The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

  ‘As I was saying,’ Biorn said. ‘Animals are good. My chickens are most special chickens. They came flapping from far away. Now I’m under their spell.’

  ‘Really?’ said Gandef. ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘I speak frivolously, but they are charming birds. Sometimes – and I am being fanciful, for sure, but – I dream I’m a chicken. I dream I can squalk’ (he pronounced every single letter of this strange word) ‘and flap, spread my wings, and go to anywhere that I please. But, you are welcome also, I am pleased to have visitors.’

  He pondered this last word for a while, as if it reminded him of something.

  ‘Still,’ said Gandef, suddenly sprightly, ‘we wouldn’t want to keep you up past your bedtime. Don’t you, you know, turn into a bear soon?’

  ‘Tonight,’ said Biorn, ‘I shall remain in my man shape, to be hospitable to my guests. But be telling me, please, where your journey takes you?’

  The dwarfs breathed a silent but visible sigh of collective relief.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mori, in a jollier tone of voice. ‘Well, we’re off to the Only Mountain. Do you know it?’

  ‘For sure,’ said Biorn. ‘Strebor, the Only Mountain. For sure. And for why are you going there?’

  ‘Gold,’ said Mori, with a quick glance at Gandef.

  ‘Gold!’ repeated Gandef, in a loud voice, fixing Bingo with a significant stare.

  ‘Ah,’ said Biorn. ‘Your quest, then, is for money?’

  ‘Money,’ agreed Gandef.

  ‘Money,’ echoed the dwarfs.

  ‘Must be,’ muttered Bingo. ‘Why else would you keep saying so?’

  The fire cackled to itself.

  ‘You will be fighting Smug the Magic Dragon for this gold?’ Biorn queried. ‘The winner will be taking it all?’

  ‘That’s,’ said Mori, ‘the idea.’

  ‘Dragons are great beasts. Great means big, you know.’ He stared at the fire for a long time. An unnatural stillness settled in the great hall. ‘Greater,’ Biorn added, after a long time, ‘than bears. And more evil.’

  He appeared to be brooding.

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s time we all turned in,’ said Gandef hurriedly. ‘Sleepy sleep time, I think. I say, Biorn, it’s awfully courteous of you not to shift into your bear shape when we’re under your roof. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we consider that a sign of a truly hospitable, um, hospital. Um hostel. A truly hospitable place of hospitality.’

  His voice faded from strong to feeble as the sentence progressed, and had petered out completely by the end. All eyes were on Biorn.

  ‘You are knowing already, perhaps,’ said Biorn, his voice for the first time registering an emotional tone, ‘of the tale of the Great Bear of the North?’

  Nobody stirred.

  ‘The Great Bear of the north …?’ prompted Gandef gingerly.

  ‘A good friend of me. A mighty bear. The dragon Smug,’ said Biorn, his eyes fierce, ‘was fighting with him, and was burning and scorching him, and his pelt caught on the fire. He was burnt. His glorious blue house was burnt.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Gandef.

  ‘Shocking,’ said the dwarfs.

  ‘Shockling?’ said Biorn vehemently. Shockling? Indeed it is shockling, dwarfs!’

  ‘Shock-ing,’ corrected Mori, but in so quiet a voice that it is likely Biorn did not hear it.

  ‘It is worse than shockling,’ said Biorn, standing up. ‘It is tragedy. It is crime against all bearkind. It is being typical of dragons, for sure, that they use this fire. It should ought not to be. It should ought not. Dragons!’ His eyes had taken on an alarming intensity, like blue ink being stirred in a pair of white ceramic pots. His hands were jerking up and down. ‘Dragons? Do I not like dragons? No I do not. Dragons? I have strong feelings of dislike for dragons.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Gandef, trying to conciliate. ‘Of course you do. Only natural.’

  ‘To be using the fire?’ Biorn thundered. ‘On the furry and the dry? To burn the majestic Blue House of the North? To turn the soothing simplicity of modern design and blue paint mixed from natural fibres and spring water to char? To dust? To,’ he added, with especial if mysterious emphasis, ‘bur?’ He strode up and down, shaking his head with mighty, muscles shakes. ‘No, no, it is not right. To use no fire on bears, this is necessary, for fire is against the protocols of the ursine. For Smug to do this? The dragon must be punished. Punished! You must kill Smug! Kill Smug! Kill! Kill!’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Gandef, trying to calm the giant man. ‘We absolutely intend to. Let’s talk about something else, why don’t we? Shall we have some more honey beer? A few more cutlets of your excellent honey-roast liver? Or one more pot of your delightfully honeyed caviar? Come, Biorn old friend, don’t get yourself – ah – overstimulated. It’s funny,’ the wizard went on, reaching into the pocket of his poncho for his smoking paraphernalia, ‘you should talk of burning dry animals in that way, actually, because – you’ll laugh at this,’ he said, illustrating the procedure by laughing a little himself, ‘this’ll amuse you. On our way here we encountered some wolves. Wolves who ate one of our fellows, in fact, nasty beasts, devoured Failin—’

  ‘Wombl,’ corrected Failin.

  ‘Just so, and they were about to eat me. We were, you see, in a sticky spot, but this’ll amuse you, especially in the, eh, ha ha ha!, especially in the light of what you’ve just been saying. This’ll amuse you. They were about to eat me, you see, eat me, and I used a little fiery spell of my own, and – well, the first wolf caught fire, you see,’ Gandef chuckled. ‘The first wolf caught fire, and he leapt about, you see, and he bumped into the second wolf …’

  Biorn, who had stopped pacing, was staring at the wizard with an unnerving fixity. Mori was making little circular motions with both hands, palms outward, in front of his chest, as if polishing a pane of glass immediately before him and shaking his head back and forth. But he did not seem to be able to catch Gandef’s eye.

  ‘… and – ha! ha! ha! – and the second wolf,’ Gandef was saying, ‘he went up like a torch, and he bumped into this third wolf – it was really something of a sight, they made such a noise.’

  He glanced up at Biorn, and his voice faltered. ‘Made,’ he repeated, in a less hilarious tone, ‘such a. Noise.’

  There was silence for the space of a full minute.

  Biorn, motionless throughout this time, began to moan. The moan grew to a groan, thence to a growl, and so to a howl. His huge hands gripped his own clothing and pulled it apart with a skeetering noise of ripping cloth.

  ‘Oh,’ said Gandef, in a subdued voice, sprinting nimbly over to one of the sofas and hiding behind it, ‘dear.’

  The rest of the company scurried to join him.

  ‘Ågh! Årggggh!’ bellowed Biorn. ‘Ø! Ø! Ø! Ø! Ø! Uh! Uh! Uh! Årggggh!’

  ‘That may,’ said Gandef, looking from dwarf face to dwarf face, ‘have been the wrong tack.’

  ‘Maybe,’ agreed Mori.

  Biorn was marching up and down the whole length of his hall now, howling and growling and generally making the sorts of noises one might associate with an angry bear. He had torn off his woollen shirt, and was trying to rip the tougher canvas of his trousers. But tearing trousers is no easy task, even for the most muscular of individuals, and in the end he had to content himself with tearing off the button at the waist and half dragging, half hopping out of them. ‘Ågh!’ he bellowed. ‘Ågh!’

  ‘Oh, Þróinn,’ swore Mori. ‘Now what are we going to do? Trapped in this wooden house with a raging bear!’

  ‘Stay calm,’ advised Gandef.

  ‘Perhaps if we rushed to the door?’ suggested Bingo.

  ‘Waaaah!’ yelled Biorn, his head rearing up over the top of the settee. ‘Waaah!’

  Gandef raced the dwarfs and Bingo to the behind-side of the other large sofa. Biorn kept making noises of intermittent fury and rage stomping back and forth.

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing,�
�� said Mori, ‘that he’s – ehm, smooth all over.’

  ‘Smooth,’ said Bingo.

  ‘I wish he’d stop yelling,’ said Gandef. ‘It’s amplified by my spell and it’s making my head hurt.’

  ‘No body hair. Shouldn’t a bear have body hair?’

  ‘No body hair?’ queried Bingo.

  ‘Some body hair,’ Mori modified. ‘But, from a dwarf’s point of view, look you, very smooth. Still smoothly chinned, la, for instance. His chest smooth as sea-sand.’

  Gandef was muttering to himself, ‘Infernal ringing noise now—’

  ‘Röär!’ bellowed Biorn. Accompanying sounds to the effect of smash! Smash! Crash! were also audible.3

  Mori popped his head above the top of the sofa, and ducked back down again. ‘He’s pulling things off one of his shelves,’ he reported, ‘and roaring.’

  ‘Yes, we can hear him roaring,’ Bingo observed. ‘Is he a bear now?’

  ‘He’s, frankly, just a nude man.’

  ‘Not a bear?’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘Not even a little bit?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mori, ‘no. All smooth. Look you.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very bear-like,’ said Bingo.

  He took his courage into his two hands, and stood up. His head reached, just, over the top of the back of the sofa. He peered at Biorn. As Mori had said, the tall man was completely naked, naked with a completeness that only an adult of full muscular development without clothes on can be. The fellow was storming up and down at the far end of the hall, roaring.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Bingo. ‘When does he turn into the bear?’

  ‘Röär!’ yelled Biorn, stampeding up the hall towards them. ‘When, you say? When do I turn? I have turned! I am a bear! I am Biorn, the mighty bear! Röär!’

  As the smooth and nude man reached the sofa, the fully clothed and hairy dwarfs backed against the wall behind them.

  ‘Röär!’ insisted Biorn. ‘Röär!’ He raised his hands in front of him with his knuckles out, as if grasping an invisible iron bar that was suspended horizontally at nipple-height. He opened his mouth and showed two rows of impressive but undeniably human teeth. ‘Röär!’ he said.

  ‘You,’ said Bingo, sweeping his crumbs of courage together internally to produce an, if you will, imaginary biscuit of valour. You aren’t actually a bear at all, are you?’

  ‘Miserable liar!’ howled Biorn. ‘For sure I am a bear!’

  He made a rush at the soddit, who ducked under Biorn’s sandstone-pillar legs and scrambled away. ‘You’re not though,’ he called behind him, panting as he ran. ‘Not actually, are you?’

  ‘Röär!’ called Biorn. ‘I shall for sure eat you with my great beary teeth.’

  ‘Ya,’ Bingo returned, this being the most sophisticated taunt he could think of under the pressure of the moment. He was at the door, and hauled with all his might at the elegantly carved door handle.

  ‘Feel the rage of the great pelty—’ Biorn howled, hurling himself at Bingo. He may have been intending to conclude this statement with the words ‘man-bear’, or possibly ‘mighty Biorn’. Maybe ‘animal’. We can do no better than hypothesise at this juncture, because what Biorn actually said moved the sentence in a wholly new direction, concluding his utterance with a startled-sounding ‘uuuuu!’ (inflected from E flat up to G). The soddit had ducked and shimmied again, and instead of grabbing him Biorn had fallen through the open door and landed chin-first on the cold doorstep outside. There was a thud, and then another thud, as he progressed on his stomach further beyond the doorstep into the mud.

  Bingo put all his weight behind the door, and swung it shut. Instantly six dwarfs were at his side helping him lower the beam of sanded wood into place.

  All seven collapsed. It took them a full minute to regain their breath.

  ‘Well,’ Gandef said from across the room. ‘That went fairly well, all things considered.’ He was lighting his pipe.

  Outside the door, a slightly muffled voice could be heard. ‘Excuse me?’ it called. ‘Are you, now, locking the door?’

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Mori, picking himself up and smoothing the creases from his dwarf garb.

  ‘Hellu?’ came the voice. ‘Hellu? Can you be unlocking the door, please?’

  ‘Go away,’ Bingo called.

  ‘It is cold here outside,’ came Biorn’s voice, rather mournfully.

  ‘Go find a cave to hibernate in,’ called Mori.

  ‘Please, not with the mockery,’ keened Biorn. ‘It is highly cold. If you allow me inwards again, I am promising to retain my man shape for the rest of the evening.’

  ‘You’re a loony,’ Mori opined in a clear, strong voice.

  ‘Never mind him,’ said Bingo. ‘You – Gandef. Don’t put away your hearing spell for a moment. I’ve a bone to pick with you.’

  ‘Eh?’ asked Gandef, his hearing magic hovering near his hand. ‘What’s it?’

  ‘You told us he actually was a bear,’ pressed Bingo. All those stories of ripped-off arms and piles of quivering flesh. Do you realise that you terrified us?’

  ‘Well,’ said the wizard, chomping the end of his pipe, ‘that’s what I heard.’

  ‘That’s what you heard? I thought you knew him.’

  ‘Oh no, oh no. Never met him before.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘A simple strategy to get inside and get some food, which worked, I might add. No, he mistook me for Raddledghastly the Ragged, my fellow wizard. But it worked out all right in the end. And we’ve learned not to trust uncorroborated stories of ursine metamorphosis.’

  ‘Hellu?’ Biorn’s voice came from outside. ‘My teeth are bouncing up and down against one another. Excuse me! Hellu!’

  They slept well that night, and broke their fast with honey cakes with honey and honey mead. Only after they were fully rested and prepared did they open the door. Outside Biorn was lying curled under a hastily scooped pile of leaves. His extremities looked blue.

  Gofur was sitting glumly on the doorstep. ‘Spent the night in the privy,’ he grumbled. ‘Is there any breakfast left?’

  As Gofur gathered some of the house’s supplies for himself, Biorn stood up, shaking off some of the damp leaves and looking very sorry for himself indeed. ‘Highly cold it has been,’ he told them. ‘With the chills, and the frost and the creeping-crawlings. Can I go in again?’

  Bingo stepped aside and allowed the large man to scurry through his own doorway. ‘And thank you,’ he called, as Gofur came out, his coat stuffed with cakes, ‘for your hospitality.’

  1 A gonk, as of course you know, is a small marsupial from the land of Gonkor, far to the south. They are intelligent creatures though small – the smallest of all the peoples of Upper Middle Earth, which is saying something – and they admire learning above all things. But their own books, written with their own tiny pencils on teeny-tiny pieces of paper (ahhh!) are too small for other scholars to read. More adventurous gonks have tried writing with man-sized pencils, a process that resembles, for them, nothing so much as tossing the caber, and although they have written little more than fragmented wavy lines by this method they persevere. Plucky little fellers. Ahhh-hhh! Swee-eeet.

  2 Advertently or inadvertently, Gandef is here quoting from a famous Upper Middle English poem, the Hex of Fish:

  Wild weather woke us worryingly

  Hurricane hurled from the heavens

  Whose fault but the weathermen?

  Why weren’t we warned?

  Old oaks uprooted sevenfold

  Typical TV types.

  3 These words have been translated from the original Middle Earthian into an English idiom. They were, in the original text, furmash! Getsmash!

  Chapter Six

  SPIDERS AND FLY! FLY!

  RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

  They set off in good spirits from Biorn’s house, depriving the now moody and withdrawn man of nine stout ponies and a number of his prize chickens. Biorn seemed content t
o sit in the corner looking gloomy and sorry for himself. ‘Ta-ta now!’ the dwarfs called to him as they left. ‘Bye!’

  He didn’t reply.

  After a night warm under Biorn’s thick-weave blankets and an easy day’s ride on the plump ponies, they arrived at the expanse of the mighty River M. Across the smoothly flowing waters, reflective as polished stone, could be seen the edge of the great forest. The sky above, a perfect blend of midday blue and metal grey, spoke of amplitude and possibility. The air was fresh in the company’s mouths, like pure water.

  ‘How do we get across?’ asked the soddit.

  ‘Coracles, boyo,’ said Mori, unstrapping the dwarfish breastplate from his chest. ‘Aren’t you wearing yours?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bingo, ‘I’ll confess, no, I’m not.’

  ‘So,’ said Tori, poking his corduroy waistcoat.1 ‘Look you, we did wonder how you expected to keep that watertight.’

  ‘It’s not designed to go in the water at all,’ Bingo explained. ‘Except when it gets washed.’ It had not been washed in a long time.

  ‘Oh!’ said the dwarf. ‘Not designed to go in the water, you say? Gracious. What use does it have then?’

  ‘It keeps my torso warm.’

  ‘Well we can take that as read, like,’ said Tori dismissively. ‘That goes, see, without saying. But what secondary use does it have?’

  ‘None.’

  The dwarfs muttered amongst themselves how foolish it was to wear clothing without a secondary use. They took the packs from the ponies and slung them on their backs, then slid their shallow metallic coracles into the water, leapt into them with remarkable grace and they were off, paddling with stubby dwarfish hands and powerful dwarfish arm muscles into the distance. A sizeable lateral transfer was imparted to their journey by the current, and they drifted far downstream as they travelled. Bingo found himself alone with the wizard and the ponies on the near-side bank. ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘What about us? Hey!’

  Shortly, though, he saw two dwarfs reboard their tiny, tinny crafts, and make their way back towards the near shore, carried even further downstream as they went. They were lost to Bingo’s eyes before they reached it, but twenty minutes later they came jogging along the bank carrying two spare breastplates.