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Monday 8 October 2012

One of my favourite bits

Book one, Chronicles, is a lot more the children's book than book two, Virus, is. That's not to say I think it's a book for children. It's set inside one, so has to conform to more of the rules. By book two the story is starting to escape from those limitations, for reasons that you'd have to read the books to understand. This bit could probably only happen in book one, though, to be honest, I'm not even sure of that and I'm writing it. I still love this part, though, and want to find some excuse to keep the Geordie grannies in the story and give them more speaking parts. There are times in a writer's life when you find yourself loving what you've done and yourself for having done it. When I realised that I could pit Grandmothers against wolves, I hit one of those times.

Phoebe
I woke up in the morning and couldn’t think where I was for a moment. When I turned over I was looking into Brendan’s face from about two centimetres away. It gave me a shock. Then I remembered it all, running through the streets of Newcastle after someone had set fire to the house I was sleeping in. Where did they get off? That sort of thing can hurt people.
I thought about that thought and realised how silly it was. But it was natural. No one had ever tried to kill me before and I wasn’t used to the idea that they would want to yet.
It was all unreal. Like, we’d got away without being hurt, so it was ok, kind of. I’d been more shocked to wake up with Adam’s hand over my mouth, you’d guess, innit? But still, this wasn’t a lol.
I got up quietly and went outside. I needed to find a tree to go behind. It wasn’t till a lot later that I wondered why I’d gone outside. While I was having a pee I looked around. It was very early. What to do next?
The problem was how to get to Black River Bridge. Did we need to sort that out ourselves I wondered? Niall and Megs should be coming through the Gate sometime in the morning at the end of their week. The hours we’d passed would be days to them. I didn’t know how long had passed over here, but the sun was nearly coming up and it wouldn’t be long before someone would be coming through. It bothered me that there were no Duergars here to greet people, but I just thought we’d have to deal with that.
Ok, let’s think. If Niall had come back to the house any time that week, he’d have found it burned down and us gone. He might have checked the hospitals. Not finding us he’d guess that we’d come back through the Gate. Malaika would know how to do that, so he’d not be surprised. Then he wouldn’t have any hurry, ‘cos crossing before the end of the week’d just leave him wandering around in the dark, like us last night. So prolly he’d be coming through, but later.
Unless he was taking longer to find Liam than he expected. Umm. Or unless he was really worried about us being on our own on this side. Megs was off staying with her sister and she wasn’t sure how long that would go on for, but surely not more than a week. Well, not for sure. Maybe… then I saw the line of movement in the grass further down the hill. Men popping up out of the grass as if they were growing there. No. not men. I’d seen that happen in a DIV before. They were Warg.
I ran back to the hut. This time it was my turn to wake someone with a hand over their mouth. He nearly broke my arm.
“Sorry,” he said, “habit. What’s up?”
“There are a group of Warg further down the hill. They’ve just changed into men, so they’ll be walking slower, but we haven’t got much time to get away before they get here.”
“They’ve changed into men? What were they before?”
“Wolves.”
“Ah. And they can change back I’d guess. How many are there?”
“Dunno exactly. Maybe ten. Maybe more.”
“So we try to run.”
“I think they might have come looking for us. The ones we dealt with before were probably the ones who set the house on fire. They must have known we’d come back through the Gate to here. They probably think they can catch us sleeping. They’ll have changed into men ‘cos they’re smarter like that, but some of them’ll change back into wolves to sniff us out. Then they can run much faster than we can.”
“Okay, so we don’t try to run. What do we do?”
“Maybe I can mind-ride a bird and find us some runners that we can use to escape on.”
“How long will it take for them to get here?”
“I dunno. But I can’t think of…”
“Shh! Listen.”
There was a sound of voices from outside. Brendan moved to the door and peeked out.
“You have got to be kidding!”
“What is it?” I asked, but he’d gone out of the door.
I followed him, but could see what he was talking about as soon as I got out. There were people coming through the Gate. They were old people, old ladies, five of them. Brendan was running over to them, so I ran as well.
Most of them had the washed out look that a journey through the Gates gives you and one of the old ladies was swaying, propping herself up on a walking stick. She looked like she was going to fall over, so I held her arm to steady her.
“Ee, thanks pet. I’ve never liked coming through them Gates, they always gives us gip.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, we got the e-mail from young Niall, down the Community Centre like, and he said that Maldon was acting up again and that you two would be on your own over here and could we come through and look after ye like. So we’ve all come, all the lasses.”
They must have all been in their sixties and seventies; maybe eighties. What was Niall thinking of?
“But there are wolves coming! Lots of them! We’ve…”
“Howway bonny lass, divn’t fash yourself.” She patted my hand. “These are nowt but cubs and there’s only fifteen of them. We’ll take care of them for ye.”
“But you’re …” I started to say, when something broke from behind a bush, streaked towards the old lady and leapt. She raised her walking stick towards it without looking, there was a flash and something hit the thing so hard it flipped over twice and landed on the ground with a thump.
“Experienced pet. That’s what we are. Experienced. Howway lasses,” she called to the others, “See them off.”
She looked me in the eyes and I could see that hers were twinkling. They really were. She was enjoying this. Her face was getting firmer. Less wrinkly.
“I’m Jessie Loftus, and we’re what’s left of the Wolves cohort. Nice to meet ye hinney.” Then she went off to chase the wolves away.
Bren…Adam, looked on with a big cheesy grin on his face. “They’re from Wallsend.” He told me. “Made on Tyneside, built to last. They can probably deal with werewolves over there as well.”
Then he looked puzzled and asked, “Hey, did Alistair really write a cohort of Geordie grannies into his books?”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
He didn’t look so pleased at that.
“It’s changing the story,” he muttered.

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