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‘I think he’s a pillock,’ said Gaspode. ‘Laddie shut up!’

There was a yelp. Laddie recoiled from the door, lost his balance on the shifting sand, and rolled down the slope. He leapt to his feet and started barking again; not ordinary stupid-dog barking this time, but the genuine treed-cat variety.

Victor leaned forward and touched the door.

It felt very cold, despite the perpetual heat of Holy Wood, and there was just the faint suspicion of vibration.

He ran his fingers over the surface. There was a roughness there, as though there had been a carving that had been worn into obscurity over the years.

‘A door like that,’ said Gaspode, behind him, ‘a door like that, if you want my opinion, a door like that, a door like that,’ he took a deep breath, ‘bodes.’

‘Hmm? What? Bodes what?’

‘It don’t have to bode anything,’ said Gaspode. ‘Just basic bodingness is bad enough, take it from me.’

‘It must have been important. Looks a bit templeish,’ said Victor. ‘Why’d she want to open it?’

‘Bits of cliff sliding down an’ mysterious doors appearin’,’ said Gaspode, shaking his head. ‘That’s a lot of boding. Let’s go somewhere far away and really think about it, eh?’

Ginger gave a groan. Victor crouched down.

‘What’d she say?’

‘Dunno,’ said Gaspode.

‘It sounded like “I want to be a lawn”, I thought?’^{37}

‘Daft. Touch of the sun here, I reckon,’ said Gaspode knowledgeably.

‘Maybe you’re right. Her head certainly feels very hot.’ He picked her up, staggering a little under the weight.

‘Come on,’ he managed. ‘Let’s get down into the town. It’ll be getting dark soon.’ He looked around at the stunted trees. The door lay in a sort of hollow, which presumably caught enough dew to make the growth there slightly less desiccated than elsewhere.

‘You know, this place looks familiar,’ he said. ‘We did our first click here. It’s where I first met her.’

‘Very romantic,’ said Gaspode distantly, hurrying away with Laddie bounding happily around him. ‘If something ‘orrible comes out of that door, you can fink of it as Our Monster.’

‘Hey! Wait!’

‘Hurry up, then.’

‘What would she want to be a lawn for, do you think?’

‘Beats me …’

After they had gone silence poured back into the hollow.

A little later, the sun set. Its long light hit the door, turning the merest scratches into deep relief. With the help of imagination, they might just have formed the image of a man.

With a sword.

There was the faintest of noises as, grain by grain, sand trickled away from the door. By midnight it had opened by at least a sixteenth of an inch.

Holy Wood dreamed.

It dreamed of waking up.

Ruby damped down the fires under the vats, put the benches on the tables, and prepared to shut the Blue Lias. But just before blowing out the last lamp she hesitated in front of the mirror.

He’d be waiting out there again tonight. Just like every night. He’d been in during the evening, grinning to himself. He was planning something.

Ruby had been taking advice from some of the girls who worked in the clicks, and in addition to her feather boa she’d now invested in a broad-rimmed hat with some sort of oograah, cherries she thought they were called, in it. She’d been assured that the effect was stunning.

The trouble, she had to admit, was that he was, well, a very hunky troll. For millions of years troll women had been naturally attracted to trolls built like a monolith with an apple on top. Ruby’s treacherous instincts were firing messages up her spine, insidiously insisting that in those long fangs and bandy legs was everything a troll girl could wish for in a mate.

Trolls like Rock or Morry, of course, were far more modern and could do things like use a knife and fork, but there was something, well, reassuring about Detritus. Perhaps it was the way his knuckles touched the ground so dynamically. And apart from anything else, she was sure she was brighter than he was. There was a sort of gormless unstoppability about him that she found rather fascinating. That was the instincts at work again — intelligence has never been a particularly valuable survival trait in a troll.

And she had to admit that, whatever she might attempt in the way of feather boas and fancy hats, she was pushing 140 and was 400lbs above the fashionable weight.

If only he’d buck his ideas up.

Or at least, buck one idea up.

Maybe this make-up the girls had been talking about could be worth a try.

She sighed, blew out the lamp, opened the door and stepped out into a maze of roots.

A gigantic tree stretched the whole length of the alley. He must have dragged it for miles. The few surviving branches poked through windows or waved forlornly in the air.

In the middle of it all was Detritus, perched proudly on the trunk, his face split in a watermelon grin, his arms spread wide.

‘Tra-laa!’ he said.

Ruby heaved a gigantic sigh. Romance wasn’t easy, when you were a troll.

The Librarian forced the page open and chained it down. The book tried to snap at him.

Its contents had made it what it was. Evil and treacherous.