“It’s the pine,” said a slightly muffled, nasal voice, followed by what sounded a lot like someone sucking on the end of a cigar.
This was strange, because the only other living thing Simon could see appeared to be a small deer at the bottom of the stairs, standing on wobbly little twig legs. With everything that had happened, the otherwise intriguing appearance of Bambi didn’t even strike him as worth wondering about. It explained the straw, though.
In fact, as he searched the bottom of the stairs and their surrounds for the source of the answer to his question (which he had assumed was Faunt), he almost didn’t look at the deer at all.
Except, of course, that its head appeared to be on fire. On closer inspection, it quickly became clear to Simon that the deer was not, in fact, spontaneously combusting but was in fact sucking on a fat cigar.
This definitely qualified as weird enough for further investigation.
“Yeah, it’s a bitch,” the deer said, through partially gritted teeth, “but I’m sort of used to it.”
There are things life can prepare you for and things they cannot. On this scale, a mind-reading, talking deer with a cigar may not rank quite as highly on the unprepared scale as, say, discovering that your carpet is the key to existence, but still …
As such, Simon pedalling backwards and screaming like a particularly timid small girl was perhaps not unreasonable. Treading on the hem of his dressing gown - simultaneously pulling it open at the front and ending any chance of him staying upright - he tumbled backwards, cracking his head on the steps just hard enough to put him back to sleep.
----
As he came round, finding himself staring at the same ceiling he’d awoken to that morning, Simon could have been forgiven for assuming he’d had an odd dream about meeting a highly unlikely small animal and collapsing in a heap. The evidence, however, refused to play along: the smell of cigar smoke and the severe pounding at the back of his head meant either the dream had been real, or he was having a stroke. All things considered, he hoped it was the first thing.
“It’s the third part,” he heard someone say, “of the naming curse. I spend midnight to noon as a fawn.”
“Oh,” Simon answered. “OK.” It really wasn’t.
“It was a pain to begin with. Using these legs is like walking drunk across custard. I won’t go into all the adjustments I’ve had to make, but suffice to say Bob helps a lot. He carried you back up here. I hope you don’t mind.”
Of all the things Simon might have minded, being carried to bed like a wedding day bride by a surly giant was low on his list today. Slowly, like the Titanic groaning its way from the ocean bed, Simon lifted his head. Seeing Faunt, indeed still a small deer, but with a shorter cigar stub than before, brought the reality of the situation crashing home to him and subconsciously took smoked venison off the menu for the rest of his life.
“I had to give you some painkillers, they’re the best available. I’d have just had Lily sort you out but, actually, I wanted a word with you alone. I hope that’s OK. They should work pretty quickly.”
True enough, someone had turned down the volume in Simon’s head a little bit already.
“Daniel and Lily told you that there are rules,” Faunt said, matter-of-factly. Simon began to nod, then decided he preferred keeping his head still and gave a simple, “Yeah,” instead.
“I know everything,” Faunt continued, his hooves clicking on the tiled floor beside the bed, “but that doesn’t mean I can tell you everything. We all have to abide by the Rules.”
Simon’s stomach flip-flopped for the umpteenth time in a few days. Faunt looked contemplative as he spat out his cigar and stomped it out with a hoof.
“I’m going to tell you the price for the answer to your question this morning. Lily and Daniel won’t like it, but I promise you, it is not unfair. In fact, under the circumstances, it is an extremely reasonable price. They still won’t like it.
“But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least give you a little bit of advice first. It’s generic but, trust me, you’ll appreciate it eventually.”
“OK,” Simon said, again.
“Those who help you are not always your friends; those who oppose you are not always your enemies.”
Simon let the words roll around in the silence for a while. After some thought, he finally asked, “What?”
“Sorry kid, that’s the most I can give you.”
Simon’s headache was coming back.
----
After breakfast, during which Simon did, indeed glut himself on butteries, Faunt invited him to his study. In keeping with the rest of the cottage, it was a huge, stone-walled cave of a room with a peat-burning fire at its heart. Three walls were lined with a menagerie of brightly-coloured leather-bound books, which seemed to breathe and stretch on the shelves.
The remaining wall was decorated with reverential paintings of some very ordinary looking people. There was a young soldier, an oriental man and a woman in Victorian dress standing next to a man in what seemed to Simon to be roughly 1960’s-style clothes. On closer inspection, the paintings all had brass plaques on them. Simon was standing closest to the soldier, whose plaque read: ‘Sergeant Michael Edward Hicks, World War II’.
“Excuse me,” Simon asked, as he caught himself a chair to sit on, “who are these people?”
“Ah,” said Faunt. “These are some of the most important people of the last 200 years.”
“Really?” asked Simon, who felt he really should have heard of them if they were that important.
“Oh yes,” said Faunt. “Take that young man: Mickey Hicks - ended World War II.”
“Ended it?” Simon asked. “How can one person end a war?”
“By cutting off the snake’s head.”
Simon didn’t remember there being snakes in World War II. In fact, the only story he could think of with snakes had something to do with Cleopatra, who he was absolutely sure was dead by the Forties.
“He shot Hitler. Blew the back of his head right off.”
“Really?” Simon asked. “I thought nobody knew for sure if Hitler was even dead.”
“That’s because a few seconds after Michael pulled the trigger, his platoon were blown up. Every one of them was killed. But he’d already fired the bullet.”
“Wow.
“So who’s that then?” Simon asked, pointing to the man and woman.
“Mary Shelley and Bill Kowalski. She wrote Frankenstein, he ended the Cuban missile crisis.”
Simon knew fine well there was a big gap between those two things.
“It’s a little-known fact that on the final day of the crisis, JKF had decided to bomb Cuba, which would have ignited a devastating nuclear war. Kowalski had been reading Frankenstein and was giving an impassioned account of the book’s warning against man playing God to a fellow White House janitor. Kennedy was passing and heard the conversation. It made him think again.”
Simon was beginning to see a pattern. “Right. And him?”
“He is the biggest of them all,” said Faunt. “The perfectly incompetent Doctor Xian Chu.”
“During his training as a medical student, he found himself stuck in an elevator with a pregnant, claustrophobic woman, who panicked and went into labour.”
“And he delivered the baby?”
“Nope. He completely botched it. Mother and baby both died. But the baby would have been Kim Hum So, the most brutal military commander in Chinese history. Under his leadership, the Chinese army would have staged a coup, reignited the nuclear arms race and conquered or laid waste to much of Asia by the end of the 20th Century.”
Something about this last story bothered Simon and, surprisingly, it didn’t take him long to work out what it was.
“Hang on, you said you couldn’t see the future. And that didn’t even happen. How could you know what would have happened to that baby?”
“Excellent!” said Faunt, almost clicking his hooves together as he stood abru
ptly upright. “Excellent question! You’re absolutely right; I can’t see the future - especially not alternate futures.”
Faunt lowered his head slightly and smiled conspiratorially.
“But I know a woman who can.”
----
Bob had spent a lot of time doing things for other people in the last few years. It was not something that came naturally to him. Being a thief required a natural proclivity to dismissing the needs and desires of others fairly casually - particularly their desire not to have their homes broken into and their things stolen.
What he had gradually discovered while working for Faunt was that he sort of enjoyed it. Having spent most of his adult life taking things from others for his own benefit, it turned out that Bob actually managed to find some pleasure and contentment in doing things for other people. Not a lot; but some.
Initially, in Faunt’s service, he had tried to plan for his own future by stealing small trinkets. Occasionally, he’d take something that appeared both odd and pointless enough that it must have some kind of inherent value beyond his understanding. He’d hide it in a hastily dug safe in his room by the gate.
The next morning, it was always gone. Trying to steal from a man who always knew what you’d stolen and where you’d put it was something of an exercise in futility. Still, it was something to do. When the novelty of waking up each morning just to see if maybe this was the morning his treasure would still be there had worn off, he’d finally resigned himself to an immediate future of making the best hot chocolate possible and discreetly clearing up deer droppings. Having done the latter already this morning, he was now focused on the former.
“Hi there,” said Lily, entering the kitchen. “How are you this morning?”
Bob stopped mid pour. How was he? It had been a while since anyone had asked. Now, here was a very attractive young woman, or at least what appeared to be a very attractive young woman, smelling rather deliciously of jasmine, he noticed, asking after his wellbeing.
“Well,” Bob replied, “I spend half my time fetching and carrying for a small deer and the rest between looking after the front gate, doing housework and playing Yahtzee.”
“But how are you?” Lily asked again, frowning slightly at his answer.
“Not sure,” said Bob. “Ask Faunt.”
“Are you unhappy?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t you be? I’m a slave.”
“Are you?”
This irritated Bob. It seemed so obvious that he was, that he didn’t understand why she was asking him such a pointless question. Perhaps she was a bit slow.
“Well, I do everything I’m told to do and I can’t leave. What would you call it?”
“Interesting,” Lily replied, leadingly.
“Is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
Bob had already lost patience with this line of conversation. He sighed and returned to the hot chocolate, turning his back on the annoyingly inquisitive demon.
“I’m taking these to the study for Faunt and Mr Debovar. Would you like one?” he asked.
“Would you like one?”
Bob stopped again. This was becoming annoying. He turned to Lily, wishing he didn’t know fine well that she could turn him into a gelatinous puddle with a thought, because he really wanted to throw things at her.
“Why are you bothering me?” he asked through tight lips.
“Am I bothering you?” she replied innocently. “I was just making conversation.”
“Well, please don’t,” he answered, again turning his back and picking up the two full cups.
“What would you like me to do, instead?”
Had Bob been able to jump a few seconds into the future, see the results of his next decision and leap back to advise himself on the best course of action, he would have said that while the cups did make a satisfying ‘thunk’ as he slammed them both back down on the counter, the flying hot chocolate which accompanied the gesture was possibly not worth it, all things considered. Sadly bereft of time travelling talent, Bob’s little temper tantrum left him with two shoulders dripping with warm, brown liquid, and a splattering of metaphorical egg all over his face. At this point in time, the only thing that could have made him feel any worse would have been if the annoying demon had been stupid enough to say something like…
“You probably didn’t want to do that.”
Anger has a tipping point. A person can only take so much before they hit a pressure valve, which opens and releases the excess build up. Were this process visible, Bob would have had multitudes of steam coming out of various orifices. He eventually reached a moment of perfect calm and turned slowly to his tormentor.
“No. Not really.”
Lily was still smiling sweetly at him, as though they had just spent five minutes discussing the comparative merits of puppies and kittens.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked.
Bob considered for a moment whether there was any way he could stop her.
“Why not?”
“When you came here, were you happy?”
“No, not very.”
“And what did you want when you came here?”
“Answers.”
“To what?”
“Everything.”
“Did you get them?”
“Yes.”
“And did they make you happy?”
“No. Life is pointless.”
“So you were unhappy.”
“Yes.”
“And you still are?”
“Yes.”
“When will you be happy?”
“When I get the hell out of this place!”
“Why?”
“So I can do whatever I want.”
“And you’re looking forward to that?”
“Of course!”
“So working for Faunt has given you something to look forward to? A time when you will be happy again?”
… A domino fell over in Bob’s head.
Lily smiled sweetly back at him. At least he knew why now. He smiled back.
“I didn’t … understand,” Bob’s world view had gone somewhat askew.
“I’ll make some more hot chocolate if you’d like to get changed,” offered Bob’s new friend. “I’m very good at it.”
He was happy to let her.
----
“Come in,” called Faunt, just before Daniel knocked on the study door. He turned to Simon and smiled. “You’d think it would get old, but wait ‘til you see his face.”
The door opened in a seriously disgruntled manner. How Daniel managed to actually make the door itself seem so utterly crestfallen with having been knocked on after the knocker had already received a reply was a matter of interest to Simon. It reminded him how much he didn’t want to annoy someone who could make a slab of wood looked pissed off.
Daniel entered, scowling. Faunt grinned.
“Good morning Faunt. Mr Debovar. I trust everyone slept well?”
“We did, thank you,” answered Faunt. “Have a seat. Lily is making hot chocolate and will be with us shortly. Should I ask her to make you one?”
Daniel looked at a nearby armchair, which promptly shuffled towards him. “No, thank you,” he said, sitting down. “I’d rather we could just get to business, if you don’t mind.”
“He never lets up, does he?” asked Lily, entering with the hot chocolates on a tray. “Years I’ve been trying to get him to relax. I’m not sure he’s capable.”
Daniel sighed and leaned back in his chair.
Lily handed Simon a mug. As she reached down to put a mug in front of Faunt, on the floor, he reached up a hoof to touch her hand.
“Thank you. That was kind,” he said pointedly.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad to be able to repay your hospitality.”
It seemed an awfully intense exchange over a hot chocolate, Simon noted. Then he tasted it.
“Wow,” he said. “He’s right; this is wonderful. Thanks.”
&nb
sp; Lily smiled. “You’re welcome, honey. I’m glad you like it.” She took a seat in a nearby chair and drank from her own mug.
“So,” Daniel began. “As you know, Faunt, Mr Debovar is the rightful owner of the Holy Rug of Djoser. It was recently stolen from him after he agreed to give it to either Lily or me. He needs to retrieve the Rug in order to fulfil his part of our agreement. In order to do that, he needs to know where it is. What price would you charge for that information?”
Faunt stopped lapping at his mug and looked up at Daniel. “You know fine well I can’t answer that,” he chastised.
It was clear from Daniel’s expression that he was not used to being rebuffed - particularly not by a deer with a chocolate beard.
“I can’t tell you anything about the Rug and I can’t offer you a price for information about it. It’s not yours.”
Lily and Daniel both turned to look at Simon, who suddenly felt like a young boy who’d accidentally wandered into his father’s business meeting with a lolly in one hand and his penis in the other.
“What?” he asked.
“Honey, we need you to ask Faunt the price for the information on your carpet.”
“Oh. OK.” He turned to Faunt, who had returned to his mug.
“Mr Faunt, how much will it cost for you to tell me where my carpet is, please?”
Faunt looked up at Simon, breathed deeply and stood up to his full two and a half foot height.
“I want my wife back.”
… Daniel was first to break the stunned silence.
“We’re not a dating service.”
“And you know we’re not allowed to make people act against their wills either, right?” added Lily. It was the closest Simon had seen her to being rattled since they’d met.
“I do,” Faunt answered casually. “But she is, I think, being kept against her will. What I want you to do, Simon, is free her, so that she can choose whether to come back to me or not.”
Carpet Diem Page 7
