Snippets and Nids erected rope and pulley systems. They threw tethers over the statue’s necks like halters. Teams of Snippets and Nids pulled, dragging down the massive edifices.
“This is your fault,” screamed V’Daphne.
“My fault? You got the question wrong too.”
“If you’d have got it right, then we wouldn’t be in this mess. So it’s your fault.”
“Idiot!”
“Clot.”
“Harridan!”
“Ah, Lucy,” said Mayor Curtis, beaming at her as the two statues boomed insults at each other. “Both Mayor Cletus and myself would like to thank you for all you’ve done for the Snids or, possibly Nippets. We shall now be a whole people again. How can we ever repay you?”
“Do you know the answer to the riddle?” she asked, more out of hope than any real sense they could solve it.
The mayors looked at each other and shook their heads.
“I didn’t think you would. Whoever can solve this riddle must be further down the road, someone I haven’t met yet. So, I must keep going. Talbot, come on we’re leaving.”
The travellers left following the River Wash upstream. They walked over the rolling dales and rested at the top of one of the hills. As Lucy looked back, she could still see the monolithic heads with the little figures of Nids climbing over them like ants. She could just hear the echoing argument of the statues as they were torn down and reconstructed into a church. She hoped that it wouldn’t be dedicated to her.
Disconcerting, is it not? said Intuition.
What is?
The fact that those statues are being taken apart and being made into a church. It is very gruesome. It is reminiscent of the starlings when you fought the Tec-heeler. There, you used the starlings’ life force to defeat an opponent. Here, you have defeated those statues with cleverness and wordplay. You have saved the Snippets and Nids from war and yet, despite your best pacifist intentions, you have condemned two sentient beings to death as a church.
It was true. There was a cost to be paid again. And once again, it was paid in blood. The two obelisks had been genocidal maniacs, but they had also been sentient beings. There was no real harm they could have done. They were immovable objects. It was only their words that had been poison. Perhaps the Snippets and Nids were to blame for listening to such idiots in the first place. However, it was not the Snippets or Nids who had been punished. It was the statues that paid the price.
It was not black and white—nothing ever was.
I’ve got to get this quest over with. Things are dying because of me. It’s not just the coercion spell forcing me on anymore. I want this all to end, and the only way is at the Falls of Wanda.
She turned and spoke to Talbot, who lay beside her with his arms folded behind his head.
“How far is it to the Falls of Wanda? It seems like we aren’t getting anywhere.”
The faun opened one eye, smiled at her and unfolded his arms.
“It shouldn’t be too long. Once we’re over the downs, all we have to do is go through the dark forest, then over the plains of Cantab, and we’re there.”
“And on the way we’ll just have to hope we find the person who can help us open this stupid riddling box,” she said, thrusting the box back into her backpack.
“Come on, we’d better get going,” said Talbot, jumping up.
Lucy shouldered her backpack and turned away from the slowly disappearing statues. There were still many hours of daylight left and many miles to travel. She was close to her goal. Over the downs, through the dark wood, over the plains of Cantab and then climb the Falls of Wanda.
Journey’s end was nearing. She could feel it. There she would have her answer about the nature of reality. Conscience was right; she would find the answer about what was going on at the Falls of Wanda.
Chapter 21 The Little Girl in the Blood-Red Cape
Wolves can come in many guises,
all god’s shapes and all god’s sizes,
and, like the mother who chastises,
wolves may love you and tear you apart.
From the song “Body Armor”
By Franches Verns,
Year After Ice 19456
“You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Once you start running with wolves you can never go home.”
From “Song of the Firefly”
By Yerux Xandu,
Year after Ice 17858
Lucy did not like the forest at all. She couldn’t decide whether it was a forest or a wood. She liked defining things just like Grandpa Will had taught her; it was part of her scientific brain, but this forest—or, possibly, wood—simply refused to be categorised. It could be either. Then, just as she made the decision that it was a forest because the trees were close together, they would come to a clearer part, and she’d fall back into confusion.
Lucy hated being confused. It was so annoying. In her opinion, there were facts about the world, and you learned them through science. Science always had an answer, or at least a better question. It was what she placed her faith in, if she had any faith, which she didn’t. As Grandpa Will had been fond of saying “If you don’t have a logical approach to the world, then how could you know anything?” All there would be was uncertainty and confusion.
She’d been confused ever since she’d arrived in this world, this stupid triple world of either reality, her own madness or the imagination of an author. She had tried to be logical in sorting out this mess, but she just couldn’t do it. This world could be any of the three options she’d narrowed it down too. One of them must be right. All three of them were believable, but only one of them could be correct. Which one? Which one was the world she was in? She hated not being able to decide almost as much as she hated this forest, or was it a wood?
It was hard to even define the trees. Even the type of tree was uncertain underneath that tangle of ivy and creeper. She couldn’t say if this were a forest or a wood, and she couldn’t even say what the trees were. All the uncertainty annoyed her. It worried her. It gnawed away at her mind. She had to know the truth. There must be an ultimate truth somewhere. She just had to find it.
She also didn’t like the forest because of the talking animals and plants. They were strange, but, Lucy reflected, anyone who lived solely in a forest, or wood, would eventually go strange. She and Talbot had stopped for lunch on a small grassy knoll and had been forced to have a conversation with a growth of mushrooms living on the rotting log on which she was sitting. That had been unnerving. Then, the pair had been assailed by at least two separate troupes of squirrels who only wanted to talk about their nuts. That had been downright absurd. She hated all these things because she believed they were stolen from books she’d read. They were all out of fairy-tales, or literature, or films, or, occasionally, television programs.
She did feel lighter somehow, relieved, as if a great weight had come from her shoulders. She was on track again. Since the town of Marsh, it seemed as if she were being stalled, but now it felt better. She was moving towards her goal again. The coercion spell in her chest was upbeat. On with the quest—to the Falls of Wanda—ever onwards—up and up.
Defeating the Statues of Cleverness and saving the Snippets and Nids from war felt to her as if she had passed a test, just as defeating the Tec-heeler had felt like passing a test. Two tests down.
A serendipitous wind whipped up sending a whirl of dead leaves spinning into a patch of daffodils.
Why are there dead leaves and daffodils? Lucy asked Intuition. There should be one or the other—dead leaves if it’s autumn or daffodils if it’s spring.
It is spring, he replied.
It was definitely spring when I got into this world. All the spring flowers were out, but since I left Marsh all the flora have been summer flowers—the oilseed and the sunflowers in the land of the Snippets and Nids. And now all the trees are shedding their leaves. I think this world is dying.
Dying? Is that not a little melodramatic? You
see some dead leaves, and suddenly the whole world is dying?
“Talbot?” she asked, giving up with Intuition and his contrary ways. “Why are there dead leaves and daffodils all at once? Shouldn’t there be one or the other?”
Talbot looked around at the forest—or was it a wood? He turned back to Lucy with tears in his eyes.
Tears and tears, tears and tears, but which is which?
She still didn’t know what that meant. Everything was uncertain in her head. Was it, a wood or a forest—which was which?
“The magic is drying up in this place,” he said. “It’s drying up all over the world. We have to get to the falls soon and heal the world, or it will shrivel up and die. At least, that’s what I think is happening, but I’m no lore master. I’m just a stupid faun. I don’t really know about these things.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that. You’re the cleverest, bravest person I’ve met.”
“You really think so?” Talbot asked, his already ruddy face going scarlet.
“Yes I do. So come on. Let’s go and save this world,” she said, as they started off down the snaking path. “There is another question you could answer for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Is this a forest or a wood?”
Talbot paused for a moment and scanned their surroundings.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Does it matter?”
She smiled wryly at the faun who smiled back.
There was uncertainty everywhere, thick round them, like a miasma. A forest or a wood—that was uncertain. Tear and tears, but which is which—that was very uncertain. Who would they meet—that too was uncertain. Why did Talbot look like the wizard? Finally, what was this new test that Lucy felt she needed to pass?
At the moment, she was on track. She just wasn’t sure where she was going that was all.
The pair trod on down the twisting path in the wood, or was it a forest?
The faun looked at her face and beamed a smile. “Shall I tell you a story?” he asked.
She half smiled back. “Go on then.”
“Once upon a time…”
~
A little girl skipped along the path in the wood. The basket slung over the crook of her arm contained all the good treats a dear grandmother could desire: wool, to darn things, biscuits and cakes, for eating, and humbugs. What more could any grandmother want?
The little girl always skipped along this path to grandmother’s house. Every day come rain or shine she would skip. It was her raison d’être: she skipped—therefore, she was. And sweets—she ate sweets too. She ate sweets and skipped—therefore, she was.
She wore a red cape—blood-red. It clashed terribly with the autumnal world around her, standing out like a strawberry in a wheat field. She was given it, possibly, as a birthday present? Maybe, at some party or other. She didn’t really care where it came from or who gave it to her. That wasn’t really important. All that was important was the skipping, and any sweets she could find along the path.
Her hair was dark brown and curled. It came down just over her shoulders and bobbed there quite happily as she danced along. She had the face that all young girls have—plump, with a runny nose. Under her blood-red cape she wore the all-in-one dress that only five-year-old girls wear. She was not, in fact, five; she was seven. Well, maybe she was seven. It didn’t really matter. She didn’t really care. Ages were irrelevant. All that was relevant were sweets and, sometimes, skipping. Her socks were white and florally embroidered, and her shoes were square-cut and shiny—just perfect for skipping.
She danced along the path swinging her basket and singing a song about pussies, wells, bells and their relationships to each other. The whole wood seemed to echo with her masterwork. The trouble with singing in a wood is that all manner of wildlife can hear, and sometimes they hunt noise makers.
The forest appeared to be in autumn. The little girl didn’t notice and wouldn’t have cared if she had. The forest always looked like this, didn’t it? The deciduous leaves littered the path in rich colours from dark toffee to almond yellow. They crunched under her square-toed shoes as she skipped.
The girl heard the dry crunching noise and thought it sounded like sweet wrappers under her feet. Therefore, there must be empty sweet wrappers on the ground making that noise. If, there were empty sweet wrappers, then, there must be sweets somewhere. She wondered why she wasn’t eating those sweets?
This was not an unusual inquiry for the little girl to make. Most of her time was spent obtaining and devouring confections of any description. If she’d had a mother or a father, they would have been shocked, appalled and then terrified by her appetite for all things sticky and sweet. She consumed nothing else, not even water. Luckily, she had no parents to worry about her, at least she didn’t think she had any parents. She couldn’t remember—it wasn’t important anyway.
As she puzzled at the sound of sweet wrappers, but the total absence of sweets, the little girl was approached by a stranger. He stepped out from behind a large oak tree right into her skipping path.
It was lost on the little girl that the man was not very tall and had thick, black, oily hair, which sat in ringlets down to his shoulders. She didn’t notice that his face was narrow, unwashed and unshaven. She totally missed his yellow eyes, which burned like a torched village. She didn’t see his shabby black suit with a white rose in his buttonhole or his dark, fingerless gloves. She was completely oblivious to his rank smell of rotten pinewood and old moss. What she did notice was his total lack of sweets.
“Hello, little girl,” he said, in a voice which dripped like an infected wound. “Where are you going today?”
The girl stared at him for a few moments. Since he was neither made of gingerbread nor marshmallow, he registered as only background material to her sweet addled brain. If she had registered the stranger as anything other than inedible natural wallpaper, she might have remembered her grandmother’s advice about men whose eyebrows met in the middle as this man’s did.
“Good day, sir,” she said, with a small curtsey. This let her check the floor for any left-over chocolates, pear drops, candy canes or liquorice laces—there were none. “I am going through the forest to visit my grandmother and take her this basket of goodies.”
“Ah, yes,” said the man, eyeing her basket, “needful things for your grandmother.”
His grin spread across his face like gangrene. The smile was too wide, it looked as if some last vestiges of sanity had snapped inside him, and he was now entering into the realm of unpleasant dribbling and calling mushrooms Rupert.
“That’s right, sir. Hey, your eyes are growing larger,” she said, in a rare moment of observation. “Are they supposed to do that?”
“It is getting darker,” he explained, as a thick mist descended through the forest, blotting out the sunlight. “My eyes grow larger in the dark, so I can see.”
The little girl thought for a moment. It seemed logical, but she had not had any candy for fifteen minutes, and her brain was not working at its peak efficiency. She stared at the man more intently in the gloom.
“Your beard is thicker,” she said.
“It grows when it’s cold to keep me warm,” he said, in his suppurating voice.
“And your ears are growing longer too.”
“That’s to hear more of your riveting conversation.”
Something was not right. She could feel it. She was by nature the kind of person who just let life take her where it wanted. As long as there were sweets to eat, she was fine. Now her sixth, seventh and eighth senses were all babbling at her. It was all happening too early.
“The nails on your fingers are getting longer,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied.
The smile cracked his face, growing too large for the proportions of his head. It raced across his cheek like a fissure during an earthquake, tearing the flesh around it.
“Your teeth are very big and sharp,” said the little girl, as th
e truck of reality hit the rabbit of comprehension. How had it all gone so wrong so quickly?
The man just winked at her, licked his lips and gave her his yellow-eyed stare.
“I haven’t even met the woodsman yet—shouldn’t we be doing this at grandmother’s house?” she asked weakly.
He shook his head.
No.
Deep inside, the man let go of the chains, and the werewolf came forward. The werewolf ripped through the stranger’s outer flesh like hot water through jam, and his skin burst. It was all tearing flesh and sinew, snapping jaws and matted fur. The thing wobbled unsteadily on its hind legs, shaking the last parts of surplus skin and brain matter from its black and grey coat. Dripping with blood and gore it howled at the moon like a new-born’s first cry.
The little girl fainted at the horrific sight in front of her.
The werewolf snarled and leapt.
He had been taught, at an early age, about wolves in stories and had reasoned that they all had one thing in common—overconfidence. The three little pigs, to his mind, was a cautionary tale about not letting your lunch get entrenched in brick built edifices. The fable of the boy who cried wolf informed him that help may not always arrive, even when the victim screams loudly. The story of little red riding hood, on the other hand, told him to attack at the first opportunity—grandmothers in cottages can wait until dessert.
Just as the wolf leapt at her throat, an unexpected tree branch swung from behind an oak and smacked him in the mouth. The wolf yelped and sat down with a great huff. Another branch swung down from behind the tree, smashing straight onto his skull, and he crumpled to the ground like a discarded ragdoll.
“I hate these flippin’ werewolves,” said Lucy, tossing the branch she’d used as a club.
“I know,” said Talbot, “but at least we’re getting good at dealing with them. That one didn’t even know we were there.”
Lucy was at the side of the young girl with the cape. She stared down into a very familiar face.
But she…she looks like me, she thought.
Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy Page 26
