It was when they started to attack Bertie Bassett himself that I got really nervous. Thus far, the harpies had concentrated their attack on the wicker basket. Things had become desperate. The basket was fast losing its structural integrity. With whole chunks of wicker being torn out, the coherency of the weave was disrupted; the net result was that the basket itself was beginning to unravel in places. This was bad enough. Now, however, the one thing I had feared above all else was happening – the harpies were attacking the balloon. All it needed was for one lucky harpy to get its claws in to the fabric of Bertie, and we would be going down fast. That’s if the balloon didn’t pop in a comically slapstick fashion and whiz through the air above the mountains, describing figures of eight above the landscape.
I kept on firing the balloon, trying desperately for our ascent to be quicker, eager for the filthy screeching harpies to leave us alone. My hounds could sense the impending crisis and were snapping at the air around them, growling and baying like the tortured souls of a thousand bloody sacrifices. All around me the basket was creaking and groaning. More horrific than this was the whispering sound that described the unravelling of liberated wicker.
As the harpies rammed and clawed at Bertie Bassett, we lurched and swung uncontrollably across the sky. Were I a religious god, I would have prayed at this moment. But I am not, really. I believe in myself as a god, certainly; but I was already here – and there was not a lot I could do. I would have prayed. Instead, I held on to a guy rope for dear life, and waited for a miracle.
The miracle happened like this: There was a metallic zapping sound. Then there was the blood-curdling screech of a harpy, followed by its lifeless body tumbling past us and plummeting to the mountainous landscape below. The harpies all disembarked from the balloon, screeching in panicked confusion, and hovered in the air all around us. They were like so many gnats, filling the summer air in an overgrown alleyway behind someone’s house in Tilehurst, Reading.
The balloon stopped lurching. It stopped swaying. We were sailing again, silently, through the clear, cold air. I peered out to understand what had scattered the harpies so effectively. And my head reeled at what I saw.
A dozen alien greys, strapped to a dozen hang-gliders, soared past me in tight formation. Their silver suits glistened will dull austerity in the thin light; their large, black featureless eyes stared out with alien intelligence. They are small creatures, greys. Standing at around four feet in height, they are thin and gangly, with long spindly limbs. Their heads seem a little too big for their slight bodies and because the head is their predominant organ, their character is defined very much by their facial expression. This facial expression – shared by all the greys I have ever seen (and believe me, I have now seen a few) – is hard and featureless. It could be said that they have the ultimate face for playing poker. Their eyes do not blink; their nose is merely two slitted nostrils in the middle of their face; and their mouths are small, straight and lipless.
It has to be said, though – they can’t half hang-glide.
The greys were, as far as I could tell, hunting harpies. They soared around describing tight manoeuvres in the air and their heads flicked from side to side, appraising the harpy population in the vicinity. I saw that each grey carried a small silver gun. In accordance with consensus perception as adopted by the human collective unconscious, these were no ordinary guns. They were, of course, ray guns. Every time a grey had the opportunity for a good shot, he would take it. Greys, I have discovered, are keen marksmen. On this occasion, their hit-ratio was 1:1. With every little jelly bean of coloured light that the ray guns emitted, a harpy would screech in mortal pain and fall from the sky. Many of them hit the balloon and tumbled past us with dramatic finality. The tide of our affairs had turned. As the balloon began to break free of the now scattered harpies, the bride once more to any forward breeze, I felt myself began to relax. My hounds, sensing our close escape, began to wag their tails with demonic relief.
I only wish I could end the chapter here. Unfortunately, Fate ne’er sleeps, when Herne is in peril.
As the balloon began to drift further in to the mountains, away from the airborne battle that had begun to rage between the harpies and the greys, I noticed that we were losing some height. I pulled the chain and sent fire in to the belly of Bertie Bassett, curtailing our descent. Just as we were beginning to gain some altitude, I heard a foul screech behind me. My heart stopped. I turned and found myself face to face with an ugly, leering harpy. Having broken away from the flock to follow us, it now hovered within feet of the broken wicker basket, its large wings beating at the air menacingly. Its eyes were hungry, its face etched with filthy hatred. I knew that it would not take much to finish off the wicker basket and send us all spilling out to meet our violent ends on the rocks below. And if the harpy did not take this approach then, in its desperation, it was likely to grab one of us and carry us off to a certain death.
My hand was still on the chain, sending fire in to Bertie’s loins. I did not think. This was no time for thinking. It was time for action.
I am well aware that the spirit of impulse can be a very effective tool, when guided by a lucky hand. My hand, however, is estranged from good fortune. I am cursed. And the worse thing I can ever do – one day, I will learn this – is act on impulse. Impulse always blows up in my face. So it was, I thought I was being deliciously spontaneous when I bent the inactive flame-thrower down so that it was pointing away from the balloon above us, and directly at the harpy just a few feet away. I thought I looked cool, when I cocked a knowing and slightly amused eyebrow at the harpy. And I thought I was being cool, when I said (keeping my face impassive and controlled) “asta la vista, baby”.
I pulled the chain to send forth the breath of the dragon.
I couldn’t have timed it worse. The flame engulfed the harpy and the harpy bellowed out in rage as it was consumed by hungry fire. Unfortunately, at the very moment I released the flame, an alien grey swooped behind the harpy with hang-gliding panache, with a view to taking it out. A sense of profound foreboding swept over me as I watched the alien grey combust. It squealed in cosmic agony, now consumed by hungry fire. I watched the grey hang-glide in to the distance, now roaring like a flaming comet.
My spontaneous manoeuvre had caused one final mishap. On top of taking out a harpy and cleansing the soul of an alien grey in characteristically medieval fashion, the flame had caught one of the guy ropes attaching the wicker basket to the balloon. A lascivious tongue of flame now licked up the guy rope and before I had time to curse my ineptitude, the fabric of our liquorice host had begun to burn.
Within just a few seconds, the burning rope snapped and the basket toppled precariously to one side, held by the remaining three ropes. A few hounds were nearly spilled out, but we were all so tightly wedged in that they remained onboard. I felt that familiar tickle of panic in my chest, as the basket began to spin sickeningly from side to side. The basket was alive with frightened whimpering – much of it, my own. Above us, Bertie Bassett was beginning to roar and his roar was becoming louder. I looked up and saw the flames licking up over the fabric of the balloon. Within a minute, there would be no balloon.
Several coloured jelly beans of light whizzed past my head. It took me a few moments to register what they were; then I saw the crisp formation of eleven remaining hang-gliders cutting like knives through the sky, towards us. I realised that the greys had understood the dire consequences of my spontaneity, and were now in retaliation over the medieval cleansing of their colleague’s soul. It gave me no small degree of pleasure to note that their hit ratio had just fallen considerably.
The balloon was roaring loudly now above our heads and there was little left to see of Bertie Bassett, behind the raging inferno that he had become. We were descending rapidly. My hell hounds, their eyes red like burning coals, their ears flapping in the wind, were whining in terror. The greys were circling us as we fell towards the mountains with increasing speed. Bertie roared. The basket spun. And the greys continued to empty their ray guns on us. I found myself ducking and darting from missiles that travelled towards me at light speed. It was no mean feat.
There was nothing for it. One way or another, we were going to be annihilated. If the greys didn’t ray gun us in to extinction, we would be dashed on to the craggy mountains below. The wind of descent was now blowing tears from my eyes, and my stomach turned with the sensation of unbridled plummetation. The greys continued to circle us, shooting at us, staring at us with cold menace – but they were a blur. Everything was a blur. I could see the mountains getting closer and closer.
Necessity guided me.
I stared ahead with a stern expression, stuck out my arm and began to wave it around in a meaningful –if slightly frenetic – way. To my relief, a vortex spun in to existence in the middle of the basket. I didn’t even reason with my hounds. I grabbed them quickly, one by one and pushed them through the vortex in to whatever lay beyond. They were not slow to move and with the mountains only seconds away, I managed to get the last one through before diving through myself, headfirst in to the unknown.
