So he had made two decisions. The first was that it would be a very good idea to stay on the move, because a moving object was harder to target.10 It might also, he felt, be wise to disguise the car, which is why they had acquired a frame made from bits of wood and gauze and metal, and painted it to resemble a big boulder, albeit a boulder that could go from naught to sixty in under seven seconds.
At the moment, though, Wormwood was peering beneath the hood of the car and fiddling with some part of the engine that only he could name. Nurd could probably have named it too, if he was bothered, which he wasn’t, or so he told himself. After all, he was the brains of the operation, and therefore couldn’t be going around worrying about carburetors and spark plugs and getting his hands dirty. It never struck him that Wormwood, as the individual who actually understood something of how the car worked, might have had more of a claim to being the brains than Nurd, but that’s often the way with people who don’t like getting their hands dirty. You don’t necessarily get to be king by being bright, but it does help to have bright people around you.11
“Have you worked out the problem yet?” asked Nurd.
“It’s the ignition coil,” said Wormwood.
“Is it really?” said Nurd, who tried not to sound too bored, and failed even at that.
“You don’t even know what an ignition coil is, do you?” said Wormwood.
“Is it a coil that has something to do with the ignition?”
“Er, yes.”
“Then I do. Do you know what a big stick capable of leaving a lump on your head is?”
“Yes.”
“Good. If you need to be reminded, just continue giving me lip.”
Wormwood emerged from beneath the hood and wiped his hands on his overalls. That was another thing: on the front of the car manual there had been a photograph of a man wearing overalls and holding a tool of some kind in a vaguely threatening manner. On the left breast was written his name: “Bob.” Wormwood had decided that this was the kind of uniform worn by people who knew stuff about engines, and had managed to make himself a set of patchwork overalls from the contents of his meager bag of clothes. He had even stitched his name on them, or a version of it: “Wromwood.”
“It’s the copper wire on the windings,” said Wromwood—er, Wormwood. “It’s taken a bit of a battering. It would be good if we could find some replacements.”
Nurd turned and stared out from the mouth of the cave. Before them stretched a huge expanse of black volcanic rock, which made a change from the huge expanse of gray volcanic rock that had until recently been the site of their banishment. The sky was dark with clouds, but tinged permanently with a hint of red, for there were always fires burning in Hell.
“We’re a long way from copper wire, Wormwood,” said Nurd.
Wormwood joined his master. “Where are we, exactly?”
Nurd shook his head. “I don’t know, but”—he pointed to his right, where the fires seemed to be burning brighter, the horizon lost to clouds and mists—“I’d guess that right over there is the Mountain of Despair, which means that we want to go—”
“Somewhere else?” suggested Wormwood.
“Anywhere else,” agreed Nurd.
“Are we going to have to keep running forever?” asked Wormwood, and there was something in his voice that almost caused Nurd to hug him, until he thought better of it and settled for patting Wormwood halfheartedly on the back. He wasn’t sure what one might catch from hugging Wormwood, but whatever it was he didn’t want it.
“We’ll keep on the move for now,” he said. He was about to add something more when a shadow passed over the stones before him. It grew smaller and smaller as whatever was above them commenced a circling descent.
“Douse the light!” said Nurd, and instantly Wormwood quenched the flame of the torch, leaving the cave in darkness.
A red figure dropped to the ground within a stone’s throw of the cave, its great bat wings raised above its back. It was eight feet tall and had the body of a man, but a forked tail curled from the base of its spine, and two twisted horns emerged from its bald head. It knelt and ran its claws over the rocks before it, then raised them to its nose and sniffed warily. A long bifurcated tongue unrolled from its mouth and licked the ground.
“Oh no,” said Wormwood. He thought that he could almost see the marks of rubber upon the rocks where Nurd had been forced to give the car a little too much gas in order to get them closer to the cave.
The creature on the rocks grew very still. It had no ears, merely a hole on either side of its head, but it was clearly listening. Then it turned its head, and they glimpsed its face for the first time.
It had eight black eyes, like those of some great spider, and mandibles at its jaws. Its nostrils were ragged perforations set in a snout of sharp bone. Nurd saw them widen and contract, glistening with mucus. For a moment the creature stared straight at the mouth of the cave in which they were hiding, and they saw the muscles in its legs tighten as it prepared to spring. Its mandibles clicked, and its jaws made a sucking noise as though it could already taste them, but instead of exploring further, it unfolded its wings to their fullest expanse and it shot into the air. The sound of flapping reached their ears, but slowly began to fade as the creature moved away, heading north in the direction of the bright flames.
“Did it see us?” asked Wormwood.
“I think it found the rubber from the tires,” said Nurd. “I don’t know if it realized we were nearby. If it did, why didn’t it come after us? Anyway, we have to go.”
“Was it—?”
“Yes,” said Nurd. “It was one of hers.”
He sounded tired, and frightened, even to himself. They had been running and hiding for so long that sometimes he thought it might almost be a relief if they were caught, at least until he began thinking about what might happen to them after they were caught, for the prospect of being slowly disassembled at the atomic level and then prodded for a very long time usually dispelled such thoughts of giving up. But eventually they would make a serious mistake, or some misfortune would befall them, and then Mrs. Abernathy’s wrath would rain down upon them. The only consolation for Nurd was that Samuel Johnson was safe on Earth. He missed his friend terribly, but Nurd would willingly have sacrificed himself to keep Samuel safe. He just hoped that it wouldn’t come to that, for Nurd liked all of his atoms just where they were.
In Which We Encounter Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs—or Elves—and Rather Wish We Hadn’t
THERE ARE FEW THINGS more soul-sapping, Mr. Merryweather concluded wearily, than being stuck in a van with a bunch of truculent12 dwarfs. The van in question bore the legend “Mr. Merryweather’s Elves—Big Talent Comes in Small Packages.” Alongside the legend was a picture of a small person wearing pointy shoes and a cap with a bell on the end. The small person was grinning happily, and did not look at all troublesome, and hence bore no resemblance to the actual contents of the van. Indeed, were one to look closely at the legend about elves and talent and whatnot, one might have noticed that the word elves had recently been painted over what appeared to be the word dwarfs.
We’ll come to the reasons for the change in our own good time, but to give you some idea of just how difficult Mr. Merryweather’s dwarfs were currently being, a family of four was at that moment passing the van on the motorway, and the two children, a boy and a girl, had pressed their noses against the car window in the hope of catching a glimpse of an elf. Instead, they caught a glimpse of a small chap’s bottom, which at that same moment was sticking out of one of the van’s windows.
“Dad, is that an elf’s bum?” asked the little boy.
“Elves don’t exist,” said his father, who hadn’t noticed the van or, indeed, the bum. “And don’t say ‘bum.’ It’s rude.”
“But it says on the van that they’re elves.”
“Well, I’m telling you that elves don’t exist.”
“But, Dad, there’s a bum sticking out of the window of the e
lf van, so it has to be an elf bum.”
“Look, I told you: don’t use the word b—”
At which point the boy’s dad looked to his right and was treated to the sight of a pale bottom hanging in the wind, alongside which were a number of small people making faces at him.
“Call the police, Ethel,” he said. He shook his fist in the general direction of faces and bottom. “You little horrors!” he shouted.
“Nyaahhhh!” shouted a dwarf in return, and stuck his tongue out as the van sped away.
“See, I was right,” said the driver’s son. “It was an elf. And a bum.”
• • •
Inside the van, Mr. Merryweather was trying to keep his eyes on the road while ignoring all that was going on in the back.
“Cold out there,” said Jolly, the leader of the group, as he pulled his bottom from the window and made himself look decent again. The rest of his companions, Dozy, Angry, and Mumbles, took their seats and began opening bottles of Spiggit’s Old Peculiar. The air in the van, which hadn’t smelled particularly pleasant to begin with, now took on the odor of a factory devoted to producing unwashed socks and fish heads.13 Curiously, this very strong, and very unpleasant, beer appeared to have little effect on the dwarfs apart from exaggerating their natural character traits. Thus Jolly became jollier, in a drunken, unsettling way; Angry became angrier; Dozy became sleepier; and Mumbles—well, he just became more unintelligible.
“Oi, Merryweather,” called Angry. “When do we get paid?”
Mr. Merryweather’s hands tightened on the wheel. He was a fat, bald man in a light brown check suit, and he always wore a red bow tie. He looked like someone who should be managing a bunch of untrustworthy dwarfs, but whether he looked that way because of what he was, or he was what he was because he looked that way, we will never know.
“Paid for what?” said Mr. Merryweather.
“For today’s work, that’s what for.”
The van swerved on the motorway as Mr. Merryweather briefly lost control of the wheel, and of himself.
“Work?” he said. “Work? You lot don’t know the meaning of work.”
“Careful!” called Dozy. “You nearly spilled my beer.”
“I. Don’t. Care!” screamed Mr. Merryweather.
“What did he say?” asked Jolly. “Someone was shouting, so I didn’t hear.”
“Says he doesn’t care,” said Dozy.
“Oh, well, that’s just lovely, that is. After all we’ve done for him—”
The van came to a violent skidding halt by the side of the road. Mr. Merryweather stood and glared furiously at the assembled dwarfs.
“All you’ve done for me? All. You’ve. Done. For. Me. I’ll tell you what you’ve done for me. You’ve made my life a misery, that’s what. You’ve left me a broken man. My nerves are shot. Look at my hand.”
He held up his left hand. It trembled uncontrollably.
“That’s bad,” agreed Jolly.
“And that’s the good one,” said Mr. Merryweather, holding up his right hand, which shook so much he could no longer hold a pint of milk in it, as it would instantly turn to cream.
“Abbledaybit,” said Mumbles.
“What?” said Mr. Merryweather.
“He says you’re having a bad day, but once you’ve had time to calm down and rest, you’ll get over it,” said Jolly.
Despite his all-consuming rage, Mr. Merryweather found time to look puzzled.
“He said that?”
“Yep.”
“But it just sounded like ‘abbledaybit.’”
“Ed,” said Mumbles.
“He says that’s what he said,” said Jolly. “You’re having a bad—”
Mr. Merryweather pointed his finger at Jolly in a manner that could only be described as life-threatening. Had Mr. Merryweather’s finger been a gun, Jolly would have had a small column of smoke where his head used to be.
“I’m warning you,” said Mr. Merryweather. “I’m warning you all. Today was the last straw. Today was—”
Today was to have been a good day. After weeks, even months, of begging, Mr. Merryweather had got the dwarfs a job that paid good money. It had even been worth repainting the van, and altering the name of the business. At last, everything was coming together.
Mr. Merryweather’s Elves had previously been known as Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs, as the changes to the van’s lettering suggested, but a series of unfortunate incidents, including some civil and criminal court actions, had required that Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs maintain a low profile for a time, and then quietly cease to exist. These incidents had included a brief engagement as four of Snow White’s seven dwarfs at a pantomime in Aldershot, an engagement that had come to a sudden end following an assault on Prince Charming, in the course of which he was fed his own wig; two nights as mice and coachmen in Cinderella, during which the actor playing Buttons lost a finger; and a single performance of The Wizard of Oz that ended with a riot among the Munchkins, a flying monkey being shot down with a tranquilizer dart, and a fire in the Emerald City that required three units of the local fire brigade to put out.
And so Mr. Merryweather’s Dwarfs had been reinvented as Mr. Merryweather’s Elves, a cunning ploy that, incredibly, had somehow managed to fool otherwise sensible people into believing this was an entirely different troupe of little men, and not the horrible bunch of drunks, arsonists, and monkey shooters who had almost single-handedly brought an end to pantomime season in England. Elves just didn’t seem as threatening as dwarfs, and as long as Mr. Merryweather kept the dwarfs hidden until the last possible moment, and ensured that they were, for the most part, clean and sober, he began to believe that he just might get away with the deception.
That day, Mr. Merryweather’s Elves had begun what was potentially their most lucrative engagement yet: they were to be featured in a music video for the beloved boy band BoyStarz to be filmed at Lollymore Castle. If all went well, the dwarfs would appear in future videos as well, and perhaps join BoyStarz on tour. There would be T-shirt sales; there was even talk of their own TV show. It seemed, thought Mr. Merryweather, too good to be true.
And like most things that seem too good to be true, it was.
First of all, they didn’t want to do it, even before they knew what “it” was.
“I have a job for you lot,” he told them. “A good one and all.”
“Eh, it wouldn’t involve being a dwarf, would it?” asked Angry.
“Well, yes.”
“What a shocker. You know, it’s not as if we wake up every morning and think, ‘Oh look, we’re dwarfs. Didn’t expect that. I thought I was taller.’ No, we’re just regular people who happen to be small. It doesn’t define us.”
“What’s your point?” asked Mr. Merryweather wearily.
“Our point is,” said Jolly, “that we’d like to do something where being a dwarf is just incidental. For example, why can’t I play Hamlet?”
“Because you’re three foot eight inches tall, that’s why. You can’t play Hamlet. Piglet, maybe, but not Hamlet.”14
“Less of that,” said Jolly. “That’s what I’m talking about, see? That kind of attitude keeps us oppressed.”
That, thought Mr. Merryweather, and the fact that you all drink too much, and can’t be bothered to learn lines, and would pick your own pockets just to pass the time.
“Look, it’s just the way the world works,” said Mr. Merryweather. “It’s not me. I’m trying to do my best, but you don’t help matters with your behavior. We can’t even do Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in panto this year because you fought with Mrs. Doris Stott’s Magnificent Midgets, so we’re three little people down. Nobody wants to watch Snow White and the Four Dwarfs. It just doesn’t sound right.”
“You could tell them it’s a budget production,” said Angry.
“We could double up,” said Dozy.
“You can barely single up,” said Mr. Merryweather.
“Careful,” said Dozy.
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And after they’d bickered and argued for another half hour, he had eventually managed to tell them about the job, and they had reluctantly agreed to earn some money. Mr. Merryweather had climbed behind the wheel and thought, not for the first time, that he understood why people liked tossing dwarfs around, and wondered if he could convince someone to toss his dwarfs, preferably off a high cliff.
They had arrived at Lollymore Castle, not far from the town of Biddlecombe, early that morning. It was cold and damp, and the dwarfs were already complaining before they even got out of the van. Still, they were given tea to warm them up, and then dressed in the costumes that had been specially made for them: little suits of armor, little coats of chain mail, lightweight helmets.
Then they were handed swords and maces, and Mr. Merryweather had sprinted from the van to stop them from killing someone.
“For crying out loud, don’t give them weapons,” he said, grabbing Jolly’s arm just in time to stop him from braining an assistant director with a mace. “They might, er, hurt themselves.”
He patted Jolly on the head. “They’re only little fellas, you know.” He hugged Jolly in the manner of a friendly uncle embracing a much-loved nephew, and received a kick in the shin for his trouble.
“Gerroff,” said Jolly. “And give me back my mace.”
“Look, don’t hit anyone with it,” hissed Mr. Merryweather.
“It’s a mace. It’s for hitting people with.”
“But you’re only supposed to be pretending. It’s a video.”
“Well, they want it to look real, don’t they?”
“Not that real. Not funeral real.”
Jolly conceded that Mr. Merryweather had a point, and the dwarfs went to inspect the castle as the director pointed out their “marks,” the places on the battlements where they were supposed to stand during filming.