WisteriaDrapedWishingwells

It is odd what we perceive when we see someone walking down the street or sitting on a train. If they are male, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase one might be likely to immediately get a picture in their head of a nice house behind a white picket fence. They might see two cars parked in the driveway beside the manicured lawns and not to be forgotten, the two children, one girl and one boy. As one looks at him, one might think that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and that he is University educated and probably a member of the 'old boys' club. And his wife? One might presume her to be charming and adept at the art of baking, sewing and the nurturing of his children. But we really don't know anything about them at all. Our minds formed an idea based upon what we have learned from previous experience with people who may have looked just like the person we just saw and presumed all those things about.
Behind every man sitting on a train or racing his way through the early morning traffic is a real person. That real person was someone's baby, someone's brother, son or father. There is a real story behind him, there is a real live heart beating beneath his chest and he is staring straight back at you thinking his own thoughts about you. His thoughts about you will be formed from the very same things that your's were about him.
The old adage that tells us 'never to judge a book by the cover', might be appropriate to bring to mind right at this moment. You see, looks can be deceiving. Take for example the pictures at the top of this story, swords, castles and a dragon. One would be forgiven for assuming that this story might be about a damsel in distress being kept in a tower at the hands of a merciless dragon. That somewhere along the way, a knight in shining armour is going to gallantly rush in on his white steed and rescue her. Well, it sort of is...and yet it is not.
This story is about the meanest man who ever lived, and although it might sound like a bit of an over statement, for those who found themselves at the mercy of this man, a truer word has never been spoken. The man was so mean that some used to dream of ending him while he slept, and yet anyone outside of the immediate world of the man would have been shocked to the very core to hear this.
He was a good man. He was the 'bread winner' and his wife, a darling of the mid-sixties, stayed at his castle and took care of their eight children. Yes he went to work every day in his chariot, gallantly fighting the traffic and running every orange light so that he would get to work bang on eight. Everyone knows that an orange light at an intersection simply means 'put your foot down buddy or you'll be stuck there for the next five minutes'. He was very efficient at never getting stuck at a red light and was, in fact, the envy of the other men at his place of work.
He was also the hub of his work place, helpful and always ready to lend a hand and he was also the life of it. Whenever someone needed cheering up he was always at the ready with a racist joke to tell that would have his 'all white' colleagues in fits of laughter. It was the mid-seventies the days where swing ball, fondues and racist jokes were all the rage. Yes, he was 'the man'. But after five when he got home, he became a beast. Like the Hydra that refused to die, the more that you tried to kill it, the bigger and meaner it became. A more merciless creature there never did exist and neither did a more hated man.
When he walked into a room, an icy hush fell over it and that which was two seconds earlier animate now sat there inanimate. Even breath was a challenge to squeeze out without offending him and incurring his wrath! Quietly, deathly silent the children would sit while secretly berating themselves for being stupid enough not to be outside and thus out of his line of vision when he arrived home. He would stand there in the icy atmosphere of the cold, dank room, his blue beady eyes scanning the space before him for the slightest wrong look or inappropriate movement. Like a snake his tongue would be quivering and jiggling inside his mouth as he hissed just waiting to strike out.
His serpent queen would be sitting there just waiting for the opportunity to tell the tales of the day and then derive pleasure from witnessing the torment that Hydra would bestow upon some fool child! It was not a home. It was the castle of doom and Hydra was the King and he ruled with a fist of steel and a will of iron. God help any child who fell afoul of Hydra, for no one else would!

Life is a bitch and then you die...Everyone knows that saying, but it's the bit that happens between it turning into a bitch and the dying that you should be really concerned about. You see, life has a way of taunting you with a horrible thought and you think to yourself, as the thought flits around in your head, "I would just never ever want to end up there...or live that way." Then darn it if life doesn't just turn around and dump your sorry ass in the exact situation or place that you just lamented the possibility of ever landing in. I don't know why life does that, it just does! Perhaps there is some kind of big secret entity listening in on your very private thoughts and as soon as you begin to lament an idea, it says, with great shrieks of joy, "AHA...GOTCHA!" and kabam...there you are in the worse thing you could ever have imagined. The only thing that makes it worse is that you took the time to imagine what it might be like to end up there. But, as the cold shiver ran down your spine, you shook the thought off and returned to your happy version of reality.
Well, that's what happened to a girl by the name of Alia and she was nine years old...just. As soon as the woman parked outside the castle, Alia wondered if she would even make it to ten, you see, she had been there before. Two years previous to that terrible day when the woman parked outside 'his' castle, she had stayed for just a weekend but it was a weekend that was ingrained into her mind as the worst weekend of her life. That was when she had thought 'that thought' "I would hate to have to ever live here...I am so glad that I don't." If Alia had understood the true nature of life then she would have known better than to think such a thought, but she didn't so thought away she did.
She had been staying with a really nice couple and she had thought that she would be living there, but come the end of the summer holidays, at the start of February, her things were packed into boxes and bags and off she went, yet again. The lady who had picked her up hardly spoke to her at all. She had not wanted to have to ride all the way to that village just to have to pick a kid up and ride all the way back again; but that was her job. Stinking hot day or not, someone had to do it.
Alia had known that there was a problem the moment that the woman parked in the chariot outside the tower and then took her up to the top floor and told her to sit down on a chair and wait. She watched the people running around sending pages with parchments to this person and the next, and within ten minutes she knew for sure that she was their latest 'crisis'. Alia resented being their latest problem and she also resented the fact that she had to sit and listen to them pleading with people to take her, even if it was only for a few weeks until they could sort something else. That was the first time she thought it, that terrible gut wrenching thought, "No one wants me." Everyone else was surprised that it had taken her so long to come to that conclusion, there had certainly been many major clues along the way. At the end of the day, as pitifully pathetic as 'No one wants me,' may sound, it was true; no one wanted Alia.
She was kind of like something that you buy on sale, you know? You don't really need it and you most certainly can exist without it, but maybe one day you might find a use for it and who knows? It might even become a favourite. Worse case scenario, you can always chuck it out or give it to someone else.
Alia was damaged goods; abused and not good with adults,...she was also past her 'used by date'. Once a kid hit nine or ten, then the teen years were not far away and no one wanted kids that age and no one knew it better than Alia. When they finally found somewhere for her to go, she knew that she would have to be all meek and grateful. That was just the way of things, she was supposed to be happy and grateful that someone had actually agreed to take her in, but she never was. She was not grateful because she never asked to be in that position and she never asked to be put into a complete stranger's house. So why should she be grateful for something that she never wanted or asked for in the first place? Why should she be grateful for what other kids her age had as a right of birth?
It was not nice to know that she was not wanted and very often she would look at some people just willing them to be her life boat in the ocean of humanity that she was slowly drowning in before everyone's eyes. Except that no one ever really saw Alia, no one REALLY saw Alia at all. Not helped by the fact that most of the people that Alia looked to, as potential lifeboats, were either on television or staring at her from someone else's bedroom wall or album cover. Perhaps she always zeroed in on the unattainable because then it wasn't personal when she got ignored?
With real people, sure they saw a dark-haired blue-eyed child, but they never saw 'her'. Often times what they saw was an object of curiosity, something to be wary of or maybe a person to feel sorry for. Perhaps, like a new car, they'd take her for a test-drive, but as soon as they discovered that she did not corner too well in the slick, then that was that.
This time they had nowhere for her to go. There was no room in the inn...not even a solitary spot in someone's stable and so they were having to think very fast on their feet. Alia felt kind of weird knowing that she was homeless because that had never happened to her before; there was always somewhere to go. Not this time though and so they took what they could get and what they got was a spot for her in the castle of Hydra!
Alia sat in the chariot outside Hydra's castle with the woman and she looked at her and said, "Not here...Please don't take me in there."
The woman then began spouting all the virtues of Hydra and his Serpent Queen, but Alia was not fooled for a second. She had no doubt that life was about to take a nasty turn for the worse and that she was about to become Hydra's latest plaything. She was powerless to do anything to stop it! She then told Alia to get out of the chariot and to grab some of her things to take inside. Alia was tempted to run there and then, but where was she going to go? So she grabbed some things just as the lady had asked her to do and they began to make their way across the mote and up to the castle door.
Hydra and Serpent Queen were at the castle door by the time that the woman and Alia got up the steps to knock on it. Hydra gave Alia a look as if to say, "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Alia averted her eyes when Hydra gazed down upon her and she just knew that it was a mistake that she would pay for later because that is what Hydra did. Serpent Queen just stared down upon Alia and said nothing at all, but she did invite the woman with her down to the formal lounge. Alia had no choice but to go with them and, as it turned out, the woman could not stay long. When she stood up and said that it was time to go Alia almost puked right there and then.
Once the woman was gone, Alia felt abandoned, and she was home sick for the people whom she had just left. She longed to be back in their backyard with the overgrown green grass where she could sing herself away. Singing herself away usually worked really well, but somehow she just knew that it would take more than singing to switch off life in Hydra's castle. Hydra and Serpent Queen moved to the kitchen and made Alia go with them so she went. While she sat at the table, Hydra would not let her mind escape his presence or his will.
She didn’t really know how she knew it was going to be so awful there with Hydra. Sure she knew it was going to be unpleasant, but she had not imagined, even for one solitary moment that it would begin the very second she fell into his hands. Yet the second she had looked at him, as they had sat in the lounge, she felt a terrible icy chill run down her spine. It was as though she had some kind of nasty sixth sense that liked to pre-warn her about sadistic pricks, especially the ones that she couldn’t do anything about.
While they say in the kitchen, Serpent Queen told Alia that she was going to share a room with two other girls, Genny and Kim. (The bedroom Alia shared with Kim and Genny was quite big so the three of them had their own bed and dressing table against a wall. Alia's was positioned right under the window. Kim was three years older than Alia was, she was twelve, and Genny was one year younger than Alia.)
Alia nodded her head because she just did not have the emotional energy to speak and that was the first time that Hydra hit her. “Don’t just bloody nod your head, aren’t we good enough to be spoken to, you high and mighty little cow?" Hydra slapped her hard around the head again. The blow hurt Alia's head a lot but she refused to cry.
Hydra became enraged by Alia's lack of emotion and so he screamed, “Look at me when I bloody speak to you.” His face was red and he was leaned down over Alia who was small for her age anyway. Alia refused to look at him because she was scared she’d cry and she didn’t want him to see that he had made her cry. Hydra yelled again, “You stuck up little bitch, think you’re better than the rest of us do you?”
Alia shook her head. That was not what she was thinking at all. Hydra then leaned over and shook her by her arm and said, “Yes you bloody well do. I think you need a new name, what do you think?" he asked his Serpent Queen. "A new name for our Miss high and mighty?”
Serpent Queen was a fat, ugly, horrible woman and she just sat there with all her fat oozing off the sides of the chair and out the back of it like the fat was as afraid of her as Alia was, and was trying to make a desperate escape. Serpent Queen nodded to his question; laughed then said; “I’m going to get you sorted, Alia! You mark my words.”
Hydra laughed heartily at his Serpent Queen. “You’ll get her sorted? Take a number and get in line.” For a few moments Hydra just sat there staring into Alia's face and then made his decision; “Yeah that’s what we’ll call her, Garbo. Greta Garbo, the lady who thinks she’s too good to talk to anyone, just the same as you ya little snob.”
Serpent Queen laughed at the idea of Alia being called 'Garbo' and all her fat jiggled as she did so. The only thought inside Alia's mind at that moment was how revolting Serpent Queen looked.
Alia soon started to hate Greta Garbo and she wished that Greta Garbo had never been born. She didn’t even know who she was or what she looked like, but she knew that because of her, that her life was being made a misery. Soon she would be overheard muttering, "Look out, Greta Garbo. One day I'm going to find out who you are and beat the living shit out of you for being such a such a snob!"
It only took a few days for Alia to discover that Hydra had nicknames for the kids he hated the most. Kim was known as 'Maggot' because Hydra said that she was 'thick and she stunk'. Tommy, a boy who was two years older than Alia was named 'Nigger' by Hydra. No one else had a nickname, just the three of them because they were the ones that appealed to Hydra the most because they came off as being the weakest most vulnerable of the eight.
Alia soon learned that it didn’t matter what she did around Hydra, who was a sadistic prick, it was never right. Alia would soon discover that no matter what she did or said that it was never going be right because he would never let it be so. She would come to know that it would be this way even before she did anything and that it would be this way every time. And Hydra knew no mercy; his cruelty knew no bounds. But at that point, Alia did not quite comprehend just how deeply ingrained into the psyche of Hydra was the need to be cruel; vicious even. But she soon would.

That night when it was time to eat, Alia was sitting in the lounge with the other kids just watching television. Hydra walked in and said to the kids, "Tea time."
Alia watched as the other children quietly stood to their feet and walked out of the lounge, and so she did the same. She followed them out of that room and into another which was the kitchen. In the kitchen there was two big tables with chairs all around them, one was for the boys and the other for the girls. But in the corner of the room, away from the two main tables, was a small table with two chairs positioned so that who ever sat on them faced the wall. Alia found out that the small table was the ‘disgrace table’. On the very first night when Hydra told her to sit down because it was ‘tucker time’, she sat down at the girl’s table. She was just following everyone else because no one told her where she should sit.
Hydra became annoyed and yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You don’t sit there, get over to the disgrace table with Tommy; none of us want to look at you while we’re eating, you’ll make us vomit.”
(I’m not even going to write the name Hydra used for Tommy, it is too offensive. Hydra was a racist prick and I'll hate him until the day I die!)
Alia went and sat down at the small table beside Tommy who gave her a sympathetic smile because he felt sorry for Alia. But Tommy was glad that he did not have to not sit alone any more. Alia and he could be outcasts together. Hydra started screaming at Tommy to tell Alia what the rules of the disgrace table were, because he could not tolerate any more mistakes on her part that evening. She was irritating him and just looking at the girl got his heckles up! In a very quiet voice Tommy said, “No talking, no turning around.”
“That’s right, and why, Tommy? Tell Garbo why?” he screamed at Tommy like a demented man.
“Because no one wants to see our ugly faces when they’re eating because we’ll make them sick and we’re not good enough to speak to.” Tommy looked at Alia and gave her yet another sympathetic look. Alia just sat there thinking, "I'm sure it wasn't this bad last time...was it?"
“That’s right, you’re both too retarded to have an intelligent conversation anyway.”
Serpent Queen put the other kids plates on the table in front of them and they picked up their knives and forks to eat. Tommy and Alia weren’t allowed a knife or fork and so had to eat with their fingers. Hydra yelled, “And those bloody plates better be spotless when you’ve finished too Garbo, or there’ll be hell to pay.”
Tommy used his fingers to start eating, and that’s when Alia realised he was serious and so she copied Tommy. That’s also when she realised the only way the plates could be cleaned when they’d finished eating was through licking them. Alia couldn’t believe it; she’d actually managed to sink to a new low! Both Alia and Tommy felt awful sitting there with their backs to Hydra. Every now and then they could feel Hydra’s eyes boring through the back of their heads while he looked for a reason to get up and strike out at them. The worst of it was that they never knew when he was going to up and do it. When Hydra did, not only did it hurt, but it also gave them one hell of a fright because by the time Hydra got round to doing it, they had forgotten to remember that it might be coming soon. Once dinner was finished Hydra called Alia over to where he was sitting and he asked her, “Have you got a hair brush?”
Alia thought that to be an odd question, but she nodded her head. Hydra then asked if it was a nice hard hairbrush? When Alia said it was, Hydra made her go down to her room and get it for him. If she had known what he was going to do she would’ve gone back and told him it was gone. But she had no idea what Hydra was up to so she did what she was told and went to her new room to get her hairbrush. When he saw it he said to Alia, “Oh, good, it’s nice and hard, wood’s the best too, the Baron buy you this?”
Alia just nodded her head because by then she was starting to realise that Hydra was going to hit her with it, but she couldn’t think why. "What did I do wrong that Hydra wants to hit me? Surely he will tell me what it is that I did first?" she thought to herself, as she stood there in front of him.
“They must have known you were coming here. I want to play a game with you Garbo, it’s called Tin Soldiers. Do you want to know how to play?” Hydra smiled at Alia and she was rather confused by that time.
Alia nodded her head, what else could she do? She already knew that one must never say no to Hydra. She wished she were big enough and brave enough to smash Hydra's face in, but she wasn't; she was just a kid. Hydra explained the game to Alia. “You have to march across the room for me with your arms straight like a soldier and your nose held as high up in the air as you can, understand? And you better march properly.”
All the kids sat at the table staring at Alia, except for Tommy who was forbidden to turn around to look. Hydra yelled, “Now march Miss. High and Mighty, march.”
Alia began to march feeling very stupid in doing so, but what else could she do? Hydra smiled, so Alia smiled too thinking that maybe it was going to be a fun thing after all. Alia never really was very smart when it came to adults and their games. Hydra suddenly became enraged and went all psycho and screamed at Alia, “Did I say you could bloody smile?”
Alia shook her head and said, "No."
But that just made things worse and he yelled at her, “Did I say you could bloody talk?" He looked at the others sitting at the table watching and he asked again, "Did I say she could talk?”
Serpent Queen began to laugh and Alia could see all her disgusting fat jiggling around like a huge bowl of jelly. Alia hated that Serpent Queen more than she had ever hated anyone before, aside from Hydra. Alia thought to herself, as she stared at Serpent Queen, "You should be sent to the glue factory!"
Alia had completely lost focus by then and Hydra jumped to his feet and began screaming right into her face. But Alia had had enough and she was thinking about something else. She could feel Hydra's hot breath on her face and she could see his mouth moving, but she was not there any more. She was on the grass, flat on her back staring up at the stars watching them shooting too and fro across the sky. Alia was waiting for one to fall to add to her collection of all the others that she had caught when they had fallen. Just as she was about to catch another, Hydra hit her with the hairbrush rather harshly too. Alia saw her star hit the ground and she knew that it was gone, so she stopped trying to catch any more and she cried.
“Did I say you could bloody stop Garbo, well did I?”
By then Alia was so confused as to what she was supposed to do and what she wasn’t that she didn’t know what to do. That happened a lot when she 'skipped out' of their moments.
Hydra yelled at her, “You keep marching until I tell you to stop.”
So Alia marched and marched, across the room and back again. For the first few times she felt self-conscious about doing something like that in front of the other kids, but before long she was not alone. Either side of her she saw that there was at least seven other soldiers wearing armour. Behind her there were so many other rows of soldiers that she simply could not count them. They marched and marched across the green grass below the castle. Alia looked up at the castle for a few moments and it looked magnificent. It was huge and made of brown stone and there were so many towers she could hardly count them all. The clouds in the sky above the castle were all pinks and purples on account of the sun that was fast setting. Alia's attention was then placed squarely upon Hydra who sat upon his grey horse screaming at them, "Faster! Straighter! Hold your swords up."
"Why doesn't someone kill him?" asked Alia of the soldier to her left.
"His day is coming, but one man alone cannot slay him," he replied and he winked at her through the slit in his helmet.
Every time Alia marched past Hydra on his horse, he lashed out at her as hard as he could with his lance. If Alia put her head down Hydra hit her helmet with his lance and screamed at her, “HOLD YOUR HEAD HIGHER GARBO, HIGHER.”
Hydra hit her if she put her fingers through the slit of her helmet to wipe the tears from her eyes or the snot from her nose. Other times he hit her for no reason at all. The soldier to her left said to her, "Never fear, little knight, we will take care of Hydra when the time is right."
Then before Alia knew it she was back in the kitchen and the other soldiers had all disappeared. Hydra's game lasted for about two more minutes and then he tired of it and said, “Oh just piss off to bed you retarded little high and mighty bitch.”
Alia didn’t know what made Hydra get started on her as soon as she arrived. But one time a Baron once told her that she had charisma. Alia knew that it was supposed to be a good thing to have, even though charisma as a word was quite complicated to completely understand at the age of nine. Alia did wonder whether Hydra could see that she had it and maybe he thought she shouldn’t?
Hydra was a real beast; a total monster and none of the children ever once wished he’d be nice or expected anything other than torment from him. They all just knew that that was what Hydra was and they couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Hydra tormented everyone about everything, except for his Serpent Queen; he seemed rather fond of her. That first night in bed in Hydra's castle, Alia cried and wished she were elsewhere. She had no idea how she was going to be able to survive Hydra, she only knew that she must. Once she was done with her tears she thought to herself, "Hydra is a most ferocious beast and he must be destroyed...there must be a way to defeat him!" Just as she thought that, she heard the door to their bedroom open and she saw Hydra sneak in to visit with Kim. Alia could tell, from the sounds coming from Kim that she was scared and that Hydra was not a welcomed guest. "He definitely has to be done away with. I will speak to the other knights and see what they think," she thought to herself and then she drifted off into her thoughts again. She created a new story in her mind...about Kim and Hydra.

Alia shut her eyes and yet she was still wide-awake and yet inside her mind she drifted off to another place. She was standing in a forest and it was thick with trees and Alia could hear the breeze making the trees gently sway. Alia liked the sound of the leaves gently nudging each other as the wind made them come into very close proximity to one another. She loved the sounds... "She hates the night, she hates the way the sky grows dark and the trees begin to take on the form of malice."
"Malice, is that the right word?" she asked herself as she lay there, temporarily brought back to reality by Hydra making the hinges on the door squeak as he was exiting the room.
"The house becomes dreary, moody, ebony, foreboding, and as Kim makes her way to her room, she know that perhaps tonight St George and his dragon will visit her again. Kim climbs into bed and pulls the covers over her eyes; if she can’t see then maybe he won’t find her tonight."
"Foolish Alia," she said to herself, "that never works!"
"What are you talking about?" asked Kim, as she sat up in bed.
Alia heard her sniffing and so knew that she was still crying. "Nothing, Kim. Go to sleep."
"Stop jabbering and I will!" she retorted. She then threw herself down on her pillow and faced the wall.
Alia returned to the story in her mind. "She hides under the covers, but it never works. Just as Kim is drifting off to sleep she hears the hooves of his horse galloping over the forest floor. It’s distant to begin with. As the sound gets closer, Kim can hear twigs snapping under the weight of his noble steed; she is white, pure white and she is magnificent."
"Can a steed be magnificent?" asked Alia of herself, out loud.
"What? Alia, shut up and go to sleep!" said Kim who was becoming ever more annoyed by the second having to listen to the muttering of the stupid new girl.
"Closer and closer he comes and Kim can hear the bracken being swept aside with a swooshing noise that sounds like gentle rain. But as it gets louder and louder her heart beats faster and faster and the snapping twigs begin to sound like thunder."
"Oh how I love thunder." Alia lay there trying to remember the last time that she had heard a good bolt of thunder.
"Alia, if you make ONE MORE SOUND I'm going to come over there and biff you around the ears!"
"Sorry...Kim!" said Alia, who smiled at the thought of what Kim might make of her story if she heard the whole thing?
"Kim remembers the first time St George came to pay his respects to her. She was beckoned to conscious thought by the sound of the clomping hoofs, and she awoke to find that her room had turned into a beautiful forest."
"SHUT THE HELL UP!" yelled Kim.
The next thing they knew, Hydra came bursting into the room. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN HERE?" he yelled.
Alia looked at him and she could see that his ugly grey horse had steam coming out of his flaring nostrils. She hoped the grey donkey of a horse would buck him off. Maybe Hydra would fall and strike his head on a rock that was concealed beneath the leaves on the forest floor?
"Nothing is going on," said Kim.
"ALIA? TURN OVER AND FACE THE WALL!"
"Yes," she said, and she did what Hydra demanded. She then heard Hydra slap Kim viciously in the face, while telling her to shut the hell up and go to sleep. Once Hydra left the room, Alia said to Kim, "I am sorry."
"Just go to sleep," she hissed at her.
"Although it was night, the full moon was out and the forest was illuminated by that silver light, a special moon beam over Kim's bed, just for her so that she can see. There were flowers everywhere the likes of which Kim had never seen. Wild flowers of every colour and every shape, and some had even grown so high that they began to cover her bed, and white roses had wound around and around the headboard. Kim could smell the flowers and the grass and the trees, and she looked around for fairies or dwarfs, but there were none, just herself and St George.
The first time she met Hydra, he had remained on his horse and stared at Kim through the slit in his helmet. His eyes looked dark; not at all as a knight’s eyes should appear. Then his horse reared onto her back legs lifting her majestic white head high into the air, and she gave a cry. That was when Kim first saw that it was not really a horse but that it was actually Serpent Queen! Her cry was loud, eerily sweet, like a dirge, like sad music, sonorous in tone and all the notes arranged themselves just so, hanging in the air waiting for Kim to grasp the meaning, but it was beyond her, it was just sound."
"Kim?" said Alia, as she turned over and stared in her direction across the dark room.
Kim sighed. "What?"
"A dirge is a song isn't it?"
"How the hell would I know?"
"They sing them at funerals...you know?"
"Yeah well if you don't shut the hell up I'll be singing a dirge at yours tomorrow!"
"Kim?"
"Bloody hell, grrrrrrr," said Kim, "WHAT?"
"Do you like him?'
"Who?"
"Hydra."
"Who the hell is Hydra?"
"Him that came in here before to see you."
"Go to sleep, Alia." Kim rolled back over and put her hands over her ears. Alia had no choice but to turn over and face the wall again too.
"Steam emitted out from her flaring nostrils and she seemed to be warning Kim, yet Kim didn’t know what it was that she was warning her about. Then as though to give up her plea, she gracefully touched her front hoofs upon the forest floor, and St George discharged his mount."
"Oh stuff it, he got off his bloody stupid horse!" said Alia out loud.
"She raced off into the forest, just disappeared out of sight. So St George stood there for a moment or two, and then he removed his helmet and Kim could see his face. She knew that she had seen him before, well maybe not him but someone just like that. He had blond hair, blue eyes that seemed to have begun to sparkle, and his face was as white as his horse.
He pulled his sword from out of the sheath at his side, and the sword was immense, shined like silver, and yet it also appeared to be dark grey. Kim saw that it kind of flickered from one colour to the other. St George went over to the side of Kim's bed, and she was sad because he crushed the beautiful flowers with every step he took. As he sat down on the edge of her bed, the white roses started to die. The beautiful floral aroma was no more, replaced instead by the smell of a burning funeral pyre."
"What book did I read that in?" Alia asked herself as she thought about her story so far.
"Then St George leaned forward and whispered in Kim's ear, and his breath smelled like garlic. His breath was frosty on her there, and a chill shot right up her spine when he asked her if she could keep a secret?
“This secret you cannot tell for the maiden I must rescue may die.”
“A maiden?” asked she.
“Oh yes, a lovely maiden dressed in lace who is chained to Hydra’s side. He is restless, and only you and I can save her from he.”
Then St George told Kim he was going to reveal secrets of old, older than time itself. Truths of little girls dancing in a garden of jest, called life, named so because it never makes sense. “It’s not supposed to,” Hydra said.
St George moved away from her ear and came near to her mouth and his first secret was a truth of fire, one that burned Kim's tongue and hurt her lips and it leapt down her throat filling her soul with terror. Kim almost couldn’t breathe. Then St George stopped and told her that truth of the garden of jest never appears to be nice, but that it would if Kim would just give it some time.
Kim's terror had just began to subside, like a wave backing out on the tide, when he pulled from a hidden place an asp."
"Kim?" called Alia again as she turned away from the wall and sat up.
"Oh for crying out loud...what?" she asked as she sat up in her bed on one elbow.
"An asp is a snake isn't it?"
"Yes...sort of...I think. Why?"
"No reason." Alia lay back down again and faced the wall.
"It was the ugliest asp she'd ever seen. He said the asp was magical and he could make it do whatever he asked. It was at his command, and as he held it in his hand it became larger, like a snake from the head of Medusa, and Kim knew it could take whatever it wants. Kim knew that it would, and the asp did, and truth was not kind or nice. It was an agony that filled Kim's soul with a terror unsurpassed. The nightmare grew up inside her with much more power than ever before, and she began to realise that truth is a painful thing. Kim began to look for an escape because that asp was evil, and it was hurting her. St George seemed to delight in the torture of the asp upon her, and as her terror increased, so did his pleasure at causing her to scream.
Kim's mind began to drift away to pictures of merry-go-rounds, clowns, fairies and dwarfs and St George became angry, and St George put his sword to her throat and commanded the Kim keep her mind on the asp. Suddenly St George’s eyes clouded over and he spoke no more. He just drifted away like a cloud in the sky on a dismal day, so Kim seized the opportunity to lay hand on his sword, and she climbed from her bed to the forest floor.
The sword was incredibly heavy, much more so than it actually looked, yet still Kim raised the sword high into the night air, and she brought it crashing down. It sliced straight under St George’s head. Then all was still for a second or more as she held her breath, staring in shock at what she had done. But St George just smiled, as his head fell off his shoulders and rolled across the forest floor finding rest beside his helmet. The head sort of wobbled and rustled the leaves until it became still, and upon it presided the ever-leering smile of St George.
Kim dropped his sword and fell to the forest floor crying, relieved she had won, but wondering how she had come to this forest in the first place. Then her mind was distracted by a voice. She looked up, and to her horror, sitting on the edge of her bed was St George, but now he had two heads. As fast as a strike of lightning, Kim seized the sword and dismounted those heads from their station too. And as those heads rolled across the forest floor to find rest with the first, to her extreme horror, in their place grew four, and that’s when Kim realised that St George was the monster who never dies.
He could never be slew, he would never go away, never be defeated, and his truth would be hers for all time. The more that she tried to slay him the worse he became; more powerful, more determined, and Kim is but a child of twelve."
"Bugger, that doesn't rhyme!" said Alia.
"I swear that if you make one more sound then I am going down to the lounge to tell him!" said Kim. She had had enough of Alia's muttering and just wanted to go to sleep.
"He could never be slew, he would never go away, never be defeated, and his truth would be hers for all time. The more that she tried to slay him the worse he became; more powerful, more determined, and Kim is but a child of nine."
"That's better," she whispered.
"She's climbed into bed and pulled the covers over her eyes. If she can’t see him then maybe he won’t find her tonight? But it doesn’t work. Just as she is drifting off to sleep she’ll hear the hooves of his horse galloping over the forest floor, and it will be distant to begin with. As the sound gets closer she will hear twigs snapping under the weight of his noble steed; she is white, pure white and she is magnificent. Closer and closer he will come and Kim will hear the bracken being swept aside with a swooshing noise that sounds like gentle rain. But as it gets louder and louder her heart will beat faster and faster and the snapping twigs will sound like thunder.
Kim is the lovely maiden dressed in lace at Hydra’s side, but when St George is restless he becomes him in the night. You know he never really slew the dragon in the end, St George is really tricky he’s the Hydra as a man. And Hydra’s getting restless, only George can save her life, and every time he does it Kim's the maiden who may die."
"Well, that was fun!" Alia told herself as she shut her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

The next morning Alia woke to the news that she would have to return to school with the others that very day. Hydra was at work by then and so Alia was rather relieved that she did not need to deal with him. She was quite pleased with the thought that he was out to war in the big bad world and that if she were very lucky, then some other Hydra might take him out. Perhaps even some of her knights might go and beat up his chariot with a battering ram...preferably while he was still in it! But she soon discovered that even if her knights did beat Hydra to a pulp, Serpent Queen was just as nastier a contemplation. She glared at Alia and told her; "You will walk down to Bridge Street School, go to the office and let them know you are there."
"But..."
"You will take yourself there, Alia. You are nine years old; old enough to do that by yourself."
Alia was not worried about going there by herself, she was worried about going there at all. She had gone to that school a few years ago and most of the kids would know her. They would know the dreaded secrets of her past and what if they remembered the vagabond child that she used to be? But there was nothing that she could do except head off in the direction of the school before Serpent Queen got really upset with her, as it was she knew she'd be hearing from Hydra after school when he got home from work.
Going back to school turned out to be the nightmare Alia expected that it would. It was especially worse when she had to go to the Principal to report for her first day. Alia had hoped that the office lady would just take her off to her class, but Alia already kind of knew that it just wouldn't be that easy. She knocked on his door and he called out, "Enter."
As soon as Alia saw him she thought, "He is still the same old wanker he always was." She stood in the doorway for a few moments contemplating the pros of turning heel and running. But he looked up at her and said again, “Come in.” He looked back down at his papers. Alia began to walk in and he said, “I haven’t got all day girl,” without looking up.
Alia was right; he hadn’t changed since the first day she ever saw him. If she hadn’t known any better she’d have said he’d been sitting there ever since that first day that she met him when she was five. He continued to keep his head down and read whatever was in front of him. Finally he looked up at Alia over his glasses. “Alia, well, you’re back eh? I hope this visit is going to be more pleasant than the last one?”
Alia didn’t know what to say because she’d been hoping she’d get through her first day without anyone saying something about what happened before, and then he asked, “Cat got your tongue?”
Alia shook her head and looked at the floor, even though her overriding desire was to scream at him, "NO! BUT I'LL FEED YOUR'S TO THE CAT IF YOU WOULD LIKE!"
“Well, I’m going to have my eye on you girly girl and there’s going to be none of your previous carrying on, understand? Hydra and Queen Serpent will have you straightened out in no time, you mark my words and if they don’t, then it’ll be off to the dungeon with you. Do you want that, Alia?"
Alia stood there staring at him and then she thought to herself, "Did he just say Hydra and Serpent Queen? Did he threaten to throw me in the dungeon? How could he know about those things?"
"Well then, you had better not come into my school with your thieving filthy ways. Yes I’m going to be watching you and you better not even breathe in the wrong direction or else I’ll put you on the rack myself, understand? Now get out and I don’t expect to see you in this office again.”
Alia stood there for a minute because she didn’t know what to do next and the Principal then said, “Well go on girl, get out I’ve got work to do, Mrs. Carson will take you to your class.”
Alia shook her head and she realised that she must have drifted off while he was speaking to her because she was sure she had seen all her comrade knights standing there behind him threatening to lop off his head with their swords if she would like them to.
Mrs. Carson walked Alia over to the Open Plan, and while they were walking, Alia could see the huge army of knights walking along behind them. She could hear their armour clinking and their boots stomping on the concrete. Alia smiled at them and then put her mind back to Mrs. Carson who was jabbering away beside her. "Did you hear a word I said, Alia?"
Alia nodded her head, but she hadn't and she heard the knights chuckling quietly amongst themselves. She turned to them and said, "Ssh, you'll get me into trouble."
"What?" asked Mrs. Carson.
"Um, I was just thinking about something." Alia felt embarrassed that she had heard her addressing the knights.
Mrs. Carson opened the door to the Open Plan and gently, by the arm, pulled Alia in the door. The open Plan was a big room that had partitions in it and the room held six classes. As Mrs. Carson walked Alia over to the teacher that Alia had been allocated to, she called out, “Hello Mr. Tims. I have Alia here for you.”
“Oh, you’re here at last, we’ve been waiting for you,” he smiled at Alia, which made her feel a bit better.
Alia heard some kids whispering to each other, “I thought she was dead?”
She had no idea what they were talking about, but as she turned around she saw her knights biffing around the ears the ones who had spoken out about her. Mr. Tims was really nice and spoke to Alia nicely. He encouraged her to sit with two girls, but Alia did not like the look of them, they both had blonde hair. The knights all shook their heads. "All creatures with blonde hair descend from Hydras, young knight, so be careful!" said one of the knights to her.
"I know," she replied as she sat down behind the two blonde-haired girls.
"You know what? Alia?" asked Mr. Tims who was smiling kindly.
"Um...I forget," said Alia as she sat there scratching her head. She again heard the knights laughing amongst themselves, but she did not turn around to look at them just then. But within five minutes she did and she could not believe what they were doing. One was sitting at Mr. Tim's desk with his legs crossed and his boots up on his papers. Other knights were rifling through exercise books, while yet others were messing with the math equipment.
Just before interval Alia noticed something that made her blood run cold. Her old teacher, who was also somewhat of a Hydra, was in the Open Plan. Alia was fit to die of embarrassment then and there! That female Hydra had finger printed her when she was six. Alia put her head down so that the female Hydra would not see her at all. One of the knights, upon seeing Alia with her head down asked, "What is the matter young knight?"
"Over there is a Hydra, a female Hydra."
The knight stood to his feet and drew his sword. He walked over toward her and lifted his sword high above his head to get a good swing to lop off her head. Just before he did so, he turned to look at young knight to seek her approval. She looked at the knight and shook her head.
"Drats!" he said as he lowered his sword and put it back into the sheath at his side. He quietly returned to Alia's area to continue messing with the math equipment.
Alia made two new friends at lunchbreak; kids she’d known before who decided they wanted to be friends with her again. The girls were Sheryl and Lisa. One girl went up to Alia and said, “Ooh yuck, it’s Flea Bag.”
Sheryl said, “Piss off and shut your mouth else I’ll punch it in for you.”
Alia looked at her knights who were standing behind her and she smiled. The head knight winked and said, "We'll see you back at Hydra's castle."
No one ever mentioned the name FleaBag again after that because they were all scared of Sheryl. Alia always ended up being friends with the bad kids; it was as though she had a sign on her head or something. But she felt much better about school knowing that the other kids would have to get past Sheryl before they could take a strip off her. And if, for any reason, they did manage to get past Sheryl, then Alia know that her knights could be counted on to come back.
But Sheryl and Lisa caused her no bother and they were not the nosy kind. They did not ask her where she had been on her travels or whose castle she was living in now. They simply accepted that she was back again and their friendship began as new, but with friendly familiarity that avoided the necessity for introductions.
Alia grew to love the mornings because she was able to escape Hydra's castle for the entire day to go to school and be with her friends. But she hated the end of the day because it meant that she had to make her way back to Hydra's castle. When Alia walked home after school she walked as slowly as humanly possible, but we all know what happens when you are trying to avoid the inevitable, it seems to come around far faster than you would like. As slowly as Alia attempted to walk, she seemed to get home even earlier and she was so mad at herself. Sometimes the knights who walked behind her would suggest that she should go to the park and slay dragons there for a while, but for some reason she just knew that Hydra would not buy that when he heard about it. So she had to politely decline the offer of the knights to go dragon slaying.
The closer she got to the castle the heavier her heart would feel inside her chest and the louder it would beat and she wished that there was an escape from Hydra. She wished that there was somewhere that she could run to or perhaps someone that she could go to, but there never seemed to be anything or anyone like that around. So she simply conversed with the knights and tried not to think about how close she was getting to the castle with every step that she took. But there was no denying that every step that she took made her feel as though she was one step closer to her own public beheading at the sword of Hydra.

After a few months of living in Hydra's castle, Alia heard that she had to go to the court of the King for a hearing against the wicked witch who had abandoned her in the first place. Alia was very nervous about having to go to the court of the King of the East, he was known to be a rather grumpy old thing and Alia most certainly had no desire to see the witch ever again! Alia did wish to find the handsome King of the West who was her father though, but she had no idea where he had gone. She highly suspected that he was locked in a high tower somewhere just waiting for her knights to come and set him free so that he could come back and claim the princess Alia. "But we have to find out where he is first," she told her knights.
Alia had a pretty good memory when it came to the evil witch who had abandoned her to a fate worse than death, but her memory was pretty selective when it came to the handsome King of the West. She pictured him in her mind as brave, gallant and awfully good looking with his dark brown hair and brown eyes. He was tall, strong, powerful and exceptionally kind and she missed him so very much.
The truth of the King of the West was a tad different to the images and perceptions that Alia held in her mind and so very close to her heart. The King of the West was handsome and he was very popular with the ladies, but that was about it. He rather liked a dash of the mead here and there; in fact he liked a whole lot of it here, there and everywhere. He had a terrible temper on him and was known to be just as cruel as Hydra, if not worse, at times. He was not gallant and brave, he was a pathetic coward and he could not even keep a job for longer than five minutes. But Alia desperately needed something to hold on to, and so she recreated the King of the West to be what she needed him to be. The knights all knew that she was deluding herself and whenever the subject of rescuing him from the dungeon of the King of the East came up, they all kind of began to mumble and disappear in different directions. The King of the East had him locked in the dungeon for a very good reason, but they were loathe to tell Alia exactly what it was that he had done to end up in the dungeon in the first place. They did not want to disappoint the princess by producing the King of the West and they'd rather lop off their own heads than do anything to help him.
So the day came where Alia had to go to the court of the King of the East and she saw the wicked witch standing there crying. "What's she crying for?" she thought. "I should be the one crying! That wicked old witch is handing me over to the King of the East and he in turn is going to make me stay in Hydra's castle, so what's SHE got to cry about?"
Alia was disgusted by the way that the peasant folks gathered around the horrid witch and comforted her. "Have they forgotten all the horrible spells she cast on me? The way she made me stay small by casting the spell of hunger on me. Have they forgotten the way she cast those spells that made me sleep for three days at a time? Look at her crying away like something bad has happened to her...horrible old witch!"
"Would Princess Alia like me to lop her head off?" asked the head knight.
"Oh gallant knight, would you?" Alia smiled at the knight as she stared at the horrible witch crying and making everyone feel sorry for her.
The knight headed over in the direction of the witch and just as he was about to draw his sword and lop off her horrible head, the peasants surrounded her and led her from the court. Even the King of the East was feeling sorry for her. Then the King of the East looked at Alia and he said, "I sentence you to live in the castle of Hydra for three thousand two hundred and eighty-five days. The court of the King of the East is adjourned!" With that he banged his horrid hammer down hard and that was that.
"Bugger," said Alia out loud.
Everyone in the room turned around and stared at her and she looked to her knights and said, "Kill them all!" She sat down on the bench and watched the carnage as her trusted knights lopped off the heads of them all and what a mess they made. Wicked witch was no more as her head fell from her shoulders and rolled along the hallways and down the steps out into the street. Some vagabond boys then proceeded to use it as a rugby ball. The King of the East, his head fell from his shoulders and landed on the chair inside the witness box beside his throne. Though it was lopped from his shoulders, it still kept talking away like nothing had happened. Alia watched as head knight lopped the heads from the shoulders of the stenographer and then the bailiff and there was blood and gore everywhere, but it didn't really both Alia too much. They were gone and that is all she cared about in those moments after having been sentenced to the castle of Hydra for what might as well have been forever!
"ALIA!" said the Baroness who had just had enough of Alia and her daydreaming because it made it absolutely impossible for her to make the girl understand what had just happened.
Alia looked up and everything was as it had been before the knights had gotten started on their head-lopping spree. No one was dead, not even the horrible King of the East. Alia folded her arms and sighed. The Baroness who had taken her to the court of the King of the East then made her get into a chariot and she was driven back to the castle of Hydra. On the way back to the castle Alia felt a little sad because as much as she hated the wicked witch, she had hoped that maybe she might have spoken to her. "Wouldn't have killed her to just say hello to me," she thought to herself as the chariot weaved in and out of other traffic. She glanced out of the back window and was pleased to see that her knights were marching along in formation behind the chariot and so she waved to them and they all nodded to her.
Once Alia got back to the castle of Hydra she felt as though she just wanted to die. Hydra relished in the knowledge that the wicked witch had handed her over to the King of the East. He laughed and jeered at her in front of the other kids while she sat at the table with Tommy. Serpent Queen was just as bad as Hydra and she hated them both for their cruelty. She hated that she had to sit there and pretend that it did not bother her at all and she had to show it by not crying. "I must not let Hydra know that he has hurt me," she told herself as she sat there listening to him going on and on. Tommy stared at her sympathetically; he too had appeared at the court of the King of the East and he too had been sentenced to the castle of Hydra until he was eighteen.
Tommy had his own dreams of revenge against Hydra the Taniwha; he had them every night. One day Taniwha would make a mistake and he would set his Maori warriors onto him. The warriors would grab him when he least expected it and they would kill him with a tommyhawk blow to the head. They would then gut him like a pig and cook him in their hangi ovens. Then he'd be served up with a little puha and some kumara, except Tommy would not eat his portion; he'd feed it to the dogs. Tommy was the head Maori warrior and his whanau respected him as such and they would strike when he gave the command. Yes, Taniwha would get his when Tommy the brave Maori warrior was ready to strike!
Kim had her own idea about how she would get even with Hydra, oh yes, she'd get even with him...when she could get around to formulating a solid viable plan. She often daydreamed about it while listening to her Abba records, but she never really got beyond thinking how nice it would be to be rid of him from her life.
Genny didn't really care about Hydra because he was pretty good to her, like a real live Uncle Bulgaria womble! And even though the Serpent Queen could be horrible, Uncle Bulgaria would not tolerate her being cruel to Genny.
To Stephen, an older boy, Hydra was not Hydra, he was Urko! And he decided that he, as Colonel Alan Virden, would turn the apes against Urko and then they'd hunt Urko down and give him a lobotomy and then hang him out in the Californian desert to dry...if only he could find Major Peter Burke. Burke was elusive and had left the compound some months earlier and had not yet returned. Colonel Virden was waiting for someone to step up and fill Major Peter Burke's boots. He was thinking that the new girl Alia might just be tough enough to be Burke. She most certainly did not like Urko and she refused to let Urko make her cry. He sat there staring at the back of her head, while he ate his food, and he decided that the next chance that he got, he would promote Alia to Major.
From the first night after her appearance at the court of the King of the East and for many nights after, as the knights gathered around her bed, she would not speak to them or even acknowledge them. When she finally did speak she asked the head knight, "How long is three thousand two hundred and eighty-five days?" She stared at the head knight, as her tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Princess Alia, you will be here until your eighteenth birthday."
"Double bugger with a cherry on top!" she sadly exclaimed. "Why did the King of the West not come and get me from the court of the King of the East?"
"He is chained by the hands and feet in the King of the East's dungeon, so he couldn't come."
"If he could have, do you think he would have?"
"Of course he would have!"
"Pinocchio!" said one of the other knights sitting there listening in on their conversation.
"Shut up!" the head knight snapped at the one who had spoken. "I am certain that if the King of the West could have come and gotten you that he would have."
"Is he still in the tower, really?"
"Actually, no he's not. He was set free some time ago and..."
Alia looked at the knight intently. "So why didn't he come for me?"
"He's busy...off slaying dragons I think," said the knight awkwardly. He scratched his head through the slit in his helmet and then jigged his foot.
"Oh," said Alia. "Oh well, that's okay then, but he is coming, right?"
"Sure," said the knight as he crossed both of his fingers behind his back. Alia knew that he was crossing his fingers, but she wanted to believe his lies and so she said nothing and drifted off to sleep.

It was the very next weekend that Stephen decided to approach Alia about her promotion, but it was tougher to convince her than he had first thought it would be. She was swinging on the swing and she was going up very high and she would not stop to speak with him.
Alia was not even aware that Stephen was standing by the swing trying to get her attention. She was miles away riding Wildfire. "What does it mean to be free? Alia wondered as she stared out from behind the bars of her prison cell and a thought half flickered through her mind that perhaps she was never to know, had she ever known? It was a silly thought to be having, and she just watched the others milling about in the courtyard outside the castle of Hydra.
Ah yes, she too was old and used up before her time, having known the love of many, and it had fallen apart for her too, does it ever work out for anyone? And the jailer, Hydra, yeah he was pretty cruel even on his best days, and she knew better than to question Hydra's loyalty to the King of the East who had made the rules of the castle in the first place. A rose garden it was not, not even close, the yard itself was lifeless dreary, and the only time they ever got to go out and enjoy it was on days they were better off without. Those men in the dungeon of the King of the East were probably better off than they were.
So every morning after breakfast on the weekends Alia would coax Wildfire to come to her, "Come on Wildfire, come on, we’re going to ride off away from here." And Wildfire was always faithful in showing up, and he loved her as much as she loved him, maybe even more.
She’d climb up and stand on the mailbox, and then onto his bare back she would clamber, and she’d give him a gentle kick with her bare feet and off they’d go. Wildfire needed no reins to be directed to where they were headed, he just knew. Off out the gate, down the road to the main street, through the traffic, past the houses to the open fields. The ride was always steady, gentle, even though Wildfire was galloping for all he was worth, and he eased through the gears to get there gracefully.
First he’d walk, and then he’d break into a gentle trot, then he’d canter, then excitedly break into a gallop, and she’d hang onto his mane. As he moved along the paddocks he was aware of where she was, whether she was too far to one side or the other, and if he sensed she was moving too far to one side, he’d just gentle tussle her to the middle of his back again. He didn’t want to lose his precious cargo, for what was life without her?
Oh yeah they’d just gallop on over paddocks, up hills, down valleys and through rivers and streams, how great freedom tastes, and no one knew they had gone, yeah, they just left it all behind. And they’d keep moving until they reached that tunnel of time, and into the tunnel they’d go without hesitation.
(On the odd occasion they’d stumbled through the night to reach the same destination, but more often than not St George kept her mind too occupied to allow Wildfire to take her away, so most of these beautiful adventures occurred during the day.) Then they’d come to the end of the tunnel of time and there’d they be, standing before the object of her longing, gazing up at the beautiful old castle.
"Oh Wildfire, isn’t it just magnificent," she’d exclaim to Wildfire, in her sweet voice that was dripping with passion for this old wreck of a place. We could live here forever, oh please Wildfire tell me we don’t ever have to go back."
Wildfire would neigh powerfully as if to agree with her, and then he’d walk slowly up the wide path that led up to the castle gates. He always took this part of the journey slowly so that she could take in the beauty of the Spruce Pines, all the bird life that had made their homes on every branch, and they tweeted in recognition of the horse and rider as they passed them by.
As they neared the castle gates the sentries were made aware of their presence on the path when they heard the crunching of the gravel under Wildfire’s hoofs, "Madam," they would say as they bowed low and allowed them entry to the castle grounds.
Wildfire loved that part, grown men bowing down to horse and child, and if he could have, he would have clapped his hoofs together in recognition of the odd occurrence, but he feared to do that would be to send the rider plummeting to the ground. So he pranced by instead, head held high because he was Wildfire, the noble steed, and the rider giggled loudly on his back and her giggle resounded all around the castle walls, echoing like some happy ghost of a time long since passed.
As they approached the castle doors two doormen threw them open wide so horse and rider could pass through to the inside, and off they turned to the left to make their way carefully up the spiral staircase to the tower at the top. As they ascended the stars they passed all the murals of old, old kings, noble steeds, and portraits of queens, princes and princesses, and how lovely her face would look upon that wall he often thought.
They stayed up there long into the afternoon until the azure blue sky began to darken and the evening stars came out to twinkle up above. Wildfire knew all the constellations, but he kept them to himself, as the girl simply enjoyed just staring at the starry night.
Then it was time to make their descent on the spiral staircase right down to the level below, to the beautiful pond with the great pink swan, and oh how beautiful she looked sitting on the swan, feet dangling down into that water with not a care in the world. She’d kick her feet to make droplets of water land on the ground beside where he stood, and she’d giggle more when they found their mark.
Wildfire would stand beside the pond shaking the droplets from his muzzle, grazing on the grass that had sprouted up over time through the old cobbles. Many eyes gazed upon them both from the murals all around, seeing but unknowing, and the girl marvelled at thoughts of the people who must have been there once before. Lighted by the torches of old, the whole lower level appeared magical even to the least knowing eye.
Then the big old clock began to chime and Wildfire knew that they must hurry back before they noticed she was gone. She jumped from the swan as soon as he called and she swam across the beautiful pond to the cobbled side. Wildfire got down on his knees so that she could mount him again and they slowly made their way from the swan room to the castle doors. She always began to cry at this point and Wildfire hated to make her leave, but it was the way it had to be.
As they passed through the gates the sentries bowed low, and it was then that Wildfire decided they wouldn’t go, no, he’d take his charge back to the castle and maybe they could stay there forever. They could watch the stars come out every night and she could ride the swan until morning, and as morning approached, he could take her to the top of the tower to watch the sun begin the day. She was only nine, why should she live in a prison when she could be living in the castle, yes, Wildfire and the girl together forever.
Autumn leaves dropped to the ground and faded away as the..."
"ALIA! I need to talk to you!" Stephen was exceptionally annoyed with her for ignoring him.
"GO AWAY!" she yelled at him as the swing glided backward and then forwards past him again.
"Winter snow fell, and the spring lambs were born just as the snow melted away, and it was in the summer that they found her. She had been there since the summer before, behind the old shed in the rusting crate, it appeared she had just lay down and died. She looked peaceful holding her tiny plastic horse in her hand and she had a little smile on her face.
"ALIA! Stop the swing, I need to talk to you now!" said Stephen. He was frustrated by the way she was just so easily able to shut him out. He did not know where her head was at but it obviously wasn't there with him.
"In heaven with the angels," had been the cry of the priest who gave the eulogy for the little girl that no one had ever really known. And somewhere from inside the very old walls of the church came the laughter of a child and the whinny of a horse. The priest looked around to see from where the sound had come, and the girl upon Wildfire rode out of the church, through the traffic, across the paddocks, over hills, down valleys, through streams and rivers, to the tunnel of time and back to the castle they now called home. She was free, free at last.
"ALIA! STOP THE SWING, NOW!" Stephen tried to reach for the chain that secured the swing to the top beam.
"Sod it, Stephen, WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Alia slowly brought the swing to a stop and she was just about to hop off when Hydra came roaring out of the castle.
"WHO SAID THAT? WHO USED THE S-WORD?" he roared.
"It wasn't me," said Stephen.
"OF COURSE IT WASN'T YOU...UNLESS YOU'VE TURNED INTO A PANSY! WELL, HAVE YOU?" he yelled at Stephen.
"No, sir."
"THEN PISS OFF!" he screamed at Stephen. Alia watched as Stephen made his way over toward the steps. He just knew that Urko was going to beat the living daylights out of Major Burke!
"WHAT ARE YOU USING THE S-WORD FOR?" Hydra yelled at Alia.
"It just slipped out," she said. She stood up from the swing without looking at Hydra. She could see all her knights standing behind Hydra shaking their heads because they knew that they were powerless to help her. They were the rules, if she put herself in front of Hydra and caused him to become angry with her, then they could do nothing.
"STUPID KNIGHTS!" she said out loud and then she looked at Hydra.
"AND THIS JUST SLIPPED OUT!" he said as he hit her very hard on the side of her head knocking her to the ground. Hydra turned away from her and went to walk back inside the castle to watch the jousting on TV. But when he got to the steps to the door to the castle he turned back and yelled; "AND DON'T BOTHER COMING IN FOR LUNCH, IT IS CANCELLED...FOR YOU BOTH!"
Colonel Alan Virden rushed to her side once he knew that Urko was well away out of sight. "Come on Burke, get up and come with me."
"Who is Burke?" Alia asked him. She rubbed at her head where Hydra had hit her; it stung and throbbed all at the same time.
"That's you now. You are Major Peter Burke and I am your Colonel and you will do as I say."
"I'm hungry and now he won't give us any lunch! He's such a pig!"
"Yes he is, but even if he did give us lunch, you know that he will only give us enough to make us hungrier, so better we not eat at all."
Alia began to cry. "But I'm sick of being hungry all the time, it hurts!"
Stephen momentarily questioned promoting the whiney, grizzling girl to the role of Major, but he was fast running out of options. Stephen pulled her up by her arm and dragged her over to the overgrown gardens behind the hedge. She walked through the gardens with him until they came to an opening in the ground.
"What's that?" she asked him as he climbed down into it.
"This is where we go to hide from Urko."
Alia climbed down into the hole and then asked him, "Who is Urko?"
"Urko is the mean gorilla who just biffed you one and knocked you to the ground. One day we are going to sort Urko once and for all."
"Urko? You call him in there Urko?" asked Alia hardly believing that a boy could give a monster such a stupid name.
"Clean yourself up, Burke, you look like a girl!" he snapped.
"WELL I AM A GIRL! DUMMY!"
"I AM COLONEL ALAN VIRDEN AND YOU WILL NOT CALL ME DUMMY AGAIN, MAJOR BURKE!"
"Burke? You are calling me Burke? My name is Alia!" she wiped at her nose and eyes with her sleeve.
"While you are in here in our bomb shelter, your name is Burke, not Alia. Alia does not exist, does she Galen?" Stephen asked, as he stared at Tommy.
"Who is Galen?"
"He's the chimpanzee...Tommy is Galen the chimpanzee."
"Well why can't he be Major Burke?" asked Alia.
"You want to be the monkey?" asked Tommy. "I don't mind if you want to be the monkey."
"You're the monkey," said Stephen pointing at Tommy. He then pointed at Alia, "and she's Burke! The end."
"But..."
"She has the same colour hair as Burke and you climb trees better than she can so that is why you are the monkey!" Stephen began to get very annoyed with Galen.
Alia was quite concerned about what her new status as Burke might do to her knights? She popped up out of the hole in the ground for a second and she said to them, "I have to play with Stephen. Go...slay some dragons or something!" Alia then popped back down into the hole in the ground and stared at Stephen and said, "Major Peter Burke reporting for duty."
Stephen handed Alia a spoon and said, "Start digging, Burke."
"What am I digging?" she asked.
"That wall down there, start digging and Galen will take the dirt out the other end where you came in."
"And what will you be doing, Virden?" she asked.
"Watching you two to make sure you do it properly."

"Why are we digging a hole in the ground?" asked Alia after about half an hour of digging with the spoon.
"Keep going Major Burke and I might have a surprise for you," said Stephen.
Alia stopped digging and stared at him. "What surprise, Stephen?"
Stephen leapt to his knees and crawled over and grabbed Alia by the front of her shirt and shook her. "MY NAME IS COLONEL VIRDEN! YOU CAN CALL ME ALAN IF YOU WANT, BUT IF YOU CALL ME STEPHEN AGAIN I WILL HAND YOU OVER TO URKO MYSELF!"
"LET ME GO, DICK...I MEAN COLONEL VIRDEN!"
Virden let Burke go, while Galen just knelt there half expecting that Burke would tell Virden where to shove his underground cave, even though Virden didn't have a prayer of making it fit in such a small space!
"Right, Burke. Here's the thing, Zaius is a very good teacher and I have been listening to him, even though he is only an orange monkey with very bad eyebrows."
Alia looked at Virden, "An orange monkey?"
"Just listen! Zaius says that man is the only animal who wars against his own and I got to thinking. We did the First World War and the Second World War..."
"And Vietnam," offered Galen.
Virden looked at Galen and said, "Don't even get me started on Vietnam! The point is that if the people had taken out the troublemakers right at the start then all those other people needn't have died. So, if Zaius is right, then all we have to do is erase the big troublemaker. Our trouble-maker is Urko!"
"Who is Zaius?" asked Alia feeling totally confused.
"You saw TV last night, the orange monkey from the High Council."
Alia squinted her eyes and shook her head. "What?" She was ready to throw down her spoon and let Stephen find a new Major Burke.
"Oh, Alia, never mind!" Stephen crawled back over to where he was sitting.
"My name isn't Alia, it's Burke and why are we digging a hole in the ground?"
"I can't tell you why we are digging a hole except that, if we do this properly, it will help us with Urko."
Burke looked at Galen and Galen nodded his head. Alia did not understand at all what Stephen was on about, but she got back to digging with her spoon because he looked sad. Hydra had been exceptionally mean to Stephen during that last week. He had slapped and kicked him so many times that Alia had all but lost count. Hydra hated Stephen and was always going on about his 'drunk mummy'. He always yelled and screamed about Stephen ending up in a loony bin like her and Stephen always cried when Hydra said those things. Stephen was a nice boy and Alia liked him, he was so kind that he had made something for Hydra in his woodwork class at school. He gave it to Hydra, thinking it would broker peace, but it didn't. Hydra looked at it, laughed and then snapped it and threw it in the fire. Alia had looked at her head knight and said, "That's it, kill him!"
The head knight had just stood there shaking his head because it would take more than one knight to end the terrible Hydra.
Alia had been digging for about an hour when Virden said, "Okay Major Burke, you have worked very well so here is your surprise." Stephen held out his hand to Alia.
Alia reached out her hand and Stephen placed something into it. When Alia saw it she said, "Oh wow, Colonel Virden, a K-bar...thank you." Alia sat there and unwrapped the blue paper from the K-bar and then looked at Galen and Virden. "Where's Galen's? Where's yours?"
"I've only got one," said Virden.
Alia held the bar out toward Virden and Galen. "Want some?"
Stephen looked at Alia and asked, "Why are you so nice?"
"Nice? I'm not nice, I'm just me." She held the bar out again, "Want some or not? Galen?"
Galen nodded his head and so did Virden. "Just a little piece," said Virden.
Alia handed the bar to Stephen. "You should break it into three pieces Colonel Virden. I'm not very good at making them even."
Stephen took the bar and broke it into three pieces taking the smallest piece for himself and giving the biggest piece to Alia. Tommy got the middle-sized piece. "Just like the three bears in Goldilocks," said Stephen as he laughed at his own comment.
"Goldilocks is evil!" said Alia.
"Burke, why is Goldilocks evil?" asked Stephen.
"She's got blonde hair and blue eyes and descends from a Hydra."
"What?" Stephen couldn't believe what she was saying because he had read the story of the Hydra and nowhere in it was there ever made mention of blonde-haired blue-eyed people.
"All blonde-haired blue-eyed people descend from Hydras; everyone knows that." Alia chewed away on her piece of the K-bar.
"Colonel Alan Virden has blue eyes and blonde hair; did he come from a Hydra?" asked Stephen.
"Yes he must have, but I think he rebelled against the Hydra and that is why Urko must be after him."
"Okay, Burke...whatever shakes your tree!" Stephen shook his head, Alia sure was a strange kid, stranger than most others that he had met along the way, and he had met quite a few. Stephen had been handed over to the King of the East at a much younger age than Alia and so he had lived in far more castles. Living in a lot of castles allowed him the pleasure of meeting way more prisoners and some of them were mighty weird, but none so weird as Alia. "You know you piss Urko off every day without fail, why do you do it?"
"I don't try to piss him off...he was born that way."
"Yeah but you annoy him more than other people. I think it is the way you look at him sometimes," said Stephen.
"What? What's wrong with the way I look at him?"
"I don't know, but Kenny says you look like you are daring him, you know, challenging him."
"Kenny comes from Hydra, so what would he know?" asked Alia who was very quickly becoming annoyed with Stephen.
"He says that that is what Urko says to Elta."
Alia shook her head. "Who is Elta?"
"His wife."
"Kenny has a wife?" Alia could not believe it.
"Not Kenny, Urko!"
"You mean the Serpent Queen?" asked Alia.
"Is that what you call her?" asked Stephen.
"Yeah, she's Serpent Queen and he's Hydra."
"He's Taniwha and she's Taniwhaess," Tommy started laughing.
"Taniwhaess?" asked Stephen who quickly broke into fits of laughter. "Taniwhaess! That's so funny."
"Well at least our names are nicer than the ones he gives us," said Alia who was chewing on her last piece of K-bar.
"True," said Stephen who was rubbing at his eyes. "Well, Major Burke, we should get back to digging because we have a long, long way to go. How's the pile outside, Galen?"
"Small."
"Just make sure that you don't stand on it or else you might make it cave in on us and there's no way that Urko will come and dig us out."
"It might cave in?" asked Alia, feeling alarmed at the idea of being covered in dirt and not being able to get out. She was terrified of being buried alive.
"It won't cave in if no one stands on it. I know...Galen, get those planks of wood and lay them on top. That way if anyone forgets and accidentally stands on it, they won't cave it in either."
"Yes Sir Colonel Virden." Tommy started to crawl out of the hole again.
"Galen?"
"Yes Colonel Virden?" Tommy stopped and stared back at Stephen.
"Just call me Alan."
"Okay, Alan." Tommy smiled and then proceeded to crawl out of the hole to go and lay the planks of wood where Stephen had told him.
They were outside in the hole until well after dark, and once they came out of the hole it was freezing cold. Alia sat on the steps with Tommy and Stephen and she was so cold that all she wanted to do was cry.
"When is he going to let us back in?" she asked Stephen.
"You know him, when he is good and ready."
"He's such a prick! How many weeks do you think it is going to take us to dig the hole?" asked Tommy.
Stephen shook his head. "I don't know. We only really have the weekends, so considering how much we got done this afternoon, it is going to take a while."
About an hour later Hydra opened the castle door and allowed the three to go inside. Alia and Tommy were ordered to go and have a bath and get into their pyjamas. Alia sat in the bath and she cried because she was so miserable. Her head knight sat on the floor against the wall facing the bath and he was unsure as to what to say to her.
Later that night, Alia made a terrible mistake. She told her knights that she was going to find out exactly what Hydra was doing to Kim. Her knights tried to warn her against it, but Alia would not listen.
When Hydra came into the room and ordered her to face the wall, she did as he said. But once he was settled on the side of Kim's bed, she slowly turned over and peeked at him. Alia saw that he had his hands under the blankets and that his mouth was joined together with Kim's for ages. She had no idea what he was doing, but she knew it wasn’t right. Then he caught Alia out of the corner of his eye. He broke free from Kim and went over to Alia. “You were spying on me weren’t you, Garbo?” He didn’t say it loud, but Alia could tell from the way he said it he was really angry.
"I wasn’t spying on you." Alia should’ve just told him the truth for all the good the lie did her.
Hydra flew into a rage and screamed at her, “Get out of here now.” Hydra dragged Alia from her bed her arm and shoved her out the door into the hallway. Hydra started to belt Alia really hard with his hand. Then he dragged her down the hallway and shoved her onto the couch outside the toilet and said, “This is where you sleep from now on.”
At that moment Serpent Queen came storming down the hallway to see what was going on and as she stormed down the hallway the whole castle shook. "Hold on for dear life," called the head knight to all the other knights who were being thrown from wall to wall by the great shaking of the castle. Chairs slid across the room, tables tipped over and books and ornaments fell off shelfs hitting the knights. It was chaos and Alia was terrified that Serpent Queen's effect on the castle might kill all the knights. Then Serpent Queen hissed at Alia, crossed her arms and asked, "What's going on here?"
Alia watched as her knights began to regain their balance once the castle had become still. "Hold on though," warned the head knight, "She is bound to walk back to the lounge soon."
Hydra said to her “Oh I’ve had enough of Greta Garbo and her stirring with Kim and Genny. As far as I’m concerned, the further we keep her away from them the better! She can sleep out here from now on.”
Serpent Queen hissed again and said, “You never learn do you, Alia?”
Alia wanted to scream at her that she was a fat Serpent Queen, but she knew that Hydra might next to kill her for that. Hydra went into Kim and Genny’s room, tore Alia's blankets from the bed and then threw them at her and told her to make her bed. Hydra then turned and walked in the direction of the lounge.
"Hold on boys, Serpent Queen is on the move again."
The castle once again shook violently with every step that Serpent Queen took. It was really hard for Alia to make her bed on the couch in the dark, and with all that shaking going on. But she knew that she had to get it done real fast.
Alia had no idea why Hydra had gotten so mad that she had spied on he and Kim, but she knew enough to know that he’d been doing something he shouldn’t have. Once Alia settled on the couch and was almost asleep, with her knights keeping guard over her, Hydra sneaked up the hallway. Hydra leaned over the edge of the couch and grabbed Alia by her hair. He held it so tight that it hurt her and he put his face right next to her ear and said, “If you say a word to anyone I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”
The knights stared at each other with a puzzled kind of look on their faces and Alia said to them, once Hydra was gone. "I suppose the threat might be more frightening if I didn’t already wish I’d never been born."
Then the head knight replied to her. "But the way Hydra might choose to make you wish it could be something quite terrible, so take him seriously."
Sleeping on the couch had its good points and it had it’s bad. All the kids knew that Hydra hated Kim, Tommy and Alia and they knew that to get on Hydra's good side that they’d have to act like him, and so they did. They’d purposely bang the door open and shut to disturb Alia's sleep as well. That really annoyed Alia until her head knight pointed out that they first had to disturb their sleep in order to disturb hers.
"Hey, I didn’t think about that," said Alia with a smile.
"Every dark cloud has a silver lining, Princess Alia, you must merely learn how to find it."
Sometimes the kids would lean over and slap her on the face and head, and sometimes they pulled her hair. They knew that Alia couldn’t tell on them because Hydra would just laugh at her. So Alia just lay there and sang songs in her head to wile away the hours.
But then Hydra took to making visits to Alia during the night and his kisses goodnight began to bother her a lot. She hated him and she was scared of him and there was nothing that she could do about anything. Alia became so completely miserable and that she just wanted everything to be over. She spent a lot of time wondering why the King of the West hadn’t turned up yet? Then she really began to worry her knights with her morbid thoughts, for after a while she started thinking about running out in front of a chariot on her way to school. She thought about it on her way home too and the knights were at a loss as to what to do about her.
Then one day she actually stood on the curb by a busy intersection and dared herself to do it. Fortunately a Baron stopped, poked his head out the window of his chariot and screamed at her, “If you don’t get back off the road you’re going to get hurt.”
That made Alia think about her plan a little bit more, what if she only got injured and not killed? What would Hydra do to her then? The thought of only getting hurt scared the hell out of her and much to the surprise of her knights, she eventually stopped thinking about running out in front of a chariot.
Alia began to see the good side of sleeping on the couch in the hallway, especially on the weekends. The mornings were the best time because the hallway got light before anywhere else in the house and Alia used the early light to tell stories to her knights. They would storm the castles run by people like Hydra and they would free all the prisoners. She told them tales of dragons fighting knights and dragons fighting dragons. It was all very exciting and filled with much blood and gore, but the knights were always the heroes and Hydra always died some terrible gruesomely slow agonising death!
Once or twice Colonel Alan Virden got brave enough to sneak out of bed and down to the cold stone hallway where Major Peter Burke had been imprisoned. He crept with stealth over the stone landing and stared at Burke through the bars of his cell in Urko's prison. "Don't worry, Burke, Galen and I will get you out of here one way or another."

One particular night, Alia lay on her bed in her prison cell and she looked at her head knight, while all the other knights stood behind him in formation. "Look, Urko has to go."
"Who is Urko?" asked the head knight.
"Hydra. Hydra has to go. You must behead him or put him in the dungeon of the King of the East. Hydra is a very bad man."
"Yes he is a bad man, but we must bide our time."
"When will the King of the West be here?" Alia stared intently at the head knight.
"I am unsure when his arrival might take place. Again, we are going to have to bide our time."
"That is all we ever seem to do." Alia sighed and turned away from her head knight, he was becoming a little tiresome to her. "I wish you would go away and never come back!"
"Little Knight, you mistake my concern for disregard, let me tell you a little story."
"I hate your stories, mostly I can't understand them. Go away!" Alia put her head under the covers and tried to ignore the head knight.
"The two dragons rose up furiously against each other, wings fanning the breeze viciously, crashing like thunder. Talons scratching and scraping the ground like diamonds on glass, piercingly torturous. Shivers ran down the spine and double molars ached in time with the queer music of impending pain. Hearts beat like pounding native drums from a time long since passed. Tempers flashing hot red fire through rage never displayed before. Teeth grinding away in the mouth of each like a sledge hammer smashing the rocks from the bottom of a river, the incessant noise disturbing everything and everybody in their wake. The quarry-like cacophony causing mass confusion in the minds of all that had once seemed logical.
Eager spitting vile poison at each other, and oh how desperately angry and vengeful the little one was, she wanted her pound of flesh. None would sleep until exacting and reclaiming that which had been taken placated the viciousness alive within the little one’s barely beating heart.
The bigger dragon, the arrogant fool who heaped bitterness upon bitterness unfaltering in his destiny, mercilessly garrulous, suspiciously clever in the attainment of trust and so proficient at strangling any sensibility from the faith placed within it. Oh how she hated him, how she wanted to mirror back the pain, make him see, feel, understand and maybe even empathise, what a stupid waste of time.
So the dragons fought causing the dust to swirl and disguise any kind of implication as to whom might walk away and who may die. But it was of no real consequence to the miniature one who could see through the vale of the future as though it were marquisette and she knew. To battle was to lose, to refrain was to lose, the whole occurrence either way was lose-lose and so she had nothing left to lose.
Beat me, scratch me; impale what is left of my heart upon your wall of shame with your carelessness, your degrading pitiless version of love. I TRUSTED YOU!
The bigger of the two faltered in his mission of destruction lacking reason or cause to want to snuff out the life of the little one. She’d struck a mortal blow to his ever-booming beating heart as he realised what he was fighting for. The battle being one of misunderstanding that had caused her to relish the thought of tearing out his heart with the sharp talons she possessed because he had supposedly ripped out hers.
Such confusion he just could not comprehend, how could she entertain the thought that he would even do such a thing? How could she fathom such darkness dwelt within his heart, such ruthlessness existed in his mind to be so cold toward the hurting and tormented little dragon?
How did admiration, consideration, kindness, trust and endearment become confused for something so twisted, vile and ugly?
"Through your silence," she whimpered, her anger totally dissipated at his lack of gusto for the impending battle. Silence speaks so many more verbose words than loquacious speech ever can. The little dragon’s wings ceased fanning, her talons stopped screeching across the ground like diamonds on glass, and instead the little dragon just curled up in the dirt there and cried as the faltering rhythm of her heart petered out and she slowly died, ceasing to exist yet again."
Alia sat up in her bed and stared at the head knight. "Verbose? Loquacious? I'm nine fool knight, how am I supposed to know what those words mean?"
"You read them in that story, remember?"
"No!"
"Well you did. The point is, little knight, that you often mistake people's intentions and what they are trying to say to you. You must stop it."
"YOU SOUND LIKE ADAM!" yelled Alia. Then she realised what she had done and she heard Hydra before she saw him.
"Lay down little knight and pretend that you are asleep."
Alia lay down in her bed and tried to feign sleep, but Hydra was rather clever and seemed to know when she was pretending. He pulled her from her bed and took a hold of her hair. He dragged her down the hallway to the door of the castle that led to the outside of it. "YOU WANT TO WAKE UP THE WHOLE KINGDOM WITH YOUR SHRIEKING, THEN YOU CAN SLEEP OUTSIDE!" Hydra shoved her out of the castle door and she heard the big key turn in the lock.
Alia looked at the water in the mote and the drawbridge that had been lowered so that she could leave and so she walked across it. The full moon was high in the sky and so she went and sat down under a tree and stared up at it. All her knights sat down on the grass around her and the head knight said to her, "See?"
"See what?" she snapped at him.
"Never mind," he said.
Alia sat there staring up at the sky and then suddenly every now and then a star fell down and landed in the field beside the castle. After she had watched about five stars fall she said to her head knight. "Want to catch falling stars?"
"Of course, I love that game." He stood to his feet and he reached into his armour and pulled out her star bag. "Okay my fellow knights, we are going to go out into the field and help Princess Alia catch the stars that are falling from the sky."
Alia walked with the head knight out into the field. The grass was wet with dew but felt like warm velvet under her feet. The knights formed a guard around the perimeter of the field and then watched as Alia and the head knight ran from one end of the field to the other trying to catch the stars as they fell. Pink ones fell, purple and yellow too, but Alia loved the purple ones best. "Run, head knight get that purple one over there!" Alia squealed and laughed as the head knight tripped and fell into a big heap in front of her. Alia merely jumped over him, sailed through the air as gracefully as a butterfly, caught the star in her hands and then landed softly on the ground. Alia got down on her hands and knees and crawled over to where her head knight was lying on the ground and she held the star up in front of his face. "For you, head knight." She placed the purple star in his hands and he gently placed it inside his armour.
Alia then lay on the ground beside him and they just watched the stars falling all around them. The purple ones were always tiny and made just a soft swooshing sound as they fell, but the pink ones shot down like supernovas! They were spectacular with the sound of thunder and they had a huge pink tail that burned brighter than the sun. "They are so beautiful, knight."
"That they are, little knight, that they are."
"Do they come from the moon?" she asked him as a yellow one exploded about five feet above them and showered them in tiny little yellow stars.
"I am not sure where they come from, little knight, but they are beautiful."
"What is your favourite colour?" she asked the head knight.
"I like red."
"Okay, red stars fall from the sky," called Alia. All of a sudden a huge shower of red stars began to fall; thousands all at once and the head knight could only sit there and say, "WOW!"
"I wonder if we can get some rainbow stars?"
"Try," he said to her.
"Rainbow stars fall from the sky," she said. Suddenly the night sky was ablaze with all the colours of the rainbow as stars fell and exploded all over the field where they lay. It was like Guy Fawkes, but much better and Alia would like to have stayed there for the rest of her life just watching them. But as suddenly as the stars had been falling, they stopped and the whole field was bathed in moonlight, as it had been when they had first gone out there. Alia looked around her and then suddenly she saw Hydra marching into the field and he was very angry. He walked over to where she lay and yanked her up by her arm and then smacked her harshly around the head. "Can't even throw you outside to shut you up," he hissed at her.
She wondered why he was not yelling, but then she remembered that he would not want all the neighbouring Lords and Earls to hear him speaking in such a way to a child. They respected him and thought him to be a kind and caring King. If they heard him speaking they way he normally did, then they would immediately know that he was really a Hydra and they would seek to slay him with their swords! They would slay him, the Serpent Queen and their snake-like offspring. He would lose his castle and his nobility and he couldn't have that!
Alia looked up at Hydra as he held her by the arm and she said, "How the mighty fall!"
"What?" he seethed.
"Nothing." Alia could not believe she had said that out loud and then she tried to remember where she had read that line?
Hydra began to drag her back toward the castle and as he did he told her how much she disgusted him. "No wonder even the wicked witch doesn't want you!" He dragged her across the mote and into the castle doors and once he got her inside the castle again he proceeded to give her a most vicious beating. Once he was done with that, he dragged her back to her prison cell and threw her into it as though she was a rag doll. "NOW SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP!" he screeched at her.
Alia lay there crying but trying to keep quiet when suddenly she felt a hand upon her head. Colonel Virden had, once again, sneaked into the prison and he had managed to reach his arm through the bars on the door to touch her. "You okay, Burke?"
"No," said Alia.
"I have something for you, Burke," he said. "Reach out your hand."
Alia reached out her hand and he placed into it two round aniseed wheels. Alia smiled and said, "Thank you, Colonel Virden."
"You are welcome, Burke. Now eat them and go to sleep. We will spend the next week in search of food and then on the weekend we shall work some more on our hole in the ground."
"Okay...Colonel Virden?"
"What?"
"Will the hole really help us to deal with Urko?"
"Yes, I promise it will help us to deal with Urko. But Burke?"
"What?"
"Try not to upset Urko any more, okay?"
"Okay." Alia watched as Virden pulled his arm out from the bars on the door to her cell and she smiled to herself, Hydra's days were numbered!

The next weekend came around quickly and the digging of the hole in the ground, on the part of Galen and Burke continued. Colonel Virden was still supervising...he wanted to be sure that the structure was not going to cave in on top of them. But then he had a horrible thought and called Galen over to him. "Go and take the planks off the top out there."
"But Alan, the roof?"
"Galen, I am a Colonel and you are but a monkey, so do as I say."
Galen turned away from Alan and crawled back out of the hole; he hated it when the Colonel pulled rank! He slowly and carefully removed the planks from the top of place where it was being dug out underneath. Galen was just removing the last plank when he heard Alan announce that they would take a break and perhaps play wrestling for a while.
"Why?" asked Alia. "Don't we want to get this hole dug?"
"Yes, but too much work and not enough play makes Burke a boring boy!"
"I'm a girl!" reminded Alia quite sternly.
"Okay, too much work and not enough play makes Burke a very boring girl!"
"Does it make Galen a very boring monkey?" she asked as she remained on all fours staring at Colonel Virden who was also down on all fours. "You should have made this deeper...you should have made it so that we can stand up in here."
"Well, being that you are only a Major and I am a Colonel, we will just have to assume that I know better than you, Burke. Now, let's go play wrestling!" Stephen crawled out of the hole and Alia followed closely behind him. Stephen, Alia and Tommy made their way over to the part of the lawn where the hedge joined with the fence. It was Alia who pointed out that it would be pretty hard to play wrestling with just the three of them. "We need more people. What about Kim and Genny?"
"Oh crap no! No way...they are so girly they'd cry the second you put them on the mat. No, I think we should get Urko and Elta's kids to play," said Stephen with a curious smile on his face.
"You want the spawn of Hyrda and Serpent Queen to play with us? Are you joking? I don't want to..."
"Spawn? Isn't that what fish do?" asked Stephen as he gazed down on Alia.
"Huh? Fish? No! It is...like...devil spawn...that's it...Devil spawn! I read it in a book," said Alia, jigging her leg and feeling nervous because Stephen was staring at her very strangely.
He leaned over her and then put his face right in front of hers. "Burke?"
"Yes?" she said very quietly.
"You read way too much. Stop it!" He then stood upright again and ordered Galen to set up the ring while he went away to secure the services of Urko and Elta's kids.
"This is a very bad idea, little knight," said Alia's head knight.
"I know," she said to him, "but what can I do, he's the Colonel!"
"He's an idiot!" said the head knight forcefully.
"He's still the boss, now shut up stupid knight!" she snapped.
"Who are you talking to, Burke?" asked Galen.
Alia looked all around her and then at Galen. "No one," she said feeling very guilty.
No sooner had she spoken than Stephen arrived with two of Urko and Elta's children who were both older than Alia. She did not like them at all because they both told tales on them and got them into trouble all the time. She did not want to play with the spawn of Hydra and Serpent Queen, but Colonel Virden had spoken and that was that! Galen had just fastened the rope to the fence and Colonel Virden announced that Galen would wrestle with Urko's eldest gorilla child.
"Major Burke, you will have to be the ref."
"What will you do, Colonel Virden?"
"I will sit over there with Zaius and judge the fight," he said.
"But won't Zaius have you lobotomised and hung out to dry in front of all the other humans for being...well smarter than the apes?"
"Humans are not smarter than apes!" asserted Galen.
"Galen?"
"Yes, Alan?"
"I thought we had this conversation already?"
"Yes, Alan." Galen looked at Alia again and said, "Burke, apes and humans are equals."
"Blasphemy," shrieked Zaius.
All of them turned to stare at Brett; he had no right to join in on their game. How dare he presume to be Zaius? Stephen marched right up to him and he said, "You can be the gorilla Jason, but you are NOT Zaius, you are not wise enough! Now, Galen into the ring with the...other monkey!" Stephen could not think of a name for him off the top of his head but then he said, "Bandor, that's your name,Kenny, Bandor. Let the match commence."
Alia stood there staring at Virden and then she asked him, "What do I do?"
"You make sure that they fight fair," said Stephen.
"Fair fights? There's no such thing!" she asserted.
"Young knight is absolutely correct, there is no such thing as a fair fight," said head knight, but no one was listening to him.
"Just pretend then!" ordered Virden.
Alia stepped inside the ring and said, "Ding ding, first round."
Galen and Bandor ran at each other, but Bandor was quite a bit bigger than Galen and he pushed him down onto the ground and all but wrapped his legs around his head. Galen started to shout; "I surrender!" But Bandor would not let go.
"BANDOR! HE HAS SURRENDERED, YOU HAVE TO GET OFF HIM NOW!" ordered Virden.
"I WILL GET OFF THE JUNGLE BUNNY WHEN I FEEL LIKE IT," said Bandor very nastily.
Alia's head knight was leaning against the fence just watching and then he looked at Alia, raised his eyebrows at her and said, "I told you it was a bad idea...and it just got a whole lot worse!" Head knight looked over beyond Alia and so she turned around to look at what he was staring at. There was Hydra marching across the lawn toward them and Alia felt her heart all but leap into her mouth the second she saw him.
Stephen saw Hydra heading their way too and he knew that Urko was storming over the lawn toward them because he was absolutely fuming irate with them. Alia glanced briefly at the kitchen windows and she saw Serpent Queen standing there staring out at them. Then she looked back at Hydra and the look on Hydra’s face was nothing but pure rage. Alia had no idea what they could’ve done that was so wrong that he’d be so angry. Hydra reached the wrestling ring and then screamed at them, “You rotten little bastards, I’ll give you jousting all right,” and he jumped over the ropes that formed the ring like a cheetah jumping on an antelope. He grabbed Tommy by his hair and slung him over the rope like he was a little rag doll; “There goes your nigger friend.”
Alia watched Tommy lying on the ground holding onto his head crying out loud. Hydra then grabbed Stephen by the arm and swung him round and round and then pushed him out of the ring saying nothing. Hydra's gaze then fell upon Alia and then he grabbed her by the seat of her pants and by the back of her jumper. Hydra raised her high into the air and threw her out of the ring and onto the lawn belly down. He yelled, “And there’s your bloody ref.” Hydra then quickly made off with Bandor and Jason.
Alia landed on the lawn so hard that it knocked the wind out of her and she couldn’t even breathe. She wanted to cry but couldn’t even do that, and so she just lay there until the pain went away enough for her to be able to take shallow breaths and then she cried. Alia's knights all gathered around her as they watched the scoundrel bully Hydra march back to the castle. They also watched the useless fat Serpent Queen just stand at the window watching. Serpent Queen had done nothing to stop Hydra and the knights were as disgusted by her betrayal as Alia was. "Women they’re so weak! I bloody hate women! I hate them so much because they are all serpent queens and witches!" Alia sobbed as she spoke to her head knight.
"Yes they are, they all are. Shall we attack the castle and lop off her head? That way you will not have to be bothered by the Serpent Queen any more."
"Yes, lop off her head and send it to the King of the East as a gift from princess Alia. And tell him that he's next!" Alia lay her head back down on the ground in an effort to make the pain go away some more, but it did not work.
Colonel Virden eventually got up off the ground and staggered over to Alia and he rolled her over and checked her out. "I am pretty sure that Urko has broken a couple of your ribs because you are badly bruised on the outside. Can you breathe right, Burke?" he asked as he leaned over her.
"No. It hurts really bad."
"Galen?"
Galen was still lying on the ground with his hands on his head. Urko had pulled clumps of his hair out as he had thrown him by it. He weakly called out, "What?"
"Burke is hurt. We have to get him back to the cave."
Galen slowly got to his knees and then his feet and Alia could see that he was still crying. "Okay," he said as he leaned down and helped Virden get Burke to her feet. They slowly but surely made their way with her over to the garden behind the hedge where their cave was. Virden crawled in first and Burke went second and Galen last. They remained the rest of the day inside the cave neither talking nor working for quite some time. The three of them just sat there staring at each other all three of them lost in their own private thoughts. Eventually one of them did speak and it was Virden. "I swear that one day I am going to get even with Urko. I will hurt Urko so bad that he’ll wish he’d never been born."
Alia feared that the only one who was going to be sorry they were born was Virden, not Urko. She looked at him and said, "Colonel Virden?"
"Yes, Major Burke?"
"I am already sorry that I was ever born! Why is Urko such a prick to us?"
"Because he can be," said Stephen as he kicked out at a stone.
"But he's not allowed to do these things to us," asserted Alia.
"He is URKO and URKO can do what he likes!" said Tommy.
"We need to keep digging this hole instead of sitting here feeling sorry for ourselves."
"Will we ever make it back to our time, Colonel Virden?" asked Alia as she got on her knees and began to dig at the wall with her spoon.
"No, our own time is gone. It will always be us against Urko. And when we've sorted Urko there'll always be another big ugly ape ready to take his place and torment us just as Urko does now."
"Why?" asked Alia as she paused to stare at Virden.
"Because we are different to everyone else and we always will be. No one cares what Urko does to humans like us, Burke. No one cares at all!" Stephen's tears rolled down his cheeks as he sat there. He did not care that Galen and Burke were staring at him. Alia suddenly decided to go over to him because she could not bear to see anyone cry, especially not Colonel Virden. HE was the strongest of the three of them so if he was feeling that way, then what hope did Burke and Galen have? She slipped her arm around his shoulders and said to him, "It won't be like this forever, Colonel Virden. One day we will make it home, one day we will."
Colonel Virden looked at her and he said, "I used to think that too Burke, but it just isn't true. It will always be this way and the only ones who can help us is us." Stephen wiped his tears and pushed Alia's arm away from him. "Back to work Burke!" Colonel Virden also took up a spoon and began to dig because he knew that with Burke doing the digging all by herself that they would never get the cave finished.
Head knight gave Alia a warning as she was down there digging. "He is very angry with Hydra and it may make him do something very stupid, so you be careful, little knight."
"Go slay a dragon, head knight!" she snapped at him.
Galen and Virden stared at each other when she spoke to head knight, but they did not say anything because they were well used to Alia's odd little outbursts.

The next day, Hydra again denied them lunch and he left outside until way after dark. Alia was so miserable that her knights really began to fret for her. They tried speaking with her and she would not answer them at all. When finally Hydra decided to allow them back into the castle, Alia went to the bath to get cleaned up. She sat in the bath all hunched up and cried her heart out. She cried so much that her chest hurt and she out loud to no one in particular, "I think I'm dying. The pain is so bad!" The knights watched her as she rocked and tried to rub her chest better. But it did not matter what Alia did, she could not stop crying nor make the pain go away and it terrified her.
The knights knew that it wasn’t just the pain of crying or even the strange, horrible feeling of hopelessness that she’d never succumbed to before. Alia was actually physically injured but because she could tell no one, she could get no help. She was completely miserable and she just wanted everything to be over. The knights knew that she was spending a lot of time wondering why the King of the West hadn’t turned up yet, and the head knight knew that he would have to tell her the truth.
Head knight waited until Alia was in bed later that night and he knew that it was an inopportune moment. Alia had been made to parade across the parade grounds with all the other knights in front of Hydra again. But this particular night he had been more vicious than usual and had pushed little knight until she had cried and even then it was not enough for Hydra. Head knight sat down on the side of her bed and he said to her, "Princess Alia, you and I need to speak."
"I thought I was little knight?" she asked him.
"You are both to me. We need to speak though and it is not a pleasant conversation that we are to have."
"What's wrong?" asked Alia as she stared up at him.
"It is about the King of the West."
Alia sat up. "What about him?"
"Well, Princess Alia, he cannot come and rescue you from the castle of Hydra."
"What? Why can't he come to rescue me?"
"It is not that he can't it is actually that he won't." Head knight hung his head and dared not to look upon Princess Alia.
"Why won't he come and get me?" asked Alia as the tears welled up in her eyes. "You're lying!"
Head knight looked Alia in the eye and he said, "I would never lie to you, Alia. He will not come because he says that you are not his Princess."
"But I am his princess, I have always been his princess...he loves me and he misses me and he wants to come and get me."
"Alia, the King of the West was cruel to you and you know that he was. He is not coming for you, he never will, but I think that deep down you know this. You are just trying to hide from the truth. But all good knights, they face the truth head on and they deal with it bravely."
"Whose princess am I?" she asked the knight.
"You are no one's princess, Alia. This you also know well but attempt to reject."
"But I am a princess, all little girls are princesses." Alia's tears slid down her cheeks as she processed all the truths that she had been trying to deny for so long.
"Yes, all little girls are princesses, but not all little girls are someone's princess. That is the difference between you and most other little girls."
"So I am alone? I have to face Hydra alone? No one will come to rescue me from him?"
"No, Alia. No one is coming to rescue you. You are alone and you need to find a way to be able to deal with that. I am sorry to be the one to make you face these things, but face them you must." The knight sat there on the edge of the bed as Alia once again cried. He knew how terribly hard it would be for her to let go of the dark-haired, brown-eyed King of the West, but the sooner she did it the better off she would be.
"If I am not the King of the West's princess, then whose am I?"
"It is as I said, you are no one's princess. You are Princess Alia and that is it. But we will all always be your Knights and if you would like us to hunt down the King of the West and lop his head off, then we will."
"But what if he changes his mind?" asked Alia of the head knight.
"He will never change his mind because he already has a princess by the name of Alia who IS his own princess."
"What? How can he have two Alias?"
"Six months after you were born, there was another little girl born whom is his child and whom he named Alia."
"He gave my name away to someone else?"
"Yes he did...but that little princess is doomed to see the grave before your tenth birthday; she is dying as we speak."
"What? Why?"
"I do not know why she is dying or why she will see the grave before your tenth birthday, some things just happen, some things just are. That is the case with the other Princess Alia."
"That is so sad," said Alia. "The King of the West is to have no Princess Alia after all?"
"No, he won't. But do not feel sorry for him, you and the other Alia were just as pawns on a chess table anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"It does not matter what I mean. The point is that you have to accept that the King of the West is not going to be coming to get you, so stop thinking about him and try to think about something else."
"What else is there?"
"I do not know, Princess Alia. I do not know," said the head knight sadly.
The next day on the way to school, Alia felt sadder than she had ever felt and she walked along telling herself a story. "I want to fall in front of a chariot because I can’t live any more. I’ve carried on as best I can, but it’s all been in vain, waiting for things to get better when all they do is get worse. And you little sparrow are you singing of my curse? The King of the West ahs left me and he's never coming back.
I can see you flitting from pillar to pillar from pole to pole without a care in the world and I wish I were you, because at least to some you are seen as beautiful. I’m not seen at all.
I remember little sparrow when I was just eight or so, I remember thinking that I must not do anything wrong because I wanted them to love me, I wanted them to want to keep me, and I think maybe I knew it was a game. I knew because when I cried, no one cared, but you little sparrow, you were there. You were watching and I know because I saw you.
And then when they drove me away and they didn’t say why, I sat in the back of the car and cried, then I looked out of the window for a reason why, but all that was there was you on a power line. Swinging on the breeze, singing your song of beauty to God above, so why couldn’t I be a sparrow too?
There’s no one to go to, there’s no heart to appeal to, I don’t mean anything little sparrow, I hold no cards. I have nothing to bargain with and I am scared little sparrow, scared of the future and terrorised by the past. When I walk past families, they just glance at me then they look away again, I don’t even register! I want to scream at them little sparrow, I want to scream at them, “LOOK AT ME…SEE ME!”
But they never do little sparrow; I’m just a number on a file. I never deserve any of the goodness I get because, they say, I am unappreciative, but why do they expect me to thank them for the pain I receive? Why can’t I be naïvely unappreciative like every other child? Big words eh Sparrow? I read those in a book!
Why do I have to be aware of sacrifice, why can’t I just take childhood for granted like everyone else? I want to scream and I want to cry because I hate that this world hates me! And I hate you too little sparrow because at least God notices you.
I’m always last on and first off and when something’s got to give, it’s always me. When push comes to shove, I’m always shove and even I hate me, so why should anyone else feel any different? Always, always, everyone else is always more important than me, their feelings and their dreams but me? I’m nothing. Oh God how I cry…and I cry more because no one hears and so I know what a total waste of time even crying is. But all these things I hold up to you in vain.
And that’s why I should just fall, just fall beneath the wheels of a chariot. Keep falling until one of them flattens me on the ground, at least then I’ll be real! I feel empty again, I feel down. So, stupid little sparrow you flitter away too. Go on then; back to your nest to wherever it is you call home. I want to be as silent in death as I am in life, and though I’m very scared, I bid you goodbye."
Alia stood on the side of the road and waited for a really big chariot to come along and she leapt out in front of it. Unfortunately the chariot stopped without hitting her and all she got was screamed at. Alia walked the rest of the way across the road and she could not believe how bad her luck was. She somehow knew that if someone else had accidentally stepped out in front of that chariot that it would have killed them for sure.
"That was a very bad thing for you to do, Princess Alia," said the head knight.
"I don't care."
"You will if Hydra ever finds out about it."
"Fine, I won't do it again. Are you happy now?"
"Very!" snapped the head knight. Alia glared at the head knight who was walking beside her. She then glanced behind her to make sure that the other knights were not listening in on their conversation. "Don't worry, I stuffed their ears with cotton wool," he said as he saw her glance back at them.
"I hate Hydra. I really hate him and I hate his fat ugly Serpent Queen!"
"I don't like them either," said the head knight.
"Why don't you all just go in there and lop off his head?" Alia looked at the head knight.
"The time is not yet right."
"It's never right!" Alia bitterly complained. She then walked into the gates of the school and called to the head knight to take all the knights home. "Come and pick me up after school."
Alia hated coming out of school when it was finished for the day. So many kids were picked up in their parent's car by their mothers. Few ever walked and watching them getting into their cars and going home always made Alia feel sad and sick. She did not feel so bad watching it if her knights were there to escort her home. Alia felt like the luckiest girl in the world when she was walking with them!

All week it seemed as though Hydra was really gunning for Stephen and his pursuit of him was relentless. Sometimes Hydra got like that. He would pick and pick and pick at a particular prisoner until the prisoner snapped. That way Hydra could send them off to the dungeon and it seemed to please him to be able to do that every now and then. It was around mid week during dinner that Alia could tell that something was really up with Colonel Virden. He was at the place where he was ready to take a chunk of Urko and as the seconds went by it got real obvious that there was real trouble brewing. All of a sudden and without a hint of warning, things went from slightly tense to all out war.
Tommy and Alia were sitting with their faces to the wall when the fight between Urko and Virden broke out. Alia was not even sure what started it; she wondered if maybe Virden had just had enough? Whatever the reason, she knew that things were going to light up like a Christmas tree inside the castle of Hydra. The first thing Alia heard was Urko saying to Virden; “So you want to have a go you little sod?”
Alia then heard a chair scrape across the floor and a slapping sound. Both Tommy and her dared to look around to see what was happening, and that’s when they saw Virden take a swing at Urko. Alia looked at her knights and said, "I hope he knocks the bastard’s block off! I swear I will cheer if he does!"
Urko yelled, “You little bastard,” as he swung at Virden and hit him in the face. Virden fell, landed against the wall and the blood was pouring out of his face. Virden then took another jolly good swing at Urko, but again, he missed and Urko sort of laughed at him. Urko then lunged at Virden and got him into a kind of headlock and they staggered around the room for a few moments and people got up and jumped out of their way. Serpent Queen sat there watching as though she was enjoying it and Alia thought; "Serpent Queen is a better name for her than Elta.”
Suddenly Virden got out of Urko’s headlock and took another swing or two at him and one actually connected. Alia went to cheer and her head knight slapped his hand over her mouth so that no one would hear her. Urko and Virden continued to struggle for a few moments and then one of them tripped over something and they both fell to the ground. Urko immediately sat on top of him and twisted his arm up behind his back. Virden yelled at him some more swearing and telling him exactly what he thought of his gorilla infested planet!
Urko twisted his arm even harder and screamed at Virden, “You give up now you stupid shit?”
Virden screamed back at Urko that he wasn’t going to give up, so Urko gave Virden’s arm an almighty yank. Virden began screaming, “I give up! I give up!”
Urko held him there for a few more seconds, then got up and stepped back to let Virden take his seat at the table. But Virden wouldn’t sit down again at the table of Urko, and so Urko said to him, “Piss off to bed then you sod.”
"I wouldn’t have sat back down again either if I was Virden," said Alia to her head knight.
Urko's wife Elta made some stupid comment, and then just ate her food like nothing had happened. Alia stared at her head knight and said, "Serpent Queen! She makes me sick the way she just sits there on her fat ass pretending that nothing’s going on. Sometimes I think Serpent Queen is more cracked in the head than Hydra. Bugger if I’m gonna grow up to ever like that! I swear!"
Urko yelled at the rest of humans in his kitchen, “I hope you little bastards took a good look at what happens to the high and mighty around here. Now eat your bloody tea and then you can all piss off to bed.”
"And King of the West will leave me here forever?" asked Alia as she stared at her knights. "I wish I was big enough and brave enough to smash his ugly face in!" Alia's knights did not say a thing because they were worried that Hydra might start with her if they encouraged her on the path that she had chosen. Tommy was staring straight at her because he could tell from her breathing that she was absolutely fuming at what Urko had done to Virden.
"Keep your cool, Burke," he thought to himself. "Urko is a little bigger than Virden, but compared to you he is huge and he will squash you like an insect!"
Meanwhile, Virden walked toward the far kitchen door and Urko asked him where he thought he was going? Virden said, “I’m just getting a towel for a shower.”
Urko stopped looking at him then, thinking Virden was doing what he’d said he was. But then everyone heard the back door bash against the wall as Virden flung it open. “Go screw yourself, gorilla nuts!” screamed Virden.
Alia smiled widely when she heard that and Galen kicked her under the table and shook his head. He knew that if Urko caught Burke smiling at what Virden had said, that Urko would mete out a terrible punishment.
What surprised Alia was that even though Virden had run off, Urko didn’t even bother giving chase. Urko instead just sat down and continued to eat his tea like nothing was happening. But Urko knew that all he had to do was make a phone call and every gorilla near and far would be out on horseback looking for him. Virden was on foot because any human caught riding a horse would be shot! He was no match for mounted gorillas, so Virden wouldn’t be gone for long,and when he got back he’d pay for what he did. Urko always made them pay! Besides, Stephen was like the majority of the others; he had nowhere to go and no one to run to.
Once tea was over Hydra sent everyone to bed except Genny and his and Serpent Queen's kids, but before he let Alia go he said, “Go and get your hair brush, Greta Garbo.”
Alia knew what that meant, he wanted to play tin soldier again and there was nothing that she could do except go and get my hair brush and let him. Alia walked slowly to the room hoping and praying one of the other kids had stolen her brush, but she wasn’t that lucky. She found it in the top draw with her other precious things right where she had left it. She tried to walk as slowly as she could back to the kitchen until Hydra screamed at her to hurry up.
Alia hoped against hope that the game with Hydra would be over really fast and that he would pick on someone else, but because he was so angry with Virden, Alia was to get a double dose. Hydra snatched the brush from her hand and said, “Walk across the kitchen.”
Alia did as she was told, but as she walked past him again she walked too far for him to be able to hit her. Hydra fixed that problem in his usual way and made sure that Alia didn’t want to do it again. “Dumb tin soldier,” said Hydra.
All the other knights marched with Alia and tried to get her to stay in formation, but she kept falling out of formation and throwing them all off. It was not helped by the fact that Hydra was bashing her over the arms and helmet with his lance. All they could do was to keep on trying to keep her focussed until Hydra had had enough. Finally Hydra yelled, “Piss off to bed, Garbo!”
Alia walked out of the kitchen crying and she went and got onto her bed in her cell and head knight tried to talk to her. "He punished you because he couldn’t punish Virden."
"His name is Stephen and at the moment I think that he's a prick." Alia climbed into her bed and hummed a song about a little dog that swam out to sea and drowned. Head knight hated the way that she did that; always made herself feel even worse than what she already did. "Alia, why do you do that? Make yourself feel sadder?" asked head knight.
"I always feel sad about animals dying because they are innocent and they don’t know what they did wrong to make dying happen."
"Alia, that is not what I meant. Why, when you are already sad, do you think of something even sadder and make yourself feel worse?"
"Sometimes, but not that often, I like to make myself feel sadder on purpose because that way I can learn how to turn it off. Makes me feel like not everything is out of my control. Do you think it's a dumb thing to do?" Alia looked at head knight.
"Yes. Yes I do think it is a dumb thing to do. Why would you want to feel worse and why would you want to learn to shut your feelings off?"
"Fine! I will sing something happy and meaningless like...hmm...John B Sails?"
"I hate that song and you know that I hate that song. I get seasick just hearing it!"
"Too bad..." Alia smiled at head knight and began to sing the song that he hated most.
“Little knight, you should stop singing that song right now!”
“Nah!” she said, and then she kept on singing, but she had not long started when Hydra caught her.
He slapped her a couple of times on the head and snarled at her, "Bed straight after the school for the rest of the week! See if THAT will teach you to shut your cake hole in bed!"
"I DID try to warn you," said head knight.
"Oh shut up!" said Alia through her tears. She cried for about five minutes before she realised that Galen was standing there staring at her through the bars of her cell. She did not know how long he had been standing there but it probably had not been very long because he knew that if Urko caught him near Burke that'd he'd be shot!
"Where do you think Virden's gone?" he asked her in a whisper.
"Back to the ship?" she whispered as she dried her eyes.
"No, he won't have gone there, Urko blew it up."
"Well I don't know then," she said as she stared through the bars at Galen.
"I wonder how long it will take Zaius to find him?"
"I don't know, Galen. But you better go because if Urko or Elta catch you here, you'll be toast!"
"Urko said he's going to punish us all for what Virden has done...I heard him telling Elta."
"Wow, what a surprise!" said Alia.
"Hey I heard Urko saying something else too," said Galen.
"What?"
"Genny and Katie are leaving next holidays; they've both got new places to go."
"So there'll be just six of us?"
"No, there's new humans coming in here, three or four from what Urko said."
"Great!" Alia threw herself down on the pillows. "Do you think Urko will let us go by Christmas?"
"Urko will never let US go, Burke; he will never do that."
"Well that's just great too." Alia hit out at the bars on her cell and at the same time she heard the lounge door open. She sat up and said; "Galen, someone's coming, get out of here!"

Alia spent the rest of the week in the company of her knights while she lay in bed in her cell. Hydra took all her books away and anything else she had kept by her bed. Going to bed every day after school was supposed to be a punishment and Hydra intended to make it as miserable as possible. Hydra particularly like using that form of punishment because it meant that he could pretend that the child concerned could be completely ignored and did not have to be dealt with at all. Alia found it an incredibly insidious form of punishment because the wicked witch had done that to her a lot. She had spent almost all of her time locked in a room at the cave of the witch and it was a torment to have it done again. So she did what she did best and created adventures in her mind, so although she was in fact lying in her bed in her cell, in mind she was far, far away from there.
On the first day that she climbed into bed in her cell she closed her eyes and went riding Wildfire with Burke, Galen and Virden. Her knights marched in formation behind them just in case Urko and his gorillas should show up. They could be shot on the spot for daring to ride horses, but they did not care. They rode over the green hills and through valleys laden with fruit trees. Alia ate a lot of fruit because she was very hungry. Virden and Burke were not at all interested in fruit; it was all they had been eating forever and a day. Burke even commented, "If I never see another piece of fruit it will be far too soon!"
Galen rather enjoyed the fruit and he ate a lot of it. The knights would have liked some but it was difficult to fit it through the slits in their helmets to get it into their mouths and they were not happy to remove their helmets just in case Urko tried to take them by surprise. Alia and Wildfire took Burke, Virden and Galen up to their castle on top of the cliffs in amongst the spruce pines and they were very impressed with the place. Alia was just about to take them for a ride on the pink swan when she felt someone slap her on the head. "I SAID IT IS TUCKER TIME!" roared Hydra who was very annoyed at having been ignored by Alia. Alia was shocked at how fast the time had gone by.
The next day after school she took Virden, Burke and Galen out catching falling stars, which all three seemed to enjoy. Virden caught the most stars and Alia secretly wondered if he had tapped into his Hydra power and she asked head knight to keep a special eye on Virden just in case he was secretly working for Urko. On the last night of her punishment she lay there crying because no matter how hard she tried to drift away, she could not. Once again she was thoroughly miserable and her knights were at a total loss as to what to do.
Once the weekend rolled around and Hydra's punishment of Alia for singing in bed had come to an end, her and Galen sat outside wondering what they should do? They were totally lost without Virden there to order them around.
"Where do you think he is?" asked Alia as she sat riding her horse and watching Galen riding his.
Galen moved around on the tree branch awkwardly. "This doesn't feel like a horse, Alia and I feel stupid sitting here pretending that it is."
"Sssh, Galen. You are riding your horse across the Californian countryside and we are looking for Virden. We have to find him before Urko does. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?" Alia stared over at Tommy hoping that he would just shut up and play the game. All of a sudden Wildfire's nostrils began to flare and he began to step nervously. "Something's wrong with Wildfire."
"Maybe he thinks it's not a good idea to go out looking for Virden? Maybe he knows that Urko is close?"
"Galen, Wildfire cannot smell Urko."
"Well thunderbolt can, can't you Thunderbolt?" Galen gently rubbed his horse's neck as he sat on top of him.
Alia began to giggle at Tommy stroking the tree as though it was alive and then she stopped. She had been the one berating him for not getting into the spirit of the game. "Perhaps Thunderbolt is working for Urko and taking us in the wrong direction?"
"Thunderbolt would never betray us to Urko. He wants to find Virden as much as we do. Perhaps we should ride over that hill over there and see if he's there?"
"Galen, there's a thousand hills here, he could be behind any one of them, so which one should we choose?"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TWO DOING?" Hydra screamed from down on the ground.
"Urko's found us," hissed Galen. "Climb to the top of the tree, Burke, NOW!" Galen ordered.
Burke jump from Wildfire's back and scaled the tree, not as efficiently as Galen did, being that he was a monkey, but still, for a human she didn't fare too badly.
"GET DOWN NOW!" screamed Urko.
"Burke, you can go down to Urko if you want, but I'm not. I'm staying right here."
"I'm not going down to him, stuff that for a joke!" Burke looked at Galen knowing that they were both done for when they did finally climb down. Urko would bash them silly with his gorilla fists when they finally did get up the nerve to climb down and face him.
"For a gorilla, he's not very smart," said Galen.
"What do you mean?" Burke held onto her branch for dear life. She did not like heights too much and was terrified of falling.
"Any other gorilla would have been up here by now, but not him." Galen stared down on Urko who was becoming more frustrated and angry by the second.
"RIGHT! I'LL FIX YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!" he screeched. Burke and Galen watched Urko storm off to the garage and they heard him throwing things around in there. After a few minutes he reappeared with what looked to be a chainsaw.
"He's going to cut down the tree!" said Galen the panic evident in his voice.
"With us in it," added Burke. Then Burke rethought that idea. She looked at Galen and said, "Nah, he won't cut it down with us in it; we'll be killed."
"You think Urko cares about killing a couple of humans? Zaius and the High Council will probably thank him!"
By that stage, Urko was furiously trying to get the chainsaw started. Every time he pulled the string on it and it sputtered and died he became angrier. Finally he managed to get it started and began to cut into the trunk of the tree.
"GET DOWN, BURKE! NOW!" called Galen. Both he and Burke scaled down the tree faster than they had ever thought it possible to scale down a tree. Once they hit the ground, Urko turned the chainsaw off and ran at them both. Urko managed to grab Burke first and he hit him mercilessly about the head and face with an open hand. When Burke fell onto the ground, Urko began to kick him in the stomach and anywhere else his boots could find a spot to land.
Once Urko tired of Burke, who had by then stopped moving, he turned his attention to Galen, with whom he was far more vicious. The entire time he hit and kicked Galen, Urko spewed forth the most disgusting insults and derogatory information. Even Burke, who had seen a lot in her young life thus far, was shocked to the core at some of the things that spilled from Urko's foaming mouth. He was as an ape possessed and as Burke lay on the ground crying, she became fearful that Urko would not stop until he had finished poor Galen off permanently. She looked around her and saw her knights just standing there not really knowing what to do about Hydra and she was too scared to speak and give them orders. Eventually Urko ran out of energy to kick Galen any more and so stormed off back inside the castle. Burke crawled over to where Galen was lying on the ground and she tried to shake him to see if he was okay, but he was asleep. Galen had blood coming out of his nose and mouth and it looked as though Urko had accidentally kicked him in the face. Burke knew that Urko would not have done that on purpose, he never hit forcefully in a place that would leave marks that could be seen by other gorillas or humans. If he had kicked Galen in the face, then Burke knew that it had been a mistake.
"Galen, you have to wake up. We have to go to the cave to wait for Virden...quick before Urko comes back." Burke shook Galen hard and she slapped him a couple of times and after a few minutes Galen began to wake up.
"I think I am going to be sick," he said. Then all of a sudden Galen began to vomit, but fortunately it did not last long because he had not eaten much that day. Burke managed to sit up, despite her pain and she encouraged Galen to do the same. Then she helped him to his feet and they both walked across the lawn and into the garden behind the hedge. Once they were in there they heard the chainsaw starting up again and they knew that Urko was cutting something with it. Burke pushed Galen down into the hole first and then crawled in herself and pulled the hedge cuttings over the top of the hole. It made it very dark in there, but at least Urko could not find them at all to torment them some more.
"I wonder where Virden is?" Burke said again.
"If he's lucky, he's dead. Can you imagine what Urko will do to him when they bring him back here?"
"Yeah. I guess it would be better if Virden was dead." Burke sighed and then said, "Are you okay?"
"No, he kicked me in the head and I feel dizzy and everything sounds a bit weird."
"Do you need to go to the hospital?" asked Burke.
"Like Urko is going to let me go to the hospital?" Galen then began throwing up again. Alia sat there just listening to the sounds of Hydra sawing away with the chainsaw and Tommy throwing up and she felt incredibly miserable. She hated being a kid, she was totally powerless and there was nothing that she could do to help herself or anyone else as far as Hydra went. She then looked at where Tommy was sitting and she said, "Galen, why do you think they are so mean to us?"
"The apes?" he asked between his bouts of throwing up.
"No, for real. Why do you think they are so mean to us? What did we do that was so bad? Other kids don't live like we do. They don't have to go and hide in a hole in the ground and make up other worlds to make this one go away. Will it always be like this? Will it ever change?"
"I don't know. I don't know nothing about nothing and I don't care too much either. I wish we were on the planet of the apes. I wish we were running away from them, at least that way we'd get a break. Sometimes I want to go home. Do you ever want to go home?"
"There is no home to go home to. I've got nowhere to go, so even if I could, I couldn't." Alia picked up a handful of dirt and then she said, "Maybe we should just keep digging for when Virden gets back?"
"I don't feel very well so you will have to do it for yourself. I'm going to go to sleep for a while. Don't leave me in here by myself, okay?"
"I won't," said Alia as she picked up the spoon, crawled over to the wall and began to dig.
Once it got dark outside, Alia lit the candle that was down in the hole. She had been down there for hours it seemed, and Galen had not woken up yet. She heard Urko calling out to them and looking all around the yard for them, but he could not find them. He assumed that they had ruin off like Virden and it worried him a little. Galen had a huge mark on his face and if anyone saw it then he might be in trouble. But Urko was clever and he devised a story for how the mark had gotten onto Galen's face so all he had to do was wait it out until the two of them surfaced.
Finally Galen woke and he was feeling sicker than he had earlier and so Burke helped him crawl out of the hole and they made their way over to the door of the castle. Alia's knights gathered around them and head knight said to her, "Galen does not look at all well...I think he needs to see a doctor."
"Hydra won't let him see a doctor."
"Then perhaps, Princess Alia, you should run away and find someone who can take you to the King of the East so that Galen can be helped?"
"Hydra would kill me if I did that. I can't do anything, I just have to hope that he will be...."
"WHERE HAVE YOU TWO LITTLE SODS BEEN?" roared Hydra when he saw Alia and Tommy sitting on the steps of the castle.
"In the backyard," said Alia without looking at him.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU COME WHEN I CALLED YOU?"
Alia wanted to yell at him, "Because you kicked the shit out of us last time we saw you," but she didn't. "Tommy was too sick to move and I didn't want to leave him."
"What's wrong with him?" Hydra leaned down and pulled Tommy's head up by his hair. "HOW'D HE GET THAT MARK ON HIS FACE?" he roared at Alia when he saw his face.
Alia looked at him and was having a moment where she was unsure as to what to say. She knew that she would get hit if she said that he himself had done it to Tommy and so she said, "Tommy fell out of the tree and hit his face on the ground."
"Well that'll teach him to climb the trees then won't it!" He then grabbed Tommy by the hair and dragged him inside. Alia wanted to scream at Hydra to stop hurting Tommy because he was feeling bad enough without Hydra making him feel worse. But she didn't say a thing; she couldn't. The next day Hydra kicked them outside again even though Tommy felt and looked like death warmed up. Alia took him by the arm and led him across the lawn and into the garden where their cave was. Tommy crawled in and lay down and Alia went out and snuck down behind the garage to grab some old blankets to cover him with. The blankets were covered in snails and were a bit damp, but Tommy was too sick to notice. As Alia had walked back with the blankets, she looked at the tree where they had been riding their horses the day before and Urko had cut all the branches off as high as he could reach. Their horse riding days were over.
Fortunately by late afternoon Tommy woke up and was feeling a lot better. He even felt well enough to help Burke dig and he also had a new enthusiasm for having a lot more of the cave dug for when Virden finally returned.

Life's a real charmer, yes sireee. Life could charm the leg off a chair sometimes with some of the things that it does. Take for example the idea that things just cannot get any worse. Now, I do not know who is responsible for that hideous, oftentimes, erroneous little pearl of wisdom. But whoever it was should be lined up against a wall and promptly shot for perpetrating, by mouth, such a glaringly obvious lie! Everyone knows by age twenty-five that one must never utter the words, "Well things can't get any worse," because one knows that the second that you utter that absurd little sentence, that there is only one way left for things to go and here's a wee clue, it's not up. And pointing out that things cannot possibly get any worse when they feel about as bad as they can get anyway is like an airline pilot telling you what the temperature outside the cabin of the plane is at 35'000 feet. One, you have no way of proving nor disproving that what he says is correct. Secondly, if you did happen to be unfortunate enough to find yourself in the position of being able to prove or disprove what the Pilot said, by being outside the cabin of the plane at 35'000 feet, the last thing you are going to be thinking is, "Shit the Pilot lied, where's my coat?"
See, life is filled with more pieces of completely useless information than you could ever hope to shake a stick at, and "Things cannot possibly get any worse," comes about second on my list right after "A three hundred dollar picture tube will blow first in order to protect a 2 cent fuse!"
But Alia did not understand the laws of life and utterances at the age of nine and she looked at Tommy as they dug away at the wall and said, "Well look on the bright side, things can't possibly get any worse."
That evening after they had had their bath and gotten into their pyjamas, Hydra called them into the kitchen for dinner. Alia thought the kitchen smelled absolutely gorgeous because she was so hungry. She didn't even care that what she got would probably not be enough to fill her up, the food smelled so good. She saw that all the kids' plates had some kind of really yummy looking meat and vegetables on them and she looked at Galen and smiled. But once she saw the disgrace table where they had to sit, her smile very quickly faded. She looked at Galen and he looked back at her because Urko had found yet another way to inflict some good old-fashioned revenge upon them.
Alia looked at Tommy and she just wanted to cry as she sat down. She knew that Hydra was staring at Serpent Queen and laughing, and within two seconds Serpent Queen was laughing along with him. Where Alia and Tommy's plates should have been was two slices each of stale bread and a glass of water. Hydra then got to his feet and said, "Seeing as how Garbo and Nigger are such good friends with Stephen, then they can have bread and water until he is found. AND THAT IS ALL YOU WILL GET UNTIL HE IS FOUND! GOT IT?"
Tommy nodded his head, but Alia was too upset and so just sat there as the tears trickled down her face. "BETTER NOD, GARBO! YOU DON'T WANT ME COMING OVER THERE TO MAKE YOU!"
Alia nodded her head and while everyone else ate their dinner, while happily chatting away, Alia and Tommy tried to eat the stale bread and it was disgusting! When the others had finished their dinner they were then given ice cream and fruit, but Alia and Tommy sat there with nothing. But as if that was not enough, Hydra announced that after dinner, while everyone else sat in the warm lounge and watched TV, Tommy and Alia would have to sit in the hallway with their arms and legs folded. So Tommy and Alia sat there in the cold hallway and they could see the warm fire through the glass doors, which just served to make them feel colder.
"When I grow up I won't be a little nigger any more, I'll be a big one and when I am, I'm gonna come back and stick him like a pig!"
Alia just sat there and calmly asked him, "Can I watch?" She didn't care what Tommy might do to Hydra because nothing he could do to Hydra was too nasty as far as she was concerned. As she sat there, she was so hungry that her tummy was hurting and all she wanted to do was cry. Once the tears hit, she sat there willing God to let her die. She didn't want to be in the world any more, not if everyone she ever ran into was going to be like Hydra. It had seemed such a victory when Virden had told Hydra where to go and then run off, but the reality was that he had increased their suffering. By the middle of the following week, Alia was praying to God that Virden would be found and brought back. She was so hungry that when she walked past shops on her way home she was tempted to go in and steal something to eat! Then she found herself wishing that it were summer. At least in the summer there were apple trees to take apples from and grapevines to steal grapes off. But being winter, nothing grew and so there was no way to improve the situation on her own. All she could do was wait and hope that Stephen was caught real soon.
Friday brought good news. Virden had been caught and returned to the castle of Hydra. Galen and Burke were almost fit to burst when they heard the news and they couldn't wait for dinnertime. Finally they would get to eat something substantial. Neither gave any thought to Virden's current misery, theirs was too great to be concerned with his. But at dinnertime Virden was dragged into the kitchen by Urko, by the scruff of his neck. Urko roughly shoved him down on a chair right beside him and instead of a plate of food, he was the one sentenced to stale bread and water.
Galen and Burke sat down at their table facing the wall and on their plates was real food...not a lot, Urko ensured that they had only a small helping, but still Alia didn't care and cleaned her plate in about two seconds flat. Unfortunately, as per usual it had been just enough to make her hungrier. Galen, upon seeing that Urko was too busy tormenting Virden to be worried about what he was doing, quickly swapped his plate with Burke's. Burke looked at him and he just nodded his head to her to indicate that she should eat his food too. Alia wanted to cry. Part of her wanted to give it back to him, but the other part of her was so hungry that she really wanted to eat it. The hungry part of her easily won the day and so she ate Galen's food too. By the time that she was finished his she felt almost satisfied, but then she looked at Galen and felt bad. "I shouldn't have eaten Galen's food too."
That evening Tommy and Alia were permitted to sit in the lounge and watch TV with the other kids and as it happened, Planet of the Apes was on and Tommy smiled at Alia when it started. For the first time Alia took notice of what was going on in the program and she decided that Burke was rather a top kind of bloke and she did not mind being called Burke at all once the show ended. He seemed to have kind eyes and a smile that lit up the entire TV screen and he sort of reminded her a little of the King of the West. "But he's the nice version of the King of the West. He would come and get me if he knew what Urko was doing," she thought to herself as the credits flashed across the screen in sky blue.
Once the TV show was finished they were sent to bed and as Alia lay in her bed in her cell she heard Urko in Virden's cell. She heard him hitting him and she heard Virden crying out. It made her stomach feel very sick and it made her head swim. She very quickly pictured Burke inside her mind with his warm smile and kind eyes and she concentrated on staring at his face and shutting out the noise of Urko beating Virden. She had just about managed to shut the entire thing out of her mind when Urko suddenly dragged Virden by his hair into the hallway. Virden's cries became much louder and so did Urko's yelling. Alia then heard the bathroom door open and she heard Urko roughly shove Virden in there.
"RUN AWAY AGAIN WILL YOU?" he screeched at him. "THIS OUGHT TO GIVE YOU A LITTLE TASTE OF WHAT THE JAIL YOU ARE GOING TO END UP IN ONE DAY WILL BE LIKE!" Urko slapped Virden around the head a few more times and then forced him to stand under a cold shower.
Alia shut her eyes tight and put her hands over her ears and just said to herself, over and over again, "BURKE. BURKE. BURKE," until his face became very clear in her mind. She was just gazing upon his face when the bathroom door opened again and Urko shoved a soaking wet Virden into the hallway. He stumbled and fell landing right beside Alia's cell and so she sat up to look at him. His face was red, his lips were quivering, his eyes were bloodshot and he looked terrified. She quickly lay down again when she heard Urko getting closer. Urko grabbed Virden by the hair and dragged him back to his room and he slammed the door behind him. Although the door was shut, it was not hard to hear what he was saying to Virden, being that he was still shouting at him. Urko was absolutely merciless in the exacting of his revenge upon Virden and Alia lay there feeling helpless and frightened that Urko might kill him.
Once the noise stopped, Urko walked down past Alia and seeing that she was still awake, leaned over her and slapped her across the head and told her to get to sleep. Alia lay there sobbing quietly and she again tried to picture Major Burke's face and she drifted off to sleep with his image firmly front and centre in her mind.
The next morning there was huge trouble with Hydra and his own children. Kenny was supposed to have put the milkbottles out so that the milkman could drop off the milk for the day and he had forgotten. Hydra had reminded him too, which just made it worse. It was very unusual for Hydra to be so outwardly nasty to his own serpent children, but he was being unbelievably mean to Kenny that Alia almost felt sorry for him. Well, up until the point where Hydra announced that they could all go a week without milk or sugar on their porridge. "MAYBE BLOODY KENNY WILL PUT THE BOTTLES OUT NEXT TIME! IN THE MEANTIME YOU LITTLE SODS CAN THANK HIM! WELL GO ON THEN, THANK HIM FOR THE WAY YOU HAVE TO EAT YOUR PORRIDGE!" he shrieked.
Alia turned around and faced Kenny like everyone else and they all said a resounding, "THANK YOU, KENNY!"
That delighted Hydra so much that he laughed at Kenny and then smacked him around the ears. Alia knew that her and Tommy would have to be very careful for the next two days. It was the weekend, Hydra would be home all day for the next two days and he was obviously in a worse than usual mood. If he was doing that to his own serpent children, then what might he do to them if they rubbed him up the wrong way? Once they had been kicked outside for the day Tommy told Alia what Hydra was doing to Stephen.
"Urko makes him have a cold shower every night and then he makes him sleep on the floor with no blankets, no pyjamas and no pillow. Virden cries all night, Burke, and I don't know what to do for him. It is horrible hearing him cry all the time and Urko gives him a new hiding every night."
"Why?" asked Burke.
"I don't know, but he said that Virden will do this two days for every one that he was gone."
"He's a prick! I hate him! I wish we could murder him, I wish we were big enough and brave enough to do something really mean back to him!" Burke kicked out at a stone that was near the cave that they had been digging.
"Well, let's keep digging the cave for when Virden gets back." Galen crawled down into the hole in the ground and Alia crawled in right behind him.
"Hey Galen?"
"Yes, Burke?" he said as he stopped and turned to face her.
"Thanks for giving me your tea last night, I was so hungry and I felt full for the first time in ages after eating yours." Alia then thought about what she had said. "I mean...um...I hope you weren't too hungry all night." Alia knew that it was stupid thing to say. Of course Galen had gone to bed hungry, she had eaten his tea too so how could it have been any other way?
"I was feeling a bit sick and they would have just thrown it away," he lied. He had his reasons for giving Alia his tea. He had collected a rather good stash of biscuits, bars and fruit and he had it hidden where Urko would never sniff it out. "Hey I have got a surprise for you."
"What?" asked Burke as she reached down to grab the spoon to start digging with.
Galen put his hand into his pocket and pulled out an orange. "Tada!" he said with a big smile.
Alia was so excited to see an orange because she could not remember the last time that she had eaten one. "The last time I had one of these was last year, I think. Wow thank you."
"That's not all," said Galen as he put his hand into his other pocket. "Biscuits too," he said as he placed six round chocolate biscuits into her hand.
Alia could not believe what she was seeing. "Wow, where did you get theses, Galen?" she asked, her smile plastered all over her face.
"I am not just a monkey who knows how to climb trees. Say no more and just eat the food, Burke," he said as he grabbed the spoon from the ground beside her and began to dig. Alia sat down on the cave floor and ate her biscuits and then she slowly peeled her orange. She adored the smell of oranges as they were peeled and when she put the first piece in her mouth she was sure that she had died and gone straight to heaven. Once she was finished the food that Galen had given her, she went and knelt beside him and began to dig. "What's he doing now?" she asked as she scraped off her second spoonful of dirt.
"Who?"
"Virden."
"Oh. He has to sit on the floor doing nothing all day. He has no books, no pens and no paper. No nothing. Even in jail they at least give you pens and paper so that you can write to people."
Alia felt badly for Virden but knew that there was nothing that she could do for him other than to keep digging the hole. "He sure will be surprised when he sees how far we have gotten with this. It must be at least twice as long as it was before he left."

Eventually Urko tired of making Virden suffer because it just took too much of his energy to keep it up, but he had kept it up long enough for Virden to vow revenge. Somehow, someway he was going to get Urko. "He'll make a mistake and then I'll fix him for good!"
"We kept digging the hole for you while you were gone," said Alia.
"It's a cave, Burke, not a hole. Have you hit daylight yet?" he asked as they made their way over to the garden behind the hedge.
"Not yet," said Galen.
"Then you have not been digging fast enough then have you?" he snapped.
"DIG YOUR OWN STUPID HOLE THEN!" snapped Alia and she walked off in the direction of the swings. She decided that she would ride Wildfire for the day and Galen and Virden could dig the dumb hole by themselves. Alia got onto the swing and began to make it go higher and higher and as she did that she imagined Burke on a horse. He was riding away across the ranges to hide from Urko and the other gorillas and he was taking her with him. Urko would never be able to hurt her again while Burke was taking care of her. Burke would never be cruel. He would never hit Alia, scream at Alia, call her ugly names or make her go hungry.
"Alia, stop it!" called Virden as he stood beside the swing.
Burke and Alia were almost into the forest when...
"Come on, Alia. I didn't mean to be snappy. It's just that Urko has..."
"GO AWAY!" she yelled at Virden. She had her own new hero now and she did not need Tommy, Stephen and a dumb hole in the ground any more.
"Please, Burke, we can't dig it without you," pleaded Galen.
The forest was beautifully green and plush and it smelled of spruce pines. The birds were singing and the deer were standing beside the river drinking from the beautifully crystal clear water. Burke turned to Alia and said...
"Major Peter Burke I am your Colonel and you must obey my orders."
"Bollocks!" said Alia to Stephen as she brought the swing to a stop. There was no way that she could wander away from Urko on horseback with Peter Burke while Virden stood there laying down the law to her. "FINE! I'LL DIG YOUR STUPID HOLE!" Alia began stomping her way over to the garden and just as she approached the hedge Galen said, "I have another surprise for you."
"What?" asked Alia as she stopped and turned to face him.
"This," he said as he handed her a pink packet of sparkles.
"They're my favourite. How did you know?" she asked him.
"Why Burke, I am your friend, it is my job to know what you do and don't like. Virden is sorry for being a prat, aren't you Virden?" Galen gave him a good hard jab to the ribs.
Virden coughed and then said, "Yes, Burke. I am sorry for being a prat. Now come on, we have a cave to dig."
Alia dug for about ten minutes when she decided to ask Colonel Virden the question that had been on her mind since he had been found by the apes and handed back to Urko. "Colonel Virden?"
Colonel Virden kept working away. "Yes, Major Burke?"
"Where did you hide while you were away?" Burke stopped digging for a moment to stare at him.
"Keep digging and then I will tell you."
"Okay, Colonel Virden."
Galen too kept digging beside Alan and Peter, he too wanted to know where Alan had been for almost two weeks, but unlike Peter Burke, he was too afraid to ask. Virden kept digging as he spoke. "The first night I ran and hid under a bridge and I could hear the apes going backward and forwards over it on their horses looking for me. Horse hoofs sure sound loud when you are under a bridge. Anyway I stayed there until the next morning and then I slowly made my way across the hills until I came to a little settlement. You remember the one, Burke?"
"Huh?" asked Burke, as she stopped digging to stare at him.
"Remember the place that the old man went to, to get us our clothes when we first crashed here?" he looked at Burke.
"Um, nope Colonel Virden, can't say that I do."
"Chaylow," said Galen.
"Sounds like the name of a pop star or an actress to me," said Burke as he continued to dig.
"Yes that's the place, Galen. Well when I got there the apes had burned it to the ground while they were looking for me. They said that the Prefect was hiding me, so they punished them all."
Burke stopped digging again and looked at Virden. "So where did you go from there then?"
"Dig, Burke!" said Virden, who stopped to stare at her. As soon as Burke was digging again, he continued with his story. "I stole a horse and a gorilla mask from one of the humans I met and I rode all the way to the old ruins of the city. It was funny because lots of gorillas stopped me on the way and yet none of them could tell that I was wearing a mask. Gorillas really are very stupid!"
"Well I am one and I am not stupid!" snapped Galen.
"But you're a monkey, not a gorilla so you're different," said Burke. She smiled at Galen to make him feel better.
"Anyway, while I was in the city I tried to find out if anyone knew where the old settlement was that I had come from and someone thought they knew. So I followed some directions and I found the house of my mother."
"Holy cow, what'd she say when you turned up?" asked Alia. She had a fair idea of what the wicked witch would say to her if she ever turned up unannounced and none of it would be pleasant.
"She was shocked, I mean I had been gone for over a thousand years."
"Did she think you had changed much...over a thousand years?" asked Burke.
"What do you think?" asked Virden.
"I suppose," said Burke feeling a little stupid for having asked that question.
"Anyway, he was pleased to see me and I was there for three days before the first lost of apes came. I heard their horses on the driveway and so I went and hid in the barn with the cow. They did not stay long and left without checking anywhere around for me."
"That was lucky," said Galen.
"But they came back three days after that and for some reason, they knew where to look for me." Virden looked as though he might cry any second as he knelt there remembering how his mother had betray him. "My mother dobbed me in to the gorillas and that's how they recaptured me."
"She doesn't see you for a thousand years, invites you to stay and then pots you in to Urko?" asked Alia not quite believing what she was hearing. "How could she be so mean?"
Galen nudged her in the ribs, "Shut up, Burke!"
"Don't nudge me in the ribs, primate!" she snapped at him.
"Shut up both of you and just keep digging!" said Virden as he regained his composure. He knew that the whole world was against humans like him, so his mother potting him in to Urko and the other gorillas was not as bad for him as it might seem to be from Burke's perspective. Burke was still very young; he knew that. He had six years on her, being that he was fifteen years old, and therefore he was far wiser than Burke or Galen. He understood how the world worked and why it worked the way that it did and nothing shocked or surprised him any more. They had been digging for another half-hour before Virden spoke again. "Okay, we need to start digging hight up from the floor and cut more into the roof as we go."
"Why?" asked Burke.
"Because we have to start digging toward the surface so that we can find daylight."
"But that will make two openings, won't that make it easier for Urko to find us in here?"
"Burke, you are a mere Major and I am Colonel. I am far more experienced in these things than you are so just do as you are told, okay?" Virden looked at Burke sternly.
"Okay, Colonel Virden," she said meekly. "Colonel Virden?"
Stephen sighed loudly, "What...Burke?" he asked as he stopped to look at her again for a moment.
"How many other humans are there like us?"
"What do you mean, like us?"
"Like us, trying to run away from Urko or having to live with him?" Burke sat down for a moment to take a rest from the digging.
"Probably thousands."
"Then how come we don't know very many of them?"
"They keep us away from each other because they are scared that if we knew exactly how great our numbers are then we might get it into our heads to band together and overthrow the apes."
"Do you think we could?" Burke had a smile on her face because she thought it would be a great thing to do.
"That's why they keep us apart and make us live in small groups, so that we cannot get it into our heads to rise up against them. But we can rise up against them one at a time and that is better than sitting around feeling miserable and doing nothing."
"I have to go inside to the loo. Back soon," said Burke.
"Watch out for Urko, he's probably been drinking," warned Virden.
Burke made her way out of the cave, through the garden, across the lawn and up to the steps of the castle. She opened the door very carefully and went into the nearest toilet and as she went to shut the door she thought she heard voices. Burke stepped out of the toilet and peeped into the kitchen. Hydra stood at the window staring out at the lawn with Serpent Queen. "What do you think they are doing in there?" Serpent Queen asked Hydra.
"I don't know and I don't care." Hydra turned away from the window and walked over to the other part of the kitchen to get another beer. Burke quickly shot over and into the toilet, but she did not shut the door and continued to listen.
"Don't you think that we should know what they are doing in there? It might be dangerous," she said to Hydra as he ripped the tab off a fresh can of Lion Red.
"If we're really lucky, they're digging a huge hole and one day it will cave in on them. Three little bastards less, suits me just fine." Hydra laughed at Serpent Queen's concern for the brats in the garden.
"Yes but how would we explain something like that?" she asked him.
"Just tell them that they went to the shop and must have ran off from there and we haven't a clue where they might have gone."
"True," said Serpent Queen as she nodded her head and laughed wickedly with Hydra.
Burke waited for a few minutes before she flushed the toilet and then she shot out the door without washing her hands. She'd rather risk Hep B than risk running into Urko. She thought about telling Virden and Galen what she had heard Urko and Elta saying, but she decided not to. Within two seconds of Burke arriving back, Virden announced that he needed a bathroom stop too.
"Watch out for Urko and Elta, they're in the kitchen," warned Burke.
"Doesn't matter to me whether they are or not," he said as he crawled out of the cave.
Burke crawled out behind him and asked him, "Don't you care if Urko hurts you?"
"Comes a day where you no longer care or are afraid. What can he do to me, Burke, that he has not already done?"
"Plenty, probably."
"Don't worry, I will be fine," said Virden who then smiled and went on his way. Burke was relieved when he arrived back inside the cave ten minutes later and was still in one piece.

The next week Urko was in a better mood than he was normally in and only picked on Alia and Tommy, he left everyone else alone. By Thursday he was leaving everyone alone and seemed almost happy. It was Virden who told Burke why he was so happy. "The reason is that on Friday he, Elta and his kids are going away on holiday." Virden smiled at Burke.
"What's so good about that?" Burke was completely confused.
"Jeepers Burke. If Urko goes away then he is not here is he?"
"Oh yeah," Burke giggled. "So we will get good food, no one yelling at us and we will be able to stay inside if it's cold?"
"Yes, but even if it is cold we have to keep working on the cave. Urko will only be gone for two days and when he gets back you can bet your bottom dollar that he will pick on one of us for something. No matter how much we think we have stayed out of trouble, he'll find something."
"Do you think he'll be worse?"
"No, he'll just be the same," said Virden.
Friday night Stephen, Tommy and Alia sat on the same couch together to watch Planet of the Apes and while they watched it, the people who came in to look after them left them alone. The atmosphere in the room, for the first time, was not tense and no one was feeling afraid, so it was very enjoyable for the prisoners who lived in the castle of Hydra. For the first night in many, Alia went off to sleep without crying and she actually slept peacefully.
In the morning she had breakfast, and the people even let her have a second helping and then she went outside with Virden and Galen and they got on with digging their cave.
At one point in the day, Genny came outside wanting to play with Alia out in the yard and Alia wouldn’t let her. She wanted to keep digging the cave with Virden and Galen. She could have taken her to the cave but Virden and Galen didn’t want Genny to know anything about it. No one knew but the three of them knew about it and if Burke took her there they’d soon lose it. So Alia told her to go away, and she went inside crying.
Later that same day Genny came outside calling to Alia because she wanted to use her pencils and paper. Genny just would not take no for an answer so Virden said, “Just tell her to piss off.”
So Alia did what Virden told her to do and Genny went away crying again. On Sunday there were a few more incidents where Genny wanted to use Alia's things or wanted to play with her and Alia flat refused to do it, and Genny went away so many times crying that she almost drove the relievers bonkers. But Alia didn't see why she should suddenly have to play with Genny. When Serpent Queen and Hydra were around Genny never wanted anything to do with Alia. It was Virden who pointed that out to Burke and so she didn't feel so bad about constantly turning her down. She preferred to spend her time in the cave with Virden and Galen anyway.
When Hydra and Serpent Queen came back they were very nice to everyone, but that was only because the relievers were still there. They then disappeared into the kitchen with the relievers to get the report on how all the prisoners had behaved. While they were in the kitchen, Alia worried a little about whether she might get into trouble with Hydra for refusing to play with Genny, but then she thought that surely she wouldn't get into trouble for something like that?
Once the relievers went on their way, Serpent Queen sent the youngest kids to bed and Alia was one of those, so she went and got into her bed in her cell and lay down to go to sleep, relieved that nothing ugly had occurred at all. She did see Hydra walk past her cell and then walk back past her a few moments later carrying Genny like a baby. Alia saw that he took her into the lounge with him and shut the door. Alia thought it was a bit weird, but no weirder than the usual stuff that Hydra did.
Alia was almost asleep when Hydra snapped on the light in her cell above her bed. She was stunned by the suddenness of his appearance and blinded by the light. Hydra grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of her bed. Alia didn’t have a clue about what was going on at all. She was still half-asleep when Hydra screamed into her ear, “Get down to the lounge you stuck up little bitch, NOW!”
Hydra then kicked her all the way down to the lounge and Alia saw all her knights just standing there staring at her and Hydra. When she got into the lounge Genny was sitting on Serpent Queen’s lap crying her eyes out, that’s when she knew that was for it.
Hydra stood Alia in front of him and said, “So do you want to tell me what you’ve been doing to Genny all weekend?”
It was quite obvious to Alia that he already knew and that he didn’t need her to tell him, so she shrugged her shoulders. Then he screamed, “What did you say to Genny today?”
Alia said that she didn’t say anything, which was a lie, but Hydra made her far too scared to tell the truth. Then Hydra blew, “Don’t bloody lie to me miss high and mighty. You told her to piss off, didn’t you Garbo?”
Alia nodded her head thinking he was going to strike her dead any second. But he didn't, he then asked, “What the hell gives you the right to speak to Genny like that?”
Alia had no answer for that either. There were certainly thousands of potential replies floating around in her head, but none of them were going to improve the situation, so she said nothing.
Hydra was particularly angry by then. “So why did you do it then? You better answer me Garbo, don’t come the too good to talk to me act.”
"Stephen told me to say it." Alia could not believe that of all the potential answers that she could have given him that she chose that one. Neither could her knights and they all stood there behind Hydra shaking their heads.
Hydra replied, “Oh, Stephen told you to say it, well if Stephen told you to jump off a cliff would you?”
Alia stood there for a moment asking herself why adults always say that? "Why do they always say such dumb things?"
“Of course you would because you’re just as thick as Stephen. Come over here, NOW,” he screamed.
Alia was too scared not to go over where he said to go and so she walked over to him and stood by the fire in front of him. He opened the fire door and said, “Stick your head in here, go on.”
Alia shook her head and refused to do it. Hydra talked nicely and said, “Come on Garbo, you do everything everyone else tells you to do, put your bloody head in there.”
Alia wondered if he was joking and would give it up and stop asking her to do something so stupid, a bit like one of her other foster fathers one time? But then Hydra started screaming at her and dragging her by her arm down onto the floor so that she faced the open fire on her knees and then he screamed at her, “PUT YOUR FUCKING HEAD IN THERE.”
That was when Alia realised that Hydra was serious; he wanted her to put her head into the fire. Even though she was terrified of doing it, she was more terrified of what Hydra might do to her if she didn't. Her knights all stood there looking at each other nervously. No one could believe it when Alia screamed at him, “Okay, I'll do it,” not even Alia. She had tears pouring down her face and she was really frightened by Hydra and by what he was asking her to do. But she knew that if she didn't do it then he would do it for her.
Alia began to put her head into the fire, and just as her hair was about to go up in a puff of smoke Hydra kicked her away from the fire with a boot to the stomach. At the same time he said, “Oh my god you really are a retard. You were really going to put your bloody head in there, did you see that Serpent Queen?”
"I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself," cackled Serpent Queen.
Alia was lying on the floor winded, crying and scared and had no idea what to do. Hydra then said, “Get up off the floor and piss off to bed and don’t you ever touch Genny again else I’ll break both your arms.”
Alia was indignant, she had never touched Genny, not a hair on her head. So she made the stupid mistake of looking up at Hydra from the floor and saying, “I never hit Genny.”
Hydra yelled at her, “DID I ASK YOU TO OPEN YOUR HIGH AND MIGHTY MOUTH? WELL DID I? NO, ALL I DID WAS TELL YOU TO PISS OFF TO BED! BUT SEEING AS HOW YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING THAT YOU ARE TOLD THEN I WILL HELP YOU!” Hydra grabbed Alia by her hair and dragged her up the hallway to her cell. Hydra then kicked her across the floor so that she landed against the side of her bed.
Alia lay there for a few minutes in shock, terrified and unsure as to whether he was going to kick her while she was down on the floor. She put her hands over her head to protect it from his shoes, but he didn't kick her any more, he just walked back down to the lounge and slammed the door behind her. "I'M RUNNING AWAY!" she screamed down the hallway at Hydra. She had not meant to say anything at all, but everything was too much for her and it slipped out in her anger.
"What are you trying to do?" asked head knight.
Hydra came out of the lounge in a hurry and walked up and into Alia's cell. He grabbed her by the hair and said, "Going to run away are you? GOOD! I'LL PACK YOUR SHIT FOR YOU!" Hydra began to get her things together and then he grabbed her blankets. He walked down to the back castle door and threw everything out. Alia heard her things falling down the castle steps. Hydra then came back and grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the back door of the castle too. "RUN AWAY!" he screamed at her, as he threw her out and slammed the door behind her. She heard the key turn in the lock and she just sat there in shock for a few moments. She did not know what to do.
"I can't believe you told Hydra that you were going to run away! Of all the things you could have said, you chose THAT?" The head knight was most unamused with Alia.
"What else was I supposed to say?" Alia looked at her head knight.
"Gee, Alia, how about nothing? How about just saying nothing and not making things worse for yourself? You always do this every time. Every time you get into trouble with Hydra you just got to make it worse! You think that it is his fault that he picks on you, but you cause it, you invite it!"
"You think this is my fault?" she asked her head knight as her tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Yes! You do it with him and it was the same with the King of the West, you made him mad all the time too with your stupid little ways and the things you did. Some times Alia, I cannot stand you. You are pathetic and weak and then you are smart and arrogant and you never know when to just SHUT THE HELL UP!" he screamed at her.
Suddenly the castle door was thrust open and Hydra came out and grabbed her by her hair, "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU SCREECHING AT OUT HERE?"
"Myself! Myself," said Alia as she dissolved into tears.
"Well maybe, Garbo, you should start listening to you? The first sign of madness is talking to yourself. Do you know what the second sign of madness is? Hmm...Garbo, do you?"
"No," said Alia as she held onto his hand that had a hold of her hair.
"Answering yourself," he said as he gave her hair one more hard yank and then shoved her over on top of her things. Alia watched him as he walked back into the castle and shut the door leaving her out in the dark.
Alia sat down on top of her things and she truly rued the day that she was born. She then thought of Burke and she shut her eyes until his face was front and centre in her mind again. She liked his eyes and she liked the way his dimple showed when he smiled. "Why couldn't Burke be real? Why can't he come and save me from here?" Alia curled up on top of her things and drifted off to sleep hoping never to awake again.
No sooner had she dropped off than she felt someone nudging her awake. At first she thought it was Hydra but once her eyes adjusted to the partial moonlight she saw that it was Burke. "You came to get me?" she asked hardly daring to believe that it was he.
"No, but I want to catch falling stars with you, Alia. Show me how to catch a falling star," he asked her kindly. He was crouched down beside her things and he was wearing his blue top that he always wore. He then stood to his feet and towered over her.
"Won't Urko get mad that you are here with me?" she asked him as she stood to her feet and gazed up at him.
"What Urko doesn't know won't hurt him, or you." Burke took Alia by the hand and led her over to the dimly lit field and they lay down side by side. "What colour will fall first?" he asked her.
"What colour do you like?" she asked him.
"Whatever colour you want will be just fine," he said as he reached for her hand and gently squeezed it.
"Okay, purple. Purple ones will fall first."
"How do I catch them?"
"Just reach out your hand and really want the star that you are looking at. If you want it badly enough then it will fall right into your hand."
"It is that easy, huh?"
"Yup," said Alia.
Suddenly purple stars began to fall from the sky all around them. Everywhere Burke looked purple stars were gently falling from the sky. Some of them had purple tails trailing behind them as they came down and others made a gentle fizzing noise.
"It is beautiful, Alia," he said as he watched the stars cascading down toward him.
"I wish life was always like this. I wish that life could stay like this forever."
"But you would soon become bored with it, Alia."
"I would never get bored with this," she said as she watched the stars falling everywhere like glitter but much better than falling glitter. A rather large one was falling toward her when Burke announced that he had to leave now.
"But you just got here." Alia felt her heart thumping madly inside her chest at the thought that Burke was going to leave her.
"I have to go now, Alia." Burke stood and began to walk away and Alia just turned over and watched him slowly fading away.
"WAKE UP, FOOLISH GIRL!" said Serpent Queen as she gave her a harsh nudge. "Pick your things up and get back inside, it's going to rain!"
Alia opened her eyes and her face was wet from little tiny spits of rain and so she began to do what Serpent Queen ordered her to do. That was when she realised that Burke had been just a dream; he had never been there at all. But still, the memory of his kindness in the dream did not leave her immediately and it was something she would remember vividly for a few years to come. Once she was back in her cell and had put all her things away where they belonged, she lay down and tried to will her mind to return to the dream of Burke, but it refused.

The months slowly passed by with Hydra still tormenting those imprisoned in his castle and not much else changing. That was until the girl Katie came back from her trial placement in a village some distance from the castle of Hydra. For some reason, and Alia did not know what reason, Hydra and Serpent Queen were very angry with Katie. Alia heard from Virden that Katie might only be returning to pack her things and Alia felt so jealous that Katie would be forever freed from the castle of Hydra. But when Katie arrived to pack her things, Alia did not envy her one bit and for the first time felt quite glad that she was Alia and not Katie.
Hydra was really nice to the lady when he met Katie and her at the front door of the castle, but his whole attitude changed when he was told for certain that Katie was only there to pack her things to leave. The Baroness stayed to have a cup of coffee with Hydra and Serpent Queen. Alia and the other children were permitted to sit down in the kitchen with them because it was 'show time'. Hydra liked to show off how wonderful he was with the prisoners who lived in his castle, especially before a Baroness or an Earl. But during that time, while the Baroness was none the wiser, Hydra shot Katie one of his looks that said, “You just wait ‘til she’s gone.”
Alia looked at Tommy and then Stephen and she felt so afraid for Katie that her blood began to surge through her body like a flood. When the Baroness stood and announced that it was time for her to go, Alia's heart began to do flip-flops; she knew that Katie was going to be tormented harshly at the hands of Hydra. Before the Baroness left, she turned to Katie and said “Good luck with your new home, I hope it all works out for you there.”
The Baroness then smiled at Alia. Alia just smiled back at her and wished that there was some secret panel in the wall where she could stash her so that she’d witness what was going to happen to Katie once she was gone. Alia knew Hydra was going to mess with Katie something serious and maybe she’d even get a beating from him before he was finished.
Hydra walked the Baroness out into the passage and Katie stood up to follow, but Serpent Queen quietly hissed at her to stay where she was. So Katie sat back down and nervously waited for them to come back and Alia could see just how nervous she was because she was grinding her teeth and making her jaw click. Hydra was always screaming at her for that, and she had occupied the cell that Alia was in for that very reason, prior to Alia being thrown in there. Alia heard their voices grow fainter, and then she heard the front door of the castle being shut.
That was when the stomping started, as they both Serpent Queen and Hydra angrily made their way back to the kitchen. Tommy, Alia, Stephen and a few others were surprised that Serpent Queen didn’t go through the floor. Hydra slammed the kitchen door behind him, making all of the prisoners jump, but no one more than Katie, and then he went and sat down on the chair next to Katie. Everyone in that room knew that it was about to get very ugly in there and Alia stared at her head knight who simply said to her, "STAY OUT OF IT!"
Hydra stuck his finger in Katie's face and started yelling at her, “What do you think you’re playing at, Katie?”
Serpent Queen started in on Katie as well, “That wasn’t even supposed to be your placement, it was for Genny.”
Hydra slammed his fist down on the table, “You won’t last there you little bitch, you’ll ruin it like you ruin everything else.”
At that point Alia saw Katie stare at the floor. "Big mistake," she thought to herself, knowing that Katie's refusal to look at Hydra would make him even angrier than he already was.
Hydra yelled at Katie, “What are you staring at the floor for? You know you don’t deserve it, it should have been Genny’s.”
Serpent Queen started up about how she could understand why Katie's own mother hadn’t wanted her, and Katie just sat there and took it all. Hydra then added, “Hey, I’ve got an idea, I’ll call social welfare and tell them to send Genny instead, would you like that, Katie?”
None of the children knew that Hydra simply couldn’t undo what’d already been decided. But while Alia sat there watching what was going on and listening to all that was being said, she decided that if she ever got to go away, and Hydra brought her back again, that she’d throw herself out in front of a very fast chariot first day back at school.
All the prisoners had had enough of Hydra and most felt like they couldn’t take any more. But it was amazing what the prisoners in Hydra's castle could take, it really was. Those prisoners were high energy and they just kept on breathing no matter how bad things got. Everything went silent for a little while and Alia began to wonder whether that was it? Maybe Hydra was finally all played out where Katie was concerned? But then she hoped that he still had more torture for Katie, because if he didn't, then who would he turn to, to torment next?
Hydra said to Katie, “You didn’t answer me. What, aren’t we good enough to talk to any more?” Hydra was starting to get really angry with Katie and it was taking all of Katie's energy just to keep her mouth shut and not call them all the names under the sun. She was not the only one wanted to scream at him, to beat him and to basically just lose it, but just like Katie, all they could do was sit there and take it. Hydra then did something that surprised everyone. He turned to Alia and said, “I think I’d like a game with my little tin soldier.”
Alia made the mistake of looking at Hydra and saying, “Please don’t.”
Hydra mimicked what Alia said and screamed at her to get up on her feet and go and get her brush. But Alia wouldn’t. "I'm not going to help you do this to me!" she thought as she got to her feet and stood there staring at Hydra. So Hydra got a wooden spoon instead, which was worse than the hairbrush.
"See, I told you," said Alia's head knight.
Alia had to start marching across the parade ground in front of Hydra and so her knights all fell into formation beside her. What choice did they have?
Alia and her knights started marching up and down the parade grounds like a little tin soldier so that Hydra could play his sick little game. Hydra could not risk hurting Katie too badly; she was leaving and might say something, so he decided to humiliate Alia instead. Hydra screamed at Alia, yelled at her and hit her. Stephen found it very hard to sit there just watching Urko hurting Burke, but there was absolutely nothing that he could do that wouldn't make it worse, so he just sat there staring at Galen.
It was really hard for Alia not to just fall on the floor screaming at Hydra, but she knew, that in part, Hydra probably wanted her to do exactly that. Hydra had her backed up against the wall and he knew that there was no place for her to go from there but down into a screaming heap. Hydra wanted Alia to lose it so that he could have an excuse to beat her. Hydra wanted to get his anger out in regard to Katie, but the problem was that Alia would not accommodate it. She had just turned ten years old, which had been completely ignored by the kingdom of Hydra and the King of the East, but Hydra hated that he couldn’t push Alia over the edge. He hated that he couldn’t break the ten-year old child at will no matter what he did. It seemed to him that no one could; not really. Head knight had often said to Alia, "I think that sometimes it’s better for you just to let them break you, then they can move on to someone else because once they’ve broken you they’re happy and they lose interest."
Alia had replied, "I’ve seen Hydra break heaps of prisoners since I have been there, I know what he can do and I am frightened of him. But I survived the King of the West and he was a lot more violent than Hydra is. Hydra can make me cry, he can even make me wish I had never been born, but he will NOT break me; I won’t let him."
Head knight had stook there shaking his head. "Foolish, foolish child!"
In the end the evil Hydra got tired of his game and turned his attention back to Katie. He screamed at her, “Get out and pack your things. I can’t wait to see the back of you.”
Alia was by then on her bed in her cell but when she saw the look on Katie's face as she walked past, she could tell that Katie wanted to say that she couldn’t wait to see the back of him too. Alia smiled at Katie as she went down to the room where her stuff was kept. Katie smiled back, but when she got to her room, she found that Satan’s little helper Brett had been through it. Brett had taken some of her things and hidden them.
Alia listened while Katie asked Brett where her things were and that he better give them back.
Brett taunted Katie, “Go tell my dad.”
Brett knew that Hydra was the last person who’d help Katie or anyone else like her. Brett then went running through the house shouting, “Hooray. Hooray, Katie’s moving out.”
Alia heard Katie muttering that she would’ve run around saying the same thing if she thought she’d get away with it because she too was so glad to be leaving.
Tea time that night was a boomer. Everyone was just sitting there eating quietly, Tommy and Alia at the disgrace table while everyone else sat at the tables with Serpent Queen and Hydra. Alia could feel Hydra staring at the back of her head, but then he turned his attention to Katie again. “Hey Genny say thank you to Katie.”
Hydra waited while Genny thanked Katie. He asked her, “Do you know what you’re thanking her for you stupid cow?”
Alia sat there thinking, ‘uh oh, here we go.’ Hydra NEVER picked on Genny, so if he was calling her names now, then he was beyond irate!
Genny said that she didn’t know why she’d thanked Katie, and Hydra said, “You’re stupid, Genny, yeah, stupid is what you are. Tell her why she’s thanking you, Katie.”
Alia felt really sorry for Katie because she was getting it from Hydra with both barrels. Katie didn’t say anything to Hydra or even acknowledge that he’d spoken to her and Hydra lost it.
Hydra jumped up from where he was sitting almost tipping the table over and sending his chair flying across the kitchen floor. He raced around the table to where Katie was sitting and grabbed her by her hair. “You think you’re too good to speak to me now do you Miss High and Mighty?” he was speaking about an inch away from her face. Even Alia and Tommy dared to turn around to look at what was happening to Katie.
Alia sat there thinking, "If I could have a dollar for every man who has yanked on my hair, I reckon I would be richer than the King of the East."
Meantime, Katie still refused to speak to him. Alia noticed, while he stood there glaring and seething at Katie, that his face was red with rage, and he reminded Alia so much of the King of the West. Then he said to Katie, “You better answer me! You too good to speak to me or what?”
Alia wish Katie had the balls to tell him to go fuck himself. But she didn't, she decided to shake her head to indicate that she didn’t think she was any better than Hydra.
Unfortunately, that response did not please Hydra either. “You’re a liar too eh? You think you’re too good for us, don’t you?” Hydra was screaming so loudly into Katie's face, that Katie decided to nod her head to agree with him and that’s when Hydra slapped her in the face.
"They always go for the face or the hair eh head knight, every time!" Katie looked at her head knight to see if he had heard her and he just stood there nodding his head. Katie started to cry and she wondered what Hydra was going to do next? She did not have to wait long to find out.
Hydra immediately went back to his original line of conversation, “Now Katie, tell Genny what she’s thanking you for.”
It appeared that Katie was still in the dark about what it was that Hydra wanted her to say. She wracked her brain but she couldn’t think of a thing, and she was desperately wishing that she could think of something. Then Hydra educated her when he said to Katie, “She thanked you for stealing her placement. That’s what she thanked you for.”
Hydra yanked on Katie's hair even harder and made a prediction. “You’ll mess it up, Katie and when you do they’re gonna bring you back here and I’ll be waiting for you.”
Hydra had a real nasty look on his face when he said it, and that’s when Katie decided that if the placement didn’t work, then she’d kill herself because there was no way that she was ever going back there.
Katie spent the rest of the evening with no one talking to her, but she didn’t care. Finally at around eight o’clock there was a knock at the door. Alia was so relieved for Katie when Hydra went down the hallway to answer the door because she knew that for Katie, it was nearly over. Then Alia felt sick when she wondered when it would finally be over for her. She had never felt so jealous when Katie walked down the hallway toward the front castle door to leave for the very last time. Before they left though, the Baron and Baroness introduced each other to Hydra and Hydra invited them inside and asked them if they wanted coffee? Alia saw that Katie looked extremely relieved when they both declined his kind offer. Katie was at the point where she felt as though she couldn’t have gone through another minute with insidious Hydra.

Guy fawkes was not far away, about a week after Katie left the castle of Hydra forever. Little did they know at the time that within eight months of Katie leaving that she would be dead. Thrown from the bridge above the mote of their castle by her new foster father, who had really not turned out any better than Hydra at all. But at least he would be held accountable and made to pay for what he did in the end. Hydra, on the other hand, it seemed he was to be blessed with the luck of the saints and would never answer for a thing. He would keep being cruel to the prisoners who had been sentenced to live in his castle forever and a day. Serpent Queen would continue to sit there and laugh as he did so and their children would watch them so that they would know how to repeat that kind of behaviour when they grew up and had children of their own.
But life's a funny thing sometimes, just when you think a situation is totally hopeless, something happens. It is almost like that dumb saying that I spoke about earlier, you know, "Things can't possibly get any worse." Well there's another little pearler, just when you say to yourself, "My life is such crap and things are never going to get better," life pulls a fast one and things suddenly slip onto the up and up. Which can be a bummer, especially if you were looking forward to a total breakdown and some time out in a padded room. Suddenly life takes away all your excuses for being miserable and forces you to be happy whether you want to be or not.
Alia was at the point where she felt that life would never improve, but, by a miraculous turn of events, it did get better. It happened one afternoon when they were out digging the cave. Alia pushed her spoon into the dirt really hard and it went straight through it and on the other side was nothing. "I HIT DAYLIGHT!" she shrieked at Virden.
Virden leapt up from where he was lying down and he crawled over to where she was digging. He looked closely at the small hole and then he looked at Alia and said, "Burke...you did it! Galen, we're through." Virden began jumping around on his knees excitedly but stopped when his knee hit a stone. But he didn't care too much, they had finally reached their goal. "Burke, you have no idea how good it is that you have reached daylight."
Alia was confused and she looked at both Virden and Galen and asked, "What now?"
"Now you go up to the other end of the cave with Galen while I dig this last part out and you stay there until I tell you that you can come back in."
"Why?"
"This last part has to be dug very slowly and carefully. Just in case anything goes wrong, I want you at the other end with Galen. That way if I need your help then you can get to me fast."
"What do you think might go wrong?" asked Alia.
"I am not sure how thick the ceiling is, if it is too thin it might cave in on me, which means that you two will need to dig me out real fast."
"If it caves in then we will have to start again," said Burke with horror.
"I know," said Virden.
"But it has taken us almost six months to dig this...I don't want to have to start..."
"Burke, I think it will be fine. I don't think it will cave in, but just to be cautious and careful you wait at the other end with Galen while I dig this last part, okay? Here," said Virden as he reached into his pocket, "a K-bar just for you." He handed it to Alia and so she took it and crawled to the end of the cave like he ordered her to.
Burke sat with Galen in the entrance to the tunnel and they talked away about Katie and what her new home might be like. They also spoke about Guy Fawkes and how almost everyone in the kingdom would get to celebrate it but them. "I will go star catching with Burke again if I can." Alia smiled to herself and then popped her head out of the hole to let her head knight know that they had hit daylight.
"Really?" he asked.
"Yeah the hole is only as big as a plate at the moment, but by the time Virden is finished it will be as big as this one. Neat eh?" she asked him.
"Yeah...so...um...what happens now that you have hit daylight?"
Alia shook her head. "I don't know."
"What's the point of having a cave with a hole at each end?"
"I don't know." Alia wondered why he was so intent on ruining their first moment of pure joy in months?
The head knight shook his head. "I don't get why there has to be two holes. I mean, no other cave has two entranceways, that's why they call them caves. Your cave sounds like a tunnel."
"So what if it is a tunnel, what does it matter?" she asked him.
"But why has Virden had you digging it?"
"I don't know. But it is almost finished now so that's a good thing."
"Yeah, but Princess Alia, what happens now?"
"I don't know...who cares?" Alia scowled at the head knight. "Why are you being like this? Why do you always ruin my fun?"
Head knight walked over and sat on the ground beside the entrance to the cave where she was partially obscured. "I just don't understand why finishing a tunnel in the ground gives you any sense of achievement. I mean there's a thousand other things that you could have been doing all these months. Yet you have stayed under ground like a little beaver just digging away."
"Don't beavers live in water?"
"Okay, like a little mole."
Alia stared at her head knight and scowled. "I like beaver better."
"I thought you would; that's why I said it." Head knight smiled.
"Well, when Hydra makes me march for him, you march along with me and you get nothing out of that, so why do you do it?" she stared at head knight intently.
He sighed. "You raise a very good point...one for which I have no answer...but I think we do it so that you do not have to do it alone."
"Maybe I dug the hole with Virden so that he would not have to do it alone?" Alia stared at the green trees at the end of the yard that were bending in the breeze.
"Maybe you dug it so that you would not be alone?" he asked her, as he winked.
"Perhaps it was a bit of both. But Virden said that if we dug this hole that it would help us with Urko."
Head knight raised his eyebrows. "Urko?"
"Hydra," said Alia.
"Ah," said the knight, as he nodded his head. "How will it help you?"
Alia shook her head. "I don't know."
"Well, when you do find out, be sure and let me know," he said smiling.
By the end of that late afternoon the hole would have served the purpose that it had been intended for, but few would know exactly how or why. When it did happen, it was totally unexpected.
Virden finally had the hole at the other end dug large enough that an adult could fit thorugh it and Alia tried it out a couple of times. "It's so cool Virden," she said, as she climbed out for the fifth time.
"It is eh?" he said, as he knelt down staring at his work.
"There's a bit of a breeze going through it now so it's not very warm in there any more," said Galen. He stared at Virden a little disappointed that their one escape from the cold was now gone.
"It's almost summer now. In a few weeks you'll be glad that I put that other hole in there because the breeze will cool us down."
"I need to go to the loo," said Alia.
"Just go, Burke. But watch out for Urko, remember, it is his drinking day today and tomorrow," warned Virden.
Alia headed off inside to go to the toilet. In the meantime Urko was inside and had run out of cigarettes. He looked at Serpent Queen and said, "I'm gonna pop down the dairy to get some fags. Be back in about ten."
Urko headed for the back door of the castle and he reached it about the same time as Burke went charging through it to get to the toilet. Burke pushed the castle door open with more force than she normally used and unknown to her, Urko was just on the other side of it. Unfortunately the door flew back, hit him in the face and cut his lip.
Burke was a little confused, as the door came to a sudden stop and did not open all the way, so she pushed it gently and stepped inside. That was when she saw Urko standing there a little dazed having just had the doorhandle smash into his mouth. When he saw who had pushed it he was livid, so livid, in fact that he didn't utter a word. He merely grabbed Alia by the arm and dragged her out of the castle and then proceeded to hit her over and over again.
Urko was so angry that he kept hitting and hitting Alia, even as she was crawling across the concrete trying to get away from him. At one moment he stood upright for a second because all that bending over was doing his back in and so Alia took it as her chance to run. She was absolutely terrified and she did not know where to go to to escape Urko. "RUN INTO THE TUNNEL, PRINCESS ALIA!" yelled head knight.
Alia then veered off to her left to get to the entrance of the hedge that would lead into the garden where the tunnel was. She glanced behind her and saw all her knights trying to slow Hydra down with their swords, but Hydra was way too powerful for them and just kept coming. As soon as Alia saw Galen and Virden she fearfully said, "Urko's coming."
"Get into the tunnel, Burke!" said Virden. He then ran with Galen and hid behind the pile of dirt so that Urko would not see them. Alia shot into the tunnel and paused for a moment. Urko was outside the tunnel in the garden wondering where she had gotten to. Then he saw the entranceway and stuck his head in it, "I'm coming in there to get you, you little prick!"
Urko knelt down and began to make his way into the tunnel. Alia took one look at him in the entrance and she crawled through it as fast as she could and then she scrambled up and out at the other end. Once she was out she could no longer see where exactly Urko was, so she ran across the garden and out of the hedge again. Having nowhere else to go, she ran and hid down behind the garage and cried.
Virden, seeing that Urko was in the tunnel and, knowing that he would have seen all the things they were hiding in there and so stopped to have a look, seized the opportunity. "GALEN, JUMP!"
Both Galen and Virden began jumping on the pile of dirt that was piled carefully on top of the ceiling of the tunnel. At first nothing happened and Virden was afraid that he had dug the tunnel way too deeply. He had meant to start thinning the ceiling out but had not expected that Urko would end up inside the tunnel so soon. "JUMP HARDER!"
Galen and Virden jumped and jumped and jumped and finally it happened. They threw their entire combined body weight on the middle of it and it collapsed. Urko could hear Stephen telling Tommy to jump, but he had thought that they were jumping from the hedge again. He had thought he'd cured them of that passtime, but obviously not. "I'll give the little bastards a refresher course when I get out of this tunnel," he muttered to himself.
Urko could not believe that they had so much stuff hidden in there. "I've got the little bastards this time!" he said as he smiled to himself. He had just finished smiling to himself when he realised that he heard a thumping sound coming from the roof of the tunnel and it was happening for about the third time. He looked up at the roof wondering what it could be and he saw all the dirt come tumbling down on top of him. The dirt was so heavy that the weight of it easily pushed him to the floor of the cave. Once all the dirt had surrounded him he had a pocket of air about the size of his fist. Urko tried to move to dig himself out but he couldn't move beneath the weight of the dirt. "Unless someone digs me out, I'm done for!" That was about the moment where Urko realised that he was done for and the panic seared through his brain and body. The panic that Urko felt in those moments was not unlike the panic he had caused the small humans around him feel every waking moment when he was around.
Virden and Galen could not believe that the cave had finally caved in and they both sat there in shock for a few minutes. They were experiencing a combination of shock, relief and panic. Shock that it had worked, relief that Urko was finally gone but panic stricken about the fact that they had probably killed him. They just sat there for a few moments not really knowing what to do. Virden listened hard to see if he could hear Urko calling out, but he could not hear a thing. Urko was calling out, but there was too much dirt for him to be heard by anyone. Urko slowly but surely surrendered to the darkness and he was never to be seen or heard from again.
"We need to put those boards back over there by the fence and then put all of those branches over the top of this."
"Yeah," said Galen. "We never tell anyone, right?"
"Take it to our grave," said Virden.
They placed all the boards back beside the hedge fence where they had been to begin with and then they covered the dirt pile with the branches they had pulled from the hedge. Once they had done that, Virden looked at Galen and said, "We better find Burke."
"Do we tell her?"
"No, she doesn't need to know. Let me do the talking, okay?"
"Okay." Galen nodded his head and then followed Virden to go and find Burke. They looked all over the place and couldn't find her anywhere. Virden suddenly became frightened that she might have gotten back into the tunnel when they weren't looking. He was just about to run back to the garden and begin digging when he saw her come out from behind the garage. "We've been looking for you. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, but Urko's going to kill me tonight."
"Why?" asked Galen.
"I accidentally pushed the door into his face when I went inside to go to the loo. He hit me and he wouldn't stop so I ran away from him."
"Well I heard Elta telling Kenny that he went for smokes about half an hour ago," said Galen.
"Where were you when you heard that?" asked Virden.
"Under the kitchen window. Burke must have hit him with the door just after that."
"I didn't mean to hit him. I didn't even know he was there."
"It's okay. Just do what you normally do when he gets started, just keep calm, do what he says until he gets tired of it," said Virden. He knew that Burke would never have to deal with Urko ever again, but he could not tell her that. Burke cried until it got dark and he wished that he could tell her not to worry.
Finally the castle door opened and Kenny said, "My mother said that you should come in now because it's cold outside."
The three walked inside and went and sat in the lounge. "Bath time for Alia and Tommy," said Serpent Queen. She looked like she was worrying about something, but Alia did not know what.
"Where's Urko?" she asked Virden, as she made her way out of the lounge.
"I don't know," he said.

Alia went and got into the bath and she sat there in the water crying and worrying about what would happen in the kitchen that night when Hydra came back from wherever it was that he had gone. Alia looked at her head knight who was sitting on the floor staring at her. "I didn't mean to hit him with the door. I didn't even know that Hydra was behind the door."
"I know that, Alia. Everyone knows that you would never strike out at Hydra...you are tiny compared to him, what chance would you stand against him?"
"None. Look at Virden, he's almost as big as Hydra and even he couldn't do anything about him. But Hydra was so mad at me. Did you see him?" Alia stared down at the water and then back at her head knight.
"We all saw him. He is a bully and he would never pick on someone his own size because he knows he would not win. That's the thing about Hydras, they have to make small people feel bad in order for them to feel good."
"You know when you said that I caused him to get mad with me the same as I made the King of the West mad at me, did you mean it?"
"I never said that, Alia. I would never say a thing like that."
"Yes you did, and you told me that sometimes you can't stand me too."
"Alia, I think you must have imagined that because I would never say such things to you. Perhaps you dreamed that I said those things?"
She looked at her head knight and it did not seem to her that he was lying. "Maybe I did?" Alia sat there for a few more moments before she spoke again. "I'm scared of what he's going to do...he will make me march and he will hit me and I hate it when he does that. He is still mad about Katie leaving and when he gets mad about it he hits me. I don't want him to hit me any more."
Alia had no sooner finished telling her head knight how she was feeling when she heard a knock on the bathroom door. It was Serpent Queen. She walked in as soon as she had knocked and she said to Alia,"Let me wash your hair for you."
"Why?" she asked, wondering what on earth Serpent Queen was doing in the bathroom at all, let alone wanting to help her.
"I just thought that you might like help washing your hair."
Alia just sat there in the bath staring at Serpent Queen in pure disbelief and then she wondered if she had come in to drown her in the bath or something. "I'm fine...thanks," she replied quietly.
Serpent Queen looked disappointed and slightly sad, "Oh. Oh well...um...well...you just take your time and when you get out your dinner will be waiting for you in the kitchen." Serpent Queen turned and walked from the room shutting the bathroom door gently. Alia whipped around again to stare at her head knight.
"What was that?" she asked him.
Head knight shook his head. "I have absolutely no idea!" he was just as mystified as Alia was.
"Was she just being nice or is Hydra up to something?"
"I honestly don't know, Princess Alia, I really don't." Head knight was as perplexed as Alia and the more he thought about it, the more Serpent Queen's behaviour made no sense. Alia got out of the bath and into her pyjamas and she wandered slowly down toward the kitchen dreading every step that was taking her closer to having to face Hydra. She hoped that there would not be a horrible mark on his face where the door had hit him. If there was a horrible mark where everyone could see it then that would just increase his anger toward her. She opened the kitchen door very slowly and what she saw pleasantly surprised her. Everyone was smiling and there was no Hydra sitting at the other end of the table. Alia could hardly believe what she was seeing, never had Hydra ever not sat at the head of the table for a meal. Alia went to go and sit at the disgrace table but Serpent Queen stopped her. "No, Alia, you can sit right here beside me."
Alia panicked. "Why is she being nice?" But she did not argue with Serpent Queen, she just went and sat on the chair next to her as she had been told to do. Serpent Queen was allowing all the children to speak to each other and the atmosphere in the kitchen that night was so different to any night that Alia had ever experienced while living there. Serpent Queen even spoke to Alia a few times, but Alia just nodded or shook her head. She did not trust Serpent Queen after all she had allowed Hydra to do and she never would.
"After tea, Stephen and Tommy, you will help Alia move her things into Katie's old room. That will be your room from now on, Alia." Serpent Queen looked at Alia and smiled.
Alia did not know what to make of anything that was going on and so simply nodded her head and replied, "Yes."
Virden and Galen helped Burke move his things into the new hut and Burke seemed quite pleased with the change in circumstances. "Now I am closer to you two and we will be able to talk to each other and pass notes...so long as Urko doesn't catch us."
"Burke, I know that you don't know this yet, but Urko went out this afternoon and never came back." Virden stared at Burke for a few moments.
"What?"
"He went out and hasn't come back yet. Elta thinks he has probably gone to a friend's house and will be back later tonight, so there will be no talking and no note passing okay? If you do it and you get caught then Urko will put you straight back into the cell, if he doesn't do it anyway. Elta isn't allowed to make decisions like she made about you, so you better keep that in mind for when Urko gets back."
Later that evening Serpent Queen came down and tucked Alia into bed and head knight was very suspicious of her motives for doing so. Alia was simply struck dumb by it all! Once Virden and Galen were in their room for the night, Galen asked Virden, "Why did you scare her about Urko coming back? You know he's never coming back."
"I know that, you know that, but Alia can never know that, not from us. We can never tell anyone, Galen or we will both end up in jail and it will be as Urko said that it will be. It is our secret and we take it to the grave. Urko went out and never came back and that's the end of it."
"Okay," said Galen.
"You swear?" asked Virden.
"I promise, I will never tell a soul."
Meanwhile Alia was laying in her bed in her new bedroom, her mind in a land far, far away from the castle of Hydra.
Princess Alia stood there face to face with the nine foot eight inch high wicked witch. The witch had big black feathered wings, and Alia immediately recalled how it had tried to devour her the last time that they had come face to face. Alia shook in her shoes before it. She was tempted to drop to her knees and beg for my life, but she knew it’d make little or no difference. That was confirmed two seconds later by the knight who had accompanied her to that terrible place.
"The wicked witch hates you, Princess Alia. Can you not feel her hate radiating like a heat wave in summer? And yet the hate that she feels for you is somehow crueler, more malevolent and spite filled.
Her eye were beady brilliant blue, steely blue, cold, harsh and arrogant and they traveled over Alia's form. Head to foot the eyes of the witch scanned and then she sneered at Alia and cackled, "What do you want?" The witch had bee unable to erase Alia's existence from the earth, but she would like to have at least been able to erase Alia's existence from her evil mind. The witch almost had, yet always she was fully aware that Alia still breathed. Alia's breath the misery of the witch.
"How dare she have the audacity to be living still?" she cackled under her breath as she stood there staring at the princess.
The witch looked beyond Alia to see if anyone else was around, maybe the moment had come to correct what should have been put right years ago? The witch looked Alia in the eyes and asked her who the hell she thought she was. The witch spit the words like acid from the mouth as the flames leapt forth from her tongue. And actually, who did Alia think she was? Alia didn’t really know to be completely honest, she was unable to form conversation or logical sentences. She had fallen into that cauldron of pain, fear, cruelty, depravity once again, and all the images played before her mind like a silent movie…baby teeth on a floor in a pool of blood, a big hand across her face, the witch looking on as the King of the West tried to end the life of the princess. Lying down on concrete steps all day dreaming about being someone else’s little girl and wishing she could leave there, wishing that the wicked witch would go.
Those witch hands of hers were so big, so forceful holding the power of life and death…carelessly uncaring…savagely cruel…bitterly tormenting, they were grossly huge still.
"I guess this is what happens if you insist on meeting up with the Devil in a wishing well," said her knight trying to be helpful yet failing miserably.
That witch had a demon of her own and she was wishing her twelve foot demon into the ground. Alia saw what the witch was thinking as her own demon burned at the stake before her. Alia was glad of it’s destruction…happy to see it removed from life forever, and she wished the witch in front of her away to the same sad end. How many more years could it remain to haunt Alia? Alia wanted the witch to kill itself as she had kept promising to do. She was wishing and praying that the witch would make good on her threat…"oh to have that ugly vicious demon gone," said Alia to her knight
Instead Alia, with the the knight watching on, stood there before it as a helpless, useless, scared, scarred image of what it had managed to reduce Alia to and the witch delighted in Alia's terror; she always had. Alia told the witch that she forgave all that the wicked witch had done to her but it was thrown away; the witch didn’t care. “So you should,” the witch snarled.
"That it could love, how foolish could a mortal being be?" asked the knight, as he stood there watching Alia allow the witch to hurt her once more.
“Turn away and run as fast as you can,” the knight yelled at Alia. But the child wanted to drop to her knees to beg and plead, “Please tell me you loved me, even in its smallest measure.”
Somehow Alia needed the love of the witch. She needed her love to make her feel real, to not feel like a cabbage patch kid. "Sometimes, Alia, bad is okay. Bad’s good, bad’s better than truth, and some endings just cannot ever be happy." The knight shuffled nervously on his feet wondering how Alia would take that piece of wisdom.
The witch gave nothing but insults and ridicule while Alia continued to stand there and listen. After all those years, still as bitter and as acidic as she always was. How insane to dare to hope it could have loved when it denied even being responsible for any part of the form that stood before it, and Alia had never dreamed that anything could ever be that cruel. She faced evil and knew it was an innate part of her. By birth something insidious could lurk within her, yet thus far it had remained unseen.
The witch silenced Alia with her words. Her every syllable a cruel and vicious taunt designed to cut to the core, and they did. So Alia fled. She fled as fast as she could, from that place, from that thing, from the words, from the torment from the memory. A few moments later standing on the side of the trail not knowing whether to puke, scream or cry Alia suddenly realised…that ranting, vicious, cruel, ugly witch was… her mother.
Alia sat up in bed, her heart pounding inside her chest and her head swimming. "It is okay, princess Alia, just go back to sleep and all will be well with you," said the head knight.

Hydra had been gone for 48 hours when Serpent Queen finally rang the police. They came around immediately and questioned everyone about the last time that they had seen him. Serpent Queen sat at the kitchen table quietly crying and one of the police officers tried to comfort her, but to no avail.
"I don't understand why he would just leave and not come back," she sobbed.
"Does he have any women friends? Maybe there is someone whom you know nothing about? Did he seem unhappy?" asked the policeman.
"No, he liked it here. Looking after other people's children was his dream....it was all he ever wanted to do...he would never just up and leave." Serpent Queen looked at the policeman as her tears rolled down her cheeks.
When they questioned Alia she told them how the door had swung back and hit Hydra in the face and how he had gotten 'cross' with her. "What happened then?" asked the policeman.
"He gave me a hug and told me not to worry about accidentally hitting him with the door. I got on the swing and I don't know where he went," she replied.
"But a moment ago you said that he got cross with you." The policeman looked at Alia and frowned.
"He was cross to start with, but then he realised that I didn't mean to do it and so he was nice to me."
"Oh, okay." The policeman seemed happy with Alia's explanation and went on to questions the others. Normally Alia would have felt terrible for lying, but she didn't feel bad for having lied about Hydra. He had lied enough about her and made himself look like a loving, caring man; she was simply keeping up his lie.
Within days Hydra's picture was all over the TV and everyone was searching for him and seeing as there was no word from him at all, the police suspected that someone had intercepted him between the house and the shop. They had established that Hydra had never made it to the shop and so they tried to work out if Hydra had any enemies. Serpent Queen could not think of anyone who would want to hurt Hydra at all and was quite confused by the whole thing.
Within three months of Hydra going missing, the King of the East declared that Serpent Queen and her offspring would have to leave the castle because the kingdom would not abide the prisoners in the caslte being watched over by just a Serpent Queen. "The children need to have a strong male influence in their lives. I have been told that a new Baron and Baroness have been selected to move into the castle, so you have two weeks to vacate."
The King of the East excused the Serpent Queen from his presence and she had to find somewhere for her and her horrible children to go.
Alia was relieved to hear that she and Hydra's offspring would be leaving the castle and she began counting down the days. Serpent Queen was initially worried about what might become of her and her children, but in the fashion of others of her ilk, she landed on her feet. Finally the day for them to leave came and as it turned out, she had met a rather nice Baron who had a castle somewhere in the South. Serpent Queen and Hydra's offspring went off and lived happily ever after.
When the new Baron and Baroness arrived at the castle, Stephen and Tommy eyed them up for size. "They seem nice enough," said Tommy.
"Don't worry, Galen, if he turns out to be a cousin of Urko, well we can always dig another cave."
Alia looked at the new Baron and Baroness. They had no children of their own and the Baron seemed a friendly enough sort of guy, but the truth would only come out once the Baroness of the King of the East left. Then? Well they would just have to wait and see.

It is odd what we perceive when we see someone walking down the street or sitting on a train. If they are male, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase one might be likely to immediately get a picture in their head of a nice house behind a white picket fence. They might see two cars parked in the driveway beside the manicured lawns and not to be forgotten, the two children, one girl and one boy. As one looks at him, one might think that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and that he is University educated and probably a member of the 'old boys' club. And his wife? One might presume her to be charming and adept at the art of baking, sewing and the nurturing of his children. But we really don't know anything about them at all. Our minds formed an idea based upon what we have learned from previous experience with people who may have looked just like the person we just saw and presumed all those things about.
Behind every man sitting on a train or racing his way through the early morning traffic is a real person. That real person was someone's baby, someone's brother, son or father. There is a real story behind him, there is a real live heart beating beneath his chest and he is staring straight back at you thinking his own thoughts about you. His thoughts about you will be formed from the very same things that your's were about him.
Another thing that can be very odd is the things that we presume. Take this story, for an example, who do you think is telling the story? Whose perspective do you think it is written from? Am I an unbiased narrator and if I am an unbiased narrator then I would have to have been there to know all that I do...that negates my ability to be unbiased, so that rules that out! Could I be Princess Alia or her head knight? Maybe I am Virden, Burke or Galen? Perhaps I am Hydra himself...but that couldn't work because Hydra is dead.
I was standing at the kitchen window when it happened just watching the children playing as children do. Many times Hydra was told by Serpent Queen that he should go and see what the children were doing in the garden, but he never was one to listen to anyone else. I went and saw what the children were doing, I saw their cave and initially I too thought it was just a game. They were inventing a world that allowed them to make sense of their reality and you can't blame kids for that because Hydra really was as cruel as they said. Poor little Alia, I used to worry for her so. I used to worry about how much more of Hydra she could take, but every time she faced him she was brave and courageous, even though she was terrified. But the true meaning of bravery is being terrified of enduring something and yet doing it anyway. I do not even know if Alia has a head knight or whether she catches falling stars...but she is a little girl so I assume she might. As for Galen Virden and Burke, well I heard them calling each other by those names and according to the TV their nemesis is Urko, so I thought that fit pretty well. Besides, every child needs a hero and Virden and Burke seemed like fairly good role models to me. I am not a child so I could not even begin to understand what it must have been like for the children to fall into the hands of Hydra, I could only imagine what must have been going through their minds.
I too wished that Hydra would go away and I often dreamed up ways of getting rid of him, but he was far too strong and crafty for me, so all I could do was sit there and take it. For years I sat there and took it, so when I saw him run into the garden and never come out again, I knew what had happened. I did not care. I merely felt relieved...well I was initially a little fearful...fearful that he might find a way out, but he didn't. When the Police came I did what everyone else did, I acted as though I knew nothing and I even shed a few tears...that wasn't terribly hard to do. But now that he is gone and will never be coming back, I am happy and the world is a better place without him. I am Serpent Queen, widow of Hydra...sssh, I won't tell if you don't.

Piczo