by Heide Goody
“Filthy little bugger,” said Rose and then gagged as the expanding cloud of flatulence reached them.
Dwarfs stuffed their noses and mouths with their beards or their hats. Ella coughed at the stink which toured a colourful but disgusting path from human digestion, through rich farmyard stench and beyond into an uncharted, reeking realm of noxious smells. Ella clutched her throat and realised she couldn’t breathe. They would either have to flee or pass out.
“S’horrible,” spluttered Rose hoarsely.
Then Ella had an idea. It probably wasn’t a good idea but Windy’s fart was starving her brain of oxygen and, in the heat of the moment, it seemed a brilliant idea.
“Get down, Granny,” she instructed and then pulled the oven door open.
Ella whipped her still wet blanket-turned-cloak off the clothes horse and threw it over herself and Rose as Passive Aggressive leapt out howling, his trouser legs on fire.
Covered by the blanket, she didn’t see what happened when the flaming dwarf met Windy’s cloud of methane-laden guff but she heard it and felt it. With a sound like the world’s biggest paper bag popping, a hot and unyielding blast threw them to the ground. Metal dented, glass shattered and a lone voice yelled, “Bastaaard!”
Ella had landed with her elbows locked and her body arched protectively over her grandma. Beneath the now steaming blanket, Ella said, “Are you okay?”
“Are you?” replied Granny Rose, which was good enough for Ella.
She threw the blanket aside and helped Rose to her feet. The kitchen had been devastated. The windows had been blown out. What crockery had survived Shitfaced’s rampage had been pounded to dust. One of the kitchen tables had been turned to matchwood. The table was badly charred. And the cosy on the teapot was burning merrily. Additionally, there were four unconscious dwarfs, variously dangling from pan hooks, curled up on the stove, wedged head first into cupboard doors and slumped in the sink. One dwarf lay in the centre of the room, clutching his behind.
“My arse,” whimpered Windy. “You’ve ruined it.”
He gave a toot of misery and immediately winced in agony.
Ella didn’t know what to say; she hadn’t meant to cause such damage.
“Granny…”
“Into the tub with them,” said Rose briskly.
Ella opened up the twin tub.
“I can see the light!” slurred Shitfaced. “What was that noise? Sounded like the end of the world.”
“It was Windy,” said Ella.
“Ah, the trump of doom,” said Shitfaced.
Rose scooped up and dropped the comatose dwarfs one by one into the tub. The last to go in was the weeping and repentant parper.
“Shouldn’t there be seven of them?” said Rose.
“Apparently, there’s only six.”
“Disco’s on a secret mission,” mumbled Inappropriate.
Rose shut the lid and dragged over a cast iron shoe repairing last to hold the lid firmly in place.
“They’ll need a long overnight soak,” said Rose with no small amount of vindictiveness and turned the washing machine to its hottest setting.
“The Spinning Wheel Gambit,” she said. “Surely, there was a funeral for mum.”
“There was, but Carabosse had spirited her away by then.”
“Where to? What happened?”
“Did tha not listen to the tapes?”
“Those little audio cassettes? There’s no player upstairs. Have you still got one?”
Granny pulled a face. “Try the pantry. Top shelf.”
Ella went into Granny’s tiny pantry, which was really a darkened cupboard filled with storage jars and ancient kitchen gadgets. The top shelf appeared to be where Granny kept things that she didn’t need very often. Ella inspected a tin containing cake decorating nozzles. Another held a dismantled mincer. Finally, she found the Dictaphone underneath a stack of recipe clippings and lifted it down in triumph.
“Got it! Might need some batteries though.” She flipped open the battery cover. “It needs, wow, it needs four.”
Granny raised an eyebrow. “There’s some in that drawer there. Listen to the answer phone message. The conversation with Carabosse. Tea’ll be a while longer now I reckon. I’ll give thee a shout.”
In the guest bedroom, Ella speculatively placed another video cassette in the camcorder. In the recording, the camera rested on the seat of a wooden picnic table, its gaze encompassing a pair of denim clad knees, the underside of the table and, a little way off, the swings and slides of a children’s playground. Ella recognised the embroidered jeans in the picture as the ones she was wearing now. Apart from the distant and almost inaudible action in the playground, nothing happened. Ella guessed that, unless her mum was into making avant garde video art, there had been a slip of the finger on the record button.
Ella set the Dictaphone on her lap and pressed play.
“- a menial task, do not offer to take their place, not even for an instant. Rule number eighteen, do not accept food from a stranger. Rule number nineteen, never stray from the —”
She turned it off, not because she didn’t want to hear but because, on the screen, the denim knees had just stood.
“You came,” said Natalie.
“Regretting it by the moment,” said an invisible woman.
The denim knees sat and were joined by the folds of a many-layered skirt.
“I don’t approve of playgrounds,” said the woman. “What’s wrong with climbing trees and jumping off logs?”
“Playgrounds are safer.”
The woman made a disgusted noise.
“Fun’s not fun if it’s safe. There’s no reward without suffering.”
“Ah,” said Natalie.
“Ah?”
“I was wondering what you got up to on your days off but, no, I can see it now. A little kinky fun with whips and leather.”
“Natalie Thorn! Don’t be so vulgar!”
“It’s Hannaford. I’m married.”
“Not to the right man!”
There was a lengthy pause and then Natalie said, “Your name is Carabosse.”
“Maybe. Names are like faces. It’s practical to have more than one.”
“We’ve been getting your ‘gifts’”
“Gifts?”
“It’s not going to work. Every time you send one to us, I’m just going to smash it up.”
Carabosse laughed, a girlish titter.
“It’s not me, dearie. It’s the universe. Before her sixteenth birthday, she will find a spinning wheel and —”
“Is this because we didn’t invite you to her christening?” said Natalie.
Carabosse tittered again.
“You have everything on its head. I’m the good one. I’m her fairy godmother, as I was yours. Oh, the princes I had lined up for you.”
“Just what do you want?” demanded Natalie. “You want an apology? You want me?”
“I want what I’ve always wanted. Six little words.”
“What?”
“‘And they lived happily ever after.’”
“Then lay off with the magical curses!”
“It’s just a little prick and a sleep. Most women have had to put up with worse to get their heart’s desire. She won’t age, Natalie. I can arrange for you and that bore of a husband to sleep too if you wish.”
“So you can go out and find a bloody prince to wake her? She doesn’t need that kind of help.”
“Now, my dear, that’s all very progressive but people do undervalue the success of arranged marriages —”
“We don’t want your help!”
“Shush, dear. Godmother knows best.”
There was a bang of glass being placed forcefully on the table top.
“What’s this?” said Carabosse.
“Libertatibus perierat et ignaro —”
“How dare you!” spat Carabosse in a voice that was far deeper and far less constrained than before. “You think you can bind me like some
garden sprite? In what? A bottle?”
There was a sharp pop and glass shards scattered down. A crack appeared across the camera lens and the recording stopped.
That was the last video cassette in the box and, judging by the crack in the lens, it was indeed the very last video recorded. Ella looked down at the Dictaphone and inserted a different cassette.
There was a second-long beep. It was an answer phone recording.
“Mum. Mum?” It was Natalie. She was outside somewhere. Distant but fast-moving traffic could be heard in the background. “Mum, it’s me. I found it. The spinning wheel she intends to use. I’m at this pub, the White Hart, and she’s got it at this place a few miles down the road. I’m going in there.” Natalie paused and the sound deadened a second as though she had her hand over the receiver. “I can’t destroy it. She’ll just make another one. She said that the magic will just keep going until a finger is pricked and the spell is cast. If someone’s got to prick their finger, I’d rather it was me than Ella. She’s going to be pissed off, mum. I need you to look after Gavin.” Natalie sniffled. “Look after Ella for me.”
Click.
Sometime after nightfall, they ate a dinner of slightly burned but nonetheless delicious Yorkshire puddings (cooked in lard, of course), beef gravy and runner beans from the garden. Six unhappy someones thumped and gurgled in the washing machine.
“Do you know where my mum is?” said Ella.
Rose shook her head and spooned gravy into her mouth.
“I only know what’s in that there box,” she said.
“I have to warn dad.”
“And what will tha say, love?”
Ella gazed at her beans — her tasty and reassuringly non-magical beans — and shrugged.
“I can’t let them get married.”
“No. Not least because that Myra lass was a right hoity-toity miss.”
“My phone is dead. As a doornail. Do you…?”
Rose shook her head again. “Who’d phone me?” She put her spoon down. “T’woods are too dangerous at night. In t’morning, tha’ll take my car and go find tha dad.”
“Will you come with me?”
“No, love. It’s been trouble enough keeping mesen safe here. I’ll not be going out there again while Carabosse is free.”
Ella reached over and squeezed her hand.
“I’ll come back.”
“Course tha will,” said Rose. “I reckon tha owes me some fresh china and a new window an’ all.”
There was gooseberry and apple pie for pudding and then, as tiredness came over her like an avalanche, she said her goodnights and made her way upstairs. Tripping out of her clothes in the guest bedroom, Ella saw there was still one item in her mum’s box of memories. It was the cylindrical bundle wrapped in yellowed newspaper. It was a jam jar and, inside it, glowering with livid fury and glowing with a vivid green light was a misshapen figure, all fatty folds, teeth and scabs.
“So that’s what a boggle looks like,” said Ella.
The boggle threw rude gestures at her.
“Zxxxkrt! Zhveee! Skrbble! Release! Jaaaql! Free!” it squeaked.
“You bit my mum,” said Ella.
The boggle laughed and threw further rude gestures at her, some of them quite creative.
“Zaarb! Jkreeet! Kill! Squaxl-squaxl! Whore!”
Ella put the glowing jar on the bedside cabinet and used it as a nightlight as she climbed into bed and went to sleep listening to her mum’s voice.
“- path. Rule number twenty, if you are given a rule, follow it. Rule number twenty-one, never trust a man with an axe. Rule number twenty-two, never trust gingerbread…”
Chapter Seven
There is an old fairy tale regarding the nature of time and of infinity which ponders the length of time it would take a bird to grind down a mountain by sharpening its beak upon it. Ella woke in the morning to discover that it took two determined (possibly even demented) bluebirds a single night to peck and scrape their way through a bedroom window. Ella sat up as a large chink of glass fell down and the first bluebird pushed through.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said and leapt up.
The bluebird flew straight for the bedroom door and Ella slammed it a millisecond after it had passed through.
“Intruders!” she yelled.
The other bluebird had now pushed through. She grabbed the nearest thing to hand, the Dictaphone, and swiped at it. The swift bird did a barrel roll to evade her, swooped along the bed head and tipped the boggle jar off the cabinet.
Ella roared in frustration as with a smash, a pop and a “Xlor! Jizzimus! Hurrah!” the boggle was free. The ankle-high sprite gave an evil chuckle and then bounced like a rubber ball from floor to ceiling and to the door. It swung on the handle, pulled the door open and, a second later, it and the bluebird were through.
“Granny!” shouted Ella, giving chase in her underwear.
Ella followed the twitters and thumps and the greasy smears the boggle left on the walls. She blundered through the kitchen door and found Rose fending off two birds and a slimy fairy with a frying pan.
“Modesty, Ella!” said Granny, seeing her state of undress.
“But…”
Rose gave Ella one of her patented looks. “But me no buts ‘til tha’s covered tha butt.”
Ella grabbed her now dry clothes from the horse by the stove and, as she struggled into her trousers, Rose landed a direct hit on one of the bluebirds. With a satisfying and feather-splattered thunk the bird ricocheted off the fridge hard enough to bounce the door open.
However, Rose’s victory was short-lived. The boggle had slipped under the heavy cast iron shoe last that was holding the twin-tub closed and was levering it away.
“Don’t!” yelled Ella.
“Jaxl! Bot-bot! Knickers!” snorted the boggle and with astonishing strength, thrust the shoe last aside.
Rose leapt onto the twin-tub lid to hold it down as the angry occupants attempted to force their way out. The boggle, pleased with his wicked work, chortled. Ella scooped him up mid-chortle, threw him into the fridge and shut the door on him. She hurried to help her grandma but Rose waved her away and pointed to the hook by the back door.
“Take t’keys,” she said. “And go! Warn tha dad.”
Ella dithered for a second then complied. She grabbed the car keys off the hook, OCD’s wedding seat plan off the side and, with the Dictaphone in her free hand and no shoes on her feet, ran out of the house. She ran round the borders, into the hen house and jumped into the driving seat of Granny Rose’s Zastava Podvarak. She turned the ignition and was surprised to hear it catch first time. A couple of chickens on the back seat gave fright and flew out.
The car had three gears: ‘И’, ‘б’ and ‘Р’. Ella stuck it in ‘И’, hit the accelerator and, with straw spinning under the wheels, burst out onto the grassy track that passed for Granny Rose’s driveway. The driveway led down to a pair of gates that were as rotten and overgrown as the fence. With a silent apology to her grandma for yet more damage, Ella kept the pedal down and rammed the gates. They flew apart, not so much smashed as mulched.
Ella looked in the rearview mirror as Rushy Glen receded from view. She spotted a blur of colour in the wing mirror. Specifically, it was a bobbing red hat, with Psycho the dwarf underneath it. The other dwarfs were behind Psycho. Six hats sped purposefully towards her, although it appeared Shitfaced had already fallen over.
Ella hurriedly tried to change up gear. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Windy gain an extra turn of speed while Inappropriate, who was behind him, reeled with horror at the after-effects of his flatulent turbo boost. Windy had his hands on the car’s bumper when Ella finally managed to push the gear stick into ‘б’ and accelerated ahead with a screech. Ella heard voices under the throaty roar of the car’s engine.
“Don’t forget, Mirror-Signal-Manoeuvre!” shouted OCD.
Windy held on to the bumper for as long as he was able, trumpeting in defianc
e as Ella sped off.
Ella accelerated to a bone-shaking thirty miles an hour and Windy fell away, the brown-topped bundle rolling and bouncing in the dust.
Only then did Ella allow herself a sigh of relief.
A hen jumped from the back of the car onto the head rest of the passenger seat.
“Well, I declare, madam,” said the hen, “that was jolly dramatic, what.”
Ella gave a little shriek.
“You can talk!”
“Indeed, I can. Indeed, I can. Of course, a clever hen knows better than to open her mouth in Mrs Thorn’s company, what.”
Ella nodded then wound down the window and heaved the chicken out.
“Rule number three,” she recited. “If animals talk to you, don’t reply.”
Granny Rose’s car was showroom-ready. Unfortunately, the showroom in question had been behind the iron curtain and devoted to the egalitarian creed that everyone deserved an equally shitty car. The bodywork had probably only survived this long because Grandma stored the car in her chicken shed. The ammonia stench of chicken manure fought a brave battle for Ella’s attention, but it never really stood a chance against the mechanical terrors of the car itself.
There was a perfectly alarming hole in the floor, just ahead of Ella’s feet. (Had a hungry fox burrowed in through the floor?) It was disconcerting to see the ground rushing beneath her as she turned off the dirt track and onto a narrow road paved with gravel. Ella could have ignored the hole and kept her eyes resolutely on the road ahead, but something was lodged under the pedal. (Perhaps the fox had a taste for talking chicken?) The clutch was stuck. Ella would need to pull up on the pedal to release it, which meant either taking her eyes off the road or groping blindly toward the finger-devouring blur she had been struggling to ignore. In time, she decided to give up on the clutch and change between the three unknowable gears without it. But the technique of listening to the engine revs to decide when to change gear was ruined by noise from the broken radio. It was stuck between stations, and Ella hadn’t yet found a way to turn it either down or off.
“Police are investigating — kxzzz! — apparent disappearance of Princess Sofia of Holland — kxzzz! — family from their home in County Durham — kxzzz! — a family celebration. Eyewitnesses say — kxzzz! — were last seen on the dancefloor before —”