One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [83]
“Lyell? Boring?”
“Yes. I don’t know who Lyell was or why he should be boring, but boring he was—and Thursday didn’t like it. Not one little bit.” Jenny shook her head and took me by the hand. “I miss her, Thursday. It’s lonely not being directly imagined on a day-to-day basis.”
We walked back towards Landen’s house.
“I’m confused,” said Square. “What, precisely, is going on?”
“I’m not really sure. I feel like I’m following in Thursday’s footsteps, only several hundred yards behind, and—hello, that’s odd.”
I looked around. Jenny, who’d been with us just a second ago, was nowhere to be seen. I twisted this way and that to see where she’d gone, and as I was doing so, a black van screeched to a halt in front of me. Within a few moments, the sliding door had opened and I’d been bundled inside in a less-than-polite manner, a sack put over my head. With another screech of tires, the van set off, and to make matters worse, I was then immediately sat upon by someone who smelled strongly of Gorgonzola.
23.
The Stiltonista
The most cost-effective way to tour the BookWorld is by bus. A BookWorld Rover is the preferred method, giving you unlimited travel for a month. Delays might be expected at the borders between islands, but for the discerning tourist eager to see the BookWorld at a leisurely pace, the Rover ticket is ideal. Next page: working your passage on a scrawl trawler. Not for the fainthearted.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (5th edition)
Any attempt to describe the journey would have been futile, as the varying degrees of gravitational flux that I encountered during the trip were unpleasantly distracting. Suffice it to say that all the lurches, bumps, swerves and twists made me feel quite peculiar, and I wondered how anyone could undertake journeys on a regular basis and not only become ambivalent but actually enjoy them. Fortunately, this journey ended after not too long, and once the van came to a stop and I was rather impolitely hauled from the back and placed on a chair, the sack was pulled off.
I was in a deserted warehouse. There were puddles of water on the floor and holes in the ceiling—which probably accounted for the puddles on the floor. The windows were broken, and green streaks of algae had formed on the walls. In several places brambles had started to grow, and the odd pile of rubble and twisted metal sat in heaps. I wasn’t alone. Aside from the four men who had brought me in the van, there was a Rolls-Royce motorcar and three other men. Two of them seemed to be bodyguards, and the third was undoubtedly the leader. He was dressed in a mohair suit and greatcoat, and his features were drawn and sunken—he looked like a skull that someone had thrown some skin at.
“I am Keitel Potblack,” he said in the tone of someone who felt I should know who he was and not fail to be impressed, “head of the Wiltshire Stiltonista. Your failure to remain properly dead is becoming something of an inconvenience.”
I laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. This guy dealt in cheese, and he was acting as though he were a Bond villain.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t kid,” said Mr. Potblack.
“Oh,” I said, “right.”
I looked at him, then at the men standing next to him, one of whom was carrying a spade. “Going gardening?”
They exchanged glances, as though this were the sort of comment they expected.
“It’s up to you. Now, are you the real Thursday or just another copy?”
“I’m not her,” I said, “so if you can take me home, I’d be really grateful.”
“If you’re not her,” said Potblack, “I have no further need of you.”
“Good. If you could tell your driver to go easy a bit on the way back, that would be—”
“Mr. Blue? Would you do the honors?”
The man with the spade walked towards me, and all of a sudden I realized that if he was digging anything over today, it would be me.
“You want to talk?” I said, the ease with which I stayed calm surprising even me. “Then let’s talk.”
“So you are Thursday?”
“Yes,” I replied,