by Tom Holt
I expected Cru to make a fuss. I knew her too well. I was right.
When she’d calmed down a bit, I asked Melissa, ‘Which body?’ It sounded a bit like your-place-or-mine.
‘I think it’d be far safer to use my physical template,’ she answered, ‘because it’s my body the universe is used to, if you see what I mean. Which is why,’ she went on, ‘when we both weighed ourselves just now, we each weighed exactly half of my usual weight. If we used your template, it might cause problems.’
She looked at Cru expectantly. For her part, Cru had gone as white as a sheet.
‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘You and me, locked up in your body, for the rest of our lives.’
Melissa nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I’m willing to do it if you are.’
Cru was shaking slightly. ‘Trapped for ever,’ she said. ‘With her. In that.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think it’s a very nice—’
The look Cru shot at me would’ve frozen a volcano.
‘Idea,’ I said quickly. ‘A very nice idea. At the very least you ought to think about it.’
‘Bastard!’
There’s being forceful and assertive, and there’s being an idiot. The two should not be confused. ‘Sorry,’ I said, as quickly as I could without dislocating my tongue. ‘If you won’t even consider it, fine. Your choice. Absolutely no pressure. And I’m sure Melissa’s perfectly happy to leave the decision up to you; aren’t you, Melissa?’
I think the very tips of her ears might have quivered slightly, but she swallowed and said, ‘Yes, of course. In fact, I’m sure that after a year or so we’ll be the very best of friends.’
Cru screamed. It wasn’t one of your B-movie Bride of the Gorilla screams, more an attempt to express the sort of rage they just don’t make words big enough for. ‘That does it,’ she said. ‘All right, so the world’s got to get blown up. That’s a real shame and I’m very, very sorry, really I am. But.’
She turned on her heel and started to walk. I think she’d gone all of five yards when the first fissure opened up in the ground in front of her, and the sky began to crackle and spark in a manner that suggested that God had been doing DIY wiring.
‘Shit,’ she said, and stopped dead.
Clouds had appeared out of nowhere, and were rapidly blotting out the sun; it was so dark it could’ve been a June noon in Manchester. A small laurel bush about three paces to my left burst into spontaneous flame. Actually, that struck me as a good sign at first, but when it didn’t say anything I dismissed it as a coincidence (thought I was tempted to try leaving a message after the tone, just in case). Ahead of us on the green, elves were standing glued to the spot, staring upwards. It took me a while to realise that dwellers in Elfland, where skies are always blue, probably hadn’t seen a cloud before.
‘Oh hell,’ Cru wailed, ‘I don’t know what to do. Somebody else decide, for God’s sake.’
Of all the reactions I’d been expecting, this wasn’t one of them. I reckoned I knew Cruella by then, and whatever else she might do, she’d never ask for advice. Ever.
‘Well?’ she said.
Melissa had gone as white as tapioca pudding when the electrics started playing up; she was quite obviously frozen with terror, and I can’t say I blamed her. Terror doesn’t freeze me, though; in fact, it has the opposite effect, making me go all wobbly and fluid-boned. I had an overwhelming urge, in fact, to scratch a circle in the dirt and get the hell out of there, in an illogical hope that even if Elfland blew, the human side wouldn’t go up with it. Silly, I know, and I’d like to say in my defence that I only considered it as a possible course of action because there wasn’t a convenient pile of sand to hide my head in.
Cru was expecting a reply. Nobody to give it but me.
‘Decide what?’ I asked.
‘Mike, just for once don’t be so bloody stupid. Decide what I ought to do, is what.’
Not the hardest question I’ve ever been faced with. ‘I wouldn’t go any further if I were you,’ I suggested.
She muttered something under her breath. I couldn’t make out most of it, though I fancy I caught the words denser than depleted uranium. ‘Thank you so much, professor bloody Einstein,’ she said aloud. ‘Apart from that, what should I do?’
‘What, do you mean should you do the merging thing or carry on following Melissa about?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’
Trickier, by several orders of magnitude.
I thought about it; and I had to confess, the first thought that crossed my mind was that I loved Cruella very much indeed. But Melissa was rather more restful, not to mention looking like something thrown off a catwalk for being so cute she was distracting people’s attention from the clothes. Combine the two, I thought, what the hell is there to think about?
I considered that; and then I considered myself considering it. Not a pleasant sight.
On the other hand, we still had the world to save, not to mention Cru’s sanity and quite possibly Melissa’s life—
(Logic. If Melissa were to die, like my real dad, wouldn’t that free up the necessary space on the seesaw? Hell, if she merged with Cru, they’d both effectively be dead – they wouldn’t be themselves any more, so was there really any difference? I decided that the logical me was an even bigger arsehole than the selfish me . . .)
Come on, I told myself, you’re a bloody double Nobel laureate, think of something. There’s got to be an answer, and the answer’s got to be something to do with me, just like it was when I had to figure out a way of dealing with Daddy George. When you turn your face towards Heaven and cry out, ‘Why me?’, the answer Because everyone else is still at lunch doesn’t really cut it.
Something to do with me—
If they merged, Cru and Melissa might as well be dead, because neither of them would be them any more; because it’s who we are that makes us unique. So: what makes us what we are? Various things; where we come from, the way our experiences shape us. The way other people shape us – like the way Daddy George effectively made me who I was; or the way I’d made Cru who she was, because she’d loved me all along and I’d kept vanishing, for years at a time, and she’d waited. Because she loved me.
The penny hadn’t dropped yet, but it was quivering on the edge. Loving me was a fundamental part of who she was, it defined her. If she stopped loving me, she wouldn’t be Cru any more, she’d turn into someone else living in the same body and wearing the same clothes. The old Cru might as well be dead.
(If she stopped loving me, I might as well be dead too. But that was a side issue. Can’t make omelettes without breaking hearts.)
If I made her stop loving me, I’d kill her. There’d still be a Cruella, but it’s be just an animated torso and appendages, haunted by the ghost of how she used to be, while a new occupier moved in and gutted the interior.
If I killed her, there’d be room on the bench; she’d drop out, having no opposite number, just like me. She’d be out of the loop. She could go home.
She’d be better off.
That just left the modus operandi; and that was easy.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I think you should go ahead with the merger.’
Cru looked at me, and it was as if some clown had poked a ladder through the roof, and I was looking up into darkness through two holes in her face.
‘It’d solve the mess,’ I went on, ‘and that’s the main thing. After all, this is very serious, we can’t go letting our feelings put the whole world in jeopardy. Besides,’ I added, ‘you shouldn’t think of it as anything bad happening. Stroke of luck for you, really. Just think of it as if you were moving out of a poky little flat into a luxury mansion. It’d suit me better too, of course. I mean, that goes without saying.’
And I knew her too well. I was giving a fairly unconvincing performance, but I could’ve been reading it off the teleprompt and she’d still have believed it, because she’d always believe the worst of me,
because she loved me and knew me too well. I could feel my hand tightening around the throat of her love, and the life slowly draining away with each heartbeat. It’d have been so much easier, so much more pleasant to slide a razor across my own throat, if only that’d have done any good – but it wouldn’t, because the universe didn’t need my space, think you very much, I could come and go as I liked and it wouldn’t make any difference to the balance of the see-saw. And if I died, all I’d be doing would be going away again, this time with no chance whatsoever of coming back, and Cru would still carry on loving me, stubborn as a dog refusing to let go of a stick, and she’d still be Cru.
‘Well?’ I said. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
Her face was as empty as a blank form. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you want.’
I knew her so well, I could feel the death of love; there was a specific moment at which she stopped loving me. And as soon as that moment came—
‘Run,’ I shouted. ‘Cru, for God’s sake just trust me. Get out of here.’
Yes, it can be a real pain at times, but there are occasions when a really forceful and assertive personality can make all the difference. A bewildered now-what-the-hell look flashed across her face, and then she started running. I hit the deck with my hands over my head, asinine as a Civil Defence leaflet, and closed my eyes.
The world didn’t end.
No fuses blew, no chasms opened up, the ground stayed stolidly motionless. After five seconds, I lowered my arms, raised my head and looked up.
The sun was coming out.
I let my head sink back onto the ground; it was a big, heavy, cumbersome head and I was sick and tired of supporting its weight. It could be a clever old head when it wanted to be, there were all sorts of smart ideas stuffed away inside it somewhere, along with all the trash. On balance, however, I didn’t like it much. In fact, as far as I was concerned, that head was just a pain in the neck.
I realised I was in shadow, and looked up. Melissa was kneeling beside me, her eyes wet with tears. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Go away,’ I said.
She winced as if I’d slapped her. ‘I love you,’ she said.
‘So what? Push off.’
I stood up. I’d felt happier. Being unspeakably cruel to Melissa hadn’t actually made me feel any better, for some odd reason, so I turned round to apologise, but she wasn’t there. No matter, I thought, she’ll definitely be better off. You don’t have to be an unmitigated bastard to save the world, but it probably helps. I can’t see how any nice, decent, honourable person could ever get the job done.
‘Well?’ said a voice behind me.
I didn’t recognise it, as such; but it was so completely and utterly unlike another voice I knew very well that I’d guessed the speaker’s identity well in advance of spinning round and seeing her. ‘Spike?’
There she was again; another bloody dreamboat. All the female elves were beautiful, of course, in the same vaguely unsatisfactory way as the countless industrial-grade California blondes you see on American daytime soap operas. Golden hair, flawless features, millimetreperfect Barbie-busted figures, swimming-pool-blue eyes – and instantly forgettable. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘my name’s Zefirassa, but I was Spike on the other side.’
I shrugged. There wasn’t really anything I wanted to say to her.
‘Sorry if I’m being intrusive,’ she said, ‘but oughtn’t you to go after her?’
‘Mind your own bloody business.’
‘I was watching,’ ex-Spike went on, ‘and I figured out what the problem was, and how you solved it. Wonderfully inventive and resourceful.’
Part of me felt like replying that whatever it was I was full of, it surely wasn’t resource. Most of me couldn’t be bothered, however, so I kept my face shut and shrugged again. The fact that she’d apparently been able to work out from first principles what the problem was, and how to solve it, wasn’t lost on me. I just wasn’t particularly interested.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, I really do think you ought to go after her,’ she went on. ‘She’s probably very upset. And you do love her ever such a lot.’
I scowled. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ I said. ‘But she doesn’t love me. Not any more. That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it?’
She huddled up a bit, like a leaf held over a candle. ‘Absolutely, yes,’ she said. ‘But you’ve sorted the problem out now – extremely well, of course in fact quite brilliantly. If you were to go to her and explain—’
I shook my head angrily. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I know her, you don’t. Sure, I could run after her, and I could explain the reasoning behind it and how it was the only way to deal with the situation without getting hurt. I could even,’ I added, ‘apologise. Wouldn’t do any good. If you had the faintest idea of what love’s really all about, you’d have known that.’
She looked at me with that simpering-sweet soulful expression I’d come to know and loathe so much. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’
She walked away, leaving me with my mouth wide open.
Stupid bitch, I thought, really hasn’t got a clue. Apparently she was under the impression that love was something you could switch on and off like electric current. Of course, it’s not like that. Oh, it’ll survive almost anything if it’s contrary and cussed enough, it’ll take pruning and parching and flooding and DDT in its stride and carry on growing like convolvulus – the more you try and clear it out, the stronger it gets. But when it dies, it dies; it’s as dead as Queen Anne or the Monty Python parrot, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t do spit about it.
All my own fault, of course. I was trying to be clever. It was a far, far better idea at the time than I had ever had before.
On the other hand, the least I could do for her was give her a ride home, instead of leaving her stranded for ever in the company of elves. Maybe Daddy George had deserved that (though the point was still as moot as a barrelful of ferrets as far as I was concerned) but Cru certainly hadn’t. I let my shoulders lump and set off after her at a medium-fast trudge.
Half an hour later I realised that I didn’t actually have to do all this tedious walking. Two seconds after that I was somewhere completely different, with a vague memory of a long, difficult search, and there she was, sitting under a flowering cherry tree, with her left shoe in one hand and the heel pertaining thereto in the other.
‘Bloody thing snapped off,’ she said, without looking up. ‘Serves me right for buying cheap, flashy footwear.’
‘Cru,’ I said.
She didn’t throw the shoe at me. That was a bad sign. Instead, she sat there pressing the heel back into the little square of cracked dry glue that marked where it’d been attached to the sole. ‘Ruined,’ she said. ‘I could try glueing it back on, but it’ll never stick. Oh well, chuck it away and get a new pair. It was a load of rubbish to begin with, anyway.’
I nodded. ‘Did you have them long?’ I asked.
‘Oh, years and years and years,’ she replied, ‘ever since I was a teenager. And you know what, they never did fit properly, used to rub my heel raw sometimes. I suppose I had this sort of silly sentimental attachment to them, and I simply couldn’t bring myself to chuck them. Now they’re bust, of course, and I can’t remember what I ever saw in them.’
I sat down on the grass, about six feet away from her. ‘Force of habit, maybe,’ I said.
‘Maybe. Doesn’t matter a whole lot now, of course. I expect I can get another pair just as good. Better, in fact. I can have any pair of shoes I want in the whole world.’ She twiddled the heel round in her fingers. ‘Except these, of course.’
‘Would you like to go home now?’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I don’t like it here,’ she replied. ‘The blue sky and happy, caring, beautiful people get right up my nose, and the flowers are hell on my hay fever.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘Of course, if we go on from here
I haven’t the faintest idea where we’ll end up.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well,’ I qualified, ‘if the village green was in fact central Birmingham, my guess is that right now we’re somewhere in Handsworth. But I wasn’t really paying attention.’
‘Handsworth’ll do fine.’ she replied. ‘In fact, I couldn’t care less if we finish up in Perry Bar as long as we get out of this dump.’
As it turned out, I was right. When we stepped out of the circle we were in Handsworth, and it was tipping down with rain. A bus whipped past, flaying us with flying puddle.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘goodbye, then.’
It was, I realised, now or never.
‘Goodbye,’ I said.
I guess that’s the difference between romance and real life, Elfland and Humanside. I think they probably have tupperware hearts in Elfland, thin and bendy and impossible to break, and thus not worth having. This side, we have the real thing; we have all the real things, good and bad, and it’s the fact that they can be lost and bruised and broken that makes them valuable. They have all the looks and the style and the flowering cherry trees, we have grotty streets and lousy weather and love that can’t be Araldited back together again if you’re cack-handed enough to drop it. They have elves who can edit out the bad and boring bits and live for ever; we’ve just got little people, living short lives, living every second of them, whether we like it or not.
It’s a great place to visit, Elfland, but I’m glad I don’t live there.
Just as there’s no silver medal for knife-fighting, there’s no consolation prize for making the wrong call on a street corner in Handsworth in the rain. I watched her walk away, until she turned a corner and wasn’t there any more.