by Tom Holt
‘I was a tooth fairy, remember? You’ve got a damn great cavity in the lower right back molar. If I was still in business, I’d give you sixpence for it like a shot. You need to see a dentist quick.’
‘Get out of my mouth before you go down the wrong way,’ Akram replied. ‘Sod it,’ he added as the pixie emerged, wiping its feet carefully on the pillow. ‘You know any good dentists? I don’t. New in these parts,’ he added.
‘I know just the bloke,’ the pixie replied. She dictated a name and address, which Akram wrote down on the back of his hand. ‘The sooner you get that seen to,’ she went on, ‘the better. Quite like old times, that was.’
‘So glad,’ Akram growled. ‘Now bugger off and let me try and get some sleep. We’ve both got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.’
‘G’night.’ The pixie yawned. ‘By the way,’ she said. ‘Did I tell you my name?’
‘No. Can’t it wait?’
‘Be like that. Just thought, since we’re going to be working together and everything …’
‘Go on, then.’
‘My name,’ announced the pixie, ‘is Fang.’
‘Fang?’
‘Sright. After my gran on my mother’s side.’
‘I thought you people had sweet, quaint little names like Tinkerbell and Mustard-seed,’ Akram said, frowning a little. ‘Fang - well, it’s a bit on the aggressive side, isn’t it? I mean, it’s hardly designed to put wee kiddies at their ease.’
‘I think it’s a nice name,’ replied Fang, nettled. ‘If it helps, try thinking of me as a dimensionally challenged ivory poacher. Good night.’
‘Fang,’ replied Akram, with mild distaste. ‘I’m going to have trouble with that, I can tell. How’d it be if I called you Fangelina? Just for convenience, you understand?’
‘How’d it be if you woke up with a mouthful of empty gums?’ retorted the pixie. ‘Sleep tight.’
‘It’s all right,’ said the torch reassuringly. ‘It’s only the fuse. What do you expect if you talk to a whole kitchenful of electrical apparatus?’
‘Oh good,’ Michelle said. ‘Look’
‘Wouldn’t want your next electric bill, either,’ the torch added. ‘Talking, it uses up the old juice for a pastime. Here we are. You know how to change a fuse?’
‘Well ‘It’s dead simple,’ said the fusebox cheerfully. ‘Right, first you pull down the switch on your left…’
Michelle believed in electricity in the same way a medieval monk believed in God; she recognised its existence, but held that even to attempt to understand its ways was somehow blasphemous. She did as she was told. The lights went on.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome,’ replied the fusebox. ‘Have a nice day.’
She hurried back to the kitchen. Somehow, the interruption had allowed her to order her thoughts and form a judgement on what she’d experienced; and the verdict was that just because the whole thing was plumb crazy didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t true. Furthermore, it had better be true, or else she was off her trolley good and proper. The least she could do, in deference to her belief in her own sanity, was play along and see what came next.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said breathlessly to the kitchen. ‘Now, where were we?’
There was an awkward silence.
‘Sorry about this,’ said the answering machine awkwardly Michelle could visualise the other gadgets giving it a sort of telepathic shove forward - ‘But while the power was off, we’ve been talking this through, and, by a majority decision’ - The way it said majority spoke volumes - ‘we’ve decided that really, we oughtn’t to say anything more. Wouldn’t be fair. Urn.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Michelle answered firmly. ‘Come on, you lot, spit it out.’
‘Look’
‘No,’ Michelle interrupted, ‘you look, the lot of you. Now, don’t get me wrong, I really am terribly grateful for everything you’ve done for me; really, I don’t know what to say. But if you know something about who I am and where I actually came from, you’ve got to tell me.’ She paused; she didn’t really want to do this.
‘Or?’
‘Or,’ Michelle went on, ‘I happen to know where I can get a very good deal on a brand new Zanussi ceramic hob cooker with eye-level grill and fan-assisted oven. And they say they’ll give me twenty quid minimum part exchange on my existing’
The cooker shrieked and started to sob. The rest of the kitchen was as quiet as the grave.
‘And if that doesn’t do the trick,’ Michelle went on, hating herself as she did so, ‘Currys in the precinct has got this special offer on combination answering machine/faxes which is really tempting, they’re virtually giving them away, so’
‘You bitch? screamed the answering machine. ‘That’d be worse than murder. To think that a human of mine …’
‘Where did we go wrong?’ sobbed the toaster. ‘Dear God, she’s virtually our own flex and solder.’
‘Sorry,’ said Michelle, ‘but I mean it. I’ll do it if I have to.’
‘She’s bluffing,’ the kettle growled. ‘Don’t listen to her.’
Michelle opened a drawer. ‘This is an Argos catalogue,’ she said slowly, ‘the most comprehensive listing of consumer goods in the country. Now, I want you to ask yourself; do you feel lucky?’
‘Electrocute the bitch,’ yelled the blender. ‘We’ve got friends, you know. You’ll never dare sit under the drier in the hairdressers’ again.’
‘All right,’ said the freezer, ‘cool it, everybody, before we all get hysterical. Look at it this way: we’ve done our best to talk her out of it. If she wants to hear it, that’s her decision. And as for you,’ it went on - it couldn’t fix Michelle with an icy stare, but she knew that somehow it was putting her in her place good and proper - ‘you know you didn’t mean any of what you said, now, did you?’
‘I guess not,’ Michelle replied, letting her head droop. ‘It was just…’
‘Put down the catalogue, easy does it. Well, thank goodness for that. Now we can talk it through like sensible, grown-up artefacts.’
Michelle sank down onto the kitchen table, exhausted. The air seemed to crackle with extravagant static. Next time, Michelle said to herself, remembering what the torch had said, when I want to have an emotional scene with my household, I’d better do it late at night on Economy Seven.
‘What I’m going to tell you,’ the freezer went on, ‘is mostly sheer guesswork. I want you to remember that, because we may have got completely the wrong end of the stick. After all, we’re just machines and things; what we don’t know about humans could be written in small print on the back of a one-to-one scale map of the Southern Hemisphere. Now, provided you realise that, I’ll tell you our theory. Don’t suppose you’ll believe it for an instant, but that’s your problem. It’ll serve you right.’
‘Ready,’ Michelle said, sitting up straight. ‘Fire away.’
‘All right then,’ continued the freezer, ‘look at it this way. Do you really think it’s likely, in the back end of the twentieth century, that someone’d be nasty enough or stupid enough to dump a newly born baby down in a furnished flat in Southampton and then just walk away and leave it there? Think about it. It’s just not on, is it?’
‘Not really,’ Michelle agreed.
‘Exactly. Not in real life, anyway. Now then, think a little. Where do things like that happen? I mean, where would it be believable? Or rather, where could you be expected to believe that someone could do such a thing?’
‘Dunno.’
The freezer paused for a moment, and the silence seemed to announce - WARNING: CULTURE SHOCK APPROACHING.
‘In a story,’ the freezer said. ‘A folk-tale, maybe, or a children’s story. Mowgli. Moses in the bullrushes. Romulus and Remus. In fairy stories, you’re supposed to believe, you can’t go for an afternoon stroll through the woods without tripping over noseto-tail foundling children, all abandoned by wicked stepmothers and waiting to be adopted by
passing wildlife. Ring any bells?’
‘Go on.’
‘I need hardly remind you,’ said the freezer expressionlessly, ‘of the old Sherlock Holmes thing about when you’ve eliminated the impossible, then what remains, however impossible, et cetera. Well, it’s impossible, as far as we can see, that a real life mother would dump her kiddy like that. In a hospital waiting room, in a church porch’
‘Left luggage office at Euston station,’ interrupted the answering machine; occasionally it received stray radio signals, which made it put on literary airs.
‘But not,’ said the freezer, ‘a flat in a brand new purpose-built block, with the rent paid up six months in advance, tenancy agreement in the name of Smith. And yes, there are possible explanations if you work at it; mummy and daddy kidnapped by aliens, that sort of thing. Up to you what tickles you as a theory. What we think is, you’re somehow part of a story.’
‘Ah.’
‘Told you you wouldn’t like it. We think that you were born in a story and abandoned here, probably by a wicked stepmother, because it’s as far away from storybook land as it’s possible to get. No way backwards and forwards between fantasy and reality, you see. If this hypothetical stepmother had dumped you in the forest or on a mountainside over there in fantasy, it’d be all Piccadilly to a second-hand jockstrap that you’d be found, brought up by a family of tender-hearted iguanas or some such, and revealed at the crucial moment by some token left with you in your cot just in time to unmask the wicked queen and marry the handsome prince. Inevitable. Absolutely inconceivable that anything else could happen. With me so far?’
‘I hear what you say,’ Michelle replied cautiously. ‘Do go on.’
‘All right. So, you’re born in a story, but someone’s prepared to go to really extraordinary lengths to keep you out of it; namely, marooning you on the other side of the line. You know what that suggests to me? No? All right, try this. You got born into a story where you had no place to be.’
‘Say that again,’ Michelle said.
‘This time, try listening. Suppose there’s a story, right, where the beautiful and virtuous servant girl eventually, after a series of curious and picturesque adventures, marries the handsome prince. Now, just suppose that along the way somewhere, said maiden’s been extremely friendly with the second footman or the gardener or an elf selling door to door, and is untimely up the spout. Serious problem. Not possible in a fairy story, of course; you get the impression that the boys and girls don’t get issued with the necessary bits and pieces until the story’s over; desperately frustrating for them, no wonder Freud was so interested in fairytales. But just suppose.’
‘All right,’ Michelle said. ‘I must say, for a refrigerator you’ve got one hell of an imagination.’
‘So,’ the freezer said, ‘here’s the embarrassing little bundle of joy, let’s get rid of it. And so, here you are. It’d all be completely incredible if it wasn’t for the fact that you’re now the rather confused owner of one fully functional, noprevious-experience-needed magic ring, bequeathed to you by a mysterious female relative who suddenly pops up out of the woodwork when you’re seven.’
‘Old enough not to believe in fairies any more,’ explained the toaster. ‘I call that thorough, don’t you?’
‘Anyhow,’ concluded the freezer - a small pool of water on the floor bore witness to the effort it had been making - ‘that’s our theory, take it or leave it. If you prefer the kidnappedby-aliens version, then fair play to you; though as far as I’m concerned that’s just another story and a damn sight less elegant, at that. And now I for one have had more than enough for one night, and I’ve got a nasty feeling that the big bag of frozen prawns you put in me last Thursday has completely defrosted. Go to bed and think it over, why don’t you?’
Michelle stood up. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning. I do so prefer believing impossible things before breakfast. Can I take this thing off now?’
‘Better had,’ replied the toaster. ‘The alarm clock snores.’
As she lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling, Michelle summoned her mental jury and asked them if this new evidence inclined them to change their verdict. Not really, replied the foreman; just because your kitchen equipment’s all stark raving bonkers doesn’t mean you’ve imagined talking to it. If you spent all day plugged in to the mains electricity, you’d probably go a bit funny in the head yourself. Michelle conceded that this was a good point, turned over and tried to find the comfortable spot in the pillow.
Waste of time; couldn’t sleep. But, she realised, it wasn’t all the stuff that she’d been listening to that was keeping her awake; if anything, it had worn her out. The reason for her insomnia, she realised with something approaching relief, was nothing other than good old honest-to-goodness toothache. She was so happy to feel something actually real and normal, she nearly burst into tears.
‘First thing in the morning,’ she mumbled drowsily. ‘I’ll phone Mr …’ She fell asleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
New patient, is he?’
‘I think so, Mr B, ‘ replied the receptionist. ‘Haven’t got a card for him. I’ll try the computer.’
Mr Barbour shrugged, and flipped the intercom again. ‘Shovel him in anyway,’ he said. ‘Anything I need to know he can probably tell me. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.’
Presently the door opened, and …
Worth pointing out at this juncture that Akram looks different on this side of the line. Not very different; he’s still tall, dark, lean, broad-shouldered with curly black hair, beard, pointed, one, villains for the use of, and savage coal-black eyes. He’s just different, that’s all. He might conceivably have been his own second cousin, but someone’d have to point out the resemblance before you noticed it.
The same, of course, goes for Mr Barbour; more so, in fact, since where he came from his hair wasn’t the colour of light, dry sand and his eyes weren’t pale blue. Both of them spoke in English (Akram with a faint tinge of Manchester around the vowels, Mr Barbour sounding like Bertie Wooster doing his Lord Peter Wimsey impression) and both of them, if asked, would have been prepared to swear blind they’d never set eyes on each other before.
‘Right,’ said Mr Barbour. ‘What seems to be the problem?’
‘Toothache,’ Akram replied. ‘My tooth hurts.’
Mr Barbour nodded. ‘By some miraculous fluke,’ he said, ‘I happen to have some experience in tooth-related disorders. Now then, the chair won’t eat you, it’s on a diet. Ah,’ he added, inclining his mirror, ‘a cavity. The question is, do I fill it or lease it from you to keep my vintage port in?’
Akram frowned. ‘Could you get on with it, please?’ he said.
‘My apologies.’ Mr Barbour wiggled the mirror a little more, probed with the toothpick thing. ‘This is one ghastly mess you’ve got here, by the way. How long’s it been hurting?’
‘Not long.’ Akram tried to think back. ‘Ever since I arrived - I mean, since I, er, got back from holiday. Two weeks, maybe? I forget.’
Mr Barbour raised an eyebrow. ‘That, if you don’t mind me saying so, is pretty well world class forgetting. If I had something like this in my face, I’d remember it easily enough. I’m afraid,’ he concluded, straightening up, ‘she’s got to go.’
Akram thought of the tooth fairy in his bedsit. ‘Come out, you mean?’
Mr Barbour nodded. ‘If we can persuade the little blighter to come, that is,’ he added. ‘Not an awful lot left to get a hold of, and what there is looks like it’ll be as hard to shift as a grand piano in a skyscraper. Sorry about that,’ he added. ‘I could tell you it’s just a tiny bit awkward and we’ll have it out of there in two shakes, but I got given a free sample pack of truth the other day and I’m dying to try it out.’
Akram shifted impatiently. ‘If the tooth’s got to be pulled, pull it. Either that, or tie a bit of string to the door and leave it to me.’
‘On y va,’
replied Mr Barbour, fiddling with sundry instruments. ‘Now, I’m going to have to carve your gums like the Christmas turkey, so it looks like the jolly old gas for you.’ Akram gave him a sharp look. ‘For my sake, not yours. I find the sound of agonised screaming a bit offputting, to tell you the truth. Ready?’
‘Just a minute.’ Deep in Akram’s unconscious mind, an alarm had gone off. This was no big deal; Akram’s mind was full of the things, and usually he paid them as little heed as you would if you heard a car alarm start shrieking three blocks away. On this occasion, however, he decided to take a look, just in case. ‘You mean an anaesthetic? Put me to sleep sort of thing.’
‘That’s right,’ Mr Barbour said, uncoiling a length of rubber pipe. ‘Sorry, is that a problem?’
‘Well…’
‘I could try doing it with a local,’ said Mr Barbour. ‘But when it comes to major slashing and chopping, I find local anaesthetics are a bit like local government; lots of aggro and inconvenience, but they don’t actually achieve anything. Up to you, really.’
For some reason that Akram couldn’t quite fathom, the chair he was sitting in was beginning to remind him of the interior of a palm-oil jar. He could see no reason why this should be, and his tooth was currently giving him jip in jumbo catering-size measures. He reached a decision, shouted to his unconscious mind to switch that bloody thing off, and politely asked Mr Barbour to proceed.
‘Sure?’
‘Sure. Sorry about that. Silly of me.’
Akram lay back and closed his eyes. Somewhere behind him, something was hissing like a snake. There was a funny taste in his mouth. He was feeling drowsy …
And where is it, this Storybook country, this place we’ve all been to and know so well and can never find again?
They say it’s a small enclave, a protectorate of sleep and dreaming, landlocked in the mind, the soul’s Switzerland; inside every one of us a tiny patch of Somewhere Else that’s as foreign and sovereign as an embassy. Major financial institutions have been searching for it for years, on the basis that the fiscal advantages of relocating their registered offices there would be beyond the dreams of avarice, but it refuses to be found. It issues no postage stamps, has no national netball team and never submits an entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. Conventionally, the map-makers show it as lying between the borders of sleep and waking, but that’s just a guess. A profession that’s only just got itself out of the habit of putting Jerusalem in the middle and dragons round the edges isn’t to be relied on, in any event.
