Episode 6

The new day brings a new challenge – skiing and shooting – Or at least combat  - Marigold is up for the challenge – some of the others are not so sure – They walk the course – a gentle slope starts them off, followed by a narrow gully, that turns deceptively steep and curves oh-so-slightly.

After that, it is the usual flat sections, step sections, a tunnel and a bell to ring as well as stations where there are target boards to shoot for.

There is a one-point score for successfully navigating the obstacle or terrain and a point for each shot on target. After a narrow squeak in the narrow section, Marigold executes the skiing well but her excitement gets the better of her targeting and she manages to miss a lot of the targets. Only managing to hit one in seven – A somewhat pedestrian nine points.

Lincoln Bee and Mal all fail to navigate the narrow gap and have bumps and bruises to show for it. Little Bee has some wobbly moments on the flatter sections, which upsets her aim in the latter sections.

Lincoln scores an impressive thirteen points, and Bee levels her score with Marigold’s nine. Mal puts in an almost perfect run, only missing ringing the bell and the tunnel and only dropping one shot on target, and scoring a top-of-the-table fifteen. He makes some adjustments to his robot and sends it down. It pinballs through the narrow gap, the hairpin bend and the tunnel and finishes with a score of only five- but considering the fact that it doesn’t have weaponry of any kind, Mal is pleased with its performance.

Cerise follows with a score of Eleven, them Marigold considers trying again to improve her score. Autumn puts in a solid fourteen. Iris and Sienna wait until after lunch to make their attempts.

They all assemble at a chuck-wagon, and make inroads into bagels and bacon sandwiches. The two caterers in the van are shadow-outlined nobodies, here to serve and to serve food. – Cerise gets a premonition – That something wicked is coming this way.

“Not ‘something wicked this way comes?’”

“No. – Stupid!”

This puts Little Bee in mind of something.

“You know, there’s a list that keeps going around in my head….. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, witches' mummy, maw and gulf of the salt-sea shark, root of hemlock digg’d in the park.…” She says, calling on her knowledge of long dead (and indeed never actually existed) playwrights.

“-Dark, surely.”

“Park, dark….Whatever....And don’t call me Shirley.”

“Who said that?”

“Dunno.- It was unattributed- Which is what you’ll get if you don’t start making sense.”

“Shopping list.” Marigold says, trying to drag the conversation back on track.

“What?”

“Shopping list. – Back at the guesthouse….It’s Mister Goode’s grocery list.”

“Aha!”

“No wonder the stew tastes so foul. Or indeed: Of fowl.”

“Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth….And end up in the pot. – In the park. In the dark.”

Mal thinks. “You know, with all those ingredients, it’s a wonder we don’t all see visions.”

“Well I have had a few weird dreams the last few days.” Lincoln admits.

“That’ll be the cheese. –I think blue cheese is okay….But the green….”

“I like green!”

Marigold is determined to improve on her score – she takes the chairlift up for one final run. –The others gather at the bottom to watch her. Having deftly come off the chairlift, she does the classic of putting on her gloves and adjusting her goggles while smoothly swishing across the piste. Having got lined up for the narrows, she digs in her sticks and glides off effortlessly. She is just gathering speed and getting to the left of the grooves she cut last time when disaster strikes! – She hits a rogue snowflake and face-plants into the piste! The skis come off, but there is very little gradient so they don’t go further than she can reach. She sits for a minute putting them back on, and then slides downhill more gently than before, leaving a perfect snow-bunny impression in the piste.

 – The rest of the course is still as challenging, although she does manage to get some shots on target this time and scores an eleven –and considering the deduction for her fall, not a bad score.

She swoops along the final section to come to a rest by the chuck wagon. -The temptation to use her speed to dump loads of snow over the onlookers is strong, but she resists it.

–Final tally:

First:               Mal.

Second:          Autumn.

Third:             Lincoln

Fourth:            Cerise

Joint Fifth       Bee and Marigold.

Sixth:              Mal’s Robot.

As Marigold changes back into her size-fourteen boots, Sergeant Bridges is explaining that the next part of the exercise is to kit up and spend a night outdoors, there is movement around the target at the bottom of the slope. It gives way to a large Ursa!

“That’s a big Ursa!” Lincoln says, somewhat unhelpfully. The shutter on the wagon slams down with a bang, nearly taking Autumn’s hand off in the process.

The Ursa rears up onto its hind feet. Glowing orange-red eyes are boring into them. The thing roars. Spines on its neck and chest bristle like an enraged porcupine. There is a flurry of activity as our heroes ready themselves for an attack!

Mal and Cerise spit electrical energy and energy-energy into the beast. This serves merely to make it more aggressive. Lincoln attempts to stick it with an arrow but misses form point blank range. – Autumn has to intercede to stop Lincoln becoming mincemeat. Little Bee’s speed kicks in and she goes on an outrun to get behind the thing. The sergeant shoots two quick shots, but doesn’t make much of an impact on the thing. – Though he does make Autumn temporarily deaf. Bee runs up the creature’s back, aiming for its head. Autumn decides to flip the thing on its back. Little Bee grabs a spine and slides deftly around it, using it as a pivot point. –She could use this in a floor show! Mal and Cerise pound it with the ends of their staffs. The creature extends long claws and sinks them into the metal side of the chuck wagon. Autumn slides between beast and wagon and shoves with all his might. The creature comes away with the panel, scaring the two people inside.  It lashes out, but no-one is badly hurt. – The thing is flipped over and the teenagers make short work of pounding shooting, electrocuting and grinding it into a powder.

Two large black birds are circling ahead. They’re too high to shoot, - although Lincoln tries anyway. –The children will need a miracle to hit them at that altitude. They wheel around in the winter sun. –But they haven’t banked on Autumn!

Autumn hefts his shield in front of him. Fueled by the pummeling he’s received, he is ready for something epic! He motions at Little Bee, urging her to hop onto the shield. As Bee does so, Autumn crouches. Muscles bulge in his arms and legs. A grin spreads across his mouth. Mal concentrates, and like he is using the force, augments Autumn’s efforts. Little Bee is launched into the air!

Instead of shooting straight up, she veers slightly toward the right in a sharp parabola. – This also means descending some score of meters away! – Autumn has realized his mistake -not centering Bee on the shield, and rushes to catch the falling girl. He nearly runs into a tree – Although to his credit it is the correct tree – at least it is when he hops left. Little Bee tumbles through the snow-draped branches and drops the last ten feet into Autumn’s arms. – There is no “My hero!” comment, nor is there a kiss for her rescuer! – The others nearly wet themselves laughing. Cerise calms the two chuck wagon employees and the birds wheel around and disappear over the treetops.

When everyone is calmed down and Bee dried out a little, Sienna rack-welds the panel back onto the side of the wagon. Marigold and Iris spend the rest of the afternoon practicing their skiing, while the others go back to order an early supper. – Bridges has told them that they’ll be camping out this evening, and to get a good meal. They get stick-brown stew- which tastes like Marmite sticks. – Not twiglets, but actual small twigs from trees covered in salty black stuff. –Eeew!

The Sergeant collects them at seven. He goes over the map of the mountain. They are to make for the summit and camp there. – Cerise has a vision of several scenes- people being wary of Grimm, people being aggressive to the Grimm, people shooting and using their auras to fight the Grimm, and finally the people dead at the feet of the Grimm.

“One day you get the Grimm. One day the Grimm gets you.” Lincoln says.

“I thought that was the chicken pox.” Autumn says.

“No. –Stupid!”

Marigold and Autumn are going over the kit that the Sergeant has delivered. It is tents and sleeping bags and torches. – Everything for a night in the mountains.  They spy two cadets hanging around. –However when they approach them, the two scurry back to the barracks. Autumn is all for following them, but Marigold warns that they could be leading them into a trap. “I see a two versus two hundred snowball fight.” Marigold warns. Autumn sees sense –after all, a female told him so it must be true.

The others arrive back in time to partake of the Stick Brown. By early evening they are ready to head off.

“Straight there – you can’t miss it.” Bridges tells them.

“How so?”

“Coz it’s at the very top of the mountain. – ‘Ultima Thule’ which means: ‘Beyond which, nothing.’”

“We could camp out of sight of the base and pretend.” Lincoln suggests.

“They might ask us questions about the summit – and we’d be found out.” Cerise reminds him. “Besides if my visions are completely correct, we’ll be….Um….We’ll be…..”

“Fine?”

“I was thinking of ‘dead’ but I’ll take ‘fine’ as a substitute.”

“You’re a very ‘up’ person.”

“Not if we don’t get a move-on.”

They distribute the packs according to carrying capacity. – The others skip off unencumbered while Autumn carries everything. When he starts to buckle under the weight of eight tents, sleeping bags, kit and rations they punch him in the stomach a couple of times, and he springs up and bounds off like a mountain goat.

They reach the summit late in the evening. By some meteorological and astrological quirk it is still dusk at the top, despite leaving in the late winter afternoon- where it is already dark. –Yeah, go figure!  They are scratching their heads over this phenomenon when they can see a ruined structure above them. The shell of a cathedral towers above them. The sturdier skeleton of a great hall is slightly behind and slightly above it. They crawl all over it, searching for a spot to camp. They elect to sleep upon the raised dais at the end of the cathedral structure. – It affording better panoramic views and shelter in equal measure. –They light a mall fire by rubbing two boy-scouts together.

Sienna is scornful. “Pfft! I don’t need two boy scouts to rub together to keep warm.”

“No?”

“No. I can keep warm without!”

“What shall we do with these two spare scouts?”

“Um….Have them stripped and oiled and at my tent in half an hour!”

The darkness falls – for at least the third time. –Their torches and meagre campfire make scant headway into the cold and darkness around them. They jab Sienna with sticks until she is cross enough for them to toast marshmallows. Autumn climbs to a high niche to curl up in. The stars wink down weakly and in the darkness an owl hoots, to confirm that it is night. (Again.) There would also be a cricket noise, but bad light has stopped play long ago – at least twice!

In the dark, Cerise says, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?

“I did!”

“When?”

“When I had that premonition that we’re all going to die horribly up here.”

CODA:

 ( a short while later)

 “Where exactly did you bury Cerise?”

(All together) “–IN THE SNOW!”