The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Um,’ said Eärwiggi. He could feel the last ember of hope dying in his heart, and it was an uncomfortable feeling, a bit like indigestion but more spiritual.

  ‘Pooh,’ said Nobbi, by which he meant to express dismissive scorn. ‘If you toss a coin and it comes up ’eads six times in a row, do you say to yourself “well this proves that no matter how many times I toss this coin, it’ll always turns up ’eads?” Is that your logic?’

  ‘So you’re saying . . .’

  ‘Law of averages, isn’t it,’ said the Dwarf. ‘Sooner or later evil is bound to triumph. That’s politics, see.’

  ‘So Sharon is now Lord of Upper Middle Earth for ever?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘And has evil finally triumphed after all? It is a grim thought.’

  ‘What was it you said the Dragon magic said? For as long as there are Elves and Men? Best get used to it.’

  ‘But if I fall into the hands of the Orks, they’ll make me a slave and work me to death – or eat me – or otherwise crush my spirit and destroy me.’

  ‘Master Eärwiggi, you saved me from drowning, and you’ve fed me, and I’ll repay you by keeping you out of the ’ands of the Orks. Where are you travelling?’

  ‘West,’ said Eärwiggi, remembering his parents’ words. ‘And north.’

  ‘Cold up north,’ said Nobbi. ‘But I’ve always wanted to go west. So west we’ll go.’

  And the first thing Nobbi did was to draw forth a myth-army knife from his belt, and with it to skin the two wolf carcasses.

  ‘You mean,’ said Eärwiggi, ‘that you had that knife all along? Why didn’t you just cut your beard with it and swim free?’

  ‘Cut my beard, bach?’ said Nobbi, horrified. ‘Do you hear what you’re saying? Cut my own beard? That’s sacrilege, that is.’

  And he scraped the skins and dried them in the wind; and he cooked the meat and salted it at a salt-lick nearby; and when the skins were ready he wrapped himself in one and Eärwiggi in the other.

  In this fashion, protected against the winter and with a small store of food, the Dwarf and the boy travelled together, moving west along the northern shoreline of the Loth. And they had many adventures, too many to relate here, frankly.

  They passed through a desolate landscape, white as summer clouds but chill as death; and the northern wind was a malicious thing, that insinuated itself in at the crevices and rents in their garments and seemed to cut their skin with its very chill.

  At last they reached the western seaboard.

  They found a camp of two dozen Elves, who were sitting on the strand in a state of considerable dejection. The shell of a boat, half-built, was abandoned on the shore behind them. The Elves sat before their tents, staring at the sea with eyes full of misery.

  When Eärwiggi and Nobbi came upon them they were, at first, full of terror thinking them Orks come to kill; and when they saw that the newcomers were not Orks, they fell to tears and wailing. Eärwiggi had never seen Elves crying before.

  But this was not the most amazing thing to Eärwiggi; for as he looked around the group he thought he saw his mother, sitting on a rock and looking out at the ocean with a blank face. He approached her and cried out ‘Mother!’ And though she looked at his face, there was no recognition in her expression.

  ‘Wait,’ said the Elves, running over, ‘what are you doing?’

  ‘This is my mother,’ said Eärwiggi, his eyes full of tears, ‘although she pretends not to recognise me.’

  ‘Your mother?’ cried the elves. ‘Never! This is our Queen, and she has never taken to herself a husband, or borne children. For, as we think, the evil of Sharon has stolen her wits, and left her mind smooth and blank as a new fall of snow over the fields. She cannot be your mother.’

  Yet, through his tear-blurred eyes, it seemed to Eärwiggi that the elven Queen was his mother for all that; for she was fair of face, and she had only one hand. And he clasped her one hand and kissed it, and kissed her face; and his tears fell upon her face, and she looked amazed. Her features formed themselves into a questioning expression, and she spoke one word: ‘Eä’, which is Elvish for ‘in or at or to this place or position’.

  The Elves stood back in wonder; and Queen Lüthwoman herself seemed to register emotion for the first time, for she looked around her with an expression approaching amazement.

  ‘Child,’ said one Elf. ‘My name is Túrin Againdikwittingdn, and I lead this band – for as you have heard, our Queen lies under some curse. Yet never has she spoken any word since her madness fell upon her, and now you have lifted Sharon’s curse. Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Eärwiggi,’ said Eärwiggi. ‘And in this woman you call your Queen I recognise my mother, who was married to my father, and who raised me beside the River Optik far to the east of this desolate place. But my parents were commanded by the authority of Sharon into servitude in Blearyland, and they could not resist. How this woman comes to be here I do not know.’

  ‘It is a mystery,’ said Túrin. ‘For we left Blearyland and came to this shore before Sharon came to this land and victory. We planned to build a boat and sail the Capital Sea, to try and make our way to Westersupanesse, where we hoped to find a land beyond Sharon’s malignancy.’

  ‘We can see the boat,’ said Nobbi. ‘But it looks to me only half finished.’

  ‘Alas!’ cried Túrin.

  ‘Alas!’ answered the Elves, and they cast their hoods over their heads.

  ‘Alas?’ repeated the Dwarf, in disbelief. ‘Come now. Who says that? Pull those hoods back, boyos, and stop mincing about. Tell us what happened.’

  ‘We had built half the boat, and looked forward with hope. But then came a troop of Sharon’s soldiers, Orks and beasts, led by a man who bore Sharon’s eye in his head. He declared himself the Eye of Sharon, and we could not resist him. His command was a law to our heart, for such is the Dragons’ curse. So he ordered us to stop working on the ship, and since then we have been unable to so much as lift a timber to the structure. And he ordered us to prostrate ourselves on the sand, and laughed at us. “Escaping?” he said. “No, you shall not complete your boat, for I order it, and you must obey. And neither do I give you leave to travel any more in Blearyland. But look!” And he laughed again. “There is seaweed to eat, and snow to drink, so you may yet be happy.” And so he left, and since he had forbidden us to travel in Blearyland we are stuck here. From time to time he, or one of his kind, stops by as they pass, to laugh at us more.’

  ‘I shall finish your boat,’ said Eärwiggi. ‘For Sharon’s command does not move my heart.’

  They were much amazed at this; and yet it proved true. For over the following twelve days, Eärwiggi worked on the boat; and Nobbi helped him. And as the days passed, the land by this portion of seafront thawed, and snowdrops grew, and grass was revealed as the shift of snow withdrew a little. And again the Elves marvelled.

  ‘Truly,’ they said, ‘the curse of Sharon does not compass you, young Eärwiggi. You are slight in years, but great in power.’

  And each night Eärwiggi embraced the elven Queen, and kissed her good night. And every morning she spoke another word.

  The first day she said ‘Eä!’ a second time.

  The second day she said ‘Eä!’ a third time, and Eärwiggi began to fear that it would be her only word, and that her wits were almost as blank as before.

  The third day she said ‘Se!’ And the Elves greatly wondered to hear this, for in Elvish this words means ‘utter specified words in a speaking voice’. ‘She is amazed at her ability to speak,’ declared Túrin. ‘As we are! Thus she says this word.’

  The fourth day she said ‘La!’ And the Elves were puzzled, because this meant nothing in Elvish. But Nobbi declared it a word of dwarfish provenance, and suggested that she might be turning into a dwarf; which discomforted the Elves greatly. And they sang mournful songs of bearded queens. But privately Eärwiggi thought it sounded very unlikely.

  The fifth day she said,
‘Meal!’, which means food. And they fed her.

  The sixth day she said, ‘No!’ and looked crossly upon them. And they were afraid and ashamed, for it is a dire thing when one’s monarch looks crossly upon one.

  The seventh day she said, ‘You!’ And they were amazed. ‘Me, your majesty?’ said Túrin. ‘What? What do you want?’ But she said nothing more that day.

  The eighth day, she said ‘Twits!’

  The ninth day, she said, ‘List!’ And Túrin looked sorrowfully, for it seemed to him that his Queen was now simply saying random words.

  The tenth day, she said ‘En!’ and Túrin said, ‘What, the letter “n”? That doesn’t really make sense.’

  The eleventh day, she said, ‘To!’

  The twelfth day, she said ‘Me!’ and she pointed at the rocky hills, not far from the beach, which were the westernmost low peaks that grew, moving east, into the Mountain of Byk. But the Elves remained mystified.

  And finally the boat was completed, and the Elves thanked Eärwiggi heartily. ‘And now we shall leave this land, burdened with the cursed name Bleary-land. For although we cannot disobey Sharon, yet his Eye commanded us only to desist from building the boat, and not to travel upon the land, and neither of these things have we done. So we shall hope to reach Westersupanesse, and be free at last from the curse. We say to you: come with us, for your help has been invaluable, really it has.’

  But Eärwiggi looked at Nobbi, and said, ‘Thanks but no thanks.’

  ‘You sure?’ pressed Túrin. ‘The land here is cursed. Evil has triumphed. There is nothing to be done but turn our backs on it as a bad job and look for something better.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Eärwiggi. ‘But I still feel I should remain.’

  ‘Then farewell,’ said Túrin. ‘You have served us well, young Eärwiggi, and one day perhaps we can repay you. Until that time, I urge you to keep your face clean, and always to tell the truth, for these are the badges of Goodness.’

  And Eärwiggi smiled, but took this advice with a pinch of salt.

  So the Elves made their farewells, and gave Eärwiggi and Nobbi such gifts as they could, and then they pushed the boat from the shore and sailed west, over the horizon. And the last figure Eärwiggi saw was Lüthwoman, Queen of Elves, standing in the prow, or stern – I always get those two mixed up, don’t even get me started on port/starboard – anyway, standing at the back of the boat, and waving. And the thaw had freed a small portion of her mind, such that she recognised Eärwiggi, and smiled at him as she went off. She waved to him with her stump, and then looked at it as if confused for a little space; and then she waved to him with her hand, which was a much better waving device.

  And soon they were gone, and the sun followed them over the horizon as if it too were leaving Upper Middle Earth forever.

  But the next day came, as next days always do, with a watery sunrise in the skies to the east. And though the whole land laboured under evil tyranny, yet it got on with the business of stirring under the sunshine, to the best of its ability.

  And as Nobbi dug tubers from the soil just above the beach, Eärwiggi sat on a stone, and he saw a worrying thing: for a rider on a black horse looked down upon them from a distant hill. He could surely see the green land, like a bite from the otherwise covering snow; and he could see the empty beach, with only a boy and a dwarf by the sea.

  And when Eärwiggi looked again, the rider was gone.

  Nobbi returned, and the two of them cooked the tubers, and ate them for breakfast. ‘Thank heavens,’ said the Dwarf, ‘them Elves has finally gone. Thought they’d be here forever with their farewells and singing.’

  ‘So,’ said Eärwiggi. ‘You understood what the Queen was saying, over those twelve days?’

  ‘You’d have to be a moron,’ said Nobbi, ‘not to understand.’

  ‘Or an Elf,’ agreed Eärwiggi. ‘Yet I wonder at her words. Can the great Sellmi truly be here, on this shore, at the very western limit of the mountain chain?’

  ‘Difficult to say really,’ said the Dwarf. ‘But it’s easily checked out, look you.’

  So they put on their wolfskins, and made their way over the surface of the deep snow, where it glittered with frozen dew. In an hour of hard walking, sinking their tread into the snow and hauling out each leg to take the next step, they reached the westernmost foothills of the mountain chain, where stark rock dipped down from the spine of peaks eastwards as if a great stone head were reaching to the sea to drink.

  The stone presented a blank face to most approaches, yet there was a cave mouth, or so it seemed, where the rock swirled and curled over a black space. So Eärwiggi and Nobbi investigated; and the air inside the cave was cold and sulphurous, and they did not venture inside.

  ‘Here,’ called Nobbi. ‘Here. Here.’ And he pressed himself against the left-hand archway of this cave mouth.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Inside this rock, look you.’

  ‘Inside? How can you tell?’

  ‘Dwarf-knowledge,’ said Nobbi.

  ‘I do wish you’d explain it to me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nobbi, feeling his way over the expanse of rock. ‘We Dwarfs come into being inside rock, you see. Born there, like. That’s what I was doing at the lakeside – I had been quickened, laid if you like, in the rock at the lakeside. Only the lake level must have risen during the time I lay insensate in the stone; and when I broke out, my beard got snagged.’

  ‘That’s the story?’ said Eärwiggi. ‘You told me it was a long story.’

  ‘It is,’ said Nobbi. ‘Quite. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘I gave you the shortened version.’

  ‘So you’re a newborn? Effectively?’

  ‘Oh we’re different to Elves or Men. We’re born with the wisdom of our people already inside us. Anyway, bach, la, look you, never-mind-that-now, what it means is that I have a certain feeling for stone. It means, for instance, that I know exactly where to smite it—’ and he punched the rock hard with his fist, in a sudden motion ‘—to open it up.’ And where Nobbi had punched, the rock split, and inside was the fabled Sellmi.

  They clustered round the opening. ‘Oo!’ said Eärwiggi.

  ‘Oo,’ agreed Nobbi.

  ‘Pick it up,’ suggested Eärwiggi.

  ‘You pick it up,’ said Nobbi. ‘It’d have a deleterious effect on me, bach.’

  ‘Deleterious?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  So Eärwiggi plucked the Sellmi from the living rock, and carried it back across the snow field to the beach, by the stream. It felt hot in his hand, and he tucked it inside his wolfskin to keep it safe.

  For a while Dwarf and boy sat on the beach beside the stream and debated what to do. But in the midst of their conversation, they heard a yell.

  On the far side of the stream was a troop of ork soldiers, together with two – not one, but two – separate Eyes of Sharon, each one mounted on a black horse.

  On hearing that a portion of the north-west was free of winter, and that strange things were going on, he had thought to himself: two eyes are better than one eye, and so I shall send my two most potent emissaries to see what is going on.

  ‘You!’ called the first Eye of Sharon. ‘You!’

  And Eärwiggi looked as innocent as he could, and looked over his shoulder, and then tapped himself in the chest as if surprised, and said, ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You are under the command of Sharon!’ called the Second Eye. ‘I command you to tell the truth.’ But Eärwiggi did not feel this command in his heart, and thought to himself, ‘Not likely.’

  At this Nobbi stood up and took out his knife. ‘Leave him be!’ he called. ‘He’s my friend and I’ll not stand by to see him bullied.’

  ‘We have no quarrel with you or your kind, Dwarf,’ said the first Eye. ‘But we have dominion over all Elves and all Men. Boy! What have you been doing here –
speak truthfully.’

  And to this command, any Elf or Man would have said: we have uncovered the fabled Sellmi from the rocks over there, and here it is. And the Eye of Sharon would have said, ‘Give it me.’ And any Elf or Man would have done so. But Eärwiggi did not say this. Instead he scuffed the sand with his foot, and looked sideways, and said, ‘Nothing,’ in a sulky voice.

  ‘You are our slave,’ said the second Eye. ‘We will send you to the work-gangs in the south, where you will die of exhaustion, or perhaps survive if you are strong and ruthless, I care not which. But first you will explain to us how you came here.’

  At this Nobbi grabbed Eärwiggi in a protective hug. ‘If you want him!’ he called aloud in the clear air, ‘Come and claim him! If you think you’re hard enough!’ He continued taunting across the little stream. ‘Come on then, claim him! Go on. Call that claiming? That’s rubbish, that is. My granny could claim better than that, look you! Yah! You couldn’t claim candy from a baby, you lot. He’s my mate, bach, and you’ll not have him.’

  So the Eyes of Sharon splashed over the stream on their fierce black steeds, and the ork warriors trotted after them on foot. They surrounded Nobbi and Eärwiggi the two of them, and the Dwarf was forced to concede, ‘Alright, you’ve come over the stream nice and prompt-like, I suppose that counts as claiming.’

  Now the fate of the world hung in the balance. For it occurred to the Eye of Sharon to kill the boy there and then, just because he was in a bad mood. And had he done this, then Blearyland would have languished under the Sharonny until the ending of time. But he did not kill him; he stayed his hand, although not from mercy; but the death toll in Upper Middle Earth had been rather high lately, and it was getting harder to find slaves to make up the numbers of the work gangs. And so Eärwiggi was spared.

  And the Eyes of Sharon did not bother to bind Eärwiggi’s arms, for they were confident of the power of the Dragons’ magic to hold him to his will. Instead the first Eye addressed the Dwarf. ‘Sir Dwarf, our quarrel is not with you. Go, and leave us to our business with our slave here.’