Herbie Brennan - The Faeman Quest

‘Ta,’ Brimstone muttered, taking care not to meet Orderly Nastes’s eye. It was important not to meet the eyes of orderlies, who were equipped with special eye inserts that shot invisible rays into your head and melted your brain. He reached out for the cheese and began to break it into crumbly pieces.

‘How’s George?’ asked Orderly Nastes conversationally.

Why don’t you ask him yourself? thought Brimstone crossly. George had put in an early appearance, as he often did when there was cheese about. He was towering over them now, fangs bared, with his back against the far wall. But experience had taught Brimstone that idiots like Nastes often failed to notice things that were right under their noses, so he murmured, ‘Fine.’ George smiled and nodded his agreement.

Orderly Nastes gave a discreet cough. ‘Word to the wise, Silas. Wouldn’t want to mention George to your Review Board, I were you.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Get my drift?’

‘Yes,’ Brimstone muttered. He wanted Orderly Nastes to go away now, so he could drink his ale and feed George with the cheese. If George was hungry – and George was always hungry – he might eat Orderly Nastes instead of the cheese. How would he explain that to the Review Board?

But Orderly Nastes was already on his way out. ‘You have a nice breakfast now, Silas,’ he said. ‘Nurse will be down presently to take you for your review.’ He shook his key ring and selected the three that locked the door. ‘Well, best of luck now.’

As soon as Nastes was gone, Brimstone spread the crumbled cheese on the floor, laying it out in neat little lines the way George liked. But George mustn’t have been hungry after all, because he didn’t touch the cheese and the food stayed there until the rat Brimstone had heard crept cautiously out of a hole in the skirting. It stared for a long time at Brimstone, who sat immobile in his corner, then crept forward and began to nibble at the nearest crumb. Brimstone caught it and ate it, starting with the head since he was not a cockroach.

It tasted even better than the bluebottle.

Analogue clothes were really weird. She’d followed the pictures and dressed herself in blue breeches (like a boy!) that clung to her bottom, and a sort of buttonless cotton shirt with writing on the front. The writing said, Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifs. Mella had no idea what that meant – she’d never heard of a geek or a gif – but the girl in the shop had assured her it was cool.

The Analogue World was really weird as well. She was used to the mechanical carriages now; had even ridden in one. She’d listened to the little boxes that talked to you and played music in your ears. She’d sat on a hotel bed watching a window on a scene that kept changing all the time, allowing her to watch humans doing the most remarkable – and sometimes naughty – things. But all these were just magical toys, whatever her father’s journal said about no magic in this realm. What she found seriously weird were the huge trackways of tar and crushed stone that criss-crossed the world like spider-webs. She was on one of them now, walking along its pavement, fascinated by the houses down each side.

They were smaller than the Purple Palace, of course, but they were also smaller than most other buildings in the Faerie Realm, where town houses were seldom less than three storeys and country houses came with their own rolling parklands, gardens and estates. These were country houses (in the sense that they were houses built some distance from the nearest town) but their grounds comprised no more than a few yards of lawn, a few flowers, a few bushes and, rarest of all, the occasional lonely tree. None rose higher than two storeys. Several were just one. Not one was built from honest stone: the favoured material seemed to be rust-coloured bricks. It was incredible to think her father had once lived here.

She came to an open-fronted shelter with a sign on a pole that made her smile. The sign said Bus Stop. At home, ‘to bus’ meant to kiss. But here, of course, it was short for ‘omnibus’, a giant mechanical carriage capable of carrying scores of people along the trackways. She smiled for another reason as well. This was the selfsame bus stop her father had used all those years ago when he came home from school. Which meant his old home must be just a short walk away.

Mella slowed her pace so she could rehearse her story one more time inside her head. She knew from her father’s journal that he was supposed to be living in New Zealand. Mella had no idea where New Zealand was, but she imagined it had to be a long way from here and nowhere near the Faerie Realm. Henry had chosen New Zealand because that was where Mr Fogarty was also supposed to be living. Mella had never met Mr Fogarty, who died before she was born, but she’d spoken to him once or twice and he’d been willing to answer questions. He’d told her the story that they’d fed to Henry’s mother and reinforced with a little subtle spellwork so she would never question it. Basically she believed her son was married to a New Zealand girl and there was no question of them ever visiting England because they were looking after Mr Fogarty, now ninety-nine years old and bedridden. (The dead Mr Fogarty had found that hugely amusing.) More spellwork ensured that Henry’s father believed the same thing. Neither of them were told they became grandparents fifteen years ago. Mr Fogarty had advised Henry that the knowledge of a granddaughter might encourage them to visit New Zealand where the whole elaborate charade would fall apart.

From everything she’d read in the journal, Henry’s father was nice, but weak. When his wife threw him out, he took up with a girl half his age. Now he was living with her in Stoke Poges, somewhere that sounded to Mella like one of the gnomic cities, but couldn’t be because it was in Buckinghamshire, a notorious gnome-free zone. Henry’s mother was something else. Henry’s mother fascinated Mella. She ran a girls’ school somewhere close by. She was hard as iron nails, tough as leather boots. She was intelligent, opinionated, bossy and independent. She even slept with other women, for heaven’s sake. Well, one other woman at least, a girlfriend named Anais.

(Mella had almost missed this when she was reading her father’s private journal for the first time. He referred to his mother, her grandmother, as ‘gay’, which Mella thought meant she was happy and cheerful most of the time. Except from everything Henry wrote, Martha Atherton didn’t seem happy and cheerful. In fact, sometimes she sounded downright sinister. It was quite clear Henry was frightened of her. Later, Mella discovered ‘gay’ had a totally different meaning in the Analogue World.)

But the most exciting thing of all was that Martha Atherton was human. Mella’s father was human, of course, but he’d spent so much of his time in the Realm he was practically a Faerie of the Light. He talked like one and acted like one and much of the time Mella suspected he even thought like one. Her grandmother was different. She’d never even heard of the Faerie Realm. She was human through and through. Mella could hardly wait to find out what sort of woman that made you. She could hardly wait to meet her grandmother.

‘Good morning, Grandmother – my name’s Mella.’

She’d spent much of the last month honing the simple sentence into a state of absolute perfection. Not, You don’t know me, but you may remember you’ve a son called Henry? Well… Not, This may come as something of a shock, but we’re closely related. Not, Hello there, I’ve just come from New Zealand and guess what…? Not even, Hello, Mrs Atherton, I am your granddaughter. If everything Henry wrote about her was true, she would understand at once. It would come as a shock, of course, but she would never show it. She would say, in her stern, serious, terribly human voice, ‘Come in, Culmella, and meet my girlfriend.’ It would be so cool!