by Heide Goody
“Isn’t that just the bride and the groom?” he said.
Myra flung the door open.
“Don’t talk to me about the groom!” she snorted. “Ridiculous man!”
Myra Whuppie had, quite understandably, decided against a white wedding dress. However, it appeared that Myra nonetheless wished to make a statement with her wedding ensemble. Roy was no expert on couture but even he could see that Myra’s dress was a statement of power: borrowing a leaf from the late Margaret Thatcher’s book, a smidgeon of the look of Chancellor Angela Merkel and even a flourish perhaps taken from some wild barbarian queen, Myra gave the appearance of a woman not only ready to conquer the world but also ready to assume command of an intergalactic empire.
“What a beautiful dress,” said Roy automatically.
Myra humphed.
“Not happy?” he said.
“Oh, I’m fine!” she snapped. “It’s not me who decided to ruin the big day by letting flying ants have a party on their faces.”
Roy looked past Myra to Petunia and Lily. If Myra was a galactic empress, then these two were clearly her imperial guard (assuming the imperial guard was happy with peach fabrics and puff sleeves). Both looked thoroughly sorry for themselves, with faces as red and shiny as a prize Edam.
“I think they’ve laid eggs in my brain,” said Lily miserably.
“It will no doubt increase her IQ when they hatch,” said Myra. “Now, if you’re looking for Ella, I can’t help you. Haven’t seen her since she went off to that Dainty character’s place. She’s just like her father. Causing all manner of ructions and then running away from any responsibility. Here. Try some of this.”
This last was to Petunia as Myra passed her a tube of concealer. Petunia squeezed out a glob of it and smeared it over Lily’s face.
“What ructions?” said Roy.
“Oh, the rumours she’s been spreading. It’s all attention-seeking behaviour, you know.”
“Attention-seeking,” agreed Petunia.
“Is this about Ella’s mum still being alive?”
Myra shushed him loudly and mashed his lips shut with her fingers.
“None of that here,” she whispered angrily. “Gavin’s in the next room, sleeping off a bottle of Merlot and I’ll not have him hearing such vicious lies.”
“You haven’t told him?”
“Of course not! Lies! All lies.”
“Mum,” said Petunia. “You can still see the bites. They poke through.”
Myra regarded the now flesh-coloured but otherwise perfectly evident eruptions on Lily’s face.
“You’ll need to fill in the gaps,” said Myra. “Build it up in layers. Slap it on with a trowel if you have to.” She returned her attention to Roy. “I loved Natalie,” she said. “Truly I did. And if I could do anything to bring her back, Mr Avenant, I would. I really would.” She gave him a tired but earnest look. “But she’s dead and the man I love has had enough heartache for one lifetime.”
“Of course,” said Roy.
“Now, I’ve got some facial reconstruction to do on these two which I think is going to require both
Chapter Thirteen
“Jumping Jehoshaphat!”
“Had that one.”
“Suffering succotash!”
“And that.”
“Son of a gun!”
The carpet gave a rev of energy but its slow descent did not halt.
“Head for that forest over there,” said the wolf.
“What forest?” said Ella.
Daylight was a couple of hours away. It was midsummer’s day, the day of her dad’s wedding, but, for now, the world was a shifting mass of blacks and very dark greys.
“That forest there,” said the wolf. “You really can’t see it?”
“Hey, night-vision, I don’t knock wolves for being colour blind.”
The wolf huffed loudly.
“Down there. Left a bit. That’s it. Left a bit more.”
Wet and shivering from her dip in the sea, Ella squeezed a fraction more juice out of the carpet with an inspired ‘Cheese and crackers!’ before they brushed, snapped and bumped their way down through the tree canopy onto the ground.
And now it was truly pitch black. Ella crawled forward, feeling her way along her mum’s body to the wolf.
“Where are we?” she whispered. “And why am I whispering?”
“Cos you’re not stupid, princess. If I was blind and landed in the Deep Dark Forest at night, I’d keep quiet too.”
“So where are we exactly?” she said.
“The Deep Dark Forest,” said the wolf.
Ella shook her head. “We were in the Deep Dark Forest when we were near Granny Rose’s house. This is Wales. The Brecon Beacons or something. Miles away. At least a hundred miles.”
The wolf’s hot breath on her cheeks told her that he had turned his head to her.
“It’s all one forest, sweetheart. I thought you’d got your head around this. This is how your world works now. Dwarfs, castles, forests. It’s archetypes all the way.”
“Yeah, right. But I don’t see why ninety percent of these stories I end up in have to feature a Deep bloody Dark Forest.”
“It’s symbolic, isn’t it? I reckon that fellow, Freud, would be able to tell you what it signifies. All this dark wild overgrowth, full of secrets and adult mystery.”
“All right. I get it. No need to beat around the bush.”
“Well, exactly.”
“You’re saying that this forest extends across swathes of British countryside that, up until a few days ago, were cultivated field and towns and roads.”
“No, not that. I’m saying —”
“Shush!”
Ella tried to put a hand over the wolf’s mouth in the dark but missed slightly and stuck a finger up his nose which shut him up nonetheless. She thought she had heard something and now, in the silence, she heard it again, clearly but some distance away. A powerful but morose voice, exhausted but still able to carry a tune.
“— five hundred and thirteen green bottles hanging on the wall. And if one green bottle should accidentally fall, there’d be eight hundred and twenty-eight thousand, five hundred and twelve green bottles hanging on the wall.”
Ella recognised the voice instantly.
“But he can’t be here,” she said. “His cave was miles from here.”
“This is what I was trying to tell you,” said the wolf. “It’s one forest. It’s not here. It’s not there. It just is.”
Ella stood and stared into the black. There was an orange flicker of fire light, tiny but definitely present.
“Does that mean that Rushy Glen is as near to here as it was the last time we met him?”
The wolf licked his nose.
“Your grandma’s house is eight and a half miles north east of here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Hey, sister, I know how to get to grandma’s house, short cuts and everything. Eight and a half mile thattaway.”
An idea had formed in Ella’s mind. Her subconscious mind had already made a decision but her conscious mind need a little persuasion.
“We need to stop that wedding,” she said. “And we’re going to die of hypothermia if we stay out in the forest.”
“True,” agreed the wolf.
“And I don’t suppose you could carry the pair of us to Rushy Glen…?”
“I’m a wolf, not a mule.”
“You’re a big wolf.”
“Not a mule.”
“So we’ve got no choice.”
“No choice but what?” said the wolf.
“Stay here a minute and take care of my mum.”
“What? Why? Wait. No. That’s a really bad idea.”
“Have you got a better one?” she said as she made her way towards the tiny fire.
“Well, give me a moment to think,” said the wolf but she was set on her path now.
Ella trod with care, feeling slick roots underfoot and pulling a
gainst the grasses and brambles that tried to ensnare her. The singing, miserable and monotonous, grew louder as she neared.
The ogre watched her approach but did not get up. The hulking rough-skinned creature crouched beside his pitiful fire and continued his song.
“Eight hundred and twenty-eight thousand, five hundred and nine green bottles hanging on the wall.”
“Morning,” said Ella and gave him a little wave.
The ogre looked at her and sang. What other choice did he have? In the space of a week, he was not yet a fifth of the way through his song but if he stopped or moved then his life would be forfeit and fairy tale creatures clearly took their oaths seriously.
“Can I join you?” she said.
The ogre, resigned and unhostile, gestured for her to sit. The wood on the fire was thin and burned quickly. By the light it threw, Ella could see that the ogre had plucked and denuded the trees, bushes and grasses within monstrous arm’s reach of the spot in which he was trapped. Ella sat close to the fire and her soaked clothes soon began to steam.
“How are you doing?”
The ogre gave her a look and sang a verse that, though superficially about the possibility of green bottles falling from a wall, had an implicit subtext regarding the misery one might feel if compelled to sit in one spot and constantly sing a song about green bottles.
“I could release you from your oath,” she said, “if you promise not to harm us.”
The ogre peered at her suspiciously through his thick spectacles and made a question of the fall of the eight hundred and twenty-eight thousand, five hundred and sixth green bottle.
“And if you do me a favour,” said Ella.
The ogre tilted his head, listening. The ogre made the universal signal for “please, do go on” by rolling his hands. He wasn’t ready to commit just yet.
“All I need,” said Ella, “is some hired muscle for a day or so. Reckon you could help with that?”
The ogre nodded slowly, still cynical.
“If you help us with a few brute force tasks, then at sunset tomorrow you’ll have no further obligation to me. We go our separate ways. How’s that?”
He spread his hands: explain.
“Mostly transport,” said Ella. “We — that’s the wolf and me and my mum who’s in a magical sleep — need to get to my grandma’s house. Rushy Glen? We ran out of swears for our magic carpet.”
The ogre nodded as though this was a perfectly normal and not at all mad sentence.
“And then we might need your help stopping a wedding. No violence required. At least I shouldn’t think so. Deal?”
The wolf did not enjoy being carried by an ogre but their progress through the murky forest was rapid. The ogre seemed to loosen up as he went, clearly enjoying the chance to move around at last although he appeared to be fighting a battle with his lips which seemed trapped in a muscle memory loop and wanted to keep on singing.
They arrived at Rushy Glen just as the sun made a coquettish appearance through the trees. Ella nearly lost the flying carpet as a volley of inventive abuse greeted them.
“Tha’s never brought an ogre along here? Tha’s got cloth between tha ears, honest t’God!”
“Hi Granny,” called down Ella from her lofty position on the ogre’s shoulder.
Granny Rose’s shotgun waved an emotional figure of eight. It seemed entirely unsure whether to shoot an ogre, a wolf or a member of her own family.
“The ogre’s working for me, Granny,” said Ella. “He swore.”
“Aye, fairy tale things are creatures of their word,” agreed Rose, sceptical nonetheless.
“He won’t mind waiting outside for a bit if you don’t want him to come in.”
“Come in? I were debating whether t’marmalise the bugger. Tha can come into the garden, creature, but no further. Well away from the goat, mind!”
The ogre gave her a look. “Madam, I am an ogre, not a troll.”
“Oh, so’s tha don’t eat goat then?” Rose asked pleasantly.
“I do.”
“But tha thought I reckoned all ogres and trolls was the same, eh? I’m not one of those racialists. My husband were a bear, tha know.”
“Indeed, madam,” said the ogre and gingerly stepped over the white picket fence, carefully avoiding the various traps and pits, and sat down on a patch of bare earth.
And Zeke an’ all,” said Rose with a reproachful waggle of the gun. “Should have learned tha lesson the last time.”
The wolf said nothing but leapt nimbly down and placed the ogre between Rose and himself.
Rose came over as the ogre carefully placed Ella and Natalie onto the ground.
“Who’s that there with thee?” Rose’s hand fluttered to her mouth as she recognised her lost daughter. “Well I’ll be...no! It surely can’t be?”
“It’s mum, yes,” said Ella.
“No.” Rose touched Natalie’s cheek, prodding it as though it might be a waxwork model, an illusion. “But she’s the same… Hasn’t aged a day…”
Ella watched an intense conflict take place on Rose’s face, between the tsunami of emotions that the reappearance of her daughter had stirred and the granite-faced façade that her Yorkshire genes and old-school stiff upper lip had built over the years. A weakness flickered in her eyes and a trembling set in around her lips and then decades of repression, self-denial and tea-fuelled British grit pushed aside those mere feelings and reasserted control of Fortress Rose.
“Well, there’s no good to be had from sitting around like a pair of soppy wazarks. Let’s get her inside, eh?”
The two of them lifted Natalie through the door and onto the kitchen table. Rose examined her from head to foot, feeling for a pulse and brushing hair away from her face. She also, Ella noticed, surreptitiously poked her with a pin, blew salt in her face and made the sign of the cross on Natalie’s forehead.
“It is mum,” said Ella.
“Oh, aye?” said Rose. “We’ll see. Reckon I’ll need to get a flannel on this one, freshen her up a bit.” She regarded Ella for a moment. “Why’s tha all wet?”
“We came down in the sea. A couple of times, actually.”
“What were tha doing in t’sea?” said Rose, who clearly didn’t approve of such fripperies.
“It’s a long story.”
“I bet it is.”
“I think I’ll go and get changed if that’s all right, Granny?”
The old woman nodded brusquely and turned back to her task.
Ella climbed the stairs, realising just how cold and exhausted she was. In the guest bedroom she had slept in only a few nights before, she stripped off her soaking clothes and began to tremble with the accumulated cold and weariness. Telling herself that she would just warm up for a moment, she slipped beneath the cover of the single bed. In a few moments, the trembling subsided and Ella started to feel warmth stealing back through her body. She decided to stay for another five minutes before going back downstairs.
Ella was woken by the crow of Granny’s cockerel.
Light seeped into the room — the golden light of mid-morning — and she realised that she’d been asleep for hours. She slipped out of bed. Her clothes remained in a sodden heap on the floor. She went to the cupboard to find more of her mother’s clothes. She chose a pair of leggings and a sweater with a bizarre frieze of ski-jumpers arrayed across the chest. She went downstairs after finding a pair of flip flops to wear.
Granny Rose dozed in the chair next to the table. The wolf was curled up in front of the stove, which was a surprise. Had Granny softened and let him in?
On the table, Ella’s mum had been stripped of her wet clothes and Rose had laid a bedsheet over her. Otherwise, she looked much the same, pale as death (although perhaps a little redder in the cheeks where Granny had applied some vigorous flannel action).
Ella decided not to wake any of them. A little peace was to be treasured. She slipped outside to collect eggs for breakfast. She went round to the henhouse that was
no longer also a garage; at some point, she would have to tell Rose that she had parked the car in a hedge somewhere.
The ogre sat in a flower bed, head tilted to the sky.
“Are you all right?” she asked, cautiously.
The ogre gulped heavily. He turned his head to Ella with a sigh. “I have shown great patience, but no birds have landed in my mouth at all.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Ella.
“Because I put all of the seed from the bird feeder in here,” he said, pointing to his mouth. “It must follow that I should be irresistible to wildlife.”
Ella left him to his efforts as he uprooted a whole sunflower plant and patted the soil ball into place in his mouth, turning his face hopefully back towards the birds.
There was a new rose tangling its way across the entrance to the henhouse, so Ella fetched the secateurs to deal with it. She spent five minutes reducing the thorny invader to a brazier full of pieces, and took a turn round the garden to see what else might need attention. She found a glowing bean on the bean pole and plucked it off the plant, popping it in her leggings pocket to add to the brazier. When she approached the well there was a handsome young man sitting on the low brick wall. His hairless chest glistened with beads of water and his eyes smouldered in the way that Ella had only ever seen before on the male models that did the Christmas perfume ads. She didn’t even need to check to know that his lower half was formed of a fish’s tail, which he flipped lazily.
“Morning,” she said.
He didn’t speak, simply stared at her with a well-practised boy band smoulder.
“Can I just say,” she said, “in my entire adult life, excluding crotch-rubbing lechers and drunkards, I could count the number of blokes who’ve shown an interest in me on one hand.” She did a quick head count. “One hand and a pinky. But in the past week, the forces of magic and goodness have tried to thrust at least two men on me. Repeatedly and often. So, you, my good merman, rather than being a welcome diversion — with your pecs and six pack and v-muscle thingy — are just another bloke I genuinely and respectfully have bog all interest in. Understand?”
The merman continued to stare mutely at Ella with a fake intensity that only grated on her nerves.
