by Tom Holt
Just a minute, I thought, what’s going on? ‘That’s very nice of you,’ I said, ‘but I only met you about an hour ago, so I don’t suppose it’s done me any lasting psychological damage. Besides, compared with what I’m used to—’
‘An hour ago?’ She looked utterly bewildered. ‘Oh, of course, you don’t know yet. Oh dear.’ Then, just to complicate things, she started crying.
People who cry when they’re sad – well, they’re a pain in the bum most of the time, but at least you can see where they’re coming from. People who cry when they’re happy, on the other hand, are an unmitigated nuisance and it’s high time something was done about it. Now. I don’t know; the government spends millions of pounds of your tax money on guided missiles and clogging up perfectly good roads with speed bumps, but can you persuade them to part with a bent nickel to deal with the growing menace of happy cryers? Can you hell as like.
Difficult to know what to do for the best. Quite possibly it was one of those situations that calls for the arm round the shoulders and the reassuring hug; but maybe it wasn’t, in which case well-intentioned physical intervention might earn me a busted jaw followed by a long holiday in a mailbag factory. My theory is that until you know the locals’ habits, customs and culture to Ph.D. level or preferably beyond, you’re best off not pawing them about if there’s any doubt in your mind whatsoever concerning how such contact’s going to be interpreted.
On the other hand, standing there like a short, defective telegraph pole while the poor girl sobbed her eyes out was as clear a case of boorish male insensitivity as you’re ever likely to see, and if there’s one thing women can’t be doing with (trust me on this one) it’s boorish male insensitivity. Which would be worse – a boot in the nuts followed by a jail sentence, or long-term ongoing aggravation on the missed-birthday level - has got to be a matter of personal taste rather than objective judgement.
A tricky one, in fact. I decided that the best I could do was stand by and hope she’d notice and appreciate the waves of unspoken but palpable sympathy and support I was broadcasting straight at her, like some kind of emotional Bush House. Luckily, the tear-fest only lasted about a minute.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said (that made twice, in one day), ‘it’s just that I’ve been away for so long and there were times when I thought I was never going to get back here, and I’d be stuck there for the rest of my life, and – well, that my life was going to have a rest, instead of just—’ She paused. ‘None of this is really making any sense to you, is it?’
I shrugged. ‘Well, no,’ I replied. ‘But sense isn’t everything, God knows. Still, if you could see your way clear to giving me just a small explanation . . . Doesn’t have to be the true one,’ I added quickly, as another dangerous surge of snuffles threatened to sweep in from the northeast, ‘just so long as it makes me feel better, and I can go home.’
And that, believe it or not, made her laugh. Bloody hell fire in a bucket; you know, on balance I think bewildering laughers are possibly an even worse menace than happy cryers. Round up the lot of ’em and nuke ’em till they glow, is my recommendation.
‘You can’t go home, silly,’ she said.
‘Can’t I?’ That didn’t sound good. ‘Oh.’
‘No, of course not. You can’t go home when you’re already there, can you?’
Under any other circumstances, that would be the sort of ambient weirdness level that would prompt me to make a quick scuttle for the nearest exit. Tragically, that option wasn’t really available; my leg was better, sure, but I now had more pins and needles in it than all the John Lewises in Christendom put together. That only left the back-up plan, namely staying put and trying to get some sense out of the dozy bitch. Well, I say back-up plan. It was a back-up plan the way hitting the ground after falling off the top of the Empire State building is a back-up plan for forward-thinking hang-glider pilots.
‘Home,’ I repeated. ‘That’s not here, that’s in South Bucks. This is school. Home from home, maybe, but—’
‘No, listen,’ she said, and in spite of everything I had to take the time out to savour the difference. Ever so many girls have said ‘No’ to me since in a dazzlingly wide range of contexts, and quite a few have also said ‘Listen’. But the way she said it was completely different. Nicer, if you get my meaning. ‘Sorry,’ she went on (third time!), ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt. But I do think it’d be much better if I started from the beginning. What do you think?’
What did I think? Bloody hell. Now I knew I wasn’t in Kansas any more. ‘I think that’d be wonderful,’ I told her. ‘Please, go on.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure. Really.’
‘All right. Here goes. This is Elfland. I’m an elf. My name is Melissa.’ She paused. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked. ‘All clear so far?’
I pursed my lips. ‘Almost,’ I said. ‘There’s just one small point, though. We were round the back of the sheds – those sheds,’ I added, pointing. ‘I don’t seem to remember going anywhere.’
Another laugh. Silvery, possibly even quicksilver. ‘That’s not how you get to Elfland,’ she said. ‘It’s more a case of staying where you are and hoping you can lure Elfland into coming to you.’
Now that conjured up a sheaf of mental images that I’d probably have enjoyed flicking through if things hadn’t been so fraught. Worlds that come when you call. Planet-training classes. Here, Elfland, I thought, good Elfland, down, boy; leave; leave it, for crying out loud, sit . . .
‘Hello?’ she said. ‘For a moment there you were miles away.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘No pun intended,’ she added.
‘I’m here,’ I replied. ‘And Elfland can’t be gone to, it just sort of comes and gets you. Right so far?’
‘I knew you’d get the hang of it, an intelligent person like you. The fact is, Elfland and where the humans live are really all just one place. The difference is only a matter of perception, like how things look different with and without sunglasses: same thing you’re looking at, but what you see isn’t quite the same. All right so far?’
Furtively I tried moving my leg, but it was still doing the ingrowing-porcupine bit. ‘I think so,’ I replied. ‘You’re saying that Elfland and the, um, other place, they both occupy the same spot.’
‘Exactly.’ Big happy beaming smile. Enough to scare a man to death, seeing so much quality ivory stacked up in one place. ‘Like, there’s only one radio but you can get loads and loads of different channels in it.’
‘I see,’ I lied. ‘All right, so now I know about Elfland. How do I leave?’
She laughed. Double silvery with extra silver. ‘Do you want to?’
Hadn’t thought about that. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can’t stay here, can I? Can I?’
‘Of course.’ She took a deep breath, as if she was trying to inhale the whole sky. ‘Oh, it’s so wonderful to be back, and to be me again . . .’ She paused, as if she’d just realised she’d said something extremely tactless. ‘Not that there was anything wrong with – I mean, I know you were very fond of her, but—’
‘Hold it,’ I said. (I know, since when was I all forceful and self-confident and able to talk to girls without trying to swallow my tongue?) ‘Who’s this ‘her’ you’re talking about?’
She looked down at the ground. And very nice ground it was too, but I don’t think that was why she was looking at it. ‘Me,’ she said.
‘You?’
She nodded. ‘Cruella Watson.’
Do you ever get days like that, when you wake up and it seems like all the rules have subtly changed while you’ve been asleep, and everybody else except you knows the new version? I hate it when that happens, mostly because I can never quite get past the instinctive feeling that it’s somehow my fault. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do about it. It’d all be so much easier if I could find the instruction booklet that should’ve come with me when I was born.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t take this the w
rong way, but you aren’t Cruella Watson. You can trust me on this one, really. For a start, you’re taller and your hair’s a different colour and you aren’t a—’
She smiled, and shook her head. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I’m Cruella Watson here.’
‘All right,’ I said doubtfully. ‘So, who’s Cruella Watson there?’
‘She is, of course. Cruella Watson. And here, I’m Melissa. Don’t you see?’
At least I knew the answer to that one. ‘No,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘I knew it was going to be tricky to try and explain it in words, and it’s not something I’m terribly good at, so I decided I’d bring you here and hope that’d make you able to figure it out for yourself. and now I think you’re even more confused than you were. Sorry.’
Four times now. Definitely not Cruella; not my Cruella, at any rate. Sure, Cru did know the word, and I’d even heard her use it a few times, but only in conjunction with phrases like excuse for a human being, referring to guess who.
Then, suddenly I understood. No, that’s overstating the case. But suddenly I could just about imagine a potential scenario where understanding might just possibly occur. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I want to think for a moment. Is that all right?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry.’
I turned away and looked round, trying to take in what I saw. She’d been right, of course. It was the same place, only different.
Of course. It was that simple.
For example; about sixty-five yards away due east there was a tree. Now I knew that tree pretty well; nothing special, taciturn, morose, lousy conversationalist, just a tree under which I occasionally sat when I was in a miserable mood and wanted an appropriate setting. That tree was exactly where it had always been, and as far as I could tell (I don’t know much about that stuff) it was the same type or variety or breed or make of tree that it’s always been. But here, it was also totally different; here, it was a cheerful, optimistic, empowered tree. Its branches seemed to be pushing upwards instead of drooping under the unfair burden of gravity. Its leaves were just a little thicker and greener – it didn’t give the impression of having bald patches with leaves carefully combed over them. Same tree, only different.
Okay. If it worked for trees, why not for people? Maybe this place, or this version of the same place (I steered my mind round that one before it got bogged down in it) had exactly the same people as the place I came from, but they were all different. Quantitatively similar, but qualitatively divergent. Nicer.
Much nicer.
Well, there was one way of testing this hypothesis. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but are there other people here I’m likely to know?’
She laughed. ‘Of course there are. Go on; name someone, and we’ll go and see if we can find him.’
You know what it’s like when you’ve got to pick a name at random; my mind went so blank you could’ve projected movies on it. After an embarrassing pause the only name I could think of was Neil Fuller (you remember Neil; he was the one who was looking for his German grammar, when Melissa was sitting on it), so that was who I nominated.
She thought for a moment. ‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘I expect he’ll be in the west cloister.’
‘Oh’ Highly unlikely place for Neil to be, a cloister. Not unless there was something there he could steal, or he was meeting some girl. ‘Can we go and look?’
‘Sure,’ she said; and as soon as she’d said it, there we were, back in the study area. Except that it was (also/instead) a definite and unmistakable cloister, with big arched unglazed windows looking out on a central courtyard and a rather attractive marble fountain.
‘Hey,’ I objected, ‘how the hell did you do that?’
She looked startled. ‘What do you mean? Oh,’ she added, ‘you mean how did we get here. We walked.’
I closed my eyes and tried to count to ten, but it didn’t work. ‘No we didn’t,’ I said. ‘One moment we were out there, next moment we’re here.’
She clapped her hands, as if applauding. ‘Exactly’, she said. ‘There were two moments, one there and one here. Plus a lot of other moments in between, during which we walked across the grass, in through the back gate, across the lobby, up a flight of stairs, across the scriptorium, past the dorter, down another flight of stairs and out under a low arch where we turned right to reach this place. But they were rather dull and boring moments and I got the impression you’re in a hurry and want to get all this stuff sorted out in your mind, so I left them out.’
I gave up trying to stay cool and just stared at her. ‘You left them out?’
She nodded. ‘That’s right. We can do that here. Time works in a rather different way.’
‘Different.’
Another nod. ‘Nicer.’
‘Ah.’ this time I tried taking a deep breath; waste of time and effort. ‘You mean to say that if you don’t want to bother with the dull and boring bits of your life, you can just sort of fast-forward them? Like the adverts on TV?’
‘Precisely.’ She sighed again. She was very good at sighing. Graceful melancholy, very tastefully done. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘when I was stuck in – well, in your place, I thought I was going to go mad, having to live through every second of every day. How you people can stand it, I really can’t imagine. You must be so brave.’
I’ll admit, I’d never thought of it in that light before. Typical: I get to be a hero and never know it. ‘So,’ I went on, trying to clarify, ‘I’ve just been for a two-hundredyard walk which I don’t remember a thing about—’
‘Don’t you?’ She looked surprised. Her surprise wasn’t quite up to her sighing, but it wasn’t bad. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Well, yes. No,’ I corrected myself, because I’d been wrong; I could remember it, once I’d found the right place in my mind to look. I could see myself trotting up the stairs, down the stairs, past the wrought-iron lamp sconces set into the walls—
Weird. Where the hell had wrought-iron lamp sconces come from?
‘You can remember it, can’t you?’ she said, with a gentle smile.
‘All right,’ I conceded, ‘yes. But it never happened. Did it?’
‘Of course it did. Tell you what – after we’ve found your friend, we’ll walk back, and he can be a witness. Will that do?’
I’d forgotten all about the quest for Neil Fuller. ‘First things first,’ I said. ‘Where is he? I can’t see—’
And suddenly, there he was, complete with a full memory of having stood around for half an hour waiting for me; but I skipped over that. One thing at a time, after all.
Neil Fuller. Unmistakably Neil Fuller – only he was six foot two, with light brown hair tied up in a ponytail, wearing what looked to me like a Robin Hood outfit from a rather upmarket fancy-dress hire place and – much more bizarre – looking pleased to see me.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to wonder when you’d show up. Oh, hi there, Melissa,’ he added, with a polite little wave. ‘Glad to see you’re back with us.’
I cleared my throat nervously, as though I was about to make a speech in front of the whole school. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but are you Neil Fuller?’
His grin was so broad that I was surprised his face didn’t unzip. ‘Of course I am,’ he replied, whereupon he grabbed my hand and started shaking it enthusiastically. ‘My name’s Arganthonius, by the way,’ he added. ‘Welcome to Elfland.’
Now there comes a point – and God help you if you ever reach it – when the lunatic drivel starts making sense. Well – let me qualify that a little. It’s sense, Jim, but not as we know it. I looked the newcomer in his clear, bright golden eyes, smiled as pleasantly as I could, and said, ‘Did you manage to find the book you were looking for?’
He laughed. ‘You know perfectly well I did,’ he replied. ‘You were there, remember? And so was Melissa. She was sitting on it.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Thank
s.’
I turned to walk away, but the Fuller elf wasn’t done with me yet. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how do you like it here?’
Tact; always tact. ‘It’s just fine,’ I said. ‘Very nice architecture. Good sky.’
The Fuller elf nodded. ‘It’ll take you a while to get settled in,’ he said. ‘Hardly surprising,’ he added. ‘It must be pretty disconcerting, coming home for the first time.’
I didn’t reply to that, and he let me alone and turned to the Melissa female. ‘Welcome back,’ he said gravely. ‘You were gone a long time.’
She nodded. ‘Too long. But I’m back now. All that stuff is just – memories.’
Funny way she said the last word, though one more piece of weirdness was like a very brief shower of rain in mid-Atlantic as far as I was concerned. ‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘So, what’re we going to do about—?’
About him, he meant – referring to me. I swung round – I hate it when people talk about me behind my back to my face, if you see what I mean - and said, ‘Can I make a suggestion?’
‘Of course,’ said the Fuller elf.
‘Fire away,’ the Melissa female confirmed.
When it actually came to it, I couldn’t think of a better way of putting it than, ‘Take me to your leader.’ So that was what I said. I didn’t add on the bit about coming in peace, because that would have been just plain silly.
‘Ah,’ Melissa said, ‘that could be awkward. We don’t have one.’
I shrugged. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then take me to your national assembly, parliament, congress, board of directors, general purposes committees or Christmas thrift club. Please?’ I put in, because it always helps to be polite.
‘Haven’t got any of those,’ the Fuller elf said. ‘That’s not how we do things here, I’m afraid. Will we do instead?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘It’s hard figuring out who’s the best person to ask when you don’t really know what the question is.’