“Where do you want to go first?” said Alpin once Jane had crept back into the chestnut woods, giving a last bitter look over her shoulder. “Would you like to see Jane’s children, or would you rather see Petey?”
“I would rather return home,” I said, “and that is a sad thing, considering I don’t really have one I feel fine in. But I suppose I should understand what is going on here before I speak to Petey, because something tells me he won’t tell me.”
“I think that’s the right answer to my question,” said Alpin. “So I’ll show you the Sunflower Fields. That should give you an idea. But you must at no moment make us visible. This is compulsory, Arley. No matter what you see, you must not be seen yourself. Or it might be the last thing you will see.”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s happening here? You seem to know.”
“It’s easier to tell you as you see things,” Alpin replied. “Yes, I’ll explain what you see. And don’t breathe the mortal air. The adjective couldn’t describe it better.”
So the air was poisoned there. When we fairies are invisible to mortals, we are not physically present. We are in our own world as well as in the mortal one. There is a kind of magic circle around us that keeps us in our world. A kind of cylinder, but I won’t go into how that works now, only that the air within it is ours.
Alpin told me where and how to advance and I followed his instructions. We moved to a side of the blinding statue and circled Petey’s palace without approaching it or stopping to look at it. When we were behind the huge park that was its backyard, never entering but always circling the marble fences that kept those gardens shut, I saw what seemed to be an interminable sight. This was a vast, vast, vast, long, long, long, unending field of sunflowers. The sun was setting in the dizzyingly distant horizon. The yellow petals on the nine foot tall flowers were growing a little pink against the glowing red sky. And it could have been a pretty sight to gaze upon. And so it was, if I had been in a mood for peaceful sight-seeing. But I was edgy and wary and perhaps that was why it did not take me long to see some dark shadows that seemed to be fleeting and flowing in black lines among the lower half of the rows of flowers. The sight was rather like rows of ants marching between rows of tiny daisies, but many times enlarged.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked Alpin. “Are those shades people? Out there among the flowers?”
I was thinking Petey had some kind of army, or some kind of enemy army was marching against his castle. Alpin soon explained it was something else I was seeing.
“If you’re thinking this is an army, you are wrong. Petey does have an army. But this isn’t it. This is a work force. They are not really advancing. They are swaying with the wind because it is sunset and they are at something like rest. They won’t return to their miserable huts after their time out here because they no longer have huts. They don't need them. The truth is they don’t need to sleep either. They just stand there all night in the fields swaying with the plants that sway with the wind and wait for the sun to rise. This is so Petey can say he is kind to his people and allows them a full night off. Then the sun rises and they start to work again. Rain or shine, day after day, this is how iti is.If you could see behind all these tall flowers, you would see brown heaps of beheaded drying stalks and dead flower heads, empty of their seeds, lying among them. This field is half harvested. When it is done, the workers will move to another.”
I didn’t know which of the many questions I had to ask I should ask first.
“Why don’t they sleep? Do they eat?”
“First ask me why the fields.”
“Why the fields?”
“He has to feed his children.”
“You mean his people, don’t you? Petey sort of thinks of everyone like his own resposibility, if I remember right. These people work the fields and then eat the seeds?”
“He does think of everyone as his own property, rather than as his responsibility. But no. When I say his children, I mean a multitude of rare brats his woman has given birth to in her laboratory. Dr. Viruta Meagrebrain Pocuscocus doesn’t have one child every nine months like Jane usually does. She has as many as an insect does whenever she chooses to. As many as she needs. These creatures are part Viruta and part Petey and part themselves. They only feed on sunflower seeds. These give them the energy they need to fly and spit. They spit the hulls, and they can spit their own personal type of poison. That helps to contaminate the air. But it only adds to the toxicity there. There’s more to that. If the Pipnoshers aim at your eyes, you go blind. If you ingest this venom when it hits your ears or nose, or if you swallow it when it hits your mouth, you are likely to die. But murder is not Viruta’s purpose. When you are lying there next to dead she comes and sprays you with a can similar to that of TNT that has a concotion in it that makes you rise like a zombie, and that is what you are. And then she just tells you to march behind the zombie leader and do as the others do. And there she has them, her field hands, working to feed Petey’s children, who in turn work to keep her in power. By the way, the zombie leader is a machine, a robot she manufactured. It´s not a zombified human.”
I could not believe what I was hearing.
“Petey knows this?” I asked. “Why isn’t he out here trying to be kind to one or another of these miserable creatures?”
“He thinks he needs an army to fight off his enemies.”
“And these are?”
“Anyone who believes in liberty, of course. Anyone who would teach him to respect civil liberties. People from other countries, now that he has reduced his own. He is convinced anyone unreduced is savage and that the end of civilizing them justifies the means he employs. So he has many sons, yes, sons, all male, with Viruta, to protect his country. That’s why they have children. To compete with other people’s children and win. They don’t need daughters because Viruta can give him as many little warriors as he needs.”
“And the local people?”
“You’re seeing some of them swaying in the wind. He doesn’t need them for anything else but to do what they are now doing because he thinks they are mean and ungrateful and don’t appreciate him. Which doesn’t stop him from caring for them in his own way, for he believes that here in the fields they are better off than anywhere else. Viruta has given him sons and he thinks these will do better than his original people. He thinks the Pipnoshers love him. They are easy to feed and ask for nothing else but sunflower seeds to crunch on. He calls them his little lilies of the valley, can you believe that? Of course, he can’t have touching father to son conversations with them, but that doesn’t matter because people like Petey never listen to anyone. They just tell other people what to do. Petey doesn’t even need to tell the Pipnoshers what to do because Viruta created them to do nothing but what they are supposed to do which is spread poison all over this place so no one ever comes here. His enemies know better than to try. The sole concern of neighbouring countries is to keep a constant eye on the quality of their air, hoping Viruta’s poison doesn’t reach them. There are no thieves here either, come to steal bananas or sunflower seeds and make money selling them elsewhere. They would fall dead and be zombified. Petey is very proud of that. He says he has erradicated crime. Of course, he doesn’t think that this is because he is the criminal himself. When he is ready, he will probably become even crazier and be wanting to have more children and send them to molest his enemies in their own space. Invade is the word, I think. Yes, he will become an expansionist. But you…you will have to wear a gas mask or something like it if you are going to speak with Petey in person.”
“Oh, no! This poison can affect us too?”
“Probably. There are no fairies frolicing around those sunflowers, are there? Granted these are human fields, but you know how sometimes fairies flit around such and get knocked out by stuff humans spray. None of us to be seen here. My guess is they all left. I hope they did.”
“Are you hiding something from me? They really left? They’re not dead or zombified or anything?”
“Alright. I’ll tell. I know some left when a few went blind. The curious ones who got close to the Pipnoshers with a view to studying them. The able ones had to drag the casualties off with them.” Alpin shut his little, wormy eye so he could see better and added, “I’m reading lips and someone is saying it took hell to cure those affected. They’re still in shock.”
“What kind of a chance do I have then?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Then the first thing I need, a different friend from you aside, is a gas mask of some kind.”
The little apple that was Alpin rocked forward and backward, which is its way of nodding.
“So do I,” he said, “because I’m going with you. And all I need to be utterly anulled is for my one little eye to go blind.”
“Let me see if I get this right. There is nothing in Bananawood now but sunflower fields and banana groves. Petey has a woman that is helping him do crazy dictator things. Her name is Viruta and she has a lab. She has given him children that poison all there is about. Tell me about her, Alpin. One should know one's enemies.”
“A wanted criminal. I have no idea how they came together, for that was before Mari got in touch with me and I can’t see the past, only remember what I’ve seen or process what I hear about it. And I’ve seen Viruta on mortal wanted posters. Apparently she is some kind of scientist who once tried to resurrect some kind of monster. I’m not sure what it is, but it has to be bad because everyone hates her. She fled from whoever was chasing her and found a harbourer in Petey. I won’t call it asylum. A mental asylum is what she should be in, though. They’re not really in love or anything that might be taken for that. They are more like allies than lovers, but I think it’s not even that. They are two sick people who feed each other’s madness. When I see them together it’s as if I were seeing two mirrors set face to face. The reflection in one moves, and that in the other reacts and vice-versa. The monsters she is making now, the Pipnoshers, seem to be something easy for her to create. I don’t know what she is thinking. She is quite hermetic. But this can’t be enough for her. We have to stop her before she does worse.”
“Look here, Alpin. I am now going to ask you the most important question I can ask you. And you had better give me a good answer. Where on earth is the Sheriff of Bananawood? Don’t say he is in those fields. I don’t think I could bear that.”
“Well, I don’t have to say that. Because he isn’t there. However, I’d rather show than tell. I can take you to him. But we need those masks or helmets or whatever, Arley.”
“Should we try at Magpie’s shop?” I asked. “She’s got all sorts of stuff that has to do with violence and calamities. She might have something that will do. Or I could look through Mum and Dad’s collections of magic treasures. There might be something useful we could borrow.”
Alpin said no. We were not going to bring Magpie into this. She was dangerous to deal with. And in this case, that was unnecessary. He had already checked her stuff and there was nothing there useful to us. As for my parents, we didn’t need to involve them in this adventure either. At least, not yet. He had done some preparatory research while he was waiting for me to decide to accompany him on this mission. He knew exactly what we had to acquire to move about the sunflower fields and the rest of Sherbananawood safely and where we could find it.
“What you are needing,” he said proudly, “is the Mask of Falguniben.”
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