Jasper Fforde - The Well of Lost Plots

THURSDAY NEXT

1950-1986

SpecOps agent & beloved wife

to someone who doesn't exist

Killed for no adequately explained reason

in an abstract place by an abstract foe

I raised my gun and the grammasites shuffled slightly, as though deciding among themselves who would be sacrificed in order for them to overpower me. I pointed the gun at whichever one started to move, hoping to postpone the inevitable. The one who seemed to be the leader — he had the brightest-coloured waistcoat, I noted — took a step forward and I pointed my gun at him as another grammasite seized the opportunity and made a sudden leap towards me, its sharpened beak heading straight for my chest. I whirled around in time to see its small black eyes twinkle with a thousand well-digested verbs as a hand on my shoulder pulled me roughly backwards into the elevator. The grammasite, carried on by its own momentum, buried its beak into the wood surround. I reached to thump the close button but my wrist was deftly caught by my as yet unseen saviour.

'We never run from grammasites.'

It was a scolding tone of voice that I knew only too well. Miss Havisham. Dressed in her rotting wedding dress and veil, she stared at me with despair. I think I was one of the worst apprentices she had ever trained — or that was the way she made me feel, at any rate.

'We have nothing to fear except fear itself,' she intoned, whipping out her pocket derringer and dispatching two grammasites who made a rush at the elevator's open door. 'I seem to spend my waking hours extricating you from the soup, my girl!'

The grammasites were slowly advancing on us; they were now at least three hundred strong and others were joining them. We were heavily outnumbered.

'I'm sorry,' I replied quickly, curtsying just in case as I loosed off another shot, 'but don't you think we should be departing?'

'I fear only the Questing Beast,' announced Havisham imperiously. 'The Questing beast, Big Martin … and semolina.'

She shot another grammasite with a particularly fruity waistcoat and carried on talking. 'If you had troubled to do some homework you would know that these are Verbisoids and probably the easiest grammasite to vanquish of them all.'

And almost without pausing for breath, Miss Havisham launched into a very croaky and out-of-tune rendition of 'Jerusalem'. The grammasites stopped abruptly and stared at one another. By the time I had joined her at the holy lamb of God line they had begun to back away in fright. We sang louder, Miss Havisham and I, and by dark satanic mills they had started to take flight; by the time we had got to bring me my chariot of fire they had departed completely.

'Quick!' said Miss Havisham. 'Grab the waistcoats — there's a bounty on each one.'

We gathered up the waistcoats from the fallen grammasites; it was not a pleasant job — the corpses smelt so strongly of ink that it made me cough. The carcasses would be taken away by a verminator who would boil down the bodies and distil off any verbs he could. In the Well, nothing is wasted.

'What were the smaller ones?'

'I forget,' replied Havisham, tying the waistcoats into a bundle. 'Here, you're going to need this. Study it well if you want to pass your exams.'

She handed me my TravelBook, the one that Goliath had taken; within its pages were almost all the tips and equipment I needed for travel within the BookWorld.

'How did you manage that?'

Miss Havisham didn't answer. She snorted and pulled me towards the elevator again. It was clear that the twenty-second sub-basement wasn't a place she liked to be. I couldn't say I blamed her.

Miss Havisham relaxed visibly as we rose from the sub-basements and into the more ordered nature of the Library itself.

'Why do grammasites wear stripy socks?' I asked, looking at the bundle of garments on the floor.

'Probably because spotted ones are out of fashion,' she replied with a shrug, reloading her pistol. 'What's in the bag?'

'Oh, some — er — shopping of Snell's.'

Miss Havisham was a bit like a strict parent, your worst teacher and a newly appointed South American dictator all rolled into one. Which wasn't to say I didn't like her or respect her — it was just that I felt I was still nine whenever she spoke to me.

'So why did we sing "Jerusalem" to get rid of them?'

'As I said, those grammasites were Verbisoids,' she replied without looking up, 'and a Verbisoid, in common with many language students, hates and fears irregular verbs — they much prefer consuming regularverbs with the "ed" word endings. Strong irregulars such as "to sing" with their internal vowel changes — we will sing , we sang , we have sung — tend to scramble their tiny minds.'

' Any irregular verb frightens them off?' I asked with interest.

'Pretty much; but some irregulars are more easy to demonstrate than others — we could cut , I suppose, or even be , but then the proceedings change into something akin to a desperate game of charades — far easier to just sing and have done 'with it.'

'What about if we were to go ? I ventured, thinking practically for once. 'There can't be anything more irregular than go, went, gone , can there?'

'Because,' replied Miss Havisham, her patience eroding by the second, 'they might misconstrue it as walked — note the "ed" ending?'

'Not if we ran ," I added, not wanting to let this go, 'that's irregular, too.'

Miss Havisham stared at me icily.

'Of course we could. But ran might be seen in the eyes of a hungry Verbisoid to be either trotted, galloped, raced, rushed, hurried, hastened, sprinted or even departed.'

'Ah,' I said, realising that catching Miss Havisham out was about as likely as nailing Banquo's ghost to a coffee table, 'yes, it might, mightn't it?'

'Look,' said Miss Havisham, softening slightly, 'if running away killed grammasites there wouldn't be a single one left. Stick to "Jerusalem" and you won't go far wrong — just don't try it with adjectivores or the parataxis; they'd probably join in — and then eat you.'

The elevator stopped on the eleventh sub-basement, the doors opened and a large Painted Jaguar got in with her son, who had a paddy-paw full of prickles and was complaining bitterly that he had been tricked by a hedgehog and a tortoise, who had both escaped. The Mother Jaguar shook her head sadly, looked to heaven in exasperation and then turned to her son.

'Son, son,' she said, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, 'what have you been doing that you shouldn't have?'

'So,' said Miss Havisham as the elevator moved off again, 'how are you getting along in that frightful Caversham Heights book?'

'Well, thank you, Miss Havisham,' I muttered, 'the people in it are worried that their book will be demolished from under their feet.'

'With good reason,' replied Havisham. 'I've read it. Hundreds of books like Heights are demolished every day. If you stopped to waste any sympathy, you'd go nuts — so don't. It's man eat man in the Well. I'd keep yourself to yourself and don't make too many friends — they have a habit of dying just when you get to like them. It always happens that way. It's a narrative thing.'

' Heights isn't a bad place to live,' I ventured, hoping to elicit a bit of compassion.

'Doubtless,' she murmured, staring off into the middle distance. 'I remember when I was in the Well, when they were building Great Expectations . I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world when they told me I would be working with Charles Dickens. Top of my class at Generic College and, without wanting to seem immodest, something of a beauty. I thought I would make an admirable young Estella — both refined and beautiful, haughty and proud, yet ultimately overcoming the overbearing crabbiness of her cantankerous benefactor to find true love.'