The Day Before Tomorrow

by Nicola Rhodes

  He gave Porky a cursory glance. ‘Traitor,’ he commented mildly enough. Porky trembled. He had been in Hell long enough to know, that Askphrit was at his most dangerous when he was apparently as mild as milk. ‘I shall deal with you later, clear off.’ Porky cleared.

  Askphrit held up the silvery box. ‘Curious thing isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I haven’t been able to positively identify the element that it is constructed of, only that it is only found elsewhere in the heart of stars.’

  ‘Funny,’ Tamar observed. ‘It was bigger than that, the last time I saw it.’

  ‘It had a lot more in it back then,’ Askphrit told her.

  Tamar nodded, not taking her eyes off the box. She was white to the lips – her fists clenched.

  ‘Why would that make a difference to the size of the box?’ asked Stiles, literal to the end.

  ‘If that sidekick of yours was here, he could answer that better than any of us, couldn’t he?’ said Askphrit to Tamar. He was referring to Denny’s unfortunate encounter with the previous opening of the box. Tamar had no idea how he knew so much (he had shown no surprise when she had said that she had seen the box before) but she was careful not to show this. As it happened it was a wasted effort, Askphrit knew perfectly well how she was feeling.

  ‘This must be killing you,’ he observed sardonically. ‘And I’m not going to tell you how I found out either.’

  ‘I’m surprised that boy isn’t with you,’ he went on. ‘I thought you two were joined at the hips, or the groin or whatever.’ He smirked. ‘Pity, I would have liked to see him again. One last time you know.’

  Tamar went on clenching and unclenching her fists.

  ‘So, are you going to tell us where you found the box then?’ interposed Stiles smoothly.

  ‘Ah, the interrogator,’ said Askphrit equally smoothly, turning his attention to Stiles for the first time. ‘I realise, of course, that you are merely stalling for time, but since you have no chance of stopping me, I see no harm in indulging your curiosity. Except I don’t see why I should.’

  ‘He didn’t find it,’ said Tamar. ‘It found him.’

  Askphrit deigned to look impressed. ‘Very good, my dear. Did you just work that out?’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Who cares? You are right of course. The Fates intervened on my behalf. So much easier than all that running about looking for the dammed thing.’

  ‘I thought that everything the Fates did, had been undone,’ said Stiles.

  Tamar trod on his foot. Too late.

  ‘Oh you did, did you?’ said Askphrit. ‘I can see by her expression that she thought so too. Well, you’re both wrong.’

  ‘Not down here eh?’ said Tamar.

  ‘That’s right, I am outside of the world here, outside of time, normal rules do not apply.’

  ‘Normal?’ said Stiles.

  ‘It’s a relative term,’ conceded Askphrit. ‘However, I assure you, this is the genuine article. But you know that, don’t you? Whatever else I am, I am no charlatan. There’s no fun in it, if it’s a lie. No drama.’

  ‘So,’ said Tamar after a long pause.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Askphrit. ‘Bit of an anticlimax after all, isn’t it?’

  Tamar did not think so. In fact, she recognised a crisis when she saw it. ‘Stop him!’ she yelled and darted forward as Askphrit delicately and with ironic reverence opened the box.

  ‘No!’ she and Stiles cried out together.

  As the lid opened, the box vanished in a silvery spiral of glittering smoke. Then it was gone.

  ‘Poof!’ said Askphrit.

  ‘You can talk,’ muttered Stiles.

  ~ Chapter Twenty Five ~

  It was so sudden, so final, so irrevocable. Tamar was hit hard, stunned by the flat finality of it. The box was – gone. It was over. And they – she – had lost.

  Askphrit exhibited his typical evil nemesis or “villain’s” laughter. That is the special kind, which has an independent existence from its owner and remains behind on its own for a little while after the owner has vanished.

  Tamar could have also done this, but she had never though it worth her while.

  ‘Well, that’s him gone at any rate,’ said Stiles, trying to look on the bright side. ‘Thank god for small mercies, eh?’

  Tamar was just standing there, looking decidedly punchy. Stiles was concerned about this – he would work his way up to worry later, if the situation warranted it. For now, he was just concerned.

  He took Tamar gently by the shoulders. ‘Come on then,’ he encouraged, ‘got to find a way out of here.

  Tamar swayed slightly in front of him and gazed blankly at him.

  ‘Never say die eh, never give up. Don’t let the bastards grind you down?’ he tried this one as a last resort.

  Tamar switched her unfocussed gaze to Stiles. ‘Bastards’ she murmured vaguely. She looked as if she was very, very far away. Completely gone, in fact, somewhere deep inside of her own head.

  Stiles jumped straight over worry and went directly to panic.

  He shook her hard; his grasp of psychology was weak at best. ‘Tamar!’

  She did not so much ignore him as seem to be entirely unaware of him.

  ‘Oh shit!’ he wondered if he should slap her.

  This was beyond him, he decided. She seemed to have withdrawn completely into herself. Probably the shock, he thought. He felt a little like this himself, but within his nature was the unspoken feeling always, that there was always something that could be done. Tamar, on the other hand seemed to have given up. Stiles, who had known Tamar for quite a long time, was frightened by this. If Tamar thought it was over, it probably was. If only because, if she gave up, who else could take over for her? He would have to get her back to Denny; he was probably the only one who could snap her out of this.

  He put his arm around her shoulders and gently steered her away from the jail. His main problem was that he had not the faintest idea where he was supposed to be going. He kept up a steady stream of reassuring commentary. ‘Come in then, off we go.’

  ‘Go,’ muttered Tamar.

  ‘Yep, have to get going now. Find a way out of here. Denny will be worried about you, you know.’

  ‘Denny?’ She seemed, marginally, to be coming back from wherever she had been.

  ‘That’s right. You remember Denny.’

  ‘Of course I remember Denny,’ she snapped. She was right back with him now all right. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she glanced around her. ‘This is the wrong way,’ she told him.

  Stiles flung his arms around her, thus highly embarrassing both of them.

  ‘What has got into you?’ asked Tamar. ‘I was just thinking.’

  ‘Well, you looked,’ Stiles informed her, ‘like you were Joan of Arc or something, having visions or hearing voices. Thinking about what?’

  ‘I was,’ said Tamar simply. ‘And I was thinking about what to do next.’

  Stiles relief was immeasurable at hearing this. ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘And what should we do next?’

  ‘Got to get out of here first, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘And then,’ she told him firmly, as if expecting some kind of argument. ‘We’ve got to find that damn box.’

  * * *

  Stiles did not even pretend to understand it.

  Tamar proposed to find the box before Askphrit had. But she did not intend, she said, to use the historical files to do so.

  ‘Takes too bloody long,’ she said. ‘Too complicated.’ She intended to use quantum. But when she tried to explain how this worked, Stiles felt his mind skidding away from the thoughts. Tamar said this was not surprising. All magic was based on quantum, she said, it was essentially a different set of physical laws from the ones that humans regularly used. This was why although humans knew about quantum physics, they did not understand it. Just as previously, humans had known about magic, but had been unable to duplicate it. Stiles could just about follow this part, but his brain was be
ginning to hurt, so he did not want to encourage this line of conversation further.

  He was saved from saying so by the unmistakable sounds of digging below their feet. This sound was accompanied by the sounds of voices arguing.

  Against all probability, someone was digging up.

  ‘I tell you, we’ve come the wrong way again.’ said one voice.

  ‘Go on,’ said another. ‘You couldn’t find your way out of a one doored room, with a map.’

  ‘I resent that,’ came the first voice.

  ‘Yah, you can say what you like,’ said yet another voice. ‘You’re drunk again anyway.’

  ‘Well? Ain’t we all drunk?’

  ‘I’m not,’ came a fourth voice.

  ‘Well, anyway, you’re as stupid as a bleedin’ troll,’ came the first voice. ‘No wonder we’re lost.’

  ‘We’re not lost.’

  Tamar and Stiles listened, fascinated. Stiles looked at Tamar, who shrugged.

  Then a large pickaxe burst through the ground just in front of them. And, within seconds, the hole was enlarged by the emergence of a large crowd of small bearded men.

  ‘Dwarfs!’ said Tamar, unable to keep the shock out of her voice. ‘What the hell …?’

  The Dwarfs had not noticed them; they were arguing again. ‘There I told you,’ said one. ‘This isn’t right.’

  ‘How would you know, troll brains,’ said another. ‘We don’t know what it looks like, do we?’ He bounced the handle of his axe off the other dwarfs head. It made a loud clang as it rebounded of his iron helmet.

  ‘Oi!’ said the first dwarf. ‘What do you think you are you doing?’ his diction was deadly.

  ‘I ham ’itting hyou on the ’ead,’ parried the other dwarf. ‘Hand hwhat hare hyou a goin’ to do habout hit?’

  ‘Why you rotten little bugger,’ roared the first dwarf and he ran towards the other dwarf his axe flailing in his hand.

  ‘Time to break this up I think,’ murmured Tamar.

  She strolled over to the scuffling dwarfs. ‘Excuse me …’ she began, she got no further. The two fightng dwarfs stopped their fracas and the others, their shouted encouragements and they all stared at her uneasily.

  The first dwarf opened his mouth. ‘Snow White, sw’elp us,’ he yelled. ‘Leg it, lads.’ Each and every dwarf made to obey this instruction with alacrity. But Tamar picked up the two fighting dwarfs by their helmets and dangled them a few feet from the ground.

  Tamar, it should be pointed out, looked not a bit like Snow White, apart from the obvious similarities of colouring, i.e. skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony etc. Snow White, at least the Snow White that I read about, never wore a long black leather trench coat nor an expression of extreme ferocity, not even when the dwarfs forgot to put the toilet seat down.

  ‘Stop,’ yelled the first dwarf. ‘She’s got me.’ The crowd of dwarfs halted and headed back towards Tamar reluctantly, swinging their axes nevertheless in a determined fashion.

  It turned out that the dwarfs did not really think that Tamar was actually Snow White, except in a sort of generic, beautiful but bossy human female, way. It emerged during the conversation that followed that all dwarfs are brought up hearing the story of Snow White as a cautionary tale, much as humans tell the story of Hansel and Gretel to their children. Thus the dwarf who had yelled ‘Snow White sw’elp us,’ had done so, in much the same spirit as a human might cry out ‘Dragon!’

  But once they had ascertained to their satisfaction that she had no desire to set them up in a nice little cottage somewhere and force them to clean behind their ears and comb the rats nests out of their beards, they were quite amiable.

  ‘This is Droopy,’ said the dwarf who had yelled “stop!”, and who had obviously been appointed spokesdwarf. ‘And this is Mufti, Tufty and Lofty, ’cause he’s the smallest. Rusty, Dusty and Crusty. And over there, that’s Dinky, Stinky, Minky and Manky. They’re brothers. And Giblet and Dribbler ’

  Tamar nodded in a bemused fashion.

  ‘And over here, we have Stroppy, Loopy, Itchy, Sleazy, Toerag, Dozy and Sid.

  ‘Sid?’ said Stiles.

  Sid hung his head.

  ‘We don’t talk about it said the spokesdwarf confidentially. ‘Poor chap; it’s not his fault. His mother was a bit strange. ’Tis true tis not a proper name for a dwarf, but he’s a good lad all the same.’ He leaned forward, ‘that’s not the worst of it,’ he whispered. ‘His brother is called Graham.’

  Tamar tried to look suitably shocked and commiserate.

  ‘And what’s your name?’ said Tamar, keeping an admirably straight face, Stiles thought. He himself was dying to stuff his fists into his mouth, to keep from laughing.

  The spokesdwarf drew himself up to his full height. (4’3”) and puffed his chest out with considerable pride. ‘I am Florid Underdrawers,’ he declared. He looked expectantly at them. ‘Oh well,’ he said to their uncomprehending faces, as he deflated a little. ‘Such is fame, I suppose.’

  ‘So what are you all doing here?’ asked Stiles.

  ‘Well, we were digging up from Heaven …’ began Florid.

  ‘Up from Heaven?’ interrupted Stiles.

  Tamar dug him in the ribs: ‘To dwarfs, Heaven is below,’ she told him.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Florid. ‘Where are we anyway?’

  ‘Hell,’ Stiles told him.

  ‘There,’ said Florid crossly. ‘Didn’t I tell you, we’d come the wrong way.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t have done any better,’ snapped the dwarf that Stiles recognized as Stroppy.

  ‘I could indeed,’ argued Florid. ‘Anybody could, I don’t know! I thought dwarfs were supposed to have a good sense of direction, especially underground.’

  ‘Are you impugning me?’ demanded Stroppy.

  Florid hesitated, he was not sure, Stiles thought, what this meant. But he said “Yes” eventually, apparently on the basis that it was some kind of insult, and an insult, during a row, is seldom out of place.

  ‘Do you even know what impugning means?’ said Stroppy. Who had not failed to notice Florid’s hesitation.

  ‘Of course I do,’ screamed Florid. ‘It means – to impugn, ha.

  ‘Our great leader, gentlemen,’ said Stroppy sarcastically.

  The two dwarfs were bristling and weighing their axes ominously. There was every sign that the fight was about to get underway again, when Stiles interposed smoothly to save Florid’s face.

  ‘What does it mean?’ he asked Stroppy. He was taking a gamble here, but not much of one really. Some words are difficult to define, even though you may know what they mean. He was rewarded by a baffled look coming over Stroppy’s countenance as he struggled with this unexpected development. ‘It means er …well obviously it means…’

  ‘Okay, said Stiles, forestalling Florid from expressing an untimely display of tactless glee. ‘You never did get around to telling us where you were trying to get to.’

  ‘Earth, obviously,’ said Florid. ‘Where else?’

  Tamar and Stiles looked at each other. ‘We want to get there too,’ said Tamar.

  The dwarfs now exchanged glances, which clearly said. ‘Well of course you do, doesn’t everybody?’

  ‘We have a map,’ said the dwarf previously introduced as Mufti, helpfully.

  ‘Just don’t let Stroppy have it,’ muttered Florid under his breath, ‘and we should be okay.’

  ‘I heard that,’ said Stroppy, threatening to take right off again.

  ‘Why don’t you give me the map?’ said Tamar, sparking off a series of mutterings in which the words ‘Bloomin’ Snow White’ were clearly heard once or twice. Evidently, the dwarfs were not entirely convinced after all, about her lack of proclivities in this area.

  ‘It was only a suggestion,’ said Tamar hurriedly. She was not nearly as accomplished as Stiles at pouring oil on troubled waters, her usual method being to bang the heads together of the opposing parties until they saw sense – or passed out. Her attempt, ther
efore, at diverting the dwarfs from their ongoing argument only worked in that it diverted their animosity towards herself, which, while effective in its way, was not quite what she had had in mind.

  ‘What about it lads?’ said Stiles. ‘Shall we put our heads together?’

  The dwarfs huddled together and began muttering.

  ‘Will we have to take a bath?’ said Grotty, looking particularly hard at Tamar.

  ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ she said.

  ‘Wash behind our ears? Clean out our fingernails.’ He gulped. ‘Brush our teeth?’

  ‘No, you can be as mucky as you like,’ said Tamar. ‘I honestly don’t care.’

  The dwarfs convened again. ‘Can you cook?’ said Toerag. ‘Gooseberry pie, that kind of thing?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a sigh of relief. ‘Okay then, you can come with us,’ said Florid. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Tamar. She turned to Stiles. ‘We did promise him,’ she said.

  Stiles sighed. ‘We did, didn’t we?’

  * * *

  They had only been in the dwarfs’ tunnel for a few moments when they heard, from behind them, an eager voice. ‘Oh there you are,’ it said. It was not the gruff voice of a dwarf. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

  Everybody turned. Even Porky, who had so far made the journey in dazed silence, as if he thought the whole thing a dream. They had found him not far away from the jail where he was just hanging around to see what he could pick up in information.

  Making its way up the passage on silent feet was a very strange looking creature. Smaller, even than the dwarfs, and without the beard you could hide a chicken in, it had very large ears, longish curly hair on its head and also on its oversized feet. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ it whined.