Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"How far down does it go?" said Molly.

"All the way," said the Blue Fairy.

"Some questions, you just know you’re not going to get an answer that helps," said Molly.

"Elf blood has many useful properties," the Blue Fairy said calmly.

"Even diluted, degraded blood like mine. All elves have an built-in talent for travelling. They can walk sideways from the sun, access other planes of existence, enter dimensions you and even I couldn’t even conceive, let alone operate in. But the blood itself is enough to open doors and allow me to go fishing. Sometimes just for the fun of it, fishing at random for whatever’s there…sometimes to order, for a price. If I concentrate hard enough, I can find pretty much anything…and what you need, Eddie, is a Confusulum."

"A what?" I said.

"A Confusulum," the Blue Fairy said patiently. "Don’t ask me what it is is, because I’ve no idea. That’s the point. It doesn’t actually change anything, just confuses the hell out of everyone. It works on the uncertainty principle that nothing is necessarily what or where it seems to be. I found the first one years ago, quite by accident, and it scared the crap out of me. Everyone needs some certainties in their life. I threw it back in, but something about it stuck in my mind. The Droods’ family defences are based around certainties: friend or foe, permitted entry or not, that sort of thing. But the Confusulum will take all those certainties out of the equation. The Hall’s defences will be so confused they won’t know whether they’re operating or not, whether you’re permitted entry or not, even whether you’re actually there or not. They’ll be so confused you’ll be able to walk right through them while they’re still struggling to make up their minds. By the time anyone at the Hall notices that their defences have just had a major nervous breakdown, you’ll be in.

"The Confusulum isn’t one hundred percent guaranteed; its uncertainty even applies to its own nature. So there’s no telling exactly what its effects will be or how long they’ll last. But since I’m the only one ever to encounter a Confusulum, you can be sure your family have no specific defences against it."

He fished randomly for a while, just getting himself in the mood, and Molly and Jane and I sat more or less patiently around the golden pool, watching. I was having trouble getting used to the idea that I could be going home so soon, and that my family’s notorious protections could be brushed aside so easily. And all because of a little man nursing a grudge and just waiting to be asked.

The first thing he pulled out of the pool was a seven-league boot with a hole in its soul, followed by a small black lacquered puzzle box, a stuffed moomintroll, and a statue of a black bird. The Blue Fairy threw them all back, and then stared into the pool with a look of fierce concentration on his face. His eyes bulged, and his lips drew back from his gritted teeth in a fixed snarl. Beads of sweat popped out all over his straining face. His line jerked suddenly, sending slow ripples across the surface of the glowing pool. The Blue Fairy let out a long breath and began to slowly reel his line back in. He took his time, keeping a light but constant pressure on the line, staring so intently he wasn’t even breathing anymore. And finally he brought something up out of the golden pool.

I couldn’t tell you what it was, exactly. It clung to the hook, writhing and twisting like a living thing, even though I knew on some deep instinctive level that it wasn’t alive and never could be. It changed size and colour, shape and texture, from moment to moment, its dimensions snapping in and out and back and forth. It looked like all the things you see out of the corners of your eyes when you’ve just woken up and you’re still half asleep.

"Quick!" said the Blue Fairy, his face contorted with concentration.

"I brought it here for you, Eddie, so it’s up to you to give it a shape in this dimension. Impose a single nature on it, so it can survive here. The link you make will mean it will serve you and only you. But do it quickly, before it becomes something we can’t bear to see with only human eyes."

I concentrated on the first image that came to me. It just popped into my mind: a simple circular badge I’d seen in an old head shop in Denmark Street years ago, a white badge bearing the legend Go Lemmings Go. And just like that, the twisting unnerving thing on the hook was gone and the badge was resting on the palm of my hand. It looked and felt perfectly normal, perfectly innocent. I pinned it carefully on the lapel of my jacket.

"All the things you could have chosen," said Molly. "Everything from Excalibur to the Holy Hand Grenade of Saint Antioch, and you had to choose that. The workings of your mind remain a complete mystery to me, Eddie."

"That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me," I said, and we both smiled.

"By any chance, are the two of you an item?" Janissary Jane said suddenly.

"We haven’t decided yet," I said.

"We’re still working on it," said Molly.

"We’re…partners, on this particular enterprise."

"Partners in crime."

"Or possibly a suicide pact."

"You two deserve each other," said Janissary Jane, shaking her head.

None of us had noticed that the Blue Fairy had inadvertently allowed his line to drop back into the glowing pool. He cried out abruptly as something below grabbed the hook and tugged hard on the line. The Blue Fairy was almost pulled forward, and the line whirred through the reel until it ran all the way. The Blue Fairy was jerked forward again but hung on grimly.

"What have you got?" I said. "What were you concentrating on?"

"I wasn’t thinking about anything! I didn’t catch this; it caught me!"

I hit the button on my reverse watch, and nothing happened. I hit the button again, and still nothing. I shook my wrist vigorously.

"Oh, shit," I said.

"It sounds so much more helpless when he says it," said Janissary Jane.

"He’s had a lot of practice recently," said Molly. "What’s wrong, Eddie?"

"I appear to have broken the reverse watch," I said. "Or exhausted its batteries, or whatever the hell the damn thing runs on. I think I asked too much of it when I forced it to save you."

"So it’s my fault?" said Molly.

"Always," I said, smiling.

We all looked on as the Blue Fairy wrestled with the fishing rod, the taut line jerking back and forth across the pool. It snapped abruptly, and the Blue Fairy stumbled back. And something huge and long and inhumanly strong burst up out of the golden pool, reaching for him. It was a single tentacle, dark purple in colour and lined with rows of suckers full of grinding teeth. More and more of it burst up out of the pool, snapping back and forth.

"Get out of here!" yelled the Blue Fairy. "I’ll handle this!"

"Don’t be a damned fool!" Janissary Jane yelled back at him. "You can’t handle this on your own!"

"It came through my blood," the Blue Fairy said grimly. "So only I can put it back down. Go. You’ve got things to do. Things that matter. This…is my business. No damned thing from the vasty deeps is going to get the better of me in my own home! Will you all please get the hell out of here, so I can concentrate? And Eddie, make your family pay! For what they did to you, and what they did to me."

More and more of the tentacle was forcing its way into the room, yards and yards of it, straining against the edges of the pool that contained it. The Blue Fairy threw his fishing rod aside and sketched ancient signs and sigils on the air with dancing hands, leaving bright incandescent trails on the air. He was chanting in Elvish in a form so old I couldn’t follow one word in ten. Magic spat and crackled all around him, and for the first time, he was smiling. A cold, inhuman smile.