The Chameleon Shop

Up near the clouds...

The castle of Wilfrey George Hobbs perched precariously at the uppermost point of Mount Beaton. It was built in the gothic style with arched ceilings, stained glass windows, ridiculously tall pointed turrets and a multitude of massive staircases throughout.

Stone miniatures of the dreadful gargoyles that enjoyed harassing the rest of the realms augmented the simple stone guttering system. However, these ones never moved. Instead, they merely stared at you with glowing red eyes, spouting dirty fountains on occasions when the rain fell.

Surrounding the castle grounds, behind tall spike-topped fences, were hagars; horrid black beasts the size of a hyena, with faces somewhere between a wild dog and a Russian boar, including tusks and little black piggy eyes.

They prowled the grounds until required by the gargoyles, from time to time, to cause mischief wherever Wilfrey felt like directing it.

Behind and beneath Mount Beaton lay the Byagal Sea. It was a beautiful dark blue expanse reaching as far as the eye could see ─ except for the Bay directly below the cliffs.

At the bottom of the cliff was where Wilfrey ordered his servants to dump all their waste. They thoughtlessly tossed it out the kitchen windows overhanging the cliff top. Many innocent sea creatures suffered from this mess, but the people of the Water Realm, like the Fire Realm, were relatively powerless against Wilfrey, as long as he had the Crone working for him.

The sea was dotted here and there, with the odd small coconut-tree covered island. The ferrymen (aka Pirates) of the Water Realm collected natural spring water from these small islands, sealing it in large oak barrels to trade with the other realms.

Wilfrey, via his gargoyles, was notorious for taking most of this and selling it off at ridiculously high prices to everyone else who needed it.

The water was brought to the mainland by ferrymen, who liked to pretend they were pirates because it was ... well fun was what it was. Boys were sometimes just dorks like that, weren’t they?

Beneath the castle, in the outside bailey ─ a type of courtyard ─ there were endless stacks of firesticks and felled trees from the Fire Realm, barrels of water from the Water Realm and fruit and vegetable produce from the Earth Realm. Greedy should have been Wilfrey’s middle name, not George.

One miserable evening, deep in the castle dungeons, Wilfrey stomped across an untidy walkway of wooden planks, across the waterlogged flagstone floor. Candles guttered and flickered in the draughts on the dank dirty walls. He kicked out at a frog in his way, which croaked annoyance and dove into the shallow, murky water with a plop.

The Crone’s big black crow cawed sharply, announcing Wilfrey’s arrival. He turned to it and glared it into silence, grinning with satisfaction at its fear.

The Crone was busy with something, her back hunched over as she muttered to herself. He approached and rudely peered over her shoulder as she broke a blue egg into a pewter dish on the floor. She then threw in some bones that had rune markings on them. After that, she spit in it, swirled the odious globule round the pewter dish, scraped her long hideous fingernail through the gruesome mixture and looked up at him, waiting for him to speak.

‘What is it now, Hag? You interrupted my milk bath ... so it better be important!’ He snarled.

‘Forgive me, Wilfrey; I have seen something in the bones,’ she said in her creaky old voice and she laid the dish on the ground at their feet.

‘Oh prey-tell. What prize am I in for next then?’ He smugly admired himself in a shiny platter that leant against the wall and picked something green out of his tooth with a grubby fingernail. He frowned at the red scar on his cheek; a little memento from an enemy he had rubbed up the wrong way. He swept back his wavy black locks and stroked his black beard.

‘No, this is not a good omen. Your rule is under threat from a young girl, a newcomer to this place.’ She looked up at him, with one of her wonky eyes, face grave between long straggles of wispy white hair.

His face contorted in anger, ‘Let her try! You think I’m not enough of a man to outwit a child!’

‘I only say, what I see in the bones. She will bring about the end of you ─ the end of us!’ She shuffled over to her jars, tipped out a palm-full of slaters then tossed them into her bubbling cauldron, followed by an orange and white spotted fungus, which produced a hissing red cloud.

Wilfrey followed her, waving away the smelly red vapours, which rose to sting his eyes. ‘What does she want from me? Send those useless stone soldiers and those hairy mutts out there to bring her to me.’

‘What she seeks is not yet clear, but I will find out ... in time. My mirrors sometimes show me things, but something shields her from my view.’ Wilfrey scowled at this less than satisfactory answer.

‘See you do. I have more important things to do than babysit a lost child!’

The crone smiled showing pointy black teeth, ‘One would think you might have more care for an orphan? Given you were one when I found you on that hillside freezing to death.’

He flew towards her in rage, stopping nose-to-nose, ‘You are NOT to mention that to ANYONE! I am the Guardian! Heir to the throne from the last Guardian ─’

‘… Who I got rid of, putting you there in the child’s stead,’ she said snidely without missing a beat.

‘Be that as it may, Crone, you’re lucky I put up with you. You’d be burned at the stake if I tossed you out there,’ he snarled, pointing to the Fire Realm. She shrank from his anger and continued with her brewing.

Without further ado, he spun on his boot heel and made his way back along the slimy planks. His eye caught sight of something distasteful on a nearby bench and he paused to pick it up gingerly with his fingertips. It was a dismembered eyeball of some large mammal. ‘Ugh! Is this entirely necessary?’ He looked at her scornfully and threw it over his shoulder before he stormed off as it plopped into a puddle somewhere in the dark corners of the room.