Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

Moody stopped speaking for a moment, took a sip from his hip thermos, then continued.

‘As the grey dawn pushed the night behind it and the world once more stirred to wakefulness, Lloyd suddenly jerked awake. He had slept for the past two hours and had been woken by a cry from Ichabod. Two words, quite clear, with no meaning he could discern. He yawned and stretched and called out. But of answer, there came none, and upon investigation he found Ichabod’s Thumper, the safety off but undischarged – and all his clothes, neatly folded on the ground, and still inside one another like Russian dolls. His socks were lining his shoes, his braces still buttoned up outside his shirt, a small pile of teeth fillings next to his watch.’

‘He’d gone?’ said one of the other passengers.

‘Vanished. Lloyd called the Consuls but they gave up after three days, having found nothing but his hat wedged high in an oak two miles away. They concluded that he had suffered a night terror, lost his mind and fled. A new stockman was brought in to replace Ichabod, his disappearance a mystery.’

‘What were the two words he spoke?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.

‘He said: “Oh Gronk”, with a – a sort of a sigh of tired realisation.’

There was silence in the railway carriage, the air heavy with a sense of dread and wonder. The Gronk was a recent addition to the range of Wintervolk, and I’d not heard about her first appearance. I glanced out of the window. We had reached the bottom of the incline, and were steaming along the shores of a frozen reservoir that boasted a stone dam and Gothic straining tower. I turned back to Moody. I knew the story wasn’t over.

‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ I asked, and Moody nodded.

‘The replacement Winterstockman noticed that the taste of the water turned sour over the coming weeks so he made his way up the vertical ladder and through a loft hatch that was barely two foot square. They found Ichabod in the cold water tank, complete except for a missing little finger.’

Moody paused for dramatic effect.

‘The Consuls concluded suicide, and that Ichabod might have had an “inexplicable desire to cement Wintervolk legend”. But Porter Lloyd had more than doubts. When searching for Ichabod he noted that the house was tidy, the washing done, the beds made up, South Pacific [34] Original Broadway cast recording, obviously. Ichabod’s wife and daughter had been big fans. playing on the gramophone. There was even a Lancashire hotpot on the stove, a note on the lid in a small, spidery hand.’

‘What did it say?’ asked one of the other passengers.

‘It said: “Not enough oregano”. ’

‘He could have folded the clothes and cleaned and cooked himself,’ said another passenger, peering around the seat back, ‘and put on the record. Like the Consuls said, to perpetuate the legend.’

‘It’s possible ,’ said Moody, ‘but Ichabod wasn’t a tidy man – and more a Rice/Lloyd Webber sort of person.’

I had only a single question.

‘Was Ichabod unworthy?’

Moody looked at all of us in turn.

‘He wasn’t the only one they found in the water tank. There were the bones of his wife and ten-year-old daughter who he’d previously maintained had walked out on him eight years before.’

Moody concluded his story, his small audience murmured appreciatively, and as tradition dictates, gave him food as a tip. Within a minute he had half a Mars Bar, eight wine gums, a small bar of nougat and a Murray Mint.

‘We’ll meet later in the Wincarnis,’ he said, leaning back to have a nap, ‘and I’ll tell you all about the blue Buick – and HiberTech.’

I returned to my seat, where Mrs Tiffen was still safely in Torpor. We stopped briefly at Talybont to drop off a power worker, and whilst at the halt the RailTecs reset the brakes and pretty soon we were off again, but now more easily, the line clear, and with good speed.

We crossed a river cocooned in ice and snow, then passed through an abandoned junction, the platforms and station buildings covered in snow and ice. The train travelled on for another half-hour until with a gentle hiss and a muted squeal of the brakes we drew to a halt.

My outward journey was over.

I roused Mrs Tiffen from her Torporific state with a lump of marzipan under her nose, fed her two slices of Fruity Malt Loaf and a Walker’s Shortbread Finger, then guided her out the carriage door. The air was sharper than in Cardiff; our feet trod the snow with more of a squeak than a crunch. It was by now quite dark, and the town was illuminated not by electric light, but gas: the flickering orange light from the lamp-heads added a sense of ethereal gloom to the town, as though it were caught in a time warp.

The signboard on the platform announced the station as Talgarth, the small town that played host to the HiberTech complex. I told the stationmaster I was dropping my charge and would be returning on the same train, and she replied that I had at least two hours, so plenty of time.

While Moody supervised the unloading, I took Mrs Tiffen towards the station exit, where Aurora had already been met by a man who was tall, thin, and had a complexion like that of a freshly oiled rugby ball. I was put in mind of an ancient corpse that had been preserved in a peat bog.

‘Deputy Worthing,’ [35] It was the first time I’d been given the honorific ‘Deputy’ rather than ‘Novice’. I still wasn’t sure about it. said Aurora as Mrs Tiffen and I approached, ‘allow me to introduce the Deputy Head of HiberTech Security, Agent Lionel Hooke. He looks after stuff when I’m not around. Highly trustworthy. Was a captain in the army until he joined us.’

‘You were… Captain Hooke?’

‘Yes,’ he said, one eyelid twitching, ‘and if you make any comments about crocodiles, alarm clocks or missing a hand, I will pluck out one of your eyeballs and make you swallow it.’

‘I was thinking of no such thing,’ I replied somewhat untruthfully, as every single one of those things had gone through my head.

‘Hooke was joking about the eyeball,’ said Aurora, before turning to the Deputy Head and asking in a more quizzical tone: ‘You were joking?’

‘Of course,’ said Hooke after a pause, ‘my little absurdity. To break the ice, you understand.’

And he gave me a smile that looked as though it had come from a hastily-read handbook on cultivating personal charm. Even more worrying, he moved in to give me a Winter embrace. He smelled of chewing tobacco, battery acid and recently dead horse. He also took the opportunity to whisper in my ear.

‘Step out of line and I’ll destroy you.’

‘Good to meet you, too,’ I stammered, realising that the introduction was simply so he knew who I was, not the other way round.

‘Want a lift?’ asked Aurora. I said I needed the exercise, so she wished me well, then departed with Agent Hooke in a four-wheel-drive command car that looked as though it was the unfortunate union of a truck and a family saloon.

Mrs Tiffen and I threaded our way through the empty town, following the signs towards the HiberTech facility. I noticed that fixed safety lines were very much in evidence – a 6mm steel cable running through eyelets bolted to walls and lamp-posts. Although we had provision for these in Cardiff and Swansea, they were used only in emergencies. Here, they looked not just used, but used a lot . If visibility dropped to zero, the fixed line would ensure you’d not get lost – so long as you clipped on with a lanyard.