by Tom Holt
I shook my head. ‘But I think it’d be a gracious gesture if you did,’ I added.
‘All right, then.’
I waited for a few seconds, then drummed my fingertips ostentatiously on the table top.
‘Elf,’ she mumbled. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Thank you.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ she snarled. ‘All right, so what’s the story? What happened?’
I shrugged. ‘Haven’t a clue, really,’ I replied. ‘I went to do these questions, and when I opened the folder and took them out, there was this writing all up through the margin. So I copied it out, and came to find you.’
Cru glared at me. ‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it. The full story, complete and unabridged.’
‘Oh.’ She rubbed her eyelids, as if something was making her feel very tired. No idea what it could be. ‘Theories.’
I nodded, and told her. She sighed.
‘It’s not getting any better, is it?’ she said. ‘You know, I think that’s what’s really getting to me about all this is the thought that after all the time and effort I put into trying to study hard and do well at my maths and science and stuff, just when I thought I was getting somewhere and really beginning to see how the universe works in an orderly and logical way, with no cheating – then you come along and the next thing I know is, I’ve got no choice but to believe in sodding elves. It isn’t fair, is it? I mean, supposing I was doing a physics exam—’
‘Unlikely,’ I pointed out. ‘You told me you stopped doing physics when you were fifteen.’
‘All right,’ she snapped, ‘yes. But just supposing. I’d be having to sit there, writing answers that say yes, the cosmos is just one great big machine and if you wind up the spring and press the lever, such and such will inevitably happen and such and such inevitably won’t – and it’d all be a load of old socks, because really there’s magic and elves and things that some people can see and other people can’t, for no bloody reason.’ She looked up at me, bewildered as a chameleon on a paisley scarf. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘you’re supposed to be into maths and science and stuff. How the hell can you bring yourself to lie to the examiners?’
Of course, I hadn’t thought of it in that light, maybe because I had more sense. After all, things were difficult enough as it was without making everything worse by trying to understand. ‘No idea,’ I said. ‘I guess you’d have to say that the elf stuff is all maths and physics we just haven’t got around to discovering yet. Look, no offence, but I’d rather not go into that side of it right now, if it’s all the same to you. I need to know what to do next.’
Cru shrugged. ‘Well, I can see that,’ she said. ‘And I think that the first step should definitely be to find this elf. Agreed?’
‘Er, I suppose so. But that’s easier said than done. What did you have in mind? Infra-red motion detectors? Stop-motion surveillance cameras? A very large fly-paper?’
I’d offended her again. ‘Sarcasm isn’t going to help, now, is it?’ she said. ‘No, I was thinking of a more direct approach.’
‘Really? More direct than a fly-paper?’
‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘Think about it for a moment. There’s this elf, OK, and he’s doing your maths assignments for you. Consider that action for a moment. Can you tell me what it is?’
I shrugged. ‘Bloody useful.’
‘Yes, I know. Apart from that. I believe it’s a way of getting your attention, saying “Hello, I’m here.” Does that make any sense to you?’
‘Seems like a reasonable assumption under the circumstances,’ I replied. ‘So what do you suggest?’
She steepled her fingers, ‘Well,’ she said. ‘The elf wrote to you. Write back.’
Of course, I hadn’t even considered that; I’d been too busy trying to figure out how to make a non-lethal mousetrap to contemplate the possibility that I could just sit down with the elf and talk. ‘That’s a very good idea,’ I said.
‘Being mine, that goes without saying. Mind you,’ she went on, ‘that’s assuming you know where to put the letter so he’ll find it. Also that he can read English. Big ifs.’
I shook my head. ‘No, not really,’ I replied. ‘If he can’t read English, how can he write it? As far as reaching him goes, I’ll put a message in my diary and another one in each of my written work folders. If he wants to be reached, that ought to reach him.’
Cru was silent for a moment. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘that’s quite sensible. Yes, you could try that, at least as a start. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll have to think of something else: messages painted on walls, adverts in the newspapers, sky-writing. I guess it depends on how badly he wants to get in touch with you.’
I thought of the tiny letters spelling out HELP. ‘It’s a lot of trouble and effort for him to go to if he doesn’t,’ I reasoned. ‘And he’s not stupid, after all.’
‘What makes you think – ? Oh, you mean the maths answers.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t mean to sound downbeat, but mathematical ability doesn’t necessarily equate with common sense or intelligence. After all, look at you.’
‘Well, quite,’ I replied. ‘Nevertheless, I think that’s what I’ll do.’ I looked away, breaking eye contact. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘You’re grudgingly welcome. Thanks for what?’
I sighed. ‘For listening. For not letting on that you’re trying to humour a lunatic, even if that’s what you’re actually doing. For – well, lots of things, I suppose.’
‘Whatever.’ She opened a book and looked at it. I noticed it was the wrong way up. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’d better get to it, then. As and when I find anything, I’ll tell you straight away.’
‘No, you bloody well won’t,’ she replied. ‘Not if it’s the middle of the night or I’m busy. Next time you see me will do just fine, thank you all the same.’
So there I was, biro in hand, diary open in front of me, trying to think of something to say.
Not a wholly unfamiliar sensation, at that. In fact, when I look back it seems to me that I’ve spent a depressingly large proportion of my life doing that sort of thing, starting with Christmas thank-you letters back when I’d only just grasped the concept that ink only came out of one end of the pen, on through hours of hunkering down writing history essays and geography essays and English essays and the like, to the point where my collected works would fill two shelves in the British Museum library and make Dickens look like a minimalist – and every line on every page ground out in spite of a writer’s block you could’ve carved the pyramids from.
My literary compositions are very much like a ten-year-old Citroen: they’re a pain to get started, and when they stop they stay stopped. Eventually, after ten minutes of staring blankly at the empty page, I’d decided to begin with Dear elf – but that was just plain ridiculous, so I crossed it out and substituted To whom it may concern. Once I’d crossed that out as well, my creative battery was effectively flat, and no amount of scowling at the paper or sighing tragically was going to get me up and running again. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice, so I tore out the page and put down Hello instead.
Well, quite; but I told myself that there’d be plenty of time to go back and revise later. The main thing was to crack on and get something down, no matter what. How are you? I wrote.
That more or less drained me for the next hour; in fact, to be honest, I think I might have closed my eyes for a moment or so at some stage, because the next thing I was aware of was as light but insistent tugging on the lobe of my right ear, which had somehow wound up pressed to the desktop. Odd, I thought, and lifted my head. The tugging stopped, which was nice, but now I could hear a tiny voice calling my name, apparently from a long way away – the tennis courts, perhaps, or the cricket pavilion. I frowned as the sleep started to clear off the windscreen of my mind. Why would anybody be out on the playing field at this time of night?
‘I said WAKE UP!’ yelled the voice, gradually getting louder with each word.
‘Are you deaf or something?’ I looked round, towards the window, which was firmly shut. Weirder and weirder.
‘No, you bloody fool, down HERE! Oh for crying out loud, can’t you – ?’
Down? Down where? I glanced down under my desk, behind my chair; nothing. Maybe I was imagining it; in which case –
‘Behind your elbow, bird-brain. No, not that one, the other –’
And there it was. There she was. Shorter than the genuine accept-no-substitutes Barbie and with shorter hair and a rather less pronounced bust; wearing, if memory serves, a light green sleeveless cotton blouse and something that was either a fairly short skirt of a fairly wide belt, depending on how you define such things. She was stunningly lovely and she was holding an unfastened safety pin, which she was just about to stab into my forearm.
‘About bloody time, too,’ she growled. ‘Jesus, you’re stupid. If you had two more brain cells, you’d have a pair.’
I didn’t say anything: I was too busy gawping, while what was left of my mind was wondering why at least some of the world’s annual allowance of weirdness couldn’t happen to somebody else, just for once. For her part, she dumped the safety pin, and stood glowering at me with her arms folded, tiny blue eyes loaded with an infinity of contempt; Sergeant Major Barbie, or My Little Fascist Dictator.
It looked like I’d just got myself a walking, talking, shouting, swearing, living doll.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Excuse me,’ I said diffidently, ‘but who the hell are you?’
She looked up at me out of two forget-me-not-blue eyes and called me an arsehole. ‘How can you say that?’ she said. ‘After everything I’ve been through to get here—’
‘Sorry,’ I interrupted, ‘but you’ve got to tell me this. Are you an elf?’
She sighed. ‘No, I’m a chartered actuary. Dressing up in green miniskirts and being only six inches tall is just something I do in my spare time. Of course I’m an elf, you idiot. You should know that,’ she added bitterly, ‘better than anybody.’
Oh God, I thought, another of those niggling little oblique references. Unfortunately, there were more important issues waiting to be addressed, so clearing up that particular mystery was going to have to wait. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘you’re an elf, thank you. So – what are you doing here, and why are you doing it?’
For some reason that seemed to annoy her a lot. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘wonderful attitude. That’s really going to help, if you keep it up.’ She grabbed hold of a book, dragged it three inches across the desktop (remarkably strong, for her size; it must’ve been the equivalent of a full-sized human hauling a dead cow), and sat down on it as though it were a park bench. ‘Serves me right for imagining you’d be different,’ she went on. ‘But that’s me, hopelessly naive, as usual.’
Before I could call her on that, I noticed a shadow falling across the desk, suggesting that someone was standing between me and the light, directly behind me. I froze; no time to do anything.
‘Here,’ said a voice, ‘have you seen my German grammar?’
Neil Fuller – his desk was two down from mine. In fact, the elf had just sat down on the book he was looking for.
‘Sorry,’ I answered, keeping my eyes fixed on a crack in the plaster on the opposite wall, ‘no idea where it could have got to.’
A tongue clicked, and a hand appeared at the extreme edge of my peripheral vision. ‘Are you blind or something?’ Neil said, and I closed my eyes, so as not to see what was going to happen next. ‘It’s right here. Look,’ he went on, ‘under your stupid nose.’
I glanced down, to see a highly vexed female elf sprawling on the desktop where the book had been. But of course it wasn’t what I could see that mattered. ‘Oh,’ I mumbled, ‘that book.’
‘Idiot.’ Neil sighed and he walked away. I waited till the door swung shut behind him before looking back.
‘He couldn’t see you,’ I said.
‘What?’ The elf made a great show of rubbing a purportedly bruised elbow. ‘No, of course he couldn’t, you fool. He’s human.’
I ignored that one, too. Sooner or later I was going to have to deal with this issue, whatever it turned out to be. Later, for choice. ‘So,’ I said, ‘is this anything to do with nobody else being able to read your writing?’
She grinned. ‘No magic in that,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose many of them can read your writing, either. Talk about your inky-footed spiders.’
‘I’ll rephrase that. See your writing.’
‘Ah.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, pretty much. There’s a whole lot of physics that explains it, but I’ve had a quick flick through your physics notes, and there isn’t a chance in hell that you’d be able to understand any of it. Same goes for whoever dictated those notes, if that’s any consolation. I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘And they call themselves a dominant species.’
‘They’ in this context presumably being humans. It was getting harder and harder to ignore, but I managed it. Amazing what you can do if you try.
‘So only I can see you,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’
She lifted her head. ‘You sound pleased.’
‘You bet I’m pleased. God only knows how we’d keep you hidden if you were visible.’
A tiny eyebrow twitched upwards. ‘You want to keep me hidden,’ she said. ‘Interesting. Why?’
I blinked twice before answering. ‘Oh, because there’s a school rule against keeping pets. And because if anybody saw you, they’d whisk you off to a government research lab so fast you’d be younger when you arrived than when you left. And before you ask, no, you wouldn’t like it in a research lab. Trust me.’
That made her look thoughtful. ‘Why should you care?’ she said.
‘What? Because - well, I just would. It’s called compassion. Don’t you have it where you come from?’
For some reason, she found that amusing. ‘Oh we’ve got compassion all right. If you could bottle it and sell it, we’d have a bigger GDP than California. I’m just surprised to find you’ve heard of it, that’s all.’
I nodded. ‘I need to talk to you about that sort of stuff,’ I said. ‘Only not now, if you don’t mind. First priority is to find somewhere you’ll be safe and out of the way. Then maybe you’ll tell me what the hell you’re doing here.’
She sighed. ‘Escaping,’ she said. ‘All right, where do you suggest?’
Good question. Excellent question. Where do you stash a six-inch-tall humanoid where she won’t get squashed, asphyxiated, frozen, eaten or bored to death? ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Look, would you mind getting into my pocket?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘First because I don’t entirely trust you, the same way I wouldn’t entirely trust a starving hyena. Second because I’m prepared to bet money that in any pocket of any garment you own, there’ll be at least one square of squished and melted chocolate impregnated with grit and lint. Third, not on a first date. If you want to give me a lift somewhere, I’ll go on your shoulder. Hold still, this might tickle.’
Before I could query or object, she’d jumped onto the back of my hand, run up my arm in defiance of stuffy old gravity, like a spider, and disappeared from my field of view.
‘I’M UP HERE,’ thundered a deafening voice in my ear. The way in which I winced sharply must’ve suggested to her that lowering her voice a tad was the polite thing to do. ‘I’m sitting on your shoulder,’ she said, ‘looking straight into your earhole. To my surprise, I can’t see the opposite wall, or hear the sea, but at some stage you’re either going to have to get your ears syringed or start a candle factory. All right, ready when you are.’
I still think it was a good idea.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ she said, a few minutes later. ‘I’m not getting in that.’
‘But it’s ideal,’ I protested. ‘Nobody ever uses it, and you can open the door from the inside.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ she snarled. ‘Un
derstood?’
I shook my head; a strangled scream and a sharp pain, such as might be caused by someone with sharp fingernails hanging from my earlobe, suggested that it wasn’t such a good idea. ‘Sorry,’ I yelped, and fished vaguely round the side of my head with my left hand. I didn’t connect before the pain stopped, implying that she’d managed to get back on my shoulder without my help.
‘It’s a gas chamber,’ she growled.
‘No, it isn’t,’ I replied. ‘It’s a gas cooker – there’s a difference. And this one doesn’t work, which is why it’s been hauled out into this shed. Seclusion, privacy, peace and quiet. You’ll soon get to like it, I bet.’
It took her a few tries to get the hang of lifting the catch on the inside of the oven door, but she managed it in the end. ‘It’s horrible in here,’ she called out after I’d shut the door on her for the fifth time. ‘It’s dark and greasy, the floor’s got holes in it, and it smells disgusting.’
‘Same goes for Manchester,’ I replied, ‘and thousands of people live there quite happily. Now come out, because I want to ask you something.’
The door swung open. I looked in, but I couldn’t see the elf. ‘Hello?’ I called.
– Whereupon the elf suddenly appeared, out of thin air. Just like they do in Star Trek, only without the shimmering lights and the distinctive whoinging noise.
‘Made you look,’ the elf said, smirking.
‘Oh great,’ I muttered. ‘You can make yourself invisible to me, too. Hey, will you please not do that? It really pisses me off.’
She shrugged. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s an absolute pain to do, anyhow. And before you ask, no, I can’t make it so mortals can see me. I can just make myself visible to other – well, to you. What was it you wanted to ask me about?’
I took a deep breath and shifted my weight onto my other knee. ‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? I suppose you’ve got a name.’
‘Yes, but—’ she hesitated.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Is there some kind of taboo about people knowing your true name?’