“Yes, son?”
“Our bet; last one home has to eat seconds, right?”
“Right – so?”
“You’re still on this side of the wall, aren’t you?”
If his dad had spoken, Ned would have sensed the alarm in his voice. Actually eating Olivia Armstrong’s cooking was a fate that neither of them relished, but “seconds” were out of the question. The guard-spikes at the top of their garden wall turned to mist and were carried harmlessly away by the wind.
Ned’s dad nearly always won their bouts of training. But then his dad set the rules. Even so, there were some things Terrence Armstrong couldn’t control – Ned was younger and faster, and over the wall whilst his dad was still scrambling to find a foothold.
He landed on the other side as quietly as a cat. But even as he righted himself, he sensed that something was wrong, just before the shadow beside him moved. “How?” he mouthed, as a foot connected with his chest and he flew, arms flailing, into the family’s plastic wheelie bins.
“What is the family motto?” asked a grinning Olivia Armstrong.
“How about, ‘Social Services are going to take your son away for his own protection’,” said Ned grumpily.
“I love you too, dear,” replied his mother, before kissing him on the cheek. “And I heard every word about the sewing and the wager.”
Ned and his dad entered their home like two naughty schoolboys. It was their family’s inner sanctum and a picture postcard of pre-Christmas excitement. Presents sat lovingly wrapped under the tree, home-made decorations covered the walls and if there was hanging space, there was mistletoe. His mum even had a constant supply of Christmas carols murmuring from the radio in the kitchen. It was a cosy contrast to the bachelor lives the two Armstrong men had lived before Ned’s mum had been returned to them. Olivia Armstrong had worked tirelessly to make up for lost time and lost Christmases. Twelve years’ worth.
Ned had always wanted a “normal” life, and though they were all trying, there was one rather unavoidable issue. The Armstrongs, despite outward appearances, were not even remotely normal.
And therein lay the problem. Ned had exactly what he’d always wanted right in front of him, but, as wonderful as it was, deep down inside he knew it was a lie. Ned had seen the magic of another world and, once seen, it could never be forgotten. The more they pushed him to blend in with his old world, to go unseen, to go unnoticed – the more he realised that he couldn’t.
“You know he made me fall off a roof?” said Ned, who’d taken his throbbing back to the comfort of their sofa.
“I was going to cushion the fall, son, would have done too if you hadn’t fallen quite so well. The gutter was inspired by the way – got your mum’s training to thank for that.”
“You’ve got to be prepared for anything, dear,” cooed Olivia from the kitchen.
As always in regard to training, his mum and dad were a united front.
“And you need to work on your smoke screens,” warned Terrence as he set the table for dinner. “Very effective, but too much power—”
“—brings attention, I know, I know, but what’s the point in learning how to evade danger if all we do is hide away from it?”
Olivia pretended not to hear and busied herself with preparing their supper, whilst humming to an awful version of “White Christmas” on the radio.
“Don’t you miss it, Dad, the Hidden, the Circus – our friends?”
“Course I do, Ned, but not nearly as much as I missed or worried about your mum. Or you, whilst we’re on the subject, after you crossed the Veil. I will never let us be apart again, Ned, not now, not ever.”
“But Barbarossa’s dead, Dad, all that’s behind us.”
His dad shook his head. “Do you know what they call you behind the Veil? ‘The hero of Annapurna.’ Everyone knows what you did, what you’re capable of, but you’re still just a boy, my boy – and there are plenty of creatures on the other side as bad as he was and with as much to gain by getting their hands on you.” His dad paused. “Nowhere is as safe as you think, Ned, not for people like us.”
“Oh, Dad, really? We used to live in the dullest suburb in England, and now we live next door to it. Nothing happens here.”
“Which is precisely why our powers need to stay a secret. If jossers found out about us, we’d have to move, and quickly. Besides which, ‘nothing’ much was happening before Mo and his cronies came looking for me in Grittlesby. Trouble could just as easily come looking for us here.”
“Then teach me how to fight, really fight, not hide.”
His dad’s face darkened. The truth was that Ned could do any number of the training exercises asked of him, with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back. Ned knew it and so did his dad. What he was really asking was for permission to work outside the limitations of the Engineer’s Manual.
“You know I can’t do that, son.”
“I’d be careful, Dad.”
“It’s not about that. What you did at St Clotilde’s, that level of power, it’s simply never been done. Not by a single Engineer before you. We have no idea of the dangers.”
“What if it has, though? The missing pages from the Manual, maybe that’s what they’re about? You could help me, we could work it out together.”
His dad’s expression looked somewhere between anger and concern, before finally settling on kind.
“The pages are gone and there’s no way of knowing what was on them. Ned, any Engineer could have made a smoke screen without choking themselves half to death and you’re better than all of the ones that came before you, better than me. Remember last week, when you got angry? The power grid for half the suburb went out and not for the first time. We’ve gone through three blown microwaves in less than a month and every time you do homework, car alarms start sounding off all over Clucton. I can’t do that, son, none of it.”
“Then help me control it, Dad, please?”
And this was where the conversation always wound up.
“Your powers have changed since Annapurna, since you connected to the Source, that much we know. But there’s something else, something troubling you that you’re not telling us. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know what it is.”
For a glimmer of a moment, Ned looked into his father’s
