by Gregory Dark
“Ze tummy grumbles,” a little further down the ‘bank’ Nespa was complaining to Susie and the bears. “It is time, n’est-ce-pas, to appease ze grumbles?”
Careful to hug the bank, Nespa had bounced around the same rock as she had previously en route to the snowwich crag.
“Susie,” hisspered the same disembodied voice, “I want to see her.”
Nespa caught the merest glance – of a carrot, was it? It was all over in a flash. She wasn’t even sure she had seen anything. She decided life would be a lot simpler if she hadn’t.
Back on the ‘bank’, Susie was tentatively sort of vaguely insinuating to the polo-bears that the ice seemed to be holding. There hadn’t even been the hint of a crack. Couldn’t she, maybe, just for a moment or two, perhaps …
“Good morrow, Ox,” said a funny-looking creature, startling Susie by its sudden appearance.
“Good morrow, Cam,” said another voice. “Good morrow, Susie,” they said together. Two heads: one body!!!
“Do I know you?” she asked. “I’m almost sure I don’t.” And yet they did, for no reason Susie could think of, look vaguely familiar.
“I’m I-Knew-It 31,” said the first.
“And I’m I-Knew-It 32,” said the second.
“Known, in short,” said Ox, “as IKI 31 and 32.”
“Quite,” said IKI 31.
The two I-Knew-Its were about Susie’s size, but with heads disproportionately large to the size of their one body. A casual first glance would tell you it was – or should that be: ‘they were’? – a large flightless bird – or birds. Closer inspection, however, revealed that the apparent wings were sleeves of a short black academic gown. Its chest was bright red, on which, emblazoned in yellow, were the letters ‘IKI’. IKI 31 wore a pair of pink spectacles, repaired at the arm with a piece of sticking plaster. IKI 32 wore a black eye-patch.
They reeked of menace.
Chapter 12
“We have been sent by the Snow-it-alls …” said 32
“May their names be reverenced,” incanted 31.
“…to invite you to a snowball in your honour,” continued 32, “at Snow-it Hall.”
“We are to go now,” said 31.
“The Snow-it-alls …,” said 32.
“May their names be reverenced,” said 31.
“ … are waiting. Snow-it-alls …,” 32 continued.
“May their names be reverenced,” said 31 again.
“… do not wait,” said 32.
“You don’t want to go to Snow-it Hall,” Ox hinted. The IKIs threw him a glance, the menace of which was spiked with venom. “Not before you’ve tried a snowwich,” he added hastily.
“I don’t want to try a snowwich.” It was Susie’s turn to sulk.
32 saw its chance. “Food,” it said, “awaits our honoured guest at Snow-it Hall. Call your friends in off the ice,” 32 continued, before 31 added with a smile bursting with insincerity, “why don’t you?”
Susie, frankly, had had her fill of polo. And of polo-bears? … Well, if her cup did not exactly runneth over, it was beginning to brimmeth clothe to the edge.
Hobbling back on three paws, her fourth holding a mound of snowwiches, Nespa made no acknowledgement of the voice which hisspered at her, yet again: “Susie. Remember.”
“Oui, oui,” she returned vaguely back. But even the most casual listener would have detected a lack of any conviction in the tone.
“Mimimi!” Susie shouted. “Miss Chief!” The two skaters stopped mid-slither. “We’re off to a banquet.” The skaters mimed that they couldn’t hear and continued skating.
“Call that a shout?” Bluemerang asked. “You think anything but a woozy Chihuahua is going to obey a baby’s blueming blouson of a shout like that?”
“Don’t, don’t you know, ask him to do better,” Mr E advised.
“You do better, then,” Susie challenged him.
“OIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!” screamed Bluemerang. All around them the snow juddered on the peaks of the mountains, a few small avalanches hurtled themselves down a few small cliffs. Miss Chief and Mimimi statue’d where they were.
“What did I tell you?” asked Mr E of Susie.
“WE’RE GOING!!!” the blueming boom continued. A few fir trees lost their frosting. “IF YOU DON’T WANT TO STAY HERE ALONE, GET BACK HERE.”
There was a brief glance between them. Could they pretend not to have heard that too? No, they both tacitly agreed. No. That injunction could have been heard on the far side of Jupiter. Miss Chief assumed her most pronounced indignation, and started skating back towards them. Mimimi Beverly-Hillsed a shrug struggling to lay itself back and followed suit.
Nespa also bounced her way back to the group at this stage.
The two polo-bears sniffed a sullen air. “Why don’t you come too?” Susie asked.
“It is you, Susie, who are guest of honour,” said 31.
“Polo-bears,” said Ox sadly, “are not allowed into Snow-it Hall.”
“They are not the most delicate of creatures,” 31 creepy-crawlied on. “Previous visits have inevitably lead to substantial refurbishments.”
“Excuse we, Bluemerang …” Miss Chief was advancing on them like an enraged hornet, “Excuse we …”
“You are to walk in our footsteps,” 32 told them regally.
“The route is hazardous,” 31 told them majestically.
“Exactly in our footsteps,” 32 told them imperiously.
“Will I see you again?” Susie asked of the two bears, suddenly besieged by visions of disaster.
“The whole fun of the future, Susie,” said Mr E, “is not knowing what it holds.”
“I souldn’t have caid it better,” Cam nodded sagely.
“And so we go,” said 32.
“And so we go,” said 31.
And so … they went.
Chapter 13
The first footfall squeaked rather as it pressed into the snow; the second squeaked hardly at all. By the time the last Sufrog had trodden in the footsteps of his predecessor there was no footstep to be trodden into, just a rather soupy slurry, whose squeaks long since had been drowned. It wasn’t a cavort, this, through lily-lined lanes. But a trudge, one of grimaces grim and a hardiness that was hard.
Being nine hundred and ninety-nine, Mr E’s energy was no longer that of a mere three-hundred-whatever old. He therefore suggested to O’Nestly that, now the chucking interlude of the odyssey had come to an end, he return to the job of Susie contact. O’Nestly, truth to tell, was rather downily ensconced and was considering just letting his eyelids drop. For a quick zizz. Twenty winkettes. Certainly no more than thirty.
But O’Nestly was a kind frog and a good frog. Albeit with a few bad-tempered hrrrmphs, he ceded his place to Mr E.
On they trudged. On they sludged. On they ‘in-their-leaders-steps-they-slid’.
A propos of apparently nothing, Susie (who was panting fiercely now and sweating buckets) suddenly said, “We’ve been away, Mr E, an awfully long time.”
Mr E was somewhat taken aback by the swift change of the conversation’s direction. “Only in local time,” he told her, boring through her eyes to excavate for hidden meaning. “In Earth time, not even a second.”
“Hmmm,” Susie hmmmed unsurely.
“Trust me,” said Mr E.
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not,” replied the beanbag frog, with maybe just a grain or two of Miss Chief’s hoity-toitiness.
Trudge, trudge, trudge. Sludge, sludge, sludge.
“They’ll be going frantic, Mum and Phil.”
“Not even a second has passed, Susie,” Mr E reassured her.
Susie continued to look dubious. “I think, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home,” she panted.
“We’ve only just got here.”
“My parents, don’t you know, could be worried, you know, sick,” pleaded Susie, confident in the certainty such an appeal would be irresistibl
e.
Trudge, trudge, trudge. Sludge, sludge, sludge.
“What is so hard to understand?” asked Mr E.
“Yes, what is so hard to understand, Mr E?” Susie pouted as she panted. “I want to go home.”
“What do you like doing best, Susie? As in, in the whole wide world?”
“Going home,” Susie continued to pout.
“You’re just avoiding the issue. Go on,” said Mr E. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“How do you know it’s secret?” Susie winced as she slid underfoot and held her arm out to save herself from falling.
Mr E, on the other hand, was armchaired comfortably in the bib of her dungarees. “It nearly always is,” he said. “You humans find it difficult to talk about things you love. Things you hate, easy. Or people you hate. How many times have you told your mother that you hate her? And how many times that you love her?”
“That’s different.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t have a go at me,” she said, suddenly finding her indignation. “That’s why I want to get home.”
“You’re changing the subject again. What’s your favourite thing?”
“I don’t have a favourite thing,” Susie decided.
“And that’s why you’re blushing, is it?” asked Mr E. “Because you don’t have a favourite thing.”
“Painting,” Susie almost spat out. “Painting. There. Satisfied?”
“Why would you be embarrassed about liking to paint?”
“In the real world, Mr E, on Earth and things, most people seem to find it hilarious.”
“Then, Susie,” said Mr E, “it is not you who should be embarrassed, but most people. Painting is not to be embarrassed about, painting is to glory in. Some of humankind’s greatest achievements are paintings. It is an achievement. Any painting is an achievement. Something only humankind can do. Kicking a ball between two bits of wood is something a donkey can do.”
“And quite a few asses.” Susie smiled.
“Certainly,” said Mr E. “Very many asses. When you’re painting does time whizz past?”
“Yes,” said Susie.
“Whizz past?”
“Yes, Mr E, whizz past, zoom past, whatever.”
“And when you’re playing … let’s say soccer, for instance, does it whizz past then?”
“Not exactly.”
“My point,” said Mr E triumphantly.
“Your point?”
“My point exactly,” said Mr E.
“And what – exactly – would it be, then, your point?”
“Time,” said Mr E, “does not travel at the same speed.”
“That’s just silly,” Susie said.
“Why is it silly?”
“Because it feels like a long time doesn’t make it one.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“That’s as silly as saying if I feel like an ice-cream I am an ice-cream.”
“Now you’re playing with words,” Mr E told her. “If you feel like a long time it is one. How do you know it isn’t?”
Susie thought for a bit. “You look at your watch,” she check-mated as she tried to shield the fact she wasn’t wearing one.
“That’s only mechanical time,” said Mr E. “Mechanical time, don’t you know, isn’t true time. The only reality,” said Mr E, “is what we believe reality to be, or what we feel reality to be. Shivering our skin off on a soccer field, it feels like every second is an hour. Every second, then, is an hour. That’s the basis of us Sufrogs, the basis indeed of both all reality, don’t you know, and of magi.”
Rarely had Susie’s plex been more per-ed. She therefore grabbed hold of the last statement as a lone life-jacket in a sea of confusion. “You mean magic,” she said.
“Magic!” sneered Mr E. “As in conjurers and wizards and all that other nonsense?”
“It’s not nonsense,” Susie indignated.
“It’s not even really magic,” said Mr E. “What is magic is not producing rabbits from top-hats it is producing rabbits from rabbits. That, don’t you know, is truly awesome.”
“What’s that got to do with …?”
“Only conjurers can do conjuring tricks,” said Mr E, “and only witches can ride on broomsticks. Magi, though. We, all of us, are capable of magi. It’s the magi inside i-magi-nation. It’s there for us all to tap whenever we want. It’s also, by the way, the poetic word for the three wise men who came to see the baby Jesus.”
“So?” asked Susie.
“Is there a ‘so’, Susie?” asked Mr E. “Even that is for you to decide.”
“DON’T DO THAT!!!” shouted 32.
Miss Chief had diverted from the sludge, sludge, sludge of the trudged, trudged path to skatette a petite pirouette on an adjoining ‘rink’. 32 had looked around just before she was about to step on the ice. “Excuse we,” imperioused Miss Chief, “excuse we,” she hoity-toitied. “Do you know to whom you are addressing? We am the Sufrog amphibassador.”
“You will not be told again,” said 32. “One further transgression and you will leave me no choice but to report you to the Snow-it-alls.”
“May their names be reverenced,” said 31.
“May their names be reverenced,” said 32.
“We,” Miss Chief crawled her way up to her full – not too substantial – height, “are not told what we do. We tell others. That is the status whoa …”
“Quo,” said O’Nestly.
“Whatever. Imagine the to-do, if those like we who tell others to do were themselves told what to do. It would be a to-do where no-one knew what to do. And that, our odd shaped friend, is what is known as anchory.”
“Anarchy, Miss Chief,” wearied O’Nestly.
Glaring at 32, holding him like steel pinions, she deliberately sprung three giant hops onto the ice.
Which then cracked.
And, like a coin in a wishing-well, Miss Chief plummeted through the hole to its murky depths.
Chapter 14
“Slurp … brrr … slurp,” gasped Miss Chief as she slurpedbrrred-slurped.
She struggled to find purchase on the ice, but this – because, now shattered, more fragile – simply gave way. She sank again. Like all frogs, Miss Chief was a good swimmer, but not in frozen waters. In frozen waters, she now discovered, her limbs too seemed to freeze.
“Help we,” she spluttered as she came up for the second time.
Susie was on the point of rushing to the ice when she heard the flip-flip-flip of flippers scurrying as fast as flippers can scurry: Mimimi.
Nothing laid back about Mimimi now.
Miss Chief slurped some more, brrred with frightening intensity. Her colour was changing from green to blue. She tried to shout, but even the words seemed frozen on her lips.
“I’m there, Miss Chief,” Mimimi reassured her. The tone was reassuring, her stride confident. “You just hang on in there, you hear?”
Miss Chief dropped, stone-like, for the third time. Mimimi jumped in right behind her.
“Oh bother-blueming-ration,” exclaimed Bluemerang. “I wanted to rescue her.”
Mimimi emerged from the fissure, Miss Chief’s head in her arms. For a brief moment, Susie was tempted to laugh. The image was that, almost, of a traditional ghost, its head under one arm. But she shook the giggles from her as Mimimi shook the cold water from her head.
Mimimi grabbed hold of the ice before her. As it had with Miss Chief, this simply broke.
The I-knew-it was in some kind of a dither, that much was clear. One of its heads kept saying: “The Snow-it-alls – may their names be reverenced – are waiting”; the other intoned: “They are expecting seven for the snowball. We can’t turn up with just five.” Both heads whined at the Sufrogs: “Do hurry up. Hurry, please, up.” It hobbled about from one foot to the other like someone bursting, the wrong side of the locked bathroom door.
“We’ll have to form a chain,” said O’Nestly.
Bluemerang shot O’Nestly a warning sho
t across his bows. Rescue, the shot announced, was Bluemerang territory. Trespassers were not allowed. “Fine,” said O’Nestly in answer to the look. “You organise it. Only organise it fast. Your frog is also turning blue.”
“We need to form a blueming chain,” Bluemerang told them.
“Maybe,” suggested Susie, “if I lay down right on the edge of the pond, and stretched my arms out just as far as they would go …”
“Just do it,” O’Nestly urged. “You’ll theorise them to death.”
In the water, Mimimi was trying to pacify a frantic Miss Chief, thrashing around as if she were the victim of a shark attack. This thrashing was, of course, turning a bad situation into one several times worse. What had been the splintered timber of the cracked ice now became eggshells. It could sustain no weight whatsoever. In creating the bridge to them it was entirely possible that Susie would follow them into the freezing water. She started to lay herself down gingerly on the ground. Started slowly to slither herself out to the hole in the ice.
“You could,” said O’Nestly, “also over-cautious them to death.”
Susie stretched out her hand. She couldn’t reach them.
“You’ve got to blueming stre-e-e-e-etch, Susie,” said Bluemerang.
Susie extended her fingers to their tippiest. And Mimimi all but wrenched her arm from its socket trying to reach them. They missed by nanometres.
“Zut, alors,” said Nespa, and scurried the length of Susie’s body, up over her arms. “Grab ze tail, n’est-ce pas,” she told Susie. Who did so.
“I was just about to blueming do that,” said Bluemerang somewhat indignantly.
Nespa slithered on the ice. It made an ominous rending sound. But it held. Slowly, very slowly, the ice creaking beneath her, squeaking beneath her, moaning and growling beneath her, Nespa flattened her body against the icy surface and extended her forepaws.
Mimimi grabbed at them, and broke off some more ice. Nespa stood her ground. Mimimi grabbed at Nespa again. Got hold of a paw.
“PULL!” Nespa shouted to Susie, who started to draw in Nespa and her frozen, soggy load much as a stevedore would haul in a hawser.
Mimimi’s arms were sausages of ice. She was finding sustained purchase of Nespa’s legs almost impossible. “I can’t …” she started to stammer. For a change, Nespa’s speed of uptake was rather fast. She bit at Mimimi’s arms and, terrier-like, held onto her as Mimimi, terrier-like, held onto the shivering, but still hrrrmphing Miss Chief.