The Great Troll War

‘Was something meant to happen?’ said D’Argento, and I opened my eyes. I looked down at Shandar, whose evil personality was beginning to re-form as he once more expelled the Better Angels. Worse, even in his weakened state, he was still more powerful than me.

‘You little fool,’ he said in a weak voice. ‘You do not have the emotional energy needed to focus your powers to initiate a criticality. You are weak, as you have always been. But never fear, I shall give you the end that you so desire – only it will be on your own: sad, unremembered and unmourned, abandoned on Ganymede to watch as I suck the sun dry of its power.’

He paused, weakened by the speech. But already I could feel his power returning; it would not be long. He would succeed. He was all-powerful.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and D’Argento’s voice close to my ear. It was soft, and warm, and caring.

‘Our parents live in a village outside Leominster,’ she began, ‘in a small house with a wisteria on the gable. There is a swing in the garden under an apple tree and the paddock leads down to a brook. In the springtime, the blossom drifts around the house like snow, and in the summer the hedgerows are alive with the creamy scent of meadowsweet. Our father James looks after the house and our mother Lynda is head nurse at the local hospital. She is good at her job, and much admired. Zambini came to them and explained what was needed, what we, and they, had to do. You at Kazam and me embedded with Shandar. They followed our progress, and love us, miss us, and will be proud. But they knew that we had a function to play in the Great Scheme of Things, they understood that, and put aside their sorrows, and love us just the same.’

I felt my eyes fill with tears. I thought of the photograph I’d found in the glovebox, and the unseen child in the back of the VW Beetle. I also remembered the misspelling of the writing on the back. Only it wasn’t a misspelling.

‘Assett is our surname, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I am Belinda, and you are Catrina. You are my little sister by four years.’

‘Catrina Assett,’ I said whispering my birth name for the first time.

Belinda hugged me tightly, as a big sister might do.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered, and she told me I needed to act while there was still time.

Because I could, now.

Magic is an invisible energy field that flows about us, powered by the force of human emotion: anger, sadness, greed, hope, love – and joy. The joy of knowing who you are, who your sister is, and that she, and your parents, love you.

‘You lose,’ I said, holding Shandar even tighter, ‘as you were always going to.’

‘Wait, what?’ he said, struggling to get out of my grasp. I think in that brief moment he felt real terror, and the anger and ignominy of defeat.

I didn’t. I imagined myself back in the lobby of Zambini Towers, but I was not alone. Moobin was there, and Zambini, and Feldspar, and the Quarkbeast, and Perkins, and Captain Lutumba and her crew and all the others who had not made it this far. And they were all smiling, because I had done what I had set out to do. The right thing, for them, for everyone.

I felt Shandar struggle ever more violently to get out of my embrace, but Belinda added her arms to mine to hold him close, to ensure that the wizidrical detonation went critical.

‘No, wait,’ he said, ‘you can’t—’

‘Now,’ I said, but I wasn’t speaking to Shandar, I was speaking to the Mysterious X.

And there was light.

And there was heat.

And then … there was opportunity.

…

Epilogue

‘How can you be sure what happened to Jennifer right at the end?’ asked Tiger as he finished reading my typewritten notes. ‘Especially as no one really knows whether the Mysterious X was real, or just a few orphaned good ideas in need of a hypothesis.’

‘I can’t,’ I replied, ‘but we are all agreed that Shandar and his tower were utterly destroyed. Astronomers have noted a disturbance in the orbit of Ganymede, as though a large chunk was blown out of it – and two comets were ejected from the conflagration, fast and dense enough to easily overcome Jupiter’s gravitational pull and accelerate off out of the solar system.’

We were speaking at a small café in the main square in Hereford. Most of the damage inflicted by the Troll invasion had been repaired by now, but even so, two years on, there were still blackened façades and boarded-up buildings. The plinth next to the old Black and White house now carried a bronze of Jennifer and was surrounded, as usual, by fresh floral tributes. Her effigy was simple, rather than heroic. Lifesize, with Jennifer leaning on Exhorbitus, the Quarkbeast by her side.

‘She triumphed, that much is clear,’ I said. ‘The galaxy is safe.’

‘I sincerely hope so,’ said Tiger, ‘but again: how can you be so sure any of this happened as you say it did?’