An otter and a mole with the power to teleport themselves
seemed a good place to go next and, though John agreed, he did have some
reservations. To get to the bottom of
them it was clear we would need some way for John to 'talk' to me as yes/no
questions and picture presentations could only get us so far.
When I was a teenager, me and some friends would regularly
spend weekends together at each other’s houses.
A few times when we were older, we would break into abandoned houses and
squat for that time. It was much drier
than camping and free from adult intrusion.
And much the scarier for the ouija boards. We freaked each other out with them for
years, it was so much fun. I remember it
stopped when God 'appeared' and told us to stop fucking about with the dead. Freddie never had enjoyed it as much as the
rest of us, he always seemed to take it a little too seriously. But there was a definite glint in his eye as
the religious twins, Bob Reynolds and Timmy Turpin, received this message from
God.
Anyway - I'd always kept one we made for use at my house as
a wee souvenir of those nights. We had
each taken a section of the board (letters, numbers or a combination of the
two) and designed our own tiles. Mine
had been very simple, infantile really, in comparison. While everyone else had created elaborate
designs for letters, I had simply written a big capital letter and done a
crappy drawing of something it stood for: an attempt at being funny, or cool, I
suppose.
My sixth of the circle was made up of Grass (a few upward
strokes of green felt tip and, something I believed to be a stroke of genius at
the time, a joint), a Hat (well, it was a red baseball cap), a rather flat
looking Igloo (complete with Eskimos keeping warm in an unrealistic absence of
clothing), Jelly (looking more like a sliced off breast, perhaps
unsurprisingly), a Kettle (complete with a pornographic Polly) and a Lemon
(which is how I now feel). So very
mature in those days was I.
Anywho - we used 'Y' and 'N' for the yes/no style questions
and the whole board for anything more complicated. And a subbuteo ball instead of a glass.
Using this method I discovered that the otter could turn
himself, and anything he chose on contact, invisible as well as teleport and
that an incantation was needed to summon either the otter or the mole, although
John only knew the one for the otter.
This second part I had already suspected. What I hadn't was that only he, she or it who
uttered the incantation would be able to converse with the creature summoned. It was a bit like the babel fish by all
accounts, or the stuff they get injected with in Farscape. But magic.
Finally I was going to be using magic against the unicorn. It felt good.
*
A few days later and I was summoning The Magical Otter. She agreed to help, said it sounded like a
bit of fun. So I showed her the clearing
and the van as she needed to know a certain amount about the start and finish
of the teleport.
In the very middle of that afternoon the unicorn appeared
and I watched and waited for the otter's move; waiting for the Unicorn to
disappear. But she never did. Instead I saw grass in an area the length and
width of an otter flatten and travel under the Magical Otter's body before
popping up again and the sudden appearance of said otter each time she put her
hands on the Unicorn's ankles and disappear upon their removal.
It was a failure, then.
But she did suggest the mole might be of more help. We both agreed the flattening of grass may
have been the problem and so the otter suggested the mole as a more stealthy
approach. The otter was even helpful
enough to provide me with the incantation.
*
A week later and I brought the mole to the clearing. The Magical Mole went straight to work
digging tunnels under the clearing so he could do his thing.
Which he tried at drink and biscuit time. The unicorn spotted the new lumps and bumps
in the clearing and instantly began to explore, scraping the earth away with
her hoof, foolishly alerting the mole to her exact whereabouts. Once she had dug deep enough he struck and
the unicorn vanished.
I rushed back toward the van to see my captured prey,
running faster than I ever had. I knew
something had gone wrong, though, when I saw the unicorn and mole appear on the
path about ten metres ahead of me and then disappear again quite quickly. And then it happened again about thirty
seconds later, this time to my left and at the foot of a sycamore tree. And then three more times; first by an elm,
then a primrose patch and finally close by a silver birch.
On my return to the van there was no one about. I had parked it on the grass that day as the
lay-by was halfway through renovation work and therefore cordoned off.
I jumped onto the back step and peeped through the back
windows. Nothing. I kept looking, hopeful of some change. After ten seconds or so it came. For a brief moment the unicorn and the mole
appeared - but not for long. It was like
a flicker of a candle or a television screen.
Then, a few seconds later, it happened again, this time for a bit longer
- but they hadn’t fully materialised enough for the mole to be able to let
go. They never came back again together.
Instead the mole returned half an hour later to apologise
and explain. The unicorn had
unexpectedly been able to control the teleportation, or, at least, to disrupt
it enough for the mole to lose complete control and to eventually tire him out
and force him to give up. We shrugged
our shoulders and parted. For me it was
back to the ouija board.
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