What My Characters Did During the Summer

 

 

The call of the thrush came in the following week (you know, that omnious call of the thrush we've all been waiting for while Lillian sat twiddling her thumbs in the overgrown garden with her rather strange birthday present chained to a tree nearby), on a cold afternoon, when the sky was gray and the clouds hovered low, promising more rain. Lillian grabbed her present and rushed over the stepping stones in the lake to the grotto behind the horse fountain (two guys, two horses, all covered with slimy green things, remember?), for, as you surely already suspected, there was a secret entrance to the garden at the back of the grotto where a former lord of the manor had met with his amour, a girl from the nearby village (she only wanted a bit of his money, though, for he was rather fat and ugly and had a huge wart on his nose and his name was Huguetton Apollinaire Rodolphonsonton Bonnefoi). When Lillian opened the door, hinges creaking, and had pushed the curtain of creepers, which always grow in front of secret doors, aside, she didn't see a thrush, but a bedraggled boy with bare feet and a tendency to spit in order to appear more manly. Yet she already knew that she wouldn't find a bird, I mean, let's face it, a bird might be sweet and nice, but it's no big help when it comes to rescuing maidens from dreary manor houses. The boy smelled of the sea, BTW, so he must have been a fisher's son, a smuggler's son, and he wasn't really happy about Lillian's six foot two birthday present. But they all huddled on the pony cart the boy had brought and were whisked away from the manor and the evil stepmother, while a soft drizzle plastered their hair to their heads and soaked their clothes. When they drove through a forest, Lillian dumped her present in the middle of the muddy road, because, as you might remember, she hadn't really liked it in the first place. But still, she gave him her mother's locket made from gold (so that later he would know that she had wanted to help him, yet she wasn't to know that yet, I mean, she fully expected to never see him again because she didn't know anything about the insidious mind of her author). Afterwards, Lillian and the boy drove on to meet Lillian's old nanny, on a stroke of genius called Nanette, and the group of smugglers who had aggreed to bring them to England. (By now, it was pitchblack and raining quite badly, so Camille, the stepmother-bitch, had no chance of tracking them down that night.)

Lillian changed into dry clothes and then they all had to hurry, for the tide was high and it was time to be on the ship and their way. Instead of the pony cart, they now all huddled in a boat that turned out to be rather small, and sailed and sailed until Lillian though they must have slipped through the web of time (for her author is very fond of Helen Cresswell's The Secret World of Polly Flint) and were now doomed to sail onward forever after. And when the morning kissed the sky till it blushed a becoming pink, they were still sailing and feeling quite hot, and the strange thing was that the sun rose on their right instead of their left. But there was land in front of them, the white cliffs of Dover, the ....

"Eh," said one of the men. "England's sure changed since we last saw it." (Only he said it in coarse French, of course.)

 

Another scratched his ear. "Doesn't look like England to me."

 

"Perhaps a ... er ... witch ... has put a spell on it. Used to happen all the time in the old times."

 

Very cautiously, they approached the beach, covered in shining white sand. Miles and miles of white sand, softly rolling hills of white sand.

 

"Perhaps that witch has crumbled the cliffs of dover and scattered them all over the beach," one of the men ventured and shrugged out of his oilskin coat and thick woolly sweater, for it was rather hot. They all got rid of a few of their clothes, trying to find some familiar landmark.

 

"Well ...."

 

"Isn't that the beacon of Dollywell over there?"

 

"No. Looks like ... like ... a big stone head without a nose?"

 

They all stared at the apparition which rose over the sandy hills at the horizon. All of a sudden they heard a metallic sound in the distance, coming rapidly towards them. And then, on top of the nearest sandhill appeared a red feather, followed by a kettle upside down, followed by ... well, actually it looked like a tin man on a ... on a huge, black horse.

 

The men all crossed themselves for fear. "Sacre Dieu!" they whispered.

 

The big horse came to a halt in front of them, and inside the kettle a voice rattled omniously (in English): "Art not afraid, my friends, I have come to deliver that hapless maiden from her terrible fate." The tin hands reached for the kettle and lifted it. Underneath appeared the face of a young and rather handsome man with tousled, sweat-soaked golden curls which stuck to his smooth forehead. Now he cleared his throat, took a deep breath and rattled on in the manner of a small boy who has to say a long and tiresome poem in school: "Fair Princess and ye Matrons all ...." Frowning, he looked at his enrapt audience. "You are matrons, aren't you?"

 

Nanette lifted her hand. "I am."

 

"Oh, good," said the tin man, took another deep breath and continued:

 

"Refrain and mourn no more,

For by the Fiery Dragon's fall

Your Freedom I'll restore.

The Dragon is your enemy ... er ... Enemy,

I'll quickly end his strife,

I'll clip his wings, he shall not fly,

Or George shall loose his life."

He stopped, apparently quite proud of himself, and looked at them expectantly.

 

"What's he talking about?" one of the fishers asked on a whisper (in French).

 

"His house burnt down," another answered equally quiet, "but he still got that bird of his and now he wants to clip its wings so it won't fly away."

 

"Ah."

 

Nanette frowned at the fishermen (for her grasp of English was much better than theirs), before she turned to the tin man. "You mean that metaphorically, don't you?"

 

Now the tin man frowned as well. "That's not the right answer."

 

"I  beg your pardon?"

 

"Well, that's not the right answer. And you said you're the matron, anyway," he explained. "It's the fair princess's turn."

 

"Whose?"

 

"Hers." He pointed to Lillian, who regarded him in her composed manner.

 

She thought that her answer would surely come as a shock for the poor man. "I'm not a princess."

 

The line between the tin man's brows deepened. "But of course you are. And you are supposed to say ..." With effort, he managed to turn around and started to fumble in his saddle packs until he finally produced a small, battered book. "Let's see ... where is it?" Impatiently, he thumbed through the pages. "Ahh, here it is. You are supposed to say:

Sir Knight, I give you Thanks, quoth fhe,

That undertakes this Fight;

And fince it is for Love of me,

The King fhall you requite.

And if you perifh in this Thing ... Pardon me for saying this, but your pronouncitation seems a bit weird. -- Where was I? Next comes the Daughter ... No, it's The which you take in Hand..."

 

Nanette cleared her throat politely. "Excuse me, I'm afraid there has been a misunderstanding."

 

"No, no, that's not the next line." The tin man's nose vanished behind the book as he peered at the letters. "Next comes the Daughter of a King ..."

 

The earth shook.

 

"... As well you underftand ..."

 

The earth still shook, and an omnious rumble could be heard in the distance. The fishermen looked at each other before they slowly backed away, leaving the two women face the stranger alone. The tin man looked up, annoyance at another interruption clearly written on his face. His horse snorted and suddenly looked like a horse who wished to be somewhere else entirely. "Oh dear," the tin man sighed. "It's him."

 

The earth bounced, the tin man's horse showed a row of large, yellow teeth, and the rumble got louder until they could distinguish words. "Hand me my pantsss, hand me my pantsss."

 

"Oh dear, oh dear." The tin man put his book back into the saddle pack and straightened. "He's coming our direction."

 

"Hand me my pantssss, hand me my pantssss, hand me my pantssss."

 

"You mustn't be afraid. You just have to be careful not to be in his way." The tin man shook his head sadly. "Ever since he crashed into that lion-lady, that Sphinx-thingy, you know ..."

 

"Hand me my pantssss, hand me my pantssss, hand me my pantsss, hand me my pantssss."

 

"... and her nose came off and dropped on his head, he's not been the same, poor thing." His voice was nearly drowned out by the roar of that other voice.

 

"Hand me my pantssssss! Hand me my pantssssssssss! Hand me my pantsssssss! Hand me my pantsssssssss!"

 

"And don't mention his slight speech impediment," the tin man shouted, while his horse rolled its eyes and tried to get rid of its rider. "He's very sensitive about it."

 

"Hand me my pantsssss! Hand me my pantssssss! Hand me my pantsssssssss! Hand me my pantsssssss!"

 

Around the corner of a nearby sandhill trottered a large dragon, covered in pale green scales that glittered in the morning sun. He was walking on his hindlegs, which is rather unusal for a dragon, and wagged his tail excitedly, nearly whooshing the tin man off his horse.

 

"Hand me my pantsssss! Hand me my pantsssss! Hand me my pantssssss! Hand me my pantsssssss!"

 

Nanette watched with wide eyes as the dragon disappeared behind another sandhill, while Lillian seemed completely unperturbed. She only raised her eyebrows and said: "I didn't know that they still have dragons in England."

 

"England?" The tin man shook his head.

 

"Hand me my pantsss! Hand me my pantsss!"

 

Even though he seemed clearly surprised about such obvious ignorance, he explained patiently: "You are not England. This is Egypt, don't you know? And your are the fair Princess Sabra, whom I will save from the dragon, the ghastly beast."

 

"Hand me my pantssss! Hand me my pantsss! Hand me my pantsss!"

 

"Egypt?" Nanette gasped. "This can't be! We sailed from France to England, we couldn't possible have arrived in Egypt!"

 

"Ooops," I said, "my mistake. Let's try this again."

 

The call came in the middle of the following week, on a cold afternoon, when the sky was gray and the clouds hovered low, promising more rain. Three times the thrush called out and gave the long-awaited signal. Yet when Lillian rose from the damp tree-trunk her face was expressionless.

 

Chained to the other tree, the man stood also, like a well-raised dog. For his obediance during the last two days or so, he had been spared the gag today.

 

She turned and shook her head. They would not yet go back to the mansion.

 

Swiftly, she stepped onto the first stone in the water. The clacking of her shoes on the stones sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the garden. However, she crossed the path to the mouth of the cave without hesitation. She knew which of the steps to use in order to climb up to the men and their horses.

 

Taking a deep breath, she looked back to the man on the banks of the lake. He stood so still that he could have been a statue himself.

 

With a swirl of her coat, Lillian turned to enter the cave.
 
 

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