Talk to the hand

Each week Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut roll up their sleeves and plunge into the mail sacks that have arrived at the Royal Mythological Society's offices. (Dame Sepia wisely stays out of it.)

Dear gents

I’m not one for fancy words so I’ll come right to point. I’m the gamekeeper for the Earl of Derby at his Whitley estate. Few days back, there were a right exodus from the woods up by his coverts. Squirrels and birds and mice and frogs, insects too, all come pouring out. You’d think whole forest were aflame. And dead quiet after. I went on me own to take a look, none of the beaters would stir an inch, and you’ve never heard the like of that silence. Right in the heart of wood all the trees were down like skittles, and in the midst were a great gigantic hand, knuckles like boulders and each nail as big as a coal cellar door. Hairs on it like barbed wire. The old dog would have nowt to do with it, no fool him.

It’s just the hand, like, no blood or bone showing. You’d mark it clay but for the plain fact it’s warm flesh. And it lies there, cupped with the palm down, but not limp like a dead ‘un. More like your own hand if it were resting on the arm of a chair, now and then moving just a bit, a twitch or a scratch.

Well, there’s no shooting to be done while it’s there. No wildlife will come within a mile of it, you see, except for adders. And I can’t think what it’d take to move the thing. Any notions?

Yours, Ben Gummer, Great Heck, Yorkshire

Dr Clattercut replies: This is a curiosity indeed. From the scale of the extremity, I think we can surmise it belongs to a giant, god or titan. It is unfortunate, Mr Gummer, that you omit to say whether it is a right or left hand. The god Tyr, of course, famously had his right hand bitten off by the Fenris wolf, whereby the Old Norse word for the wrist was “wolf-joint”.

Prof Bromfield: It would be a bit chewed up in that case, wouldn’t it? Not to mention that Fenris swallowed the hand, so you’d expect to see industrial quantities of wolf poo around. As Mr Gummer specifically says the wrist is clean of blood, I take it to be more in the nature of a supernatural dismemberment. Didn’t the Egyptian god Set use magic to sunder Osiris’s body into fourteen parts?

Dr Clattercut: But none of those parts, I think, would logically turn up now in a wood in Yorkshire. More likely, I feel, the hand is a fragment of one of the giants Gog and Magog, who were disjected by Brutus of Troy when he founded Britain. This could also explain why snakes, which owe their allegiance to older gods, are comfortable in the hand’s presence.

Prof Bromfield: As to the practicalities: it’s obviously too big to get on a cart, even if Mr Gummer could induce the horses to approach it. So what about tickling it with a feather. It’d take a bit of patience, but that way it should be possible to get the hand to twitch and convulse enough to drag itself out of the woods.

Dr Clattercut: And, always assuming it didn’t flick its tormentor away, unless you would take the trouble to tickle it all the way to the sea that would still only result in a giant hand blocking the road. Personally I’d advise putting a fence around the woods and moving the coverts elsewhere. No doubt it’s a bother, but it’s the lesser of two bothers.

FURTHER READING

• A Minotaur At The Savoy
• But That's A Detail by A J Alan
• The Collected Short Stories by Saki
• Fancies & Goodnights by John Collier
• Gods, Men & Ghosts by Lord Dunsany
• The October Country by Ray Bradbury

Urbane fantasy

"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything," and to mark the rebirth of the year, you can pick up a free Kindle copy of A Minotaur at the Savoy (US edition here) all this week. Yep, right up until Friday 13th. Good thing I'm not superstitious.

This little volume, as regular readers will know, is a tie-in with the world of the Mirabilis graphic novel, fleshing out the background by means of fifty Dunsany-ish tall tales woven around the postbag of the Royal Mythological Society. For example:

Dear Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

Recently I was taken by a friend to a restaurant in Fitzrovia. As we were settling down over whisky and cigars after the meal, I glanced at the menu and noticed that the à la carte listed Dodo Véronique. Intrigued as I was, I had by this time already put away a dozen oysters, the onion soup, a smoked haddock dish, two helpings of beef wellington, a lemon soufflé, a plate of almond biscuits, a bottle or two of Chateau Yquem and three large brandies. Also, I’d had a bit of a gyppy tummy earlier in the week, so at that stage I really didn’t feel up to fitting anything else in. I now rather wish I had, as I went for a bit of a walk to see if I could find the place again and there’s no sign of the street. I remember it had a little blue sconce of flame over the door, and a sort of curtain of ivory beads to keep the fog out. My friend has gone on a trip to Venezuela so no use asking him.

Sincerely, Edward Plunkett, The Attican Club, Pall Mall

Dr Clattercut replies: O rara avis in terris!

Prof Bromfield: Latin? You’ll have lost most of our readers right there, old man.

Dr Clattercut: I merely remarked on the pang of missed opportunity. Who knows how long before Mr Plunkett will again find himself in a restaurant with dodo on the menu?

Prof Bromfield: I doubt if there’s honestly any cause for regret. From what I hear, dodo is a tough, gamey sort of fowl. No use cooking it like chicken. Dodo meat is more like what you’d get on a year-old pheasant: tough if served pink, and dry if overcooked. Much more sensible to put it in a curry or a spicy Mexican dish. A Véronique sauce would be all wrong. There’s your explanation, Mr Plunkett – you can’t find the restaurant because it’s gone out of business.

Dr Clattercut: Perhaps the words of another rare bird, the Swan of Avon, will offer some consolation: “Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.”

Is that a dragon in your stocking..?

If you've enjoyed the Royal Mythological Society epistolary short stories (eg here and here) wherein Dr Clattercut and Prof Bromfield reply to various fantastical events, you might be interested in the paperback edition. Intended as a little Christmas gift, this collects all fifty-odd stories in one neat little pocket-sized package, complete with that beautiful piece of iconic Mirabilis artwork by Martin.

You can get A Minotaur at the Savoy from the Book Depository, from Barnes & Noble, and of course from Amazon. Don't take any notice of Amazon's estimate of 5 to 8 weeks for delivery - they often do that with books printed through Lightning Source; order now and you'll get it in good time for Christmas - and look at those prices. Spiffing, eh what?

Mean little beasts, all shaggy with kelp

Two more days remain of the under-a-dollar special offer on the Kindle edition of The Year of Wonders. The book comprises fifty fantasy vignettes in the form of correspondence sent from around the world to the Royal Mythological Society. Wondering what to do about a talking cow? Missing breakfast because fairies got at the milk? Turfed out of your local by pirates? Vexed by the problem of how to catalogue a chimera? Or at the mercy of the elements thanks to a levitating roof? Our boffins, armed with little practical experience but plenty of enthusiasm, are ready to advise on these and many other problems caused by the head-on collision of reality and fantasy. For example:

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

I would expect you to be familiar with our village, as it is famous in a small way for having a sunken twin a little way out to sea. When I was a girl, I could stand on the cliffs and, with the wind in the right direction, it was possible to hear the tolling of the submerged church bell coming up out of the waves.

Now that things are as they are, our submarine neighbours no longer content themselves with the occasional ringing of a bell. Walking my dog along the beach, as often as not I will encounter a group of mermaids riding there. Their manners are polite, but I think there is some teasing in their glance and their ponies are mean little beasts, all shaggy with kelp and very high and briny to the nose. You know the smell when the tide goes right out; it's like that.

My concern, however, is the mermaids’ effect on our village. Twice a week, or Wednesdays and Saturdays, they come and sit on the beach with trinkets to sell. And I know where they get those trinkets. One of them had an ivory pipe that I recognized. It belonged to my grandfather, who was drowned at sea on my first day at junior school.

Yours sincerely, Mabel Catchpole (Mrs), Dunwich

Dr Clattercut replies: An interesting case, Mrs Catchpole, and thank you for bringing it to our attention. I don’t know if I would consider what the mermaids are doing to be looting. Any knickknacks they find on the sea bed were, after all, irretrievably lost to us on dry land. One could argue they are performing a valuable service akin to marine salvage. Admittedly, however, there is a suggestion here of grave-robbing. What do you say, Bromfield?

Prof Bromfield: Hmm? Just thinking… Cabyll-ushteys, those sea ponies are called – that’s what they call them in the Isle of Man, anyway. They’re more than pesky. Get in trouble out swimming and they’ll drag you down and eat you up. All of you except the liver, funnily enough.

Dr Clattercut: I believe the Suffolk version is less outrightly murderous, though still a creature to be wary of. I was kicked by one while collecting trilobites at Aldeburgh two months ago and I still have a bruise. But just a moment – how do mermaids..?

Prof Bromfield: Side saddle, old chap.

You can get the complete Kindle book of Royal Mythological Society correspondence from Amazon US, Amazon Europe or Amazon UK, and if you want to look at a few more letters you could check out the free previews on MyEbook or fReado.

And I will make thee beds of roses

There's just one more week for you to get yourself a copy of the Kindle edition of A Minotaur At The Savoy at the special offer price of 99 cents - in the US here, in the UK here, and in mainland Europe here.

Recent discussion in these parts having been on the definition of fantasy, I should explain that there is a very broad range on display in these letters to the Royal Mythological Society. As the green comet's effect is to erase the line between the real and the imaginary, you will find every flavor of the fantastic from gods to goblins to green-skinned Martians. But my own favorites are the non-genre stories that slip between the cracks. Like this one.

Dear sirs

You have heard the expression “a whirlwind romance” and I can attest that courtship truly can spin a person quite dizzy. Only a year ago, I was in Sicily with more thought of collecting archaeological specimens than of collecting a husband. And yet there at a little tavern overlooking the bay, a man at the next table sketched my portrait on his napkin and I could see at once that his eyes had found something beautiful in my poor plain thirty-year-old face. I shaded my eyes from the sun to look up at him. And like a Mediterranean storm, there it was, gentlemen: love.

We were wed soon after at his family church near Palma di Montechiaro, but my husband’s father does not approve of his choice of career as a painter, so to avoid daily arguments - which in Sicily can take on the proportions of a pitched battle - we returned to set up home in England, at a country estate left me by my uncle.

The estate has extensive grounds, and at first I was surprised at my husband’s enthusiasm for an activity so staid as gardening. But he said that the gardens would be his new canvas, and indeed his art found full expression there. When he is angry, the flower beds are violent with dark reds and brooding purples. When he is amused, the topiary bushes strike funny poses that have me laughing too. And when he is sad, the shrubbery droops and I seem to notice far more weeping willows about the lawn than at other times.

A wife frequently is left to guess at her husband’s moods, for men do not talk of their feelings even if they are Sicilian. Therefore I have come to rely on the garden’s visual cues to help me better understand his feelings and support him as a dutiful wife should. In the last week, however, the garden has changed in a way I do not recognize. The flowers are in full bloom, a thousand of them, so that everywhere one looks is a riot of passionate bright colours like the most heartfelt Impressionist painting. I have spoken of this with my young cousin Amanda, who recently came to stay with us, but though she has struck up quite a friendship with my husband she too is at a loss to explain what it all may mean.

With your wide experience of supernatural matters, I wonder if you are able to illuminate this mystery. For some reason it vexes me greatly, though why I cannot tell.

Yours faithfully, Mrs Rachel Sindona, High Wycombe

Prof Bromfield replies: Dear lady, do not allow your cousin to outstay her welcome. I will say no more.

(Photo by Ozeye from Wikipedia.)

Merlin and the motor car

The collected correspondence of the Royal Mythological Society comprises more than fifty fantasy tales involving such thorny issues as what to do with a miniature civilization discovered in an Oxford professor's rooms, whether to blow the Gjallarhorn on the Last Night of the Proms, and how to pot your husband if he should happen to turn into a plant. Or, as here, whether you should sell a used car to the court wizard of Logres...

Dear sirs

I don’t know how you feel about the motor car. I am a founder member of the Automobile Club of Great Britain, and during the summer we often get ourselves out for a bit of a race, all in fun really, with a pub lunch in the middle.

Yesterday, I was just in the first leg of a race from Wilmslow to Nottingham and I had a bit of trouble getting started, so I was at the rear. No sign of the others but their dust, and there at the side of the road as the dust cleared I saw a queer old duck who was waving at me to stop. You don’t know if he might not be in trouble, do you, in a case like that, so even though I didn’t like the look of him, I pulled over. You know that picture by William Blake of God? He looked a bit like that, only with a long robe and a staff.

Blow me down if the fellow didn’t offer to buy my motor car. Right there in the road, just as if he was asking a light for his pipe. He didn’t have a pipe, but you know what I mean. I’m in a rally, I told him; no time for tomfoolery. He had something to say about that, but I didn’t catch it because I was off on my way again.

But not for long. An official at the next checkpoint waved me down and gave a disqualification. Never mind what for; it wasn’t fair, that’s all. So I turned around, went off back down the road, and there’s the old chap with the beard. I’m still interested in that horseless carriage, he says, and this time he shows me a purse. I say a purse; it was more of a sack really, and bulging with jewels. Or perhaps it was my eyes that did the bulging.

It was only a couple of miles to walk home, and you don’t get shown a fistful of diamonds every day, so I drove the old chap to a cave that he pointed out. You don’t want to keep it in a damp place like that, I said. Drive right in, he says, and it’s his money, after all, so I put the lights on and down we went. I had my hand crank beside me; he seemed a frail old chap but you can’t be too careful. But when we got down to the cavern I could see he was on the square. The place was full of knights, the armoured sort, all sleeping in a circle – a hundred of them at least. And beside about three-quarters of the knights stood a horse, asleep on its feet as they do. But the rest of the knights all had a motor car parked at their head.

Seeing me taken a bit aback, the old fellow asked how many horsepower had my vehicle. Twelve hp, I tell him. There you are, he says, you can see why we’re modernizing. And for ten rubies as big as eggs I sold him my car. What do you think about that?

Yours faithfully, Edwin Laurie Esq., Alderley Edge

Dr Clattercut replies: I used sometimes to enjoy a ramble in the countryside, or perhaps a picnic, but the era of the motor car has spoiled all that. One might as well take a stroll across a battlefield in the middle of an artillery barrage.

Prof Bromfield: Oh, I don’t know. You’re such a stick-in-the-mud, Clattercut. If I were ten years younger, I think I might put on the leathers and a pair of goggles and give this rallying a go. Great fun. And the notion that, in England's hour of need, the Lord of Camelot and his knights will ride to lead us at the wheels of 12 hp Daimlers… Splendid!

A curious manifestation on the Strand

As the green comet looms ever-nearer in the sky and the world gets stranger, the Fellows of the Royal Mythological Society (Cyril Clattercut and Bampton Bromfield; that's them above) are busy answering queries about extraterrestrial etiquette, fairy faux pas, and how to live with a minotaur next door. You can read their collected correspondence in A Minotaur At The Savoy, which for this month only is priced at just 99 cents for more than fifty mini-stories like this:

Dear perfessors

I hope that you may help me with my Trouble and do not object to a letter from one as does not know you. I have the agreeable position of regular employment at a public house by the Strand, name of The Three Gypsies. My duties there in the main being the stabling of horses, polishing brasses, & co. I also do in the taprooms and some private bedrooms that are kept for travellers, though not so frequent as in former days, now that the coach stand is not there no more. In the morning I rake out the fires and carry the ashes in a pail, which I have been in the habit of tipping down the drain that is in the street near the entrance to the yard. Only the other morning I went out that way and saw what had the look of two sooty, or I should say ashen, footprints on the pavement outside. Scuffing at these with my foot had no effect to remove them, and thinking no more I went and poured the ashes down the drain as per usual. Then on the next day I found two bare feet standing there. Just the plain feet, you understand, and not with no body above them, the feet being grey and looking to my eye to be made of ashes. Subsequent to that, having visited the drain on my purpose some other times, the feet have now been joined by ankles and the lower part of the legs, that is the calf. Mr Bardley, him being the landlord, says not to be tipping the ashes that way no more, but I have become quite driven with Curiosity to find out what will come. Today I tipped out another pail of ashes and in the morrow I’m in expectation of a pair of knees. Do you gents think this is advisable, or is Mr Bardley right?

Yours, Joe Gammock, Raven Row E1

Dr Clattercut replies: Mr Gammock, I have no direct experience of exactly such a phenomenon as you describe, but I implore you to consider all the ways that it could turn out if you continue as you have. One does not have to be an avid reader of the works of Mr Bram Stoker to foresee something rather chilling. There are many bad endings to the story and few good ones.

Prof Bromfield: Hmm. You do not say as much in your letter, but I surmise that the pedal extremities in question are feminine, and reasonably shapely. For once I have to agree with Clattercut. If this goes on, Mr Gammock, I feel it could be a case of curiosity killing the cat.

From Paddington Station to the helium mines of Phobos

It's the Fourth of July and there will be fireworks even here in London. To mark the occasion, Leo and I are knocking a whopping $4 off the price of the Kindle edition of The Year of Wonders for one month only. So that's fifty whimsical vignettes of green comety weirdness for just 99 cents.

The stories range from a mysterious giant hand found in a wood in Yorkshire to the best way to deal with a dragon that's taken a shine to the gold reserves of Fort Knox, and although it's hard to pick one that can be described as typical, this will give you a taste of what to expect:

Dear human savants

Following a motion of no confidence in the prime minister, I find that my Martian Party has enough seats in the House of Commons to form a new government in coalition with the Liberal Unionists. The only sticking point is that, as you may know, my prospective allies are committed to a very specific agenda. Their three-point plan entails establishing a minimum wage, giving women the vote, and maintaining the unity of the British Isles - whereas the Martian Party is pledged to subjugate the planet Earth, replace corn with red weed as the staple carbohydrate dietary supplement, and ship a million slaves to the helium mines of Phobos.

As a compromise, I have agreed to defer mass enslavement for the term of the current Parliament, concentrating instead on domestic transport policy as an area of common ground on which our two parties can agree. For example, to alleviate the growing problem of “rush hour” congestion at the major London rail terminuses, we propose loading commuters onto massive catapults which will fling them across the city to land in collection nets near to their place of work. We estimate this would save at least seventy thousand man-months of labour per year. However, some of our advisors believe that it will not be a popular measure and could lose us votes at the next election. What do you counsel?

Yours, the Right Honourable Xangovar the Merciless, OBE, c/o the Palace of Westminster

Prof Bromfield replies: It would be very popular with small boys. Unfortunately, they don’t have the vote. Might be a better world if they did, if you ask me.

Dr Clattercut: Oh yes. Because resolving international disputes with conkers matches is obviously the way to go. Pulling girls’ pigtails when they demand enfranchisement. Declaring the whole of January a national tobogganing holiday. Making marbles the official currency of the Bank of England…

Prof Bromfield: You think you’re being wittily scathing, Clattercut, but in fact you’re just proving my point. So that’s what I’d suggest, Mr – er, Xangovar: shake up the Cabinet a little. Bring in some schoolboys and artists and poets and whatnot. Be more radical with your reforms, if anything. This is the Year of Wonders, so what’s wrong with sprinkling a bit of magic on the tired old machinery of politics? Trust me, the electorate will thank you for it.

Dr Clattercut: Those that land in the nets, anyway.

You can get The Year of Wonders from the Amazon Kindle store in the UK and in the USA. But just till August, remember. Happy landings.

Dance on moonbeams, slide on rainbows

While adapting the first 8 issues of the Mirabilis comic book for iPad, iBookstore and Kindle, I'm not neglecting the whimsical correspondence of the Royal Mythological Society that features on the comic's letters pages. These missives show the kind of things that are going on around the world as the ever-nearing Comet Meadowvane strikes a great green line through every rule of science, reason and logic. There's a whole book's worth already - and more coming in all the time - which makes them ripe for packaging up as an ebook.

New readers, of whom we have quite a few lately, may appreciate a bit of explanation at this point. (You old hands can jump straight down to the latest RMS letter.)

It is a little known fact of history – or myth – or both, that around the start of the twentieth century there existed a lost year.

In this year, a green comet appeared in the sky. As it grew larger, things that would previously have been considered utterly fantastical began to seep into everyday life. By the height of summer, imagination and reality were so seamlessly merged that few recalled a time when the world had been otherwise.

Mermaids swam in the Mediterranean. Martians commuted by train from Woking. Greek gods gave lecture tours of the United States. And with this new way of life came a whole set of problems of etiquette and decorum (see reference to mermaids).

Fortunately, the solution was at hand. In the depths of the British Museum, intrepid academics Bampton “Bammy” Bromfield and Cyril Clattercut had long been cataloguing accounts of the uncanny from around the world on behalf of the Royal Mythological Society. The arrival of the green comet was about to give them the busiest year of their lives. As you can see from letters like this:

Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield

If you could see my hand shake as I write this. Well, you can see from the ink blots how my nerves are shot. I am lately escaped from an ordeal of some months, and here is the way of it.

I think it was back in April - my diary says it was April the twentieth, but it seems now to have been in another life - I had occasion to drop in at the Savoy. O unhappy day! By bitter irony I was not even staying there; I had taken rooms at Claridge’s and only called at the Savoy to see if a lady friend of mine was in town.

The hotel had lately appointed a minotaur in a commissionaire’s uniform to stand outside the doors and hold an umbrella for people arriving by carriage. I have had to cross a few fields in my day, and I did not like the look of those little dark eyes and the snorting nostrils, I can tell you, nor the way the cap was pushed up by the fellow’s horns. But I hurried past him, pushed through the revolving doors - and there my ordeal began. An ordeal of four months when I wandered as though in a maze, ever turning as those accursed doors spun round and round and I thought I would drop from dizziness!

Occasionally I saw fleeting figures pass through. I called out but cannot tell if any heard me; certainly no-one stopped to help. At one point, after perhaps a month had passed, I stumbled out of the door and thought I had achieved deliverance. But it was not the lobby of the Savoy at all, but a vast hall of cracked masonry filled with sand drifts, which gave the impression of a great weight above as though far under the ground.

After that I returned to the revolving door - anything rather than bear the stillness and silence of that empty tomb. I survived on the rainwater that intermittently blew in as the weather changed outside, and once I caught a pigeon that had strayed through the hotel doors. Very tough and stringy meat when one has no fire. But for that poor bird, and the deposits of chewing gum left by some of the hotel’s foreign guests as they flitted through, I would surely have starved.

Was it desperation that led me to recall the stories of my youth? I was half mad by then, certainly; the whole world was on a corkscrew and my mind with it. I found myself thinking of the thread that Ariadne gave Theseus to lead him safely through the Labyrinth. It may have been in a delirium that I plucked the end of a thread from my trousers and attached it to the door frame so that even as it whirled around, I could keep my hands on that thread and follow it slowly back until I emerged onto the Strand, in the clear September light, and gulped the sharp and smoky autumnal air. It could have been a breath on the summit of Olympus, gentlemen, so sweet I found it.

The minotaur was still there. I gave him a look and he gave me a look back, and I was at the point of confessing how meanly I had thought of him before, and declaring him a good fellow, and I plucked at his sleeve and was ready to embrace him. But do you know what he did then? He called for the police and they took me away, and now I am up on a charge of public indecency. For, you see, in the escape my trousers had all unravelled.

Yours sincerely,

Theodore Lolley,

Seaford

Dr Clattercut replies: My heart goes out to you, poor chap. But other than publishing your letter as a caution to others, there is little we can do. My advice is to pay the fine and put the whole thing behind you.

Prof Bromfield: Quite. I got in touch with the manager of the Savoy and he tells me they originally had Cerberus on the door, but that was even worse.