not realise she was being followed. She threaded her way through the trees
with assurance. She clearly knew exactly where she was going. It occurred
to him, however, that with his crap sense of direction, and without her to
guide him, he had little or no chance of finding his way back to camp again.
He sped up a little. It was better that she realised that he was following her,
than if he lost sight of her and ended up wandering round the Forest on his
own until Selene tracked him down.
She came to a halt in front of a particularly large tree, twice the size of its
neighbours. The trunk measured a good six or seven feet across. She dug her
fingers into the bark at one side, and wriggled them around as if looking for
something. A section of bark swung open, like a door. She stepped inside,
closing it behind her. And she was gone.
What to do now? He looked around. The moonlight enabled him to see his
immediate surroundings, but who knew what might be lurking in the deep
shadow? Clowns were his greatest fear, more so even than Selene. At least
with her his death would be quick and clean. With the clowns, he would be
eaten alive. Would they be out and about at this time of night? He had never
taken sufficient interest in them to know whether or not they were nocturnal.
He felt vulnerable out here on his own. He had to follow her into the tree-
trunk, even though it meant certain discovery. Now she was back in her own
body, she would only stay mad at him for a minute or two, and then she
would be inviting him to admire her bottom again. She never held a grudge
for long.
He approached the tree. He stopped in front of it, having second thoughts.
Maybe it was better just to hide nearby, to wait for her to come out? It was
a tree-trunk, for goodness sake; she was hardly likely to be in there for long,
not with her attention span. He should hide behind a nearby tree, and follow
her back to camp when she got bored in there.
He heard a noise in the undergrowth. It didn’t sound all that close, but who
was to say which direction it was heading in? Everything in the Forest was
out to kill him, except Takina, and even she would have her Queen in tow.
There was only one thing for it. He would have to hide in the tree with
Cherry, until the danger had passed.
He tried to dig his fingers into the trunk, as she had done, but stubbed his
thumb badly. The wood was hard, unyielding. He clicked his fingers to
conjure up flame to examine the trunk in better light, but extinguished it
again immediately. He recalled his first outing in the Great Forest. The trees
were living creatures, who were far from comfortable with fire. It was more
than likely that they would find their own way to extinguish it, if he had not
done so first, and his way was much less painful than theirs.
He rubbed his hand over the tree-trunk. He heard a noise off to his right.
There was definitely something out there, and it was getting closer all the
time. He jabbed his fingers painfully against the bark again, repeating the
process in a slightly different spot each time. And, much to his relief, on the
fourth or fifth attempt, they sank into the wood, much as Cherry’s had done.
He wriggled them around. There was something inside the trunk, a catch of
some sort. He squeezed it, and the trunk sprung open a few inches.
He stepped back cautiously, half-expecting Cherry to come tumbling out.
Nothing. He gave the trunk-door an experimental tug, and it drifted open.
There was a metal room inside, an empty metal room. It was lit with a
strange artificial light, as if it was day-time in there, even though there was
no sign of a lamp or a candle. He stepped in, closing the door behind him.
“Cherry?” he whispered, as loudly as he dared. “Are you there?”
No reply.
He looked about him. There was nothing in the room save for a few buttons,
grouped together in a vertical line running down one wall. One had a “G”
on it, one had a “B”, and the other two had arrows pointing inwards and
outwards respectively. He pressed the “G”, but nothing happened. He tried
the outward arrows, and the door opened, without him even touching it! He
pressed the inward arrows, and they closed again.
“What magic is this?” he whispered to himself. But he knew the answer.
This was the magic of a great magician, maybe even a warlock or a demon.
It put his own abilities to shame.
His hand hovered over the “B” button. His reason told him that this was
where Cherry must be. It was the only button left which she could have
pushed. He hesitated. Why would she be visiting a demon every night? Was
it like his relationship with Areola, the succubus? Did she just come here for
sex? Or was there a more sinister explanation? Maybe she was planning on
sending him back to Hell, when the time was right. Not Cherry, though.
Surely not Cherry. She cared for him. She wouldn’t do that to him, after all
they’d been through together.
It was a dilemma. He agonised over whether to go in search of her, or
whether to go back outside and hide, taking his chances with whatever was
making its way through the undergrowth towards him. He touched the “B”
button, without pressing it. “What to do?” he asked himself. “What to do?”
The decision was taken out of his hands. The door opened out to the night,
and a figure stepped inside. The door closed again, leaving the two of them
together. He was alone with one of the Candidates he least wanted to see.
#
Halfshaft screamed like a big girl’s Laura Ashley blouse.
Young Halfshaft screamed right back at him, determined not to be outdone.
Eventually, once convinced that neither meant the other any harm, they
tailed off.
“You!” said Halfshaft.
“Us,” confirmed his younger self, somewhat smugly.
“What are you doing here?”
“I saw you disappear into a tree. It’s dark out there. There might be –
creatures. I thought I’d better follow you in. What are you doing here,
though? It’s just a metal room. Is this where you hide at night-time?”
“It’s not just a metal room,” Halfshaft replied defensively. “There are
buttons!”
He gestured towards the buttons on the wall. If he was hoping to impress
his younger self, he was disappointed. Young Halfshaft shrugged. “So?
What do they do?”
“This one opens the door. This one closes the door. The one with the “G”
on it must be broken.”
“What about this one?” asked Young Halfshaft, jabbing the button with the
“B” with an inquisitive finger. “What does that one do?”
“Stop!” cried the wizard. “You don’t know what you’ve just done!”
“What? What have I done?”
“I don’t know either,” Halfshaft was forced to admit. He saw his younger
self smirking, and was only just able to resist the urge to throttle him. If you
kill him, he reminded himself, then I won’t live to be me. I would’ve died
years ago. Just give him a withering look, and have done with it.
And then they were in motion. The room didn’t change in any way, but the
feeling in his stomach suggested that it was dropping downwards, down into
the earth. Young Halfshaft looked at him in panic. “What’s going on? What
have I done?”
“I just told you.” It was his turn to smirk. “We don’t know.”
The motion stopped. The doors opened automatically. They were no longer
in the Forest. There was a long corridor, with doors either side it. Painted
magnolia, which seemed a very strange colour indeed to the two wizards
who skittered around the lift. Hell was normally red or black, as far as
Halfshaft was aware, if it was painted any colour at all.
A door opened further along the corridor. Halfshaft punched the button to
close the doors. They closed. He pressed the “B” button again, desperate for
them to start moving back towards safety, but nothing happened. They
stayed stubbornly put.
“Where are we? Where was that?” asked his younger self.
“How should I know?”
“You’re older than me. Old people are supposed to know stuff like that.
Besides, you were the one who was coming here. You must have some idea
where this is.”
Halfshaft went quiet for a while. “I could be wrong, but I think we’re in
Hell,” he said. He had never been very good at breaking bad news gently.
Young Halfshaft screamed again. Old Halfshaft screamed louder still.
And then the doors opened. A blade flashed. More screaming, shriller than
before. And one of the wizards lay dead on the floor in a fast expanding pool
of his own blood.
#
“Cherry!” Halfshaft screeched. “You’ve just killed me!”
She tucked the dagger back into the waistband of her metallic knickers.
“No I haven’t. I’ve killed him.”
“You don’t understand. He’s me. If he’s dead, then that means I never made
it past – whatever age he is. I’ll cease to be.” He checked himself over,
expecting to see himself start to vanish at any second. “What have you done?
What have you done?”
“He’s not you. He’s a robot.”
“Robot?”
“A machine. A bit like a clock, only considerably harder to build.”
He shook his head. The girl had gone mad. “Clocks don’t bleed!”
“They do if you programme them to. Everyone who “dies” in the Games
has to bleed. One of the robots didn’t, one year. I can’t even begin to tell you
how many millions of complaints they had. Now they pump blood all over
the place, just to be on the safe side.”
“I don’t understand any of this. What do you mean, “one year”? Have you
done this before?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything later,
when we’ve won. But we’ve got stuff to do first.”
She closed the doors, and pressed the “G” button. They started to rise.
“What stuff?”
“We’ve got to kill Baby Halfshaft.”
The wizard huffed. The poor man – clock, whatever the hell he was – was
lying in a pool of blood on the ground. He looked very much dead already.
A thought occurred, as it was prone to do from time to time. “If he really
is a clock, how come he died when you stabbed him?”
“I stabbed his blood bank. They close down automatically when you do
that. Otherwise, they’d be running round like maniacs with blood pumping
out of their chests, and viewers would get even more irritated than if there
was no blood at all. Dead men don’t walk, you see, yet alone run around in
circles like headless chickens.”
“Are they all robots? The other Candidates, I mean.”
“Only one of them.”
“Are you one? Are you a clock?”
“Have you seen this body?” she asked incredulously. “This face? As if they
could design anything this perfect! Besides, robots always have two holes
on their right bum cheek. It’s where they charge them up. There aren’t any
holes in my bum, none that aren’t meant to be there anyway! You would’ve
noticed, the way you keep checking me out all the time when you think I’m
not looking.”
The metal room stopped moving. She opened the door, and started
dragging his younger self out into the Forest.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Where are you taking him?”
“Just shut up a moment, will you? You men ask so many questions. Just
stand over by that tree, and look worried for me, will you? The viewers are
going to love this.”
He did as he was told. He had run out of questions for the time being,
although he was sure he would think of plenty more later on, given time to
think. She started to pull Young Halfshaft’s corpse up a tree, like a leopard
with her kill. He marvelled at how strong she was. Maybe it was best to do
as he was told, in case he ended up in the tree as well.
She balanced the corpse precariously on a low branch. She dropped back
down on to the ground, landing lightly on her feet. “You ready?” she asked
him. He nodded dumbly, unsure what it was that he was agreeing to be ready
for.
“Action!” she cried.
The branch of the tree tipped up of its own accord, and Young Halfshaft’s
corpse tumbled down on top of her. She gave a cry of surprise, and started
wrestling with his body, as a small child pretends to struggle with a toy
snake. It did not look remotely convincing to Halfshaft, but maybe someone
who thought her assailant had just leapt out of a tree at her would find it
easier to suspend their disbelief. Why was she doing this? She kept going on
about viewers, but there was no-one else here. Not even those little black
boxes, with the little people inside of them. There were just the two of them,
and surely she couldn’t be putting on this performance for his benefit alone?
The girl was clearly out of her tiny mind.
She was winning the struggle, which was not hugely surprising, bearing in
mind her opponent was dead. She caught Halfshaft off-guard, though, when
she called out to him for assistance.
“Help!” she cried. “I can’t hold him off much longer.”
The wizard looked on in panic. No way did he want to be a part of this
farce. Why did she have to involve him, when she was more than capable of
fighting off the dead robot all on her own?
“No,” he called out to her. “You’re doing fine. I don’t think you need any
help.”
“Help me!” she cried again.
If there was an audience somewhere, like she’d said, she was making him
look ridiculous. What was worse, though? Looking mean for refusing to
come to the rescue of a damson in distress, or rolling around on the floor
with his recently deceased former self, trying to make it look as if it was a
fair fight? It was a hard call to make.
Cherry changed tack. She rolled Young Halfshaft on top of her, clamping
his body tightly between her legs, and started pumping her hips up and down.
“Halfshaft!” she screamed. “Oh no, please no, anything but this.”
The wizard gave in. That was all he needed; she was making his former
self look like a rapist! If he didn’t help her now, he would look truly awful.
He had no option but to wade in and rescue her from the vicious cadaver.
“Don’t worry, Cherry, I’ll save you,” he said in an unenthusiastic
monotone. “Leave him to me.”
He walked over to her, pulled Young Halfshaft from her, and wrestled the
corpse to the ground. It weighed less than he was expecting, which
thankfully made it much easier to manoeuvre than might otherwise have
been the case. He pulled it on top of him.
“He’s trying to bugger you now!” cried Cherry, in mock horror.
“No, no, he really isn’t,” Halfshaft replied firmly. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“He is! He’s getting his thing out! Quick, finish him off before it’s too
late!”
“He isn’t getting it out!” Halfshaft insisted. “We’re too busy fighting for
any of that sort of nonsense.”
He rolled over, so that he was on top, in the hope that this would shut
Cherry up.
“Now you’re trying to bugger him!” she exclaimed. What a bitch!
“Would you shut up!” he snapped, “or you can bloody well finish him off
yourself.”
He stood up. Enough was enough. “There. He won’t be given you any more
trouble.”
She came and inspected the body in poorly-acted horror. “There’s a lot of
blood,” she gasped.
He looked down. His leotard was covered with the stuff. He shivered.
Being covered with his younger self’s blood was not a pleasant experience,
even if Young Halfshaft was apparently more of a time-piece than an actual
human-being.
“How did you kill him?” she asked.
The question took him by surprise. He stared at her. She stared back. He
could see the tiniest hint of a smile flickering at the corner of her mouth. He
stared some more, but she was still waiting for an answer.
“Heart-attack?” he eventually proposed.
“How come he’s bleeding?” she replied, refusing to let him off the hook.
He stared at her even harder than before, but all to no avail. An idea
occurred. He smiled at her in triumph. She smiled back, a trifle warily.
“You’ve got blood on you, too. He must have got covered in the stuff when
he was on top of you. I think we both know what happened here, don’t we?”
“We do?” she ventured.
“We do,” he affirmed. “Would I be right in thinking you’ve got the painters
in…? I’m afraid you’ve leaked all over him. Probably what gave the poor
fellow his heart-attack.”
She frowned at him.
He gave her a wink. Revenge was sweet.
#
Finally, they were on their way to the hut. Selene would get there soon
afterwards, Cherry assured him, if she was not there already. Takina would
be there, too. Only two of the four of them would be allowed into the time-
tunnel. The other two would die “for the viewers at home”. They were a
demanding lot, whoever they were and wherever they were hiding.
Question after question occurred to him. She shushed him to silence at first,
and bearing in mind she still had the dagger in her belt he decided that it
might be safer not to press the point. After all, she was not the woman he
thought she was, so who was to say what she might be capable of now her
secret was out?
But come midday she let him speak. “It’s all expert analysis at lunchtime,”
she said. “No live footage. We can say what we like for a bit.” Quite what
she was going on about was anyone’s guess!
“I need answers,” he told her. “There’s so many things I don’t understand
about all this.”
“You don’t always get answers,” she replied. “Ever seen “Lost”?
He shrugged, not having the faintest idea what she was rattling on about.
But it was time for her to talk. Where to start?
“You’re one of “them”, then”?
She gave that infuriating smile again. “Usually not. But I have been known
to dabble, from time to time.”
“You know what I mean. You’re working for the people who set all this
up.”
“Pretty much. I’m their star. I cost a fortune. But I’m worth every penny,
I’m told. They love me, at home.”
“So all that stuff you do; it’s all an act?”
“What stuff?”
He ran around in circles, waving his arms around ineffectually. “Oh, look
at me, look how beautiful I am! Haven’t I got the nicest bottom in the whole
world?”
“No, that’s the real me, alright. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And I’ve got it by
the bucketful.”
He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with this. He looked her in the eye.
She looked back in amusement. “Who are you, Cherry? Who are you
really?”
She shrugged. “Hard to say. I’m different things to different people.”
“Try.”
“Okay. I’m a mercenary. They pay me to run around in the Forest, looking
sexy, because it puts their ratings up. I do this every year. They tried to
replace me the year before last, but their ratings halved so they brought me
back again. Apart from looking gorgeous, it’s my job to look after you. The
viewers love you. It’s important that you win.”
“Me? Why me?”
“They have satellites all over the place. How can I explain that to you? Like
spy-holes, I suppose, where people all over the universe get to see what
you’re doing. They were doing a show about Hedral on the Geography
Channel, and they saw you and your friends saving the world. The viewers
loved it. Someone even wrote a book about it. So they decided to put you in
the Games. Make a star of you.
They wanted the others as well, but they had trouble finding them in time
for this year’s show. It takes a while to track people down when they
disappear into time-tunnels. They could be anywhere and any-when. They’ll
find your friends before long, though, and put them in next year’s Games.
Thane, Rod, all of them. I’m looking forward to starring opposite Thane; it
will be fun working with another mercenary. Less hard work, too.
This isn’t your past, by the way. It’s a set. The Castle, the Forest,
everything’s fake. Except the people. Most of them are real. Only one
ringer.”
He tried to make sense of all this, but failed. It was too much to take in. He
had more questions, but wasn’t sure he wanted to ask them. There didn’t
seem to be much point, when he didn’t understand the answers she had
already given. Eventually, he decided to press ahead anyway. It passed the
time, if nothing else.
“So where did you go, when you went into the tree? What was down there?
I thought it was the Underworld.”
“The control centre. You can see what’s going on with all the other
Candidates. I need to know where they are so they don’t take us by surprise.
Plus I get to have a couple of hours’ beauty sleep, without fear of having my
head bashed in by one of our lovely rivals.”
“But I might have had my head bashed in while you were gone!”
She shook her head. “No. I would’ve seen it on the cameras. Sorry, the spy-
holes I mean. Like with Ditherer. As soon as I saw him coming in your
direction, I came back to help you.”
“You left it pretty late.”
“Sorry. I was doing my nails. Don’t look at me like that. Have you seen the
state of them? You try staying well-manicured when you’re grubbing around
in a forest!”
“And it’s your job to look after me? So I win? You didn’t save me because
you wanted to, you saved me because they were paying you?”
“Yes, they’re paying me, but I would’ve done it anyway. I like you. You
remind me of my granddad.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Don’t mention it. Anything else you want to know? You’ve got about a
minute before we “Go live” again, and then we’ll have cameras – “spyholes”
– on us to the very end. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
“That speech of yours earlier. About you wanting me to like you best.
About you wanting me to think you were worth saving. You looked so sad;
so sincere. Was that all just an act, too?”
She stopped walking. She turned to face him. The laughter left her face.
“What I said back then. What I said. I - ”
She looked upwards, gauging the position of the sun. “Too late,” she said.
“Time’s up. We’ll live again any second.”
She marched on ahead of him. He scuttled along beside her. “Just nod,” he
begged. “You don’t have to say anything. Just nod, and I’ll know.”
But she ignored him. It was one question too many. But it was the question
he most needed answering.
#
It was just a hut; a normal every day hut. Rectangular, thatched roof, walls
made of dried mud. The only thing unusual about it was the metal door,
similar to the one inside the tree trunk. They had said it would be a hut, but
after everything which had happened to him since the Games had started, he
had expected something more imposing. It was almost something of an anti-
climax, if the truth be told.
It stood in the middle of a clearing. Cherry insisted that they skirt round it
before approaching it, to see if Selene was skulking around in the trees.
Halfshaft felt this was unnecessary; Amazons don’t “skulk”, he told her.
They’re