The Peacock Cloak

butt end upwards. There was a hiss of gas as the burning tip made contact, and then the floater sank, slowly deflating, onto the ground.
    Carmelo walked over to it, and squeezed out the remaining gas with his foot.

    One night, a month or two later, Cassie was woken in the early hours of morning by her parents quarrelling yet again on the far side of the bedroom wall.
    “Why don’t you listen , David? I – don’t – want – to – stay ! Which part of that don’t you understand?”
    She got up and went to the window. The lawn outside shone its unnatural green in the bluish glow of the electric lights. Far off in the forest, tall shadowy giraffe-necked creatures were solemnly processing round a shining pond.
    “ Why is it impossible, David, why?” came her mother’s voice. “Why can’t you just go to the Agency and say ‘sorry, we made a mistake, we need to go home before my wife loses her mind, and my kids become even more weird and goblin-like than they already are’? Why is that impossible?”
    Cassie considered knocking on the wall as usual. Her parents had already had one row that night. Surely they could see it wasn’t fair to wake her up again?
    But she didn’t do it. Something in her mind had clicked into a new position, though she couldn’t have said why, just now, after months and years of this nightly torment. Giving a little firm nod of assent to her own impulse, she pulled on some clothes, and tiptoed quietly to the door. As she touched the handle, her mother’s voice rose yet again in the next room.
    “I know David, but what you’ve got to understand is…”
    She closed the door carefully behind her.

    Her brother woke with a start.
    “Peter. Wake up. We’re leaving.”
    “What?”
    He always obeyed his sister unquestioningly, but he’d been deeply asleep.
    “Where are we going?” he wanted to know, while Cassie passed him clothes.
    “Away from here. Mum’s shouting at Dad again .”
    Cassie took the key to the compound from the shelf beside the kitchen door, then crept out across the grass with her brother, bleary-eyes, behind her. She slid back the bolt on the gate, very slowly and carefully so as not to disturb Juan, then led Peter briskly through. She headed quickly away from the brightly lit fence and then immediately off the road and into the forest.
    “Dad says you could walk five hundred miles this way,” she said, “and still not reach another road.”
    All around them were ponds, and phosphorescent moss, and creatures moving under the dim mushroomy trees.
    “Where are we going?” Peter asked again as he trotted behind her.
    “I don’t know yet,” Cassie said. “But don’t keep asking me, eh?”
    From a pond straight ahead of them, unicorns emerged, scrambling one by one out of the bright water to snuffle and flare their nostrils in the caramel air, before heading off in single file through the trees.
    Peter began to count them.
    “One, two, three, four…”
    “Seventeen,” Cassie told him shortly.

    About twenty ponds later, they came to one where a single, very small, goblin sat at the bottom, lit by the pink phosphorescence of the pond’s floor. The creature was not much bigger than a large cat, and was quite motionless, staring straight ahead, apparently at nothing in particular.
    Peter pulled at his sister’s hand, troubled by the presence of the goblin and wanting to move away. But Cassie resisted, making him wait until the little goblin glanced up, its black button eyes taking in the two of them looking down from the air above.
    “Mummy is going mad,” said a calm cold voice inside Cassie’s head. “Daddy is a scaredy-cat, who hides away at work.”
    “Yes, sirree,” she muttered with a grim chuckle. “You got that right, my friend”
    Peter began to cry, and Cassie turned to him with a frown.
    “Go on then,” she said, “Spit it out. What did it say to you?”
    Her little brother just sobbed.
    “Well, whatever it said,” she told him firmly, “you may and well face up to it, because it’s true. They don’t tell lies.”
    Peter nodded humbly.
    “So go on then,” Cassie persisted. “Tell me what it said.”
    “It said…” snuffled Peter, “it said that Mum wishes I’d never been born.”
    “Oh that ,” Cassie snorted. “Is that all ? I could have told you that. I’ve heard it often enough through my bedroom wall. She wishes she hadn’t had either of us. Spoiled her career apparently, and anyway she doesn’t like