket, and drew out the trophy he had brought back the first time he was there, and guarded carefully since then. By now, it was glowing only sullenly.

“Where did you get it?” he asked, urgently, catching his breath, “and how long have you had it? Does anyone else know of its existence? Truthfully now!”

Jimmy explained its history, at the end of which Reuben's shoulders dropped and he slumped into the big swivel chair behind the great oaken desk. “This is the worst news I have heard for many years and could prove our undoing.”

“But it's only a ...” Jimmy butted in.

“You don't understand,” Reuben interrupted again. “The circlet was not only a badge of office for the Senti you vanquished, it allows the power that made it to track its whereabouts. It could in part explain why you have had dreams and flashbacks since your return.”

“In part?” Jimmy asked, puzzled.

“The other part is within you,” Reuben said slowly. “Being in Omni over a prolonged period affects different people in different ways according to their inner power. Those with little inner strength or power are not affected. The stronger you are, the greater the effect. Ultimately, the ones with the greatest internal power learn to come and go between this world and Omni, and other worlds for that matter, at will. They are the people upon whom all our hopes are founded.”

Jimmy sat in stunned silence throughout, recognising the importance of what his uncle was saying, and that the last bit referred to him. Yet, how could he, little ten-year-old Jimmy Scoggins, be this important person who held the future of
this
world, and, for that matter, others in his hands? Surely Uncle Reuben was mistaken in his assessment of Jimmy's capabilities. However, somehow, somewhere deep inside he knew he was right. He
did
feel different, strange.

“The circlet,” Reuben said, jolting Jimmy back to reality, “you must not carry it again. Prolonged exposure to it will build into you dependence, and eventually it will turn your mind to the evil that made it. It must be destroyed, and the only person who can destroy it is you, I'm afraid, old man, in Omni itself.”

“Destroy it? In Omni?” Jimmy exclaimed aghast. He hated the thought now of being without it, but Uncle Reuben was a wise old man. If he said so, it must be the only way. “But I don't know how or where in Omni.”

“The Chieftain will know,” answered Reuben, “and I will help you to get it to him, have no fear.”

“Until then,” Jimmy added, “can I keep it?”

“Only if you promise not to bring it out again,” said Reuben. “You must not leave it anywhere, and don't touch it!”

As Reuben stopped talking, the great tapestry behind his desk began to descend slowly, silently. As they watched, a telecast of the battle they had witnessed first hand what seemed like moments before, began to roll. What was apparent to them was that it might have been an exact rerun of what they had witnessed, but
they
were not to be seen. Their little hillock was there, but they were not. Jimmy understood instantly, and started to explain to Reuben what he thought was happening. Reuben simply looked at him, in his own inimitable fashion, over his half-moon spectacles, not in any admonitory way, but with new wonder and respect in his eyes.

“You have grown indeed, old chap,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “The power of Old Omni is beginning to wax in you, and that is a sign for hope.”

Jimmy listened carefully to what his uncle was saying, whilst watching the battle. “Look Uncle Reuben!” he burst in. “The battle's moved to Tarna's village!” At that moment, the telecast was lost, and the tapestry started to recoil.

“You must remember,” Reuben added quietly, “that what you see is only
one
possible outcome. It
may
happen as you have seen it, but not necessarily.”

 

Once again in the lounge, over a steaming cup of hot chocolate and piece of date and walnut cake, they watched the autumn light slip away over the back fence ahead of the blue dark of early evening.

“Time you were off, Old Chap,” Reuben sighed. “Your mother will be nattering that you are late.”

Jimmy's visit had given Reuben much to think about. He felt he had brought a new dimension to the fight against the evils of these worlds so much earlier than he had expected. He had always known there was something
different
about the lad, but he had not expected so much potential so soon.

Jimmy made his goodbyes and see-you-soons as he left the bottom-most step of his uncle's front path. He reached the gate on his way to catch his bus, and turned around to wave to his uncle, to see his own front door in front of him, and his hand on the latch of his own front gate. Slightly puzzled, but not enormously surprised, he turned to tread the short way to his home. Even though he
thought
he had only just had hot chocolate and one of Reuben's enormous doorstep slabs of cake, his stomach felt curiously empty. That smell, as he unlatched the door, which assailed his nostrils was remarkably like cooking bacon and eggs, and
that
was designed to start his gastric juices flowing in anticipation. He had long stopped questioning how his mother was able to forecast at what time he would arrive for his tea, but that was mothers for you!

 

Tarna's village was beset by enemy forces. They fought against near impossible odds, but their defences held, just. Inside the Chieftain's hut the atmosphere was charged as in the build up to a catastrophic electrical storm. In the centre of the hut, in the deepening gloom, sat the Chieftain, eyes closed, hair cascading over his shoulders, hands grasping the deeply carved arms of the Great Chair. To the untrained observer, he was resting; to those who would know, he was engaged in an intense mental joust with some other, equally powerful being. Suddenly, he slumped forward, released from the contest, sweat coursing down his forehead. The gloom lifted, and the storm had passed, for now. The defenders had repulsed the enemy, but he knew that this was only the beginning of a much more intense onslaught which would follow in its wake.

The Chieftain's eyes drew slowly open, and
then
he knew they had been betrayed.

 

 

 

Jimmy had yet another fitful night, with vivid dreams of Omni invading his subconscious. So vivid were they that he could feel the sun on the top of his head and experience those smells that were particular only to that world. For the most part, his presence there was disjointed and illogical, but it also wound a thread of truth, a reality which could not be doubted. Mostly, he re-enacted and revisited previous experiences and places, but generally out of sync with everything else.

He saw their approach to Algan's cave, but he was the one who was injured at the threshold. Dwayne Davis, who was substituted for his brother, was looking down at him as he came to. Within moments, he awoke in Oompah's castle, where Dominic was the toad and Oompah turned into Grumblin' Grainger. This in turn gave way to the Chieftain's hut, but the Chieftain was not in his Great Chair, or at least he didn't recognise him as such from behind. The gloom and mist surrounding the chair and its occupant masked his upper body and head, until the room revolved around the chair, and revealed – Tarna! Tarna? What was he doing there? And to whom was he talking?

“It shall be done master,” Tarna muttered, but seemed unable to move whilst visibly struggling to disengage from the conversation.

Jimmy seemed held, enthralled by what he had seen and heard. The over-riding questions in his mind were – why was he in the Chieftain's chair, and at who was the comment directed? Only the Chieftain of All Omni was permitted to sit in
that
chair. Was he talking to the Chieftain? No, it couldn't have been, as he would not have allowed him to be there. Was this a presage of the future, with Tarna as Chieftain? But the lineage of that position was unbroken father to son, and the Chieftain had five sons.

Jimmy dismissed it as part of the nonsense of a dream, until he heard Tarna's last words.

“Yes, my lord Seth, I obey,” Tarna croaked whilst bowing his head.

The visions of Omni slowly faded and drifted away, leaving Jimmy once again restlessly tossing and turning in his bed. The light of dawn was beginning to sneak through the chink in his curtains, as he started to resurface. He awoke with a start to the milkman's crate rattling on their top step. Eyes blearily open, the night left him with only one enduring impression; Tarna, a traitor?