Jailbreak

• Sandy Milne, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2007

The china plate rocketed through the air.
In the kitchen corner Otto ducked, years of practice coming under the spotlight. The plate smashed against a back wall. “Aargh,” growled Oren, Otto’s boss. Oren was a Tamboorian trool (often misspelled troll).
Otto was a slave living on the mythical island of Helsburg. Helsburg is inhabited by goblins, dragons, dwarves, griffins, elves, phoenixes and all sorts of mythical creatures.
Once upon a time, all those mythical creatures roamed free over the grassy plains of Earth. They lived everywhere, side by side with the cavemen. It was a golden age.
Then, one day, the humans turned traitor. Power-hungry barbarians stormed the fairy-forts, destroying anything in their paths till corpses of mythical beasts littered the fields that were once their homes.
The beasts rallied together, under the banner of Exorforce, a wise, powerful leader. With no option but to retaliate, they made camp near the jungle which is now The Amazon, hellbent on eradicating the mysterious cut-throat race of people known as the Incas.
The two vast armies lined up valiantly. Exorforce’s generals planned to launch a surprise assault at the crack of dawn.
Desperate to prevent a bloodbath, a mysterious wizard sneaked up to Exorforce’s camp. There he cast an ancient spell, transporting Exorforce and his men into a pothole in time…
Now the spell was beginning to unravel. Already twelve beasts had been cast out of the Pothole. All but one got lost in space, time and infinite. His name was Fardeep.
Fardeep had, in revenge, stolen a baby and transported him back into the pothole to live life as a slave.
That was how Otto came to be in Helsburg.
An unforgivable gust of wind made Otto’s skin crawl. The houses looked eerie in the ghostly streetlight. Otto wove in and out of the jumbled maze of fire-hydrants, lamp-posts and rubbish-bins that was the street.
He stooped abruptly. He was here. Otto wrenched the door open and stepped inside the House of Scholars. Hundreds of thousands of books lined the walls. Otto followed a shelf, until he came to a book on the subject he wanted. Otto pulled it out. He flicked open Magic For Dummies, and skimmed along until he landed on the chapter. Reading the Time spell, Otto traced a shaking finger along as he spoke.
“Gia gorso kami kayu.”
Instantly he fell. He fell through a long, dark tunnel. He fell for what felt like, strangely, like both two millenniums and two seconds. (In real life he fell for both, even though they took the same time.)
Otto strode down the driveway, gravel crunching under his feet. He grasped the familiar brass doorknocker and banged it against the door. His heart was beating a tattoo against his chest. He forced himself to remain calm and composed. A woman answered.
Otto collapsed, sobbing, against her chest.
“Mum,” he wept.
“I ain’t your momma.”
Otto glanced up, bewildered, then screamed out in shock. He had a stepmother.