Breather!
Finally we can rest. And there’s Wi-Fi here! I can’t believe our good luck. Timmy has informed me that ‘Fortune is smiling upon us.’
Hmm.
So we arrived in this weird other dimension, whose name we can’t pronounce, late Friday night (or early Saturday morning) and quickly realised that we weren’t anywhere near where the Hunchmen have taken Clyde. Our guide Sqknnnnnwg, who we met shortly afterwards, said we probably didn’t let the music play for long enough before we stepped through the doorway (which was bright and purple and flashy and pretty darn cool). Where you end up when you arrive depends on the duration of the music.
Anyway. We materialised in a blue field, with no landmarks for miles, although luckily we could see pretty well because this world has SIX MOONS.
Yes. Which means that it’s bright as you like during the day, and not much dimmer at night. Everyone wears sunglasses to bed.
The second thing we realised when we arrived (the first being “we’re not supposed to be here”) was that although we had come through the gateway, none of our stuff had. So we were in a field, in an alien universe, with no stuff. Not even the Vimto. I started to panic, I’m not ashamed to admit, but Timmy kept a cool head and immediately said ‘let’s go this way’. There was no reason that we should be going that way, but Timmy said it and I agreed, because there was nothing else to do.
After a while we came across Sqknnnnnwg, whose species, the Numkumberbumpwins, are indigenous to this world. He looks kind of like one of those trolls you used to get with the brightly coloured hair, except fatter and covered in brown jam. He doesn’t speak much English, just enough to get by. Apparently he visited our world once, and is not keen to return. Timmy eventually worked out that he’d visited Scunthorpe, which explains why he didn’t want to come back.
He knew of the Hunchmen, but not of Clyde. He explained that he was a farmer, but that a mysterious plague had killed all of his livestock. It was the same all the way across the country (it’s a really, really, really big country, by the way, hence us walking pretty much solidly for five days). He’s been trying to make a living harvesting the slime that occasionally pops up from blisters beneath the blue grass in the fields, but nobody really wants it because it’s useless. So he was just wandering around and happened to find us, and we explained our predicament and he made some calls.
When I say calls, I mean literally. He has a kind of a mouth organ / trumpet contraption which he uses to shout to people far away. They pick up on the specific frequency of his call and then reply. After a lot of really tuneless shouting he managed to tell us that the Hunchmen took Clyde to The Dark Citadel, home of some extremely evil, extremely mysterious creatures that no-one really knows anything about. Nobody goes near them, and I was fully expecting Sqknnnnnwg to tell us to hop it, but he’s pretty happy go lucky, and said he was bored.
So he helped us gather some supplies, and we started to walk. Miles and miles of blue fields. Blue trees as tall as the sky. Weird blisters that pop when you walk on them, covering your shoes in a purple gunk which smells like brown sauce. And occasionally a six-trunked elephant so big I couldn’t see its top. They just amble around the place not doing very much. Every now and then they crush a village.
Timmy loves it here. I can’t wait to go home.
A couple of times we came across bandits, other members of Sqknnnnnwg’s species who’ve taken up lives of crime. Each time, Sqknnnnnwg fought them off, not with weapons but with a technique he calls Psy Expulsion. Basically, it’s a hallucinogenic burp. He burps in their faces, and something in the expelled air gets into their brains and makes them hallucinate wildly, giving us time to run away.
Timmy loves Sqknnnnnwg. He’s starting to grow on me, to be honest, although he has accidentally burped in my face a couple of times. The first time I thought I was being eaten alive by shoes. The second time was so terrifying I’ve actually repressed it. I don’t have a clue what happened. I’m sure it’ll come back to haunt me.
So nearly five days of walking, with the occasional stop for food and to try and find Wi-Fi. Patches of Wi-Fi just occur naturally in this world, and they’re the only concrete (for want of a better word) link back to our world. This is the first time we’ve been able to stop for long enough to do a proper blog post. I’m using Sqknnnnnwg’s computer, which is kind of like a toy piano and a typewriter that have had an accident and become fused together. It’s quite hard to use.
So that’s the story so far. We’re doing OK, although I spent most of the time being terrified for my life. Even when there’s nothing there.
Don’t worry, Clyde.
We’re coming for you…
Hold on…
What was that noise…
