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journey following maps helped sorry karmalott edge morning ship lazuli
check wonder stick follow meet purple thanks suddenly stood family seem

spot story view chair
happened usually himself
pay looks bring self above early
young mirabelle stopped
eyes rolled
rather empty land

“Baby? What baby?” asked Liz. “I thought that baby had been dealt with in the last chapter, it seems ages ago. Has anyone been feeding it, do you think? What happens to all the characters when nobody writes about them? Are they glad of it, happy to do what they want? Or are they bored and frustrated at having nothing to do? Do they like being plucked from whatever they were doing once in a blue moon, and flung into an improbable scenario, and then left there, with no way out even imagined yet?”

“You only have to ask,” replied Aunt Idle, pushing the bowl of peanuts over to Liz.

Aunt Idle:

Why was Mater going on and on about Trout? I scrutinized her face, but she looked innocent enough ~ perhaps it was just a dream, but I couldn’t help feeling it was a sign, or a clue.

“Oh, I say, Finley, look at the sunlight streaming through those cleaned windows now!” I exclaimed, distracted by the difference to the room a bit of window cleaning made. “What a good job you’ve done!”

“Nothing a bit of elbow grease and buffering with a soft cloth won’t do,” she replied, “Buffer buffer buffer, that’s what I always say, to get everything ship shape!”

Why was the cleaner going on and on about buffering, I wondered. And surely the word was buff, not buffer?

”I had a funny dream last night”, said Mater when she eventually found Dido clearing up in the kitchen. Or more accurately perhaps, ’supervising’ as it was clearly Finnly doing the bulk of the work.

”It was very peaceful. A man and a little boy were fishing in a stream. “Fishing is what a true man does,” said the man to the boy. At that moment there was a tug on the line and the little boy pulled a huge trout out of the water. Enormous it was,” gesticulated Mater, flinging her arms wide to demonstrate. “The trout fought hard and got away, but not before … what on earth is the matter with you, Dido?”

“A trout,” murmered Dido looking strangely at Mater.

I think I might have over~egged the brûlée again, thought Elizabeth, but was immediately distracted by the rock hard knob end of stollen shoved into a truffle box on the caravan shelf.
This really is the last straw, she exclaimed self righteously.

Today, I met Huoxing, the bank teller. Funny, you would say that they have a bank teller on Mars. The irony is not lost on him apparently, his name means Mars in Chinese. His parents did have either some special foretelling powers, or a mean sense of humour.
In both cases, he was quite efficient at setting my account up and doing some basic transfers.
With the latest collapse of the economy on Earth, there are mostly only banks of China left everywhere. Still, there is only one on Mars, and Mars is the teller. What are the odds?

Perhaps everyone thought that the baby belonged to one of the tourists that were gathered around the shrine, either holding their phones up to snap pictures, or gazing down at the screens in rapt concentration. The baby scanned the crowd, aware enough on some level to know there was a purpose, that being handed about here and there was a necessary part of the story and that the one who was meant to come, would come.

Night fell, and nobody came. The gates to the shrine were closed and locked by the night watchman, who was too engrossed in his phone screen to notice the baby. The baby didn’t cry, despite huger, thirst and a very smelly nappy. When all was silent, and the last of the shrine staff had descended the hill, a doe approached the helpless bundle, blowing warm breath on the chilled little face. The gentle deer lay down beside the orphan, nudging it with her soft muzzle until it was enveloped next to her warm body.

“Haki, did you find that baby a good home?”

“I left it at the shrine, madam…”

“Please, call me Liz!”

“I left the baby at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Yellow Burden, Liz. It’s a busy shrine, I’m sure someone will pick it up and look after it.”

“Well, perhaps you could pop back and check tomorrow, just in case it’s still there, Haki.”

“I think the thing with shrines, Liz,” Godfrey butted in, “Is not to keep revisiting them.”

“Don’t be daft, Godfrey, people flock to shrines all the time.”

“Precisely,” he replied.

Aunt Idle:

It was good to see the back of them, although it was a shame that Crispin Cornwall ~ alias Godfrey Trueman, I now knew ~ hadn’t paid his bill. I could trace him via Liz, but I wanted to keep a distance. I had two pieces of the Tattler, Trout and Trueman puzzle, but who was Trout? Why did they send me that note made of ripped up maps, and what did Flora have to do with it all? And what were they doing buying up ghost towns?

Of course, considering Liz was involved, it was entirely possible that none of it meant anything at all. Then again, with Liz, one never knew. And I don’t know a thing about Trueman, and less about Trout.

Perhaps there was a clue in room 8.

wall changes, losing city somehow
continued rather truth stick,
hope focus characters
tried poor nobody dust, love secret: dry lazuli bugger

Aunt Idle:

“Don’t look so grim, Idle, we’re not staying,” Liz said, “We only came for a mince pie. We’ll be off in a minute but first I must have a word with Godfrey in private.”

What a relief, I can tell you! “I’ll go and get him, shall I?”

“No, I think I’ll have a word with him in his room, if you don’t mind,” she replied. “I think he has something to show me.”

Curiosity over ruled any shreds left of anxiety, and I had to bite my tongue not to ask straight out, not that she’d have told me. Always full of enigmatic little secrets, she was, always had been. It was never a hundred percent clear if she knew what she was talking about and was very clever, or if she hadn’t got a clue what was going on and was winging it. Anyway, the main thing was that she wasn’t staying long, so if we got through the next half hour without any more confusion ensuing, we’d be laughing. Feeling more inclined towards gracious kindness than previously, I beamed magnanimously at her and politely ushered her down the hall to room 8.

“Mr, er, Cornwall,” I didn’t know whether to call him Godfrey, and decided against it. His bill was in the name Crispin Cornwall, and I wasn’t about to have him flitting off with Liz and her entourage without paying it. “Elizabeth would like a private word, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Bloody Liz Tattler’s the last person I wanted to see,” he said. “Trust her to just happen to land on my secret hideaway.”

My hand flew to my mouth. “Did you say Tattler?”

There is something creepy about that new maid.
“I think she’s got a crush on me”, I said to Joe the other day. “That bush pig’s putting porn red lipstick when she knows I’m coming to the Inn.”
Actually I hadn’t really noticed it until Prune mentioned it. Not with those words, of course, she’s too sophisticated to use such words. I used them because I knew it would catch Joe’s attention and make a better story. But truth is, there was not much of a story to tell.
T’was pathetic and oddly arousing at the same time to pretend I would be interested in catching the maid in the laundry room and give’er the bone on the washing machine.
“She’d slap my face with her feeders…” You know how boys are. We can be stupid when excited.

It was something to make jokes about it in the barn with Joe, but I had a hard time at Christmas trying to avoid her. I caught more than once an amused look on Prune’s face when Finly would bent over lower to serve me some stuffing. I’d swear she had no bra and no knickers. It could have been exciting but her armpits smelled of fried onions, barely masked by her cheap perfume.

After diner, I pretended a headache and went to my room. That’s when I heard that strange noise in the corridor. It was coming from room 8.