Murphy found himself on the same dusty road he had been on when he arrived. The sun was still shining in the sky, and people were still going about their day to day business all around him. He felt like his eyes were out on stalks as he walked along behind Jake and Jacobi. He just couldn’t stop himself from looking around at everything. He was literally drinking in his surroundings, and he felt pretty soon he would find himself to be drunk!
First of all, every person here was so small. They were all his height or smaller – adults and children alike. They pottered around wearing very old fashioned clothing. They looked like something out of one of his beloved history textbooks. The men wore cloth trousers and shirts, the trousers made of a suede material, the shirts of a kind of cotton, and they had matching suede slipper type shoes in the same colour and material as their trousers. All of the colours were browns, beiges, greens – natural colours. They looked like they had made them out of the very landscape around them. They were clearly hard working people who took pride in themselves and their appearances. He wondered to himself whether they always dressed this way, or whether they were in their work clothes at the moment, for they were clearly all busy working on one thing or another. There were some chopping wood, some collecting branches and leaves, some working what looked like huge water mills attached to their homes and others wheeling around barrows full of building materials was his best possible description of the contents. Materials to build what exactly he wasn’t sure.
He continued on his way to he knew not where, following Jake more by good luck than by good management. He was so busy looking around him it was a wonder he didn’t end up getting himself irreversibly lost. The women here were also hard at work, wearing lovely dresses in the same kinds of materials as the men. They all seemed to favour having their hair plaited so that it was away from their faces, which made his heart lurch a little. It was exactly the way his mum had worn her hair most of the time. The women were carrying around the chopped logs, taking them into their homes and collecting up the branches and leaves also. They seemed to be surrounded by children too, each woman was obviously responsible for at least three children who fussed around them trying to help often (but actually getting in the way) and playing children’s games. Games he actually recognised; skipping, hopscotch, tag – they were just like any other young children he had met. Except they were really tiny. They scampered around the women happily, dressed in miniature versions (or even more miniature versions) of the adults clothing. Everywhere he looked, people seemed happy, and the whole area had an air of contentment wrapped around it. It seemed almost like a kind of sanctuary. A family sanctuary where people would move specifically to raise their youngsters.
At this point, Murphy noticed that they seemed to be walking straight through this village. He found that the cottages at the side of the road were becoming fewer and further between and that the road ahead was surrounded by nothing but fields, with what he supposed were farm houses in the distance. He caught up to Jake now that there wasn’t so much to divert his attention.
“So, Jake – when did you first hear about this world – the Montalians? Was it when you went missing back in June? Or did you know before then?” Murphy was curious about Jake, about what had brought him here.
“I have always known about the Montalians – I am one in fact.” Murphy’s face must have registered some kind of shock, as Jake was looking at him in amusement. “I know this is all such a shock to you, and there is a lot you still don’t know. We Montalians, as Jacobi rightly said, live in isolation from the human race, with only a select few knowing of our existence. We do however have to keep in touch with what is happening amongst the humans. One of the ways we are able to do that is by living amongst them, albeit in disguise. Because of our size and appearance, this is most easily done by appearing in the human world as children. It’s not easy to do – it involves some memory modification charms and other magic’s, but in this way we can keep up with developments more easily and therefore work better with you all. So, we send a few of our own to live as human children and to report back on what they discover in the human world. There are lots of us living with families all over the world. I am one of the ones chosen for this duty. It is a great honour to be able to live with the humans as one of their own.”
Murphy’s mind was reeling: Jake wasn’t human? “So, how old are you then really? You can’t be a child right? They wouldn’t send in a child to do this kind of work would they?”
“No, you are right Murphy. I am in human terms, around forty years old.” Jake let that sink in for a little while. He was worried that Murphy’s head might literally explode if he had to take in any more information at the moment. “But, I am able to pass for a child in the human world, and I love my job there. I have also come to love my human family. It really pains me to see them so distressed at the moment. I know that they think I am missing.” Jake’s face had fallen and he looked really upset. “Yes, that wasn’t part of the plan at all. It was a very hurried return to my home village – my grandfather has recently passed away – that prompted me to leave in such a rush. Normally, when I have to report back it is planned in advance. I attend a summer camp, weekend trip or visit some relatives elsewhere and my human parents are then none the wiser. But this time it was such a rush – the memory charms we left behind for mum and dad obviously didn’t work. And now they are so worried about me. It’s really dreadful.” Jake sighed deeply.
Murphy was still kind of struggling to take all of this in really. His friend (albeit not a really close friend – more of an acquaintance actually), smiley Jake, was in fact someone else entirely. And where he was really from, he was actually old enough to be my father! It was enough to seriously boggle the mind. How could his parents not know about this? How could they be so blind? They really never questioned when he disappeared for sometimes weeks at a time? It just didn’t seem right somehow. Although his excuses were pretty realistic he supposed: children did go away to camps and relatives all of the time. “How often do you come here? You can’t do it all of the time or people would get suspicious wouldn’t they?” Murphy still couldn’t quite believe that Jake had gotten away with this for such a long time.
“You’re right – I only visit when it’s really necessary. I have other ways of communicating at other times.” Jake smiled at Murphy and waved – just as he had that day in the mirror! Murphy understood: the mirrors can be used to communicate and to travel. How very clever.
Murphy looked up at the road ahead and saw a bridge over the road he was walking. It was the kind of bridge that was so rounded that if it carried on under the road it would form a perfect circle, and as you walked towards it you had the feeling you were heading down a tunnel to somewhere else entirely. It was made of creamy sandstone and each brick seemed to Murphy to have been carefully placed and designed to form that exact structure and arch before him. It was a lovely old bridge, set in amongst the green fields surrounding it, and Murphy felt he would have liked to have stopped and painted the scene. He knew it was definitely a scene his mother would have enjoyed. Trying to capture the vivid greens, and blues and yet capturing the subtlety of the sandstone and keeping it as the focal point for the painting would have been a real pleasure. He sensed that there wouldn’t exactly be time for painting on this occasion however.
They were heading as a group directly under the bridge and Murphy looked up to see the intricately crafted underside of the structure also. Everything looked so well thought out, with each individual brick seeming hand carved and measured for it’s individual spot. He could see they were heading for a particular area, exactly halfway along the wall of the tunnel they now found themselves in. They wouldn’t be clearly be visible from either end: it had obviously been designed with exactly that in mind. The depth of the bridge was perfectly proportioned so that at this mid point they had some level of invisibility towards any onlookers. Murphy registered this information almost subconsciously as he huddled round a curious looking stone with a large copperplate T written on it. They had formed a tight circle holding hands without Murphy even realising. Murphy looked from Jacobi to Jake apprehensively: he wasn’t sure of what was about to happen but he had a feeling it would yet again be something new (to him at least). He took a deep breath and readied himself for whatever may come next.
Jacobi cleared his throat and in a loud, clear voice said “London.” Murphy blinked and his whole world changed once more.
*
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