The Princess and the North Star Chapter Nine: Black Dreams “Ah, there you are,” the classically-featured young woman in the elegant evening gown bade the travellers. “Do come in out of the terrible weather.”“Well thank you,” responded Cinderbelle the Christmas Fairy. In her job wandering the dreams of children to tell Santa who’d been naughty and nice she was used to abrupt changes in dreamscape, and the weather outside really was getting stormy. “I know this place,” Sarah Sheperdson realised with a grin. “This is Wendel’s Hallow, the Wilton Mansion. And I’ve met you before, very briefly, back during… when…” “During that awful business with the Hellraisers,” agreed Lady Marjorie Wilton. “Absolutely. Lovely to see you again, Dancer. Now come on in.” “We’re in the dreams of Sir Mumphrey Wilton,” Shep concluded. “He’s dreaming about his wife.” Madge nodded as she led them into the small drawing room (through the main reception hall and the small reception hall, past the smoking room and the snooker room, left by the gun room and the yellow dining hall, then second left after the long gallery). “It’s pleasant to visit the old fool occasionally in his memories,” she admitted. “Especially since he tends to remember me when I was young.” “It is good to remember people you’ve lost,” agreed Dancer. Cinderbelle seemed almost shy as she came into the room where Sir Mumphrey Wilton was smoking a cigar and reading the cricketing news. “Excuse me, Sir…” she ventured. Dancer was surprised to see Mumph looking young and fit and rather handsome. She realised that this must be how he tended to remember himself too. After all he’d spent the best part of a century at that physical age, before he’d put away his Chronometer of Infinity to age naturally with his wife and family. The eccentric Englishman jumped up as he realised ladies were present and hurried to offer them chairs. “Delighted to have visitors, of course, m’dears,” he told them. “Stormy night like this is no time for young ladies to be out in the dark.” “Do you know me, Sir Mumphrey?” ventured Dancer. “Of course I do,” Mumph assured her, leaving her to wonder whether his dream-self had recognised her as the Lair Legion’s Probability Dancer or mild-mannered waitress Sarah Shepherdson. “And your companion has about her the glow of faerie.” “I’m Cinderbelle, your excellency,” curtseyed the Christmas fairy, blushing deeply. “Um… do you have an elf?” “We’re looking for Zebulon,” Dancer explained. “He’s… borrowed… Cinderbelle’s bag of dream-walking fairy dust and he’s probably in one of the Legion’s dreams. We’ve been kind of… trailing him.” “And now you’re in my dreams, what?” Sir Mumphrey snorted, his face becoming more serious. “We, um, didn’t mean to trespass,” Dancer apologised hastily, glancing between Sir Mumphrey and Lady Wilton. They seemed fully clothed, but she realised that any reunion of Mumph and his beloved late wife was probably best not interrupted by passing visitors. “That’s not what he’s worried about, Dancer,” Madge assured them. “Mumphrey is just worried about how he’s going to keep you safe while you’re here. His dreams aren’t the safest places to be.” Cinderbelle jumped as the storm crashed nearer. The gas lamps flickered in their mantles. “I don’t… I’m not licensed for nightmares,” she whispered. “Only kind of dreams I seem to get these days,” sighed the eccentric Englishman. “You’d best go, m’dears. Before the storm breaks.” Dancer glanced at Madge. “Not safe?” “I’ll be staying, of course,” Lady Wilton told them. “The old idiot couldn’t get rid of me with a barrel of dynamite, and I’m not about to leave him alone when the monsters come.” “Zebulon’s not here,” Cinderbelle concluded quickly. “He’s never been here. We need to get on.” “What monsters?” demanded Dancer. “Mumphrey…?” The door slid open and a young girl in a billowing white nightdress pelted across the room into Sir Mumphrey’s arms. At first Dancer thought it was his grand-daughter Samantha, until she said, “Daddy, help me! The monsters are coming again!” Cinderbelle caught Sarah’s expression. “What is it? Who is she?” “Fiona Wilton,” Dancer answered with a chill in the pit of her stomach. “Their daughter. She was murdered. Tortured to death and murdered.” Cinderbelle looked around at the gathering shadows and shuddered. “We have to get out of here,” she told Shep. “Right now!” “Don’t worry, little one,” Sir Mumphrey told the child quivering in his arms. “I’ll keep you safe from harm. This time. Somehow.” The storm rattled the windows as its fury rose. “You go,” Dancer told Cinderbelle. “Look for Zeb, sort it out between the two of you. I hope you both get the happy ending you deserve. I’m staying here.” “It’s not safe here!” Cindy warned in mounting panic. “Dancer, you don’t know what these guilt nightmares can be like. They’re dangerous to dreamwalkers. We can die here!” “You go. I’m staying with my friend.” Madge noted the exchange and came over to them. “That’s very loyal,” she smiled at Dancer, “but it won’t do any good. The dream’s always the same. The monsters break in and we can’t stop them, can’t save Fiona, can’t fight back. So we die, horribly. Every time. Every night.” “Every night?” Dancer asked in horror. “Best you hide somewhere else in the house, what?” Sir Mumphrey suggested. “We’ll make our stand against the blaggards here.” “No!” Dancer protested. “You’re doing this wrong! You’re doing this all wrong!” “We’ve tried it lots of ways,” Madge answered. “All kinds of ploys and defences. Traps, hides, strategies. The monsters always win.” “You’ve not tried it the proper way, then!” Dancer argued. Outside the wind howled to its height, shattering the glass along the east of the drawing room. Fiona screamed. “And what’s the proper way?” Sir Mumphrey demanded, hefting a shotgun and glaring into the coming Blackness. “With a little help,” Dancer answered, “from your friends.” She slipped a comm-card from her leotard sash and thumbed the button. “Guys… Lair Legion, Line Up!” The monsters came through the windows. The Lair Legion came through the wall. Al B. Harper’s car was first, smacking into the lead monstrosity as MACH 1, spraying it across half the county. Then came CSFB!, trailing green and orange neon lights that seemed to burn the darkness. Then Donar rose amidst the tempest and lifted his baseball bat and made the storm his own. The monsters lunged forward, but the Lair Legion were waiting: Hatman and Epitome and De Brown Streak and Yuki and Nats and the Librarian and the Shoggoth and Lisa and Visionary and Trickshot and NTU-150 and ManMan and dull thud and Yo, racing forward to battle the night. “Sir Mumphrey,” Dancer told the eccentric Englishman, “you are never alone. You are never without friends. You call, we come. That’s how it works. That’s how we smite the ungodly.” “Jolly good,” approved Madge. “Hmph,” said Sir Mumphrey Wilton, his whiskered face breaking into a slow, satisfied smile. “Excuse me for a moment please, ladies. I have a job to do.” He rose up, hefted his shotgun in one hand and his temporal pocketwatch in the other, and joined the fray. “Wow,” swallowed Cinderbelle. “I think we’d better get out of here now,” Sarah advised. “Before he wakes up.” “He won’t be waking up yet,” Madge told them. She gave them a secret little wink. “Not before the good part.” “This isn’t the good part?” Cindy asked, watching the carnage the Legion was wreaking upon the ranks of the ungodly. “The part that comes after this, where the villains are defeated and the Legion have gone home and Fiona’s safely tucked in bed and Mumph’s alone with the love of his life, that’s better,” Dancer gently explained. “Let him be happy, if only for a moment.” “I shall do my best,” Marjorie Wilton promised them. Dancer and Cinderbelle slipped away and left the Legion with the mopping up. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
