by Dandi Palmer
Short Stories
For Older, and Not Quite So Old, Children
by
Dandi Palmer
This edition published by Dodo Books
at Smashwords
Copyright Dandi Palmer 2010
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Stories
Abbess Honoria
Honour the past, or pay the price
Custard Doughnuts
Confectionary and stone carving
Dream Fungus
A friend from another dimension
The Ghosts of the Greasy Spoon
Haunted junk food
Hot Chocolate
Never trust a four-year-old's grasp of arithmetic
The Jugle Egg
How to hatch a new Universe
The Odd Fish
A chatty fossil
Queenie
Rodent with the ultimate weapon in its paws
Sammy's Sandwich
Strange snacks for a strange friend
Tigger, Treacle, and Coke
Friendship knows no boundaries
Twillington's Tip
Where rubbish goes
Zalda Zax and the Cyberpod
Flight of fancy into a different dimension
ABBESS HONORIA
Written before the UK Hunting Act 2004 was passed
Several dozen hooves crunched over the frosted ground. Some distance ahead, hounds bayed as they followed the scent of the fox.
Suddenly there was silence, then whimpering as the beagles turned tail and fled back along the track, through the hooves of the horses.
“Hunt saboteurs!” bellowed the master of the hunt. This was unlikely as he had managed to get the protesters' ringleaders jailed for criminal trespass weeks ago. But he was in a fury and spurred his horse forward to give any interloper the taste of his riding crop.
Before they could catch up, the rest of the hunt heard an indignant whinny, terrified yell, and dull thud as sixteen stone of retired bank manager hit the frozen ground.
There was a ghostly figure blocking their way. By its flowing white robe it might have been some Glastonbury hippy on a quest to find the Holy Grail.
The hunt closed in. There was no one else watching, so they could get away with giving the trespasser a good hiding. However, when they could see beyond their cloud of anger, it transpired that the interloper was a tall, elderly woman wearing the robes of some religious order. She was surrounded by an eerie halo. All the same, she was trespassing: there was only one way to deal with poachers and trespassers. The hunt might well have trampled the holy woman into the ground if she had not raised her hands and formed a shimmering arch in the cold air.
More horses panicked and unseated their riders.
The arch filled with light that crackled and spat like a living creature.
Terrified horses and bruised hunters fled.
The apparition faded and a lucky fox continued on its round of the local rabbit warrens.
On the hill above, despite the barking of dogs and whinnying of horses, Gillian ignored the commotion. She had seen it all before and was more interested in wrapping her remaining sandwich, putting on her mittens, and climbing down from her perch on the crumbling monastery wall.
Somebody was walking through the ancient tombstones in the graveyard with a businesslike stride. The woman had a large key in her hand and was heading towards the crypt - she must have been going to open it!
Gillian knew she wouldn’t get a chance like this again. That crypt had been out of bounds to visitors for years and the woman with the two wave radio chattering somewhere inside her quilted jacket was obviously going inside.
Gillian tried to appear casual as she strolled past her line of sight, peering intently at the inscriptions on each gravestone and jotting down the odd note in her pad.
The woman had an air of officialdom about her and looked at the 10-year-old as though she were at risk of becoming lunch for the peregrine circling high above them. "Hello."
Gillian was used to adults looking at her as though she was out of place. "Hello,” she replied with an engaging smile.
"Are you up here all by yourself?" There was a schoolmarmish authority in those firm tones.
“It’s alright.” Gillian pulled a mobile phone from her pocket. “I only live in the estate down there and have to check in every hour, and Harry always comes as soon as I call.”
“Harry?”
“Our Alsatian.”
“He’s got a mobile phone?”
“No ... I didn’t mean ...”
The woman laughed and the sternness evaporated. “It’s alright. I know what you meant.”
Gillian couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. “Are you going into the crypt?”
"That’s why I’ve got the key."
“They don’t let anyone in there as a rule - that’s what the museum curator told me.”
“I’ve got special permission. One of the perks of my job."
“Who are you then?”
“Detective Sergeant Jardine.”
Gillian’s face lit up. “Police! Are you investigating the white lady?”
DS Jardine looked puzzled. “What white lady?”
“The one that leaves the crypt every time there’s a hunt.”
The detective looked at the iron gate securing the crypt, then at Gillian. “Tell me about her?”
“Let me come inside with you then?”
The 10-year-old looked and sounded mature for her years, and obviously had a keen interest in local knowledge which might be useful.
DS Jardine unlocked the gate and took out her torch, beckoning Gillian after her.
They went down a dark passage and into the crypt where there was enough light coming through the gratings high in the outside wall to see without the torch.
Gillian enthusiastically examined every tomb and inscription. If the police officer wanted to find a body here, she was spoilt for choice.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure. We had to bring charges against the hunt saboteurs for criminal trespass and some were sent to prison. But their leader claimed that the land had been bequeathed by the Abbess, ‘For the good and well being of God’s creatures and the people.’ So I decided to check on the story just to confirm that those who claim the land actually have title to it."
“And?” Gillian asked as innocently as she could.
“The ancestral owners allowed us to examine the deeds... However..."
"They were a forgery?"
"If so, a very good one. The key document doesn't mention Abbess Honoria."
“So those protesters could be set free if you find her will?”
"If only it were that simple. If a court decides that the people do own the land and ruins, they will probably end up with the National trust." DSI Jardine paused to wonder why she was telling the 10-year-old all this. For some reason it didn't seem to matter, so she went on. "But that’s not why I’m here. If this land doesn’t belong to the current owner, a multi-million pound fraud is about to be perpetrated."
"Why?"
"Leaving it to the moles and rabbits didn’t matter before, but this land has now become very va
luable to speculators; valuable enough to make it worthwhile forging a few ancient documents."
“Wow! You shouldn’t really have told me all that, should you?"
DS Jardine was baffled that she had. The police officer had the reputation of being tight lipped in the most stressful of situations. "Not really." She brushed some grime from an inscription, none the wiser about what she was looking for. “Now Gillian, tell me about the lady in white?”
“She’s in here now," the 10-year-old announced brightly.
"In here..?" The detective tried not to shudder at the strange change in her young companion and the crypt’s air pressure. “How can you tell?”
“Look.” Gillian pointed to a tall white shape forming in the gloom at the far end of the crypt.
The apparition wore a robe that fluttered eerily in the still icy air and the only features visible were the long severe face and a hand pointing to a skull in a niche.
Undaunted, Gillian skipped over to lift it down. “It’s very heavy for bone.”
The figure in white immediately became a ghostly whirlwind.
Before Gillian could hand the skull to DS Jardine it whirled from her grasp and shattered on the flagstones.
The detective trained her torch on the remains. “Good grief, it was clay.”
Gillian pulled a large iron key from the shards. "This must open her coffin.”
“But Abbess Honoria’s remains are in a casket in the cathedral.”
“Well let’s go before anyone realises we’ve discovered the key.”
“Now hold on ...”
“The white lady will only let me open it, you know," Gillian announced confidently.
The detective had no doubt about that, then an anxious Alsatian looking for its 10-year-old owner pattered down the crypt passage, so she decided to let the strange girl hold onto the key.
Once Harry was taken back home and Gillian’s parents were satisfied that she was in safe hands, DS Jardine drove her and the key to the cathedral.
Clutching a can of WD-40, the deaconess led Gillian, DS Jardine, a forensic scientist, and party of interested clerics down into the cathedral crypt. “It’s such a heavy lock. Even the recent burglars couldn't get into the casket; they just scratched the wood. No idea why they thought there would have been anything of value in it? Only an acetylene torch could cut through those iron bands, and that would have set off the sprinklers.”
The deaconess and other clerics seemed unaware that they were caretakers of the evidence that could foil a multi-million pound fraud.
As the party reached the massive steel and wood casket, the deaconess turned to Gillian. “You do know they’ll be bones, hair, and such like ... in there?”
“Oh those things won’t bother her,” said DS Jardine. "After all these centuries, I’ll just be surprised if she can turn that key.”
The deaconess sprayed the inside of the lock with WD-40 and Gillian pushed the key home. As she carefully turned it there was a ‘clunk’ and a sudden gush of the air was released from the lid.
A faint, eerie sigh echoed through the crypt columns.
The forensic scientist lifted the lid of the casket. Inside it was a jumble of human bones and decaying white robe. Skeleton hands clutched a manuscript box. He flicked away the dust of centuries with a soft brush, and then the deaconess put on her spectacles to translate the Latin inscription on its lid.
“This is the will of Abbess Honoria, witnessed by God and her holy order.”
She looked up. “Seems as though the legend might have been true after all.”
“Legend? What legend?” asked DS Jardine.
“Didn’t you know? Nobody could prove it because her mortal remains could not be disturbed on pain of death, but it was believed the King tried to take her lands for the royal hunt. So she left her estate to the holy order, God’s animals and the common people ... on condition no one ever hunted on it."
CUSTARD DOUGHNUTS
Sadie liked custard doughnuts. Strawberry, raspberry and even chocolate fillings were great, but nothing could beat that smooth, sweet taste of custard and pastry that filled you with a glowing sensation.
Sadie had tried custard tarts, and custard with apple pie or treacle pudding. Somehow it wasn't the same. While all her school friends queued for crisps, coke and chocolate bars, Sadie was preferred to walk to the patisserie and collect her custard doughnut.
Apart from her daughter's expanding waistline, Sadie's mother was also worried that this pastry preference was becoming the highlight of a young life that should have been filled with pop videos, parties, and boys.
So Sadie's parents upgraded her computer, paid some computer geek to write a program that blocked pornography websites - and any reference to custard doughnuts - in the hope she would spend her spare time surfing the Web instead of pursuing confectionery.
Sadie took to the Internet like a wart hog to mud. She wallowed in the online art galleries, interactive discussions on the state of the planet, and simulations of sounds made by dinosaurs.
But, most importantly, she Googled custard doughnuts. It came up with caramel doughnuts, iced doughnuts, dinky doughnuts, even doughnuts for dogs - but no custard doughnuts. Sadie was puzzled. How was it possible that such a comprehensive search engine couldn't find anything about custard doughnuts? Then she started to believe that they had been a figment of her imagination and it was just fate that she lived near the only patisserie on the planet that made them.
One night Sadie went to bed sadly perplexed over the matter and woke the next morning feeling as though a void had opened up in her life. It wasn't until lunch time that she realised what had happened - her craving for custard doughnuts had disappeared.
As time passed, that void demanded to be filled, yet it seemed that nothing could compensate for Sadie's old pastry addiction. Sport may have been all right, but she was too big and clumsy to pirouette on the asymmetrical bars. Reading was fine if you could find something that didn't involve fluffy animals or teenage angst, and there were only so many times you could play video games before everything became a blur. So Sadie sat in her bedroom, immersed in the Internet.
Downstairs, her parents congratulated themselves that they had weaned their daughter away from her old craving for deep fried pastry which exuded a gelatinous yellow mixture. Perhaps she would now find a nice online club that wanted to save the whale, or even take cyber hikes across the Himalayas.
Weeks passed. Sadie's friends occasionally called to go with her to the school's disco club. Her parents held their breath. Perhaps their big, clumsy, daughter was developing into a well balanced young woman after all.
Then, in the middle of summer, a truck pulled up outside the house. It was carrying large blocks of stone.
Sadie's mother looked aghast at the delivery slip. 'One 70x40x30cm of rough sawn limestone. Cost & delivery PAID.' She had no choice but to allow the two delivery men to wheel it into the back garden where it sat by the patio as though a gigantic garden gnome wanted to burst from it.
Before going to her morning coffee club, Sadie's mother went up to her daughter's room. Under the bed she found a wooden box containing three stone chisels, a file, rasp, dust mask, protective goggles and a three pound iron hammer. It was now apparent what Sadie had done with all the money she had saved by not buying custard doughnuts.
Sadie's first efforts with the hammer and chisel produced something shaped like an amoeba. It might have been useful as a giant's doorstop, and provoked several enquiries from neighbours anxious that the council had commissioned some modern sculpture to offend local taste. With help from the stone carver's website she had discovered, Sadie's work quickly improved.
As her father looked out over his flower beds punctuated by huge stone animals, he wondered if he didn't after all prefer a plump, custard doughnut loving daughter instead of one with arms like Popeye capable of flattening the neighbourhood bullies. At least his golfing friends were impressed and their club commissioned Sadie
to carve something monolithic as an interesting hazard on the ninth hole. It may have been paranoia, but when the sculpture was finished, her father had the horrible suspicion that it looked like a gigantic custard doughnut.
DREAM FUNGUS
Published in Aquila in September 1994
It was still there, tucked secretively away amongst the nettle stems like an abandoned ostrich egg. Lee decided to tell no one about the puffball, even though it was safe from his father's strimmer. His mother insisted the bottom of the garden be kept for the butterflies, and any other wild creatures that could make it through the nettles.
Over the next few days the puffball rapidly grew. Lee was tall for his ten years, but it was soon up to his waist. The books said that these fungi could become very large, but Lee wanted to know what happened when they finished growing. This one surely couldn’t get any larger and he had the feeling that when he came out the next morning he would find a collapsed brown shell.
Lee just told his parents that he wanted to camp out all night to watch a shower of meteors. As it was the weekend, his parents agreed on condition that Damien, their black Labrador stay with him. Having a large dog bounce on your head in the dead of night was bad enough, but the thought of suddenly encountering its wet nose in the early hours at the bottom of the garden almost persuaded Lee to cancel the adventure. But his father had already put up the tent and was making him a plate of cheese and radish sandwiches, so there was no way out.
As darkness fell Lee was not sure what to expect. After pulling back several nettles, he slipped into his sleeping bag to watch from the tent as the puffball shone in the moonlight. Hedgehogs crunched their way round it and the occasional frog flopped near Damien’s nose. When one croaked the Labrador hid in the nearest bush.
"Fine guard dog you are," muttered Lee, and then dozed off.
