The Great Troll War

Epilogue

‘How can you be sure what happened to Jennifer right at the end?’ asked Tiger as he finished reading my typewritten notes. ‘Especially as no one really knows whether the Mysterious X was real, or just a few orphaned good ideas in need of a hypothesis.’

‘I can’t,’ I replied, ‘but we are all agreed that Shandar and his tower were utterly destroyed. Astronomers have noted a disturbance in the orbit of Ganymede, as though a large chunk was blown out of it – and two comets were ejected from the conflagration, fast and dense enough to easily overcome Jupiter’s gravitational pull and accelerate off out of the solar system.’

We were speaking at a small café in the main square in Hereford. Most of the damage inflicted by the Troll invasion had been repaired by now, but even so, two years on, there were still blackened façades and boarded-up buildings. The plinth next to the old Black and White house now carried a bronze of Jennifer and was surrounded, as usual, by fresh floral tributes. Her effigy was simple, rather than heroic. Lifesize, with Jennifer leaning on Exhorbitus, the Quarkbeast by her side.

‘She triumphed, that much is clear,’ I said. ‘The galaxy is safe.’

‘I sincerely hope so,’ said Tiger, ‘but again: how can you be so sure any of this happened as you say it did?’

I didn’t know at first, either. The ideas just popped into my head, the same way they did when I was asked to think up something ‘big and bold’ for Jennifer upstairs at the Globe, the only time I met her. I needed to know more, and on a hunch I drove to Leominster, and after a lot of exploring found what I was looking for: a small cottage with an apple tree in the garden and a wisteria on the gable, the paddock leading down to the stream. There was only one way I could have known that: the ideas had not been mine. John and Lynda Assett were polite and cordial, proud of their daughters, but didn’t want their identities revealed. Humility runs in their family.

‘It just rings true,’ I said, ‘don’t you agree?’

‘I do,’ said Tiger, ‘every word.’

I wasn’t guided to write everything, though – only the part in the Chrysler Building. The rest I pieced together from a multitude of sources over two years, and speaking to the participants had often been a humbling experience. Jennifer had inspired those around her to a sense of higher account – no one embellished anything, or made her more heroic and selfless than she was. There was really no need. I’d asked Once Magnificent Boo what she had thought the Mysterious X actually was, and she told me that maybe something, somewhere, keeps a careful eye on potential usurpers, and works in mysterious ways to defeat them. I think I understood what she was talking about.

‘Did you hear Lady Mawgon became court mystician?’ asked Tiger.

‘A wise choice,’ I said, ‘and Colin is leading a delegation to ensure the newly formed United Kingdoms are more closely aligned with Europe.’

‘He’s a good negotiator,’ said Tiger, ‘even if he does have a silly sense of humour. The coronation was quite something, wasn’t it?’

Tiger was being ironic. There was no huge coronation, just a five-minute ceremony. The Queen’s low-key approach to her new-found status was well received in the islands, along with her decision to transfer power to a representative democracy within twenty years.

‘It might be the first and only time an all-powerful leader divested themselves of limitless power,’ said Tiger. ‘A pointer for tyrants and dictators everywhere.’

There was a pause. Tiger had been invaluable in giving me the basics of the story as he had known Jennifer the best, and had established himself as the go-to person for any Jennifer Strange consultations. Without Tiger’s say-so The Last Dragonslayer Chronicles would not be simply unpublishable, they’d be dead in the water. Tiger had invoked Jennifer’s spirit in his decision:

Get it right or don’t do it at all.

‘I say go for it,’ he said, handing me back my outline notes – four books, each dealing with a different part of her story. ‘I can’t see how else this should be told.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, placing the sheaf of papers in my bag. ‘What’s with the Quarkbeast?’

I had noticed the small creature when I arrived, sitting on Tiger’s foot and eating the copper windings from a starter motor. It was about the size of a guinea-pig and had markings like those of a silver birch.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there is trouble brewing up ahead. Legend says the Quarkbeast appears to those in need of assistance, but I think I’ve got some time. It won’t be fully grown until I am almost ninety.’

‘About the same time the twin comets from the Wizidrical Criticality return,’ I mused, as astronomers had already tracked their journey, and seen hundreds of smaller comets break from the two and streak off in all directions. They would be visiting new worlds, outside ours, as if on a journey of discovery. The smaller comets would never return, but the larger two would. Officially, they were known to science as B769-D; unofficially as ‘The Two Sisters’.

I finished my coffee and stood up.

‘There’s just one more thing I need to run by you.’

‘Is it about the Queen’s skin rashes?’ asked Tiger. ‘I think you should leave that bit in, no matter what she says.’

‘I have – no, it’s just that I wanted to tell the story from Jennifer’s viewpoint. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know the first thing about writing,’ said Tiger with a shrug. ‘It’s whatever makes the best story, I guess.’

I screwed the top on my pen and closed my notebook. All I had to do now was to sit down and write it.

‘It’s decided, then,’ I said, with some relief. ‘I’ll tell her story using a first-person narrative.’

So I did.

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