I'm still alive (part 3)

Well, here I am again, my short and shiny children. Here I am, once again, to tell you about the stuff that happened after the last stuff that happened. Yes, it is I.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the whole vortex, stabbing and related activities. Honestly, the things that happen to me these days.... I think it's high time we swapped back into the comfortable medium of the adjective-laden flashback. Whoosh!

***

No sooner had Grott flung the dagger into the swirling maelstrom in front of us, when I was suddenly gripped by a vice-like, icy sensation. It was over before I really had a chance to experience its full hideousness, which was probably just as well. Almost immediately something started to happen in the vortex in front of us. A bright light started to blossom in its depths, growing rapidly until it filled the whole chamber.

"Yes!" Grott said excitedly, "Yes! the tower's starting to move!"

I looked at him with an expression which I hoped indicated that moving the tower wasn't exactly on my top ten list of things to do that day, but he didn't seem to notice. The light from the vortex grew brighter and brighter, though strangely without seeming to hurt my eyes, until I could feel the warmth of it on my face.

Grott turned around to face us.

"Well," he said cheerfully, "Anyone fancy a cup of tea?"

***

About ten minutes later, we were all back upstairs in the kitchen. A cup of tea in the hand was little comfort when all you can see out of the window resembled an advanced kind of screen saver with complicated swirly bits. There hadn't seemed much choice but to follow Grott's suggestion, but I was beginning to feel like some kind of small leaf being swept along in a flood.

Looking at Grott sipping at his tea and grinning knowingly, you'd have been hard pressed to believe he was running around in a blind panic mere minutes ago. You'd also have been hard pressed to believe he was the same Grott as the one who'd been my helpful and warty sidekick for so long. Honestly, the feeling of embarrassment was the one that struck me the most. All those times he'd bumbled around doing my general bidding, and all that time he was just pretending - it didn't bare thinking about! I can't believe I had him pour custard all down the stairs for an indoor skiing extravaganza, or that time I had him as the chief umpire and jam spreader of the Toast Olympics. Err.... don't worry yourself too much about that one. Still, life is full of disappointments, like that time in my childhood when my giant, invisible panda friend told me I have a poor grasp on reality. [Note to self : remove that awful joke, it was a real stinker]

I looked around. From the looks on my companions' faces, it seemed the torrent of questions was only being held back by the weird experiences of the last half hour. Suffice to say, despite the fact that they'd only had themselves to blame for being daft enough to come along in the first place, something told me they weren't exactly overjoyed at the situation they now found themselves in.

"So," said Grott, looking at each of us penetratingly with his beady black eyes, "I expect you're wondering what's going on?"

"Well funny you should say that," said Nigel the Gnome sarcastically, "I was kind of wondering. Just don't give us that 'there isn't much time' crap again, else you'll feel the tip of my pointy hat right where it hurts."

"Oh, do be quiet," said Grott condescendingly. Nigel looked at him darkly, then over to Gorgrod. I think he was considering getting the troll to give Grott a swift bit of treatment with his hob-nail boots.

"I do admit," continued Grott, "That I was indeed having a small amount of fun at your expense. I didn't realise that blasted wizard would show up right in the middle of it though, so I suppose I'd better apologise for that."

"Look," I interjected, "Before we go any further, I can't help asking: should I still call you Grott?"

The others looked put out at me asking daft questions at a time like that, but it was kind of important to me. I remember when he first moved into the tower I'd asked him his name, at which point he'd made one of his famous gurgling noises and rushed over to the kitchen table, scrawling a semi-illegible word that I could only interpret as 'Grott' on the back of an old newspaper. Ah, I can't help feeling nostalgic, those were simpler times indeed. *sigh*

Grott smirked.

"Yes, you can continue to call me that, I find it amusing enough. If truth be told, I don't really have a name, my illustrious master didn't see fit to give me one, so therefore I have no real need for one."

"Your master?" I asked, hoping this would lead him in the right direction.

"Yes, the Lord Telvarin, the greatest wizard the world has ever seen. This, as I said previously, was his original home; his first mage tower. It was here he hid his greatest secret, the source of his absolute power."

"Well, that's very interesting, you know," I replied awkwardly, "But what's going to happen to us, and how exactly do we fit into all of this?"

"Well, everyone but you is here by pure chance. When you arrive a few years ago, I really couldn't help but let you in. You know, I was created solely for the purpose of looking after this place, but even I get bored sometimes. There didn't seem much harm in letting you move in, it gave me something to fill the time with."

"How long have you been here?" Maevrin chipped in, "Didn't Venedir Telvarin disappear?"

"He didn't disappear!" said Grott, with a sudden irritability that surprised us, "He is merely away from home for a while. And in answer to your first question, I have been waiting for four hundred and seventy eight years."

There was a long pause. I contemplated asking if that entitled him to a free bus pass, just to try and improve the mood a bit. Maevrin's expression had changed to something approaching pity.

"Don't you kind of, well, lonely hanging about here all on your own?" said Maevrin hesitatingly.

"No I don't!" Grott replied, "I knew someone would ask me that the first time I saw you lot come in the door! Didn't I say I was created specifically to look after this place? Of course I don't need any company, I just get a bit bored from time to time. Got that?"

"OK, OK," said Nigel, "Calm down, she didn't mean no harm. All I want to know is, what was with all that destruction outside, that wizard bellowing at us, and how does it fit in with Ivan?"

"Well, at last a sensible question," said Grott, "Well, the truth is, the last thing I expected to happen was that Eldrigar showing up. I don't know how he did it, but he must have discovered how to tap the same source my master learned to, all those years ago. He must have been drawn to the general location of the tower, but I don't think he realised at first what the tower actually contained. His presence totally disrupted my ability to move this place away from harm, forcing me to boost the tower's power with him over there."

Grott gestured towards me. What a fine and heady sinking feeling I felt at that moment.

"What exactly have you done to me?", I asked, wondering if I wanted the answer.

"Oh, nothing much. I just hooked up your soul to the tower's spacial uplink, nothing to worry about. I'd been trying to do it via that horrible drink I've been making for you these last few weeks, the only surprise being that you actually liked the stuff. Anyway, more drastic measures were needed, hence the drop of blood. I'd put a plaster on that wound if I were you, I didn't get a chance to sterilise that dagger."

Oh, what a relief he was so concerned about me! Hooked up my soul?

"What do you mean, hooked up my soul? I'm supposed to take that calmly, am I? What's it going to do to me?"

"Look," said Grott irritably, "I told you already it's nothing to worry about. It's not going to do you the slightest harm, and as for why, when you understand the complexities of hyper-dimensional spatial folding you can come and tell me what the best course of action is."

"Alright," I said, "I just don't know why you couldn't use your own soul if you needed one."

Grott paused, grinning nastily. He seemed to be pausing for effect.

"That would be because I don't have a soul. You can't create a soul."

I'm fairly sure he only said that to freak us out. It pretty much worked.

"Err, well, OK, so what's the plan from here, then?" asked Nigel, trying to move things off the disturbing, "You know, I only came along in the hope of a bit of free junk to take down the car boot sale next Saturday, I didn't sign up for all this freaky stuff. Where are you taking us and when can I get out?"

"I'm taking you to the other side of the world, where hopefully the tower will be safe for the time being, while I think what to do. You're all free to go when we arrive, of course."

This was not met with approval.

"The other side of the world?!" we all said in chorus, like the cast of some dodgy old cartoon.

"Yes, you'll be free to go after that."

There was nothing much you could say to that. Nigel nodded to Gorgrod, who stepped forward menacingly. Grott didn't bat an eyelid.

"Right," he said, "I've just about had enough of all this. Take us back somewhere near where we were and drop us off, or my troll friend here'll give you something to think about. Well?"

Grott looked positively bored. I was about to tell Nigel to stop it, when it seemed he'd made up his mind.

"OK, then, let him have it!"

But as Gorgrod lunged at Grott, his great fists swung through nothing but fresh air as Grott had shot out of the kitchen door, down the hall and out of sight so fast it was frightening to behold. The only thing faster I'd ever seen was Nigel closing the internet browser on the works computer when the supervisor came in.

"Now what did you go and do that for?" I asked, turning to a stunned looking Nigel. "Unless you hadn't noticed, we're in the middle of something way beyond our understanding, and you go and try to beat up the one guy that can explain it all!"

After the usual round of recriminations, we searched the tower from top to bottom, bar the strange chamber below, as the stone covering the entrance seemed to have sealed it up again. We shouted out to Grott to forgive us and come out, but there was no sign of him. From the windows, all we could see was an eerie pattern of purplish stars swirling silently against absolute blackness.

"Well," said Maevrin, as we stood dejectedly in the kitchen again, "What are we going to do now, then? Just who's bright idea was it to head over here was it in the first place?"

"Well, it was you that told me this place was still standing, what else was I supposed to do?" I retorted.

"Oh, forget it," she said, bitterly. "I'm going to go and steam some stamps off that heap of old envelopes in the corner, it helps me think."

We all stared at her as she started boiling some water, partly in that we found it difficult to believe anyone could have come up with such a course of action in the circumstances, and partly because we didn't have anything better to do. Just to let you know, dear readers, the pile of old envelopes in the corner doesn't have a secret identity and should play no further part in the proceedings. Just in case you were wondering, I'd saved them to write my shopping lists on the back. Thank you for your time, normal service will now be resumed.

In the end, there was nothing much we could do but try and make ourselves as comfortable as possible, so we raided the cupboards for some canned food and dragged enough random bits of soft furnishing upstairs to my room to make it comfortable enough for everybody to lie down. The only reason we went in my room was that if there was any sleeping to be done, I decided I'd be doing it on my own bed, and in the circumstances of being in a tower creepily floating through goodness knows what with Grott lurking somewhere about I don't think anyone wanted to be on their own, even with Gorgrod's flimsy grasp of what was going on.

As we were installing ourselves in my bedroom, there came a slightly unsettling change in our surroundings. Dimly at first, then more distinctly, we could hear a sort of low, groaning sound coming from outside, or possible more like a deeper version of the creaking of an old wooden sailing ship in heavy weather. This was accompanied by the occasional faint vibration that seemed to be running throughout the tower. I don't have to tell you, this didn't really improve our enjoyment of the the evening's events. For want of something better to do, I tried sending out an account of our exploits on the computer, but it came out all garbled and weird, as you probably saw. We sat around morosely staring out of the window and listening to the strange sounds rumbling around the tower. You know, the only person I could think of who had any experience with teleporting castles was Count Duckula. What he would have done at a time like this?

After what must have been an hour or two, without the slightest warning something happened that woke Maevrin (who'd been dozing off on the sofa cushions) and made the rest of us sit up in surprise. Suddenly in place of the darkness, there was now bright light, like sunlight, shining through the windows. It was sunlight.

We all crowded around the window, blinking as we took in the view that now presented itself.

We were in the middle of a perfectly tranquil garden. White gravel paths radiated out from where the tower stood, and between them were immaculate arrays of flowers and shrubs, elegant trees and swathes of pristine grass. The light, now our eyes had got used to it, was mellow. It seemed to be the late afternoon; the sun was sinking quite low in the sky, casting warm shafts of light between the trees and long shadows. In the Nigel pushed open the windows, and the smell of the flowers wafted in.

"Where are we?" breathed Nigel.

"I haven't the faintest idea," came a now familiar squeaky voice from behind us.

Grott had reappeared. He was casting his beady eyes over us once again.

"I trust you're not planning on setting your bulbous friend on me again, are you now?"

"No, we're not," I said firmly, before Nigel had a chance to say anything. "Now, could you hold on for just one moment, please?"

I took another look out of the window. There wasn't a soul in sight, it really did seem peaceful. I had pretty much had enough for one day.

"Are we in any immediate danger?"

"No," replied Grott, "Not as far as I can see. Aside from the fact that I can't explain why we've materialised four hours early in a completely unknown place, other than that, there is no apparent danger. The view's the same around the whole tower, and I don't sense anything obviously dangerous going on. The tower's defences are fully active."

"Right, then," I said, "You can keep an eye out, can't you? I've had just about enough of all this for one day. The sun will probably be setting out there in a few hours, and I for one would feel a lot better tackling things after a good night's sleep."

Grott grimaced.

"Oh very well, then," he said, grumpily, "You can all stay here for the time being, at least until I've figured out what's going on. And yes, I can keep a lookout - have you ever seen me sleep?"

"OK, that's enough of the creepy stuff for one day," I said briskly, shooing everyone towards the door, "Everybody out, I want to close the door, have a good sulk and pretend all this isn't happening for a few hours, I suggest you all do the same."

"But, where can I sleep?" said Maevrin as she was hustled through the door.

"Oh, there's an old room downstairs with a bed in, you can have that. I never use it."

"What about me?” said Nigel, who was trying to avoid Gorgrod's boots.

"I'm sure you can find somewhere," I replied, "Try the bread bin in the larder, you're small enough."

Something told me that remark would probably be noted down and avenged at a later date, but I didn't really care right then. Gorgrod looked as if he was about to say something, but I cut him off before his lumbering brain processes came to an end point.

"Not now, please, save it for the morning!" I said to him, knowing trolls didn't really need anything but a floor to sleep on.

With one final "See you tomorrow!" I shut the door behind them and leant on in, sighing. What a day! I suppose I wouldn't be turning up for my afternoon shift the next day at the factory, though there really were more important things to worry about than that. I closed the window and pulled the curtains, first taking a quick look at the view. I have to say, it really was the most beautiful garden I'd ever seen. The colours were so rich, yet kind of dreamy and otherworldly. In the distance, I could see the garden ended in a tall, deep green hedge, and beyond it a succession of round, green hills stretched away as far as the eye could see.

Well, it turned out that I didn't feel as sleepy as I thought, so after lying on the bed for a while, I got up and switched on my computer again to update my loyal internet minions on my recent adventures, which is, of course, what you've just finished reading. Why did I divide it into three parts? Well, why not, it makes it more fun. Seems the internet connection is working properly now, though please don't ask me how it works in the first place because I haven't got a clue.

Oh well, at this point we've arrived at the present tense. It's got dark outside, and after all that typing, I think a good sleep is on the cards after all. Tomorrow I'll have to go out there and find out what's going on, something I have decidedly mixed feelings about. I suppose this stuff is more exciting than shuffling around the place then going out to get my dole money, but really, I could do without any more weirdness. Let's all hope that the foreboding note about weirdness at the end of the previous sentence won't come back to haunt me. Well, I can but hope.

OK, bye for now....