What Polly Did Next: Autumn (i)
What Polly Did Next
Summary: If Monstrous Regiment could be filed under “What Polly Did” this would fall under the remit of “What Polly Did Next” covering as it does the joys trials and tribulations of our eponymous heroine, picking up sometime in the year following the final paragraph of MR. Will contain Polly/Mal, but not yet. All you can hope for in this one is some confusing situations where people wake up not exactly where they expected to be.
Disclaimer: Polly and Mal belong to Sir Terry Pratchett. Author makes no claims of ownership in any way. No profit is being made from this work.
Part one, also known as Summer.
Autumn
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head;
Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that I said?
Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand;
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragments of a song,
Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over, were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair?
The Windmills of your Mind
Words & Music by Alan & Marilyn Bergman & Michel Legrand. Recorded by Dusty Springfield, 1969
~X~
“Oh, Go Bite Someone Already!!!”
As the raised voice of his Sergeant came bouncing down the corridor Corporal Ganzfield sighed and shook his head before returning his attention to the signal forms. Tuesday seemed to come round quicker every week.
It had been two months since the arrival of Corporal Maladict. Life at the fort had quickly woven the new troops into its routine. Mal had been sent on her first Patrol and returned with the vampire equivalent of sunburn and an open invitation to the guardroom’s Saturday night Cripple-Mr-Onion game. She’d sauntered off to take up the offer the very next weekend, Polly’s warning not to fleece them out of all their wages on her first visit echoing in her ears, and henceforth Tuesdays had become the bane of everyone’s existence.
The customary drinking that accompanied the Saturday night game meant the participants used the rest of the weekend to sleep off the associated hangover. This left Monday full of empty hours for Mal to develop the details of whatever crazy plan had been thought up in drink and Tuesdays had thus become the day of reckoning. Tuesdays, pre-Mal, had always been a quiet productive day when Sergeant Perks had rejoiced in processing and sending off the mess supplies for the week. Post-Mal they had become filled with the need to avoid an over excited vampire with a plan.
After a few of these plans produced near disasters Polly had started going along to the game night with the intention of nipping any ideas in the bud before they burgeoned into anything serious. So far her efforts were having minimal effect. If anything the plans were getting crazier and Corporal Ganzfield had developed a suspicion that the card players were spiking her drinks. So they had adjusted. As each Tuesday rolled round again the whole castle braved itself for the next outburst of inanity knowing they would at least have something to talk about over dinner and breakfast for the rest of the week. In general folks had come to accept it as a bearable side effect of having Maladict around.
But today’s outburst was odd; especially as Corporal Ganzfield knew their workload wasn’t even that heavy today. Though he hated to admit it, Sergeant Perks had some great ideas for increasing efficiency and since the Tuesday Madness had begun to penetrate even the upper levels of castle life Polly had shuffled her workload to allow for emergencies. With her gift of knowing when to delegate, revealed more and more since the vampire had been popping round with tempting invitations for mid morning breaks at a certain coffee shop that frequently ran into long lunches, there wasn’t even anything she was supposed to be doing today.
“Definitely surprising” mused Ganzfield, glancing up as Corporal Maladict stumbled past his door in a daze. But as one of the reasons he made such a good administrative clerk was his general lack of nosiness he put the problem to one side, returning to his forms.
~X~
Polly sat white faced, staring at the empty space where the vampire had stood. How had it come to this? She had only meant to fob off the corporal for a while. Time enough to allow her to take stock, to work out where their friendship was going. She hadn’t meant this. Dropping her head to the desk with a thud she swore under her breath. It was all the fault of that darn pothole in the road up from the town.
In truth Polly had been concerned for a while now, ever since she’d found herself missing Mal those two weeks she was out on patrol. She’d caught herself wondering how it was going up there on the mountain, whether Mal was making friends. The relief she’d felt when she saw the Corporal had come back somehow released, as though the expanse of sky above had lifted a weight from her shoulders was understandable. No, what worried her was her response to the smile Mal had thrown in her direction as the patrol came wandering through the outer gate dusty and tired, comrades all laughing together. That smile that had caused Polly’s heart to bound in her chest and warmth to flood through her entire body.
That had started her wondering and once she’d started she couldn’t stop. She knew they were friends, a friendship where Mal was still allowed to mock everyone and everything indiscriminately including Polly, invade Polly’s office whenever she felt the need to drag her away for an extended coffee break and generally disrupt her ordered yet miserable life. So far Polly wasn’t complaining. She knew there were boundaries. Mal’s mocking eyes kept her at arms length, and that was fine. But recently, she had begun to think there was something else going on. Mal’s attitude toward her had changed, become warmer. Was it really just an evolution of their friendship?
Thrall was a dirty word she wished she’d never heard of. Vampires were famed for it, even amongst Black Ribboners, revelling in the ability to get what they wanted without any effort. She’d avoided even considering the idea when it first came to mind, but the possibility was there. Mal was a vampire and vampires were coded to thrall. There was always the possibility that their friendship meant nothing at all, and that was a thought that brought something akin to pain and a tense clenching of her insides.
Not wanting to accuse anyone unjustly she’d been suppressing her worries for a while but things had come to a head last weekend when she’d stumbled over that damn pothole coming back from the pub and Mal, who had been walking beside her, had dropped quickly to her knees to check she was ok. Grasping the strong arm outstretched to lift her up Polly had looked up and it was what she’d seen that rippled through her mind now. The usually shielded eyes had softened into gentleness their mocking light dissolved into anxious warmth. Crouching there, the damp from the pavement creeping into her breeches Polly had felt a familiar cold fear clutch at her heart.
“I’m fine thank you Corporal.” She had withdrawn her arm abruptly and clambered to her feet alone.
Only someone who knew Mal as well as Polly did would have caught that flicker of confusion before the shield was raised once more. Slipping back into her comfortable mocking persona Mal had turned to the others, waiting somewhat impatiently for them to catch up and declaimed:
“Silly Sergeant slipped and stumbled,
Skulking home from sinful spot.
If silly Sergeant had been sober...”
Mal had waved her finger mockingly under Polly’s nose and the group, ever obedient, had responded with a chorus of tutting.
“Spinning Disc would not have stopped!”
She had then bowed graciously in response to their mocking applause and throwing an unreadable look over her shoulder at Polly she had linked arms with two of the gang and continued up the road.
Polly trailed behind them all the way into the castle and once there, as there was no explainable reason why she shouldn’t, she had joined the card game that had sprung up. Nothing untoward had happened for the rest of the night. Nothing at all. And yet now that she was paying attention every little nuance seemed to hold great significance. She had taken her usual position next to Mal. She never played but it was her custom to revel in mocking her neighbour’s cards and whisper a distracting commentary during quiet moments. That night something was different. Mal’s closeness had been awkward instead of comforting, Polly all too aware of a leg pressed up against hers under the table as they shifted around to squeeze in another player, the nudges coming from her left suddenly unwelcome. And when Mal had gone to refill their mugs and leant over the back of Polly’s chair to place them on the table Polly had had to suppress the urge to cringe away.
Mal never emerged from the Saturday night recovery period until late morning on Tuesday and over the two days grace she’d been given Polly had had plenty of time to think carefully on what it all might mean. So it was that when Mal had knocked politely at her open door, smiled when Polly had looked up and invited her to lunch, she’d said no.
Mal had blinked but accepted the change in routine. For all the army was boring sometimes in its habits there were occasions when unexpected hiccups demanded the full attention of the Supply Office. Not recently admittedly, but the possibility was there. Always ready to help the army in whatever it might require, Mal merely enquired if Polly was busy.
“Er, yeah.”
“No worries.” At some point a visit to Ankh Morpork had introduced the vampire to the vocabulary of Four-Ecks and she’d absorbed it like a sponge. “Do you want to grab lunch later?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
Ok, so Polly had got into the habit of taking coffee with Mal at Fouquets. And yes, they often ended up grabbing lunch at the same time. But did thatt mean she had to do it everyday? Mal shouldn’t expect her to be always free to help her polish her ridiculous plans. The army was paying her to work after all, not sit around in cafés discussing the meaning of life and the role of coffee in the universe!
Polly carefully didn’t thought about the current lack of paper demands in her in tray. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as Mal sighed, stepped over the threshold and leant in her most nonchalant attitude against the door frame.
“What’s up Pol?”
“Nothing.” Without looking up Polly reached for another file and opened it. It was a requisition form for stirrup leathers but she gave it her full attention Mal would take the hint.
“You should know I’ve got nothing planned for the rest of the morning and it’s been said I’m very good at settling in for the duration.” As Polly turned a page Mal added: “how long d’you reckon you can hold out for?”
The recipient of her question continued to pointedly ignore her. In the silence they could hear the rough tones of someone addressing the finer points of swordmanship with some useless specimens of humanity. Kettering was having fun again. Polly eventually put down the file, placing her hands deliberately on the neatly labelled folder.
“I was thinking maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time together.”
“Oh.” Mal broke a couple of laws of physics by appearing to relax even further. “Any specific reason as to why?”
Polly looked down, uselessly shuffling some paperwork. She muttered something into her forms.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“I said” Polly tried to find a better way to phrase it. “I said: I guess it’s a bit odd.”
“What is?”
“This!” Polly jerked an explanatory hand, the gesture encompassing the two of them.
“You taking a coffee break?” Mal’s brow quirked. “I don’t think I understand Polly. Even Ganzfield takes a carefully timed fifteen minutes at 10:35 and 3:20.”
“Not the Coffee!”
“What then?” Mal may have been trying to help but she was just increasing Polly’s frustration.
“You’re always around and stuff!”
That struck home, Mal blinked and took a step away from the doorframe.
“I’m always around?”
“You know. Coffee breaks, lunch, invites to drinks with the lads, all the card games. It just looks a bit odd Mal.”
“Odd?”
Yes. Odd.” Polly snuck a glance at the very very very calm vampire whose hands were slowly clenching and unclenching at her sides. There was a rather long and worrying silence before Mal finally spoke.
“I Was Trying To Be Friendly!”
“Well it came out weird!”
“Then I’m sorry!” They were both shouting now. “It was not my intention to freak you out by the judicial application of mere kindness!”
An echoing silence fell between them as they both processed what had been said. Then her gaze on the paperwork as if she knew if she met Mal’s eyes she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to the sticking point Polly asked simply “Did you Thrall me?”
“NO!” Her shout startled them both. Mal took a breath and started again.
“You don’t realise what you’re asking Polly.” She struggled to explain. “I don’t do that. Not on purpose. I just... Not that. Not for ages and never since I took the Ribbon. It’s like a human, well... to make you do something against you will, to make you want to do it, it’s... I just wouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” And Polly was, seeing now in Mal’s eyes an old hurt uncovered and scraped raw again by her unfeeling words.
“Sometimes yes, they do stuff. But it’s because they think I’ll like it - I don’t ask. I don’t ever want them to.”
“I just thought...”
“I can’t believe you would think that of me!” Mal came back at her then, anger kindling in place of her previous vulnerability. “Is that what you think I am, that I’m that kind of person?”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Yeah. You said.”
Mal had withdrawn somewhere Polly couldn’t reach. They had argued before, many many times, over Mal’s stupid idiotic crazy plans, over whether she should allow someone else to win at cards for once and at times long and exhaustively over whether they should have gateaeu or cheese for desert at Fouquets. And why hadn’t Polly remembered that before? Surely one didn’t argue with someone if one were in thrall to them. That gave her pause. Had she treated Mal fairly over this? Or just jumped to conclusions over a warming of her manner? Now was perhaps not the time to go into that however, Mal was still standing before her ice-cold, drawn up and furious. Now would be the time to apologise extensively, to back down and to do her best to soothe over the hurt she had unwittingly caused. But unfortunately Polly was a normal human being, not a saint of the first order (Saints in the Army having been Banned after one Joanne of Arcadia lost them the battle of Wounded Kneck) and the nagging feeling that she might have gone about this the wrong way translated into sulky annoyance. Thus it was that she heard with shock the words coming out of her mouth.
“If you’re going to be childish about it...”
“Childish?” Mal took breath. “So, it’s childish to think that perhaps my friends might trust me to control my baser instincts in their company? To realise that I would never do anything that might harm them?”
And that was when Polly had said the words that couldn’t be unsaid.
Left alone at her desk Polly dropped her head into her hands, cursing herself. She hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t meant it at all and would do anything to grab back the words that had flown out of her mouth. She couldn’t wipe the image from her mind of Mal’s white face, shock etched across those prominent cheekbones. The flash of pain screaming out to her across the room before Mal locked all emotion away and turned to step straight-backed out into the corridor, the door carefully closing behind her.
What had she done?
~X~
The sulks that followed were legendary. Over the next week a mountain of paperwork was processed through the Regimental Clerk’s office (Private Mahler found himself dispatched home when his leave application - languishing at the bottom of the pile for so long he’d forgotten sending it in himself - was processed and approved) and Mal found interesting new ways to get from one end of the castle to the other without passing by the supply clerks office.
It surprised Polly to find she missed the regular interruptions, apparently one could even get used to inane comments and distracted company should one be exposed to it for long enough. No matter. If one could get used to a thing, one could just as quickly get used to its absence.
She was staring out of an upper window at Mal drinking coffee dejectedly in the courtyard below when a cough at her shoulder caused her to jump six feet into the air and give out a maidenly scream. Spinning around she took in the sight of a tall menacing man all in black and relaxed, placing a calming hand over her wildly beating heart. It was only Sergeant Goldhawk. He withdrew his hands from the pockets of his long black coat (a known alumni from the Assassins School he had never come to understand the concept of uniform and no-one seemed willing to explain it to him) and stepped forward to join her in the window. She wondered for a moment if Mal would hire him to do away with her, and if so would he agree?
“You and the stuck-up corporal have had a bit of a divergence of opinion I understand?”
“Mwuh?” The look of astonished denial she shot at him was wasted as he seemed engrossed in the small figure sipping delicately far below.
“You weren’t at the game last night.” Polly had to give him that. “Plus it’s a small fort”
“We may have had a small disagreement over a personal matter. Nothing to disrupt the smooth passage of day to day life.”
“Well it’s bloody well disrupting mine.” He turned to her at last. “Make up for Pete’s sake; he won pretty much every game last night without you to distract him and Kettering for one wasn’t best pleased. There’ll be hell to pay if he carries on like this and you know it.”
He nodded at her and left, his piece said, his mind at peace once again. But after he’d gone she remained, gazing down into the now empty courtyard as she mused on his words. Goldhawk had the air of sizing you up in a way that said you could keep on being amusing as so far no-one had paid him enough to kill you, but should anyone come up with a reasonable offer you should really watch out for the very sharp blades you just knew he had secreted somewhere about his person. She liked him.
Having decided to be the bigger man (or abomination) Polly then had the problem of finding Mal. The castle wasn’t that big, but as she traipsed along one long empty corridor after another Polly found it was quite large enough to hide a reasonably sized vampire should said vampire not want to be found. She eventually caught up with the object of her search in the lower kitchens, empty at this hour, brewing up over the stove.
She may have been quiet in her entrance, but the figure lifted a head before she got halfway across the room.
“I’m not talking to you Polly. I thought even you’d have the brains to work that out by now.”
How did she do that? She hadn’t even turned round! But Polly wouldn’t allow herself to be distracted from her task no matter how unpleasant. She kept walking.
“Mal, listen to me for a minute please. I’m sorry. I was out of line to say what I said. I didn’t understand what I was asking and now that I get it I need you to know I would never have thought that about you. I know you’re not like that.” The stiff back was within reach now and she reached out a tentative hand. “I am sorry Mal. Really.”
The vampire must have known she was there surely, what with the heartbeat that Polly could hear pounding in her hears. But when Mal turned round she seemed shocked beyond bearing that Polly was so close, within arms reach. Her startled flinch and hurried step away hurt more than the cold rejection of her short statement of denial and Polly was left to look after her as she hurried away, the door slamming loud behind her in the empty silence.
That was that then. She’d ruined whatever friendship she’d had with the contradictory vampire over a stupid fear that she hadn’t even examined properly, preferring to put her intelligence to once side in order to listen to her emotions. Once again she’d acted on a whim and once again it had got her into trouble. There was nothing to do but stick her chin out and take it, she’d made her bed and now it seemed she had to lie on it alone. Damn and blast the vampire, it was enough to make a girl cry, even one who’d got a reputation as a hardboiled sergeant in the Borogravian Army. Polly sniffed quietly into her sleeve, wiped her eyes thoroughly and went back to work.
And so it went on. Polly got up, went to work, filled out a mountain of forms into the late evening and then went to bed. She didn’t see Mal and though it was a struggle she consoled herself with the fact that after a while the ache would lessen somewhat. Goldhawk gave her a look, but once the truth got round (from Mal) that some little pipsqueak of a dumb sergeant had tried to fiddle her way around an upstanding corporal of the Border Blues (Mal again) he looked on her with more kindness and saved the killing glares for a certain Corporal Maladict.
But it couldn’t last, and one night Polly was awoken by a disjointed frenzy of knocking at her door. When she managed to drag it open (ignoring the pain in her toe from an unfortunate collision with the desk) she found a wild eyed apparition quivering violently in the corridor.
“Do you think anything eats wasps?”
Polly stared.
“I was thinking, all the other insects are probably running around in constant fear of them but they’re only little, we squash them without even thinking, in fact I saw you swat one with a file only the other day, and I was thinking that somewhere there must be something that eats them, everything gets eaten at some point (or squashed with files) and Bob said that there was a tribe out in Howondaland that ate all kinds of weird stuff so maybe they eat wasps, but you’d probably have to remove the sting and that could be nasty if your hands slipped, and how would you catch them anyway? You’d need a wasp catching net or something…”
Mal ran down, a thought struggling to be heard over the sparkling fireworks currently occupying her brain. She frowned. “Why are you here, Polly?”
“This is my office Mal.”
“I know and it’s a very nice office, very nice indeed, though you do spend too much time here Polly, you should be out and about more, you’re always buried in paperwork with that paperworky frown on your face, scowling at forms. You shouldn’t frown so much Pol. You’ve got a lovely smile you know, and it does wonders for the aging of muscles in the face, smiling that is. Why all this frowning and you’ll be a wrinkled hag by the time you’re thirty. I guess that’s why I kept trying to drag you out to lunch, trying to get that smile back. I thought maybe a bit of fresh air would do you a power of good and of course you need feeding up, not that I was fattening you up for the eating, I mean we don’t do that anyway - fat in the blood ruins the flavour, nice bit of lean meat is what puts hairs on your chest, not that you need hairs on your chest.”
She paused, her train of through de-railed by unexpected engineering works. Polly was still taking in her appearance and so missed the chance to butt in with the questions that had begun to bubble up slowly through layers of sleep. Switching tracks to avoid the bus replacement service Mal tried again.
“Anyway, my point was, my point was, was something about how it’s late and you shouldn’t be working, you work too hard, seeing you here buried under all these files - it’s a damn waste Polly that’s what it is, a damn waste and surely you can’t begrudge me the idea that perhaps seeing as you’re stuck out here for the next million years you might not take too unkindly to someone attempting to make those years pass a smidgeon quicker through humorous conversation and ingenious plans. But evidently that didn’t quite work out the way I had planned and somewhere along the way some wires might have got a little crossed.”
Mall sighed. Polly blinked slowly. The hour was too late to even be early and she had understood exactly none of that. However, the cold striking up from the stone flags indicated that this was really happening; the vibrating abomination in the doorway not merely a horrible remnant of some dream.
“So anyway,” Mal continued, no indication of any possibility that she might run out of bright inconsequential chatter anytime soon. “I was talking it over with the boys and we decided that someone had been an unmitigated ass and that person was probably me and I should perhaps come and apologise and stop this silly infantile behaviour. But then there were little cups of this amazing coffee flavoured stuff (you should try it, it’s a taste explosion) and so we tried that and Goldhawk discovered that if you mixed it with espresso it made the little pink elephants turn blue and we had to leave Finchley behind cos he was in in-depth conversation with the statue outside the town hall...”
Corporal Robert (Bob) Finchley never could hold his drink, Polly thought sourly. A good lad by all definitions of the word, he’d been posted for being transparently honest and thus unable to overlook the repeated indiscretions of a Major’s son despite pressure from above. For some unknown reason Finchley had decided that Mal was just a gentlemanly rascal with a heart of gold beating somewhere beneath that smart blue jacket.
“...but Sergeant Goldhawk took me for a little walk and explained some things, (you know, he’s very persuasive when he’s got little blue elephants prompting him with the bigger words) and I got to thinking that what with all these crossed wires and everything I may have said some things I didn’t mean and yes you did say that, but perhaps you didn’t mean it either and I never meant it to be annoying and I can stop.”
She paused to take a badly needed breath.
“I’m not totally dependant on having lunch everyday, (it’s not even like vampires eat) and I need you to know I never meant to overstay my welcome. But you make it so hard and then there were the game nights and I thought maybe… but I didn’t mean… I would never do anything like that, not on purpose, I wouldn’t do that to you Pol, I think more of you than that, I would never...”
Her train of thought completely out of sight by now the vampire stared dazedly at the ceiling before dropping her gaze to the half dressed figure in front of her. “There were beans” she concluded and stood swaying, her face a mixture of confused incomprehension and hopeful appeal.
“Mal, how much coffee did you drink?”
“I don’t know…”
Mal’s eyes settled on her for a second before returning to the disjointed darting up and down the corridor. The cold was bringing on the shivers and the two forces working in opposition looked liable to tear her frame apart.
“There were beans” she reiterated as though this might explain everything. “Chocolate coated.”
“Oh Mal.” The girl was 200 years old. You’d think she’d be mature enough to look after herself by now. Polly toyed for a moment with the idea of shutting the door and crawling back into the warm nest she’d been so rudely dragged from. But then, the vampire did look chilled to the bone. She’d waited too long in her deliberations and in the midst of her shivering a question not yet answered to her satisfaction cropped up again in Mal’s pin-wheeling thoughts.
“Why are you here, Polly?”
“I told you, this is my office.”
“But it’s night time. At least I think it’s night time.” She frowned, puzzling out the conundrum of a rotating sun and spinning disc. “It was dark outside when they threw us out of Fouquet's. You shouldn’t be working at night Polly, you should take time off. You need to get your beauty sleep; you won't be pretty for your files if you don't get your full eight hours.”
Polly held up hand to stop the flow.
“You are absolutely correct; I shouldn’t be up at this time of night. However, unfortunately I am occasionally woken from deep refreshing slumber by vampires who don’t know when to say no to chocolate coated espresso beans.”
Mal swayed gently, the look of confusion had pitched its tent on her countenance and was now getting out the swing-ball set. Apparently Polly’s presence was still unexplained.
“I sleep here. I have a cot that folds up.” She looked down, embarrassed. “I didn’t want to make a fuss about accommodation ok?”
This was not when she wanted to have this conversation. Before her, Mal continued to twitch quietly, but in a listening manner, if it was possible to twitch so.
“Mal, much as I am enjoying this conversation,” (and that was no lie, after weeks of chilly silence it was heaven itself to have her blathering nonsense again, for all the cold striking up through the flags) “it’s the middle of the night and I - being human - need to sleep sometime.”
The twitch reformed itself around pleading eyes and she gave in. She couldn’t really leave the shivering vampire out in the cold could she? Sighing she stepped back to allow her entry.
“You can come in. But no chattering” she warned sternly. “Pacing I can ignore, but that chattering is almost certain to bring on a headache.”
Sliding back into the warm mound of blankets she curled up, determinedly ignoring the fact that there was a vampire not completely under control in her office. Drowsily she conceded that the light footfalls passing up and down were actually restful but fell into a deep sleep before she could examine why this was.
When she awoke it was still dark and Mal was sat on the floor, her back resting against the cot. At some point the vampire had obviously come to the end of her caffeine high and crashed out where she stood. Her shivering was causing the cot to shake.
“Mal?” The whisper drifted out into the darkness and was answered by silence. Eventually against the gloom Polly saw those tense shoulders lift on a deep intake of breath.
“About the thralling thing.”
It was a version of the vampire Polly hadn’t seen before, her head drooping between slumped shoulders, tired gaze watching thin hands clasping and re-clasping over and over in her lap.
“I guess I wanted one thing to be true. Just one thing.” The low voice went on, tinged with sadness. “Out of the all the lies, the religious madness, the masquerade and the stupid false patriotism, I just wanted one thing to be real.”
“It was real.” Poll slipped an arm out into the cold to place a hand reassuringly on the now trembling shoulders. “I promise you Mal, whatever this is, this stupid version of friendship whether built out of a desperate need for companionship at the butt end of the world or just because everyone needs a sarcastic vampire disrupting their life and you’re mine, it’s as real as the cracks in my boots that you appear to be unable to ignore.”
Mal sighed but said nothing further, her pose still scoring highly in “dejected vampire of the year” competitions. But after a moment Polly could feel the added resistance against her fingers as the woman leant back just a little into the hand gently kneading tight knots out of her neck.
“Are you planning to sit there all night?” With a wee touch of pragmatism they might get out of this without too much embarrassment to either party. “Cold stone isn’t going to do anything pleasant to that part of you our good friend Corporal Finchley persists in referring to as ‘the buns of steel’.”
There was no response. But after minute or two Mal shuffled up to perch on the edge of the bed. Polly rolled slightly to keep her in sight.
“Are you going back to yours?”
A shared yawn shook the fragile cot and when Polly blinked her eyes back into focus again she saw the vampire hovering at the end of the bed, awkward in the gloom. Shivers continued to wrack the narrow frame and Polly compared the outer chill striking at her nose to the warmth wrapped around the rest of her snuggled within the nest of blankets. She shifted over, implicitly giving permission but Mal still held back.
“As a friend Mal, I am offering you a warm place to sleep, unthralled and in full control of my faculties, albeit a little sleepy.”
“We’ve done it before,“ she added, her mind jumping back to that confusing time when they were all pretending to be someone else and she had first learnt how much she detested coffee. “You need to decide if you trust me.”
Mal lifted her eyes at last from their scrutiny of the rough blanket her fingers were cautiously picking at. Polly held her gaze without comment and it was Mal who eventually shrugged and broke the contact as she bent down to remove her treasured boots. Shifting around to enable both to fit on the narrow cot they ended up with Polly pressed against the back wall and Mal perched as gracefully as possible on the thin sliver of hard mattress remaining, unable to move without toppling over the edge. Settling down as best she could Polly wondered if perhaps this had been the best option of the evening, imagining Mal might lie awake, tense beside her. But obviously the beans had more than worn off and Mal’s breathing quickly deepened and lengthened until without any appearance of effort she was asleep.
Polly found it more difficult to drop off. She wasn’t used to sharing a bed, Nuggan law didn’t permit brothers and sisters to occupy the same sleeping space after their 8th birthday and with no sisters to warm her cot she’d got used to sleeping somewhat spread-eagled. Now she kept bumping up against bony outcroppings as she attempted to find a comfortable spot whilst retaining at least a smidgeon of space between her front and the back of the woman now quietly snoring beside her. Eventually however she managed to drop into uneasy slumber waking now and then as body parts came into close alignment.
She must have dipped into a deeper state of unconsciousness sometime toward the morning as when she did wake to full alertness she found she had thrown an arm over the waist in front of her and her nose was somehow snuggled into a the hollow where a neck meets a shoulder, with soft dark hair drifting into her eyes as she blinked them in confusion. Last night’s bony outcroppings didn’t seem as prominent in this position and as she relaxed back against her new hot water bottle she decided this must be the reason she had adopted it. Mal sighed and shifted slightly in her sleep to fit them together more comfortably.
It was at this point that the more sensible parts of Polly’s brain woke up, took a swift look around, had a short but succinct screaming fit and galvanised whatever limbs they could establish communication with. Never had any sergeant scrambled so quickly out of a cot. There may even have been flailing.
Standing shivering on the cold flags Polly watched as Mal rolled over, stretching out into the space she had just left. Muttering incomprehensibly the vampire felt around for a moment and then gathered the pillow into a warm embrace. Apparently satisfied by this replacement Mal sighed deeply and seemed to drop back into the depths of slumber.
Polly found that it was simply too early to process any of this and catching a glimpse of the clock over the mantelpiece thanked her lucky stars that the army was all about routine. Though she might chafe against the boring regularity of army life there were times it could be a beautiful rescue. Routine stated that now it was the time that she made her way across the castle to get breakfast before those louts from Company D (who were on night watch this week) came down and snaffled it all. Therefore to breakfast she would go. Pulling on chilled breeches and shrugging into a still rumpled shirt she tried not to notice that her gaze seemed unwilling to approach anywhere near the figure snoozing quietly on the cot that took up half the office. Buttoning up her jacket may have been made more difficult by fingers that still shook from an emotion as yet unrecognisable but the only thing on her mind was breakfast.
Definitely breakfast. Just because she took a last glimpse through the door before she silently drew it closed didn’t mean she was in any way thinking of the strange conundrum she’d left in her bed. She wondered if there’d be eggs.
The canteen was almost empty at this hour, the main population of the castle still either struggling to leave the warmth of their cots or impatiently awaiting the end of their duty shifts so they could get back to them. The walk through long empty corridors had helped her clear her head somewhat. It was perfectly normal after all, all animals huddle together for warmth against unseasonal conditions. Why, when Mister[1] had had her litter[2] in the Inn’s outhouses the kittens had slept all muddled up together in a heap, sometimes even on top of each other. Her thoughts skittered away from that image as not helpful at all and she was glad to see the distracting figure of one of those responsible for her current situation.
Unsurprisingly after his date with the town statue Corporal Bob Finchley was nowhere to be seen but allowed herself a private grin as she spotted Goldhawk slumped over his plate sipping delicately from a large steaming mug of tea. She dropped into the seat next to him and deposited her utensils onto the table with a loud clatter causing him to jump and swivel a baleful eye in her general direction. Ignoring him, she dug a spoon into the kitchen’s attempt on porridge and shovelled it on in. Goldhawk was therefore left to open the conversation with a “good morning” which she also ignored. He persevered. “Did the Corporal get to sleep eventually?”
“No thanks to you.” She pointed a porridge-y spoon in his general direction. “Next time you decide to get Mal to apologise could you please remove the blessed idiot from any chocolate coated espresso beans before the point of no return?”
“I’ll do my best.” Despite his fragile condition he manipulated an eyebrow to express the valid point that if certain Sergeants kept themselves from large-scale disruptive rows with specific Corporals this state of affairs would not have to occur again anyway. Unfortunately Polly was not at home to Mr Eyebrow today and merely gathered up the remains of her breakfast deciding that a quiet morning in her office was probably the best plan.
Entering the office she found Mal still asleep and skirting the cot carefully she set her tea down on the desk to set about that morning’s paperwork. Time passed, marked only by the quiet scratching of her pen and the sporadic sighs and rustling movements from a vampire dormant. Occasionally, as she placed a finished form in her out tray and reached for another Polly (released from the demands of high finance for a brief second) found her lips twitching into a fond smile. It was at one of these moments that Ganzfield came in and catching the tail end of her expression he swiftly drew his own face into a state of total blankness. She looked up.
“We’ll go over those accounts tomorrow Corporal, I’d like not to be disturbed today if that’s possible.”
“Yes Ma’am.” As he closed the door behind him Ganzfield breathed a sigh of relief that a) she hadn’t noticed his almost betrayal and b) his Tuesdays would once again be returned to him and he could finally get his colour coded wall chart rota of absolutely everything finished in peace.
Some time later, deep in the projected accounts for the next quarter Polly reached for one of the reference tomes dotted about the desk and in the process inadvertently knocked a ledger off the untidy surface onto the cot below. Drawing a startled breath she waited for an angry response from the occupant but there was nothing. However as she stood and reached over the huddled heap of blankets to retrieve her property she saw Mal had managed to drag one eye open. The drowsy gaze drifted over the shins that were all that was presented at vampiric eyelevel.
“Not those boots again Pol, they pain me. A sergeant should not be out classed in her footwear by a lowly corporal.” The force of her complaint was reduced somewhat by the yawn that broke in the middle.
“Go back to sleep Mal.” Ledger safely returned to the desk Polly bent over the cot again to pull the blanket more securely over its occupant. “I’ll bring you up some coffee later, but now I want you to sleep, ok?”
“Mmm, ok” and she snuggled back into the pillow closing her eyes once more. Polly made a note for the future about the compliance of vampires when half awake and returned to her paperwork with a smile.
Mal didn’t wake till the afternoon, just as Polly was brushing the last crumbs from her blue jacket. Goldhawk had sent Finchley with some lunch and an apology, Polly waving him away with a jerk of the head towards the mound of blankets. Seeing the vampire start to stir she’d grabbed a pen and when Mal sniffed, stretched luxuriously and opened her eyes it was to see Polly hard at work.
“Good Morning.”
“I think you’ll find it’s good afternoon instead.” Polly put down her pen, leaning back in her chair to get a better view. “How are we feeling today? Little bit less hyperactive?”
“I need a coffee.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but maybe you’d best have one anyway.” She jerked her head towards the implements laid out on the hearthstone. “Your stuff is over there.”
Climbing from the pit of blankets Mal sat for a moment on the edge of the cot, running fingers through her hair. It astounded Polly, though she refused to show it, that when the woman eventually stood up she was pristine again, no sign that she’d slept rough to be seen anywhere the creases of her clothes. Blasted vampires. As her pen moved across the ledger in front of her Polly watched the delicate process of making coffee as Mal crouched in before the small fire she’d had Ganzfield lay in her grate. The familiar hissing of the coffee machine filled the silence Polly felt no need to break. Sitting back on her heels as she sipped Mal didn’t look up to meet her eyes, then remembering some prior engagement she made her polite excuses and rose to leave. She paused on the way to the door however, standing quiet before Polly’s desk so that the sergeant was forced to look up.
“Are we good?”
“We’re good.” Polly flashed her a smile before bending her head once again to the ledger.
But once the door had closed quietly behind her visitor she put down her pen and the smile broke out again over her whole face as she sniffed with pleasure the scent of coffee once again lingering around her room.
~X~
[1] Don’t ask.
[2] Didn’t we just request you not to ask? Look, just take it from us and never allow a child under the age of 10 to name anything that could be one of two genders.[3]
[3] What is it with what we are swiftly coming to think is an unhealthy spirit of enquiry? Ok, OK. So maybe I should have checked the sex of the rabbit first. But I don’t see why this all has to be my fault![4]
[4] I’m not being defensive! It wasn’t my mother that suggested we get another one for company![5]
[5] Oh, and I suppose it’s my fault that your daughter is crying in her room now? Tell me, how else do you plan to get rid of them?[6]
[6] Well personally I don’t think it’s that much of a tragedy that Mrs Simpson at No. 42 isn’t speaking to us anymore [7] [8] [9]. I never liked that woman anyway.
[7] Or that rabble at No. 37.
[8] Or the Henderson’s. Yes I know they supposedly do the BBQ of the summer, but last year the chicken wasn’t cooked and I got a very black sausage so pardon me if I don’t think it’s then end of the world if they never invite us again.
[9] As to her over the back - it’s about time her kids had some responsibility and I can’t ask everyone who comes asking with a cardboard box if their parents are ok with a new pet can I?[10]
[10] FINE! I WILL!
Summary: If Monstrous Regiment could be filed under “What Polly Did” this would fall under the remit of “What Polly Did Next” covering as it does the joys trials and tribulations of our eponymous heroine, picking up sometime in the year following the final paragraph of MR. Will contain Polly/Mal, but not yet. All you can hope for in this one is some confusing situations where people wake up not exactly where they expected to be.
Disclaimer: Polly and Mal belong to Sir Terry Pratchett. Author makes no claims of ownership in any way. No profit is being made from this work.
Part one, also known as Summer.
Autumn
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head;
Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that I said?
Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand;
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragments of a song,
Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over, were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair?
The Windmills of your Mind
Words & Music by Alan & Marilyn Bergman & Michel Legrand. Recorded by Dusty Springfield, 1969
~X~
“Oh, Go Bite Someone Already!!!”
As the raised voice of his Sergeant came bouncing down the corridor Corporal Ganzfield sighed and shook his head before returning his attention to the signal forms. Tuesday seemed to come round quicker every week.
It had been two months since the arrival of Corporal Maladict. Life at the fort had quickly woven the new troops into its routine. Mal had been sent on her first Patrol and returned with the vampire equivalent of sunburn and an open invitation to the guardroom’s Saturday night Cripple-Mr-Onion game. She’d sauntered off to take up the offer the very next weekend, Polly’s warning not to fleece them out of all their wages on her first visit echoing in her ears, and henceforth Tuesdays had become the bane of everyone’s existence.
The customary drinking that accompanied the Saturday night game meant the participants used the rest of the weekend to sleep off the associated hangover. This left Monday full of empty hours for Mal to develop the details of whatever crazy plan had been thought up in drink and Tuesdays had thus become the day of reckoning. Tuesdays, pre-Mal, had always been a quiet productive day when Sergeant Perks had rejoiced in processing and sending off the mess supplies for the week. Post-Mal they had become filled with the need to avoid an over excited vampire with a plan.
After a few of these plans produced near disasters Polly had started going along to the game night with the intention of nipping any ideas in the bud before they burgeoned into anything serious. So far her efforts were having minimal effect. If anything the plans were getting crazier and Corporal Ganzfield had developed a suspicion that the card players were spiking her drinks. So they had adjusted. As each Tuesday rolled round again the whole castle braved itself for the next outburst of inanity knowing they would at least have something to talk about over dinner and breakfast for the rest of the week. In general folks had come to accept it as a bearable side effect of having Maladict around.
But today’s outburst was odd; especially as Corporal Ganzfield knew their workload wasn’t even that heavy today. Though he hated to admit it, Sergeant Perks had some great ideas for increasing efficiency and since the Tuesday Madness had begun to penetrate even the upper levels of castle life Polly had shuffled her workload to allow for emergencies. With her gift of knowing when to delegate, revealed more and more since the vampire had been popping round with tempting invitations for mid morning breaks at a certain coffee shop that frequently ran into long lunches, there wasn’t even anything she was supposed to be doing today.
“Definitely surprising” mused Ganzfield, glancing up as Corporal Maladict stumbled past his door in a daze. But as one of the reasons he made such a good administrative clerk was his general lack of nosiness he put the problem to one side, returning to his forms.
~X~
Polly sat white faced, staring at the empty space where the vampire had stood. How had it come to this? She had only meant to fob off the corporal for a while. Time enough to allow her to take stock, to work out where their friendship was going. She hadn’t meant this. Dropping her head to the desk with a thud she swore under her breath. It was all the fault of that darn pothole in the road up from the town.
In truth Polly had been concerned for a while now, ever since she’d found herself missing Mal those two weeks she was out on patrol. She’d caught herself wondering how it was going up there on the mountain, whether Mal was making friends. The relief she’d felt when she saw the Corporal had come back somehow released, as though the expanse of sky above had lifted a weight from her shoulders was understandable. No, what worried her was her response to the smile Mal had thrown in her direction as the patrol came wandering through the outer gate dusty and tired, comrades all laughing together. That smile that had caused Polly’s heart to bound in her chest and warmth to flood through her entire body.
That had started her wondering and once she’d started she couldn’t stop. She knew they were friends, a friendship where Mal was still allowed to mock everyone and everything indiscriminately including Polly, invade Polly’s office whenever she felt the need to drag her away for an extended coffee break and generally disrupt her ordered yet miserable life. So far Polly wasn’t complaining. She knew there were boundaries. Mal’s mocking eyes kept her at arms length, and that was fine. But recently, she had begun to think there was something else going on. Mal’s attitude toward her had changed, become warmer. Was it really just an evolution of their friendship?
Thrall was a dirty word she wished she’d never heard of. Vampires were famed for it, even amongst Black Ribboners, revelling in the ability to get what they wanted without any effort. She’d avoided even considering the idea when it first came to mind, but the possibility was there. Mal was a vampire and vampires were coded to thrall. There was always the possibility that their friendship meant nothing at all, and that was a thought that brought something akin to pain and a tense clenching of her insides.
Not wanting to accuse anyone unjustly she’d been suppressing her worries for a while but things had come to a head last weekend when she’d stumbled over that damn pothole coming back from the pub and Mal, who had been walking beside her, had dropped quickly to her knees to check she was ok. Grasping the strong arm outstretched to lift her up Polly had looked up and it was what she’d seen that rippled through her mind now. The usually shielded eyes had softened into gentleness their mocking light dissolved into anxious warmth. Crouching there, the damp from the pavement creeping into her breeches Polly had felt a familiar cold fear clutch at her heart.
“I’m fine thank you Corporal.” She had withdrawn her arm abruptly and clambered to her feet alone.
Only someone who knew Mal as well as Polly did would have caught that flicker of confusion before the shield was raised once more. Slipping back into her comfortable mocking persona Mal had turned to the others, waiting somewhat impatiently for them to catch up and declaimed:
“Silly Sergeant slipped and stumbled,
Skulking home from sinful spot.
If silly Sergeant had been sober...”
Mal had waved her finger mockingly under Polly’s nose and the group, ever obedient, had responded with a chorus of tutting.
“Spinning Disc would not have stopped!”
She had then bowed graciously in response to their mocking applause and throwing an unreadable look over her shoulder at Polly she had linked arms with two of the gang and continued up the road.
Polly trailed behind them all the way into the castle and once there, as there was no explainable reason why she shouldn’t, she had joined the card game that had sprung up. Nothing untoward had happened for the rest of the night. Nothing at all. And yet now that she was paying attention every little nuance seemed to hold great significance. She had taken her usual position next to Mal. She never played but it was her custom to revel in mocking her neighbour’s cards and whisper a distracting commentary during quiet moments. That night something was different. Mal’s closeness had been awkward instead of comforting, Polly all too aware of a leg pressed up against hers under the table as they shifted around to squeeze in another player, the nudges coming from her left suddenly unwelcome. And when Mal had gone to refill their mugs and leant over the back of Polly’s chair to place them on the table Polly had had to suppress the urge to cringe away.
Mal never emerged from the Saturday night recovery period until late morning on Tuesday and over the two days grace she’d been given Polly had had plenty of time to think carefully on what it all might mean. So it was that when Mal had knocked politely at her open door, smiled when Polly had looked up and invited her to lunch, she’d said no.
Mal had blinked but accepted the change in routine. For all the army was boring sometimes in its habits there were occasions when unexpected hiccups demanded the full attention of the Supply Office. Not recently admittedly, but the possibility was there. Always ready to help the army in whatever it might require, Mal merely enquired if Polly was busy.
“Er, yeah.”
“No worries.” At some point a visit to Ankh Morpork had introduced the vampire to the vocabulary of Four-Ecks and she’d absorbed it like a sponge. “Do you want to grab lunch later?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
Ok, so Polly had got into the habit of taking coffee with Mal at Fouquets. And yes, they often ended up grabbing lunch at the same time. But did thatt mean she had to do it everyday? Mal shouldn’t expect her to be always free to help her polish her ridiculous plans. The army was paying her to work after all, not sit around in cafés discussing the meaning of life and the role of coffee in the universe!
Polly carefully didn’t thought about the current lack of paper demands in her in tray. Out of the corner of her eye she watched as Mal sighed, stepped over the threshold and leant in her most nonchalant attitude against the door frame.
“What’s up Pol?”
“Nothing.” Without looking up Polly reached for another file and opened it. It was a requisition form for stirrup leathers but she gave it her full attention Mal would take the hint.
“You should know I’ve got nothing planned for the rest of the morning and it’s been said I’m very good at settling in for the duration.” As Polly turned a page Mal added: “how long d’you reckon you can hold out for?”
The recipient of her question continued to pointedly ignore her. In the silence they could hear the rough tones of someone addressing the finer points of swordmanship with some useless specimens of humanity. Kettering was having fun again. Polly eventually put down the file, placing her hands deliberately on the neatly labelled folder.
“I was thinking maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time together.”
“Oh.” Mal broke a couple of laws of physics by appearing to relax even further. “Any specific reason as to why?”
Polly looked down, uselessly shuffling some paperwork. She muttered something into her forms.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“I said” Polly tried to find a better way to phrase it. “I said: I guess it’s a bit odd.”
“What is?”
“This!” Polly jerked an explanatory hand, the gesture encompassing the two of them.
“You taking a coffee break?” Mal’s brow quirked. “I don’t think I understand Polly. Even Ganzfield takes a carefully timed fifteen minutes at 10:35 and 3:20.”
“Not the Coffee!”
“What then?” Mal may have been trying to help but she was just increasing Polly’s frustration.
“You’re always around and stuff!”
That struck home, Mal blinked and took a step away from the doorframe.
“I’m always around?”
“You know. Coffee breaks, lunch, invites to drinks with the lads, all the card games. It just looks a bit odd Mal.”
“Odd?”
Yes. Odd.” Polly snuck a glance at the very very very calm vampire whose hands were slowly clenching and unclenching at her sides. There was a rather long and worrying silence before Mal finally spoke.
“I Was Trying To Be Friendly!”
“Well it came out weird!”
“Then I’m sorry!” They were both shouting now. “It was not my intention to freak you out by the judicial application of mere kindness!”
An echoing silence fell between them as they both processed what had been said. Then her gaze on the paperwork as if she knew if she met Mal’s eyes she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to the sticking point Polly asked simply “Did you Thrall me?”
“NO!” Her shout startled them both. Mal took a breath and started again.
“You don’t realise what you’re asking Polly.” She struggled to explain. “I don’t do that. Not on purpose. I just... Not that. Not for ages and never since I took the Ribbon. It’s like a human, well... to make you do something against you will, to make you want to do it, it’s... I just wouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” And Polly was, seeing now in Mal’s eyes an old hurt uncovered and scraped raw again by her unfeeling words.
“Sometimes yes, they do stuff. But it’s because they think I’ll like it - I don’t ask. I don’t ever want them to.”
“I just thought...”
“I can’t believe you would think that of me!” Mal came back at her then, anger kindling in place of her previous vulnerability. “Is that what you think I am, that I’m that kind of person?”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Yeah. You said.”
Mal had withdrawn somewhere Polly couldn’t reach. They had argued before, many many times, over Mal’s stupid idiotic crazy plans, over whether she should allow someone else to win at cards for once and at times long and exhaustively over whether they should have gateaeu or cheese for desert at Fouquets. And why hadn’t Polly remembered that before? Surely one didn’t argue with someone if one were in thrall to them. That gave her pause. Had she treated Mal fairly over this? Or just jumped to conclusions over a warming of her manner? Now was perhaps not the time to go into that however, Mal was still standing before her ice-cold, drawn up and furious. Now would be the time to apologise extensively, to back down and to do her best to soothe over the hurt she had unwittingly caused. But unfortunately Polly was a normal human being, not a saint of the first order (Saints in the Army having been Banned after one Joanne of Arcadia lost them the battle of Wounded Kneck) and the nagging feeling that she might have gone about this the wrong way translated into sulky annoyance. Thus it was that she heard with shock the words coming out of her mouth.
“If you’re going to be childish about it...”
“Childish?” Mal took breath. “So, it’s childish to think that perhaps my friends might trust me to control my baser instincts in their company? To realise that I would never do anything that might harm them?”
And that was when Polly had said the words that couldn’t be unsaid.
Left alone at her desk Polly dropped her head into her hands, cursing herself. She hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t meant it at all and would do anything to grab back the words that had flown out of her mouth. She couldn’t wipe the image from her mind of Mal’s white face, shock etched across those prominent cheekbones. The flash of pain screaming out to her across the room before Mal locked all emotion away and turned to step straight-backed out into the corridor, the door carefully closing behind her.
What had she done?
~X~
The sulks that followed were legendary. Over the next week a mountain of paperwork was processed through the Regimental Clerk’s office (Private Mahler found himself dispatched home when his leave application - languishing at the bottom of the pile for so long he’d forgotten sending it in himself - was processed and approved) and Mal found interesting new ways to get from one end of the castle to the other without passing by the supply clerks office.
It surprised Polly to find she missed the regular interruptions, apparently one could even get used to inane comments and distracted company should one be exposed to it for long enough. No matter. If one could get used to a thing, one could just as quickly get used to its absence.
She was staring out of an upper window at Mal drinking coffee dejectedly in the courtyard below when a cough at her shoulder caused her to jump six feet into the air and give out a maidenly scream. Spinning around she took in the sight of a tall menacing man all in black and relaxed, placing a calming hand over her wildly beating heart. It was only Sergeant Goldhawk. He withdrew his hands from the pockets of his long black coat (a known alumni from the Assassins School he had never come to understand the concept of uniform and no-one seemed willing to explain it to him) and stepped forward to join her in the window. She wondered for a moment if Mal would hire him to do away with her, and if so would he agree?
“You and the stuck-up corporal have had a bit of a divergence of opinion I understand?”
“Mwuh?” The look of astonished denial she shot at him was wasted as he seemed engrossed in the small figure sipping delicately far below.
“You weren’t at the game last night.” Polly had to give him that. “Plus it’s a small fort”
“We may have had a small disagreement over a personal matter. Nothing to disrupt the smooth passage of day to day life.”
“Well it’s bloody well disrupting mine.” He turned to her at last. “Make up for Pete’s sake; he won pretty much every game last night without you to distract him and Kettering for one wasn’t best pleased. There’ll be hell to pay if he carries on like this and you know it.”
He nodded at her and left, his piece said, his mind at peace once again. But after he’d gone she remained, gazing down into the now empty courtyard as she mused on his words. Goldhawk had the air of sizing you up in a way that said you could keep on being amusing as so far no-one had paid him enough to kill you, but should anyone come up with a reasonable offer you should really watch out for the very sharp blades you just knew he had secreted somewhere about his person. She liked him.
Having decided to be the bigger man (or abomination) Polly then had the problem of finding Mal. The castle wasn’t that big, but as she traipsed along one long empty corridor after another Polly found it was quite large enough to hide a reasonably sized vampire should said vampire not want to be found. She eventually caught up with the object of her search in the lower kitchens, empty at this hour, brewing up over the stove.
She may have been quiet in her entrance, but the figure lifted a head before she got halfway across the room.
“I’m not talking to you Polly. I thought even you’d have the brains to work that out by now.”
How did she do that? She hadn’t even turned round! But Polly wouldn’t allow herself to be distracted from her task no matter how unpleasant. She kept walking.
“Mal, listen to me for a minute please. I’m sorry. I was out of line to say what I said. I didn’t understand what I was asking and now that I get it I need you to know I would never have thought that about you. I know you’re not like that.” The stiff back was within reach now and she reached out a tentative hand. “I am sorry Mal. Really.”
The vampire must have known she was there surely, what with the heartbeat that Polly could hear pounding in her hears. But when Mal turned round she seemed shocked beyond bearing that Polly was so close, within arms reach. Her startled flinch and hurried step away hurt more than the cold rejection of her short statement of denial and Polly was left to look after her as she hurried away, the door slamming loud behind her in the empty silence.
That was that then. She’d ruined whatever friendship she’d had with the contradictory vampire over a stupid fear that she hadn’t even examined properly, preferring to put her intelligence to once side in order to listen to her emotions. Once again she’d acted on a whim and once again it had got her into trouble. There was nothing to do but stick her chin out and take it, she’d made her bed and now it seemed she had to lie on it alone. Damn and blast the vampire, it was enough to make a girl cry, even one who’d got a reputation as a hardboiled sergeant in the Borogravian Army. Polly sniffed quietly into her sleeve, wiped her eyes thoroughly and went back to work.
And so it went on. Polly got up, went to work, filled out a mountain of forms into the late evening and then went to bed. She didn’t see Mal and though it was a struggle she consoled herself with the fact that after a while the ache would lessen somewhat. Goldhawk gave her a look, but once the truth got round (from Mal) that some little pipsqueak of a dumb sergeant had tried to fiddle her way around an upstanding corporal of the Border Blues (Mal again) he looked on her with more kindness and saved the killing glares for a certain Corporal Maladict.
But it couldn’t last, and one night Polly was awoken by a disjointed frenzy of knocking at her door. When she managed to drag it open (ignoring the pain in her toe from an unfortunate collision with the desk) she found a wild eyed apparition quivering violently in the corridor.
“Do you think anything eats wasps?”
Polly stared.
“I was thinking, all the other insects are probably running around in constant fear of them but they’re only little, we squash them without even thinking, in fact I saw you swat one with a file only the other day, and I was thinking that somewhere there must be something that eats them, everything gets eaten at some point (or squashed with files) and Bob said that there was a tribe out in Howondaland that ate all kinds of weird stuff so maybe they eat wasps, but you’d probably have to remove the sting and that could be nasty if your hands slipped, and how would you catch them anyway? You’d need a wasp catching net or something…”
Mal ran down, a thought struggling to be heard over the sparkling fireworks currently occupying her brain. She frowned. “Why are you here, Polly?”
“This is my office Mal.”
“I know and it’s a very nice office, very nice indeed, though you do spend too much time here Polly, you should be out and about more, you’re always buried in paperwork with that paperworky frown on your face, scowling at forms. You shouldn’t frown so much Pol. You’ve got a lovely smile you know, and it does wonders for the aging of muscles in the face, smiling that is. Why all this frowning and you’ll be a wrinkled hag by the time you’re thirty. I guess that’s why I kept trying to drag you out to lunch, trying to get that smile back. I thought maybe a bit of fresh air would do you a power of good and of course you need feeding up, not that I was fattening you up for the eating, I mean we don’t do that anyway - fat in the blood ruins the flavour, nice bit of lean meat is what puts hairs on your chest, not that you need hairs on your chest.”
She paused, her train of through de-railed by unexpected engineering works. Polly was still taking in her appearance and so missed the chance to butt in with the questions that had begun to bubble up slowly through layers of sleep. Switching tracks to avoid the bus replacement service Mal tried again.
“Anyway, my point was, my point was, was something about how it’s late and you shouldn’t be working, you work too hard, seeing you here buried under all these files - it’s a damn waste Polly that’s what it is, a damn waste and surely you can’t begrudge me the idea that perhaps seeing as you’re stuck out here for the next million years you might not take too unkindly to someone attempting to make those years pass a smidgeon quicker through humorous conversation and ingenious plans. But evidently that didn’t quite work out the way I had planned and somewhere along the way some wires might have got a little crossed.”
Mall sighed. Polly blinked slowly. The hour was too late to even be early and she had understood exactly none of that. However, the cold striking up from the stone flags indicated that this was really happening; the vibrating abomination in the doorway not merely a horrible remnant of some dream.
“So anyway,” Mal continued, no indication of any possibility that she might run out of bright inconsequential chatter anytime soon. “I was talking it over with the boys and we decided that someone had been an unmitigated ass and that person was probably me and I should perhaps come and apologise and stop this silly infantile behaviour. But then there were little cups of this amazing coffee flavoured stuff (you should try it, it’s a taste explosion) and so we tried that and Goldhawk discovered that if you mixed it with espresso it made the little pink elephants turn blue and we had to leave Finchley behind cos he was in in-depth conversation with the statue outside the town hall...”
Corporal Robert (Bob) Finchley never could hold his drink, Polly thought sourly. A good lad by all definitions of the word, he’d been posted for being transparently honest and thus unable to overlook the repeated indiscretions of a Major’s son despite pressure from above. For some unknown reason Finchley had decided that Mal was just a gentlemanly rascal with a heart of gold beating somewhere beneath that smart blue jacket.
“...but Sergeant Goldhawk took me for a little walk and explained some things, (you know, he’s very persuasive when he’s got little blue elephants prompting him with the bigger words) and I got to thinking that what with all these crossed wires and everything I may have said some things I didn’t mean and yes you did say that, but perhaps you didn’t mean it either and I never meant it to be annoying and I can stop.”
She paused to take a badly needed breath.
“I’m not totally dependant on having lunch everyday, (it’s not even like vampires eat) and I need you to know I never meant to overstay my welcome. But you make it so hard and then there were the game nights and I thought maybe… but I didn’t mean… I would never do anything like that, not on purpose, I wouldn’t do that to you Pol, I think more of you than that, I would never...”
Her train of thought completely out of sight by now the vampire stared dazedly at the ceiling before dropping her gaze to the half dressed figure in front of her. “There were beans” she concluded and stood swaying, her face a mixture of confused incomprehension and hopeful appeal.
“Mal, how much coffee did you drink?”
“I don’t know…”
Mal’s eyes settled on her for a second before returning to the disjointed darting up and down the corridor. The cold was bringing on the shivers and the two forces working in opposition looked liable to tear her frame apart.
“There were beans” she reiterated as though this might explain everything. “Chocolate coated.”
“Oh Mal.” The girl was 200 years old. You’d think she’d be mature enough to look after herself by now. Polly toyed for a moment with the idea of shutting the door and crawling back into the warm nest she’d been so rudely dragged from. But then, the vampire did look chilled to the bone. She’d waited too long in her deliberations and in the midst of her shivering a question not yet answered to her satisfaction cropped up again in Mal’s pin-wheeling thoughts.
“Why are you here, Polly?”
“I told you, this is my office.”
“But it’s night time. At least I think it’s night time.” She frowned, puzzling out the conundrum of a rotating sun and spinning disc. “It was dark outside when they threw us out of Fouquet's. You shouldn’t be working at night Polly, you should take time off. You need to get your beauty sleep; you won't be pretty for your files if you don't get your full eight hours.”
Polly held up hand to stop the flow.
“You are absolutely correct; I shouldn’t be up at this time of night. However, unfortunately I am occasionally woken from deep refreshing slumber by vampires who don’t know when to say no to chocolate coated espresso beans.”
Mal swayed gently, the look of confusion had pitched its tent on her countenance and was now getting out the swing-ball set. Apparently Polly’s presence was still unexplained.
“I sleep here. I have a cot that folds up.” She looked down, embarrassed. “I didn’t want to make a fuss about accommodation ok?”
This was not when she wanted to have this conversation. Before her, Mal continued to twitch quietly, but in a listening manner, if it was possible to twitch so.
“Mal, much as I am enjoying this conversation,” (and that was no lie, after weeks of chilly silence it was heaven itself to have her blathering nonsense again, for all the cold striking up through the flags) “it’s the middle of the night and I - being human - need to sleep sometime.”
The twitch reformed itself around pleading eyes and she gave in. She couldn’t really leave the shivering vampire out in the cold could she? Sighing she stepped back to allow her entry.
“You can come in. But no chattering” she warned sternly. “Pacing I can ignore, but that chattering is almost certain to bring on a headache.”
Sliding back into the warm mound of blankets she curled up, determinedly ignoring the fact that there was a vampire not completely under control in her office. Drowsily she conceded that the light footfalls passing up and down were actually restful but fell into a deep sleep before she could examine why this was.
When she awoke it was still dark and Mal was sat on the floor, her back resting against the cot. At some point the vampire had obviously come to the end of her caffeine high and crashed out where she stood. Her shivering was causing the cot to shake.
“Mal?” The whisper drifted out into the darkness and was answered by silence. Eventually against the gloom Polly saw those tense shoulders lift on a deep intake of breath.
“About the thralling thing.”
It was a version of the vampire Polly hadn’t seen before, her head drooping between slumped shoulders, tired gaze watching thin hands clasping and re-clasping over and over in her lap.
“I guess I wanted one thing to be true. Just one thing.” The low voice went on, tinged with sadness. “Out of the all the lies, the religious madness, the masquerade and the stupid false patriotism, I just wanted one thing to be real.”
“It was real.” Poll slipped an arm out into the cold to place a hand reassuringly on the now trembling shoulders. “I promise you Mal, whatever this is, this stupid version of friendship whether built out of a desperate need for companionship at the butt end of the world or just because everyone needs a sarcastic vampire disrupting their life and you’re mine, it’s as real as the cracks in my boots that you appear to be unable to ignore.”
Mal sighed but said nothing further, her pose still scoring highly in “dejected vampire of the year” competitions. But after a moment Polly could feel the added resistance against her fingers as the woman leant back just a little into the hand gently kneading tight knots out of her neck.
“Are you planning to sit there all night?” With a wee touch of pragmatism they might get out of this without too much embarrassment to either party. “Cold stone isn’t going to do anything pleasant to that part of you our good friend Corporal Finchley persists in referring to as ‘the buns of steel’.”
There was no response. But after minute or two Mal shuffled up to perch on the edge of the bed. Polly rolled slightly to keep her in sight.
“Are you going back to yours?”
A shared yawn shook the fragile cot and when Polly blinked her eyes back into focus again she saw the vampire hovering at the end of the bed, awkward in the gloom. Shivers continued to wrack the narrow frame and Polly compared the outer chill striking at her nose to the warmth wrapped around the rest of her snuggled within the nest of blankets. She shifted over, implicitly giving permission but Mal still held back.
“As a friend Mal, I am offering you a warm place to sleep, unthralled and in full control of my faculties, albeit a little sleepy.”
“We’ve done it before,“ she added, her mind jumping back to that confusing time when they were all pretending to be someone else and she had first learnt how much she detested coffee. “You need to decide if you trust me.”
Mal lifted her eyes at last from their scrutiny of the rough blanket her fingers were cautiously picking at. Polly held her gaze without comment and it was Mal who eventually shrugged and broke the contact as she bent down to remove her treasured boots. Shifting around to enable both to fit on the narrow cot they ended up with Polly pressed against the back wall and Mal perched as gracefully as possible on the thin sliver of hard mattress remaining, unable to move without toppling over the edge. Settling down as best she could Polly wondered if perhaps this had been the best option of the evening, imagining Mal might lie awake, tense beside her. But obviously the beans had more than worn off and Mal’s breathing quickly deepened and lengthened until without any appearance of effort she was asleep.
Polly found it more difficult to drop off. She wasn’t used to sharing a bed, Nuggan law didn’t permit brothers and sisters to occupy the same sleeping space after their 8th birthday and with no sisters to warm her cot she’d got used to sleeping somewhat spread-eagled. Now she kept bumping up against bony outcroppings as she attempted to find a comfortable spot whilst retaining at least a smidgeon of space between her front and the back of the woman now quietly snoring beside her. Eventually however she managed to drop into uneasy slumber waking now and then as body parts came into close alignment.
She must have dipped into a deeper state of unconsciousness sometime toward the morning as when she did wake to full alertness she found she had thrown an arm over the waist in front of her and her nose was somehow snuggled into a the hollow where a neck meets a shoulder, with soft dark hair drifting into her eyes as she blinked them in confusion. Last night’s bony outcroppings didn’t seem as prominent in this position and as she relaxed back against her new hot water bottle she decided this must be the reason she had adopted it. Mal sighed and shifted slightly in her sleep to fit them together more comfortably.
It was at this point that the more sensible parts of Polly’s brain woke up, took a swift look around, had a short but succinct screaming fit and galvanised whatever limbs they could establish communication with. Never had any sergeant scrambled so quickly out of a cot. There may even have been flailing.
Standing shivering on the cold flags Polly watched as Mal rolled over, stretching out into the space she had just left. Muttering incomprehensibly the vampire felt around for a moment and then gathered the pillow into a warm embrace. Apparently satisfied by this replacement Mal sighed deeply and seemed to drop back into the depths of slumber.
Polly found that it was simply too early to process any of this and catching a glimpse of the clock over the mantelpiece thanked her lucky stars that the army was all about routine. Though she might chafe against the boring regularity of army life there were times it could be a beautiful rescue. Routine stated that now it was the time that she made her way across the castle to get breakfast before those louts from Company D (who were on night watch this week) came down and snaffled it all. Therefore to breakfast she would go. Pulling on chilled breeches and shrugging into a still rumpled shirt she tried not to notice that her gaze seemed unwilling to approach anywhere near the figure snoozing quietly on the cot that took up half the office. Buttoning up her jacket may have been made more difficult by fingers that still shook from an emotion as yet unrecognisable but the only thing on her mind was breakfast.
Definitely breakfast. Just because she took a last glimpse through the door before she silently drew it closed didn’t mean she was in any way thinking of the strange conundrum she’d left in her bed. She wondered if there’d be eggs.
The canteen was almost empty at this hour, the main population of the castle still either struggling to leave the warmth of their cots or impatiently awaiting the end of their duty shifts so they could get back to them. The walk through long empty corridors had helped her clear her head somewhat. It was perfectly normal after all, all animals huddle together for warmth against unseasonal conditions. Why, when Mister[1] had had her litter[2] in the Inn’s outhouses the kittens had slept all muddled up together in a heap, sometimes even on top of each other. Her thoughts skittered away from that image as not helpful at all and she was glad to see the distracting figure of one of those responsible for her current situation.
Unsurprisingly after his date with the town statue Corporal Bob Finchley was nowhere to be seen but allowed herself a private grin as she spotted Goldhawk slumped over his plate sipping delicately from a large steaming mug of tea. She dropped into the seat next to him and deposited her utensils onto the table with a loud clatter causing him to jump and swivel a baleful eye in her general direction. Ignoring him, she dug a spoon into the kitchen’s attempt on porridge and shovelled it on in. Goldhawk was therefore left to open the conversation with a “good morning” which she also ignored. He persevered. “Did the Corporal get to sleep eventually?”
“No thanks to you.” She pointed a porridge-y spoon in his general direction. “Next time you decide to get Mal to apologise could you please remove the blessed idiot from any chocolate coated espresso beans before the point of no return?”
“I’ll do my best.” Despite his fragile condition he manipulated an eyebrow to express the valid point that if certain Sergeants kept themselves from large-scale disruptive rows with specific Corporals this state of affairs would not have to occur again anyway. Unfortunately Polly was not at home to Mr Eyebrow today and merely gathered up the remains of her breakfast deciding that a quiet morning in her office was probably the best plan.
Entering the office she found Mal still asleep and skirting the cot carefully she set her tea down on the desk to set about that morning’s paperwork. Time passed, marked only by the quiet scratching of her pen and the sporadic sighs and rustling movements from a vampire dormant. Occasionally, as she placed a finished form in her out tray and reached for another Polly (released from the demands of high finance for a brief second) found her lips twitching into a fond smile. It was at one of these moments that Ganzfield came in and catching the tail end of her expression he swiftly drew his own face into a state of total blankness. She looked up.
“We’ll go over those accounts tomorrow Corporal, I’d like not to be disturbed today if that’s possible.”
“Yes Ma’am.” As he closed the door behind him Ganzfield breathed a sigh of relief that a) she hadn’t noticed his almost betrayal and b) his Tuesdays would once again be returned to him and he could finally get his colour coded wall chart rota of absolutely everything finished in peace.
Some time later, deep in the projected accounts for the next quarter Polly reached for one of the reference tomes dotted about the desk and in the process inadvertently knocked a ledger off the untidy surface onto the cot below. Drawing a startled breath she waited for an angry response from the occupant but there was nothing. However as she stood and reached over the huddled heap of blankets to retrieve her property she saw Mal had managed to drag one eye open. The drowsy gaze drifted over the shins that were all that was presented at vampiric eyelevel.
“Not those boots again Pol, they pain me. A sergeant should not be out classed in her footwear by a lowly corporal.” The force of her complaint was reduced somewhat by the yawn that broke in the middle.
“Go back to sleep Mal.” Ledger safely returned to the desk Polly bent over the cot again to pull the blanket more securely over its occupant. “I’ll bring you up some coffee later, but now I want you to sleep, ok?”
“Mmm, ok” and she snuggled back into the pillow closing her eyes once more. Polly made a note for the future about the compliance of vampires when half awake and returned to her paperwork with a smile.
Mal didn’t wake till the afternoon, just as Polly was brushing the last crumbs from her blue jacket. Goldhawk had sent Finchley with some lunch and an apology, Polly waving him away with a jerk of the head towards the mound of blankets. Seeing the vampire start to stir she’d grabbed a pen and when Mal sniffed, stretched luxuriously and opened her eyes it was to see Polly hard at work.
“Good Morning.”
“I think you’ll find it’s good afternoon instead.” Polly put down her pen, leaning back in her chair to get a better view. “How are we feeling today? Little bit less hyperactive?”
“I need a coffee.”
“I’m sure you don’t, but maybe you’d best have one anyway.” She jerked her head towards the implements laid out on the hearthstone. “Your stuff is over there.”
Climbing from the pit of blankets Mal sat for a moment on the edge of the cot, running fingers through her hair. It astounded Polly, though she refused to show it, that when the woman eventually stood up she was pristine again, no sign that she’d slept rough to be seen anywhere the creases of her clothes. Blasted vampires. As her pen moved across the ledger in front of her Polly watched the delicate process of making coffee as Mal crouched in before the small fire she’d had Ganzfield lay in her grate. The familiar hissing of the coffee machine filled the silence Polly felt no need to break. Sitting back on her heels as she sipped Mal didn’t look up to meet her eyes, then remembering some prior engagement she made her polite excuses and rose to leave. She paused on the way to the door however, standing quiet before Polly’s desk so that the sergeant was forced to look up.
“Are we good?”
“We’re good.” Polly flashed her a smile before bending her head once again to the ledger.
But once the door had closed quietly behind her visitor she put down her pen and the smile broke out again over her whole face as she sniffed with pleasure the scent of coffee once again lingering around her room.
~X~
[1] Don’t ask.
[2] Didn’t we just request you not to ask? Look, just take it from us and never allow a child under the age of 10 to name anything that could be one of two genders.[3]
[3] What is it with what we are swiftly coming to think is an unhealthy spirit of enquiry? Ok, OK. So maybe I should have checked the sex of the rabbit first. But I don’t see why this all has to be my fault![4]
[4] I’m not being defensive! It wasn’t my mother that suggested we get another one for company![5]
[5] Oh, and I suppose it’s my fault that your daughter is crying in her room now? Tell me, how else do you plan to get rid of them?[6]
[6] Well personally I don’t think it’s that much of a tragedy that Mrs Simpson at No. 42 isn’t speaking to us anymore [7] [8] [9]. I never liked that woman anyway.
[7] Or that rabble at No. 37.
[8] Or the Henderson’s. Yes I know they supposedly do the BBQ of the summer, but last year the chicken wasn’t cooked and I got a very black sausage so pardon me if I don’t think it’s then end of the world if they never invite us again.
[9] As to her over the back - it’s about time her kids had some responsibility and I can’t ask everyone who comes asking with a cardboard box if their parents are ok with a new pet can I?[10]
[10] FINE! I WILL!