Table of Contents

A Bridge Too Few

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

A Bridge Too Few

Heide Goody & Iain Grant

Pigeon Park Press

‘A Bridge Too Few’ Copyright © Heide Goody and Iain Grant 2019

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Published by Pigeon Park Press

www.pigeonparkpress.com

info@pigeonparkpress.com

A Bridge Too Few

Chapter 1

“We never leave fairy tales behind when we become adults; we simply stop looking for them.”

It Bears Repeating: The Enduring Appeal of Goldilocks

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

There was a knock at the door to the undertaker’s viewing room.

Dr Epiphany Alexander looked up from her work.

The knocking came again — two slow and solemn knocks.

“Is there anybody there?” called a frail plaintive voice. “Unquiet spirits, respond if you can hear me.”

“I’m in here, Westerby,” said Epiphany.

“One knock for yes. Two knocks for no,” wailed Professor Smutcombe.

“I have no time for your games,” said Epiphany. “Now either get inside or go away. I have impossible tasks to do and I would like to get home for my tea.”

The door opened and the septuagenarian Westerby Smutcombe, professor emeritus in Oral History entered. He tried to give her a fierce and irascible scowl but failed because he had the soul of a clown.

“You’re no fun anymore, Epiphany,” he said, removing his brown Panama hat.

“I don’t recall I was ever fun,” said Epiphany.

“There were those garden parties at your grandparents’ house in Hathersage. You were a ray of sunshine.”

“I was eight years old.”

“Really?” said Professor Smutcombe and frowned like a man who wondered where the last forty years had gone, as though he had simply misplaced them and surely would find them if he just had a bit of a look. “Back then you were capable of performing six impossible tasks before breakfast.”

“One impossible task is quite enough these days, thank you.”

“Which is?”

“The tying together of the deceased’s toes to stop them a-wandering.”

“Doesn’t sound too difficult.”

“Is that so?”

“Let’s have a look then,” he said and came over to peer into the coffin.

The coffin sat in the viewing room of Ecking and Trowel funeral directors in the Sheffield suburb of Hunter’s Bar. Epiphany knew Mr Trowel of old, had even assisted him with an unfortunate kobold problem in the nineteen-nineties and she had been given space and time to prepare Elsa Frinton for burial.

“Ah,” said Professor Smutcombe, seeing the problem.

“Ah, indeed,” said Epiphany.

There were a number of tasks that, at first sight, appeared impossible.

Resuscitating and rehoming a mermaid caught in an oil slick in the Irish Sea had been a logistical nightmare and almost entirely impossible to keep out of the national newspapers but Dr Epiphany Alexander had succeeded.

Getting a naïve young woman out of a contract with an improbably named sprite who had granted her the ability to spin selfies into social media likes in exchange for the life of her firstborn child had been almost hopelessly irresolvable but Epiphany had persevered.

Tying together the toes of a dead woman who had no toes, no feet and was indeed entirely absent was more difficult yet. It had all the hallmarks of utter impossibility but Epiphany was not one to give up just because something was impossible.

“There’s no body,” said Professor Smutcombe.

“Well spotted,” said Epiphany. “Nonetheless…”

Elsa Frinton, who had been a keen student of fairies, folklore and all manner of superstitions had made some very clear stipulations in her will. Coins were to be placed over her eyes in order to pay the Ferryman. She was to be buried with iron nails in her pockets so that neither elves nor witches might disturb her grave. Salt was to be placed in her left hand in case she met the devil on her spiritual travels. And her toes were to be tied together with ribbon in order to stop her corpse wandering before its burial.

Epiphany approved of much of this. Elsa had been one of Epiphany’s undergraduate students at Sheffield University and it was rewarding to see that Elsa had taken Epiphany’s teachings to heart. On the other hand, in the litany of will requests, Epiphany saw a frightfully ‘pick and mix’ attitude towards folk belief.

Professor Smutcombe looked at the list on the table next to the coffin.

“Iron nails and elf-crosses placed in the coffin?”

“A bit belts and braces there, Elsa,” said Epiphany.

Epiphany did not wish to speak ill of the dead but she was an honest woman and saw no reason to honey words just for the sake of the departed.

“Elsa was an only child,” Epiphany told Professor Smutcombe. “And an orphan since the age of twelve.”

“How Dickensian,” said Smutcombe.

“Raised by a distant and elderly uncle who had preceded her into the great beyond by some years. She was only twenty-two when she died but had no living relatives so I, as her tutor, have taken it upon myself to ensure that she is sent on her way with due deference.”

“Sent on her way…” said Smutcombe. He ran his fingers over the trinkets and items placed in the coffin, the two silver coins that had been carefully placed where the woman’s eyes would have been. “May I ask where the body is?”

“You may,” she said as she measured out a length of red ribbon. “You might recall the disaster at Alvestowe last Christmas.”

“Oh, that awful landslide.”

“If that’s what it was.”

“It wasn’t?”

Epiphany considered the length of ribbon. “Against my advice, Elsa went there to investigate rumours of a lost yule-elf tribe.”

“You think she found them?”

“I think she destroyed them,” said Epiphany. “Along with the entire town, buried under a mountain of rubble. Now, if you’ll excuse me, this is the tricky part.” She bent over the coffin and made a loop of ribbon and tied it in the air around nothing but in the spot where a corpse might be reasonably expected to have a big toe. She then made another loop next to it.

“Giving her a bit too much wiggle room there, dear,” said Smutcombe. “An enthusiastic corpse could do a decent waddle with that free length.”

“Shush,” said Epiphany tersely. “I’m concentrating.”

“On what?”

“Believing that I’m actually tying her toes together. The action means nothing without belief.”

She tied off the ribbon and let it fall to the base of the coffin. She stood back and huffed breathlessly at the exertion.

“Done?” said Smutcombe.

“All done,” she whispered.

“And you’ve tied her toes together.”

“I believe I have. Surely that’s what counts? Funeral’s not until next week but at least she’s ready.”

“And I’m sure you deserve a restorative drink after such a Herculean effort.”

She looked at the elderly academic suspiciously.

“My treat, dear Epiphany,” he said.

“I think I’d rather go home. I am somewhat hungry.”

“Dinner then?”

She smiled politely. “Thank you, Westerby but —”

“It grieves me to think of a young woman living alone in that squalid terraced house.”

“It’s not squalid and it’s an end terrace so, technically, it’s semi-detached. Also, I’m no longer young and that goes doubly so for you. I know you, you wily goat. You’re thirty years older than me and should know better.”

“Oh, and I do,” he said, with a sudden twinkle in his eye. “I know a lovely Italian bistro that does a tagliatelle carbonara to die for. I also know a thing or two regarding magical goings on in the city which I wanted to pick your brains about.” He did a little ‘here I am’ gesture. “Hence the reason for my visit. I was particularly keen to discuss what you were doing about the rogue troll causing all manner of trouble.”

She was suddenly quite still. “Troll?”

“Troll, yes. Surely, you knew?”

“Pretend I don’t,” she said. “Tell me…”

Smutcombe grinned. “Over a bowl of carbonara and a mediocre house red?”

Epiphany was bone-tired and she did really want to go home, to curl up with something fattening to eat and something nourishing to read. But she also wanted to know about any miscreant magical folk that might be loose in the city without her knowledge. Also, she suspected that she had no food in at home, except half a left-over steak and kidney pie and a box of Weetabix. She did like Italian.

“Troll first then dinner,” she said.

“Capital!” said Smutcombe, patting his hat back onto his head.

“We’ll go to the Wicker Arches,” said Dr Epiphany. “All and any trolls in the city should be living there.”

“Then let’s jump in the old jalopy. I’m parked out front.”

Chapter 2

“The troll is customarily noted for its enormous size, truculent manner and vile appearance. In truth not enough emphasis is placed upon their teeth, which are uncommonly large and capable of crunching more than goat bones.”

The Charge of the Sprite Brigade

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

Smutcombe’s ‘jalopy’ was a carefully maintained orange 1963 Hillman Imp. Smutcombe shooed the black and ginger long-haired cat curled up on the warm bonnet and held the door open for Epiphany to get in. Once in motion, the car rattled like a dancing skeleton and had seats with vicious springs that had a tendency to poke passengers when least expected. Epiphany held onto the coat hook to avoid rolling on the corners and getting an unwanted spring in the fundament. Once, Smutcombe ‘missed’ the gearstick when he went to change gears and ‘accidentally’ put his hand on her knee. Epiphany rapped his knuckles sharply and told him he was dirty old professor with tenure and had better behave himself if he wished to see retirement.

Smutcombe chuckled but then behaved himself for the rest of the journey.

The Wicker Arches were part of a Grade II listed railway viaduct over the River Don. Its full length was nearly half a mile but the arches in question were on the side roads either side of the Wicker dual carriageway. The arches here had been walled off, given shutters and doors and were home to garages, workshops, niche trading companies. And trolls. Mostly trolls.

“There should be no rogue trolls in Sheffield,” said Epiphany. “My grandfather —”

“A fine chap,” said Smutcombe.

“If you say. He and his colleague were responsible for rehousing them all after the war. If a troll has a bridge, it has no reason to leave. Let’s try here first.”

Smutcombe drew to a stop. The Hillman Imp gave a final death-rattle grumble and was still.

Epiphany got out and approached the door of a car repair shop arch.

“How long will this take, my dear?” asked Smutcombe from his car seat. “A fine dinner awaits us.”

“And it can wait as long as it takes,” said Epiphany. She hammered on the repair shop door.

There were clanks and groans much shuffling and then the door was opened. The door was seven feet tall and the thing on the other side had to duck its head to step out. It wore ragged dungarees and was conspicuously wiping an oily rag on its hands. Epiphany wasn’t certain if it was wiping the oil off its hands or on.

It sucked through its teeth and shook its head.

“It’s the parts, you see,” it said in a low, thick rumble. “Can’t get the parts these days.”

“Good afternoon,” said Epiphany.

“No, you see the main gasket ‘ead cylinder bracket ‘as gone. I can’t order a new one until Furssday.”

“You can drop the act,” she said.

The troll peered down at her. It stroked its shaggy beard and then, contemplatively, stuck a finger up its nose up to the second knuckle. The troll looked left and right and then gave the archway above a doubtful look. It removed the finger from its nose, cleared its throat and intoned: “Who’s that trippin’ over my bridge?”

“I’m not doing anything over your bridge,” said Epiphany. “I’m next to it, not on it.”

The troll considered this and decided to press on.

“I’m goin’ to gobble you all up,” he said and reached down to her with one of his fat hands. His square yellow teeth glistened with saliva.

Epiphany sighed. “Fine!” she said and then adopted a sing-song voice. “Oh, please don’t eat me. I’m much too small. Wait for my friend. She’s a much bigger, er, university lecturer than I am.”

The troll looked around again, sceptically scouring the quiet back street for sign of plump academics.

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Yes,” said Epiphany.

The troll huffed. There were rules. He saw Professor Smutcombe sitting in the open door of his Hillman Imp.

“’Allo, professor. Ow’s the car runnin’?”

“Sweet as a nut, Grak-Ak. How’s business?”

“Slow,” said the troll. “We ain’t eaten nobody since two fousand and two.”

“The railway worker,” nodded Epiphany.

“‘i-vis gets stuck in my teef,” said Grak-Ak.

“We’ve heard that one of your lot has gone rogue.”

“Frightened some teenagers in Hollins Lane,” said Smutcombe. “And out in Eccleshall, there’s been a spate of people complaining about their ponds being vandalised.”

“Don’t know nuffin about that,” said Grak-Ak. “We’re good folk. Got our bridge, why move?”

“Quite,” said Epiphany.

“You could try them lot in Walker Street,” said the troll, pointing along the arches with an arm as long as a sapling. “Funny lot on the other side of the big road.”

“Much obliged,” said Epiphany and turned to leave.

“This other lecturer…” said Grak-Ak.

“Yes?”

“How big is she?”

“Oh, positively corpulent,” lied Epiphany. “Succulent even.”

“Right, best get the oven on then,” said the troll and went back inside.

Epiphany looked at Smutcombe. “You actually let these trolls repair your car?”

“Their methods might be a tad unorthodox and their manners a little coarse but they get the job done.”

Together, they went from arch to arch, questioning the troll occupants, Smutcombe complaining all the time that there was a fine meal to be had at the little Italian. There were trolls pretending to be mechanics, trolls pretending to be tattooists, trolls pretending to be welders, trophy makers, delivery couriers and industrial caterers — all of them notionally fake, for what did trolls need with actual work as long as they had a bridge to lurk under and the faint promise of someone or something to eat every now and then. Several offered to eat Epiphany but this was merely a ritual to be honoured and she made several false promises of fat academics who would soon be going into their bubbling pots or hanging from greasy meat hooks.

They drove round the dual carriageway and down the second set of arches in Walker Street which were, despite Grak-Ak’s parochial comments, just like the ones they had first seen. Epiphany clocked a potential cause of the current situation almost immediately. Traffic cones and construction barriers were erected at the front of the furthest arch.

“I should have been informed of this,” said Epiphany softly and got out of the car.

There was big sign in front of the construction works.

BRIDGE STRENGTHENING WORKS

CARRIED OUT BY

MCVITIE DAINTY

FOR THE

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE CITY-LINK RAIL PROJECT

“Not good,” she said.

The barriers around the site, whilst tall and very official looking were hardly secure and she slipped through a gap into a construction area dominated by diggers and cement mixers. A sleek silver cat sat on a generator and washed itself. The archway under the bridge had had the front wall and doors ripped away and the cavernous oval space had been filled with concrete. The troll home was gone.

“Ay up, duck,” called a man in a yellow hi-vis and a hard hat. “Members of the public aren’t allowed in here.”

“Who’s in charge here?” she said. “Under whose authority is this being carried out?”

The construction worker was about to answer but another man was already approaching. He was dressed very much the same except that under his hi-vis jacket was suit and a tie. The tie was brought up tightly around his thick neck as though it was trying to keep his double-chin corralled and contained to the general neck area.

“What’s this?” he said of Epiphany.

“Lady wants to know who’s in charge, Mr McVitie,” said the builder.

McVitie looked her up and down. “Are you some sort of…?” He fished around but clearly Epiphany’s appearance — the green woollen stockings, the solidly sensible skirt, the eminently practical cardigan and the satchel slung from left shoulder to right hip — did not provide him any clues.

“I am Dr Epiphany Alexander of Sheffield University,” she said. “Department of Folkloric Studies.”

McVitie made very little effort to hide his smirk. “Folklore Studies?”

“Folkloric. I asked this gentleman who was in charge.”

McVitie smiled to his underling and then looked down at Epiphany. McVitie was a tall man — a wide one too — and he was apparently one of those tall men who emphasised their height by standing too close to others and looming over them. McVitie loomed.

“You happen to catch me while I’m doing a site inspection.” He looked at the shiny watch on his wrist. “And I’ve got two minutes before I have a dinner appointment elsewhere.”

From behind the construction screen, Professor Smutcombe called, “As do we, Epiphany!”

“What do you want, doctor?” asked McVitie.

Epiphany took a deliberate step back so she didn’t have to look up at such a severe angle.

“I want to know what’s going on here,” she said.

“Bridge improvements,” said McVitie.

She gestured to the concreted archway. “Improvements?”

“This old girl needs propping up. She might have been fine back in the day but since she’s going to be used to carry high speed trains to Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Hull we need to zhoosh her up, give her a bit of a facelift and some underpinning.”

“But these arches…” said Epiphany.

“To be filled in, every last one of them.”

“They are in use!”

McVitie made zero effort to conceal his smirking laugh this time. “Have you seen these businesses? Shoe repairs? Costume hire? A trophy shop? A bloody trophy shop! These places must be clinging on by their fingernails.”

“They’re thriving businesses,” she said, because she could hardly say ‘They’re occupied troll homes’!

“Thriving? They need putting out of their misery! Limping dogs, the lot of them. City-Link Rail owns all of this. The tenants were all given notice months ago.”

“Letters?” Literacy was not a strong point among trolls. Apart from the occasional makeshift sign saying ‘Brij! This Way!’ they had little use for letters.

“We’ll have the rest of them kicked out before the week’s end,” said McVitie.

“No, you can’t,” said Epiphany automatically.

“Can’t?” McVitie stepped forward, closing the gap between them for some intensely unpleasant looming.

“I shall… I shall complain.”

McVitie laughed in her face. Actually laughed. In her face. “I’m the McVitie in McVitie Dainty, sweetheart. There’s no one above me. Just me and Mr Dainty at the top. We’re the big cheeses. I don’t understand why this is any of your business. Bloody university types, totally out of touch with the real world. This is business. We’re building the future, enabling the great big cities of the north to expand and grow. And if some poxy businesses go to the wall and some little towns get gobbled up along the way then that’s the way of the future, isn’t it?”

Epiphany had no idea what the way of the future was, but even if something was destined, it didn’t mean one had to like it or shouldn’t fight it. She was about to tell him as much when he cut in first.

“Time’s up,” he said, brandishing his expensive wristwatch. “Now, piss off, Dr… Pifflepuff or whatever your name is.”

She was going to get nothing more of value from this man. Without a word, she turned around and slipped out again through the security fence.

“And — you — secure that breach,” McVitie shouted to the site worker as she left.

Westerby Smutcombe gave her an oddly reproachful look. “Perhaps now we can go to dinner.”

Epiphany gave him a hard and uncompromising look and battered on the door of the nearest arch.

“I’m hungry,” Smutcombe whined, which was deeply unbecoming in a man of his years.

There was the sound of the bolts being drawn behind the door of what advertised itself to be a business-to-business laundry service (ASK US ABOUT NAPKINS!) but what was clearly a dank cave that smelled of dead and rotting things.

The troll with flabby moobs bent down and sniffed Epiphany, its long greasy hair slapping Epiphany’s face.

“Who’s that trippin’ over my bridge? I’m gonna gobble you all up.”

“Oh, please don’t,” sang Epiphany. “I’m only small. There’s a much bigger university lecturer coming along soon. Now, tell me, did you receive a letter?” she asked in a much more normal voice.

“What?”

“A letter,” said Epiphany. “A piece of folded paper, probably inside an envelope.”

“Envelope?”

“Another folded piece of paper but stuck together.”

The troll — not a troll but a trollop, she realised; the long hair, the moobs that weren’t moobs — the trollop scratched her bum in thought.

“Let me look,” she said and went clanking and bashing around inside her dark hole.

Epiphany felt no inclination to go inside and help her. Rituals or no rituals, only an idiot human would go beneath a troll bridge willingly. Shortly the trollop returned with an unopened letter that look like it had been recently put to use as a spatula. Grease and egg yolk stained its edges.

“Thank you,” said Epiphany.

There was the soft crunch of tyres on broken tarmac. McVitie leaned out of the window of his Audi and said, “You can tell her she’s got until week’s end. Then they’re all out.”

He didn’t exclaim that there was flipping seven foot troll standing there or scream in terror. Did most magical creatures cast a glamour of near invisibility over themselves? Or were humans too wrapped up in their own thoughts and drives to see what was really there? Epiphany suspected the answer was somewhere in between.

McVitie accelerated away.

“What’s ‘e mean?” asked the trollop.

Epiphany pointed at the concrete-filled hole of her neighbour. “Do you know the troll who used to live there?”

“Ek Midek,” nodded the trollop. “And ‘is oity-toity missus.”

“Do you know where he’s gone?”

She scratched her bum thoughtfully once more. “I reckon ‘e’s on ‘is ‘olibobs.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“There was all this fumping and banging and then I ‘eard ‘im say, ‘I ain’t stickin’ round for this’ and I saw ‘im go under ‘is travel bridge.”

“Travel bridge?”

“You know,” said the trollop. “A bridge. For travellin’ under.” She pointed at Smutcombe.

“Oh,” said Epiphany, understanding. “A hat.”

“Don’t know what you’re on about,” said the trollop. She sniffed and gestured at the letter. “You can keep that. I licked all the sauce off it now.”

“Thanks.”

The trollop retreated to her archway home. Epiphany was unable to bring herself to tell her that the archway’s days were probably numbered; there was no point causing a panic if she couldn’t provide a solution.

“Please tell me we can now go for dinner,” said Smutcombe.

“Not at all,” said Epiphany. “We have a troll to find and a bridge to save!”

Chapter 3

“Rumplestiltskin cheated out of his reward, the beanstalk giant a victim of theft, the ogre from Puss in Boots deprived of his castle and his life. If fairy tales teach us anything, it is that fairy folk deserve any punishment meted out to them. They don’t just live in the margins of society; they deserved to be marginalised.”

Six Out of Seven Dwarfs aren’t Happy: The Mistreatment of Little People in Fairy Tales

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

“To Eccleshall,” said Epiphany.

“Why?” pouted Smutcombe, still sulking about dinner. “We can skip starters but we can’t put dinner off indefinitely.”

Epiphany stabbed her phone with her finger. “Ah-hah.”

“What?” said Smutcombe.

“As I said, Eccleshall. There’s been a spate of people complaining about their ponds being vandalised”

“Oh, you expect me to drive?”

“I would like that very much, Westerby.”

“So,” said the aged professor as they drove, “you think the garden ponds are worth investigating. Oh. Did they have little ornamental bridges, by any chance?”

“Not all of them,” said Epiphany, reading from her phone, “but one man seems quite put out that his cat can no longer sit and watch the fish from his miniature Japanese bridge of tranquillity.”

“How can it be a bridge of tranquillity if it enables his cat to indulge in its most murderous fantasies?”

“It is well known that cats have a glamour capable of delivering a mild sedative effect,” said Epiphany. “So, the bridge will indeed be more tranquil with a cat upon it, even a cat that is entertaining murderous thoughts.”

“Well I never. Always an education, being with you.”

“I will message the man with the peeved cat.”

Fifteen minutes later, Smutcombe’s Hillman pulled up outside a substantial detached house, with a huge copper beech screening it from the road.

“I’ll be waiting,” he said as she got out. “There’s still time for dinner, if we leave soon.”

“I would not count on it,” she said.

“At this rate I’m going to have to get a sausage roll from the butchers on the corner!”

He said it as an acerbic comment but Epiphany chose to take it at face value and said, “Might be wise, Westerby!”

She walked up the driveway and knocked on the door. It was opened by a round man in his sixties. A large white cat brushed his legs.

“Mr Clegg. I’m Epiphany. I messaged you a short while ago.”

“You don’t look like a policewoman,” he said.

“Oh, I’m definitely not with the police,” said Epiphany.

Mr Clegg looked her up and down. “I’m sure you’d make a fine addition to any force, lass,” he said.

“Thank you. I think.”

He invited her in. The house was spacious and well-kept, although a good deal of the furniture looked as though it had been bought especially for the cat. There was an elaborate tree-like structure in the lounge, with padded platforms, and limbs that were wrapped with something that looked like string. The cat bounded easily from one level to the next until it was at head height. It regarded Epiphany with its large eyes.

“Does your cat always do this?” asked Epiphany. She didn’t elaborate on what this was, wanting Mr Clegg to interpret the question in his own way.

“Renaldo is an excellent judge of character, and always appraises newcomers. He seems to be taking some time to consolidate his thoughts on you.”

“I see. And Renaldo has been inconvenienced by vandals of late. Has he shared any thoughts on that matter?”

Mr Clegg stared at her, with a deadpan expression. “Are you mocking me?”

“Not at all,” said Epiphany.

“It’s a cruel thing, the mockery of a beautiful lass. Party ring?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“A biscuit. To go with your cup of tea.”

“I don’t have a cup of tea.”

“Soon remedied,” he said and moved slowly to the kitchen.

“I have made use of the wisdom of cats a great many times,” she called after him. “I find them to be cunning and opinionated, although one must always be aware of their innate self-interest.”

The cat narrowed its eyes but then sat down and started to purr loudly.

Mr Clegg made a noise of agreement. “Yes, you are quite right. What’s more, it seems that Renaldo has decided that you are to be tolerated. Well done. In terms of the vandalism, you should come and see for yourself. Shocking, it is. Most alarming is the fear that it’s put into Renaldo. He’s generally afraid of nothing, and yet he has steadfastly refused to go into the garden since the incident. I’m not sure why.”

“Let’s take a look then,” said Epiphany.

“Let me show you.”

She followed Mr Clegg out through some folding French doors into a huge garden. The lawns were green and stripy, the flowers bloomed in graded tiers in every bed and the wooden fences were all freshly painted.

“Immaculately maintained,” nodded Epiphany. “And such a large garden.”

“If one cannot enjoy the spoils of being a former captain of industry, what can one do? If only I had someone to share it with,” he said.

The only thing that marred the scene was the smashed bridge across the pond, and the blood that was smeared liberally across the remaining stonework.

“Perhaps you’d be kind enough to wait here so that I can make my own assessment?” asked Epiphany.

“I’ll finish making the tea.”

She walked across the lawn and circled the pond so that she could examine the remains of the bridge from every side. As she walked across the grass, she found various remains in differing states of decomposition. The tails of several large fish were starting to smell quite bad. A black and ginger cat sat safely in the upper branches of a nearby tree and eyed the fish remnants hungrily.

Epiphany regarded the trail of blood and bent to inspect the remnants of a duck. She could tell it had been a duck because of the feet and the bill, but that was all that remained. A large shadow fell across the lawn. “Would you be Ek Midek?” she asked without looking up.

“That’s me dad.”

Epiphany looked up. She was faced with a young troll, about her height. He smiled broadly at her. “Dad! Da-ad! Can I do this one?”

A voiceless grunt came from nearby. The young troll jumped with glee. “Who’s that trippin’ over my bridge?” he said, pitching his voice low to emulate the rumble of a fully-grown troll.

“Yes, I’ve come to talk to you about this bridge,” said Epiphany. “It’s not really ideal for your family, is it?”

“No! That’s not what you say!” complained the troll. “You’re supposed to tell me your name and then I say ‘I’m going to gobble you all up’, and then —”

“Indeed,” said Epiphany, “but rest assured there will be no gobbling, as my very large colleague will definitely be along in a moment. My name is Epiphany and I’ve come to help. Now, may I speak with your father?”

“S’pose,” said the young troll, despondent. He went over to the bridge and reached underneath the rubble, shaking some unseen body part of the hidden troll. “Dad, the lady wants to help.”

“Has she got a goat with her?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Go and tell your mother then.”

The young troll skipped across the lawn, leaving clumsy dents in the turf with every step.

He approached a large rustic pergola with a bench underneath it. “Mom, come and see the lady!”

A trollop emerged from underneath the pergola. “Manners, Skakky! Did you ask our guest if she’s come trippin’ over our bridge?”

“Yes, but she’s not playin’ right,” grumbled Skakky.

The trollop approached Epiphany and smiled. Unusually for a troll, she had piled her hair up into something like a bun. It was as wiry and twiggy as a rook’s nest, but Epiphany recognised it as a level of grooming that was generally unheard of in trolls.

“Welcome! My name is Penelope.”

“Penelope? Your name is Penelope?”

“It used to be Uggle Yok. I had it changed by the deed pole. Can I invite you to trip over our bridge?”

“As I explained to your son, I must point out that I am the smallest of university lecturers, and a much plumper colleague will surely be along in a few minutes. Now, I need to talk to you all about this business of taking up residence in suburbia.”

“Oh, it’s so wonderful!” said Penelope. “The local school will be perfec’ for young Skakky.”

Epiphany looked more carefully at Penelope. Something that she hadn’t reckoned on was an upwardly mobile troll that actually wanted a better class of residence.

“Is it worth me pointing out,” she said carefully, “that the only actual bridge in this garden is a heap of rubble, presumably since your husband attempted to insert himself underneath it? Is it also worth me pointing out that you’re not amongst trolls here. It’s a very different world?”

“A bridge is still a bridge,” sniffed Penelope. “The boys don’t mind getting wet. We don’t need to be wiv trolls. I will be joining the Dubbya Ay and spending time wiv other ladies.”

“You plan to join the women’s institute?” Epiphany asked. This was a surprise, but she kept a poker face and nodded at Penelope. “Well, they are famously inclusive, but I don’t know if a troll will be welcome when they realise that you’re eating their pets.”

“We don’t eat pets!” insisted Penelope.

“The evidence would suggest that you do,” said Epiphany, pointing at the scattered remains across the garden. She had also noticed that a well-stocked bird table was positioned right next to the pond, as if a hungry troll was using it to lure in its dinner.

There was a call from the patio door as it squeaked open. “Hello there! Do you have milk and sugar in your tea, lass?”

“No thank you!” called Epiphany. Penelope raised her head and looked as if she was about to answer, but Epiphany put a finger to her lips. “It’s best that you don’t draw attention to your presence.”

Skakky came running over. “Dad says can you ask the man for a cup of tea with a goat on the side?”

Epiphany felt the vibration of the earth through her feet as Ek Midek shook off the rubble that formed his cosy blanket. He ambled over and joined them.

“Nice bit of goat then?” he asked with a yawn that showed his grinding teeth. They resembled millstones.

“No, I’ve told you!” hissed Penelope. “We don’t eat that any more. We need to start eating quails and rice cakes.”

“Tell that to your boy!” said Ek Midek pointing proudly.

They all turned to see the young troll sitting on the edge of the pond, chomping on a large duck. In his other hand was a koi carp. Ek Midek moved swiftly over and snatched the carp, biting its head off with a grunt of pleasure and then swallowing the rest of the fish with a huge gulp. Before anyone had time to react, the patio door squeaked again.

“Try to look like rubble!” said Epiphany quickly. “There’s a time and place for you to meet the neighbours, and this isn’t it.” As an afterthought she added “Besides, he’s clearly quite a small specimen. Much bigger neighbours will be along.”

She wheeled a barrow over and Penelope draped herself into it, as if she was arranging herself on a sunbed. Skakky and Ek Midek dropped to the floor and balled up into neat piles of stones, albeit neat piles of stones that were making munching, slurping sounds.

“There you are. Can you tell what’s happened with my bridge at all?” asked Mr Clegg, bringing Epiphany her cup of tea.

“I have a very good idea what your problem is,” said Epiphany. “Solving it will be trickier.”

“Fixing things can be expensive. It was the maintenance costs that ran me out of business.”

She gave him a questioning look that she hadn’t really intended.

“Bowling alley,” said Mr Clegg. “Twenty-five laner, over in Firth Park. A right beauty she was.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Running front of house is fine enough but it’s the complex and ingenious pin-setting and ball return mechanisms that’ll get you in the end. No one realises what wizardry goes on behind there. Cripplingly expensive and remains so unless I can sell it.”

“Well, I do have an idea of how to solve your current problem. You might think it unorthodox, but I feel it will be effective. You need to go to a particular type of shop: a high-class butcher or Waitrose perhaps.”

“I’m not one for spending money unnecessarily. Unless I had the right person to spend it on,” he said.

Epiphany noticed there were three iced party ring biscuits on her saucer. They were all pink.

She took out a post-it note pad and scribbled on it.

“The butchers on the corner might be able to help you with this.”

The man looked at it. “Really?”

“Have faith,” she said.

Mr Clegg hurried off.

“Where’s ‘e going?” said Ek Midek.

“To get you dinner,” said Epiphany.

“We’re all right ‘ere. We got fish and duck.”

“Oh, this will be better,” Epiphany assured them. “I’ve never liked eating duck, anyway. You’re always left with a large bill at the end of the meal.”

The trolls looked at her blankly.

“That was a joke,” she informed them.

Skakky grinned. “Dead ducks is funny.”

Renaldo sat in the kitchen window and watched them.

Chapter 4

“The simplest way to survive a fairy tale is to not enter one. Do not step off the path. Do not speak with talking frogs. Do not rub the magic lamp. Anyone who willingly enters the fairy realm only has themselves to blame.”

Get Your Head Out Of The Clouds: Why Jack Should Not Have Climbed That Beanstalk

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

While the man was out at the butcher’s Epiphany phoned round various vehicle hire companies until one could meet her needs. She finalised the details as Mr Clegg returned. She met him in the kitchen. She had drunk the tea and slipped the party rings into her satchel.

“That was quite an expensive purchase,” grumbled Mr Clegg, handing the carrier bag to Epiphany. “Not that I begrudge anything for a beautiful lady.”

“Yes, enough of that,” she said.

“And I’m still not sure what the purpose is, exactly.”

“Leave it to me,” said Epiphany. “I’ll pop outside now, and I expect to be out of your way very soon. If I’m successful then I’m sure Renaldo will let you know by going outside again.”

She walked across the garden to find that the three trolls were gathered around something on the lawn. She walked across. Penelope was the first to react, turning around guiltily.

“We found it! We were jus’ having a talk wiv it.”

There was a small French poodle cowering between them.

“Hungry!” said Ek Midek. “Don’ like rice cakes.”

“Well I might very well have the answer for you,” said Epiphany. “Now put the dog back where you found it.”

“I like the fluffy ones!” complained Skakky.

Ek Midek scooped it up and tossed it over the fence into the next garden. The cat in the tree hissed as the dog flew past.

Epiphany held the carrier bag aloft. “From a high-class butcher, no less.”

There was a small gasp of appreciation from Penelope.

“I propose a dinner party for you all. The key ingredient’s in there.” She handed the bag over.

Penelope looked inside. “What is it?”

“I heard you say that you wanted to eat quail,” said Epiphany. “So I thought this would be even better. There is a quail in there, but then, there’s a bigger type of fowl called a guinea fowl and so it’s stuffed inside of that.”

“Inside?” said Penelope, confused.

“Yes. And then that is stuffed inside a chicken, which is in turn stuffed inside a duck, and it’s all inserted into a turkey.”

“Right,” said Ek Midek. “Well, we’ve gots to eat the quail first.”

“’Ave we, dad?” said Skakky.

“Stands to reason, don’t it. We always eats the little one first, unless it tells us there’s a bigger one comin’.”

“And there is. Bird in a bird in a bird in a…” The troll youth looked at Epiphany. “’Ow many birds did you say there was?”

“Five.”

“But we cannot eat the smaller bird without working our way through the bigger birds first,” said Penelope.

“We can get it out if we shoves our ‘ands up its bum-‘ole.”

“Ek Midek!” said Penelope, scandalised. “We’re refined trolls now. We must do this right.”

The trolls stood there, their jaws slack as they tried to process what this meat-based conundrum meant for their code of conduct.

“While you’re thinking about your dinner party, how you want to cook things, and what else you might want to do,” said Epiphany, “can I show you to your transport?”

She led them through the side gate and up the ramp of the truck that was waiting outside.

“What was that?” said the truck hire man as he passed her the keys.

“What was what?” she said blithely.

He shook his head, got her signature on his tablet. “Sixty quid a day. Needs returning with a full tank.”

“I’m sure I won’t need it for more than a day,” she said with more hope than certainty.

She went to check the trolls were safely inside. They squatted in the back, their brows knitted with the furious thinking that they were all doing about how to tackle the multi-sized poultry feast.

“Would this transportation be considered posh?” asked Penelope.

“This?” said Epiphany. She gestured at the ribbed steel roof above their heads. “This is your very own mobile bridge,” she said.

“Cor,” said Skakky.

“Very nice indeed,” nodded Penelope.

As she shut the door, Mr Clegg came down the driveway to meet her. Smutcombe stood at the open door of his Hillman Imp.

“I’m not rightly sure what’s occurred here,” said Mr Clegg.

“Probably best that way,” said Epiphany.

“But, now that we’ve got to know each other,” he said, taking Epiphany’s hand in his, “maybe I could tempt you to a Sunday lunch.”

The older man’s eyes shone with hope.

“Mr Clegg…”

“I make my own gravy,” he added.

Smutcombe scoffed loudly. “You are wasting your time, sir. Getting her to attend a dinner date is nigh on impossible.”

Mr Clegg faltered and released her hand.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were spoken for, lass.”

She looked at Smutcombe and then Mr Clegg. Renalado and a sleek silver cat sat on the garden wall and watched the awkward really-not-a-love-triangle with the kind of smugness that cats specialised in. Epiphany resisted the urge to tell Mr Clegg, quite clearly, that she was certainly not spoken for, holding her tongue lest she accidentally rekindle the man’s hopeless hope.

Embarrassed, Mr Clegg stepped away and retreated to his house.

“You are an incorrigible tease, Epiphany Alexander,” said Smutcombe. “It’s night now and I’m faint with hunger.”

Epiphany looked at the sky. “I would say it’s still evening, just about.”

“I’m near to collapse,” he told her.

She dipped into her satchel. “Party ring?”

He scowled at her but took it anyway.

“We must relocate this family somewhere safe,” she said, “and then I need to have a conversation.”

“What will we be talking about? The wine list?”

“Not you and I,” she said. “I need to talk to the cats.”

With the truck of trolls temporarily parked outside the front of her house, Epiphany went inside and through to the kitchen.

“We not going out?” said Smutcombe. “A more intimate dinner at home?”

“If you intend to come with me then you will need to eat right now.”

“I could knock up a half-decent pasta puttanesca if you wish.”

She looked at the red evening sky over the rear garden.

“I don’t believe there’s time.”

“Why not?”

“Twilight,” she said.

It took Smutcombe a moment or two to understand at which point his frown was replaced by a look of sudden alarm.

“No,” he said firmly. “No, no, no.”

“I wasn’t asking your permission,” she said and let herself out into the garden. A soft breeze played over the hedges and the heavy plum tree.

“You can’t trust them!” said Smutcombe. “There’s no need to involve them and certainly no value in summoning them!”

“I won’t have to,” she said. “They’re already here. Aren’t you?” she called loudly to the garden and the wider world.

There was no response for a moment, save for the whisper of the wind in the rose bushes and then two cats slinked onto the lawn: a slender silver creature and a fat black and ginger tom, made all the fatter by his mass of puffy fur.

“They’ve been following us all day,” said Epiphany.

Abruptly, without any intervening state, the two cats were replaced by two fairies, one in a suit of spun cobwebs and moonlight, the other with wild-hair, wild-eyes and a ragged assortment of clothes that looked like they had been stolen from corpses.

“What do you want?” said Epiphany.

“The sun chases the moon chases the sun chases the moon,” said the wild one cryptically.

“It’s not what we want from you but what we can do for you,” said the silver one. “My card,” he said and scattered a handful of acorns on the floor. Epiphany picked one up.

“Acorn?” she said.

“Oaknut,” he said. “And my friend…”

The other searched the pockets and tears of his garments and finally produced a limp cabbage leaf.

“Pak Choi,” he said.

It had been the fashion for centuries for the creatures of Faerie to name themselves after flowering plants and herbs. There were any number of Primroses, Parsleys, Mustard-Seeds and Sweet-Peas but there was understandably some branching out into less obvious species and cultivars…

“A penny for your thoughts?” said Oaknut.

“No, thank you,” said Epiphany who had no intention of selling her mind for so little.

“Get back! Get back!” said Smutcombe in the shouty tremulous manner of English gentlemen everywhere attempting to tackle something of which they were clearly terrified. “I’m armed.”

He was armed with a set of car keys. A crystal orb fob dangled from the keyring. Epiphany guessed there must some cold hard steel in some of the keys although the two fairies hardly appeared worried.

“We are not your enemies,” said Oaknut. “We come to you with amazing offers for a limited time only.”

“A knife in the heart opens no gates,” said Pak Choi.

“You face an impossible task. And our prices are very competitive.”

“She saw a large stone, kissed it and left it.”

Pak Choi stuffed his cabbage leaf in his pocket but struggled because of the threadbare handkerchief that was already there. He removed both, wiped his nose on the leaf, bit a corner off the hanky and then shoved both in different pockets.

“You want something,” Epiphany said to them. “Or you have some stake in this.”

Oaknut tried to look innocent but failed, as though a human face was something he was unaccustomed to using.

“A shoe of silver makes iron soft,” said Pak Choi and grinned.

“Nutters,” said Smutcombe. “Dangerous nutters, fairies. Don’t trust them.”

“I do not,” said Epiphany. “But they’re right. There are dozens of trolls under that bridge…”

She pictured what would happen if the city’s troll population were all suddenly made homeless. It would be more than ducks and pigeons and terrified poodles that would end up on their dinner plates.

“I need a solution to my problems,” she said.

Oaknut waved his hand and the rose trellis at the end of Epiphany’s garden shimmered. Epiphany would not be able to say that a gateway to a dusky meadow appeared within the trellis, more that the gateway that had always existed was now made visible.

“Surely, you’re not thinking of going with them?” said Smutcombe. “You’d be a fool to go.”

“I don’t expect you to come with me, Westerby.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

“Final call for the gate to Faerie,” said Oaknut. “Travellers are reminded to keep their belongings with them at all times.”

“Here, take these,” said Smutcombe and tried to pass her the keys. “Jab them if they step out of line.”

“I can’t take iron with me,” she said, “but I’ll take this.”

She lifted Smutcombe’s Panama hat from his head and set it on her own at a moderately jaunty angle.

She crouched on the lawn, pressed something into it and patted the grass.

“Final call,” said Oaknut.

“A wise man seizes time by the forelock,” said Pak Choi.

“You’ll look after the garden if I’m gone long,” she said to Smutcombe. “The plums will want picking soon.”

“How long do you intend to be?” said Smutcombe, alarmed.

“We’ll see.” She gave Oaknut a shrewd look. “And you promise that I will be safe in Faerie.”

He grinned. “All deals made in the Land of Eternal Twilight will be binding but make no deals and you will be beholden to no one.”

“Only a fool washes his roof,” said Pak Choi.

“That kind of cod-Confucianism is going to get old very quickly,” Epiphany told him.

“All I must do is write your name here” — Oaknut suddenly had a clipboard made of pressed leaves in his hand and scrawled her name on paper with a thistle quill — “and when you leave, the guardians of the door will take your name and you will be free to go. Couldn’t be simpler.”

“The bird on the wing has no pockets,” agreed his colleague.

Epiphany knew Smutcombe was right. She was a fool to even think of going willingly into the land of Faerie but, whether it was a sense of destiny or fairy magic, part of her felt she had no choice.

She nodded and walked towards the gateway.

“Stay on the path!” Smutcombe shouted.

She waved at him without looking back and then stepped across the threshold into Faerie.

Chapter 5

“Certain accounts of experimentation with LSD and other hallucinogens bear a notable similarity to earlier accounts of travels into the land of Faerie. Can we conclude that dreams of Faerie were caused by drug use? Or should we hazard that certain psychotropic compounds act as a gateway to magical realms?”

High Ho, High Ho: Drug Use and Prostitution in Fairy Tales

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

Epiphany woke from a deep and refreshing sleep to find that she was tucked into the pillowy softness of a bindweed flower. She had no idea it was a bindweed flower until she’d stepped free of its petals, and stepped back to see what it was. It was clearly a bindweed flower although one of outrageous size.

“Largest wildflower in Britain,” she murmured, “but not that large.”

She looked around the mossy woodland dell. There were smooth areas of grass and handily upturned tree stumps that invited one to linger in the dappled sunlight but Epiphany knew that Faerie was more than capable of beguiling an innocent with its simple pleasures. The merest delay on this side of the portal could see months or even years pass in the mortal world. She found a footpath and walked away, deliberately averting her eyes from the bird singing just overhead, and the glimpse of a deer’s flank through the trees.

The more purposefully she walked, the more the forest seemed to fall away. She adopted an increasingly urgent stride and the bare pastureland quickly gave way to the streets of a town. In some manner that should would not have been able to articulate, it felt that it wasn’t her that was approaching the town but that Faerie was rolling itself under her feet, a carpet insinuated under her footsteps. Narrow, steep roofed houses clustered together, shingles made from thick nut cases.

By the time Epiphany was engaged in Olympic standard power-walking she arrived at the fringes of a bustling market. She hesitated. Markets were potentially beguiling places. They were full of distractions but stalls, loose curtains and fake smiles could hide a wealth of dangers. Epiphany believed that her former student Elsa Frinton had probably encountered a yule-elf market shortly before her death in Alvestowe. She wondered if Elsa had even made it through that market alive.

This here was a goblin market, that much was clear. Goblins were well-known for being adept at monetising anything not nailed down. If something was nailed down then a goblin would sell you the added benefit that it was held securely in place.

“You are a tourist in this fair land,” said a croaky voice at her side. “You’ll need some help in navigating this sea of rogues.”

She looked down at the goblin by her side. Smaller than most, with a look of quiet cunning about him.

“I’ll take my chances,” she said.

“You will?” said the goblin with exaggerated surprise. “Every single vendor in this place will try to engage you in some smart street patter or a simple-sounding riddle that makes you sign away your soul.”

“Yes, I know,” said Epiphany.

“Well, even if you can outsmart them all, don’t you think it’s a bit tiresome?”

Epiphany looked at him. “Tiresome? Yes. I predict that it will indeed be tiresome.”

“The name’s Spunky,” he said, holding out a hand that was fifty percent knuckles, “and I can cut through all of that for you with my riddle goggles. Seriously, nobody should go in there without a pair of these.”

Epiphany avoided shaking Spunky’s hand, in case it came with an implied agreement. “Nice to meet you, Spunky. I don’t think I’ve seen riddle goggles before.”

“I’m so confident in this product that I’m prepared to let you have a free trial,” said Spunky. “State of the art, real-time situational advice lenses, guaranteed to provide the next-best-action under any circumstances. They have an SPF of fifteen to protect your eyes as well.”

“Do I need sun protection in a world of eternal twilight?”

“That’s Spell Protection Factor, lady. Here, put them on.”

Epiphany took the goggles. She held them up to her eyes and looked towards the dingy stalls of the market. It was very like wearing a cheap pair of swimming goggles, with the addition of some text at the side of her vision.

Choose the middle door.

The first thing you open is your eyes.

Roosters don’t lay eggs.

It’s a grey elephant from Denmark.

She removed the goggles and looked at the lenses from the outside. She could just make out the carefully painted script on the outside.

“A beautifully-crafted item, Spunky,” she said, “but I am afraid I must save my meagre funds, as I need to solve a very particular problem.”

“Ah!” said Spunky. “So, you need a pair of seeking goggles. Not a problem.” His hand dived inside his coat and he pulled out another pair of goggles.

Epiphany held them to her eyes and saw a different set of messages artfully painted around the edges.

Look up

You can’t always get what you want, but you might get what you need

Find someone who appears to know what they are doing and copy them.

“Most interesting, but again I must decline,” said Epiphany. She looked over towards the market. “I see a familiar face over there. If he declares a need for seeking googles, I’ll know where to send him.”

She walked over to Pak Choi who stood next to a stone fountain that babbled and sang. The fairy was slender and elegantly dressed, at least relative to the squat and frequently filthy goblins.

He saw her and doffed a hat that he didn’t have.

“So, you invited me here,” she said. “You think you have a solution to my troll problem.”

“A dandelion clock is no friend to the —”

“And I could do without the cryptic comments,” she told him.

His mouth shut with an audible slap.

“It’s just attention seeking,” she said bluntly. “If you were one of my undergraduate students, I’d have that kind of empty waffle trained out of you in the first term. Either say what you mean or don’t speak at all.”

Pak Choi frowned deeply. “The true path winds among ditches and diversions and —”

She held up a hand. “Shall we just limit ourselves to yesses and noes, perhaps?”

Pak Choi pouted. It was a very elegant fairy pout, but a pout nonetheless.

“Yes?” he offered.

“Good,” she smiled. “Now, do you and your friend have solutions to my troll problem?”

Pak Choi thought about this, opened his mouth once then twice in the search for words and then finally settled on smiling and gesturing for her to take a turn down a market alley.

She led the way through the stalls. She paused to glance at an enticing display of baked goods. There were piles of golden loaves, fragrant biscuits and steaming pies. At the very front of the stall, a dozen hogweed leaves were laid out on a velvet cloth, each with a candied fruit in the centre.

Pak Choi leaned across. “You are aware of the consequ —”

“Yes I am,” said Epiphany. “I do not intend to eat anything while I’m here. I was merely admiring the aesthetics. Ah, what is this?”

They walked between stalls that were loaded with household goods like bentwood chairs and besom brooms. There were racks of pipes and goblins offering foul-smelling tobacco to stuff them with. There were plants for sale, but some of them were so bizarre and unattractive that their use could only have been magical or medicinal. Epiphany bent to look at a particular bloom and recoiled as it puffed at her, a pungent smell filling the air.

“It’s an elvish stinkflower,” said the stallholder, a female goblin. She came round and cupped her hand, wafting the abominable stench towards her nose and inhaling deeply. “It’s a defence mechanism for the plant, of course, but if you can get over the smell, it stimulates the pleasure centre in the brain.” She closed her eyes and groaned with pleasure by way of illustration.

“Onwards,” said Epiphany to Pak Choi, shaking her head and striding forwards. “Pleasure centre indeed! Don’t these people have work to do?”

Pak Choi gave her a wide-eyed look. “Pleasure in work and work in pleasure. The red star rises —”

Epiphany thrust her nose up against his.

“Mr Pak Choi. I am a patient teacher but I will slap that nonsense out of you if I need to.”

She strode on and Pak Choi hurried to catch her. He grabbed her by the elbow and spun her round to face a stall which was arrayed with gemstones, exotic shells and insect cases that shimmered with iridescence. The stall holder was arthritically bent and shrouded in a hooded cloak.

“If truth you seek, the first step is…” began Pak Choi but quickly trailed off under a sharp gaze from Epiphany. “What you want is here,” he said simply.

“Who is that?” warbled the stallholder in an unconvincingly geriatric manner. “Has a kind young lady come to visit my humble stall?” The stallholder wobbled closer. “My eyes are old, my ears are crooked. Take a look at my wares, poppet.”

Epiphany had seen better acting at a primary school assembly. A hand slipped loose from the cloak’s sleeve. A slender and beautiful hand poking from the cuff of an elegant cobweb suit.

“Any of these charms can be yours,” said Oaknut in his faux old-lady voice.

“And you’re just a harmless old lady, are you?” said Epiphany.

“That I am,” said Oaknut.

Pak Choi tried to hold back a snigger, clearly under the impression that Epiphany had been fooled by the act.

“Just a humble purveyor of trinkets,” said Oaknut. “A hundred years, man and boy — I mean girl and woman. Take any. My prices are fair. No tricks.”

Epiphany’s hand hovered over a black and emerald beetle in a bottle. “This?”

“The Bug of True-Finding. It will only cost you a day of your life. A pittance.”

“The day I was born, perhaps?”

Oaknut stumbled. “What’s that? My ears are dim. I don’t hear too well. Or take this.” He gestured to a gold necklace. “Boreal’s Chain of Command. In payment I’ll take your hand.”

“I think not.”

“Only for a minute.”

“That’s a minute too long. Right, Oaknut, enough of these games.”

“Oaknut?” he croaked. “Who is this person your speak of? He sounds like a handsome and powerful cove.”

She sighed. Fairies were the most tiresome of creatures. “Enough.”

“But I have something important to show you,” said Oaknut.

“It had better be worth my time,” she said.

“It is,” he said, flung his hood back and stood upright. “Behold! It is I! Oaknut!”

Pak Choi fell about laughing, literally rolling in the earth next to Epiphany and clutching his belly in mirth.

“It was me all along!” declared Oaknut, delighted. “And I fooled you!”

“You didn’t.”

“Don’t pretend otherwise. I had you fooled!”

“Hilarious,” panted Pak Choi.

“Just one of our little fairy games and I won,” said Oaknut.

“You’re idiots,” said Epiphany and wandered off through the market.

By the time Pak Choi had caught up with her, she’d reached the end of a row. Set slightly aside from the main part of the market near the heavy boughs of a spreading sycamore tree was something that looked like a cross between a totem pole and a gargoyle graveyard. The pole stretched up above Epiphany’s head, and every side featured faces that looked like seriously ugly carvings, but were animated. They all seemed to be murmuring to themselves, but she couldn’t make out what any of them were saying. A goblin with bristly nostrils stood proudly in charge of the thing.

“Welcome to the deed pole!” he said.

“Is that what it is?”

“Do you doubt me, me ol’ mucker?” said the goblin.

“I was merely expressing surprise,” said Epiphany. “It looks…”

“Bold? Exciting? Tantalising?”

“Yes, why not?” said Epiphany. “All those things.”

“Ah, it’s simple, ain’t it?” said the goblin. “This here is the committee of names.” He pointed at the faces. “These fellers know every name that’s in use and all ones that ain’t, and they can come up with a fresh one at any time. Unique names, new and pre-owned. All of them guaranteed to blow yer socks off.”

“Really?” said Epiphany.

“Abso-blinkin’-lutely!” grinned the goblin. “It’s a solid promise from me to you that nobody else could know any of the names that’s in the committee’s heads. Never guess ‘em, not for all the tea in China.”

“That’s fascinating. All the tea in China?”

“So I swears.”

“And I wouldn’t be able to guess any of them?”

“Not one.”

Epiphany nodded. “How lovely,” she said and wandered on.

“You doubt me?” the goblin called after her. “You won’t find no better name source this side of the gates of hell.”

“Thank you!”

“You insult me, madam.”

She turned. “Uggle Yok.”

There was an insistent, hissing whisper from one of the faces. The goblin leaned across to put his ear closer. His face took on an expression of absolute horror.

“I believe it was previously owned by a trollop currently living in the back of a truck in Sheffield,” said Epiphany.

The goblin staggered as though shot.

“You tricked me.”

“Nothing of the sort,” she said.

“So, what was that solid promise of yours again?” she said.

The goblin wrung his hands and hopped from foot to foot. “Did I say all the tea in China? I’m sure you understood that was just a figure of speech.”

“No,” she said with slow certainty. “I think you literally meant all the tea in China.”

“That’s a lot of tea. It’s gonna take me a while to get that together.”

“It’s not just a lot of tea,” said Epiphany sternly. “It’s all of the tea. All of the tea in China.”

“Oh please!” The goblin flung itself at her feet and sobbed onto her shoes. “I can’t get that. I’d give it a good go, I really would, but what would you do with that amount of tea, anyway? There must be something else you’d rather have?”

“I am extremely fond of tea,” said Epiphany. “I drink a good deal of it, and I have many friends who also —”

“I like tea,” chimed in Pak Choi, the strain of joining a conversation appropriately evident on his face.

“Something else? Anything else?” pleaded the goblin. “You can have all the names you want.”

As the mouths on the deed poll muttered, the panicked goblin scribbled names down on scraps of paper with a charcoal pencil.

Sunrover Dreasy

Dr Juniper Codfingers

Barry Go-Lightly

Chunky Humous

Mr Cogington Downmelon

Epiphany paused in deep thought. “Well, perhaps you could help me with a small matter?”

“Yes! Yes, me and the lads will definitely help you!”

“I find myself in need of a contact. Someone with powers that extend beyond Faerie and into the human world. Someone who can help me. Do you know of such a person?”

“Yes I do,” said the goblin, “but I cannot say her name, lest I accidentally summon her. Put your ear to the pole and listen carefully.”

Epiphany leaned over towards the pole. The nearest face murmured softly into her ear.

The name was one word, three syllables and it was a name known to her.

“That’s no good,” she said. “I said someone who can help me.”

“And she can?”

“But she’s evil.”

“Evil shmevil,” said the goblin. “She’ll help for a price.”

“And where can I find her?” said Epiphany.

“On the other side of the Underhill,” said the goblin and pointed down a street to a cliff face and cave that Epiphany could have sworn wasn’t there before. “Past the Ogre with the Terrible Toll.”

“A sacrifice of a hundred lives,” said Pak Choi.

Epiphany tutted to herself. Things in Faerie were never easy.

“Let me have those names then,” she said and took the scraps of paper from the goblin and stuffed them in her satchel.

He clasped her sleeve and gave her a wide ingratiating smile. “Most gracious lady, please honour me further by taking a sip of nectar from my special collection.”

“I will do no such thing,” she said sternly, “and you will refrain from trying to entrap me further unless you want me to insist that you uphold our tea bargain.”

He grovelled and cringed for a few moments. Epiphany could see the faces on the pole behind him rolling their eyes and sighing.

“Come on Pak Choi,” she said. “I have one more small errand to run before we go through the Underhill.”

Chapter 6

The fairy godmother of European mythology is a creature to be feared above all others. Like the djinn of Arabian stories or the angels of Christian mythology, her powers are effectively limitless. However, she is not limited by magical lamps, divine authority or anything remotely resembling a conscience.”

Solomon Re-examined

Makepeace Alexander

Epiphany returned to the stall of delicious-smelling loaves, piping hot pies and candied fruit. She spoke briefly to the stallholder, a brownie in a pair of curly-toed boots. He produced a tiny sack.

“This?” he said.

“Yes.”

“But it’s just raw ingredients. Don’t you want one of my fine baked goods?”

“They do look tempting,” said Epiphany honestly, “but no. No fairy food for me. Now, the price?”

“Your heart’s desire?” suggested the brownie.

“No.”

“Your firstborn child?”

“You’ll be waiting a long time for that.”

“The sound of your voice?”

“Be reasonable.”

The brownie shrugged, out of options.

Epiphany thought a second.

“I can pay with protection,” she said.

“What kind of protection?”

“The kind that goes with you wherever you go.”

“Is it a bodyguard?”

“It’s always above you.”

“An angel?”

“If it’s raining and you don’t want to be rained on, there it is.”

“Is it a god?”

“If it is sunny but you don’t wish to be burned, it will shield you.”

“And if it’s rainy and sunny?” asked the brownie.

“It protects from both.”

“What is it?” said the brownie.

“Do we have a deal?” asked Epiphany.

The fairy creature, worked up in a lather of curiosity and excitement, nodded firmly. They shook on it and then Epiphany took Smutcombe’s hat from her head and presented it to the brownie.

“Cor, powerful magics,” he said, appreciatively.

Hat exchanged for little sack, Epiphany walked away, found the side street and walked towards the cave in the conveniently located cliff.

The darkness of the cave swallowed them almost instantly and out of the warm glow of permanent sunset, the cold wrapped around Epiphany. She could see nothing of the path ahead.

“Take my hand,” said Pak Choi.

“Can you see?” said Epiphany.

“A little.”

“And taking your hand does not constitute any form of contract or legal obligation between us,” said Epiphany. “I’m not marrying you.”

“No.”

She reached out and there was a hand in hers. It was thin and light, as if it was made from nothing more than tissue paper and straw. It trembled in her grip.

“You’re afraid,” she said as they walked in the pitch black.

Pak Choi’s voice was uncertain. “To speak of thunder is to invite lightning.”

She let that cryptic comment go. The fairy was clearly terrified.

“I’m sure the Ogre with the Terrible Toll isn’t as frightening as he sounds,” she said.

“No,” said a voice in the darkness. The voice was huge, resonating but deeply mellifluous, the cultured reading voice of a favoured uncle. “I try to be as pleasant as possible.”

Pak Choi squeezed Epiphany’s hand in fear.

“Ah,” said Epiphany, who was not a little unafraid herself. She bowed in the direction she felt the voice was coming from. “Would I be addressing the ogre?”

“An ogre for certain,” said the voice.

In the hierarchy of monstrous creatures of fairy, ogres were larger than trolls but smaller than giants. Unlike either of the other creatures, ogres possessed the gift of magic and weren’t entirely stupid.

“A pleasure to meet you,” said Epiphany cordially. “Now, we wanted to pass through the Underhill. We seek someone on the other side.”

“And you know my price?” said the ogre.

“A sacrifice of a hundred lives.”

The ogre rumbled. “I see you have brought a fairy with you. Perhaps you have another ninety-nine hidden about you.”

“More than that,” said Epiphany and held up the tiny sack.

“Oh?” said the ogre, intrigued not disappointed. “A hundred ants?”

“No.”

“Fleas?”

“No.”

“I have rarely been paid the full price for passage,” said the ogre conversationally. “Twice I have been paid in fairy lives, a nasty business. Once I was paid with the lives of children by a wicked man with a penny whistle.” He shuddered audibly. “But I have also been paid by travellers with more wits and more morals. I have been paid in frogspawn.”

“Clever,” agreed Epiphany.

“A human once shaved off his eyebrows and paid me with the mites that lived within. The average eyebrow holds several hundred.”

“I did not know that,” said Epiphany.

“But what have you brought me?” The deep cordial tone remained but there was slight undercurrent, a suggestion that Epiphany’s offering might not meet the ogre’s standards.

“Yeast,” she said.

Epiphany felt the suggestion of giant fingertips brushing the palm of her hand and the little sack was gone.

“Yeast,” echoed the ogre.

“Single-celled fungi,” said Epiphany. “I’m sure that’s more than plenty in there.”

“If I could find my glasses I would count them,” rumbled the ogre jovially.

“So, it suffices?” she asked.

“It certainly does.” The ogre sounded pleased, rather than cheated. “You are a clever woman.”

“I have letters after my name to prove it,” she said.

The ogre made a thoughtful noise. “Most people keep the letters inside their names. They’re more useful there. But each to their own I suppose. You may pass.”

Epiphany made to carry on but Pak Choi seemed reluctant to move.

“Your companion has fainted,” said the ogre.

Epiphany tutted and bent to scoop the fairy up. As she suspected, he weighed little more than a heavy coat. He must be nothing but air and fancy inside.

“Thank you,” she said to the ogre and walked on.

In good time, the light at the end of the tunnel became visible. Epiphany walked towards the rosy glow and, eventually, out into a flower garden. Bluebells, foxgloves, daffodils and orchids crowded at the edges of the path, a riot of violent colour. There was something unwholesome about the flowers here, as if the colour contrast had been turned up beyond what was natural, as if they weren’t exactly flowers but the concepts of flowers, designed by a committee of marketing executives who did too many drugs. The reds seared Epiphany’s vision. The blue-blacks were sunken holes in reality, cut-outs in the scenery of this world. The yellows were flames.

From somewhere down the path came the sound of singing, the wordless trilling of a woman’s voice.

Epiphany laid the unconscious Pak Choi down on the path and, more nervous than she had been in the presence of the ogre, made her way along the path.

Epiphany found the singer in a mossy dell.

This creature wore the body of a human woman but that was only a costume, a disguise, albeit a convincing one the fairy had invested with a lot of detail. She had put a lot of thought into the dress. It was a ballgown. Epiphany, never a follower of fashion, was unsure whether it traced its origins to the modest curves of fifties ladies’ fashion or more properly belonged to the ages when women wore posterior enhancing bustles. Similarly she was entirely unsure what combination of silk, taffeta or chiffon it was constructed from. Whatever the case, the yellow dress spoke equally of pantomime costumes, Disney princesses and a shapely if sexless attitude towards the female form.

The entire ensemble, from the glossy red heels up to the perfect chignon, was a construct and it sent a message. It was a message about purity and perfection and a very specific view of female beauty.

Without giving any indication that she had noticed Epiphany’s arrival, the creature stopped singing, vanished away the dainty watering can she had been holding and smiled at Epiphany.

“Hello, dearie.”

“Carabosse?”

“You are Epiphany Alexander,” said Carabosse.

“Dr Epiphany Alexander.”

“Only certain titles are important,” said Carabosse. “Kings, queen, princesses. I’m a fairy godmother but I don’t go around telling everyone.”

This was an outright lie. Epiphany’s understanding was that Carabosse made sure everyone knew that she was a fairy godmother and reserved a particular vengeance for those people who forgot it.

Epiphany had learned much that she knew of fairy godmothers from her grandfather, Makepeace Alexander. They had featured in the stories she had learned at the old man’s knee and what she had quickly learned was what fairy godmothers were among the most dangerous of creatures in existence. They had the power to grant wishes but, unlike genies and other wish-granting agents, fairy godmothers weren’t limited to magically granting people what they wished for but gave people what they thought they needed. Pumpkin coaches for lowly serving girls. Transformation into hideous beasts for ungrateful princes. A hundred years of beauty sleep for innocent princesses. Fairy godmothers were powerful, capricious and not a little mad.

“I think I need your help,” said Epiphany.

“You think, dearie?” said Carabosse.

Epiphany rephrased. “I know I need your help but I also know I’ll regret asking for it.”

Carabosse did a slow and dainty pirouette, swishing her wide skirts.

“I’m surprised you think I will help you. The grand-daughter of Dr Makepeace Alexander. After what he did to me.”

What Granddad Makepeace had done had pretty much cemented his future career in the study and control of fairytale creatures. As a lad, growing up in West Yorkshire, he heard of a couple of girls, two villages over, who had made friends with some fairy creatures in their garden. They’d even been able to produce a number of photographs of the fairyfolk. Armed only with scraps of spells he had found from God knows where, the young Makepeace Alexander successfully trapped the most dangerous of the fairies in an enchanted bottle. That fairy was Carabosse.

“You escaped again,” said Epiphany simply. “And my grandfather is dead.”

“You try spending thirty years sealed in a glass jar,” said Carabosse tartly. “See how you like it. If little Rosie Thorn hadn’t let me out, I don’t know what would have become of me.”

Yes, poor Rose Thorn. Epiphany had also learned of her from her grandfather. The bottle prison had become lost during the Second World War and then found by a girl, Rose, not many years after the war’s end. Carabosse’s treatment of Rose Thorn was a perfect example of how dangerous fairy godmothers could be. As a reward for accidentally freeing her, Carabosse elected to give Rose the fairytale life she believed every girl deserved. Rose spent the following decades fending off frog princes, handsome woodcutters and any number of eligible bachelors. The last Epiphany had heard, Rose and her family had fled to the countryside and lived in hiding.

“I am not my grandfather,” said Epiphany, “and I’m sure you’ll be willing to strike a deal with me.”

“What do you desire?” said Carabosse. “The gift of song? The power to ensnare your one true love? Eternal beauty?”

“No, none of that.”

“Really, dearie? Because you are something of a plain Jane and, I’m sure that, with a lift and a tuck and a bucket of rouge, I could make you into a passably attractive sort.”

“Oh, you flatter me,” said Epiphany. Carabosse was immune to sarcasm and curtseyed in reply. “I have a problem with trolls,” said Epiphany.

“Do you need a champion?” said Carabosse. “Or would you simply like a sword of troll-slaying?”

“I don’t wish to kill them.”

Epiphany outlined her problem: the troll homes beneath the Wicker Arches, the works being carried out by McVitie Dainty, the threat presented by more than a dozen suddenly homeless trolls.

“Your pet trolls need a home,” said Carabosse.

“Essentially.”

“And their current home belongs to someone else.”

“Technically.”

“But you need to know that their home is safe and ready for occupation.”

“Precisely.”

Carbosse’s face was perfectly composed, a porcelain mask.

“I can resolve your problem, Epiphany. The trolls’ home will become your property.”

“Mine.”

“You will own their home. And thus no one will be able to evict them without your say-so.”

“You can do that?”

“With ease.”

“All the trolls in the city. Their home safe.”

“I promise.”

It seemed ideal.

“But there’s a price,” said Epiphany.

“Always.” There was suddenly a wand in the fairy godmother’s hand. Carabosse waved her wand and a map of the world constructed in points of twinkling yellow light appeared at her side. “I have brothers and sisters. Caged. Imprisoned. Across the world.”

“Yes?”

“You will free them for me. There are seven in all.”

Epiphany looked at the dots — each a separate colour on the global map. “I assume they are dangerous.”

“They are my siblings,” said Carabosse as though that explained everything.

“But that would take months to complete. I need to fix the problem with the trolls by tomorrow morning.”

Carabosse waved her wand and the map vanished.

“I shall make good on the deal in an instant if you agree to my terms.”

“And then I must go freeing these dangerous, evil —”

“Careful now, dearie,” said Carabosse and the air around the flowery dell darkened, the vivid flowers taking on a poisonous neon hue. “Think before you speak. I will fix your troll homing problem in a trice and then, immediately, you must set about freeing my siblings. I will give you a year to complete the task. After that, you will be in breach of contract and your life forfeit.”

Epiphany thought on it, long and hard. The right thing to do, the obvious thing to do, in the face of a Faerie pact was to say ‘no’. But she had come here with the explicit aim of seeking help.

“I have a garden of my own,” she said.

“How nice,” said Carabosse.

“There are things I have planted and produce to harvest.”

“Yes?”

“I will undertake your task once I have made my harvest.”

Carabosse looked at her and then looked past her.

“Plums,” said Pak Choi.

“How long have you been standing there?” said Epiphany.

“She has a plum tree,” said Pak Choi. “Some blackberries. A crop of rhubarb.”

Carabosse nodded, calculating. “Very well. You have as long as is needed to gather the next crop from the plants growing in your garden. And you will harvest them. Nothing to be left withering on the bough.”

“And then my debt to you is due,” said Epiphany. “Agreed.”

Carabosse swished closer to her. “It is a deal?”

Epiphany slowly held out her hand to shake. Carabosse took hold of her fingertips as though Epiphany’s hand was unpleasant to touch and gave it the smallest of shakes.

“It is done,” said Carabosse. “I will send Pak Choi with you to ensure you uphold your end of the bargain.”

Epiphany wasn’t impressed. “I’m going to have this creature hanging around with me all year?”

“He will be the most delightful and obedient fairy servant for you until my fairykin are freed.” Pak Choi didn’t seemed at all pleased by this new turn of events. “But he will keep me fully abreast of the situation,” said Carabosse.

The fairy godmother gave another wave of her wand but there was no magic this time. It was a simple dismissal. Epiphany turned and followed the path, out of the flower garden, through a break in the trees and up a long but gently sloping hill where a familiar trellis archway stood.

Oaknut waited next to the archway, clipboard and thistle quill in hand.

“And how has madam’s visit been today?” he asked. “All satisfactory?”

“My business is my own,” said Epiphany.

“I was only asking.”

Epiphany nodded at the exit from fairyland. “I think I’ll go home now.”

“Of course,” said Oaknut obsequiously and scoured his clipboard. “Now, if I could just take your name…”

Epiphany opened her mouth to answer and then stopped.

“Do you want to take a note of my name? Or do you want to take my name?”

Oaknut smiled. “We did agree before setting out. When we have taken your name, you’ll be free to go.”

Epiphany huffed.

“My name is valuable to me.”

“And don’t we know it.”

Epiphany found herself suddenly and thoroughly annoyed. Her annoyance stretched to Oaknut and Pak Choi and all of Faerie but it was mostly reserved for herself. The business with the yeast and the hat and the deed pole and, even in her dealings with Carabosse, she had thought herself very clever but this… The deed pole!

She went to her satchel, drew out a scrap of paper and passed it to Oaknut.

“‘Chunky Humous’?” he read.

“It’s my name,” she said.

“It’s not your name.”

“It doesn’t belong to anyone else,” she retorted.

Oaknut instinctively knew the truth of that. The paper crinkled beneath his grip but he did not screw it up.

“Thank you, madam,” he said between gritted teeth.

Epiphany nodded at him cordially and, with Pak Choi at her heels, walked back through the arch into the mortal world

Chapter 7

“There is no trust to be had in fairy tales. Do not trust the characters. Do not trust the tale. Do not trust the teller. Nothing is as it initially appears.”

Cobblers! : The Dubious Origins of the Tale of the Elves and the Shoemaker

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

Epiphany walked across her lawn. Smutcombe had gone. It was unclear how long she had been away. In her mind, she had been absent for a few hours, but time spent in Faerie was a slippery thing. The sky was a grey half-light but this was now the light of morning, not of evening.

As though suddenly realising this, her stomach rumbled. She’d missed out dinner last night and her stomach was crying for breakfast. However there was work to be done first. She went quickly around to the truck that was still parked in front of her house.

She opened it up. Three broad troll faces smiled down at her.

“Who’s that trip-trapping across my bridge?” said Ek Midek.

The trollop, Penelope, back-handed her husband. “It’s that Dr Epiphany. We’re not eating ‘er.”

The trolls were all still alive and hadn’t visibly aged. In fact, the remains of their multi-bird dinner looked recent enough, so she was confident she hadn’t been away for an extended period. It was entirely possible to pop off to Faerie and come back a century later, which made things awkward to say the least.

“You enjoyed the meal?” Epiphany asked, wondering how they had overcome the challenges of eating it.

“Yes,” said Penelope. “It was a delightful meal once we ‘membered that we have the correct cutlery.”

“Oh?” Epiphany asked, intrigued.

“The bird splatterer!” chuckled Ek Midek, holding up his huge hand and demonstrating how he had squished the composite roast with a violent open-handed blow, unleashing its meaty goodness in a wide splatter pattern across the inside of the truck.

“’Parently, is what the French trolls do,” said Penelope, mopping her mouth daintily.

“Now, I have some plans in place to find you a new home,” Epiphany said, “but we need to move you out of this place.”

“We like this portable bridge,” said Penelope.

“I know, but it needs to go back. And you can now return to your home.”

“’Adn’t it been filled with concrete?” said Skakky.

“It is all fixed now,” Epiphany assured him. “The fairy godmother’s fixed everything.”

Ek Midek sucked in through his teeth.

“You don’ts want to be makin’ deals wiv no fairy godmother’s. Them’s tricksy buggers.”

“A deal was made and she’ll be held to it. Now buckle up and we’ll be on our way.”

“What’s she mean, buckle up?” asked Skakky as Epiphany closed the door.

“It means sit down and shut up,” said Ek Midek.

Epiphany got into the cab and phoned Westerby Smutcombe. He picked up far faster than anyone ought to at that time of morning.

“Breakfast?” she said.

“Epiphany! Fates be praised, you’re back in the land of the living. Or have the fairy folk installed phone masts?”

“I’m back and I’m returning the trolls to the arches.”

“So, the trip to Faerie was a success?”

“And I entirely failed to take you up on your dinner offer.”

“You have no idea what a lonely professor can stoop to eat when he has been rebuffed.”

“So, let me make it up to you.”

“I didn’t even know chicken could be sold in buckets until last night.”

She tutted. “Just meet me at the Wicker Arches and I will treat you to a glorious breakfast repast.”

She started the engine and, with the care of a person who was not used to driving a twelve tonne truck and the confidence of a woman who believed the key to everything was concentration and self-belief, she drove the truck across town and down to the arches over the Wicker dual-carriageway.

Smutcombe was already there, leaning against the bonnet of his Hillman Imp. Epiphany backed the truck up to the building site hoardings, despite Smutcombe doing his best to get himself killed by standing in her way and trying to direct her in.

Epiphany wasn’t sure what to expect. Part of her had imagined that all of the construction materials would have been vanished, utterly magicked away by the near-omnipotent Carabosse. Alternatively, Carabosse might have conjured a solution that allowed the bridge-strengthening works to continue while maintaining the troll holes.

“Bravo, my dear,” said Smutcombe and inclined his body to give Epiphany a congratulatory kiss, a gesture she utterly sidestepped, pressing on towards the building site. She squeezed through the barriers to see what enchantments had been worked on the troll family’s home. She was stunned to see it was entirely as it had been yesterday, sealed off and filled with cement.

“But…”

Smutcombe struggled through the barriers behind her, getting his jacket buttons caught in the gap.

“She said…” Epiphany whispered.

“All good?” said Smutcombe, oblivious. “All done? Then let’s break our fast. I know a charming place not far from the university.”

Carabosse had promised. She had said the trolls home would be safe.

“Now, I should warn you,” said Smutcombe. “I breakfast like a hobbit. As one should. You need the right combination of nutrients, proteins and fatty acids to set up for the day.”

Carabosse had said that the trolls would have their home. That it would become her property. That they would be safe and free from threats of eviction. This was not what they had agreed…

“So, I will be ordering a platter of sausages, bacon, puddings — both black and white — and at least three eggs,” said Smutcombe. “I have mixed feelings about the baked bean.”

Epiphany whirled, bewildered and more than a little angry.

“Pak Choi!”

“There’s no place for greenery on the breakfast plate,” said Smutcombe before realising she was not talking about the foodstuff.

“Pak Choi!” Epiphany yelled.

Without noise or fuss, without a little puff of smoke, Pak Choi was standing beside her.

“What’s this nonsense?” Epiphany demanded.

Pak Choi looked about as though he was surprised by his surroundings. “It’s a bridge,” he said, pointing.

“And that’s their home!” Epiphany snapped, pointing at the sealed up hole.

Pak Choi gave her a reproachfully contradictory look and presented her with a folded document.

Epiphany opened it. It was the ownership deeds for a truck.

“The trolls home will become your property,” said Pak Choi.

Epiphany looked back at the vehicle parked on the roadside. She opened her mouth to say that was not what she had meant when she’d made the deal but fairies cared nothing for what people meant; the wording of the contract was all that mattered and if that was open to interpretation then caveat emptor…

“That cheating, swindling, no-good…”

Epiphany did not finish the sentence. Contract or not, it did not do to insult powerful fey creatures. Besides, Epiphany’s anger was such that words were utterly failing her.

“I take it that matters are not all hunky-dory?” said Smutcombe.

“They are not,” Epiphany growled.

“Then breakfast is postponed?”

“Momentarily.” She turned on Pak Choi. “I suppose you think this is very clever?”

He grinned broadly. It would not be true to say there was cruelty in that smile but Pak Choi’s pleasure was so naked that it was difficult not to be offended by it.

“Now, let us discuss payment for Carabosse’s assistance…” he began.

“We are not finished,” she said. She looked to Smutcombe. “I’m sorry. It appears I now have houseguests to deal with.”

Chapter 8

“It is said that a verbal contract is not worth the paper it’s written on. The same can be said of anything transmitted in paper form. Just because it’s there in black and white, doesn’t mean it means what you think it means.”

One Day My Prints Will Come: How Early Printers Hindered the Spread of Fairy Tales

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

Epiphany drove the truck back to her end-terrace home with Smutcombe at her side.

“You are to stay in my house,” she said to the trolls, once they had arrived.

“You said we was goin’ back to the bridge,” said Skakky.

“A brief change of plans,” she said. “And I’m not sure my neighbours will tolerate you living in the back of this vehicle.”

“Dead homey it is,” said Ek Midek.

“Well, I think we might have to move you indoors. I hope that will be acceptable?” she said, knowing that this situation definitely didn’t have a long term future, but hoping that she could make it work while she found them something suitable.

“Oh that would be delightful, wouldn’t it?” Penelope clapped her hands together and smiled round at Ek Midek and Skakky. They both shrugged.

Smutcombe opened the ramp at the back of the truck and invited the trolls to step out. They looked around.

“’S nice here, but where’s the bridge?” Ek Midek asked. Penelope nudged him sharply in the side, which made a noise like bowling balls crashing together.

“If you come inside you will find that this structure here is a double level bridge complex,” said Epiphany, indicating the front door.

She went first and Penelope followed. Ek Midek came next and crashed messily through the doorway, his broad shoulders knocking chunks out of the masonry and dislodging the door post.

Epiphany raised an eyebrow. “Could you step a little more carefully?”

“I can fix it good,” said Ek Midek, and he turned to the door. He wrenched off the door post that was leaning wonkily and threw it outside. He regarded the ragged edge of the wall that remained, and hammered chunks away with his fists to even it up.

“Please don’t,” said Epiphany.

Penelope went over and pulled Ek Midek away. She ran her huge hands over the exposed bricks of the wall and fussily dusted off some of the broken plaster, as if she were flicking crumbs off a napkin.

Smutcombe stepped in delicately over the wreckage.

“Come through this way please,” said Epiphany. “Try not to touch anything.” She ushered them into her lounge area. She looked to see where Skakky had got to. He entered through the remains of the front door, carrying a pile of paving slabs over his head.

“Hey mom!” he shouted as he ran to catch up. “Look at my toy bridge! Can I keep it?”

Epiphany tried to intercept him as he clattered around the room with what looked like a good proportion of the pavement from outside her house.

“I think it might be time to put that down Skakky,” said Penelope.

“Ohhh, all right, mom,” said Skakky. He threw them aside onto Epiphany’s television, which crumpled in a shower of sparks and glass.

Penelope gave a small cough and then lifted the corner of a nearby rug, with the clear intention of shoving the remains of the television underneath it.

“Not to worry,” said Epiphany, holding up a hand to stop this bizarre effort at tidying.

“You never watch television anyway,” offered Smutcombe.

“Let me think carefully for a moment,” said Epiphany. “I think that perhaps it might be a little challenging for you to be inside here, so perhaps —”

“— We can be more careful!” said Penelope, with a small, anxious wave of her hand, which unfortunately sent a standard lamp crashing through a window.

Epiphany held up a hand. “Stop moving. Now. All of you.” The three trolls all stood still. Even Smutcombe froze. “I think it’s clear that you need a larger space than this, yes? I can think of a couple of options for the short term, so let’s explore those. We’re going to move outside into the back garden, and I want you to be really careful as you go out. Please don’t break the rest of my house. Can you try and do that?”

Skakky went first. He dropped to his belly and wriggled along. He gouged a trail in the floorboards with his elbows and knees, but there was no further damage. Penelope went next and she crept, with exaggerated care through the patio door that Epiphany held open. Ek Midek was last. He looked slightly panicked, as if he had no idea where to start. Epiphany beckoned to him, her voice encouraging.

“Come on now, just move slowly and carefully. You’ll be fine.”

He crept forward at a snail’s pace, placing his feet on the floor as carefully as he could, and edging his giant body forwards.

“You’re doing really well,” said Epiphany. Too late, she saw the panic on his face. He bolted for the door, but missed by a few feet. He blasted a hole through the wall and didn’t slow down until he was at the far side of the lawn, panting. Penelope went to his side and gave him a conciliatory pat on the arm.

“You might be able to claim on the house insurance,” said Smutcombe doubtfully.

“You’ll need a bridge to live under,” Epiphany told the trolls.

“Nat’rally,” said Ek Midek.

“Would you be able to build your own?”

Penelope looked thrilled at the idea. “Oh, yes!”

Epiphany looked around at her garden. There were the trees of course, but no obvious building materials. “Skakky, you can fetch those slabs from the lounge, they will be useful, I am sure. If I get you some timber and some tools, do you know enough woodwork to make a bridge?”

Ek Midek puffed his chest out in a display of bravado. “Of course! Nuffink that a troll don’t know about bridges!”

Smutcombe and Epiphany took the truck to the local DIY superstore. If fairy tricks had left one owning a truck, there was no reason not to use it. They loaded it up with building supplies and then, on the way back, Smutcombe insisted they stop at a greasy spoon café in a lay-by and he bought them supersized breakfast baps. Despite being an oozing mess of egg yolks, meat juices and brown sauce, Epiphany could not complain at the sheer deliciousness of the oily sandwich.

“Hunger is indeed the best seasoning,” said Smutcombe, wiping his fingers with a handkerchief.

“Mmm mmf,” Epiphany agreed around her final mouthful.

They returned to her house and brought the items through the side gate into the back garden.

Once the gate was safely closed again, Epiphany showed the trolls what they had.

Kiln-dried treated softwood two inch by six inch, fifty off

English larch decking, twenty off

Galvanised nails in four different sizes

Roofing felt and adhesive

Ek Midek, picked up a length of timber and weighed it in his hand. “Good!”

“I have also opened the shed door. You will find a selection of tools inside,” said Epiphany. “Now, can I make a suggestion? You will see that there is a rockery over by the gate. The trolls stared blankly, so she walked over and pointed. “This pile of earth and stones can be removed. I would suggest that you build your bridge here, near to the gate, so that if you do a really good job, we can easily show other people who might want one in their own garden, as a decorative feature perhaps. Get you some work — that would be good, wouldn’t it?”

The trolls all nodded.

“Very well,” said Epiphany. “I would also ask you not to damage the trellis or the flowers growing on them. Nor the plums — the fairies have a particular interest in those. Nor anything else I might have planted since,” she added, pointing to the disturbed soil in the middle of the lawn.

“No problem, Mrs doctor,” said Ek Midek. “Leave it wiv us.”

And she did.

“You trust them?” said Smutcombe as she came back inside.

“Heavens, no,” she said, “but we have other matters to attend to.”

“Lunch?” he said hopefully.

“The other trolls,” she said. “Carabosse promised they would have a safe home. We need to check that is the case. I may have the ownership papers for that vehicle out there but I’ve not been given the deeds to the Wicker Arches yet!”

“You cannot trust the word of a fairy,” said Smutcombe, worried.

“You can absolutely trust the word of a fairy,” she countered. “But you can never trust its intentions.”

They took Smutcombe’s car. Despite its rattlings and the viciousness of its nipping chair springs it was a far faster and more practical vehicle than her new truck.

“I cannot believe you let a troll service this vehicle,” she said.

“They can be quite ingenious at times,” said Smutcombe.

She pointed at the crystal orb dangling from his car keys. “Is that a pixie-stone?”

“Might be,” he said sheepishly.

The engine rattled and clacked like there were a thousand clockwork toys behind the dashboard. The prickly chair beneath Epiphany’s bottom shifted and nipped as though it were alive.

“Ingenious,” repeated Smutcombe.

Smutcombe pulled into Walker Street. As much as she wished she wasn’t, Epiphany had been right to be sceptical about Carabosse’s promises. In the few scant hours since Epiphany had last been here, the workmen had come in for the day and moved onto the other arches. Diggers were pushing in doorways and wood partitions, barrier walls were going up and cement mixers were pumping the holes with concrete.

There was no sign of any trolls.

Epiphany jumped from Smutcombe’s Hillman Imp and stumbled towards the construction works, dumb with astonishment.

“This can’t be,” she finally uttered. “She promised…”

A workman with a clipboard came down to intercept her before she got to close.

“What happened to them?” she said.

“You can’t be here, miss,” the workman said.

“The tr— the occupants of these arches?” she said. “What happened to them?”

“Cleared out,” said the workman as though that was blatantly obvious. “They were given notice.”

“But it’s…” She fished around in her satchel and took out the vehicle registration papers and idiotically muttered something about ‘ownership documents’. Perhaps she had expected herself to magically become the owner of this bridge and all its contents. Had she envisaged the workers doffing their hard hats as she approached? Did she expect the company of McVitie Dainty to suddenly become Alexander McVitie Dainty? What had she really expected?

“You need to step back, miss,” said the workman. “Lot of dangerous machinery round here.”

She turned about and gazed hopelessly at the city around her.

“Lot of dangerous trolls out there now,” she said to herself.

Chapter 9

“In modern retellings of fairy tales, those that owe more to Walt Disney than to the Brothers Grimm, there is an attempt to justify the choice of hero or heroine. They are deemed to be kind and fair minded and intelligent. No such traits are applied in the original versions. The only qualifications Snow White or Cinderella or Jack have are that they happened to be present at the beginning of the tale.”

People in Glass Slippers shouldn’t own Thrones: Why Cinderella would have been a Rubbish Queen

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

Epiphany didn’t feel like talking on the drive back to her house.

When the springs — or whatever they were — beneath her seat nipped and poked at her behind, she punched the seat savagely and they quietened. Even Smutcombe, a man who was usually happy to fill silence with empty chatter, picked up on her sullen mood and had little to offer.

At the house, Epiphany went straight round the side to see how the trolls had got on with their bridge construction. Something about the quality of the light in her back garden had changed. It didn’t take long to realise why. Where she’d previously had a fence, the garden was completely exposed to the street. The trolls had paid attention to her instructions and left the trellis and the flowers and the plum tree well alone but almost everything else had gone.

She circled the mountainous mess on her lawn. The rockery had been redistributed to form a lumpy semi-circle, and then the timbers formed a haphazard lattice on top. With fence panels to top it off, it appeared that the trolls had created something more akin to a cave than a pergola. Actually, no. It was more like a den — the sort of thing that a gang of eight year olds would make if they happened upon a pile of abandoned wood. The tools were unused. The nails and roofing felt had been left aside. Epiphany realised with a sigh that the trolls had no idea what to do with them. Any idea that she’d nurtured about getting them some employment on a construction site was clearly unworkable.

She heard the murmur of the trolls’ voices and approached the entrance. Penelope came out to meet her.

“Welcome to our ‘ouse!” Penelope smiled, exposing two rows of powerful grinding teeth. She had a little half apron around the place where a human would have a waist. It was held in place with a length of rope, as the original ties were not long enough. She carried a tea tray in her hands. “Would you like something to drink?”

Epiphany recognised various items from her own kitchen, but was very wary that whatever beverage was being offered was unlikely to be one that she would recognise or enjoy. Something brown and superficially tea-like sloshed in a mug, but it also bubbled ominously, and when some spilled over the side, it left a grainy trail that looked suspiciously like ground-up rocks or soil.

“I’ve just had a drink,” lied Epiphany, “but I’d, er, love to see your house. Can I come inside?”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to trip-trap over the top at all?”

“No thank you.”

Penelope beamed. “That’s all right. It’s only a matter of time, innit.”

Penelope stepped aside and Epiphany entered the dark interior to find Ek Midek and Skakky lounging comfortably on their own rockery piles. Epiphany spotted a large piece of sandstone and sat down on it.

“Good job, huh?” said Ek Midek.

“It is a beautiful place,” said Epiphany. “It will do very nicely for a short time, but I feel that we need to work on a plan to get you settled in permanently somewhere. I don’t think anyone will be going back to the arches any time soon.”

“But we’ve got this place now,” said Penelope. “An’ you to look after us.”

“We might need to find a way for you to support yourselves,” said Epiphany diplomatically. “I wonder if I can ask you whether you’ve had any jobs at all in the past?”

Ek Midek sat up and thumped his chest with pride. “I’ve ‘ad jobs! Scrapyard basher fer a while. I was good at that, but they got mad when I bashed some stuff that wunt fer bashin’.”

“How unfortunate,” said Epiphany. “Anything else?”

“Yeah! I worked at the dump. I liked it there. Gettin’ the stuff out of cars fer people and puttin’ it in the skips. Was confusin’ though. Sometimes people dint want me to put stuff in the skips, like their kiddies an’ whatnot.”

Penelope put a hand on Ek Midek’s arm. “He’s so good wiv his hands, but he gets carried away. Maybe he could make these bridges for people?” She indicated the structure that surrounded them.

Epiphany did not want to comment on the quality of the construction. “It sounds as though you might need some training, to channel your skills,” she said. “And you, Penelope?”

“Oh, if I was to take up a job it would ‘av to be sumfink genteel. Suitable for a lady, you know? I could work in a cake shop, I reckon.”

Epiphany tried to picture it but her powers of imagination would not bend to her will.

“And you Skakky?”

“If I ‘ad a job in a park I could eat ducks whenever I wanted!” Skakky said. “Mum says that I should find a job that I’ll love. Can I be a park keeper, mum?”

“You can be whatever you want to be, my sweet,” said Penelope. “We’ve got ‘elp now, so we’re all gonna get sorted, aren’t we?”

Epiphany nodded weakly. “Oh, indeed.”

“An’ you’ll be able to find jobs and bridge ‘omes for the rest of them an’ all.”

“Absolutely,” she said and then stopped abruptly. “The rest of them?”

“Epiphany?” came Smutcombe’s voice from outside. His tone was high, querulous.

Epiphany pushed her way outside. Smutcombe’s lined face was pale and panicky. He raised a finger and pointed. “The house…”

Epiphany dash inside her home.

The kitchen had been ripped apart. An eight foot troll had kicked out all the cabinet doors and squatted, curled up under the kitchen sink.

“I can spy anyone crossing my bridge through this ‘ere peepin’ ‘ole,” he said and shoved a massive digit up through the plughole.

“Oh, my,” said Epiphany.

The floorboards in the lounge had been ripped away and Epiphany could see at least half a dozen trolls lying in the crawlspace under the house, eyes and noses visible around the rim of the ragged hole.

“Who’s that trip-trappin’ over my bridge?” said the quickest of them, narrowly beating three others.

“It’s not a bridge!” snarled Epiphany. “It’s my living room floor!”

“You’re not menna say that,” a troll whined and Epiphany gave him such a vicious look that he fell quiet.

There was a troll in her bath. There was a troll in the airing cupboard. In her bedroom, she found the legs of two trolls sticking out from under her bed. They were giggling and shushing each other.

“She’ll never notice,” one whispered loudly to the other.

“Feel this ‘un,” whispered the other, just as loudly. “It’s all soft an’ frilly.”

Epiphany gawped.

“You two had better not be touching my…” She could barely herself to think it, let alone say it. “… my underthings!”

“Shh! She’s here,” whispered one.

“Be quiet and she’ll go away.”

“I tole you they weren’t hanky-chiefs.”

The indignities of the troll invasion did not end there. There were more of them in the box bedroom at the back of the house and even more in the attic. A trollop had smashed her way through the rooftiles and Epiphany could hear the creature interrogating a pigeon.

Horrified, she shakily made her way downstairs and met Smutcombe in the hallway, where a troll was trying to inconspicuously squat under an open umbrella.

“They’re everywhere, Westerby!” she said.

“How many did you count?”

“I wasn’t counting them!”

There was a rumble and a crash from upstairs, as of something enormous falling through a ceiling. Epiphany snapped.

She felt the burning sense of injustice, the kind she hadn’t felt since childhood, that deep-rooted hatred that only came from the certainty — right or wrong — that things should not be like this.

And, not caring if she sounded like a spoiled child, she gave voice to that injustice.

“Pak Choi!”

The fairy was suddenly there, leaning against the living room doorframe and munching on a plum.

“Windfall fruit is only good for wasps and worms,” he said.

“I am not in the mood for nonsense!” she hissed bitterly.

“I’m merely saying that you should harvest your plums,” grinned the raggedy fairy. “Our deal is done and you have a task to perform for Carabosse.”

Epiphany was agog.

“Done? Done?! There’s at least twenty flipping trolls living in my house and playing with my unmentionables!”

“Lucky trolls,” said Smutcombe drily.

“The terms of the deal have been met,” said Pak Choi.

“They have not!” said Epiphany.

Pak Choi sucked the flesh from the plum and then crunched the pit beneath his teeth.

“They have a home that is safe and no one will evict them without your say-so.”

“But this is my home!”

“Carabosse promised that the trolls’ home would be your property.”

“But this house is already mine!”

“And now they live here,” smiled Pak Choi.

Epiphany could have screamed but she was unwilling to give the fairy the satisfaction.

“Now,” said Smutcombe, suddenly at her elbow, “might be the time for me to take you away from all this chaos and treat you to a late lunch.”

In other circumstances, Epiphany might have reacted negatively to Smutcombe’s continuing attempts to take her out for dinner, the naïve assumption that life’s problems could be forgotten or momentarily filed away with fine dining and drink but Epiphany had reached the limits of her mental endurance and was only too happy to give up.

“Yes,” she said wearily.

“You could sound more enthusiastic about it.”

“Yes,” she peeved. “Take me to dinner, Westerby. I surrender.”

“I didn’t realise that taking you to dinner was a battle.”

“This,” she said and waved her hand at the ruin of her home. “I give up. The trolls can have it. The fairies can have my services and my soul. Everything. Maybe things will look better after a quality lunch or maybe I will just cry into my tiramisu.”

He steered her gently out through the front door, side-stepping the troll, using an umbrella as a make-shift bridge.

“How many?” she said, wearily. “Trolls.”

“Twenty-five,” he said. “I counted.”

“We’re never going to find a home for them.”

“We did before,” he said. “Your grandfather always found a solution to problems.”

“Well, I am not my grandfather.”

“Makepeace Alexander was one of a kind. But we just need to find a bridge.”

“A big bridge.” She laughed, a little giddy. “Do you think we could get them to all live under a large suspension bridge?”

“Take them all to the Humber Bridge, eh? And have them threatening every car that tries to cross?”

“Maybe we could get them to work the toll booths.”

“They want goats not coin.”

She shrugged. “As long as we could get them to understand that money can be exchanged for goats. Could we?”

You know,” said Smutcombe as they stepped towards his car, “although they are simplistic in their desires, they are indeed intelligent in their own way. Ingenious even.”

Epiphany looked at his Hillman Imp car.

“Did that mechanic troll —”

“Grak-Ak.”

“Grak-Ak. Did he really repair your car using pixies instead of proper components?”

Smutcombe dangled his keys with the pixie-stone orb hanging from it.

“Some might think enslaving dozens of pixies to just run your car is a little… cruel,” she said.

“Oh, they love it,” Smutcombe assured her. “There’s a veritable pixie village under that bonnet. And the most cosy of sleeping chambers in the soft furnishings.”

Epiphany thought of the bottom-pinching properties of the passenger seat.

“I’m not sure there’s much sleeping going on in them.”

“The point is, it works,” said Smutcombe, “and it doesn’t matter how it’s achieved. No one realises what wizardry goes on under that bonnet.”

His words chimed with her oddly and she couldn’t be certain why.

“Hop in,” he said. “I shall phone ahead and ask Carlo to dig out a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino.”

Epiphany was about to climb in when a voice called to her across the street.

“Dr Alexander?”

It took her a moment to place the face of the owner of a cat and a demolished ornamental bridge and former unwitting host to a family of trolls. He was wearing a dark blue suit with brass buttons that made him look somewhat like a sea captain, and he was carrying a large bunch of pink lilies and white gladioli.

“Good afternoon, Mr Clegg,” said Epiphany and offered him a politely quizzical smile.

“Perry, please,” he said and — gosh! — did the older gentleman appear to blush?

“To what do I owe this honour?” she said.

Professor Smutcombe made a meaningful noise and opened his car door.

“Yes,” said Mr Clegg uncomfortably. “I can see that you’re in the middle of something with your, er, father?”

Smutcombe harrumphed.

“Grandfather, sorry,” said Mr Clegg. “And I won’t keep a lass from her business. I just wanted to offer these as a thank you” — he pressed the flowers into her arms — “and ask if you’d care to come for dinner with me some time.”

“Get in line, granddad,” muttered Smutcombe.

“I don’t mind waiting,” said Mr Clegg. “I’m used to that. You’re a lass of good character and it fair turns a lonely man’s head.”

And he blushed again.

“I don’t know what to say,” Epiphany said, honestly.

“‘Goodbye’?” suggested Smutcombe.

“Who is this man?” said Mr Clegg.

“Her current beau,” said Smutcombe.

“A colleague!” said Epiphany. “At best!”

“I think we’re beyond that,” said Smutcombe. “We’re about to break breadsticks together.”

“Hold your horses, sir,” said Mr Clegg. “I do believe the lass can decide for herself. Women’s lib an’ all that.”

“And, while I thank you for that,” said Epiphany, “Professor Smutcombe and I were about to go out for an Italian.”

“Yeah,” sneered Smutcombe. “Don’t plough another man’s furrow, sunshine.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Epiphany.

The old goat of a professor looked immediately contrite. “Not the best analogy in the circumstances, my dear. Sorry.”

“Oh, a cultured lass like you doesn’t want to have an Italian,” said Mr Clegg. “There’s a fine French restaurant in Crookes where the beef bourguignon practically melts on your tongue.”

“She’s going for an Italian!”

“I’m offering her choices,” said Mr Clegg forcefully.

“And she’s not going to pick you, you twerp.”

Mr Clegg held up his fists like a Victorian boxer. “I shall invite you to step outside!”

“We are outside!” Smutcombe scoffed. He fingered his car keys. “One word and I will have a thousand pixies descend upon you.”

“You’re blathering man!”

“Twenty-five lanes!” Epiphany exclaimed with sudden energy.

“Eh?” said Smutcombe.

“Your bowling alley!” she said to Mr Clegg.

“I don’t follow, my girl,” said Clegg. “We were talking about beef bourguignon not —”

“You own a bowling alley,” she persisted.

“Closed.”

“Because the machines have broken down.”

“I can’t afford the maintenance costs. It’s complex.”

“And no one knows what goes on behind the scenes when the pins get knocked down and the ball disappears into the dark.”

“That they don’t.”

“And you’d need a fairly ingenious solution to get it up and running again.”

She looked at Smutcombe standing next to his orange pixie-powered car. There was a grin growing on his lined face.

“Do you think it would really work?” he said.

She thought about it for a long time, shushed Mr Clegg when he was about to interrupt and thought about it some more.

“You know,” she said carefully, “I rather think it might.”

Chapter 10

“Fairy tales give us the convenience of a neat ending, of justice done and of a ‘happily ever after’ but life is rarely that convenient.”

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: What happened to Rapunzel once her tale was told?

Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

The hardest parts of the transition were not what Epiphany might have expected. She had recently become the owner of a van which permitted the transport of two to three trolls at a time and all were keen to take their turn in the ‘travelling bridge’. It was not hard to convince Mr Clegg of the purpose of the endeavour. With the blithe distracted air of many human encounters with the magical, he accepted the notion of installing twenty-five trolls in twenty-five bowling lane holes as perfectly normal.

In truth, over the coming days, the biggest challenge for Epiphany was fending off the romantic advances of two gentlemen who were each old enough to be her father. During the troll installation period she permitted each of them one lunchtime date and one evening meal. She made sure that she did not ‘lead them on’ as Professor Smutcombe put it and made it perfectly clear to both that there would be no hand-holding, no kisses, no saucy talk and no footsy under the table. This last rule was inadvertently broken by Mr Clegg during a quite delightful Greek lunch when his leg was gripped by a spasm of cramp. Other than that it appeared that the two senior gentlemen were simply happy with a slice of female company.

Epiphany inspected the bowling alley once all was in place. The large venue had opened its doors to the public once more and, though the initial number of visitors had been few, word was out that the bowling alley in Firth Park was open once more.

Mr Clegg met her in reception to show her around.

“Very formal today, dear,” he said, noting her dark skirt and jacket.

“A funeral to attend this afternoon,” she said. “Elsa Frinton. A former student.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, lass.” Mr Clegg nodded in an overtly sombre manner. “If you’d rather do this another time…”

“No time like the present as they say.”

Mr Clegg gestured for her to accompany him.

“They have settled in well?” she asked as they strolled along the lanes. There were a number of daytime bowlers in and the place was filled with the thump of bowling balls, the thrum of plastic balls on wooden lanes, the clatter of pins and the mechanical ‘ker-chunk!’ of the ball-return stations.

“Each individual has been given their own space behind one of the lanes,” said Mr Clegg.

Epiphany looked to the shadowy cave areas at the end of each lane. These connected together behind-the-scenes but each individual troll had a space they could call their own.

“Sufficiently bridge-like to appeal to them?” she asked.

“Oh, indeed. I’ve never had such a happy workforce.”

“And feeding them?”

He waved at the food counter and the fast food snacks. “We sell a lot of hotdogs and nachos to the punters. What they don’t eat…”

“The trolls get the leftovers from the kitchen.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “They are much happier coming out after hours and raiding the bins and the crumbs under the tables. I’ve even had to tell the cleaners to ease up on their hoovering. One of your fellers — big tall chap — ripped open a vacuum cleaner to get to the morsels inside.”

“As long as their needs are met,” she said.

“They’re right happy, for now at least,” Mr Clegg assured her.

He opened a staff only door and led her along a corridor that ran round to the back of the alleys. Here there would normally have been complex machinery but this was gone (helpfully removed by the trolls). Epiphany greeted each troll as she passed. They were a courteous folk and with each ‘who’s the trip-trapping behind my alley’ she assured them that she was only the smallest of university academics and a larger one would be along soon. Many were engrossed in their work and she was impressed by the speed and skill with which their long arms snaked out to scoop up fallen pins and put them back in the triangular support to load the next frame.

A troll picked up a bowling ball that had come through.

“Who’s that rumble-rambling down my lane?” He put the ball to his ear. “What’s that? There’s a bigger ball comin’ along soon? As long as you say so.” He then propelled it with force back up the return track.

Further down the wall, the troll family who had first made home in her garden were happy in adjoining aisles. Ek Midek and Skakky competed to the be fastest with the setting up of fresh pins while discussing the relative merits of ‘bin hotdogs’ versus ‘carpet hotdogs’.

“An’ do they ‘ave goat in ‘em?” Skakky asked.

“I believe they do,” said his dad with a sage nod.

The trollop Penelope took to her work with a more sedate and orderly manner. She greeted each bowling ball as it arrived.

“Oh, good day, Mrs Pink Eight-Pounder. ‘ow are you today? ‘Aving a good game, are you? An’ ‘ow is young Orange Six-Pounder? Lovely!”

At the furthest end, the troll mechanic Grak-Ak was taking a different approach to his job. Motes of green light danced around him as he corralled and bullied fairy sprites into helping him, assigning each to a separate pin. Where he had found fairy sprites in suburban Sheffield was uncertain but Epiphany wasn’t about to ask.

“They seem happy,” she noted.

“As I say,” said Mr Clegg. “Best workforce I’ve ever had. Now, how are you fixed for this weekend? I know a lovely pub over in Castleton and the landlord is a personal friend of mine.”

“Another time,” she said. “My mind is somewhat focussed on matters in hand. The funeral.”

“Aye, of course,” he said and gave her a little formal bow like a German aristocrat. “Another time, lass.”

Professor Smutcombe was outside, leaning casually against the door of his Hillman Imp. He had always been a suit-wearing man, ranging from tweedy formality to raffish cravat-sporting delinquent, but in a dark funereal suit he look like a looming spectre, a modern-day grim reaper.

“And?” he said.

She nodded. “All is well.”

“And the hopelessly besotted Mr Clegg?”

“Well,” she said, unwilling to begrudge him more than that.

He snorted as Epiphany got into the passenger seat.

“That French restaurant he was raving about…”

“Not interested, Westerby.”

“A good friend on the council tells me it is going to fail its next hygiene inspection.”

“You’re being petty.”

He grumbled but was otherwise silent. Smutcombe started the engine. Epiphany raised herself and slapped the seat beneath her a few times to dislodge any pixies that might try to poke or prod her fundament on the journey to the funeral.

The funeral went as well as could be expected. It was a funeral after all.

Farewells were said, eulogies were read and tears were shed. Epiphany was not one of life’s weepers (although she appreciated the cathartic value of a good old sob) but she let a tear or two fall at the sight of Elsa Frinton’s pathetically light coffin. Professor Smutcombe complained about the quality of the pork pies and the quantity of wine at the wake but he only did that to fill the long silences.

He was kind enough to drop Epiphany at home and did not pester when she did not invite him in. Epiphany’s end terrace was still a frightful mess. Floorboards were torn up, the plumbing had been eviscerated, furniture had been overturned or worse. The city’s trolls had spent less than a day in her home and left it almost uninhabitable. Although the sweeping up and repairs had begun, they were by no means finished.

The garden too was far from its beautiful self. The troll family’s tumbledown shack had been removed and placed to one side but the damage to the garden was still fully evident. The borders had been trampled, the lawn turned over here and there and the trellis by the back fence had been knocked over so it now formed a wonky parallelogram instead of a symmetrical rectangle.

Epiphany made herself a cup of tea and sat on the bench by the back door, waiting for evening twilight.

“The sharpened blade knows it will need sharpening again,” said Pak Choi, leaning against the rose trellis and worsening its wonkiness.

“Yes, enough of that nonsense,” said Epiphany. “We need to talk.”

The scruffy fairy, clothed in the rags of others, danced across the lawn. “You have work to do,” he said.

“One of us does,” she agreed.

He prodded a plum on the tree and at that light touch it fell to the floor.

“Harvest your plums, woman, for you have a task to complete.”

“Do I?” said Epiphany innocently.

“You do. You made a pact with the fairy godmother. Carabosse has seven siblings, seven brothers and sisters in chains. You must free them.”

“And these siblings?” mused Epiphany. “Are they good fairies?”

“The best,” grinned Pak Choi. “None stronger, none fiercer.”

“Are they kind?”

“To those who deserve kindness.”

“And who are they to judge?”

“They are the Fair Folk,” said Pak Choi.

Epiphany could well picture them. Fairies — beautiful and terrible and powerful — and in chains for good reason.

“Having second thoughts?” said Pak Choi. He licked his teeth and tittered.

Epiphany shook her head. “When the harvest is done, I will deal with them,” she said.

Pak Choi was infuriated by her calm manner. “Deal with them?” he snarled. He grabbed the plum tree by the trunk and shook it. Plums rained down onto the lawn until only a couple of the most tenacious plums clung to the branch. “You will not deal with them! The deal is done! Your harvest is nearly finished and you will free them!”

“Um, no,” said Epiphany, standing. “The agreement was that until my harvest is in, you will be my ‘most delightful and obedient fairy servant’. That is what Carabosse said.”

“You cannot leave them withering on the bough!” he hissed and raised his hand, tempted to rip the final fruit down.

“Those?” she said. “I don’t care for the plums one jot, Pak Choi. I told Carabosse I had things I had planted and produce to harvest and I have as long as is needed to gather the next crop from my garden.”

Pak Choi whirled around, taking in the whole garden. He sprang from one border to the next from flower beds to ornamental hedges, looking for the anything that might be considered ‘produce’. Only when he had exhausted himself, did she step forward and show him the small hole she had created in the lawn moments before entering Faerie. With wide, malevolent eyes, he peered at the circle of dirt.

“You planted something,” he whispered.

She flicked her fingers against the limp leaf of pak choi that stuck out of his pocket. “Your friend’s calling card.”

“Oaknut?” he said.

Epiphany smiled. She wasn’t generally given to cruel smiles but it had been a long and emotional day.

“I’m not sure how long it takes an oak tree to grow big enough to produce acorns,” she said. “But that is the harvest I will wait for.”

“But…” Pak Choi staggered back. He raised his foot to stamp on the ground and destroy the sleeping acorn below the surface but he held back, possibly fearing he would violate the terms of the contract. “But…”

“Now,” said Epiphany, “I believe the words were delightful and obedient fairy servant.”

Pak Choi stood perfectly still and fizzed with fury.

“A delightful and obedient fairy servant would, I should think, pull himself together and stop being such a drama queen,” she told him.

The fairy choked down his rage, forced a servile smile to his face and gave her an awkward bow of compliance.

“You will find me a kind and generous mistress,” said Epiphany.

“How gracious of you,” Pak Choi muttered with difficulty, as though the words were being dragged out of his throat.

“Having said that, you have got quite a job ahead of you. Floorboards to replace, rooms to repaint, fixtures and fittings to mend. Oh, and how are you with plumbing?”

Pak Choi opened his mouth to make a denial and then — almost as though his voice box had taken on a life of its own — said, “I will endeavour to learn, mistress.”

“Jolly good,” she said and sat on the bench once more. “Best be about it then.”

Pak Choi went indoors to begin the enormous task of restoring the house to its former self. Epiphany leaned back, looked across the garden and watched the sun set.

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The next few pages will tell you about some of our other books.

Read the 3rd book in the Sprite Brigade series:

Disenchanted by Heide Goody & Iain Grant

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US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X6DHK11/

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06X6DHK11/

Clovenhoof by Heide Goody & Iain Grant

Charged with gross incompetence, Satan is fired from his job as Prince of Hell and exiled to that most terrible of places: English suburbia. Forced to live as a human under the name of Jeremy Clovenhoof, the dark lord not only has to contend with the fact that no one recognises him or gives him the credit he deserves but also has to put up with the bookish wargamer next door and the voracious man-eater upstairs.

Heaven, Hell and the city of Birmingham collide in a story that features murder, heavy metal, cannibalism, armed robbers, devious old ladies, Satanists who live with their mums, gentlemen of limited stature, dead vicars, petty archangels, flamethrowers, sex dolls, a blood-soaked school assembly and way too much alcohol.

Clovenhoof is outrageous and irreverent (and laugh out loud funny!) but it is also filled with huge warmth and humanity. Written by first-time collaborators Heide Goody and Iain Grant, Clovenhoof will have you rooting for the bad guy like never before.

F. Paul Wilson: "Clovenhoof is a delight. A funny, often hilarious romp with a dethroned Satan as he tries to adjust to modern suburbia. The breezy, ironic prose sets a perfect tone. If you need some laughs, here's the remedy."

US: http://www.amazon.com/Clovenhoof-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG/

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clovenhoof-ebook/dp/B008PYLULG/

Oddjobs by Heide Goody & Iain Grant

It’s the end of the world as we know it, but someone still needs to do the paperwork. 

Incomprehensible horrors from beyond are going to devour our world but that’s no excuse to get all emotional about it. Morag Murray works for the secret government organisation responsible for making sure the apocalypse goes as smoothly and as quietly as possible. 

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The first book in a new comedy series by the creators of ‘Clovenhoof’, Oddjobs is a sideswipe at the world of work and a fantastical adventure featuring amphibian wannabe gangstas, mad old cat ladies, ancient gods, apocalyptic scrabble, fish porn, telepathic curry and, possibly, the end of the world before the weekend.

US: https://www.amazon.com/Oddjobs-Heide-Goody/dp/0993365531

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oddjobs-Heide-Goody-ebook/dp/B01GVT13XQ