A Life Less Ordinary by Christopher Nuttall

Author:Christopher Nuttall [Nuttall, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FM Fantasy, FIC009010 FICTION / Fantasy / Contemporary, FIC009050 FICTION / Fantasy / Paranormal, FIC002000 FICTION / Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781908168337
Publisher: Elsewhen Press
Published: 2013-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“I want you to be clear on one point,” Master Revels said, the following morning. “While we’re on the Fairy Roads and in the Elfish Kingdom, you follow the rules I told you. Do you understand me?”

I nodded, mutely. My initial excitement at visiting another world, even the one belonging to the Elves, had faded overnight. I’d read a handful of books on the Elves and I knew that, even if we followed all the Rules, the visit could still go horribly wrong. The Elves made the touchiest human culture look weak and permissive. Even sleep hadn’t come easily and I’d had to resort to a Dreamless Sleep potion, which had knocked me out for several hours. Fiona had made a number of sarcastic comments over breakfast, reminding me that using potions to sleep was dangerous. Master Revels hadn’t commented.

“Good,” he said. He stood up and picked up his hat and coat. He’d ordered me to dress in my best, the finest clothes in the wardrobe I had inherited. I felt like a cross between a princess and a whore, even though I’d lost my breath when I looked at myself in the mirror. The Elves would probably not appreciate it, but I certainly did. The golden dress, the pair of glass slippers and the jewels hanging around my neck produced a stunning effect. I would never have dared to wear such an outfit in the mundane world. It was a walking invitation to a mugger. “Follow me.”

I’d expected him to lead me out of the door and onto the streets, but instead he led me downstairs and through a series of corridors I had never explored. The strange interior dimensions of the house - Master Revels had never explained just how large it was, or who had created it in the first place – concealed hundreds of miles of rooms and storage space, some holding artefacts and books that were long forgotten. I promised myself that when I succeeded him and the house was mine, I would map it out in my head, if that were possible. It sometimes seemed to me that the dimensions altered themselves when no one was looking. I had no idea how Master Revels and Fiona navigated themselves so perfectly. One could live in the house and never come out into the rest of the world, both worlds.

We passed through a portcullis and then a secured trapdoor, dropping down further into the lower dimensions, if they were the lower dimensions. I had a hazy idea that the house had been built into the magical world, with the building in the mundane world merely the gateway to the real building. Master Revels had promised to teach me how to construct my own buildings one day, but that required thought and careful planning. A single mistake could prove disastrous. He’d told me, probably remembering when I’d freed the slaves, about a group of magical thieves who had extended their own buildings so that they intersected the locations of other buildings, bypassing the wards in a single moment.

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