The Fairy Godmother Part 11

“Do not try to stop the program” the words appeared on the monitor.

“I don’t want to stop it, I want to join in,” I typed.

“Plug the second head set into the USB port.”

“This isn’t a good idea,” said Enid and the woman together.

“What are the goals of this game?” I asked. “I need to know what I am trying to do.”

“Do you want to join the children or join with the parents trying to stop them?” asked the program

“My husband joined the parents,” said the woman.

“Join the children,” I typed.

“Why do you want to do that?” Enid asked.

“Joining the parents obviously doesn’t work,” I explained, putting the head set on. “I need to know what the children do to win the game.”

“And if you don’t win?” the woman asked.

“I’ll have to,” I thought as the bedroom was replaced by a brightly coloured landscape, that looked like it had come from a children’s fairy tale book, which did make some sense.

“We’ve got to hurry up and catch up with the main bunch,” said a little boy with a crutch, hobbling along as quickly as he could.

“Let me help you,” I said, picking him up and flying with him along the path till we saw the main group, nice to know that some of my fairy skills worked here.

“There they are,” he said pulling out of my arms and nearly falling. I sat us down up hill from where they were. “I must join them,” he said reaching out for his crutch so that he could stand up.”

“You stay here,” I said, looking round.

“But I can’t, I’ve got to join them,” he insisted, till I put some ear plugs in his ears. When he stopped hearing the pipe music he stopped trying to join the group and sat still looking confused.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re in a computer game,” I explained. “You were trying to catch up with the rest.”

“Stephen?” said an adult, coming up the hill side.

“Dad, what are you doing here?” the boy asked.

“You wouldn’t get off the computer,” he replied. “I thought if I got into the game I could get you to come home.”

“We need to get all the children to come home,” I said pointing to the group of children rapidly approaching a hole in the side of the mountain.

“If we can find the laser canon we can shoot the magic pipe and stop the children following the pied piper,” the man explained.

“But where would the hide the laser canon?” I asked.

“There are clues to that hidden around here,” Stephen explained. “You solve the clues and that leads you to something which tells you where the laser canon is hidden.

“We don’t have time for that,” I heard Enid say, though as far as I knew she was still in the boys bedroom with his Mother.

“We need to speed things up,” I said.

“I know, but I don’t know how, non of the short cuts I know seem to work, I think there may be a bug in the program,” Stephen said.

“Is there anything else the bug is doing”? I asked.

“It’s stopping people signing out of the game,” Stephen said. “I tried to close the game down hours ago, but it isn’t responding to the normal commands.

“So we need to use commands which aren’t normal,” I said, hoping the Enid would take the hint.

“I think she wants the laser canon,” Enid muttered, waving her wand over the monitor. “I hope that will do the trick.”

As I looked down at the group of children following the pied piper a laser canon appeared in front of me.

“What the hell,” muttered Stephen’s Dad, much to Stephen’s surprise.

I picked the laser canon out of the air, took aim and shot the pipe. The Pied Piper spun round and glared in my direction, tying to intimidate me.

“Who did that?” he shouted. “Show yourself.”

I shot the curly toe of his left shoe, for a second it looked like he had a candle in the end of his shoe, then he dunked it in a puddle and the flame went out. I shot the other shoe. He took one look at me, dashed through the gap in the rock wall and it closed up behind him.

“What do we do now?” asked first one child and then another and another, till all the children were asking what they should do next.

“We need to get down there,” I said, grabbing Stephen and his Father and flying down to the children.

“We need to find the way back to the village,” said another adult who was walking up to the group.

“Mummy!” squealed one little girl and ran over to her.

“And how do we do that?” I asked.

“We need to find a flock of sheep and they will lead us to a bridge, under which are three goats, and they will only allow us to cross the bridge if we can tell them the password,” she said.

“I can’t see any sheep around here,” I said. “And I don’t like the way that the rock face is shuddering.”

“That isn’t a rock face,” the girl’s Mummy said. “That is the dam at the end of the reservoir and if that keeps shaking the way it is, then the dam will give way and this whole area will be flooded and the village will drown.

“What do we do when we get back to the village?” I asked.

“We need to destroy the wishing well,” she said. “There is some evil spirit living in the bottom and she is the cause of all the problems.”

“Right,” I said, hoping that Enid would get the hint. She waved her wand and we were in the centre of the village, just by the wishing well. “OK,” I smiled, taking aim with the laser canon at the wishing well.

“Don’t do it,” came a voice from the bottom of the well.

“It has to be done,” I replied.

“I will give you everything you could ever want,” the voice at the bottom of the well replied.

“If the offer sounds too good to be true,” Enid said. “Then it is.”

I destroyed the wishing well and suddenly Stephen, his Dad and I were back in his bedroom.

Program ended and deleted

The words came up on the computer monitor and then was rapidly replaced by Stephen’s desk top and all his short cuts.

“I’d better check the with the other parents,” said Stephen’s Mum pulling her mobile phone out of her pocket. It took a while to ring round everyone, but everyone was out of the game and they had all seen the same message when they did.

“Time to go,” said Enid and we were whisked back to the Fairy Council, but not before I’d put the laser canon in my pocket. You never know when it might come in useful.

By Janice Nye © 2019