‘And what exactly are you, little man?’ said Hank, making Denny wish he was fifty feet tall and could trample cities. He turned red. This was not a becoming colour on him.
‘Well, well, well,’ Hank was saying, ‘Tamar the Black as I live and breathe.’ He seemed to find this hugely amusing.
Tamar frowned. ‘Shut up Hank,’ she said.
‘What’s so funny about that?’
Hank turned ‘Is this guy with you?’ he asked Tamar, ‘’Cause if not ...’
‘He’s with me,’ said Tamar hastily interposing herself between them.
‘Aw baby – what are you doing to me? Whaddya see in this insect? Come on, when are you going to come to your senses and come back to me? It was pretty good wasn’t it?’
‘I’m not, and it wasn’t,’ said Tamar shortly.
She turned to Denny. ‘Hank here is the guardian of the forest.’ she explained, ‘a sort of god – well demi – hemi – semi god anyway, an anthropomorphic personification of the forest itself. And yes,’ she sighed, ‘we had a thing, but it was a long time ago and I left him, okay?’ She glared at him as if daring him to make something of it.
‘And you,’ she said turning to Hank. ‘This is Denny; he’s the master of the bottle and ten times the man you are to boot. And even if he wasn’t, I would never come back to you, you’re a savage.’
She glanced at them both. ‘Any questions?’
They both shook their heads.
‘Tough broad,’ said Hank, and a look passed between him and Denny as they recognised each other as fellow sufferers. Denny relaxed.
‘Good,’ said Tamar. ‘So, if you’ve both quite finished hosing down the forest floor with testosterone, can we get down to business? Are you going to help us or not?’
Hank bowed ironically ‘At your service Ma’am.’
‘Right. So – um well – you have godlike powers don’t you?’
‘Indeed I do – why?’
‘You’re all – seeing, yes?’
‘Here in the forest I am.’
‘Right, but if you left the forest and came with us, could you still ...?’
‘I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. I stay here; I don’t leave the forest – you know that.’
‘You can come back.’
‘No way babe – sorry.’
‘Oh, you haven’t changed at all. Don’t be so stubborn, it won’t be for long. You and your precious forest – it’ll still be here when you get back.’
Hank ruminated. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t you explain the problem to me and I’ll see if there’s anything else I can do – sort of compromise.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘Try me, what have you got to lose?’
‘Oh come on,’ said Denny. ‘He’s not going to help us – let’s go.’
‘You can’t leave until midnight,’ said Hank. ‘So, you might as well tell me all about it.’
* * *
Hank rubbed his massive chin thoughtfully. ‘Hmm, that’s quite a tale,’ he said.
‘So, now let’s have it. What’s really going on?’ Tamar and Denny sagged.
‘That is what’s going on,’ said Denny.
‘It’s all true,’ added Tamar.
‘Really? I don’t believe it. I’ve met mortals; they wander in here sometimes. Mortals don’t behave like that. Even the brave ones, they takes their wishes and they run – in case the warranty runs out. Even heroes,’ and here he cocked an eye at Denny as if to say “And this chump is no hero” ‘are only in it for themselves.’
Denny got to his feet. ‘I don’t have to take this from a … an anthra – what did you call him?’
‘An anthropomorphic personification.’
‘Right, it’s obvious he can’t help us – just like you said. Or he won’t – let’s go.’
‘Okay, you’re right, I should have known better than to ask him. He never was any damn use.’
‘No, be fair, we shouldn’t have expected… I mean look at him, stuck here for years ...’
‘Centuries.’
‘Centuries, exactly ...’
‘Millennia even.’
‘The point is,’ said Denny, ‘he’s been stuck here for so long, what could he possibly know about anything? Obvious really. And you can’t blame him for being scared to leave, I mean, all those centuries ...’
‘Millennia.’
‘Even – in the same place, it’s like prison, worse than your bottle really. He’s become institutionalised; he couldn’t cope in the real world.’
‘Not his fault really.’
‘No – no, not at all. He can’t help it – unfair to expect it.’
Big, dumb, heroic types like the forest god, always fall for this type of baiting. (How do you think they got George to fight the dragon? Three of his mates followed him around for a weekend making clucking noises until he cracked.)
‘HEY!’ yelled Hank in an offended tone.
Tamar and Denny grinned at each other.
‘Who are you calling useless?’ he glared. ‘Scared am I?’
‘It’s all right,’ soothed Tamar, ‘we understand, we shouldn’t have asked.’
‘Right!’ said Hank furiously; he made a motion as if he was pushing up his sleeves – which of course, would have been more effective if he’d been wearing sleeves. He stopped self-consciously. ‘What is it you want me to do?’
Tamar and Denny stifled laughter.
They had both been amazed at how easy it had been to bring him round using such blatant reverse psychology as the average twelve year old would not have fallen for, and they did not want to break the mood now.
‘Well,’ said Tamar, ‘what we really want is for you to come out into the real world with us and see if you can find our Djinn – or at least a sorcerer – for us.’
‘You guys are serious?’
Tamar pulled a face, which clearly said ‘Duh’
Hank looked at Denny. ‘You’re really serious? That story you told me was the truth?’
Denny nodded. ‘Of course, how could you help us if you didn’t know the truth?’
Hank looked at Denny with a dawning respect. ‘Well I never,’ he said, ‘a noble mortal.’
He grasped Denny by the hand and shook it vigorously. ‘Jolly good show old chap.’
This was a sufficiently un-Hank-like comment that it made Tamar look sharply at him. But he seemed sincere enough. Sarcasm, in any case, was generally above his level of intelligence.
‘Well I’m with you,’ he said. ‘Count me in, a noble and heroic enterprise – but ...’ His face fell, and he seemed embarrassed after all his bluster as he admitted awkwardly. ‘I don’t think I can do what you want. I won’t have my powers outside of the forest,’ he explained. ‘You see, in here, I see all and I know all, but in the real world – I shouldn’t think … well I’m only a spirit. I’m not even sure I can exist in the real world.’
‘Oh,’ said Denny.
‘Still,’ said Hank heartily, ‘I can but try I suppose. It’s for a good cause.’ Here he looked at Tamar. ‘And who wants to live forever anyway?’
‘Maybe you won’t have to,’ said Denny. ‘What about the clue, “Pink Parrot” – mean anything to you?’
‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘Know any sorcerers?’
‘No he doesn’t, how could he? Stuck in here; and we can’t ask him to risk his life – obviously. Well I can show you around at least, while we’re here.’
‘Let me,’ said Hank graciously.
*
They had been wandering around in silence for some hours. Mostly in silence anyway punctuated by gasps of wonder or surprise as Denny saw at intervals Dryads (wood nymphs) emerging from their trees, Naiads (water sprites) and a great flaming bird, which Denny took to be a phoenix, and other strange things.
‘They used to live in the real world,’ explained Tamar. ‘But there’s
no place for them now. They couldn’t adapt. This is like a kind of nature preserve, somewhere they can really be.’
Despite living with a Djinn, having met a god, seen mermaids and walked through a doorway created by a magic cigarette, Denny had not lost his sense of wonder. He wondered if he would ever get used to this sort of thing.
It was getting dark, and Tamar suggested they camp.
Hank was puzzled. ‘Camp?’
‘Stop and find somewhere to sleep. Mortals need sleep – Oh!’ She stopped at the edge of a lake.
‘I can last until midnight,’ said Denny.
Tamar was not listening; she was staring at the water.
‘What?’ said two voices.
‘I think,’ she said eventually, ‘that you may be able to help us after all.’ She pointed to the lake.
She had found the “Pink Parrot”
* * *
‘What are the odds?’ Denny said, of us arriving at just at the right moment?’ He had a point. The last rays of the sun had lit the water with a rosy glow, and there, reflected in the water, flickering like a faulty neon sign was a constellation in the shape of a parrot. Only just out and faint in the sky but strangely bright in the water.*
*[When the gods set signs in the sky or as reflections in icy pools it is expected that it will be something portentous or romantic like a sword or a crown. The sign that Tamar found was, in fact, far more usual. Thus proving that it is not true that the gods have no sense of humour.]
‘Are you sure it’s a parrot?’ said Hank, squinting at it doubtfully, ‘it could be a budgie or a puffin.’
‘We have to hurry – the sun’s almost down, jump.’
‘Er – I can’t swim,’ Denny reminded her.
‘I don’t think it matters,’ said Tamar. ‘We want to go down don’t we?’
‘And if you’re wrong?’
‘I’m not wrong,’ she said impatiently. ‘Come on.’
‘What do you need me for?’ asked Hank.
‘You have to get us back. This is your land; it’ll call you back and you can bring us with you.’
‘I suppose, technically, in there is still his land,’ said Denny. ‘It’s his lake.’
‘Good point. See, we’re not even leaving the forest, and you’re the master here. We may need you, and you did say ...’
‘I never said I wouldn’t come.’
‘Denny?’
‘Okay.’ I’m not going to be outdone by that macho idiot, he thought.
He took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Hurry up.’
They held hands after some scuffling about to get Tamar in the middle, so that Denny and Hank would not have to hold hands with each other, and jumped.
* * *
The thing about disappointment is that you do not expect it. That is what makes it a disappointment. People who are expecting disappointment, of course, are not disappointed when they get it, because they were expecting it.
There are many different types of disappointment in the human experience. There is the disappointment of standing on the scales after weeks of hellish starvation, living off water biscuits and onion soup – a diet, which can kill you according to experts (you die of loneliness) only to discover that you have gained three pounds.
There’s hairdresser disappointment. You go in with a picture of Jennifer Aniston and come out looking like Simon Cowell.
Then there’s mail order disappointment. Your item is the wrong colour/size/model. There’s no plug and the instructions are in Cantonese. Or you get a notice three months later (after hours of frustration – listening to Greensleeves down the phone) saying ‘OUT OF STOCK’. And it’s not fair, because you desperately wanted that combination toilet roll recycler / barbecue, or whatever.
There can, however, be few disappointments more crushing than leaping dramatically into a (clearly) enchanted lake and finding nothing more than wet feet. After all, it is an enchanted lake, isn’t it? With a sign on its surface full of portent (not to mention luminous tackiness). What should have happened, they all felt, (even Hank – who never read or had adventures and had only a vague idea about how this sort of thing was supposed to work) was a whirling vortex that pulled them down into a mystical chamber tenanted by a wizened sage talking mumbo-jumbo (and asking for a smack in the mouth from Tamar). Or at the very least, a snowy wood tenanted by talking animals. Tamar would have settled for an enormous neon sign saying, “THIS WAY TO THE SORCERESS >>>”
‘What went wrong?’ asked Denny.
He was, by now, getting fed up with asking this question, but he felt that somebody had to say it.
‘Damn!’ said Tamar predictably; it was her usual contribution to their run of disasters, and she said it without passion as if it were a reflex. ‘It didn’t work did it? That’s all; I must have got it wrong. And if you two say anything ...’ she glared at them both simultaneously, managing to give a whole new meaning to the phrase “two faced”
‘Wait a minute,’ said Denny. ‘Shouldn’t we be sinking? – This is a lake – right?’
‘Obviously, it’s not even a proper lake,’ snarled Tamar, ‘just a big muddy puddle – it’s ...’ She broke off because Denny was right.
Although they were only standing in it up to their ankles, below their feet she could see fish swimming about. Deeper down there were shadows moving in unfathomable depths. It was creepy; they were walking on water. Well – not walking, when they tried to trudge back to shore, they found that they were stuck.
‘Like quicksand,’ observed Denny.
‘So,’ said Tamar, business -like again, ‘this must be the clue – something to do with the nature of the water perhaps or us floating here. Maybe it’s symbolic.’
‘We’re stuck in the middle of a lake,’ snapped Denny. ‘What’s symbolic about that?’
‘Well ...’
‘And I hope we’re not going to be here until we work it out because ...’ He stopped.
‘It’s perfectly simple,’ Tamar was saying. ‘Like you said, we’re stuck in the middle of a lake. Which clearly symbolises ...’
Denny tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Look.’
Rising gracefully out of the water was a hand. It was a slender, white, female hand, clothed in samite. It barely caused a ripple in the water. It was holding up a jar, a perfectly ordinary jar with a screw top. The label bore the legend. “Mother Hubbard’s quality pickled beetroot”.
‘Anyone hungry?’ said Denny, laughing hysterically as Tamar reached out a hand and grabbed the jar. As she did so, the hand vanished, and they all fell in the lake.
* * *
‘Not another one,’ moaned Denny, as they sat in a circle examining this latest piece on nonsense that the universe had thrown at them.
‘Much more of this and I’m going to have to grow a beard and start wearing sandals and a placard saying, “The End is Nigh”.’ Denny was in a bad mood after being fished out of the lake and slung on the bank like a beached whale. He thought he would rather have drowned.
‘It must mean something,’ said Tamar. ‘We’ll work it out – or rather, I will, if you’ll just shut up and let me think.’
‘Huh, what happened to all that “O’ My Master” stuff?’
‘Okay, ‘Master’ you work it out.’
Twenty minutes later Denny said. ‘Okay, I give up.’
‘Already?’ grinned Tamar
Hank was laughing softly. ‘It’s really very obvious – too easy really.’
‘What?’ said Tamar incredulously. ‘You’ve worked it out?’
He nodded.
‘So come on then – hot shot. What does it mean?’ she demanded.
Hank just grinned inanely.
‘He doesn’t know,’ said Denny, ‘he’s having you on. I mean it’s a jar of beetroot for God’s sake. It’ll take some lateral thinking to get the answer – like the cigarette.’
They both looked at
Hank, who was still grinning.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not falling for that again. Think! – It’s really very obvious.’
‘Stop saying that,’ said Tamar in frustration.
‘Okay’ said Hank, ‘I’ll give you a clue.’
‘No more clues,’ groaned Denny putting his head in his hands.’
‘When is a door not a door?’ said Hank.
‘What?’ said Denny, now thoroughly infuriated.
But Tamar was thinking.
After a few minutes, she stood up and, in what Denny understandably took to be a fit of frustration, hurled the jar at a large tree
‘NO!’ cried Denny, trying to stop her.
The jar smashed against the trunk sending glass and bits of soggy beetroot flying.
‘When it’s a-jar,’ sang Tamar triumphantly, as a door appeared from nowhere in the trunk of the tree.
‘Well done,’ said Tamar to Hank. ‘Who would have thought you had it in you?’
‘Well done you,’ said Denny to Tamar. ‘How did you work it out?’
‘Oh it was easy in the end. I just had to wind down my sense of humour a few notches – to about the level of a drunken rugby player.’ She jerked a thumb meaningfully at Hank. ‘Then it just came to me.’
‘Hmm, funny sense of humour this sorceress, whoever she is.’
‘Oh it’s classic, everything’s a pun or a bad joke. You get used to it. I should have been quicker.’
‘The cigarette was better. Took us nearly a fortnight to figure that one out.’
‘Trust me – from now on it’ll get worse.’
‘So,’ he said looking at the door, ‘do we knock, do you think? Or do we just let ourselves in?’
~ Chapter Thirteen ~
It was the terrible “muzak” that was getting on her nerves. Somebody, either from malice, which would mean they had been expecting her, or by coincidence, had chosen to pick out the theme from ‘I dream of Jeannie’, (a sixties television program that Tamar had particularly loathed – for reasons that will be apparent to anyone who has ever seen it) apparently with chopsticks banged on the side of wineglasses, and pipe it through non-existent speakers. At least Tamar had not seen any and she had looked, with the intention of ripping them off the wall. Had she been paranoid – and she was – she would have suspected that someone (who?) was trying to psyche her out.
Denny did not need further psyching out. He was huddled in a corner twitching. He suffered from claustrophobia, he had explained before retreating into a panic attack which got worse the lower they got. He evidently could not hear the muzak, nor was he aware of anything else. He seemed to want nothing more than to be left alone to die in peace. And Tamar wondered about this too. It was as if somebody knew.