You know, sometimes I swear the whole universe runs on irony.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Good Golly Miss Molly
You hear a lot of stories about Molly Metcalf. How she once frightened a ghost out of the house it was haunting. How she abducts aliens in order to run strange experiments on them. How she once called up the Devil himself, just to tell him an endless stream of knock-knock jokes. The most disturbing thing about these stories is that far too many of them are true. But that’s the wild witch Molly Metcalf for you: free spirit of anarchy, Hawkwind fan, and queen of all the wild places. Enemy to the Drood family and everything they stand for.
Somehow I just knew this meeting wasn’t going to go smoothly.
But there I was, on the run in London and hiding in the smoke, sticking to the darker and nastier back streets because I couldn’t afford to be seen by old friends or enemies. Using the secret shortcuts and subterranean ways that normal people never get to know about. Heading reluctantly towards the one remaining person who might be able to find me a way out of the mess I was in. My oldest and fiercest enemy, my opposite in every way: Molly Metcalf. Sweet, petite, and overwhelmingly feminine, Molly specialised in forbidden old magics, applied with much passion and not a little lateral thinking.
She once changed the magnetic patterns of force over London, just so that all the migrating birds would have to pass over the Houses of Parliament and crap on them. She once worked a subtle magic on certain bed fleas and venereal crabs, making them her eyes and ears so that she could spy on the very important personages who patronised a brothel that specialised in the rich and famous. As a result she learned many interesting things, and blackmailed her victims ruthlessly. As much for the fun of it as the money. One of her victims had to stand up in Parliament and recite the whole of "I’m a little teapot, here’s my spout," during the prime minister’s question time, before she’d let him off the hook. Given who it was, I quite approved of that one…
And of course there was the time she bribed a group of disgruntled earth elementals into causing massive earthquakes in the bedrock beneath the British mainland. Apparently she wanted to split the United Kingdom into three separate island states: England and Wales and Scotland. I only just stopped that one in time. And she was an enthusiastic part of the Arcadia Project, a gathering of top-rank magicians dedicated to changing the rules of reality itself, to bring about a new world constructed a lot more to their liking. Fortunately for the world and reality, magicians have the biggest egos outside of show business and rarely play well with each other. Half of them ended up turning the other half into various kinds of livestock, and Molly lost her temper and called down a plague of frogs on the lot of them.
People were clearing frogs out of their gutters all over London for weeks after that.
Molly Metcalf resisted authority; any authority. She also hated my guts, with good reason. We’d been on opposite sides of a dozen missions, with me standing for order and her for chaos. We’d come close to killing each other several times, and neither of us had failed for want of trying. If I went to her in my armour, wearing the golden face she had every reason to hate, she’d attack me on sight. My only chance to get close to her was as Shaman Bond. Molly knew Shaman, in a friendly if distant way, as just another face on the scene. We’d even had the odd drink together, as part of my cover. I planned to use that, to get a foot in her door.
Molly lived in Ladbrook Grove, in what had once been quite a trendy area that had now fallen upon reduced circumstances. Her house was a simple two up, two down, in the middle of a long terraced row. From the outside it appeared no different from any of the others: a bit shabby, a bit neglected, and in urgent need of a new coat of paint. The street was full of squabbling kids riding their bikes back and forth, kicking a football around, or just hanging about in the hope something would happen. None of them paid me any attention as I went up to Molly’s front door and leaned on the bell. There were always strangers coming and going on a street like this. There was a long pause, long enough to make me consider ringing again, and then the front door opened just enough to allow Molly to peer out.
"Shaman?" she said in her usual dark and sultry voice. "What brings you to my door, uninvited? I wasn’t aware you even knew where I lived. Not many do, and I’ve killed most of them. I hate being bothered."
I gave her my best charming smile. Molly Metcalf looked like a delicate china doll with big bosoms. Bobbed black hair, huge dark eyes, ruby rosebud mouth. She wore a gown of ruffled white silk, possibly to lend a touch of colour to her pale skin. She was beautiful, in an eerie, threatening, and utterly disturbing way.
"Sorry to bother you, Molly," I said when it became clear the charming smile wasn’t having any effect. "I need to talk to you. About the new rogue Drood, Edwin. I know something about him that I think you need to know. May I come in? It is rather urgent."
She thought about it for a long moment, studying me with her dark unblinking eyes, but finally nodded and stepped back, opening the door just a little wider. I squeezed in past her, and she immediately shut the door behind us and locked it. I barely noticed. I was standing in a vast forest glade, with my mouth hanging open. I didn’t know what I’d expected to find behind the facade, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. Molly lived in style.
Towering trees surrounded me on every side, heavy with summer foliage. The clearing rose and fell in grassy mounds, and a nearby waterfall tumbled down a jagged rock face into a wide crystal clear pool. Out among the trees, deer watched solemnly from a safe distance, while birds sang sweetly and heavy shafts of golden sunlight dropped down through the overhead canopy. Dappled shadows gave the clearing a drowsy, cosy feel, and the air was thick with the rich damp and earthy smell of woodland.
Molly ignored me, walking among a small stand of trees. She talked to them in a soft whispered language I’d never heard before, and I swear they bowed down their heads to listen. Wide-eyed deer came forward to nuzzle her with their soft mouths, and she rubbed their muzzles with gentle hands. A russet squirrel dropped out of the overhead branches to land lightly on her shoulder. It chattered urgently in her ear, and then looked straight at me.
"Hey, Molly," it said. "Who’s the rube? New boyfriend? About time; you get really moody when you’re not getting your ashes hauled regularly."
"Not now, dear," Molly said indulgently. "Run along and play while I speak to the nice man. And don’t eavesdrop or I’ll do something unpleasant to your nuts."
The squirrel pulled a face at her and leapt back up into the safety of the trees. Molly came unhurriedly back to stand before me, beside the pool. I decided not to ask about the talking squirrel. I didn’t want to get sidetracked into what promised to be a very long story.
"Talk to me, Shaman Bond," Molly said. "Tell me this thing you know. And it had better be good, or there’ll be another cute little talking animal in my garden paradise."
"It’s about Edwin Drood," I said. "The new rogue. He’s in real trouble. Outlawed by his family, forsaken by his friends, all alone and on the run. He has been given good reason to doubt his family, or at least some part of it, and he wants to know the truth. He believes you can tell him things that others couldn’t, or wouldn’t. In return for your help, he’s prepared to offer you the one thing you want more than his head on a spike: a chance to bring down the whole corrupt Drood family."
"Works for me," Molly said easily. She sat down on the edge of the pool and trailed her fingers lazily through the lily-pad-covered waters. Fish came to nibble at her fingertips. I stayed on my feet. I would have felt too vulnerable sitting. Molly looked up at me with her dark, thoughtful eyes. "Where do you fit into this, Shaman? This is way out of your usual league. Why should I believe you when you say these things?"