“Outsiders are often better suited to seeing the big picture,” said Gayle. “And besides, they have the advantage of not being human. Which should if nothing else at least guarantee a fresh perspective. As Mice, they’re closely attuned to the natural world. Whereas I have allowed myself to become rather distant, over the years.”
Toby gave Gayle a hard look. “If they start singing about Cinderella, and dragging in a pumpkin, I’m going to lay traps and put down poison.”
“They’re not that kind of Mice, dear,” said Gayle. “You’ll like them, provided you’re not too judgemental. Goodbye, Carys. Do the sensible thing for once and stay out of this. If even half of what you and I suspect is true, the whole town is currently trapped between a rock and a very hard place. Not a good time to be drawing attention to yourself.”
“Are you going to do anything?” said Carys.
“Perhaps. There’s always the chance this will all sort itself out without me. But just in case … Come along, Toby.”
Toby scrambled to his feet as Gayle rose gracefully to hers, and just had time to nod a quick goodbye to Carys before Gayle was sweeping out of the Dandy Lion. Toby sighed, and hurried after her. It had started out as a weird day, and the general strangeness factor showed no signs of decreasing. Surely it was only yesterday when his life still seemed to make sense? Of course, it had been a pretty bloody boring life, and he hadn’t actually met up with Gayle then …so it all really came down to whether Gayle was worth the candle or not. Toby grinned. On the whole, yes, she was.
He got outside to find that Gayle was already striding off down the street, and he had to run to catch up with her. On the one hand, Toby was beginning to feel just a little pissed off at being dragged around by Gayle like a dog on a leash, but on the other hand, she had quite definitely called him ‘dear’ just now. Probably a slip of the tongue on her part, but an encouraging one. Toby liked to think he was making progress. He needed to do something, something big and memorable that would impress her, help her to see him as an equal partner in … in whatever the hell it was they were currently caught up in. A hero, a warrior, a legend… Toby scowled and bit his lower lip. He’d never seen himself as a man of action. In pub fights, he was always the one bravely fading into the woodwork. But whatever Humanity’s Champion was supposed to be, he was pretty damn sure it involved more than being Gayle’s lapdog.
As Toby accompanied Gayle through the middle of the town, he couldn’t help noticing that an awful lot of people were openly staring at him. Not just because he was a new face in Mysterie, but because he was with Gayle. Most were curious, some were intrigued, a few actually looked impressed. But there were some who looked scared, as though he were a new, unpredictable factor in the equation, someone who might either change or ruin everything. Presumably these were the ones who knew a focal point when they saw one. Toby began to feel increasingly nervous. It was bad enough having to come to terms with the fact that great things were expected of you, without being forced to admit that you didn’t have a damned clue as to what those things might be. What if he was supposed to kill a dragon, or something? No, forget the something, what if it actually was a bloody dragon? Toby had always visualised a dragon as being something very like Tyrannosaurus rex, only bigger and faster and with more teeth, probably breathing fire, too. Maybe he’d be allowed to start on something smaller first.
Like a dog with a bad attitude.
They were crossing the old bridge across the River Avon when the Howling Thing scared the crap out of Toby. He’d been walking along, lost in his own thoughts, vaguely aware of a sound like an angry siren growing steadily louder, and then just as he passed the old stone Chapel, something inside it threw itself against the confining walls. The whole structure shuddered and the Howling Thing’s voice rose like a damned soul in torment. Toby all but jumped out of his skin, and grabbed Gayle by the arm.
“What the hell was that?”
“It’s all right, Toby,” Gayle said reassuringly, prising his fingers from her arm. “It can’t get out.”
Toby began to get his breathing back under control, though his heart was still thudding painfully in his chest. “What’s it doing in there anyway?”
“It’s doing penance,” said Gayle. “Every town has its monsters, and its bad seeds. This one is doing time. Every damned bit of it.”
That was when something even worse emerged slowly from the dark waters under the bridge, reeds and river water falling away from its pallid gargantuan bulk. It was huge, easily thirty feet tall, all bone and thick slabs of muscle, with an elongated skull like a horse. Its pock-marked skin was the dead white of things that live far underwater, rarely leaving the unending dark to venture to the surface’s light. Its eyes were black, bulging painfully from wide sockets. The mouth was long and narrow, with great square teeth that looked as if they did a lot of chewing. Its shape was more human than not, and it just seemed to get bigger and bigger as it leaned over the bridge.
One huge weed-wrapped hand rested on the wall beside the old Chapel and the Howling Thing was suddenly quiet. The long head came sweeping down for a better look at Toby and Gayle, and it was all Toby could do to keep from falling back. Hell, anywhere else and he’d have run like fun for the horizon; but he couldn’t abandon Gayle. She was standing very still, staring at the huge creature as though mesmerised. Toby put a hand on her arm to pull her away, but she wouldn’t move. Toby glanced around, but everyone else had disappeared. He didn’t blame them. Every town has its monsters … The huge bony hand tightened on the bridge’s wall, and the ancient stonework cracked and shattered under the pressure of that awful grip.
Oh hell, thought Toby. I should have settled for a dragon. Maybe if I run, I can decoy it away from Gayle …
“Don’t move,” Gayle murmured, as though guessing his thoughts “It’s faster than you can imagine.”
“What the hell is it?”
“That is a troll. All really old bridges have trolls underneath them in Mysterie. Their presence holds the bridge together, against the ravages of time. In return for which, they demand a toll. Now would you please let go of my arm? You’re cutting off the circulation.”
Toby reluctantly tore his gaze away from the lowering troll and saw that his knuckles were white where he had Gayle by the arm. He made himself let go, and then took a deep breath and moved to put himself between Gayle and the troll. Even that was enough to bring cold beads of sweat popping out on his forehead. The troll was a killer. You just had to look at it to see that. But he couldn’t let Gayle be hurt. Stood to reason it was after her. Someone as important and as long-lived as Gayle was bound to have made enemies. And by accompanying Toby back into Mysterie, she had made herself vulnerable to them. That thought put a little steel into Toby’s bones, though his legs still felt decidedly shaky. He couldn’t let her be hurt because of him.
He tried frantically to think of something he could do, but given the sheer size of the troll… He wished he had a gun. Hell, he wished he had a bazooka. It came to him then that there was only one useful thing he could do and that was to try to keep the troll occupied, buy some time, so that Gayle could get away. The creature would almost certainly kill him, but Gayle would escape. The thought chilled him, but didn’t deter him. Am I really ready to die for her? For someone who doesn’t even like me much? He seemed to have all the time in the world to consider that, but the answer was never in doubt Love you’re a cold cruel bitch, he thought calmly I wanted a great romance in my life, I just never thought it’d be this short. Guess now we’ll never get to find out whether I was Humanity’s Champion. Ah well it was worth it in the end. To be in love, really in love for the first time in my life.
He was just getting ready to tell Gayle to make a run for it when the troll suddenly leaned forward, fixed Toby with its dark goggling eyes and spoke in a voice like stones crashing together in a stream, like all the cold horrid things that live in the depths.
“I have come for you, little human,” said
the troll, its great voice shaking in Toby’s bones “Little Toby Dexter. Thinks he’s so brave. Thinks he’s going to be Humanity’s Champion. Wrong. It all ends here, in blood and tears and splintered bones. This is my bridge, given to me under the old compact, and no one crosses it without my permission. Do you know the rules, little human, little Champion? The old game of riddle, of question and answer? If you do, and if you’re clever enough and fast enough and brave enough, you might just live to fight another day. But you’re a modern man, a child of your times, so it’s much more likely that I’ll feed on your tender flesh and make toothpicks out of your bones.”
A gun, a bazooka, a bloody slingshot … It doesn’t want her, it wants me … Well, when in doubt, bluff.
Toby drew himself up to his full height, fixed the troll with his best menacing glare and lowered his voice as far as it would go.
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? You back off right now, or I’ll have your balls for this! I am Toby Dexter, focal point and Humanity’s Champion. This is Gayle. I don’t suppose I have to tell you who and what she is, do I? I thought not. Do you really think you can get either one of us to do one damned thing we don’t want to? Now back off, or I’ll show you what happens when I get really upset.”
“Oh hell,” said the troll, slumping just a little. “You’re a focal point? Really? Shit. No one said anything to me about your being a focal point. Shit! I never get to have any fun any more. Is that you, Gayle? I didn’t know you were out and about again. How’s things?”
“Don’t you how’s things me,” said Gayle, in a decidedly frosty tone. “Bad troll!”
“Oh go on, rub it in,” said the troll. Toby was amazed to see that the huge creature was actually pouting now. “Make fun of me. Everyone does. No one respects you once you’ve reached a certain age, and your eyesight isn’t what it was. I’m just doing my job, you know. No one cares about riddles any more, anyway. It’s all computer games and bloody Pokemon now. I can remember when monsters were respected, when teeth and claws meant something. Go on; walk across the bloody bridge, then. Run back and forth, see if I care. You do your best, spend ages working out a good set of threats, individually tailored, too, and they laugh in your face. I’m going back into the river for a good long sulk.”
And as quickly as that, the troll disappeared beneath the dark and murky waters, and was gone. Toby looked at the damaged stone wall where its great hand had rested, and then turned to Gayle.
“Bad troll?”
“He’s no real threat,” said Gayle easily. “Hasn’t been for centuries. He was bluffing. Mostly. Unless you’d run. Then it might have got a bit nasty. But you didn’t run. You put yourself between me and harm. Quite unnecessary, of course, but still … I’m glad to have had a glimpse of what you’re really made of.”
“What I’m really made of very nearly ended up filling my trousers,” said Toby hotly. “Are you telling me you were never in any danger at all?”
“Of course not. But you were still very brave, Toby. I’m impressed.”
“I am so mad I could spit soot. I do not want to have to feel like that again, ever. If I’m going to be Humanity’s Champion, unlikely as that still seems, I want a weapon of some sort. Something to give me at least a fighting chance.”
“What do you expect me to do?” said Gayle. “Find you a big stone with a sword stuck through it? Whistle you up a magic lamp, or a ring with three wishes? Forget about weapons, Toby. It isn’t going to be that kind of battle. Hob could break Excalibur across his knee, and Angel would probably eat it. And from now on, I will look out for myself, thank you very much.”
“Fine,” said Toby. “The next big monster to come along is all yours. You can handle it, while I make for the horizon like a dog with its arse on fire.”
Gayle looked at him consideringly, and her expression softened just a little. “You won’t run, Toby. You’re not the running kind. When push came to shove, you stood your ground and kept your wits about you. Which is good to know. The kind of beings, forces, we’ll be facing will be more impressed by brains than bravery.”
“Pity,” said Toby. “I could have faked bravery. I still don’t feel like any kind of hero.”
Gayle patted him gently on the cheek. “That’s the best kind. Now come along. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and the day is young.”
“I will never wash that cheek again,” said Toby, and Gayle had to laugh.
They made their way through the town, and everywhere people fell back to give them plenty of room. A few even turned and ran. Lots of people were still giving Toby the fish eye, but he found that smiling straight back at them, like he knew something they didn’t, was usually enough to make them turn quickly away and pretend to be interested in something else. Even when there was nothing else. There did seem to be an awful lot of people about, even for a Saturday morning, often gathered in little groups buzzing with animated conversation. Toby was surprised to find he recognised quite a few faces. Apparently more people than he ever suspected were a part of Mysterie, and always had been. It made him wonder about the connections between the two worlds, and how much he might have noticed before, if he’d only ever suspected the truth.
And most surprising of all, he felt comfortable in his new, magical world, for all its monsters and weirdness. He felt vaguely that he ought to be more … upset by some of the things he’d seen and been told. The truth alone would have been enough to set a lot of people gibbering and frothing at the mouth, and the Howling Thing … In Mysterie all the rules were suspended, and everything was up for grabs. Toby could think of a lot of people who wouldn’t have been able to cope with such madness and anarchy for even a moment, and just a few days before he would have said he was one of them, but … He liked it here, in Mysterie, for all its uncomfortable truths and hidden dangers. He felt alive, for the first time in years.
It probably helped that his old life had been so utterly bloody boring, that he was glad to be rid of it.
Gayle indicated a row of old houses they were passing, mostly seventeenth- and eighteenth-century. Well preserved, but blunt and functional rather than charming. That place there, a little back from the road, used to be the old Hobshouse Bank. A failed venture by the Serpent’s Son, a few centuries back. For a time, that one bank controlled all the town’s finances. Owned a lot of property, and gave out even more promissory notes. Everyone who mattered came to Hob with their hat in their hands, looking for a piece of the action. They knew his reputation, even then, if not exactly who and what he really was, but they were prepared to overlook any number of, er, character faults, in the pursuit of obscene amounts of money. And there was a lot of gold to be found in Bradford-on-Avon in those days, when the cloth trade flourished.
“There’s more than one way to power, Toby, and Hob’s tried most of them. He ran this town for years. When his overextended bank finally collapsed, its vaults full of nothing but unrecoverable debts and piles of worthless paper, and Hob disappeared into the night with what little cold cash there was, a lot of people’s fortunes were destroyed, from the highest to the lowest. Financial disasters have a way of trickling all the way down. It took the town generations to get over it. The town’s forefathers should have remembered the old adage; if you must sup with the Devil, use a long spoon. Even if it’s only the Devil’s Son. And certainly don’t use your own money.”
“Money,” Toby said thoughtfully. “That’s something other people have, isn’t it?”
Gayle looked at him. “I thought you said you were in publishing?”
“In is perhaps too strong a word,” said Toby. “Connected with is probably more accurate. Suffice to say that money and I seem to have only the most fleeting of relationships these days. I don’t understand where it all goes. It’s not like I have any expensive vices. I never had the chance to acquire any. How much further, before we get to these Mice of yours?”
“They’re right out on the edge of town. They like their privacy, in Mysteri
e as well as Veritie. Place called Manor Farm.”
“The hippies?” said Toby. “Oh, wonderful. We’re going to end up sitting around on bean bags, drinking strange herbal teas and trying not to choke on the fumes from dodgy joss sticks, I just know it.”
“You know, you’re very judgemental, for a shop assistant.”
“You did know!”
“I’m afraid so. Carys knows everything, remember? Not to worry. I’m sure you were a very good shop assistant. Probably got a degree in stacking. You’ll like the Mice; charming creatures.”
“Yeah, well,” growled Toby. “They’d better have some cheese. I’m starting to feel distinctly peckish.”
A pleasant enough stroll took them through the rest of the town and out into the countryside beyond. It was a leisurely walk in the bright sunshine because Toby had slowed Gayle down by the simple principle of refusing to keep up. Gayle soon got tired of conversing over her shoulder with someone who might or might not be there, and reluctantly slowed her long stride to a more reasonable pace, much to Toby’s relief. He hadn’t done this much walking in years. The old Manor farmhouse was all that now remained of what had once been a thriving farm. But the land had gradually been sold off in small parcels over the years, and the livestock and outer buildings with it, till all that was left was the old Tudor farmhouse itself.
Someone had recently given the exterior a quick lick of paint and a good clean, and the half-timbered structure looked to be in reasonably good condition, for its age. Toby and Gayle trod noisily up the long gravel path that led to the great front door, but there was no response from inside the house. Most interesting to Toby, the windows weren’t boarded over, as they were in Veritie.
All in all, walking up the gravel path was like walking into the picture on the lid of a jigsaw box. It was the kind of perfect bucolic image that had become quite rare in the modern, mechanised and impoverished countryside. Everything looked just right. Of course; this was Mysterie. Toby hadn’t been out this way in so long he couldn’t tell if the farmhouse usually looked this perfect, but he rather thought not. Upkeep on historical buildings like this could be ruinously expensive, in Veritie. The whole setting seemed utterly tranquil, calm and peaceful, with wide open green fields stretching out around the farmhouse, bordered on the horizon by traditional low stone walls. There didn’t seem to be anyone about.