What happens in Devon

[nishatalitha]

So, I wrote up what happened in the game last night in some detail for purplesparkler (who I think was expecting a paragraph). Instead, she got this:


We were woken up on the train, and Susan started talking about how she had dreamed about a place with awesome food, and then insisted on opening the carriage window to look at the stars. Julian and Meg didn't say much, but admitted that the stars were pretty.

Eventually, we started moving again, came to a station and were escorted to a town hall. Susan kept a firm grip on Julian and Meg, and Meg was taken first (Susan being somewhat grubby and making faces).

Mr Melville, who Meg is being billeted with, is a widower in his early fifties, who has a farm that's probably a bit big for him. Meg was woken before dawn to collect the eggs from under the chickens and make breakfast. Being a city girl and chickens currently reminding her of giant flying rats, she got about four eggs before fleeing back to the kitchen and failing to work out how to light the Aga. The morning went downhill from there. Fortunately, things improved after that. Mr Melville is a bully who yells a lot and works Meg awfully hard, but he's not a drunkard and he works just as hard himself.

Julian and Susan ended up with Mr and Mrs Burden, who seem very nice. They are very keen that Susan and Julian do their bit to help out. Mr Burden and Julian go out shooting rabbits, and Susan has a proprietary eye on the Victory Garden. Susan and Nora went up to the local stately house where they take in orphaned babies. Susan volunteered to help garden again, but we thought Nora would enjoy spending more time with the babies (and possibly be quite good at quieting them). Mr Burden is a man of many enthusiasms and is in the Home Guard. After things settled down sommat, he taught all six of us how to fish.

Percy, Gordon and Nora are on a farm a bit further out from the village than Meg is. Eventually the boys manage to hit it off with one of the sons of the farm, who isn't quite old enough to join up, over some shared enthusiasm or argument about Spitfires and Hurricanes. Gordon makes sure that Percy and Nora write home regularly and keeps up with schoolwork.

Susan finds plants that she picked during one of the weeks I was away (heartsease or something) and has planted them in an appropriate spot in the marsh, but is still in denial. And you three have the book, which you do not show Meg or Julian. It's possible that F Lawrence was a relation - Lawrence is Meg's surname. Meg and Julian wish it were real, but claim it was all a dream and make up all sorts of reasons as to why we would have a shared dream. But secretly, in the mornings, when Mr Melville is off working and she's got her own chores, Meg finds the time to practice what Martin showed her at Castle Melody. She has a big stick.

The older children have school in the afternoon and primary is in the morning.

At some point we mount an expedition to try and find the tor and the path that led you three to the Castle. Then we do it at night, because it was dark last time. Finally, Meg points out that not that it's real or anything, but we weren't intending to go there last time, and if it were real, maybe we would have to be not intending to go there this time.

Things settle down and get into a routine. Time drags. The days get shorter and colder.

One Saturday in early November, we were out fishing. Percy was trying to tickle trout and was a bit downstream; Meg and Gordon were arguing the usefulness of pouring warm tea in the river water to warm his hands (Meg brought along a thermos) as opposed to drinking it once he'd taken his hands out of the water, and Julian had wandered a bit further upstream - actually wanting to fish.

We heard voices yelling, and a boat came down the rapid river, with a small boy in it who clearly found the oars too heavy for him, with a cat in the water nearby yelling at him to row, because her kittens were in the boat. Susan leapt into the river and grabbed the boat; Julian tried to get the boy to grab his fishing rod; Meg fished the cat out of the water; Percy and Gordon ran downstream to jump in there to catch the boat.

Unfortunately, the river was too fast for Susan and swept her off her feet; the boy couldn't hold onto the fishing rod; Meg did fish the cat out of the water, told her to be quiet, grabbed a branch and held that out; and Percy failed at his anchoring himself to stop the boat roll. Eventually, however, a familiar bear and cat came up, we managed to get the boy, the kittens, the cat, the boat, and everyone who had jumped in the river out (I think Meg and Julian were the only dry children at this point), and set off for Castle Melody. The boy was the youngest son of Sir Erasmus, now some two years older; the cat was Captain Piper and the other cat his wife, Tably, and those were their kittens; and we were back near Castle Melody. It turned out that it had been two years since we had last arrived, and Captain Piper watched me carefully when he said Martin was doing well in the King's Guard. There was no plague in the capital, although the King had fallen sick and still wasn't well.

Then the alarm claxon rang.

We got to the Castle to find it under attack. Having entered through the postern gate, we went to assist at the main gate. Firstly, we all went up, but then someone sent me back down, as the main gate was under attack, and not holding particularly well, by some men with rams. Then someone (Percy or Julian), borrowed a sword off one of the wounded defenders and threw it down to Meg. In one of those story-telling rpg moments, Meg caught it neatly and did a couple of flourishes after it thunked into her hand. Then she unbuttoned her coat and let it fall to the ground behind her.

After that, of course, she kicked the coat to the edge of the courtyard, found somewhere sensible to stand, and started stretching in preparation for an attack. It was very picturesque.

I should possibly note at this time that the most repeated sentence in the following fight scene was "Castle Melody was not built for defence." ie. no murder holes, portcullis, moat, arrow slits or even a decent weighted bar on the gate.

While Meg was waiting, Julian decided he wanted to attack the men on the battering ram and made his way to a tower, where he could see better. Percy followed shortly after, while Susan shot at the bandit leader. Susan took a while to get the range of the bandit leader, but Julian managed to take out one of the men on the battering ram fairly promptly, and thereafter concentrated on sewing havoc amongst the enemy, mostly using his die horribly curse, but finishing with a giant gout of flame blown from an oil lamp in the room. Percy hung out the gingerbread windows to shoot at the enemy for a bit, but after getting shot at quite a bit, he retreated inwards and decided that the next best thing to do would be wrestle a bench towards the courtyard so he could drop it on the men from the battering ram.

Eventually, of course, the gates gave way. While they were a bit dazed, Meg took one out. At this point, Susan finally managed to get close enough to the bandit leader that he fled, and the other men were unnerved by the flame that came out from the castle, Percy's bench landed on two of the men from the battering ram, and as they stared in fear at Meg, she flapped her free hand at them, and said "Go on, then. Shoo.", whereupon, of course they fled.

Oh, and does anyone know if Guy Fawkes Night was celebrated in the wilds of Devon during World War II, what with the blackout and all? I suspect not, but if someone could confirm it, that would be awesome.