by P. G. Bell
She was elbowed roughly to one side by Fletch, who had reappeared carrying a black cylindrical rod, about the length of a pencil but much thicker. He swung the door shut again with a crash and began tapping the end of the rod against the doorframe.
“What are you doing now?” she demanded.
“Concentratin’,” he said. He pressed an ear to the wood. “Not my finest work, but it’ll have to do.”
Her patience finally at an end, Suzy leaned over his shoulder and plucked the rod from his fingers.
“Oi!” he shouted, jumping to snatch it back. Suzy held it over her head, out of reach.
“I’m not giving this back until you tell me who you are and what you’re doing here,” she said.
“That’s not a toy!” he said, still jumping and waving his arms. “You’re stealing. Thief!”
“Intruder!” she countered, and raised herself up on tiptoes.
“That’s not fair,” Fletch whined, finally coming to a breathless halt. “It’s size-ist.”
“It’s perfectly fair,” said Suzy, trying to maintain some composure. “Just tell me, and you can have it back. I promise.”
Fletch shut one eye and peered at her sideways. “Really?”
“Really. But neither of us is going anywhere until you cooperate.”
Fletch sighed, and his shoulders sagged in defeat. “All right, you win. But I hope you realize how much trouble I could get into for this.”
“You’re already in trouble,” she said. “With me.”
He gave her a resentful look and scuffed a foot back and forth on the carpet. “I’m an engineer,” he muttered. “I maintains the lines, and builds new ones when they’re needed.”
“What lines?”
“What lines d’you think?” He indicated the tracks. “These lines. The railway lines.”
Suzy blinked. “But the nearest railway line is miles away. And anyway, this is a house. You don’t get railway lines in houses.”
“Well, not normally, no,” said Fletch in a tone of voice that Suzy had only ever heard used on other people. It made her feel a bit stupid, and her skin prickled with embarrassment. “But we’re in a bit of a pickle, y’see. The Express got held up at those new border controls in the Western Fenlands, and we’ve got to make up the time before our next delivery. Going by the normal route would take an age, so this is a shortcut.” He tapped the side of his great nose. “Strictly unofficial, of course. We’re not really allowed to set foot in human territory, but here we are, for a one-night-only sort of thing.”
Suzy didn’t grasp most of what Fletch had said, which only made her more frustrated, and she seized on the one nugget that she felt sure she’d understood. “Railways can’t just appear and disappear overnight,” she said hotly.
“They can when I’m around,” said Fletch with a proud smile. “Fastest in the business me, although, at my age, I’m starting to feel it a bit.”
“Why? How old are you?”
Fletch puffed his chest out and affected an air of great dignity. “A thousand and ten,” he said. “And still two centuries from retirement.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Nobody’s that old.”
“Really? And how old are you, exactly?”
“Eleven,” said Suzy.
“Ha!” Fletch’s laugh was so explosive that it rocked him back on his heels. “So I s’pose you know everything, then?”
Suzy felt a fresh rush of embarrassment and, hot on its heels, a surge of anger. She was so angry that she could hear her blood singing in her ears. Perhaps her feelings showed on her face, because Fletch began backing away from her toward the safety of the tent, his eyes widening.
“Don’t walk away from me,” she demanded, but he plunged a hand into his overalls and pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch. He flipped it open. “Crikey, where’s the time gone? They’re here!”
Only then did she feel the tremor beneath her feet and realize that the singing sound she heard wasn’t coming from her ears at all—it was coming from the rails.
A rush of cold air barreled down the hall, and she turned, thinking the front door had opened. Instead, it had vanished, and in its place stood an archway of old stone bricks. She just had time to realize that the world that should have been visible outside it—the street, the houses, the neat little gardens—was missing, replaced by an echoing black void, before she was blinded by the glare of a huge light, racing toward her through the darkness. The scream of a whistle filled the hall, metal ground on metal, and Suzy threw herself backward as the train bore down upon her.
3
THE IMPOSSIBLE POSTAL EXPRESS
The last thing Suzy saw before she hit the ground was a train erupting in a whirling mass of wheels, rods, and pistons from the tunnel mouth. Then she screwed her eyes shut, and for a second, the world was dark and full of noise. Hot steam gusted over her hands and face, metal screeched and clashed, a whistle howled. She gritted her teeth and clapped her hands over her ears.
The scream of brakes reached a crescendo and died suddenly away. There was a last outrush of steam, like a sigh of relief, and everything went quiet.
Suzy risked opening one eye.
She had fallen at the foot of Fletch’s tent, her feet just inches from the track. Rough hands grasped her shoulders, and she looked up to see Fletch standing over her, pulling her into a sitting position. She was too shocked to resist.
“What were you thinkin’?” he said, hopping from foot to foot with agitation. “You almost became an Incident!”
“A what?” she said, her ears still ringing.
“An Incident on the Line! The worst type of Incident it’s possible to be.”
Suzy looked at him blankly and wondered what to say. His tone made her want to apologize, but she wasn’t sure he deserved it. In fact, didn’t he still owe her an apology? She was just gathering her thoughts to say so when a new voice called out from somewhere high above them.
“Fletch? Is that you, old chap? What the dickens is going on down there?”
They both looked up toward the source of the voice, and Suzy almost fell backward in surprise. A mighty old steam locomotive towered over her, hissing and shuddering and belching yellowish steam from its chimney. It was bigger than any Suzy had seen before—at least, bits of it were. To her eyes, it looked like a large train had smashed into several smaller ones, and maybe a few buildings along the way, and the parts had all got mixed up and stuck together; its chimney was too wide, none of the drive wheels quite matched, and the cylindrical belly of its boiler was too fat at the front and too narrow at the back. The driver’s cab was nothing less than a neat little redbrick cottage, complete with tiled roof, window boxes, and a bright red front door, which stood open on the near side of the boiler.
It was from here that the voice had come, and as Suzy watched, a small figure scampered out of it and onto a narrow gangway that ran along the length of the locomotive’s flank, a few feet above the wheels. The figure carried a lantern and, when they were directly above Fletch, shone the light down over the gangway’s safety railing, like a spotlight. “Fletch? We didn’t just have an Incident, did we?”
Suzy tried to make out the figure’s face, but it was just a black patch of shadow behind the glare of the lantern.
“It’s worse than that, Stonker,” said Fletch. “Look.” He hooked a thumb in Suzy’s direction, and the light swung over to cover her.
“Good grief, a local! And it’s awake.”
“Looks like someone on the prep team messed up,” said Fletch. “Who was on shift tonight?”
“Not a soul, old chap,” said Stonker. “Didn’t you get the memo? They did it all remotely.”
“Pah!” Fletch spat. “No wonder. What do I keep telling ’em? This remote spell business is all well and good, but you need people on the ground if you want the job done properly. I mean, it’s just a sleeping spell. A common tooth fairy could do it.”
“Quite right, old boy, quite right,�
�� said Stonker, clearly distracted. “But given that it’s here, what do you suggest we do with it? We’re still behind schedule.”
Fletch scratched his scalp and looked Suzy up and down. “I should put a call in to HQ, I s’pose. See if they can send someone to reset ’er memory.”
“Don’t you dare!” Suzy said, jumping back. “You can’t go poking around inside my mind. It doesn’t belong to you.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Stonker told her. “We’re not really supposed to be here, you see. Outside our jurisdiction and all that, and it won’t do to have you giving us away. Although having said that, it might take HQ a while to get somebody out here. Couldn’t you do it yourself, Fletch?”
Fletch sucked his breath in through his teeth. “I dunno, Stonks. Memories are fiddly, like unknotting spiderwebs. You never know which bit’s connected to what. Maybe I could do a confusion spell instead.”
“No, you won’t,” said Suzy, backing away. “I’m confused enough as it is.” She squinted into the circle of light hiding Stonker. “And I am not an it, I’m a she, thank you very much.”
“Female of the species, eh?” said Stonker. “Afraid I’m not really well versed on the fauna in these parts. Do you have a name?”
“I’m Suzy,” said Suzy. “Suzy Smith. And I’d like to know who you are and what you’re doing here, please.”
“I suppose we do owe you the courtesy.” The light bobbed and weaved as Stonker grappled with the lantern, then it flickered out entirely. It took Suzy a few seconds to blink away the red-and-green smudge it left on her vision, and then she saw him.
He was the same sort of creature as Fletch, though his skin was a flinty gray, and less warty and wrinkled. He wore a smart blue uniform, with a coat that fell to his waist and a peaked cap with silver piping. He looked down at her past both his enormous nose and an equally impressive salt-and-pepper mustache, as thick and lustrous as a badger, which hung down almost to his knees before the tips curled back up into rigid little spirals. His blue eyes twinkled as he spoke.
“J. F. Stonker,” he said. “Driver of the Impossible Postal Express. The finest troll train on the rails.” He reached up and gave the locomotive’s boiler an affectionate pat.
“You’re trolls?” she said. “How is that possible?”
“We hadn’t intended to stop,” said Stonker, clearly misunderstanding her, “but I’m afraid you wandered onto the tracks. You’re jolly lucky the brakes have just been serviced.”
“But that wasn’t my fault,” said Suzy, feeling the temperature rise in her cheeks. “The tracks aren’t supposed to be here. None of this is supposed to be here. Including you!” This was all starting to feel terribly unfair.
“Fear not,” said Stonker. “We’ll be on our way again momentarily, and Fletch will have the tracks up and everything back to its normal proportions in no time. You’d never know the difference.”
“Normal proportions?” For the first time, Suzy realized there was a question she hadn’t asked herself: How could such an enormous steam locomotive even fit inside the house? She looked up and saw the hall ceiling impossibly high above her head, the purple light shade like a distant hot-air balloon. The hall had grown to the size of a cathedral without her even noticing.
“What happened?” she said, wide-eyed. “What did you do?”
“Not really my department, I’m afraid,” said Stonker. “Fletch here is the technical genius.”
Fletch sniffed. “I try my best.”
Suzy hardly heard them. She was running back and forth, trying to take it all in. The living room door was as tall as a cliff now, and she would have to stand on tiptoes if she wanted to reach the top of the baseboard. The kitchen door had vanished altogether, replaced by another enormous stone arch. The tracks didn’t end there anymore, but ran on into the blank darkness beyond. Her voice echoed in the cavernous space as she cried, “You shrank us!”
“Nah,” said Fletch, cocking his head to one side and plucking at the hair in his ears. “I just gave the hall a bit of a stretch, that’s all.”
“You mean you made everything bigger?” Suzy gaped at him, horrified. “But that’s worse! How big’s the house now? It must take up half the street.”
“What sort of a fly-by-night merchant do you take me for?” said Fletch. “I didn’t make the outside any bigger, and I haven’t touched any of the other rooms. What would be the point in that?”
“Wait a minute.” Suzy fought to digest this new information. “You mean the house is still its normal size, even though the hall is bigger than the house?”
“That’s right.” Fletch grinned, warming to his topic. “It’s pretty standard stuff, really, your basic metadimensional engineerin’, a dash of magic, and a few bits of double-sided sticky tape. Job done.”
Suzy looked again at the living room doorway. She could still see her parents beyond it, fast asleep and normal sized, but the doorway itself seemed to flicker and stretch when she focused on it. It only took her a few seconds to realize she was seeing it in both sizes at the same time, but by then it had started to make her feel seasick and she had to look away. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible.”
“Is it?” said Fletch, feigning surprise.
“You can’t just make something bigger on the inside than the outside.”
“’Course you can. It’s simple fuzzics.”
Suzy frowned. “You mean physics.”
“No,” said Fletch. “Fuzzics. Like physics, only fuzzier.”
“Physics can’t be fuzzy,” said Suzy, indignant that something so precious to her should be treated like a bit of a joke. “It’s either right or wrong. It won’t let you break the rules.”
“That’s why fuzzics kind of saunters past ’em,” said Fletch. “It’s easier than doing everything by the book.” He gave her an infuriating grin, and she was drawing breath to argue her case further when Stonker cleared his throat.
“This is all jolly nice,” he said, “but I’m afraid we really must be leaving. We’re already late, and I want to get under way before—”
“Mr. Stonker! Mr. Stonker!” The voice came from the direction of the carriages.
“Too late,” sighed Stonker, pinching the bridge of his enormous nose. “Here he comes.”
* * *
The train’s locomotive pulled a large tender behind it, which Suzy assumed must be full of coal, or whatever fuel the engine burned. Behind that were two carriages; the first was big, bulky, and cylindrical, like an armored gasoline tanker, but with a row of small portholes in the side and a knot of tubes and chimneys sprouting from the top. The letters H. E. C. were stenciled down the side in large white script. The carriage at the rear was smaller and looked like an antique goods coach, the red paint peeling from its wooden panels.
It was from this rear coach that another troll had emerged and was now hurrying toward them, waving frantically. He looked quite different from both Stonker and Fletch; his arms were long and bent in strange directions, and he seemed to have no legs at all, just a pair of large feet attached directly to his body. Only when he tripped and landed flat on his face did Suzy realize why he looked particularly strange—he was wearing a uniform that was several sizes too big for him.
“Aren’t either of you going to help him?” she asked as the new arrival floundered in a confusion of sleeves and coattails, trying to get back on his feet.
“I suppose we ought to,” said Stonker. “Fletch, be a good chap and help the Postmaster up, would you?”
“Not in my job description,” muttered Fletch. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Because I’m all the way up here,” Stonker said. “Besides, I helped him up last time.”
Suzy shook her head and hurried over to the flailing bundle of clothes. It was hard to tell which part of the troll was which, so she just reached out, hauled him up, and deposited him on what she hoped were his feet. His uniform wasn’t the same as Stonker’s, she s
aw—it was red instead of blue, and it looked older, more ornate. A tarnished gold medal dangled from the chest, and an old-fashioned horn or bugle was embroidered on both the shoulders, although the thread was badly frayed.
The bundle shook itself, and another huge nose, followed by a small, wide-eyed face, poked out from above the collar of the coat. This troll’s skin was a pale lichen green and hardly wrinkled at all. Suzy guessed he was much younger than the others.
“Thank you,” said the troll, and then, “Oh no! A local!”
He leaped into the air in fright, but his feet were already moving by the time he touched down, and he took off like a bullet, swerving around Suzy and heading for Fletch and Stonker, where he promptly tripped over the hem of his coat and went sprawling once again.
“It’s all right, Postmaster,” called Stonker. “We think she’s harmless.”
The fallen troll said something in response, but his words were muffled by several layers of cloth. Neither of the others made a move to help him, so with a weary sigh, Suzy retraced her steps and set him back on his feet. He shrugged the uniform away from his face and gave her a suspicious look. “Are you sure, Mr. Stonker? She looks like she might bite.”
“I promise I won’t,” said Suzy.
“She’d have to chew her way through all that uniform first, Wilmot,” said Fletch. “You know they come in smaller sizes, right?”
The Postmaster sniffed and turned his nose up. “I’ve told you before, Fletch—this was my father’s uniform, and his father’s before him. I have a legacy to uphold.”
“The legacy needs longer legs, boy,” said Fletch with a sly grin. Wilmot flared his nostrils in response.
“What exactly did you want, Postmaster?” said Stonker. “As you can see, we’re a trifle busy.”
“I came to see what was causing the delay,” said Wilmot. “Our next customer is waiting for us.”
“I’m aware of that,” said Stonker.
“And I can’t just leave the package on her doorstep and run,” Wilmot went on, jiggling from foot to foot inside his uniform. “It needs to be signed for! I don’t want to be the one who rings her doorbell if we’re late.”
