(A novel about Slugs falling in love and killing each other but not necessarily in that order) By Mike Batt

Chapter Seven: Some More Things Happen

Dotty and Nige were worried. They had not been present at the battle, preferring to fly briefly back home after the jelly baby drop and feed the cat, Euphoria. They knew that Elsie would have been feeding Euphoria, but they still felt that they should pop back to make sure everything was alright. Another important reason why they needed to visit their home was that Nigel's underwater onion peeler was being advertised in the Woodland Daily Trumpet and they wanted to buy a copy so that they could see their advertisement.

"Onions without tears, the best thing in years!" read the heavy type at the top of the advertisement. Nigel was not only a genius, but more than that, - a talented advertising copy writer as well. At least, Nigel thought so. They bought sixteen copies to send to their friends. They left the offices of the Woodland Daily Trumpet and flew straight to the tree house. The Large Disused Owl was pleased to see them, but said nothing. They just knew he was.

Euphoria was ecstatic to see them, because since the departure of Little Else, she had not been fed - a matter of three days. She had survived by raiding the fridge.

The reason Dotty and Nigel were worried was of course that Elsie was gone, and had taken Nigel's helicopter. They had no idea why she would have just left like that, - they did not know that she had taught herself to pilot it, or that she had quite happily flown off with the piano-elf on a perfectly pleasant mission. More ominously, they did not know that she had been ambushed by pigfrogs, along with Ergo, and was probably dead or at least feeling sick.

They rang everybody they could think of, but no luck. This didn't take long because they couldn't think of many people to ring. The kettle, having been put on by Elsie before she left, was about half boiled, so they knew she had been gone about half a week, (unless she had popped back after a day or two to put the kettle on, or put it on a long time before she left). Dotty, being Elsie's sister, was just a bit more worried than Nigel. But then it was Nigel's helicopter, so perhaps they were both worried by about the same amount. Possibly Dotty slightly, slightly more. There wasn't a lot in it, to be honest.

"I know! We'll call Ergo on his field telephone. He'll know what to do! Hip, Hip, Hooray!" shouted Dotty. So they did. But it rang and rang, and nobody answered.

"Strange", said Dotty. "he must be away from it. I'll try it later".

Nigel burst into tears.

"Mr Farnsbarnes! Do grow up!" said Dotty. But she knew how he felt.

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Ergo had three headaches. One from the piano falling on his head, one from fainting, and one from being "arrested" by the pigfrogs,- which had probably involved a short, sharp blow to the anterior cranium. Well, at least he wasn't, you know ..dead. He looked around him as he awoke for the second time that day, in a groggy condition. There was one window, - quite big, actually, for a prison. He presumed he was in a prison. The window was more French window sized, with bars, and you could look out across a kind of courtyard area which dropped away from the window and also rose high above the window. His impression was that he was in one of several cells which looked out onto this dark pit of a courtyard. Dark, that was, except for a clean shaft of light which cut the darkness from very high above, where he presumed the deep pothole shaft gave way to fresh air.

But what of Little Elsie? And the piano elf? Had they survived the ambush? What if they hadn't? What if the pigfrogs had just squashed them, but kept Ergo for questioning or ransom or something? All the possibilities went through his mind in a split second - and none of them were pleasant. Ergo was thoroughly miserable. He wished he had never left home, never met the Farnsbarneses, never met Elsie... hey, steady on! That wasn't true! He could never wish that. But he was, shall we say, not feeling Christmassy any more.

"Food for the prisoner in the condemned cell", came the muffled shout from one guard to another. There was a bang outside, and a jangle of keys. Ergo tensed up as a huge pigfrog jailer came lurching into the cell.

"'Ere you are, you slimy little weed" said the jailer, throwing down some disgusting looking muck on a square metal plate that looked like a TV dinner, - but not of course to Ergo, as they did not have television in Don't Be So Ridiculous Valley.

"Condemned cell!", said Ergo. "Is it really the condemned cell?"

"Certainly is, me little sluggy effort thingey!" said the jailer. "Plumbing's atrocious, there's damp half way up the walls, the stonework's all cracked. It's going to have to come down".

"Ah" said Ergo, somewhat relieved.

The jailer left the cell after giving Ergo a playful kick in the ribs, which didn't hurt because Ergo didn't have any. The food smelled so bad that Ergo thought he could feel a fourth headache coming on, until he realised it was only the third one getting worse.

What could he do? He would obviously try to escape, but how? And could he try to find out whether Else and the piano chappie were still alive? As he ruminated (which he hadn't done for quite a while) he heard a distant tinkling. A piano! Far away above, muffled and distant. It was pretty bad playing, he thought. Maybe the piano elf was teaching Elsie in another cell. Maybe everything was alright, - well, as alright as possible in the circumstances. He lay back and allowed himself some moments to listen to Elsie as he imagined, playing through her piano lesson.

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"Plink...plonkaplong..plinkety plong plong plong," went Ursula Moundrot's horrid fat pigfrog fingers, for it was she. She stabbed and jabbed without much finesse, as she herself would have been the first to admit, or with no finesse at all, as her husband would have said, had she asked him, which she hadn't.

"I thought you told me you could play one of those things", he moaned. "I wouldn't have got Quirkhardt to carry it up all those stairs if I'd known what a useless player you were. Well, yes, I would, - but I'd have got him to carry it back down again straight away, which I'll do tomorrow anyway. Up and down the twenty four flights of stairs for six weeks, just to start his punishment, and demoting him by one rank a week so that he gradually reaches the rank of lance corporal on the day he dies of exhaustion." The punishment had a nice, creative, satisfying sting to it. Gradual demotion, and then death. Haha! General Moundrot allowed the edges of his slobbering mouth to rise into the faintest hint of a smile.

"It does need tuning" said Ursula, oblivious to the fate of poor Captain, - (or was it Lieutenant now?) - Quirkhardt. "I'll get the workshops to give it a tweak this evening".

"Yes that'll make heaps of difference" said Moundrot, sarcastically.

"What about that slug thing you captured, Darling?" asked Ursula, idly.

"We need to find out some things from it. It'll squeal like a ... well, it'll squeal" said Moundrot. "We have ways of making them squeal".

"I didn't know slugs could squeal" said Ursula, beginning a rather unsure chromatic scale on the piano.

"Oh yes, they can - and this one will!" said Moundrot. "We'll just get you to play the piano to it! That'll do the trick, - it'll soon be begging us to stop!"

Ursula didn't get the joke. She pursed her lips and frowned in annoyance, but she didn't descend to his level. She was above all that.

There was a knock on the door.

"Enter!" The door opened and in fell Major Accuppa, the head of catering. He clicked his heels and saluted.

"Sir! The snack you ordered." Two minions trudged in with a trolley, upon which was an array of fine cheeses and fruits, several bottles of highly expensive brandy and a large chocolate cigar. Moundrot hated smoke and cigars but loved the idea of having one in his mouth, so he often had a chocolate one delivered with his evening snack. It had been the cigar smell coming down the ventilation shaft which had most annoyed him about the recent Slug attack, not so much the decimation of Third Battalion, although that was pretty annoying. It might even have been a long-held hatred of cigar smoke which had subconsciously driven him to excel at Christmas-spoiling as a young officer rising through the ranks of the pigfrog army.

Major Accuppa saluted and followed his two underlings out of the room. Ursula continued plinking. Moundrot looked up at the wet ceiling with its goo dripping comfortingly down the wall. Life wasn't so bad. He thought happily about the fun he was going to have being extraordinarily unpleasant to the slug prisoner in the morning. He began to feel almost generous. He might even make the nasty little elf prisoner give Ursula some more lessons on the piano. It was Christmas, after all.

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Elsie flew faster and faster, onwards and onwards until she came to the familiar town and the lovely, rolling hill that was Don't Be So Ridiculous Valley. She followed the Woodland Railway until it came out of the hill part of the Valley to the valley part of I Thought I Told You Not To Be So Ridiculous Valley, (which really was a valley, so that's alright) - where she spotted the Tree House from her position up in the clouds as she flew along. As she flew down, she thought about the lucky escape she had had, and worried about Ergo and the elf, - but mainly about Ergo. She wondered at how lucky she had been, - instinctively when danger threatened, - to have remembered that she was a fairy, and that she could fly! All by herself without any silly helicopter! Pah! Easy! And how she had ripped off her tweed jacket, revealing her wings, and how, still carrying the jacket, she had jumped into the air just as Moundrot had swung out at her, so that his fist had landed squarely on the jaw of his nearest junior non-commissioned officer, knocking him to the ground. She remembered with horror how she had seen them dragging Ergo and the elf away, and she wondered whether she would ever see them again. She had reasoned that it was better for her to escape to raise the alarm than to share the fate of her friends, even though she had felt guilty leaving them. She had flown back to the troop lines of the regrouped slug army, and had broken the terrible news to them.

"Gosh, how utterly, utterly crummy!" Arthur Monkberry had said.

"Let's set up camp", Sodge had suggested, "at least we can cook some CHEESE, PROCESSED, Slugs-For-The-Use-Of, and some more of that MILK, EVAPORATED, to cheer us up". So they pitched their tents and sprung open the hoods of their wheelieboards and settled sadly down for the night. Sodge had stayed up late and tried hard to think about what they might do to rescue their leader. Life without Ergo would be terribly...erm, different.

In the morning, Sodge, Arthur and Elsie agreed that Elsie would fly back to the Tree House. Knowing that Dotty and Nige were there, they had decided to ask them to help again, using the remaining helicopter - (Nigel's had been captured in the pigfrog ambush). It had been decided that any rescue attempt would best be coordinated by Sodge, from the front line, but using the additional airborne capabilities of Dotty, Nige and Little Else, - albeit with only one helicopter.

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As she alighted on the balcony, Else called out, "Cooeee, Dot, Cooeee, Nige!", but there was no reply. She walked into the main room, but it was empty. She walked a little further, but the place seemed deserted. She ventured a little further, into the bedroom, and there they were, sitting up in bed, putting the underwater onion peeler through a sea trial with a bowl of water resting on their knees. They had been so absorbed that they hadn't seen her come in.

"Little Else!" shouted Dot, jumping out of bed and running over to Elsie, spilling the water all over Nigel's lap.

"Aaagh! Blither!" shouted Nigel, temporarily infuriated.

"Elsie, Darling, what happened to you?" said Dotty.

"And where's my helicopter?" added Nigel.

"Mr Farnsbarnes! Elsie is more important than your helicopter! Don't worry, Elsie, you just relax and tell us where the Hell you have been!" said Dotty, kindly.

"Well, I was with this elf, and we had this piano...", began Else.

"Yes, go on..."

"You see, I had wanted to give Ergo a nice Christmas present of some piano lessons, and so I went to see an elf at the Don't Be So Ridiculous Valley Academy of Music, and we went with the helicopter up to pigfrog country and poor old Ergo got sort of accidentally hit on the head by the piano and then captured, and so did the elf, but the elf didn't get hit on the head by the piano, only Ergo did, and I managed to escape by remembering that I am a fairy and that I can fly without any silly helicopter... well, nice helicopter. And that's about it, here I am! And poor old Ergo's captured and it's all my fault."

Dotty looked at Nige and Nige looked at Dotty. They did believe it of course, because it was less silly than everything else that had happened,- but they were terribly upset to think of Ergo, either squashed or lying in some dark and miserable pothole of a pigfrog jail.

The phone rang. It was Sodge and Arthur.

"We're going to storm the place!" said Sodge.

"Ooh, that doesn't sound too bright" said Dotty. "You'll all be squashed".

"Well, have you got a better idea?" asked Sodge, huffilly.

"Nope" admitted Dotty, and the others agreed.

"Do you know that Ergo is definitely in there, and alive?" asked Nigel.

"Yes", said Sodge. "Last night one of our patrols was creeping past pigfrog command and heard a piano playing..."

"That doesn't prove anything", interrupted Elsie.

"No, wait a minute", continued Sodge, "the playing was very simple and clear, and was coming from a window slit, high up in the rock face of the North wall of pigfrog command. At first our patrol thought it was just somebody learning to play, - badly - until one of them noticed it was playing Morse code! And the Morse code said "E. R.G.O. A.N.D. E.L.F. A.R.E. A.L.I.V.E. A.N.D. H.A.V.I.N.G. A. H.O.R.R.I.D. T.I.M.E. B.U.T. W.E. E.X.P.E.C.T. A. R.I.G.H.T. G.O.O.D. S.Q.U.A.S.H.I.N.G. A.N.Y. M.O.M.E.N.T. N.O.W. P.L.E.A.S.E. H.E.L.P. ...E.R.G.O. I.S. I.N. J.A.I.L. B.L.O.C.K. F.O.U.R. A.N.D. I. A.M. I.N. M.O.U.N.D.R.O.T.S. R.O.O.M.S. T.E.A.C.H.I.N.G. T.H.I.S. F.A.T. O.L.D. P.I.G.F.R.O.G. T.O. P.L.A.Y. B.U.T. U.S.U.A.L.L.Y. I. A.M. I.N. C.E.L.L. B.L.O.C.K. F.I.V.E....L.O.V.E. F.R.O.M. T.H.E. E.L.F. B.Y.T.H.E.W.A.Y. M.Y. N.A.M.E. I.S. H.O.R.A.C.E."

Good old Horace The Elf had thought up a ripping wheeze - to use Ursula's piano lessons as a signal, and had written a special tune with a Morse code message in it, all on one note. He had taught it to Ursula so that she would play it even if he wasn't there any more. And, boy, did she play it! Over and over again, she was playing it, and the passing slug patrol had heard it!

"Hip, Hip, Hooray!" shouted Elsie, and the others agreed. Ergo was alive!

Then Else stopped and looked up at the ceiling, as if having another fantastic idea. Yes, here comes another one, she thought.

"I've got a better plan than storming the place!", she cried. "I'll dress up as a washerwoman and knock on their door and when they let me in, I'll find my way to Ergo's cell and give him my clothes and he can get out dressed up as me dressed up as the washerwoman. And then I'll put on some other clothes I'll have taken in, and make my escape dressed up as another washerwoman!"

There was a short pause as the others considered the idea.

The short pause was followed by a long pause.

"Why don't you just give Ergo the clothes you take in, and you stay in the ones you are wearing?" said Nigel.

"Oh, yes", said Elsie, "silly me".

"But why should they let a washerwoman in?" asked Sodge, still a distant voice on the field radio.

"Washerwomen always ge t into places" said Elsie, knowingly. I think it's a very good plan, even though I do say so myself".

They all agreed that Elsie was a very brave fairy even to think of the idea, let alone be willing to do it. Sodge agreed to wait three days before launching his offensive on the rock face of Pigfrog Command, to give Elsie a chance to carry out her plan.

Turn to Slugs Chapter 8