Andrew Buckley - Stiltskin

“Well, yes… uh, well,” stammered Robert. Lily’s dress felt like a slap across the back of his eyeballs. “It is all a bit overwhelming. So what happened to Snow White?”

Melvin returned to the table with four tankards of beer and a glass of wine for Lily, who pulled up a stool.

“Are you sure you want to know?” asked the Humanimal.

“To be honest, no. But I suppose I have to get used to things like this.”

Melvin settled back into his seat, adjusted his glasses so they were still slightly crooked, only at a different slant, and began. “You have to remember that this was a long time ago, long before I was born, before the Agency ever existed, before the Tower. There was no form of policing or security in Thiside. It was very much every man, woman, Humanimal, whatever, for themselves and the population had no trouble taking matters into their own hands. The Dwarves returned to their summer cottage the day after Snow White attempted to steal from the Evil Queen and found the young girl trying to break into their safe. As a rule, most Dwarves are kind and reasonable folk. They’re the kind of people that if you were down on your luck, they’d offer to help you out. But if it ever entered your mind to attempt to steal their gold, they’d rather decapitate you than look at you.”

“They didn’t?” said Robert, mouth agape.

“They take the theft of gold very seriously. She was executed and her body was fed to the animals of the forest.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

Lily sighed and took a sip of wine before placing a comforting hand on Robert’s shoulder. “I know it must all be a bit of a shock, but you’ve got to try and forget what you already know. You’re going to find a lot of discrepancies in the stories of Othaside.”

“Didn’t they put her head on a stick and place it outside the cottage to warn other thieves of what would happen if they messed with their gold?” asked Gnick through a mouthful of food.

“Oh god,” said Robert who was beginning to feel queasy.

“Those were darker times,” said General Gnarly nodding.

“You should drink up, Robert,” said Lily, “and we should all get to bed; I want to get an early start in the morning.”

Lily got up and offered her hand to Robert, who thought she was being overly nice considering her hot and cold mood throughout the day.

“Uh, thanks for the food, Melvin,” said Robert.

“Don’t mention it.”

“And for the hospitality.”

“It’s what we do,” grinned Melvin.

“And I’m sorry for the goa―ehh, the comment earlier.”

“Moron,” said Gnick.

“Already forgotten,” said Melvin.

Lily pulled on Robert’s hand and led him up the stairs. The stairs doubled back on themselves and opened up into a narrow hallway lit by candles hung on the wall. Ten wooden doors lined the hallway.

Lily stopped at the third door and let Robert in.

He slid past her into a small room lit with a single oil lamp. The room was sparsely furnished with a desk and chair and low bed with a large feather mattress piled with warm-looking blankets and fluffy pillows. The furniture was all roughly carved, causing the lamp light to throw angular shadows across the wall. The room felt so warm and cosy that Robert felt he could sink into the bed and lie there happily for the rest of his life.

He turned to see Lily leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed, her dark hair slightly tousled, the lamp light gleaming playfully in her amber eyes. If a simple look could offer a suggestion, Robert would have guessed that Lily was tempting him in some way.

“Have a good sleep, Robert Darkly. I hope you find a place in this world.”

Or maybe it was just the beer talking. Lily smiled and closed the door behind her. She was beautiful; no question about it, but there was something mysterious about her that he couldn’t put his finger on. Of course, females had always presented themselves as a complete mystery to Robert, and most of mankind, he expected. He’d long ago concluded that men and women were never meant to understand each other. If the world would accept that one simple truth, then everyone would be a lot better off.

Robert sat on the bed and sank into the soft mattress. The Goatheads had left a pile of clothes on the chair in his room that consisted of a pair of oversized pyjamas, a pair of pants made from some sort of rough material, a leather belt, a long-sleeved shirt, and a thick woollen sweater. Nice people, these Goatheads.

The surrealism of the day washed over him as he stripped down and pulled on the pyjamas. He was careful not to remove the necklace the White Rabbit had given him. It was hard to believe that just this morning, he had been fired from his job and had spent the early morning trudging through the rain-soaked streets of London. And now, here he was in a completely different reality, chasing an evil Dwarf, sleeping in a house run by two Humanimals, travelling with two Gnomes and a beautiful young woman. His thoughts faded as he settled down on the bed; seconds after his head hit the pillow, the lamp winked itself out and Robert was asleep.

His sleep was deep and his dreams confusing. He stared out from behind the bars of a prison, then he was in the White Rabbit’s living room, and then a bustling city with high green towers and bells chiming all around him. He was back in the halfway house and Lily was in his bed, naked, blood dripping from her mouth, and she smiled to reveal a set of fangs; she growled at him and lunged for his throat. Everything was black and then it was white. A maddening laugh screamed through the emptiness. A cat meowed and the world exploded into a million points of light, fire rose up all around him, someone screamed. Robert sat bolt upright in the bed.

The halfway house was burning down around him.

Jack had been jogging for almost three hours when he reached the end of Miller’s Forest. He’d seen the smoke from miles away and immediately assumed the worst. The settlement was nothing more than a smouldering mess. Jack climbed down the same hill that the Dwarf had bounced down and where he’d almost died not too long ago. The followers who had inhabited the settlement had already moved on to find shelter for the night. A light rain fell, causing steam to rise from the smouldering rubble surrounding the charred statue. Followers of the Witch . He hadn’t seen the body of the Dwarf, so Veszico must have failed in her vengeance. Jack felt relief and sadness all at once. He quickly checked himself, pushed his emotions deep down as he had a hundred times before, and started searching for the remains.

After an hour of searching and digging, he found the small body of Veszico buried beneath what remained of the statue. Jack lifted her to his ear and heard nothing. He let out a sigh, dropped to his knees, and began to dig a hole in the dirt beside the burned statue. After he had dug a foot deep, he dropped Veszico’s body in and covered it over. He muttered a small prayer to the Jabberwocky, stood, and brushed himself off.

A single thought rang through his mind. Find the Dwarf.

Robert was panicking. And not just panicking, he was close to hysterical. Back in the normal world, in Othaside, sometimes bad things would happen. His alarm wouldn’t go off and he’d be late for work so he’d panic. He would forget his adoptive mother’s birthday and he’d panic. Even during one of the many weird events of his life, like when he was seventeen and he’d fallen asleep in his own bed and had woken up on his neighbour’s kitchen table with no memory of anything. His neighbours were members of a local militia group known for their short tempers and large guns. He’d panicked.