‘I’m not sure. Records are scarce or missing. But there is another dyke or wall behind Offa’s Dyke known as Wat’s dyke, and, well, here we have the double wall thing again.’
We remained silent. There didn’t really seem much to go on, but Monty wasn’t finished. He showed me a map of the UnUnited Kingdoms with all the ditches and walls built in antiquity marked on them. There were a lot in number: some running east and west, others running north–south – even a canal network built in part by the Romans that was fed by seawater.
‘I think these defences were built to get rid of the Trolls,’ said Monty. ‘All of them have been found to contain buttons in great quantities. It also says that Offa’s Troll War was “faced with many hundreds of thousands of the sinful beast, but we did by way of clever enclosure, two days from start of attack to the last Troll banished”.’
‘That’s seriously quick in terms of defeating Trolls,’ said Tiger. ‘You would have thought mopping up the stragglers would have taken a month on its own.’
‘Excuse me,’ said one of the waiters politely, ‘there’s an Australopithecine outside wanting to speak to a Miss Strange.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘that will be my ride. Anything else, Monty?’
‘I’ll know more when you return.’
‘Good. Tiger? You up for a trip to Mother Zenobia’s?’
‘Do I get to ride on a Cloud Leviathan?’
‘You do.’
‘Then yes,’ he said, ‘I’m
The Australopithecine had a flattish face, a protruding lower jaw, deep-set eyes that were a bright blue and was covered all over in short coarse hair. He wore no clothes at all except a set of very worn Converse All-Stars and his only possessions were carried in a large handbag that always sat in the crook of his arm. Handbag and shoes aside, he looked like the sort of hominid that is often featured on the cover of
Ralph had originally been
‘Hello, Ralph,’ I said, and he grunted in reply.
Swapping gifts is usual when you meet an Australopithecine. He gave me a Hot Wheels VW Baja – one I did not yet have in my collection – and in return I gave him a pretty marble, six marshmallows and a box of matches, while Tiger offered up a half-used scented candle and a pack of Zetor Tractor Top Trumps, and received, in return, a mousetrap and a used Q-tip. Ralph examined his gifts very carefully and, when satisfied, popped them into his handbag.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘Good I am me better never,’ he said cheerfully, his sense of word order not yet fully evolved. He had trouble with grammar and making plans more than a week in advance, and would often steal stuff that he liked, not really understanding the concept of ownership. But all things considered, he did pretty well on a third of a modern human’s brain capacity. To be honest, he fared a lot better than many humans I knew with a
‘What do, Jen?’ said Ralph, and I outlined as best as I could where I needed to go. A modern map was useless as his more primitive visual cortex could not interpret the writing, so I handed him a picture map I’d drawn that gave him landmarks to follow all the way to Hereford, then a picture of the River Wye and the castle at Clifford, a stone’s throw from the orphanage.
The small hominid nodded, then started to look around, calling the Leviathan by name – it seems he had dubbed it ‘Basil’.
‘How can he lose a Leviathan?’ asked Tiger as Ralph ran around the place, covering the ground urgently like a demented spaniel trying to find a lost stick.
‘A Leviathan has chameleonic skin,’ I explained, ‘to merge into the background. They can’t be counted, studied or even hunted because … well, you can’t see them.’
