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Finnley froze as Liz flung her arms around her. Thankfully she was not normally this demonstrative and it was frankly alarming to be in such close proximity.

“You’re an angel to keep reminding me, Finnley. But what am I supposed to DO with the turmeric?”

“Thanks,” said Bossy taking her cup of tea.

“So, tell me more about this evil fruit-loop doctor,” said Ricardo with an encouraging smile.

Bossy looked intently at him. “It’s no joke,” she admonished him sharply.

“Oh, no. No, of course not. I mean, yeah, I really want to know. It all sounds very … intriguing. And sort of creepy, to be honest. But definitely not a joke.”

Bossy relented and gestured imperatively for Ricardo to be seated.

“The doctor could best be described as a mad genius. He believed he had found the answer to looking eternally youthful but didn’t want to go through the time and expense of clinical trials through the normal channels. So he set up a testing laboratory on a small and relatively unknown Pacific Island. Tifikijoo, I believe it was called.”

“Uh huh. Actually I do vaguely remember something about that story.”

“We got the story first,” Bossie said proudly, “but there was a media ban on publishing some of the information, unfortunately. The Doctor managed to get funding for his tests through an undercover organisation whose hidden agenda was to hide an ancient crystal skull while at the same time providing them with a facility where they could continue their own secret testing into spider genomes. I can’t tell you too much about that — it was all hush hush. So, you wouldn’t have read about that in the news, I bet,” she added with a smug smile.

“Uh, no,” answered Ricardo, privately wondering if Bossy was the mad one. It was all starting to feel a bit surreal to him.

“Did the doctor know about the skull stuff?”

“No, the doctor was genuinely only interested in preserving beauty. Unfortunately, to this end, he killed one of his first guinea pigs. And tried to disguise his crime by mummifying the body. That’s when it all began to implode on him.”

“What happened to him?”

“He had some good lawyers and was found not competent to stand trial on the grounds of insanity. And the fact that all his clients had signed liability waivers helped a bit. He was sent to a high security psychiatric institution but managed to escape by reverting to his female identity—he was transsexual—and hiding in a laundry trolley.

“The doctor hated the way he was portrayed in the media and most of his venom was focused on our people. We had a guy working with us then, John Smith, and he covered the story with Connie. They got the brunt of the hate emails. John nearly had a nervous breakdown with the stress of it and moved to the country. Pity, he was a good writer.”

“So what makes you think Santa Claus and the doctor are one and the same?”

“Call it a very strong hunch. The Doctor was born in Iceland and had strong family ties there. And now I fear he has lured Connie and Sophie there in order to exact his evil revenge!”

“Where the devil is everyone?”

Miss Bossy Pants looked around the empty office with a mixture of disappointment and confusion. She had been anticipating the surprised looks on her colleagues’ faces at her unannounced return —she had no illusions about her popularity and knew better than to expect a joyous reunion—but the room was disconcertingly empty.

Hearing the door behind her, she spun around in relief. It was the new guy, Prout, carrying a brown paper bag and a take out coffee.

“Hello!” he said, hoping he did not sound as awkward as he felt and wondering if he could back out the door again. He had only met Bossy a couple of times and found her bluntness disconcerting. Terrifying, even. There was no reply, so, taking a sip of his steaming coffee, he bravely persevered.

“Welcome back. How are you feeling?”

“Are you the only one here? Where is everyone?” snapped Bossy Pants.

Ricardo took a deep breath and focused on a wilted pot plant on the window ledge.

God, I hope I don’t start rambling.

“Connie and the temp, Sophie, went to Iceland … something about following a lead from Santa Claus and I’ve not heard from them since. And Hilda … I don’t know where Hilda went to be honest. She emailed me a few days ago wanting to know what to feed Orangutans.”

Bossy had paled. She seemed to shudder slightly and put out a hand to steady herself on a nearby desk.

“They eat mostly fruit,” he continued, “but other stuff too of course. Insects and flowers and stuff like that. Honey I think, if they can find it I guess, and bark. And leaves. Mostly fruit though.”

That’s probably enough about the Orangutans. She is clearly not into it.

“I got a bit held up actually; there is a young boy outside drawing maps. Quite young … youngish. I am not sure how old really but he was little.They are bloody good too—there is quite a crowd out there watching him draw.”

“Iceland,” whispered Bossy, her face a deathly white colour.

“Yeah, Iceland. Keflavik … Miss Bossy, are you sure you are well enough to be back? You don’t look so good. I mean, you look good … attractive of course … I don’t mean you look bad or anything but you do look sort of pale. Are you okay?”

“Santa Claus.” Bossy sat down slowly.

“Yeah … I know, a bit crazy, right? They seemed to think it was a really hot lead.”

“Stupid idiots; the lead wasn’t from Santa Claus— I will bet my life that it was from that depraved scoundrel, Dr Bronkelhampton! I heard through the grapevine he had gone to Iceland with a new identity after the Island fiasco destroyed his reputation—we covered the story at the time and it was huge—and now he is clearly after revenge. Dear God, what have they got themselves into?”

Hilda regretted her decision to fly to the British Isles, now that she was caught up in all the Fuxit brouhaha. The mysterious plague doctor in Chester had turned out to be nothing more than a common madman, looking for a party to crash. The Mexican band with a wheelbarrow full of bricks welcoming the orange toupee’d buffoon from the west had been momentarily amusing, but was nothing more than another common madman looking for a party to crash as far as Hilda could see, and not worth further investigation, but the madness that had enveloped the country over the Fuxit was another matter.

Exit mania had swept the country ~ and not only the country, but the continent as well. Doors were falling off their hinges on buildings across Europe with the rush of people demanding to leave, or trying to keep others out. Irate women were pushing their husbands out of the front door and locking them out, while shop assistants slammed the doors shut on customers, exercising their rights to determine who should be allowed in, and who should leave. “Exit” signs on motorways were set alight and exit ramps barricaded, lighted exit signs in nightclubs were smashed. Herds of dairy cows smashed down gates and roamed the streets, and sheep huddled next to boarded doorways.

Itinerant builders were in high demand to fix broken hinges on gates and doors, and the memes about the population becoming unhinged quickly ceased to amuse in the utter mayhem.

Hilda decided to get a flight back to Iceland as soon as possible. As an investigative reporter, she knew she should stay, but justified leaving on the grounds that a wider picture was imperative. And frankly, she’s seen enough!

But leaving the beleaguered nation was not going to be easy. The airline websites had been closed, and the doors on the travel agents had either been boarded up or had been removed altogether, and nobody was staffing the premises. The motorway exit ramp to the airport had been barricaded. Not to be deterred, Hilda left her hire car on the side of the road, and dragged her flight bag across the waste ground towards the airport building. The place was deserted: the doors on all the aircraft had been removed, and emergency exit signs lay smashed on the tarmac.

“Then I have no other option,” Hilda said, “But to teleport.”

The hotel manager closed the red ledger in a loud flap, releasing a cloud of dark dust. Connie wondered if it was becasue of that volcano with the unspeakable name which had been fuming again since their arrival.

“There is no vacancy”, he said.

“But, we had a reservation”, said Sweet Sophie with her sweetest voice.

“Maybe you had, but had is in the past. Now there is no vacancy.”

Sweet Sophie took a deep breath in and tried to imagine the poppy ground of her hometown in Cornwall. It didn’t work. She didn’t feel relaxed nor did she feel bliss. She had no imagination for that kind of positive thinking, her mind only worked for conspiracies and time paradoxes.

Connie had been looking at her watch repeatedly, and breathing heavily. They had been trying to get past this man for fifteen minutes. His face was as pleasant as a Gib’s monkey ass. Not as Maybe not as comfortable to sit on though. Sweet Sophie couldn’t think with all the noise Connie was doing. She knew there was a solution, and she didn’t want to go to another hotel, their instructions were specific, get a room at Diamond Suites hotel.

“It’s no use”, said Connie. “Let’s find another hotel. I’ve been told there is one called Blue Lagoon part of a wonderful Spa.”

“Shush”, said Sophie. “I’m thinking.”

“That would be a first”, said Connie with a conniving smile.

Sweet Sophie didn’t pay attention, she was used to rudeness. Instead she looked at the manager’s ugly face and suddenly had an idea that might have come from the past but could be applied in the present to get them a key.

“Of course it was in the past”, she began, “We just forgot to take the key of our rooms.”

“Very well”, said the manager, “What are your room numbers ?”

Sweet Sophie smiled. There was some progress. What did the letter say again ?

“I recommend the reindeer stew,” said the waiter with a slight nod towards the menu in his hand, yet not taking his eyes off Connie’s face.

Connie started with excitement. Reindeer stew? Reindeer was the code word!

“Ah, yes, thank you but I couldn’t possibly eat … Rudolph,” she replied.

Sophie snorted from across the table. “Prancer! you idiot,” she hissed. “You couldn’t possibly eat Prancer.”

“Prancer! I mean Prancer!” Connie giggled nervously however the waiter’s expression remained inscrutable.

“Very well,” he said, surreptitiously slipping a folded note into the menu and placing it on the table. “Let us see if we have something more to your taste.”

“Rudolph!“cackled Sophie as soon as the waiter was out of earshot. “Lucky I was here you bonehead. You could have messed up the whole mission.”

Connie wondered why people tended to preface Sophie’s name with “sweet”.

Rude, cantankerous, nasty old biddy, she thought and felt a familiar twitching in her clenched fist.

Taking a deep breath, Connie managed a forced smile. Better to stay on good terms, at least for now.

“Thanks for that, Sophie. What would I do without you? Let’s see what this note says, shall we?”

Carefully looking around to make sure they were not being watched, Connie unfolded the note.

“If you want to learn about elves, you need to go to Elf School”, she read.

“My word,” said Sophie. “How delightfully delphian.”

“Oh, there you are Hilda, can I have a word?”

Hilda started guiltily at Connie’s voice, and pushed her teacup behind a stack of papers on her desk. Slurping down the last of the tea before making her way to the airport for the Boston flight, she hadn’t been able to resist looking into the dregs for a minute or two. What she’d seen had made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. But what was she to do about it? And now here was Connie, fidgeting in the doorway. Well, see what she wants first, Hilda told herself, and then decide.

“Do you know anything about these?” asked Connie, thrusting the flight tickets in front of Hilda. “And what’s the background on the old crone, Sophie? I thought she was just a temp?”

Hilda’s head was spinning. Should she say nothing, let Connie take the flight, and hope for the best? Or try and prevent her making the trip, just in case? How accurate was her tea leaf reading really? What if she had misinterpreted the signs? It could be too embarrassing. Better just hope for the best and say nothing.

“Sorry Connie, must dash.” Hilda quickly gathered her things together and shoved them in the flight bag at her feet. Pushing past Connie she said, “Er, have a good trip!” and with a sickly smile she fled.

When Hilda arrived at the airport an hour later, she made a snap decision to change her flight. Luckily there were a few seats left to Keflavik in Iceland. She really hadn’t fancied Boston and the crotch grabbers anyway. She wouldn’t tell the others she was already in Iceland, but at least she would be there to monitor events as they unfolded.

“It’s not very comfortable” admitted Godfrey.

“I’m toying with the idea of introducing it as a new trend in the other thread.”

“I say, Liz, that’s just cruel! Making all the male characters waddle around wearing codpieces, and not be able to scratch and fumble with the actual cod?”

“On second thoughts,” replied Liz, “Maybe I won’t. I dread to think where this is leading.”

“Hasn’t Finnley woken up yet?” inquired Liz politely, but nobody heard her. They were all asleep. “Bloody time zone renegades.” She looked around the room at the snoring dribbling disheveled team. A plan to rouse them started forming in her mind.

round aunt characters matter
talk working latest ascension run
honey open mission perhaps
leader close free reading window
land cleaning times

As Prune spoke the magic words releasing her aunt from marbledom, an unforeseen chain reaction of uncrusting began. One by one the concrete statues and animals that Idle had been collecting became more yielding, less rigid. They didn’t all start gallivanting around at once, it was a slow process depending on the length of time they had been solid.

The buddha by the fish pond had had his knees bent for so long it would be some time before he could straighten them, but it was with great joy that he raised a hand from his lap to scratch the fly droppings off the tip of his nose. He was just about to make a remark about foolish idle people and wise diligent ones when it occurred to him that he’d been completely idle for quite some time, and that it hadn’t been his fault. The unaccustomed questioning of his rather rigid beliefs accelerated the uncrusting process, and he was able to turn his head to see the odd looking cat approaching, but unable to move his arm quickly enough to stop it spraying him with piss.

You have no idea how long I’ve been holding that, said the cat, somewhat telepathically.

A loud gravelly sounding laugh echoed across the pond, coming from the direction of the green man plaque on the wall. The unfamiliar cackle drew Clove out from the kitchen to see who it was.

“I have so much to say!” the green man cleared his throat, spitting out some moss that had become stuck between his teeth, “And I’ve waited so long to say it! You there, you! Don’t go away!” The green man immediately realized his predicament. He had a face but no body. He would have to wait until an audience came to him to listen.

But Clove was interested and inched closer. She had just been researching Dionysus for a project; what a fortuitous coincidence that a replica of him had come to life. She would be able to interview him for her report. She’d just read that “It is perhaps an indication of the Green Man’s power as an archetype that he was able to transfer so seamlessly from one culture and one set of beliefs to another.”

This was exactly the angle she was after.

Dispersee couldn’t wait to tell everyone that Balzac had flunked again. It would give her something to do other than sit around on tree trunks cerebrating endlessly.

“Are you following me, cousin ?” added Liz with a snort. “I never understood why you chose to hide yourself in that stinky town with your dead fishes. Maybe you are looking for a way out. There is nothing for you where I come from. I’ll never give you the teleportation ab-original codes.”
“Oh you never understood anything about me, or did you ?” said Mater, “You were too preoccupied by your followers. Is Big G still with you ? And that suspicious maid of yours. Is she still moulding dust critters ?”
“Dust critters ? What are you talking about?”
“What codes ?” asked Mater, squinting her eyes.
“Nothing,” said Liz, realizing she might have talked too much. But she couldn’t help it, her body was unable to contain all the words in her mind, they had to get out. She tightened her lips, trying to resist the outburst.
“What was that ?” asked Mater looking around, “did you hear that noise ?”
“Nope”, said Liz, “maybe an earthquake, or a storm approaching.” It had to get out one way or another she thought.
“Don’t talk nonsense with me, I tell you I heard something.”
Devan interrupted them. Liz looked at the young man, her cougar senses on alert.
“I got the paper”, he said.
Paper, with words.
“May I ?” she asked, showing the paper.
“Don’t try to seduce my boy”, said Mater, “I know you.”

A strange peacefulness enveloped Idle as she stood immobilized beside the sapling. A feeling of imperturbability washed over her, the grace of stillness. She glanced down at her legs and rather liked the smooth cold marble effect; so much more attractive that purple veins and loose skin. While her neck still had a degree of flexibility, she looked around, appreciating the hard still silent trees, their infinite serenity and refreshing lack of hustle bustle.

But her quiet reverie was not to last long. The sudden appearance of a partly clad woman sent flocks of birds squalking away from the treetops in alarm.

The woman immediately set to removing her shirt and rearranging it across her torso in an attempt to gain some kind of conventional modesty, dislodging the sticky paper scraps.

Devan, who had chanced upon this usual scene in his search for his aunt, failed to notice the paper at first, so entranced was he with watching the attractive woman attempt to cover her voluptuous body with a gardening shirt. Mater, breathing heavily from the exertion of the search, came up behind him and slapped him soundly on the back of the head and gave him a push.

“The paper!” she hissed. “Get the paper!”

“Don’t push me,” snapped Finnley. “Yes Godfrey, I believe picking up rubbish is in my job description. Your job description … well buggered if I know what you do around here,” she said snarkily, perversely annoyed at being telepathically described as ‘the maid’. “Give me that rubbish immediately and I will deal with it,” she commanded, making a grab for Godfrey’s hand. “You go and help LIz with Roberto. And whatever you do, don’t let the blighter jump 3 times in the air and shout stickum lute putty. ”

“Who are you?” whispered Godfrey, keeping a firm grasp on the scraps of paper, aided perhaps by the fact that the honey was adhering them to his hand. “You are not the Finnley we know and … well, the Finnley we know. Is that cucumber on your face really a disguise? What have you done with Finnley?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Finnley, rolling her eyes.

“Help!” screamed Liz. “He’s trying to jump!”