Cedric was starting to feel a bit left out. The other ducks in the pond weren't being very friendly and it seemed as if the passers-by who were throwing bread to all the mallards and coots hadn't noticed him at all. Fair enough, it wasn't as if he was a large, white swan with beautiful plumage who was looking very hungry and sorry for himself, he thought to himself rather cynically. Maybe they just didn't care. Feeling very much let down by modern society, Cedric swam ashore and then waddled away from the pond, passing straight through both the fence surrounding the pond and the legs of several onlookers.

Emerging from the tibiae and fibulae of the crowd, Cedric spotted with excitement what appeared to be the back of John's t-shirt and went hurtling after it. A few seconds of hectic high-speed waddling later, he realised it was just another ordinary t-shirt with an ordinary logo on the back. Giving up, Cedric's attention was caught by another possible suspect and gave chase, only to find that he had once again been misled. They all looked so similar, and Cedric began to wonder why they couldn't show a bit more variety, like swans did. You knew where you were with swans - and with that thought, Cedric set out on a mission to find his way home.

John was still just a little flummoxed by the whole thing, but he was starting to come to terms with this crazy idea that the swans were Her Majesty's most important guests — after all, he had been being chased by a ghost swan for quite a while now, although as soon as he had found someone who was looking for one it had disappeared. Though he wasn't terribly good at this lateral thinking lark, John began to put six and seven together, and began to wonder what sort of answer he was supposed to get. In the meantime, he was busy forgetting to listen to the virtual Grand Controller, who was now ranting on about how much John and Emily were going to be paid just for finding a swan and how rights for virtual entities living inside brown paper packages were virtually non-existent. Emily seemed to be listening, but Emily herself knew that she was simply nodding and smiling and thinking about what she'd like to have for dinner when she got home.

Just as everyone was about to become trapped in their own little worlds, the entire little world in which they all stood began to shake rather violently, knocking the preoccupied trio off their feet. As the shaking stopped, the bluey-greeny grass began to flicker in a rather odd manner.

Low battery — I'll have to send you back now. Do us a favour and post the package back to Basildon Road, will you...

The virtual Grand Controller fuzzled out of existence, soon being accompanied by the ground John and Emily were sitting upon. The lack of ground beneath them lead to a sudden and rather unfortunate imbalance in forces and gravity took one wicked glance at the pair and decided to send them on their way. Luckily enough, they soon landed in a small heap about three miles away from Finsbury Park.

The Monument to the Great Fire of London was rather empty at this time of day — the bloke in the ticket booth had only seen three people that day and they'd all got cold and come back down again, looking a bit dizzy from climbing down a couple of hundred feet of spiral staircase. He was naturally very surprised when a rather shell-shocked woman and a concussed-looking man appeared at the bottom of the steps, having somehow appeared out of nowhere somewhere above his head. He acknowledged to himself the fact that it was a bit windy today, but this was just taking the mickey. He was just considering the fact that the viewing platform was surrounded by an impenetrable metal cage when he noticed there was a little alien depicted on the back of one of their t-shirts, leading the ticket man to concoct a conspiracy theory which rather unsurprisingly did not involve swans and brown paper packets.

Emily was busy staring at the brown envelope, which she was now holding in her hands and looking at intently. John was still looking rather concussed and was confused to boot, so they wandered off to find somewhere to sit down. A little disoriented, Emily ended up leading John across London Bridge, staring at the grey sides of HMS Belfast as it sat by the south bank a little way down the Thames. They stopped about halfway across and John leant against the railings, feeling just a little worn out. Emily asked him if he was all right and John simply replied that he needed a nice sit-down and a cup of tea before he passed out again. Why they couldn't have just reappeared in the tearoom at Somerset House, he didn't know.

'So now can you do that Evil Summoning of the Ghostly Warrior thingy? I'm getting hungry.'

'No.'

'What? Why not?'

'Because I can't. Someone's stolen some of the power I needed — and I think it happened right here.'

'But there isn't a single person around for miles.'

'Well they're obviously not still here, are they? Who on earth would want to come all the way back here after having successfully thwarted our plan to take over the world without us even noticing? They'd either have to be very brave or very stupid.'

Cedric had needed to fly very high to get a sense of where he was, but after a bit of swooping around and starting to feel the beginnings of motion sickness, he got his bearings and settled into a sensible flight pattern which would take him back towards the lake. He hadn't been back there since that incident when everything around him had turned bright yellow and become a little too hot for his liking. The whole thing had caught him rather by surprise and he wasn't entirely sure whether he had just imagined it, as the next thing he knew he had appeared in a small house in North London. Still, these things happen sometimes and Cedric was prepared to put it all behind him and just get on with leading a nice quiet life.

He was just coming in to land when he noticed the ruins of the boathouse, along with the two putrid men whom Cedric had encountered on that fateful night. He decided that he would very much like to give them a good seeing-to and quickly crash-landed into the water just a little way from the shore. This was going to be fun.

On the Subject of Pie Archive

AlexAshman

11.01.07 Front Page

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