adventures

Having 'a look at the enemy' was frighteningly easy, as it turned out. From the topmost battlement
of the topmost tower of the castle, Bernice and her friends gazed out over the Kingdom, and
saw a huge black line on the horizon.
The King raised a spyglass to his eye and exclaimed. 'By all my horses and all my men! There
are –'
'Many, many millions of them,' Bernice finished. 'Enough to overwhelm the entire Kingdom. If
that's what they want to do.' She glanced at Wolsey. 'That's the biggest audience we'll ever see.'
'But how can we hope to stop them?' Prince Charming wrung his hands together. 'I should take
my cavalry and –'
'Absolutely not,' said Bernice. 'That would be sheer folly. And considering the state of your cavalry,
not even magnificent folly. No, we need to find out what's caused this to happen. Why the
genie was so aggressive. What the purpose of the lamp was. Why the caves where it was hidden
were so very un-panto.' She stopped, and pointed at the Vizier. 'You're our lamp expert. You said
that you had a plinth put aside for it. Where is that, exactly?'
'Well where do you think it is?' the Vizier snapped. 'Where else would I put a lamp? In the
master bedroom that the King here has reserved for his daughter and her future husband, of
course!'
The King was nodding along with him. 'Where else would you put an ancient and mysterious
lamp?'
Bernice turned to Wolsey and the dwarves. 'Now, can you spot the single flaw in this argument?'
The master bedroom was decorated in an extraordinary style. As the Vizier had mentioned, the
plinth was, indeed, situated between a shelf of china cats and the picture of the crying boy. Bernice
and her party approached the plinth, while Prince Charming looked uncomfortable. 'I don't
know how this is going to help us win the war,' he muttered.
Wolsey popped a claw and idly scratched his chin with it. The Prince fell silent.
Bernice automatically dropped to one knee in front of the plinth. The thing was at the focus of
the whole room, the kind of object that, in archaeological terms, added up to spear traps and
falling weights. It was made of the same, rather battered, material as the lamp. There was an
indentation in its surface that was exactly the shape of the lamp's base. It so cried out 'Put lamp
here' that there ought to have been a sign to that effect. She gently rested her fingertips on the
top of the plinth, estimated how much the lamp had weighed, and pressed.
A moment of dislocation.
Nothing.
And then everything was back as it had been.
Except the room was rolling, and everybody was staggering to and fro.
'Terrible things!' Lazy was screaming.
Candy was huddled in a corner, clutching her breasts.
Wolsey was in a foetal position on the bed, shivering.
Bernice stepped up and away from the plinth, and shouted that she wasn't going to do it again,
that everything was fine. She remembered a timeless time during the blankness, a little moment
of fizzing haze, like she'd experienced when making those jumps between stage and audience.
She went to Wolsey.
He opened his eyes, and was almost glaring at her with his bravery. 'You . . . were correct.' He
hissed from clenched teeth. 'I am a thoughtless thing. I function as if in a dream, propelled here
and there by instinct and base desire. When I return to my usual form, I shall lose . . . all this. I
shall lose . . . the Wolsey I am. It is worse than death.' He suddenly roared and sprang up into a
standing position. 'Never! I will fall in this war if this is the victory we aim to achieve!'
Bernice took him in her arms. 'You're loved, Wols. In your other form. I take care of you. You
feel that emotion, I'm certain.'
After a moment, his stiff muscles relaxed in her embrace. 'I cannot do it,' he said. 'I cannot go
back to that.'
Bernice looked around the others. They all seemed deeply shaken. 'Did you all see?' she asked.