Джаспер Ффорде - One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

“Thank you.”

And she wandered off.

“Thursday?”

I turned to find myself staring at . . . well, myself. I knew she wasn’t me or the real Thursday because she seemed somewhat narrow. In fact, now that I looked around, most people here were similar to real characters but of varying thickness. Some were barely flatter than normal, while others were so lacking in depth that they appeared only as an animated sheet of cardboard.

“Why is everyone so flat?” I asked.

“It’s a natural consequence of being borrowed from somewhere else,” explained the Thursday, who was, I noted, less than half an inch thick but apparently normal in every other way. “It doesn’t make us any less real or lacking in quality. But being written by someone who might not quite understand the subconscious nuance of the character leaves us in varying degrees of flatness.”

This made sense. I’d never really thought about it before, but it explained why the Edward Rochester and indeed all the borrowed characters in my series were of varying degrees of depth. Some weren’t that bad, but others, like Jane Eyre herself, were thin enough to be slipped under the door and could sleep rolled up and slipped into a drainpipe.

“How’s all that cloak-and-dagger stuff going?” asked Flat Thursday.

It seemed she thought I was the real one, and I wasn’t going to deny it.

“It’s going so-so,” I said. “How much did I tell you?”

She laughed. “You never tell us anything. Landen sent another message, by the way.”

“That’s good,” I replied, attempting to hide my enthusiasm. “Lead on.”

Thursday turned, and as she did so, she almost vanished as I saw her edge on. I wondered whether perhaps Agent Square might not be a Flatlander as he claimed, but a hyperfiction cube or something.

“We all think Landen’s totally Mr. Dreamcake,” said Flat Thursday as we walked past a reinterpretation of Middle Earth that was every bit as good as the real one, only flatter, “but he won’t speak to anyone except the real one.”

We walked down Thursday Street, and everything started to look vaguely familiar. The characters and settings were sort of similar, but the situations were not. The combinations were unusual, too, and although I had not personally supposed that Thursday might battle the Daleks with Dr. Who in a literary landscape, in here it was very much business as usual.

“He’s in there,” said Thursday, and she ushered me into a large, square room with a stripped pine floor, a thin skirting board and empty walls painted in magnolia. In the middle of the room was Landen, and he smiled as I walked in. But it wasn’t actually him; it was just a feeling of him.

“Hello, Landen.”

“Hello, Thursday. I needed to speak to you.”

“What about?”

“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically, “my answers are limited.”

I stared at him for a moment. Flat Thursday had said this was another message, so he must be communicating on a one-way basis by writing a short story—possibly with himself and his wife in conversation.

“Which Thursday do you want to talk to?” I asked.

“The written Thursday.”

So far, so good.

“Do you now believe I’m from the BookWorld?”

“You vanished as I was about to kiss you. Thursday never did that. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“Do you know what the real Thursday was doing with Sir Charles Lyell?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “my answers are limited.”

“Do you know who was trying to kill Thursday?”

“The Men in Plaid have tried to murder her on numerous occasions. At the last count, she had killed six of them. She doesn’t know who orders them to do it, or why.”

This was good news. Between Thursday and Sprockett and me, we’d taken out fourteen Plaids.

“Where is she now? Do you know?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “my answers are limited.”

“Why did she ask the red-headed man to give me her badge?”

“She didn’t— I did. As soon as she was out of touch for over five days, I contacted Kiki.”

“Why did she ask me to help her?”

“She’d hoped you had evolved into something more closely resembling her. The only person she knew she could truly trust was . . . herself.”

This sounded encouraging. “Can I trust Bradshaw?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “my answers are limited.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“She told me that she would try to contact you. She said the circumstances of your confusion will be your path to enlightenment.”

“What did she mean by that?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I have no more answers for you. I won’t know if you even got these. Good luck, Thursday.”

He stopped talking and just stood there blinking, awaiting any possible response from me.

“Listen,” I said, lowering my voice and looking around to make sure that Flat Thursday wasn’t listening, “did you write in a kiss, just to make up for the one I missed earlier?”

“Good luck, Thursday,” he said again. “I’m in a hurry, as I told your mother I’d help her with the Daphne Farquitt Readathon. Remember: The circumstances of your confusion will be your path to enlightenment. Four pounds of carrots, one medium cabbage, four-pack tin of beans, Moggilicious for Pickwick, pick up dry cleaning, toilet paper.”

I was confused until I realized that he had probably written the short story on the back of a shopping list. I watched and listened while he went through “Tonic water, snacks and the latest Wayne Skunk album, Lick the Toad ” before he stopped, smiled again and then just stood there blinking in a state of rest.

I walked back outside to where many Thursdays of varying thicknesses were waiting to be told a story and given a few tips. It felt like I was doing a Thursday master class in a hall of mirrors, but I think they appreciated it. By the time I left two hours later, some of the thinner Thursdays were a little bit thicker.

“Might I inquire where madam has been?” asked Sprockett once I had returned to The League of Cogmen. “ Vanity can be a dangerous place for those published. Brigands, scoundrels, verb artists and the Unread lurk in doorways, ready to steal the Essence of Read from the unwary.”

“I was in Fan Fiction.”

Sprockett’s eyebrow shot to “Worried” in alarm.

“How did you get back across the causeway?”

“Quite easily. They shoot anyone trying to escape, and they check the causeway every half minute to make sure. You can’t possibly run the distance in less than four minutes, so the answer seemed quite obvious.”

He diverted his mainspring to his thought cogs and whirred and clicked noisily for a full minute before giving up, and I had to tell him.

“That’s quite clever.”

“Elementary, my dear Sprockett. Julian Sparkle was a bit annoyed. He said that he’d have to change the puzzle. I won these steak knives. Perhaps Mrs. Winterhope would like them?”

“I think she should be delighted. May I ask a question, ma’am?”

“Of course.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“I’m going to accept Senator Jobsworth’s invitation to go to the peace talks tomorrow masquerading as the real Thursday Next. The paddle steamer leaves at seven A.M. Everything that has happened is to do with Racy Novel and Speedy Muffler, and unless I start getting to the heart of the problem, I’m not going to get anywhere. The Men in Plaid will think twice before doing anything while I’m in plain view, and Landen told me that this was the way to find Thursday: ‘The circumstances of your confusion will be your path to enlightenment.’ I don’t understand that, but I can become more confused—going upriver with Jobsworth will definitely provide the extra confusion I need.”