by Tom Holt
‘Do you understand it now?’
I nodded slowly. ‘You’re telling me he’s got elves working at the factory as well.’ I turned and looked at her. ‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘The big secret?’
‘Partly.’ She looked at me very solemnly, as if she was just about to launch me or declare me open. ‘Yes, there are elves working in your garden. And in the house, too. In fact, they do all the housework. Haven’t you ever wondered about that?’
Well, no, I hadn’t. True, I’d never seen anybody wielding a Hoover or washing a dish in our house, and this had never struck me as worthy of notice. Big deal. Well, have you ever met a teenage boy who didn’t assume that housework gets done by magic?
‘The factory,’ I said.
She sighed a little. ‘All elves,’ she said. ‘Hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand, by now, I don’t know. I was there for, what, ten years, then I was transferred to the house, and I haven’t been back since, so I couldn’t tell you.’
I frowned. ‘You were in the factory? And in our house?’
She nodded.
‘But that’s . . .’ My mind was spinning, like a gerbil in a blender. ‘But you just said elves can’t cross the line. They can’t go backwards and forwards between our side and home. So how can there be . . .’
She laughed, but not a funny-joke sort of laugh. ‘There is one way,’ she said. ‘Your stepfather discovered it. You might say it’s been the cornerstone of his success. Not so great for us though.’
She stopped talking, and the expression on her face was enough to make a bailiff weep. But I’m not a bailiff. ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Get on with it, for crying out loud.’
Instead, the Fuller elf took up the story, while Melissa pulled herself together. ‘The fact is,’ the Fuller elf said, ‘all elves are curious.’
‘That’s putting it mildly.’
‘All elves,’ he amended, frowning, ‘exhibit a high degree of curiosity, and one of the things they’re most curious about is what it’s like on the other side of the line. Being elves, though, when they’re told by older, wiser elves that the human side is, well, not quite like our side, and humans do things in a way that we might well find hard to get along with – being elves, they accept what they’re told and don’t even try to get across.’ He paused. ‘Most elves, anyway.’
‘Most,’ I repeated.
‘Most, but not all, I’m sorry to say: there’re always a few who persist in believing that the other side is some kind of Paradise, and the stories about it being, um, unsuitable are just to put them off and stop them going there, because some unidentified cadre of selfish elves want all the nice things for themselves. So, inevitably, they look for a way over. And when your stepfather went snooping round the place where the sleigh crashed through, and found a way of opening a door from his side . . .’ Now the Fuller elf was at it, making funny noises and turning his head away, as if it was all too much and floods of tears were only a split second away.
‘A door,’ I repeated firmly.
‘We haven’t the faintest idea how he does it,’ snuffled the Melissa elf, and I saw her eyes were red – attractively red, of course – from crying. ‘If we knew, we could put a stop to it. But we don’t; and every time he needs more workers – oh, let’s not fool ourselves, every time he needs more slaves – he opens the gate, and there’s always one or two silly, silly elves who go tripping happily through, convinced they’re on their way to a better life and a fresh start in a wonderful place full of opportunity, where they’ll be understood.’
Ah. So that was it. ‘Such as you,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Once upon a time,’ she said. ‘Everybody warned me about it, but no, I had to know best. Which is how I ended up stitching uppers on men’s fashion moccasins for ten years. Ten years real time,’ she added. ‘You can’t begin to imagine . . . and being small, too. That was probably the worst thing about it. You see, the first thing that happens to you, when you pass through the gateway, is this sudden terrible bright light and this burning, tingling sensation right up through you, like someone’s shaking you to bits—’
‘Electric shock,’ I guessed.
‘That’s right. And when you’ve stopped shaking, all the things you used to be able to do just don’t work any more, and you’re six inches tall. The same as happened to your father. And he can keep on and on doing it and getting away with it, because on the human side, of course, the humans can’t see us, or hear us – there’s no way of letting them know we’re there.’
Trying to keep up with all this was like running for a bus with lead bars strapped to your ankles.
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘If you’re invisible, how can he keep track of you?’
She smiled. ‘Oh, he can see us all right. Again, we don’t know how, but he can. What’s more, he’s done something that stops us getting out of the places where he keeps us – you know, tunnelling or climbing out through ventilation shafts, that sort of thing. We get so far and then it’s like there’s an invisible wall, and when you touch it, it’s like being hit with a huge bell. All the time I was there, at the factory and then at the house, only two of us ever managed to get out. The first one was one of the gardeners: he said he’d found a way but it was terribly dangerous, he wouldn’t tell us about it in case we tried it, but he’d have a go and if it worked, he’d come back for the rest of us.’ Massive sniffle, at least six on the Richter scale. ‘He got out,’ she said, ‘but he never came back.’
A very unpleasant thought formed in my mind. ‘Out of interest,’ I said, ‘when was that, exactly?’
‘Just before you came home from school last time,’ she replied. ‘In fact, I think it was the same night.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So, who was the other one? You, I suppose.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It was because you’d fallen in love with me – with her, I mean, the other me, my counterpart. Don’t ask me how I knew, but I did; if you were in love with me – me as I am over there, really . . .’
‘A real snotty bitch,’ I supplied. ‘Yes, go on.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you could love her, deep down you must be a really good, decent, perceptive person who’d want to help me get away and work out how to free the others. And of course, with you being half-and-half, so that whatever he uses to keep us in doesn’t work on you – all I had to do was climb into your pocket, and I was away. Free and clear. Of course,’ she went on, ‘I was taking a huge risk, that you really weren’t like your stepfather or your mother—’
‘Hold it,’ I said. ‘Is she in on this?’
Melissa nodded. ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said. ‘Like I told you, she practically worships your stepfather.’
‘I’d noticed,’ I grunted.
‘But you,’ she continued, ‘you we couldn’t be sure about. You see, we all assumed you knew, that you were a part of it and you’d turn us in to him if you knew we were trying to escape. But then, when you started putting out the bread and milk, and then the beer, that didn’t seem like someone who was part of the family business, or even someone who was aware of what was going on. So I thought, why not? I mean, the worst that could happen was that I’d be caught, horribly tortured and finally killed.’
‘No big deal?’
She shook her head. ‘If it was that simple,’ she said, ‘you’d have seen your stepfather hoeing his own spinach fifteen years ago. But it isn’t. We can’t just die over there, you see. On your side, we’re practically immortal.’
Once again, I couldn’t help thinking about someone small I’d tripped over once in a dark lane. ‘Practically,’ I said.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘On your side, we can only be killed by a close relative, or someone we love. And of course, that’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it?’
I smiled rather thinly. ‘I guess so,’ I replied. ‘So, that explains why suicide wasn’t an option. And now,’ I went on, ‘you’re talking about going back there. Won’t that mean getting zapped all over again,
and ending up six inches tall and getting plonked down in the factory, punching lace-holes for fifty years?’
She looked at me. Big round blue eyes. It worries me when they do that.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got to try. You can see that, can’t you?’
Speak the truth, my mother always told me, and shame the devil; though whether, given what I’d just found out about her, she was any kind of role model for an impressionable youth, you can best gauge for yourself. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t see that at all. That’s like saying the best way to heal a cut thumb is to slice open a toe.’ A little forty-watt inspiration flipped on inside my head. ‘Now if we’re going to be sensible and logical about this, surely the obvious person to go back and try and get things put right is me. After all, I’ve got the run of the place. More or less,’ I added, in keeping with the spirit of the new Unvarnished Truth Initiative I seemed to be locked into. ‘Anyway, a darn sight more of the run of the place than your lot, according to what you’ve been telling me. And that trick with the circle in the grass, where I just sort of went from there to here without moving . . .’
The Fuller elf nodded. ‘It’s because you’re half-andhalf,’ he said. ‘Just the one of you for both sides.’
‘So I can go across the line the way you lot can’t?’
‘It means that in practice, where you’re concerned, there is no line,’ he replied.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘there you are, then. You lot can only get across by signing on for height reduction therapy and a career in footwear or horticulture. I can just stroll across with my hands in my pockets.’
‘Yes,’ said Melissa, her face screwed up like she had toothache. ‘But—’
‘But?’
‘But you can’t leave.’
This was getting confusing: past electric-toothbrushinstruction-leaflet confusing, way past income-taxreturn explanatory-notes confusing and into the language-bending domain of Windows Online Help confusing. As bad as that.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘You just said I could.’
‘No,’ Melissa said emphatically, ‘you’re missing the point. Yes, you can leave. But no, you can’t leave. It’s all to do with—’
No, I thought, the hell with all this. For some reason, these two were dead set on making me stay there, either out of some weird idea that I belonged there or for some other reason I really didn’t want to find out about. In any event, time I wasn’t there.
All it took, if I’d understood them correctly (yes, I know, don’t hurt yourself by sniggering too much), was a circle, like the mark of the missing dustbin back in the school grounds. Now, as it happened, there was a circle just one pace to my right. True, it was quite narrow and completely encircled by a foot-high wicker rim – it was, in fact, a nice old-fashioned waste-paper basket – but it was quite definitely circular, and I was in a hurry.
‘I’m off now,’ I said. ‘Thanks for everything, and I promise I’ll do what I can. Goodbye.’
So saying, I jumped with both feet into the bin –
– And found myself in an exactly similar place and position, namely standing rather precariously inside a wickerwork waste bin about ten inches across. Now, you’re going to tell me there simply isn’t room to stand up in a tiny space like that.
You’d be right.
I toppled over quite slowly, like a factory chimney being demolished, except that I didn’t fall down nearly as gracefully or accurately. Fortunately, the arm of the chair broke my fall when my forehead hit it.
Ouch, I told myself, and looked down. The wastepaper basket had split like a peeled banana, poor innocent thing, scattering bits of screwed-up paper and pencil sharpenings all over the rather fine red, blue and yellow carpet. Lovely to look at, but not very practical. (In our house we always had coffee-coloured carpet. Guess why.)
I hauled myself to my feet and had a quick look round. The first thing that caught my eye was the complete and, let’s be honest, refreshing absence of elves. The room was empty, in fact, apart from me and all that really cute old furniture. Unmistakably the same room, apart from the differences.
Which were . . .? I knew there were some, but they were so subtle I couldn’t identify them straight off. Maybe a chair-leg an inch or so to the right, a cushion slightly more faded and frayed, different books on the shelves of the glass-fronted Edwardian mahogany bookcase. Oh, and I knew where I was – the memory came back quite suddenly, leaving me wondering how the hell I’d failed to pick up on it before. I was at school again, in a place I’d been to many times, never for anything nice. The headmaster’s study.
Spiffing, I thought. And I’ve just squashed his wastepaper basket. He won’t take kindly to that.
There was, of course, the sensible option; namely flight. I was only about ten paces from the door; through that, up the stairs, across the top landing, down the other stairs and out into the back courtyard and relative safety. Sounds easy, put like that. I expect you could make a trek to the South Pole sound like a cakewalk, too, if you set your mind to it.
Still, if I was going, I’d better go. A fraction of a second later I was by the door, hand on the doorknob, the long road to freedom only a wrist’s turn away. I stopped dead in my tracks, not even trying to move.
Because I’m stupid? No, not on this particular occasion. I think that if you’d been in my shoes, you’d (a) have done the same (b) have blisters on both heels.
What prompted me to stop was a mirror, hanging just to the east of the light switch. My guess is that our beloved headmaster hung it there so that he could make a final check on his appearance – fine-tune his scowl, get his eyebrows really meshed together in the middle – before going out where we could see him. Not my favourite person, our headmaster.
Anyhow . . . what do you suppose I saw in that mirror? Correct, a reflection. And everything I’d learned in physics about reflection and refraction of light led me to conclude that it couldn’t help but be my reflection, an accurate – albeit reversed – depiction of my appearance.
And therein lay the problem.
The face looking back at me was recognisable, sure. There were my lorry-wing-mirror ears, my superfluous length of nose, my turkey neck and Kirk Douglas Lite chin, exactly the same as they’d been the last time I’d seen them; apart, that is, from the differences.
Now, it wasn’t the strange and subtle rearrangement of features, the strengthening and softening and blurring of edges and drawing in of bits that stuck out, though they were remarkable enough. God knows, they were an improvement. You could pay a cosmetic surgeon a year’s wages and you still wouldn’t get such a complete and flattering make-over. Just consider that, will you? In the time it’d taken me to go to Elfland and back – no time at all, since there was here – I’d shed the unlovely appearance I’d been hatefully self-conscious about all my life and acquired a face that’d earn me a living doing aftershave commercials. And I didn’t even realise it until some time later, because I was too preoccupied in a completely stunned sort of way, with the other difference, the one that made me retrace my steps back to the desk, where I happened to remember there was a calendar.
It was one of those thought-for-the-day calendars, and the pearl of wisdom it offered me was You’re only as old as you feel. I pulled off the leaf, stared at it, laughed bitterly and dropped it into the ruins of the bin.
The date on the calendar was 12 January, just as it would have been when I left. But I’d left in 1985, and the calendar said 1995. Which was bad, because it meant that the clean-cut, distinctly good-looking twenty-five-year-old dressed in a brown suede waistcoat and green tights that I’d just seen in the mirror was indeed me.
CHAPTER NINE
That was when I heard footsteps.
Sometimes, you know, I wonder about evolution. As I understand it, the general idea is that over millions of years the process of natural selection has weeded out those traits that are useless or counterproductive and favoured those that tend towards success
in Life’s demolition derby. Fine; it sounds reasonable enough until you get down to cases. For instance: can anybody tell me why the hell blind, limb-freezing panic got included in the package, at the expense of, say, wings, or a back-up central nervous system, or telepathy?
So there I was, frozen to the spot, unable to think anything much except shit fuck help buggery (and it was only because I still had some of that wonderfully forceful, abrasive Elf-side-acquired personality left that I was able to think in swear words; but even that was slipping away, and before my microsecond of panic was over I’d already started replacing the strong language with oh dear oh my help oh Lord) and the footsteps got closer and closer; and before I could get a grip on myself and start scanning for useful stuff such as windows or built-in wardrobes or sofas I could crawl behind, the doorknob turned (in perceived time, it rotated as slowly as a large hourly paid planet) and the door opened, and this stranger walked in.
‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ he asked.
If my other personality hadn’t more or less completely drained away into the floor by then, leaving me with the rotten old non-boo-to-geese-saying default personality I’d had before I crossed the line, I might easily have asked him the same question. I’d been expecting (dreading, to be pedantically correct) the headmaster, a seven-foot-tall, vicious, steel-haired bastard with enormous eyebrows and a bald head like the Kremlin dome. This joker was shorter than me by a head, in his mid-thirties and wearing a Microsoft T-shirt. Of course, I didn’t know about Microsoft, but my headmaster would rather have worn a barbed-wire shroud than a T-shirt of any description. This bloke was no more a headmaster than I was.
‘Well?’ he repeated. ‘And what are you doing in my office?’
‘Um,’ I replied, and all things considered, I reckon it was a pretty good effort.
‘What?’
I tried smiling. A smile defuses even the most tense social situation, as well as releasing endorphins or something of the sort into the bloodstream, making you more relaxed and better able to cope. At least, that’s what I read in a dentist’s waiting room once, though I have to say that I tried smiling at the dentist shortly afterwards, and it didn’t work then, either. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I think I may be lost.’