Believe Me!

By Greg Shone

While the gods indulge in omnipotence and the sexual licence afforded by man’s imagination, on earth two star-crossed lovers, an oriental prince and an Irish shop girl, attempt to consummate their love in the face of social and cultural taboos.
Displeased, the Gods enlist Arch, a vengeful Irishman whose mission in life is to blow up all the bridges that link the two warring communities of his native land and who becomes the pair’s unwitting nemesis.
A light-hearted and lyrical romp through the elysian fields of the gods and the greener fields of Ireland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Shone
• Release date: May 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9780463565964

Book preview

Believe Me!

By Greg Shone

Copyright 2011 Greg Shone

Published by Greg Shone at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental

Chapter 1

WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS WOULD BUY A GROSS OF ANYTHING? WOULDN’T IT BE MORE SENSIBLE TO BUY SEVENTY-TWO PACKETS TWICE THE SIZE?

‘FUCK IT,’ swore Jaffa, as the grape juice spurted from the fruit clasped between the virgin’s teeth. Does humanity think I’m made of wenches, he thought to himself bitterly.

The failure continued.

Like a rocket, a pip followed the juice and struck Jaffa in his third eye.

Thwack!

The pain in Jaffa’s mind caused him, for a moment, to view the heavens in distorted astonishment.

With a supreme effort of will he clamped his open mouth shut and smiled as he remembered the entourage of pesky Artists and their indifferent habit of painting all things including their Lord’s suffering.

Jaffa, reclining on his mattress of lotus blossom, forced the smile to remain and cast a wave in the general direction of the knot of Artists. Let them think I’m having a ball, he thought; being Lord of the heavens won’t save me from public ridicule no matter how anyone might revere me.

Bollocks, he then thought darkly as he felt the juice begin to trickle and threaten his notorious lack of concentration even further. I’ll just have to wear it as best I can and get this over with.

Jaffa knew that complication forever littered existence like rabbit crap in a field of alfalfa but even he had not bargained on failure in the simple act he was now performing.

The truth came to him slowly but surely through the smarting of his third eye and wilting of his holy cock.

Why couldn’t the idiots understand?

Not only had he had made it quite clear before the event had begun that the goal of the exercise was to keep the fruit intact while the serving wench writhed upon his holy erection; but the picture was supposed to be simple enough for his Artists to capture. Like the Haywain - a horse and friggin’ cart rambling through some pleasant countryside - the cock of god was supposed to induce ideas such as holy togetherness. He shook his head, much as he often did in the face of stupidity. What could be simpler? The Artists could then do their image thing for the next copy of Trying With Might - the only Magazine worth a stitch in the heavens since he had become its Editor.

The best laid plans of mice and gods.

As any of the entourage of Artists could testify, it was not much of an erection. Two and a half inches of pulsating flesh that was prone more to the wiles of artistic licence than any ability to probe the cosmic peach.

Yet for all that it fitted quite snugly into the rest of Lord Jaffa’s bland physical portrait - a portrait in ordinariness.

It was hardly his fault he often explained to any ear stupid enough to listen.

Jaffa had not asked for creation, he had had it thrust upon him. Like the myriad of other gods housed in their terraced mansions, Lord Jaffa had been created by human imagination as it rambled along with its peculiar gait.

In appearance, his Lordship was an oriental gentleman wrestling with middle age and a distinct lack of any deserving features. One might pass him in the street without a second glance if it were not for the jewellery sported with cocky impudence and the extra eye of omnipotence carved deep in his forehead.

Yet outward appearances could often be deceptive. And in Jaffa’s case this was doubly true. For behind the bland features of his podgy face, lived Heaven’s most hedonistic virtuoso - one devoted to the pursuit of power.

It was also no secret that he found a passion for the bizarre uses of fruit.

‘FUCK IT,’ he swore a second time.

This further response was prompted by the hideous bulk sitting next to his mattress of rose petals like a demure JCB.

‘There there,’ soothed the voice of Jaffa’s awesome spouse, Black Ma.

The voice contained little in the way of sympathy for she was another ball game entirely to her husband. Black Ma was the terrifying demon slayer and mother of all fecundity. What she did not wear on her sleeves was not worth avoiding.

‘There there,’ she repeated as she pretended to administer to Jaffa’s needs by mopping none too delicately at the cocktail of juice and perspiration dripping from his eye. ‘It’s only grape juice.’ As she reassured her husband she casually turned her less hideous side toward the Artists and plumped up her hair of writhing snakes in the hope that, like an anemone, she might trap some passing glamour. ‘It could be the green blood and purple guts of one of the demons I have to deal with daily,’ she added in a mutter.

Feeling somewhat ignored, another voice, fraught with emotion, struggled to join the conversation. ‘Oh my Lord - Oh my Lord,’ said the writhing service wench whose name was Terri, and whose only goal in eternity was to find herself exactly where she was, but with grape intact and virginity a thing of the past.

Holy penis size had assassinated her sweetest dreams on both counts; they now lay crushed between the teeth of holy frustration.

Black Ma watched the wench’s crisis wiggle with her bouncing breasts.

I’ll have to give this child artificial insemination along with a few acting lessons if I’m not to run out of Demons, she thought darkly.

She sighed then in a rare moment of understanding. She knew only too well how infuriating sex with her spouse could be and how easy to fake an orgasm when it was required. She had spent countless time shackled to Jaffa and his puny appendage; the occasional fling elsewhere had only brought her brief but shallow satisfaction. She sighed again, her belt of woven skulls clacking their agreement. Believe me, there has to be more to sex than this, she thought as she often did.

Jaffa frowned. He regarded the wobbling and wooing service wench with acute irritation. Why had she not noticed he was no longer inside her? He would deal with her later, for now he must pacify his spouse. ‘WELL WE ALL KNOW THE WEAKNESS OF THE HUMAN CONDITION MY DEAR,’ he sang from the depth of his mattress of petals, lightly returning to their ongoing conversation

‘Well I’m tired of clearing up the mess,’ snapped Black Ma with just a smidgen of jealousy. She picked at the blood bowl she carried in one hand with the sword held in yet another, and folded the others across her plated breast in a no nonsense manner, a sure sign of her irritation.

Oh oh, thought Jaffa, for once reading the situation correctly. I can see the need for infinite wisdom here. Better be treading on vicars’ virtues or the old boiler will be popping a cork up my anus as sure as Champagne comes from Reims.

Sod the Artists, he thought as he waved the disappointed virgin away with the customary smile of gratitude.

As the wench rose Jaffa turned onto his tummy to have it tickled by the carpet of petals.

Ohhhhhh! That feels strangely nice, he thought, preparing himself for an unavoidable conversation with his spouse. ‘DARLING,’ he crooned, gazing up at her hideous face. ‘YOU KNOW THE MORE WE MAKE OURSELVES VISIBLE TO HUMAN KIND THEN THE MORE INVISIBLE WE ACTUALLY BECOME TO THEM.’

‘Of course I do; I’m not a galactic idiot,’ she snapped.

‘INDEED YOU’RE NOT MY PETAL. WHO WOULD SUGGEST SUCH A THING? UNFORTUNATELY - THE GREATER PERCENTAGE OF OUR PUNTERS LIVE AS THEY THEMSELVES PUT IT - ON EARTH - THAT DISCARDED GRAIN OF SAND IN AN INFINITE COSMOS. DID YOU KNOW, DEAR, THE PUNTERS CALL IT HOME?’ He gestured limply to where he supposed humanity might be busy doing whatever thing it was they did.

‘I have been thinking it is time to make some changes,’ Black Ma said darkly.

‘TSK TSK, MY FLOWER OF THE ORIENT,’ said Jaffa as lightly as he could, ‘AS MUCH AS I WOULD LIKE TO - THERE’S JUST NO CONTROLLING HUMANITY - IT’S BEEN WRITTEN IN OUR CURRICULUM VITAE I’M AFRAID, MY DEAR.’

Black Ma turned, causing the serpents to writhe in her hair. ‘Control it,’ she spat, ‘I don’t want to control it.’ She bowed over him. ‘I want it changed immediately before I suck the muck from your balls and run amok amongst your turbulent flock. Don’t forget I can kick more punters’ ass than you or the rest of the gods can possibly possess.’

He smiled then. ‘I SUGGEST WE FIND ALL HUMILITY MY DEAR AND NURTURE THE COMPASSION DISPLAYED BY OUR HUMAN PUNTERS. CALM YOURSELF MY CHERISHED ONE, CALM YOURSELF.’ Lord Jaffa’s voice was soothing (the lotus blossoms were having an excellent effect.) ‘THAT’S JUST THE POINT MY LOVE, HUMANS CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ACT OF GOD AND A NATURAL DISASTER; AT LEAST THEIR INSURANCE COMPANIES NEVER COULD, BLESS THEIR EMBROIDERED POLICIES. BESIDES, I RATHER THINK IT’S NO GOOD SETTING MILLSTONES OF GOOD AND EVIL ROUND THEIR NECKS LIKE THE CHRISTIANS HAVE. WE, OF OUR PERSUASION, SHOULD KNOW THAT THOSE DON’T WORK.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ demanded Black Ma, hitting her spouse in what she felt was his obvious weakness of plot.

‘HIDDEN FLAWS,’ parried the Lord of the Eastern Heavens. ‘REMEMBER, MY JELLYBEAN? WE HAD THAT WRITTEN IN TO MAKE LIFE INFINITELY INTERESTING.’

‘That sounds like more of your masculine bullshit,’ replied Black Ma darkly, although she knew that she would be hard pressed to find an answer that did not call for the annihilation of the human condition.

Depleted from his sexual endeavours Lord Jaffa turned his finely tuned mind to his wife and her obvious need for immediate attention and general distraction. No matter how she seemed to welcome his promiscuity, there was always that niggling doubt that he had become nothing more than a public tool to be painted by the Porn-Painters or marked with points out of ten by sniggering school children. ‘LISTEN MY ANGEL DUST, WE NEED HUMANS OTHERWISE WE WOULDN’T EXIST.’ As he said this his triangle of eyes twinkled in the morning light. ‘AND IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR THAT YID KID’S OLD MAN AND HIS NEW-WAVE PHILOSOPHY, THINGS WOULD BE A DAMN SIGHT EASIER I MIGHT ADD.’

‘There we go again,’ laughed Black Ma scornfully, her belt of demon skulls clacking their teeth in mirthless agreement. ‘There’s always someone else to blame isn’t there? The universe is large and expanding if we’re to believe everything that other human said and you, you find it as easy to cast off blame as tossing off chaffs before the wind.’

Damn the wiles of femininity, thought Lord Jaffa with a wince, after all it was only one chaff in the past and he had been particularly out of his skull at the time on some of Lord Tokum’s pipe weed. His mind slipped up a gear as his well oiled pride slithered back. I’m not finished by a long chalk, he mused to himself; the old boiler may know how to squeeze my crutch between her digits of guilt and bad taste, but am I not the finest orator in all the heavens. He took a deep breath in anticipation while thinking, ‘every pope has his balcony and mine is cemented in artful conversation, tiled in tautology.’

‘WE MAY NEED HUMANS DEAR,’ he answered casually, ‘BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN TO SAY THAT I WISH TO RESIDE WITH THEM. THEY’RE JUST TOO COMPLICATED. YOU CAN’T IMAGINE HOW RELIEVED I WAS WHEN THAT BURK LORD Y’AWL RECALLED HIS UNPOPULAR SON BEFORE EVERYTHING WENT TO THE WORMS. FRATERNISING BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH CAUSES PROBLEMS AND BESIDES, IF WE ALL INDULGED IN HUMAN COPULATION WE’D END UP HAVING MILLIONS OF BLESSED KIDS PERPETUALLY UNDER OUR FEET.’ He sat suddenly upright as his mind grasped its own image. ‘IMAGINE THE WORK,’ he mused in genuine distaste.

Black Ma remained silently brooding. She could imagine the work only too well, but she could not rid herself of the usual feelings of exasperation she felt when trying to follow one of her husband’s indeterminable explanations as to what anything was all about.

‘DOWN THERE,’ Lord Jaffa continued, throwing the empty fruit bowl over the side of Mt Talasick and knocking a devout Buddhist priest into an immediate state of nirvana, ‘HUMANS GET IN THE SHIT IN THEIR OWN PLAYROOM.’

‘Aren’t we supposed to make sure that they don’t?’ interrupted Black Ma wryly.

‘TSK TSK, MY RABID ERASER,’ answered her spouse, his hands describing the antics of butterflies bent on sipping. ‘BELIEVE ME, THE MORE THEY SUCK AT THE SHIT, THE MORE THEY FEEL A NEED FOR US AS A MOUTHWASH MY CHERISHED ONE. THE WAY THINGS ARE WILL WORK PERFECTLY IF YOU JUST ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN.’

‘And just who is it that has to do the mopping up, not to mention the working of my fingers to the bone with the insemination task?’ Black Ma spat the kernel of her gripe upon the rocks to the South where it sizzled and smoked for a while, bubbling like blisters on a martyr’s back. ‘I’ve so much work I hardly have enough time to change my underwear.’

Lord Jaffa thought about this for a moment and decided that now was an opportune moment for him to bring up the aesthetic question that had been playing on his mind for a century or two. ‘IF I MAY SAY SO, MY AEROBIC AMAZON, THE FULL METAL JACKET YOU’RE WEARING HAS A DEFINITE OFF-PUTTING FLAVOUR TO IT.’

Black Ma scowled suddenly as only a hideous mass of armed appendages can. ‘Have you ever tried decapitating demons in a night dress with a lotus blossom clamped between your teeth,’ she countered.

Lord Jaffa sighed long and deep. As if constant erections were not difficult enough, he thought. There was just no faking it for a male; a male needed turning on and my spouse couldn’t excite an articulated lorry in her present garb. ‘HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I ASKED YOU TO PRESENT YOURSELF WEARING A SMILE AND A FLOWERED SARI RATHER THAN … THAN ….’ He waved a limp wrist in her general direction.

Black Ma leaned forward until her nose was almost touching her husband’s. ‘Than what?’ she demanded so sweetly it was sick.

‘TOO MUCH WRATH WILL GET US NOWHERE,’ he answered, jerking his head back from the smell pervading his wife’s fangs.

‘You listen to me, my husband,’ snarled Black Ma, ‘as far as I’m concerned the delights of marital consummations are either whip it in’n whip it out and wipe it, or you take all bleddy night about it and in either case I’m never sure if I’ve been fucked or if I’m the unfortunate chosen one in some kind of cosmic tragedy. Just where is the centre of the universe you promised me?’

‘SO WE’VE BROUGHT IT ALL BACK TO THAT HAVE WE,’ retorted Lord Jaffa truculently. ‘WITH ALL DUE RESPECT I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS BEING MARKED WITH POINTS OUT OF TEN.’

‘And I do not deal in fractions,’ spat his spouse.

Jaffa shook his head. This was leading them nowhere. He was well attuned to the scathing quality of his wife’s griping. Time to change the tack. He rubbed his hands together with avaricious zest. ‘I HEAR THERE’S A NEW PILL ON THE MARKET, PERHAPS I SHOULD POP DOWN AND GET A FEW.’

Black Ma eyed her husband’s nether regions, her regard tangible enough to comb its fingers through his pubic hair, styling it in a coiffure of contempt. ‘If there’s a pill on the market that can aid male sexual performance then you can rest assured that it’ll be the women that buy them.’ She said this scornfully, while making a mental note to look into the possibility.

‘ALL OF THIS GOOD TIME SEX I DO FOR OUR ARTISTS AND FOR YOU MY LOVE,’ wailed Lord Jaffa, now genuinely hurt. ‘DON’T YOU SEE HOW MUCH ART MEANS TO HUMANS AND CONSEQUENTLY, YOU MEAN TO ME?’

‘Not really,’ retorted Black Ma. ‘It’s like all of your arty ideas, they’re far too complex and they smell like they’ve been passed backwards through a hyena’s harem. Masculine nonsense is what I’d be callin’ it, not art.’

‘WELL FORGIVE THE HELL OUTA ME,’ spoke Lord Jaffa, holding his most innocent arms apart and sinking further into the bed of petals. ‘BUT EVEN THIS CAN BE EXPLAINED,’ he mumbled.

Black Ma felt a sharp twinge in her woman’s workings. ‘Listen my ‘usband, I’m not lookin’ fer any of your explanations, I ‘ave a few of me own. An’ whereas I’m prepared to be acceptin’ your personal demands, I also expect youse to be havin’ the good grace to be acceptin’ me own.’ She adjusted her irritated seat upon the blanket of smouldering coals, like a bean-bag with oomph and contemplated. Why had she suddenly broken into an Irish brogue? She sighed again at the unfairness of being cursed with fluctuating hormones; none-the-less she was quite willing to accept this sudden speech impediment as being somehow appropriate at this time of the heavenly month.

Well that seems to have worked out rather nicely, thought Lord Jaffa, watching his spouse settle herself and sheath her sword. He tuned in his third eye, still sore from his wife’s attentions, to a distant wood glade carpeted with waiting service wenches, the scene fringed by the usual groups of Artists, arguing as they prepared their paints in readiness for their Lord’s bidding. Jaffa licked his lips in savoury anticipation. Gross is as two half gross does, he mused as he sought through the variety of naked bodies; like swollen seafood their interesting bits pouted back at him. Now where was I, he wondered vaguely, his imagination traipsing through the garden of his mind, breathing deeply upon the air filled with the sacred scent of flowering petticoats.

There followed a sort of sizzling zap that entered the wood glade striking a digital counter and changing the number with a strident buzz to sixty nine. One of the recumbent service wenches stood with delight clearly written on her cherubic features. Hailing a small group of bickering Artists and checking her tear-off ticket she moved to the counter decorated with gold leaf lotus blossoms.

‘Number sixty nine,’ she whispered virginally.

‘Pop along to the second door on the right,’ smiled the heavenly counter assistant, who for some reason was the only civil servant in heaven or earth that had been graced with a sense of both civility and service. ‘Take one of the melons from the bowl as you go through,’ smiled the girl, who, being an ardent follower of Lord Jaffa’s whims, bought all her own fruit from an organic market. ‘Now,’ she continued, reaching across the counter and patting firm flesh as she spoke, ‘plump up your breasts and stick out your bottom, our Lord is waiting.’

Chapter 2

IS FERR FER A CHINUID

Irish Law has a maxim that a man is better than his birth.

With the onslaught of European pressures, women and horses were grudgingly added.

‘So,’ she said, tis a Prince that you are.’ Her smile widened across a perfectly freckled face, the corners of her rosy mouth expanding and filling the paper-shop with poster impressions of lush lands, distant closeness, jingling with the possibilities of loose change travel.

‘I am,’ replied the love struck young man who, in spite of wearing his casuals (a far out fisherman’s T-shirt and Oxfam 501s), could do little to curtail the regal expansion of his chest ‘Though only in my own country,’ he added hastily, ‘which as you can probably tell from the pigment of my skin lies somewhere far to the East.' As he spoke, the olive-skinned young man demonstrated his origins before the girl’s counter with a regal wave in the direction of the rising sunshine that cascaded through the shop’s display window. All the time he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the subject of his infatuation; fair play to her.

‘Well me own family is only the ordinary Irish - from Ireland - which lies in the other direction,’ the girl chirped gaily, ‘though some would have it I have a bit of the sorceress’s tar an’ feathers on me.’ This last thing she whispered as if imparting a great secret from behind her delicate hand. ‘Now, was it a quarter of the humbugs you’d be wantin’?’ She asked this, lifting her head and speaking more loudly, causing the young man to glance around the curiosity shop for the possibilities of a hidden third party.

‘Yes please,’ he replied politely, though rather too loudly. The bewitched youth’s name and title was Giro Cabul, Prince of the Crab Isles, a scorched archipelago basking off the coast of India, whose only richness lay in an annual dusting of dehydrated seagull droppings. It was indeed a long way from the Crab Isles to Cambridge where the prince now stood, but the need for a European education had bridged the gap. Prince Giro was no turbaned ruffian; having been tutored at home in the art of perfectology, he had now acquired worldly manners aplenty.

‘Humbugs,’ said the girl, ‘now isn’t that a strange name fer a sweetie don’t ye think?’ She bent behind the counter to reach them as she spoke.

Giro’s princely heart began thumping as clearly to him as the outline of her knicker elastic, his eager mind returning to some old question of where freckles might begin and end. ‘Stranger than strange,’ he agreed with a nod of dark gelled hair. ‘Though I have to say that humbugs do help me to er … concentrate.’

Giro had no explanation for why his mouth and mind had suddenly turned as arid as a guano-scraper’s loincloth, though he felt sure that relief might be found in one of those humbug mints. They lay like small legless skunks, without heads and tails and covered with an appealing sugary frostiness behind the sweetie glass counter amid rows of other less appealing wares. He watched her through his dreaming eyes as she carefully scooped them into a paper bag which she peeled from a wad, hanging from a strand of sisal string, all the time chatting away to him like a speckled bird.

‘I once had an aunt who swore by immaculate concentration,’ she said, ‘though I never was quite sure what it was she meant.’

Giro noticed that the length of her summer skirt did little to detract from her wonderful spring legs which could go no higher without …

‘In fact,’ continued the girl, turning to him with a smile, ‘me aunt swore by lots of things now I come to think of it. Religion, the Dublin opera house, lace petticoats and children, though in truth she couldn’t have any herself, poor dear. Her name was Mary an’ her husband called her the Holy Mary, though never to her facing for some said she’d been a bare fisted fighter in her youth.’ As the girl spoke, cocking her head to one side, her long red hair cascading in russet fountains around her speckled neck and shoulders - the humbugs bounced eagerly into the bag.

Giro remained spellbound and tongue-tied; he was sure that he heard the inner voice of a bird of paradise, lusting, lilting, upside down with coloured petticoats in the air.

‘An’ just why is it you yourself needs to be concentratin’?’ asked the girl, surprising his princely reverie.

‘Oh - er - I’m an artist,’ Giro answered. ‘Well - a sculptor really - well - only in my spare time as I’m writing a thesis at the university.’ He wound down his explanation by turning the left side of his face purposely towards her, which many hours of practice before a mirror had led him to believe was his nobler and less pimply elevation.

Shucks, decided the girl attentively; either side was noble enough to sound the harp in her ancestral heart and did she not have a wonderful remedy for pimples?

‘Your mint humbugs do just the trick,’ Giro declared, his voice trundling on, ‘when I need to channel my energies, direct my craft and hopefully, make a statement.’

Like Venus emerging from the half shell, the girl leaned upon the counter cupping her chin in her hands. ‘Make a statement,’ she whispered in awe. ‘My, I wish I meself had the knack of that one.’

Giro felt the flush of uncertainty rise to his ears like one of Uncle Ranjid’s Vindaloos that had to be imported in special anticorrosive containers, but it was obvious from her intently green regard that she was speaking only in innocent earnest. ‘Oh it always sounds more important than it really is,’ Giro told her with a shrug of modest shoulders.

As the prince spoke the girl watched in fascination the two veiled and belly-dancing fish come to life and wink seductively on Giro’s T-shirt, causing her to suddenly giggle like a bag of shaken imps. ‘Perhaps that’s the truth of it on a T-shirt,’ she pointed. ‘But tell me sometin’,’ she asked soberly, ‘do you, the creator of arty-facts, always have to make a statement?’

‘Well er …’

‘Only me dad always says I talk an’ talk an’ never get anytin’ said which seems about as far away from the makin’ of statement as ye can get.’

Giro was besotted. He had after all, only just met the girl and here she was asking him all the wrong questions, and quite deliberately. Never had he been so intrigued when buying humbugs. Never had anyone shown so much interest in him. All of a sudden his senses seemed to be straining with a ruptured alertness, an intensity that he had missed since leaving the Isles. He gazed about, noticing that her singing voice caused the sweets and wracks of smokeables to vibrate in a readiness to serve and be served. The newspapers fluttered tiny corner ears as if they too strained to capture every nuance; she was indeed a speckled darling. He found himself wanting to talk, to chat copiously, as if something magic had suddenly unlocked a niche in the chimneys of his heart.

Most curious, he thought, though fair play to her.

‘It’s my form of art,’ he answered in a dream, his own voice sounding far away. ‘I always know what I want when I set out to fabricate a thing, though in truth, I have to trust to my unthinking self a lot. He regarded the impish expression which tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘Do you think I could have one of those humbugs straight away,’ he added, ‘only my mouth feels suddenly dry?’

The girl remained silently smiling. Like strawberries to a donkey she offered him a humbug upon the flat of one hand which he could not help noticing bore no ring or even the suggestion that she had ever worn such a thing.

As he leaned over the counter and his eager fingers touched the tautness of her hand, Giro felt a tingling shock that would not be easy to forget even should he wish to; which he did not. It was the first moment he had touched her. The tingling sensation seemed to pass up his body and speak in his mind of foreign things. Like a chattering brook of images it ran - spilling and tumbling - sparkling pictures of happy early days - cloven feet racing across springing lawns, midsummer thick and well tended - nymphs dancing to melancholic pipes the antic hay - the scratching of quills as complicated knots are scribed laboriously upon parchment from a land where mist is captured in jars and history is no more than an amusing past-time.

Giro absently placed the humbug into his mouth. On reflection he must have done, for he felt its soothing effect, though he could not explain afterwards how his hand had remained touching hers. He became aware of her gaze, penetrating, tugging at him from somewhere behind his left eye. In that instant the intimacy of bike-shed secrets passed from one to another - gas street works and factory walls flickered substantial before blinking out in his nickel-odeon mind, leaving him strangely bereft.

Then, Giro felt something well up inside; a tangible force flooded him in a timeless musical regard which caused his vision to balloon as though he were viewing his surroundings through an opaque bubble. He fought to steady himself as he felt his legs wobble and wondered if he was ill. In the next instance, he was convinced that he was dying. Through a wave of panic he watched as the paper-shop shimmered and suddenly dissolved, running away in ribbons of swirling colour as they disappeared from his view. He felt his senses splutter and gasp, as though he were drowning in a luminous liquid made up from strands of intense light. There followed a peculiar sucking, popping sound in his ears, accompanied by the sound of bicycle bells …

Shluuuuck!

Triiiiiiiiing!

... a ripping sensation pulled at his midriff as if Griffins’ talons were tugging at his abdomen. The next moment found him standing unsteadily in an emerald field decked with splashes of flowery colour.

Ahhhhhhhh!

Giro heard himself wailing, the sound of his own voice rushing like a wind as it sought to traverse some great distance that had always been so intensely close. Then, to his relief, he heard her velvet voice.

‘Oh sure, tis sorry that I am,’ she said from somewhere before Giro’s tattered senses, ‘only I seem to have brought ye with me.’

In that unaccountable moment the girl’s soothing voice was all that Giro found he could clutch on to. He became aware that he was breathing heavily as his protesting senses began to slowly re-function, but with a strange scrambled effect. He shook his head in an effort to clear them. ‘Where - we are - they - what,’ he managed to say.

‘Oh don’t ye be worryin’ yourself,’ said the girl lightly. ‘It’ll all be higgledy-piggledy fer the moment, so it will. But I’ll have us back in a jiffy if it’s that ye are wantin’?’

Giro was not sure at that moment what it was he was wanting; sense had ceased to have meaning let alone be common. ‘No no.’ he heard his own dream-like voice reply. ‘It’s - how - just - you - did do that ...’

‘Ah sure, I haven’t refined the knack of trans-poppin’ yet,’ she smiled by way of explanation. ‘But this does seem to happen a lot when I fall in love,’ she added with a sigh. Then, cocking her head to one side in concern, she placed a delicate hand upon his shoulder. ‘Your head will be clearin’ in a minute if ye just let it.’ She smiled encouragingly.

Giro remained silent with the lack of words that had washed over him. He wished to speak but trans-popping, whatever it was, was as new to him as falling hopelessly in love with a counter assistant; and all within the last fifteen minutes. He steadied himself by looking around at the gentle sloping of fields that shimmered away into the brooding distance, hoping above hope that he did not resemble too much an idiot amid this array of gentle greens washed in the spring sunshine. He could not be sure if his eyes were working properly so he closed them in an effort to clear his senses, but found this did not help as his hearing had become intensely acutified beyond anything he had experienced before. The air seemed suddenly alive, vibrant with clearly distinguishable sounds, hanging together, yet each one separate and clearly defined. He found he could select sounds which somehow conveyed to him a new and essential awareness. He began listening to the call of larking bird song - the laced winging of many insects intent upon polleny business. He heard the swishing of tails and flicking of ears - the creaking of hinged gateways - the sighing of mossy stone long settled upon comfortable stone - toast being eaten - tea being slurped - the breeze parting the grasses - a horse fart somewhere close and all at the same time - separately.

Giro suddenly started from his reverie as he felt the girl’s hand hot upon his arm, causing him to open his eyes.

‘Take it easy an’ stop concentratin’,’ she smiled. ‘Look into the distance at nothin’ in particular; tis a fine way of sneakin’ up on the rest.’

He followed her advice, though in truth he would have followed her anything at that moment. Scanning the circle of brooding hills rippling the horizon, Giro’s attention slowly returned to her.

Mmmmmm, he sighed, better, much better.

tis a fine thing, is it not?’ she asked with a voice full of honey-harmony and soothing-song.

‘Fine - yes fine,’ repeated Giro. ‘But I don’t quite understand,’ he added, sucking rapidly at the humbug still secured in his mouth.

The girl leaned closer. ‘T’is a secret I wished to share with ye from the old times,’ she explained softly.

‘Well it’s a fine secret,’ said Giro, ‘though I must confess, it’s certainly left me feeling rather disorientated.’

‘Ah go on, don’t ye be tryin’ to pick the sense out of it all,’ she whispered. ‘Just you relax yourself. T’is a beautiful day, so it is, filled to the brimmin’ with young lovers’ hearts.’ She pressed her lips to his ear. ‘Can ye not feel it?’

Along with the passing pleasure of her lips Giro could certainly feel something. That was part of the problem, he felt he could suddenly sense everything, yet he had no way of describing what he felt. Could this be love, he wondered, the all encompassing centre of some crazed and fanciful universe that until now had always remained aloof? As a child, Giro’s mentor had constantly warned the prince of love and what passion it might unleash. A shadow now crossed his beaming features as he felt a sharp pang, betraying a sudden feeling of acute disappointment with something the girl had said a moment earlier. ‘Do you fall in love often?’ he heard himself ask lamely. ‘I mean, not that it’s any jealousy of mine,’ he added with a blush, hoping that the ground might open up and swallow his obvious embarrassment.

This caused the girl