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Category:
Fantasy
ISBN-10: 1613097077
ISBN-13: 9781613097076
Price: $3.98 (eBook)
Funny thing, boredom...
Since birth, Professor Thaddeus Proctor has lacked any attractive qualities, his only asset being a formidable yawn capable of precipitating anyone who comes into contact with it into a state of soporific compliance. The yawn's power remains untapped until Thaddeus is offered the chance of competing in a TV game show, and becomes its champion.
Not even then, however, is the yawn deployed to the utmost of its capacities. It takes Thaddeus's removal to Fairyland, and involvement in the protection of its precarious peace, to test the yawn's true might, and reveal the professor is no mere "bore."
Excerpt
“Well said, old chap. About time Max De la Croix met his match,” Mordy told Thaddeus as they left the studio and headed to the nearest hostelry for restoratives with Hazchem—still in Dachshund mode—trotting along beside them on his little legs. “Only, I ask of you, please, not to set aside forever your gift in the dark arts of boredom, for it is a skill that would help enormously in the small experiment I have in mind. Should you accede to my suggestion, of course.”
“Experiment? Suggestion?” asked Thaddeus, once the pair had sat themselves down before brimming pints of Greene King Best Bitter and packets of dry-roasted peanuts in Ye Olde Goat in Boots just around the corner from Broadcasting House, in which Hank Horowitz, Max De la Croix, Zoe Ziplock and DG/Dog Sir Montague Matheson were busy head-banging walls at having lost their superstar.
“Yes. And apologies for the ending of your reign back there, Thaddeus, my friend. But there is a small proposition I have for you in compensation. If you’re prepared to listen to it, that is,” said Mordy.
Which Thaddeus was only too happy to. He liked this working-class James Bond lookalike and his uncanny capacity to replicate Socratic argumentation. He also liked the first pint of Greene King Best Bitter he’d ever drunk.
“Fire away, old chap,” he said with for him rare warmth. Thaddeus hadn’t had a friend before.
And so it was that more pints of Greene King Best Bitter and more packets of dry-roasted peanuts were ordered, during the consumption of which Mordy admitted to the fast one he’d pulled when knocking Thaddeus off his perch as the BBC’s champion bore.
“You see, old chap, I’m not actually human,” said Mordy. “And there was no way I could warn you ahead of the contest or too much might have been revealed to those who must not know. More apologies in order.”
“Not human?” asked Thaddeus, spilling Greene King Best Bitter over the brown tweed three-piece he’d been wearing every day for as long as he could remember.
“No. Neither is Hazchem,” said Mordy, patting the Dachshund’s head as he curled obediently at their feet.
“Of course he isn’t, he’s a dog, But you look human,” said Thaddeus, swatting at his trousers with a beer mat. “A James Bondy sort of a chap.”
Mordy sipped at his beer and peered over the rim of his glass. Rarely did he give away the secrets of his and Hazchem’s true identities, but, were Zachary Zuckus’s plan to be realised, he was left with little option.
“That is how I currently look. For the purposes of the TV show,” he admitted. “And, by the way, my dog isn’t always a dog either. Are you, old chap?”
“No way, José,” said Hazchem in his Marlon Brando voice.
Thaddeus spilled more beer.
“It can speak?” he squeaked.
“You just heard me,” said Hazchem. “An’ I’d be glad if you’d quit it with the ‘it,’ okay? I’m a ‘he.’”
“Anything you say,” Thaddeus spluttered.
“Time for explanations, I think,” said Mordy. “You see, old fellow...we are elves.”
“Elves?”
“Yes. With a special status in the hierarchy that allows us certain physical mutations depending on the requirements of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Care for a short demonstration?” said Mordy, glancing around the pub lounge to ensure no other customers were watching. Which, of course, they weren’t. Too busy checking how many tweets from “followers” or likes from “friends” they’d received on their smartphones.
“Puh-please,” said Thaddeus, swilling down the remains of his beer not spilt over the brown three-piece number.
“With the greatest of pleasure. So here goes,” said Mordy, snapping his fingers four times and muttering the magic words “extropool” and “looportxe,” as the result of which he shrank back into a tiny elf with a white beard and silver, shoulder-length locks, while Hazchem went for his Adonis sprite look.
The performance lasted a mere couple of seconds in case any customer in Ye Olde Goat in Boots should look up from their smartphone. But naturally they didn’t, so nobody was the wiser and no damage was done. Then the elves returned to their human-zone personas—Hazchem abandoning his Dachshund modality for his favoured Marlon Brando image, pulling up a chair alongside the other two humans and calling for a pint of Greene King Best Bitter too.
“See?” said Mordy as Thaddeus looked on bog-eyed.
But then he clapped and laughed.
“Wow!” he said. “Some trick!”
“Not a trick, old fellow. Rather the obverse: our reality. Now, that proposition we had for you. Shall I spell it out?”
“Please do,” said Thaddeus. “But, perhaps, before we go any further,” he added, “Could I could learn your chaps’ real names?”
“Something of a moveable feast, real names,” said Mordy. “But mine is normally Mordecai, although you can call me Mordy. And this is my most trusted lieutenant, Hazchem,” he added.
“Hi, there,” said Hazchem/Marlon.
“Jolly pleased to meet you, Mordy and Hazchem,” said Thaddeus as the trio stood to shake hands. “Now, to the brass tacks you spoke of, eh? The proposition.”
And, once its gist had been outlined, Mordy was astonished yet gladdened at how promptly Thaddeus agreed to it, saying he didn’t mind at all his BBC days coming to an end. Or indeed his days at St Jude’s.
“To be perfectly honest with you, Mordy, in recent times one has become a tad tired of being a boring professor, however bally celebrated on TV. In a peculiar way, I am almost grateful to you for having extricated me from that cage. There comes a time in a fellow’s life when he must make changes,” he said. “And this may be my opportunity. So Fairyland here I come. I am in your hands, Messieurs Mordy and Hazchem, both of you chaps in whom I believe I can trust. And if I cannot, well, let the devil take the hindmost. What’s a life without a little adventure?”
Mordecai/James Bond took the hand Thaddeus offered and shook it.
“No life at all,” he said.
“When do we start?” asked Thaddeus. “Should I perhaps be disguised? Clearly I can’t go to Fairyland as a human. On the assumption you are able to metamorphose me in the same manner in which you transform your own identities, of course. Can I take that to be a possibility?”
Mordy nodded. “Indeed you can, old chap.”
“Then I could be a pixie perhaps.”
“Well, we’ll have to see about that,” Mordy replied, draining the last of his beer. “Meanwhile, given your generous acceptance of our little plan, perhaps it’s time we were taking our leave. We have a car waiting outside.”
“Posh chaps, you elves, eh?” said Thaddeus.
“Wait till you see the car,” said Hazchem.
But, as initially unimpressed by Georges’s tatty, rusty exterior as Thaddeus was, once inside the tiny, battered Deux Chevaux he was like a kid on his first mystery fairground ride.
“Golly jeepers,” he said, gazing at the La-Z-Boy recliners, the bank of mini-computers of the latest elf design, and the tiny elf robot (called Marcel) who asked whether he’d prefer his coffee with the Cointreau or straight.
“Well, that’s our Georges for you,” said Mordy with a shrug. “I warned him we might be welcoming a VIP guest, so I s’pose he’s gone for the Business Class option. That right, Georges?”
“Bien sûr, mon capitaine,” said Georges, the auto-pilot-cum-chauffeur.
Georges wasn’t a real person or even a dummy chauffeur, you understand. Georges was merely the voice through which the 2CV spoke. Understandably, for a second Thaddeus lost his bearings. Protean elves were one thing, but speaking cars with differential internal and external dimensions were quite another.
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