A Bridge Too Few Read online

  “Try to look like rubble!” said Epiphany quickly. “There’s a time and place for you to meet the neighbours, and this isn’t it.” As an afterthought she added “Besides, he’s clearly quite a small specimen. Much bigger neighbours will be along.”

  She wheeled a barrow over and Penelope draped herself into it, as if she was arranging herself on a sunbed. Skakky and Ek Midek dropped to the floor and balled up into neat piles of stones, albeit neat piles of stones that were making munching, slurping sounds.

  “There you are. Can you tell what’s happened with my bridge at all?” asked Mr Clegg, bringing Epiphany her cup of tea.

  “I have a very good idea what your problem is,” said Epiphany. “Solving it will be trickier.”

  “Fixing things can be expensive. It was the maintenance costs that ran me out of business.”

  She gave him a questioning look that she hadn’t really intended.

  “Bowling alley,” said Mr Clegg. “Twenty-five laner, over in Firth Park. A right beauty she was.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Running front of house is fine enough but it’s the complex and ingenious pin-setting and ball return mechanisms that’ll get you in the end. No one realises what wizardry goes on behind there. Cripplingly expensive and remains so unless I can sell it.”

  “Well, I do have an idea of how to solve your current problem. You might think it unorthodox, but I feel it will be effective. You need to go to a particular type of shop: a high-class butcher or Waitrose perhaps.”

  “I’m not one for spending money unnecessarily. Unless I had the right person to spend it on,” he said.

  Epiphany noticed there were three iced party ring biscuits on her saucer. They were all pink.

  She took out a post-it note pad and scribbled on it.

  “The butchers on the corner might be able to help you with this.”

  The man looked at it. “Really?”

  “Have faith,” she said.

  Mr Clegg hurried off.

  “Where’s ‘e going?” said Ek Midek.

  “To get you dinner,” said Epiphany.

  “We’re all right ‘ere. We got fish and duck.”

  “Oh, this will be better,” Epiphany assured them. “I’ve never liked eating duck, anyway. You’re always left with a large bill at the end of the meal.”

  The trolls looked at her blankly.

  “That was a joke,” she informed them.

  Skakky grinned. “Dead ducks is funny.”

  Renaldo sat in the kitchen window and watched them.

  Chapter 4

  “The simplest way to survive a fairy tale is to not enter one. Do not step off the path. Do not speak with talking frogs. Do not rub the magic lamp. Anyone who willingly enters the fairy realm only has themselves to blame.”

  Get Your Head Out Of The Clouds: Why Jack Should Not Have Climbed That Beanstalk

  Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

  While the man was out at the butcher’s Epiphany phoned round various vehicle hire companies until one could meet her needs. She finalised the details as Mr Clegg returned. She met him in the kitchen. She had drunk the tea and slipped the party rings into her satchel.

  “That was quite an expensive purchase,” grumbled Mr Clegg, handing the carrier bag to Epiphany. “Not that I begrudge anything for a beautiful lady.”

  “Yes, enough of that,” she said.

  “And I’m still not sure what the purpose is, exactly.”

  “Leave it to me,” said Epiphany. “I’ll pop outside now, and I expect to be out of your way very soon. If I’m successful then I’m sure Renaldo will let you know by going outside again.”

  She walked across the garden to find that the three trolls were gathered around something on the lawn. She walked across. Penelope was the first to react, turning around guiltily.

  “We found it! We were jus’ having a talk wiv it.”

  There was a small French poodle cowering between them.

  “Hungry!” said Ek Midek. “Don’ like rice cakes.”

  “Well I might very well have the answer for you,” said Epiphany. “Now put the dog back where you found it.”

  “I like the fluffy ones!” complained Skakky.

  Ek Midek scooped it up and tossed it over the fence into the next garden. The cat in the tree hissed as the dog flew past.

  Epiphany held the carrier bag aloft. “From a high-class butcher, no less.”

  There was a small gasp of appreciation from Penelope.

  “I propose a dinner party for you all. The key ingredient’s in there.” She handed the bag over.

  Penelope looked inside. “What is it?”

  “I heard you say that you wanted to eat quail,” said Epiphany. “So I thought this would be even better. There is a quail in there, but then, there’s a bigger type of fowl called a guinea fowl and so it’s stuffed inside of that.”

  “Inside?” said Penelope, confused.

  “Yes. And then that is stuffed inside a chicken, which is in turn stuffed inside a duck, and it’s all inserted into a turkey.”

  “Right,” said Ek Midek. “Well, we’ve gots to eat the quail first.”

  “’Ave we, dad?” said Skakky.

  “Stands to reason, don’t it. We always eats the little one first, unless it tells us there’s a bigger one comin’.”

  “And there is. Bird in a bird in a bird in a…” The troll youth looked at Epiphany. “’Ow many birds did you say there was?”

  “Five.”

  “But we cannot eat the smaller bird without working our way through the bigger birds first,” said Penelope.

  “We can get it out if we shoves our ‘ands up its bum-‘ole.”

  “Ek Midek!” said Penelope, scandalised. “We’re refined trolls now. We must do this right.”

  The trolls stood there, their jaws slack as they tried to process what this meat-based conundrum meant for their code of conduct.

  “While you’re thinking about your dinner party, how you want to cook things, and what else you might want to do,” said Epiphany, “can I show you to your transport?”

  She led them through the side gate and up the ramp of the truck that was waiting outside.

  “What was that?” said the truck hire man as he passed her the keys.

  “What was what?” she said blithely.

  He shook his head, got her signature on his tablet. “Sixty quid a day. Needs returning with a full tank.”

  “I’m sure I won’t need it for more than a day,” she said with more hope than certainty.

  She went to check the trolls were safely inside. They squatted in the back, their brows knitted with the furious thinking that they were all doing about how to tackle the multi-sized poultry feast.

  “Would this transportation be considered posh?” asked Penelope.

  “This?” said Epiphany. She gestured at the ribbed steel roof above their heads. “This is your very own mobile bridge,” she said.

  “Cor,” said Skakky.

  “Very nice indeed,” nodded Penelope.

  As she shut the door, Mr Clegg came down the driveway to meet her. Smutcombe stood at the open door of his Hillman Imp.

  “I’m not rightly sure what’s occurred here,” said Mr Clegg.

  “Probably best that way,” said Epiphany.

  “But, now that we’ve got to know each other,” he said, taking Epiphany’s hand in his, “maybe I could tempt you to a Sunday lunch.”

  The older man’s eyes shone with hope.

  “Mr Clegg…”

  “I make my own gravy,” he added.

  Smutcombe scoffed loudly. “You are wasting your time, sir. Getting her to attend a dinner date is nigh on impossible.”

  Mr Clegg faltered and released her hand.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were spoken for, lass.”

  She looked at Smutcombe and then Mr Clegg. Renalado and a sleek silver cat sat on the garden wall and watched the awkward really-not-a-lov
e-triangle with the kind of smugness that cats specialised in. Epiphany resisted the urge to tell Mr Clegg, quite clearly, that she was certainly not spoken for, holding her tongue lest she accidentally rekindle the man’s hopeless hope.

  Embarrassed, Mr Clegg stepped away and retreated to his house.

  “You are an incorrigible tease, Epiphany Alexander,” said Smutcombe. “It’s night now and I’m faint with hunger.”

  Epiphany looked at the sky. “I would say it’s still evening, just about.”

  “I’m near to collapse,” he told her.

  She dipped into her satchel. “Party ring?”

  He scowled at her but took it anyway.

  “We must relocate this family somewhere safe,” she said, “and then I need to have a conversation.”

  “What will we be talking about? The wine list?”

  “Not you and I,” she said. “I need to talk to the cats.”

  With the truck of trolls temporarily parked outside the front of her house, Epiphany went inside and through to the kitchen.

  “We not going out?” said Smutcombe. “A more intimate dinner at home?”

  “If you intend to come with me then you will need to eat right now.”

  “I could knock up a half-decent pasta puttanesca if you wish.”

  She looked at the red evening sky over the rear garden.

  “I don’t believe there’s time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Twilight,” she said.

  It took Smutcombe a moment or two to understand at which point his frown was replaced by a look of sudden alarm.

  “No,” he said firmly. “No, no, no.”

  “I wasn’t asking your permission,” she said and let herself out into the garden. A soft breeze played over the hedges and the heavy plum tree.

  “You can’t trust them!” said Smutcombe. “There’s no need to involve them and certainly no value in summoning them!”

  “I won’t have to,” she said. “They’re already here. Aren’t you?” she called loudly to the garden and the wider world.

  There was no response for a moment, save for the whisper of the wind in the rose bushes and then two cats slinked onto the lawn: a slender silver creature and a fat black and ginger tom, made all the fatter by his mass of puffy fur.

  “They’ve been following us all day,” said Epiphany.

  Abruptly, without any intervening state, the two cats were replaced by two fairies, one in a suit of spun cobwebs and moonlight, the other with wild-hair, wild-eyes and a ragged assortment of clothes that looked like they had been stolen from corpses.

  “What do you want?” said Epiphany.

  “The sun chases the moon chases the sun chases the moon,” said the wild one cryptically.

  “It’s not what we want from you but what we can do for you,” said the silver one. “My card,” he said and scattered a handful of acorns on the floor. Epiphany picked one up.

  “Acorn?” she said.

  “Oaknut,” he said. “And my friend…”

  The other searched the pockets and tears of his garments and finally produced a limp cabbage leaf.

  “Pak Choi,” he said.

  It had been the fashion for centuries for the creatures of Faerie to name themselves after flowering plants and herbs. There were any number of Primroses, Parsleys, Mustard-Seeds and Sweet-Peas but there was understandably some branching out into less obvious species and cultivars…

  “A penny for your thoughts?” said Oaknut.

  “No, thank you,” said Epiphany who had no intention of selling her mind for so little.

  “Get back! Get back!” said Smutcombe in the shouty tremulous manner of English gentlemen everywhere attempting to tackle something of which they were clearly terrified. “I’m armed.”

  He was armed with a set of car keys. A crystal orb fob dangled from the keyring. Epiphany guessed there must some cold hard steel in some of the keys although the two fairies hardly appeared worried.

  “We are not your enemies,” said Oaknut. “We come to you with amazing offers for a limited time only.”

  “A knife in the heart opens no gates,” said Pak Choi.

  “You face an impossible task. And our prices are very competitive.”

  “She saw a large stone, kissed it and left it.”

  Pak Choi stuffed his cabbage leaf in his pocket but struggled because of the threadbare handkerchief that was already there. He removed both, wiped his nose on the leaf, bit a corner off the hanky and then shoved both in different pockets.

  “You want something,” Epiphany said to them. “Or you have some stake in this.”

  Oaknut tried to look innocent but failed, as though a human face was something he was unaccustomed to using.

  “A shoe of silver makes iron soft,” said Pak Choi and grinned.

  “Nutters,” said Smutcombe. “Dangerous nutters, fairies. Don’t trust them.”

  “I do not,” said Epiphany. “But they’re right. There are dozens of trolls under that bridge…”

  She pictured what would happen if the city’s troll population were all suddenly made homeless. It would be more than ducks and pigeons and terrified poodles that would end up on their dinner plates.

  “I need a solution to my problems,” she said.

  Oaknut waved his hand and the rose trellis at the end of Epiphany’s garden shimmered. Epiphany would not be able to say that a gateway to a dusky meadow appeared within the trellis, more that the gateway that had always existed was now made visible.

  “Surely, you’re not thinking of going with them?” said Smutcombe. “You’d be a fool to go.”

  “I don’t expect you to come with me, Westerby.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

  “Final call for the gate to Faerie,” said Oaknut. “Travellers are reminded to keep their belongings with them at all times.”

  “Here, take these,” said Smutcombe and tried to pass her the keys. “Jab them if they step out of line.”

  “I can’t take iron with me,” she said, “but I’ll take this.”

  She lifted Smutcombe’s Panama hat from his head and set it on her own at a moderately jaunty angle.

  She crouched on the lawn, pressed something into it and patted the grass.

  “Final call,” said Oaknut.

  “A wise man seizes time by the forelock,” said Pak Choi.

  “You’ll look after the garden if I’m gone long,” she said to Smutcombe. “The plums will want picking soon.”

  “How long do you intend to be?” said Smutcombe, alarmed.

  “We’ll see.” She gave Oaknut a shrewd look. “And you promise that I will be safe in Faerie.”

  He grinned. “All deals made in the Land of Eternal Twilight will be binding but make no deals and you will be beholden to no one.”

  “Only a fool washes his roof,” said Pak Choi.

  “That kind of cod-Confucianism is going to get old very quickly,” Epiphany told him.

  “All I must do is write your name here” — Oaknut suddenly had a clipboard made of pressed leaves in his hand and scrawled her name on paper with a thistle quill — “and when you leave, the guardians of the door will take your name and you will be free to go. Couldn’t be simpler.”

  “The bird on the wing has no pockets,” agreed his colleague.

  Epiphany knew Smutcombe was right. She was a fool to even think of going willingly into the land of Faerie but, whether it was a sense of destiny or fairy magic, part of her felt she had no choice.

  She nodded and walked towards the gateway.

  “Stay on the path!” Smutcombe shouted.

  She waved at him without looking back and then stepped across the threshold into Faerie.

  Chapter 5

  “Certain accounts of experimentation with LSD and other hallucinogens bear a notable similarity to earlier accounts of travels into the land of Faerie. Can we conclude that dreams of Faerie were caused by drug use? Or should we hazard that certain psyc
hotropic compounds act as a gateway to magical realms?”

  High Ho, High Ho: Drug Use and Prostitution in Fairy Tales

  Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

  Epiphany woke from a deep and refreshing sleep to find that she was tucked into the pillowy softness of a bindweed flower. She had no idea it was a bindweed flower until she’d stepped free of its petals, and stepped back to see what it was. It was clearly a bindweed flower although one of outrageous size.

  “Largest wildflower in Britain,” she murmured, “but not that large.”

  She looked around the mossy woodland dell. There were smooth areas of grass and handily upturned tree stumps that invited one to linger in the dappled sunlight but Epiphany knew that Faerie was more than capable of beguiling an innocent with its simple pleasures. The merest delay on this side of the portal could see months or even years pass in the mortal world. She found a footpath and walked away, deliberately averting her eyes from the bird singing just overhead, and the glimpse of a deer’s flank through the trees.

  The more purposefully she walked, the more the forest seemed to fall away. She adopted an increasingly urgent stride and the bare pastureland quickly gave way to the streets of a town. In some manner that should would not have been able to articulate, it felt that it wasn’t her that was approaching the town but that Faerie was rolling itself under her feet, a carpet insinuated under her footsteps. Narrow, steep roofed houses clustered together, shingles made from thick nut cases.

  By the time Epiphany was engaged in Olympic standard power-walking she arrived at the fringes of a bustling market. She hesitated. Markets were potentially beguiling places. They were full of distractions but stalls, loose curtains and fake smiles could hide a wealth of dangers. Epiphany believed that her former student Elsa Frinton had probably encountered a yule-elf market shortly before her death in Alvestowe. She wondered if Elsa had even made it through that market alive.

  This here was a goblin market, that much was clear. Goblins were well-known for being adept at monetising anything not nailed down. If something was nailed down then a goblin would sell you the added benefit that it was held securely in place.

  “You are a tourist in this fair land,” said a croaky voice at her side. “You’ll need some help in navigating this sea of rogues.”