Jasper Fforde - The Well of Lost Plots

'So there you are!' cried Aornis, grinning at me from her seat in the armoured personnel carrier as the wounded were removed. I had returned from the lines to the forward dressing station where the disaster had generated a state of sustained and highly controlled panic. Cries of 'Medic!' and swearing punctuated the air, while less than three miles away we could still hear the sound of the Russian guns pummelling the remains of the Wessex Light Tank. Sergeant Tozer stepped from the back of the APC with his hand still inside the leg of a soldier as he tried to staunch the bleeding; another soldier blinded by splinters was jabbering on about some girl he had left back home in Bradford on Avon.

'You haven't dreamed for a few nights,' said Aornis as we watched the casualties being unloaded. 'Have you missed me?'

'Not even an atom,' I replied, adding: 'Are we done?' to the medics unloading the APC.

'We're done!' came back the reply, and with my foot I flicked the switch that raised the rear door.

'Where do you think you're going?' asked a red-faced officer I didn't recognise.

'To pick up the rest, sir!'

'The hell you are!' he replied. 'We're sending in Red Cross trucks under a flag of truce!'

It would take too long and we both knew it. I dropped back into the earner, revved the engine and was soon heading back into the fray. The amount of dust thrown up might screen me — as long as the guns kept firing. Even so, I still felt the whine of a near-miss and once an explosion went off close by, the concussion shattering the glass in the instrument panel.

'Disobeying a direct order, Thursday?' said Aornis scathingly. 'They'll court-martial you!'

'But they didn't,' I replied, 'they gave me a medal instead.'

'But you didn't go back for a gong, did you?'

'It was my duty. What do you want me to say?'

The noise grew louder as I drove towards the front line. I felt something large pluck at my vehicle and the roof opened up, revealing in the dust a shaft of sunlight that was curiously beautiful. The same unseen hand picked up the carrier and threw it in the air. It ran along on one track for a few yards and then fell back upright. The engine was still functioning, the controls still felt right; I carried on, oblivious to the damage. It was only when I reached up for the wireless switch that I realised the roof had been partially blown off, and it was only later that I discovered an inch-long gash in my chin.

'It was your duty, all right, Thursday, but it was not for the army, regiment, brigade or platoon — certainly not for English interests in the Crimea. You went back for Anton, didn't you?'

Everything stopped. The noise, the explosions, everything. My brother Anton. Why did she have to bring him up?

'Anton,' I whispered.

'Your dear brother Anton,' replied Aornis. 'Yes. You worshipped him. From the time he built you a tree house in the back garden. You joined the army to be like him, didn't you?'

I said nothing. It was true, all true. Tears started to course down my cheeks. Anton had been, quite simply, the best elder brother a girl could have. He always had time for me and always included me in whatever he got up to. My anger at losing him had been driving me for longer than I cared to remember.

'I brought you here so you can remember what it's like to lose a brother. If you could find the man that killed Anton, what would you do to him?'

'Losing Anton was not the moral equivalent of killing Acheron,' I shouted. 'Hades deserved to die — Anton was just doing his misguided patriotic duty!'

We had arrived outside the remains of Anton's APC. The guns were firing more sporadically now, picking their targets more carefully; I could hear the sound of small arms as the Russian infantry advanced to retake the lost ground. I released the rear door. It was jammed but it didn't matter; the side door had vanished with the roof and I rapidly packed twenty-two wounded soldiers into an APC designed to carry eight. I closed my eyes and started to cry. It was like seeing a car accident about to happen, the futility of knowing something is about to occur but being unable to do anything about it.

'Hey, Thuzzy!' said Anton in the voice I knew so well. Only he had ever called me that; it was the last word he would speak. I opened my eyes and there he was, as large as life and, despite the obvious danger, smiling.

'No!' I shouted, knowing full well what was going to happen next. 'Stop! Don't come over here!'

But he did, as he had done all those years before. He stepped out of cover and ran across to me. The side of my APC was blown open and I could see him clearly.

'Please, no!' I shouted, my eyes full of tears. The memory of that day would fill my mind for years to come. I would immerse myself in work to get away from it.

'Come back for me, Thuz—!'

And then the shell hit him.

He didn't explode; he just sort of vanished in a red mist. I didn't remember driving back and I didn't remember being arrested and confined to barracks. I didn't remember anything up until the moment Sergeant Tozer told me to have a shower and clean myself up. I remember treading on the small pieces of sharp bone that washed out of my hair in the shower.

'This is what you try and forget, isn't it?' said Aornis, smiling at me as I tugged my fingers through my matted hair, heart thumping, the fear and pain of loss tensing my every muscle and numbing my senses. I tried to grab her by the throat in the shower but my fingers collapsed on nothing and I barked my knuckles on the shower stall. I swore and thumped the wall.

'You all right, Thursday?' said Prudence, a W/T operator from Lincoln in the next shower. 'They said you went back. Is that true?'

'Yes, it's true,' put in Aornis, 'and she'll be going back again right now!'

The shower room vanished and we were back on the battlefield, heading towards the wrecked armour amid the smoke and dust.

'Well!' said Aornis, clapping her hands happily. 'We should be able to manage at least eight of these before dawn — don't you just hate reruns?'

I stopped the APC near the smashed tank and the wounded were heaved aboard.

'Hey, Thursday!' said a familiar male voice. I opened one eye and looked across at the soldier with his face bloodied and less than ten seconds of existence remaining on his slate. But it wasn't Anton — it was another officer, the one I had met earlier and with whom I had become involved.

'Thursday!' said Gran in a loud voice. 'Thursday, wake up!'

I was back in my bed on the Sunderland, drenched in sweat. I wished it had all just been a bad dream; but it was a bad dream and that was the worst of it.

'Anton's not dead,' I gabbled. 'He didn't die in the Crimea it was that other guy and that's the reason he's not here now because he died and I've been telling myself it was because he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard but he wasn't and—'

'Thursday!' snapped Gran. 'Thursday, that is not how it happened. Aornis is trying to fool with your mind. Anton died in the charge.'

'No, it was the other guy—'

'Landen?'

But the name meant little to me. Gran explained about Aornis and Landen and mnemonomorphs and, although I understood what she was saying, I didn't fully believe her. After all, I had seen the Landen fellow die in front of my own eyes, hadn't I?

'Gran,' I said, 'are you having one of your fuzzy moments?'

'No,' she replied, 'far from it.'

But her voice didn't have the same sort of confidence it usually did. She wrote Landen on my hand with a felt pen and I went back to sleep wondering what Anton was up to and thinking about the short and passionate fling I had enjoyed in the Crimea with that lieutenant, the one whose name I couldn't remember — the one who died in the charge.