"Here you are,"
she said, setting it down in front of him. "I didn’t think you’d
want a hot drink on a day like today."
The Landlord
looked at the chipped dishes and snorted. He grabbed one of the
biscuits and bit into it. His face was blank for a moment as he
chewed but soon he smiled. It was good. He took a sip of the tea,
then another. From a jar Santa refilled the small tea cup and when
she went to put it away, he stopped her, putting a hand on her
arm.
"Leave it."
Santa set the jar
down in front of him.
"Would you excuse
me?" she said to him. "I have a few things to do."
Santa
surreptitiously surveyed the barn eyeing all of Mixer's usual
hiding places but he wasn’t in any of them. She climbed the ladder
but he wasn’t in the loft. She looked out the back door but could
see only Jelly, Forest and Narrow moving up and down the fields in
the distance. She stepped out to look around.
Inside the
Landlord took out his flask and topped up the cup.
Out on the road,
the rumble of thunder took the Constable off guard, too.
"It seemed like it
was going to be such a nice day today," he said to Porkchop. He had
to walk quickly to keep up with her.
Porkchop hadn’t
said a word to him since the farm yard. She wasn’t surprised by the
thunder; she was surprised that her brother hadn’t warned her. When
she thought they’d walked far enough, she stopped. She turned to
face him.
Marvellous opened
her eyes and was momentarily confused at the ears of corn bobbing
wildly above her. Then she heard some of the children’s voices
close by and remembered. She drew a strand of brown hair in front
of her eyes. When Jelly, Forest and Narrow looked up as the thunder
rolled by, Marvellous raced past their backs. She heard a noise as
she came up to the outhouse and peeked inside the crescent moon
that was cut out in the door. Inside, Pater sat, pants-less,
leaning against one wall. His head and shoulders drooped to his
chest. He snored.
Satisfied that
he’d drunk the tea and would be asleep for a while, Marvellous
entered the house and went straight to Titania’s bed. She caught
her breath when she saw the sleeping girl as the Landlord saw her.
Marvellous could see the scars and pock marks of the girl’s real
skin below the surface. She shut the curtain and lay down in
Pater’s cubby hole. She left the curtain ajar and waited.
___
Mixer emerged from
one of the storage dugouts. It was half-full of yellow onions and
he stood on top of one of the burlap sacks. He wobbled only
slightly. He regarded the Landlord, seated at the table, his back
to him, and threw out a mental order. He wasn't sure it would work
but was pleased to see the Landlord immediately straighten in his
seat, the tea cup paused halfway to his mouth. He set it down,
stood up unsteadily and lumbered to the back of the barn. He lifted
the wooden bar and lowered it across the back doors.
Mixer explored the
Landlord's thoughts. His mind felt slow and it was thick with
images of women. The picture he saw most often was the changed face
of Titania, but there were also flashes of his mother. Some of the
images showed a woman with brown hair and a pointy face. Her face
looked familiar. The Landlord's inner voice sounded weak and
pitiful. Mixer scowled.
The Landlord shook
his head back and forth, like an animal trying to eject a biting
insect from its hide. On his way back to the table he noticed Mixer
standing in the hole in the floor.
"Hey!" he
exclaimed. The Landlord saw a funny looking kid wearing a winter
coat even though it had to be close to a hundred degrees outside.
He laughed.
"Hey little fella,
look at you dressed all snazzy. Which one are you? Are you the one
what’s-her-face was looking for? Hey! You know anything about a
blonde sister? Really pretty?"
A flash of
lightning lit up the inside of the dim barn; a slow roll of thunder
followed. The Landlord blinked once, slowly. Mixer was suddenly
revolted with the man. How could he have thought that this buffoon
was powerful? He had envied the man's command, admired his
ruthlessness but he had been wrong. This man, who he had hoped and
come to believe was his real father, was just like the other one, a
useless drunk.
He hurled his
anger at the man, who staggered back a few steps.
"Hey little fella,
I don't feel so well," the Landlord slurred, swaying to and fro
where he stood.
Mixer stamped his
foot on the bag of onions, his arms straight by his sides. He
waggled his fingers against his thighs and mentally threw
everything he had at him. The Landlord had time only to wonder why
he seemed to be standing half inside a floor before he passed
out.
It took Mixer a
moment to gain his balance. His body felt strange; larger. He
realized he was looking at a spot on the back barn door he'd only
seen from several feet below. He looked down. His feet had become
enormous! He took a step, stumbled a bit but soon got the hang of
it. He practiced for a minute then walked over to the dugout. With
one foot he pushed the little body onto the onion pile then lifted
the lid and let it drop across the opening. He spun around, left
the barn and strode across the yard. Titania would be the first to
go.
___
After checking by
the creek and with Jelly if she’d seen Mixer, Santa slowly returned
to the barn. Mixer liked to play in the dirt so he could be
anywhere. When she finally reached the barn she found it barred
from the inside. Her heart pounding, she ran round to the front and
inside but neither Mixer nor the Landlord was there; only the empty
tea jar and the cup and saucer stood on the table. From the top of
the woodstove she picked up the heavy pan.
___
Porkchop and PC
Pierre kissed for a long time. Porkchop had been looking at her
boots, about to speak, about to tell him that she knew about their
father and Marvellous and everything. Instead, she had stepped
forward, tilted her face upwards and kissed him. It took him a
moment to overcome his surprise but the Constable kissed her back
and didn't stop even when a flash of lightning lit up the sky
around them.
___
Jones was getting
hot and impatient. They’d been out in the woods for hours and
everything Bull had sniffed out had turned out to be nothing.
"Maybe your nose
is off," Jones said.
"My nose isn’t
off," Bull said irritably. He'd woken up with a stuffy-headed
feeling but Porkchop had hustled him and Jones out of the barn
before he'd been able to ask Jelly for something that might help
his allergies.
They now stood in
a shelter of small pines on a shelf overlooking the back field. He
saw the corn plants being whipped back and forth in the wind, their
ears dancing up and down. The wind shifted and Bull lifted his
head.
"C’mon," said
Bull, hurrying down the path toward the field. "Stay with me, don’t
run ahead."
___
Mixer stepped into
Pater’s house and banged the door shut behind him but it didn’t
latch. He headed for Titania's bed but was distracted by the
slender foot sticking out of Pater's cubbyhole. He walked over and
twitched the curtain aside, admiring the way he was able to
manipulate the hands so well already.
"Who are you?"
Marvellous
tightened her fingers around the pruning knife in her hand. He
didn't recognize her! She opened her eyes. In that instant she saw
in his face that he didn't know who she was. After all this time,
after all she'd been through he didn't remember her mother and that
made Marvellous angry. She brought the pruning knife up and in the
moment that she dropped her disguise to give the Landlord one
chance to see his daughter before he died at her hand, Mixer's
thoughts came flooding into her brain. She immediately jerked the
knife back. She was sure that she had retracted the knife in time
but the body toppled over onto her anyway. Santa stood in his place
holding the frying pan with both hands like a bat.
The last thing
Mixer remembered before crashing to the floor was that the woman in
the bed looked like the woman in the Landlord's thoughts.
"Marvellous!
You’re back." Santa put the pan down on the table and looked
around. "Where’s Titania?"
"Sleeping like a
baby. You made the tea just strong enough. Your grandfather’s
asleep in the outhouse."
Santa, adrenaline
still rushing through her after bashing the Landlord over the head,
giggled.
Marvellous rolled
the body off her and onto the floor then kneeled down to inspect
him. She felt his pulse; it was rapid. She scanned his unconscious
mind and saw tendrils of green and black flow across it. She
shivered. If Mixer had taken over the Landlord, where was the
Landlord?
"Santa, knock it
off," Marvellous said standing up. Santa stopped giggling. She was
satisfied that Mixer would be out cold for a while. Maybe she could
think of a way to return them to their right forms without the
children knowing. "Where’s Mixer?"
Santa looked
worried. "I don’t know. He disappeared while I was seeing to the
Landlord. He’s not in the barn."
"We have to find
him." She grabbed Santa by her arm and dragged her out the door.
They ran to the barn and quickly searched it but couldn't find
Mixer. They unbarred the back door and Santa rang the mealtime bell
once to alert the others before she and Marvellous headed for the
fields.
___
The clang of a
bell woke him. He groaned as he stood up, rubbing the back of his
head where Santa had hit him. He saw the frying pan on the table
and picked it up; hefted it in his hand. He left the house and
loped for the barn, his head still aching. In the distance he could
see the figures of his brothers, sisters and Marvellous
methodically searching every row.
Inside the barn it
was quiet. He strode across the floor and, with one foot, kicked
off the lid that covered the dugout. He reached in, grabbed the
little boy by the arm and hauled him out. He started to carry him
to the table near the stove but the boy was not cooperative. The
boy cried and sobbed and wriggled and with the additional weight of
the frying pan, he began to feel unsteady again.
He grabbed the boy
by the seat of his pants, raised the frying pan and batted him
across the room with it. He laughed as the boy landed on the table,
shattering the tea cup and saucer. He picked him up from the table
and batted the boy with the pan again. This time, the boy hit the
wood stove and fell to the ground where he lay still.
In the fields
Marvellous looked up and back at the barn. "Wait here," she told
Jelly, Forest, Narrow and Santa. She could see Bull and Jones
moving quickly through the bush towards them in the distance. "Make
sure they wait here, too," she said, nodding towards the boys. The
others looked towards their brothers and when they looked back,
Marvellous was gone.
___
Mixer walked over
to the stove and was about to pick the boy up again when he heard
the barn door open and shut. He spun around and saw Marvellous
standing in front of him.
"Leave him alone,"
she commanded.
She slowly made
her way over to the stove. He retreated a few steps into the corner
behind it. She could feel his malevolent eyes on her. She stopped
and glanced at Mixer's body; it lay still in a pool of blood.
He was seething.
He had been wrong about the Landlord and now he realized he'd been
wrong about this woman. She wasn't harmless; as he watched her he
wasn't sure whether the Landlord's physical strength would be
enough. He got angrier.
She bent over the
body and felt for a pulse; there was one but it was weak.
"I wanted you dead
but not this way," she whispered.
"What's that?"
She looked up
slowly, knowing what she'd see. A spoiled little boy, disguised as
her father, playing around with power; power that he didn't know
how to use or control.
"If you go back I
can help you," she said to him.
Before she was
able to block him she felt him scan her thoughts. "We are brother
and sister," he said with surprise.
"Different sides
of the same coin," said Marvellous.
His eyes narrowed.
He didn't think; he flew at her with the frying pan raised. She
sidestepped him neatly and he bounced off the wall and back towards
her. She stepped away again and he crashed into the table. He lay
atop it for a moment catching his breath. This body wasn't as agile
as he'd first thought.
Desperately he
threw his mind at her. Marvellous wasn't expecting it and the force
sent her crashing into the stove. It was enough. He swung the
frying pan once and she collapsed to the floor beside Mixer's
body.
He picked her up
and slung her across his broad shoulder, leaving one hand free to
carry the frying pan and the other to climb up the ladder to the
loft. His headache was gone and he felt new strength, as though he
was carrying no weight at all.
He had wanted so
badly to do this to someone for such a long time but he’d never
been strong enough. He thought of all the times his plans had been
thwarted; all the times his schedule was not his own; all the times
he'd wanted to physically lash out and hurt and hurt and hurt. He
smiled and laughed as he tied Marvellous’ hands, blindfolded her
and gagged and bound her mouth. He tied up her midsection in a
blanket with rope then looped the end through the rails and loosely
tied it off. Then he waited.
___
Jelly pulled a
small head of garlic from a row, broke it open and peeled a clove.
She told Bull to chew it slowly before swallowing. The massive
odour cut through the fog in his head and he could now smell the
Landlord even more strongly than when he'd first caught whiff of
him while and Jones were in the woods. It was overpowering.