Borrowers fic: "Somewhere Between Sunshine and Dirt" (G)
Somewhere Between Sunshine and Dirt
2800 words, G, Pod/Eggletina, Pod/Homily
Summary: Pod Clock was a daredevil, and so was his cousin Eggletina. Is everyone who flies so high, headed for a fall?
Disclaimer: The Borrowers originally appeared in books by Mary Norton. This story follows loosely from the 2011 BBC movie starring Christopher Eccleston and Sharon Horgan, dreamcasting Billie Piper as Eggletina. No infringement of rights is intended and no money is being made off this story. Thanks to bloose09 and develish for their encouragement!
===
Pod Clock was young, tall, dashing, and a complete daredevil when it came to Borrowing. He had the Sense, so he didn't mind cutting it close, secure in the knowledge he would be alerted one crucial moment before a Human Bean came near.
Pod made sure his friends and family had everything they could ever dream of during Borrowing season. He raided the Beans mercilessly, his heart pounding with excitement as he dashed to safety with his borrowed booty.
Only one thing made his heart pound faster, and that was going on raids with his cousin, Eggletina.
If Pod had ever met his match, and he was privately of the opinion he had, it was Eggletina Harpsichord. Hair like sunshine, and a grin even brighter, Eggletina was a Borrower with ambition high as the sky.
They called each other cousin, but they were really best friends, or maybe a little more. Pod's uncle, Hendreary, had married a widow who'd come to join their village after she lost her husband. Eggletina was her daughter, so she was only Pod's cousin by marriage. But that didn't stop Pod from loving her - dashing, funny, pretty, nearly his equal in jumping and scurrying, clever with her hands, inventive - she was everything a young Borrower man could want in a wife. Or so Pod reckoned. They were still a bit young for that kind of thinking. Pod liked the village girls well enough - Sooz and Margit Kittle were quick, and he admitted in his most secret heart that Homily Stockstitcher was a bright-eyed beauty - but Eggletina was his in a special way. They were a matched pair. Their hands fit together when they ran, and their hearts sang up in mirth together when they laughed. They belonged to each other.
Oh, the roaring of Hendreary when Pod and Eggletina would collapse in breathless giggles, clutching their shiny or tasty tidbits, and laughing, round-eyed, over their close calls.
Hendreary stomped and fumed, his thick beard muffling his outraged accusations, while Jakky Harpsichord-Clock attempted to reason with him.
"Some Borrowers are meant for greatness, Hendreary," she'd intone. "My late Peat, may he hide secure, wanted greatness - but Eggletina - just look at her. She's a natural."
Pod agreed. Agile, quick, brave - Eggletina had everything a Borrower needed for greatness.
She would only blush and hang her head. "I'm nothing special," she'd say modestly, but she and Pod would share happy smiles, and sneak away as soon as they could to plan their next adventure.
The bravest thing about Eggletina by far was that she was obsessed with learning how to fly.
"Wouldn't you love to get up in one of them enormous Bean harecraft - go soaring high above the clouds, just like a bird? Why, I hear tell the Beans ha' been all the way to the moon!"
"Rubbish," Pod dismissed, but he smiled encouragingly.
"Even a kite," Eggletina would muse, her brown eyes gleaming, tongue licking her teeth, "or a glider, or, a pair o' shoots."
"Pair of what?" Pod asked.
"Pair o' shoots," Eggletina said. "Sheets, more like, sewn together. I seen 'em on telly. Hold up a Bean jumpin' out a harecraft. Cor, it's breathtakin'!"
Pod wrinkled his forehead, trying to imagine it.
"Sheets?" he asked.
Eggletina grabbed his hand and sketched in the air with it.
"You hang, like, on threads, here, and the shoots is in the air over your head like, so when you jump, you float to the ground like a leaf."
Pod's hand gracefully floated to the ground, dangling securely from Eggletina's cupped fingers.
"You keep 'em folded up in a pack, and pull a cord, and whoosh, out they come, and then you float to safety," Eggletina smiled. Pod grinned back at her, hand warm in hers.
"You wanna try it?" he said. He knew she did.
"Blimey, yeah!" she exclaimed, jumping up, ready to go.
That's how they got started on the pair o' shoots. They borrowed a Bean's silk hanky that was perfect - light and strong - and they shaped it with some careful seams, and figured out how to fold it so that it would open, and then they began to practice. Pod insisted his ankles were stronger and that he should try first - but really he was afraid that Eggletina would take too great a risk and end up injured. He didn't mind a sprained ankle or a bruised bum if it saved her one. He often hurt himself showing off to her - or sometimes helping her out of a tight place she'd gotten into. Jeopardy friendly - that was Eggletina Harpsichord to a tee.
Once they had it perfect, Pod left the pair o' shoots to Eggletina. She was so proud of their invention. Beans liked putting precious things in high places. It was as if they somehow guessed that most Borrowers preferred staying low to the ground. Not Eggletina. The higher the better! She'd climb up and up, then jump off and pull the cord and her face would split open with joy as she soared and circled her way down, her wide grin dazzling to Pod as he watched her safely from the ground, ran to catch her at her landing.
Pod always wondered, in later days, if their Borrowing had gotten too daring. If they'd been worse Borrowers, him and Eggletina, maybe they'd have been more cautious, less likely to sweep tasty shiny bits off of the very countertops and out of the dresser drawers of the Beans.
They should have been more careful, he sometimes thought. But they were kids, and they were daredevils, and they were in love, so they raided more and more until finally, the Beans had had enough.
"Something's got to be done," the woman Bean shrieked for the hundredth time. "It's not to be borne!"
But instead of his usual grunt, the man Bean stood and lumbered to the tellyfoam. "I'll ring the exterminator."
"Sterminator!" Eggletina gasped, turning white. "Cor!"
"What?" Pod wondered.
"We got to warn the village. It's not safe! They got to run, fast, now!" Eggletina was already scurrying for their bolt hole.
"Sterminator!" Eggletina gasped to her mum, who blanched and asked no questions, just jamming a few of her best things in a bag.
"Wot's all this then?" roared Hendreary, but one look from Jakky convinced him it was no time for talking.
Eggletina and Pod sent up a cry. Hendreary rang the village bell as Pod and Eggletina ran from hole to hole, warning their friends and neighbors to flee. A few had heard of the Sterminator, enough to convince the others the threat was serious.
"It'll only be a few days," Jakky was heard to murmur. "Maybe we can come back, sometime."
It was a soothing idea but not one many Borrowers relished. Once the Beans took action near a village, it was time to go and not come back.
Pod felt ashamed as he saw his family and friends shoving their things into bags and taking to their heels. Borrowers always had an escape plan, a bolt hole, a way out, but when he saw how much they had to leave behind, he couldn't help worrying that it was his fault somehow. If only he and Eggletina hadn't drawn so much attention to themselves.
Finally no one was left, and the village was empty.
"Halloo!" Eggletina cried.
"Halloo!" rang an echo.
"Did you hear that?" Eggletina said, worry striking her pretty face.
"No," Pod said. But he had. It was Homily Stockstitcher, over near the main hole that led to the block of Bean flats. She was a great one for Borrowing, herself, daring to be sure, but she didn't have the Sense. Couldn't tell a Bean was in the room when it was right there snoozing in its great lounge chair.
And now it was going to get her killed.
"You go on, Eggletina, I'll go get her."
Eggletina glared at him. "Glory hog! We both go, then!"
She took off running toward the sound of Homily's voice.
"Eggletina - no!" he cried. But she was already too far ahead for him to stop her, and the ankle he'd turned in one of their adventures a few days earlier slowed him down.
He caught up to her just as she reached Homily Stockstitcher, who greeted her with pursed lips.
"Oho, Miss Eggletina, what's the rush? Left any candy then for anyone else to borrow?" she taunted. She was carrying three enormous cream chocolates on her back. It was an impressive haul.
"Drop those, Homily, we got to run!" Eggletina urged, pulling on Homily's arm.
"Not bloody likely, I'll warrant!" Homily retorted, pulling back.
Pod heard a strange noise, kind of a hissing.
"What's that?" he said.
"Sterminator!" Eggletina said, pale. "Bad air, it'll make you seize up. Wrap something round your face and run now or you'll regret it."
"I ain't dropping nothing. These are for old Aunty Maples."
"She's run on, like everyone, when we sent up the cry," Pod said urgently.
"She's deaf as a stone," Homily said, her jaw set.
Pod stared at her. "We got to make sure she's gone," he insisted.
"You sure?" Homily asked, looking to Pod.
He nodded. He'd always liked determined, sensible Homily, even though she did give Eggletina dirty looks pretty often these days.
"Let's go," Homily said.
Eggletina turned back to the main hole.
"You go on," she said to Pod.
"What?" Pod said, his heart turning to ice.
"That hissing. It's bad air, it'll kill you. I can plug up the hose of the Sterminator - with the pair o shoots."
"But Eggletina - you'll - " Pod stammered. He couldn't bear to think of it. "I'll go."
"Nah," she said, smiling, but tears stood in her eyes. "Remember your ankle. You're too slow."
"I got to go get Aunty Maples," Homily said, and turned to run off to the old lady's hole at the end of the village.
"Go along, Pod - she'll need help with that old lady," Eggletina said, turning to leave. Pod grabbed her arm.
"I want to go with you," Pod said, desperately.
"Nah, it's a one person job. I can hold my breath," Eggletina said.
Pod looked into her dear brown eyes, trying to remember her forever. "You're the bravest person I know," he said, and pressed a kiss to her soft, red lips. Their first kiss. Their only.
She savored the moment, then pulled away, eyes fluttering open. "Nah, you are," she said, and before he could kiss her again, with a swirl of golden hair, she ran toward the hissing.
Pod tore himself away from the sight of her disappearing into the hole, and went to help Homily.
She was throwing herself against the locked door of the old lady's hole.
"Mad old Maples!" Homily cried. "Whoever heard of a Borrower locking a door! We don't borrow from each other!"
It took the two of them crashing the door with their shoulders (Homily never would've got the door down, narrow slip of a thing that she was, if Pod hadn't helped her) and they found deaf old Maples knitting peacefully in her rocker, the orphaned Overmantel twins sleeping together in one cradle as she rocked them with her foot. The mum had died in birth, and the dad got careless and never came back - Lupy and Doorway Overmantel, Borrowers just a few years older than Pod, he'd known his whole life.
Maples smiled at Homily as though the two young Borrowers hadn't just burst into her hole.
"Eh there Homily, got any chokky?" she asked, grinning her toothless grin.
"Aunty, there's trouble with Beans!" Homily shouted, miming Beans with wide arms and galumphing stomps.
"Running again, is it?" Maples sighed. "Hard is the life of a Borrower," she said, stuffing her knitting in a bag and getting her walking stick.
Homily pointed at the twins. "You get 'em, I'll help her."
"Both of 'em?" he said, eyes wide.
"Yes! Now hop!" she ordered, fitting her slender arm round Maples and steering her forcefully toward the door.
Pod bundled the two twins into his arms. Their bag of things he looped around his neck. They snuggled into him and didn't even cry as he loped through the emptied streets of the village, Homily frogmarching Maples ahead of him.
He caught a whiff of stinking air and held his breath till it passed, burying the babies' faces in his chest. He felt stunned, no time to think or feel, just one life or death moment right after another, babies and crazy old ladies to save, while his brave Eggletina ran toward the Beans and their deathly mists.
He was in a daze by the time he stumbled into the Borrowers' bolt camp. A cheer went up from the crowd when they realized that he and Homily had saved the little orphans.
There was smiling and cheering and congratulations, people thumping Pod on the shoulders and calling him a hero, glad of something to be glad about against so much lost, till Jakky Harpsichord-Clock strode up to him, furious.
"What about my daughter?" she demanded. "You save this one," she pointed at Homily with her chin while Pod shook his head, "and leave my Eggletina to the Beans?"
"No," he whispered.
"That's not how it was," Homily said, her eyes flashing. "Eggletina bought us time so we could go for the old lady."
Jakky's hand flashed out and left a stinging slap across Pod's face.
"You're no hero," she accused, tears streaking her face. "I'll never see my daughter again! and I don't want to see you either."
Pod's face was white and red as he lifted his hand to the slapped cheek, his brilliant blue eyes gleaming behind tears. His mouth fell open, but if he was going to say sorry, Jakky had already whirled away and never heard it.
Homily saw his face as he stood there, and she saw the moment he cracked and turned to stride away. Shoving a baby into her little brother's arms -"Oi, don't give that to me, it's all spit up! What a dreadful spiller!" - she took off after him.
"Pod!" she called, but he didn't stop. She didn't either. His steps were long and fast, but so were hers. She didn't try to reason with him. She didn't try to stop him. When he finally slowed to a halt, she felt they'd walked for miles.
He slumped to the ground. She sat down near him, back to the wall. They were in some nasty tunnel, who knew where.
"She's gone," he said, his face a mask of desolation.
Homily nodded.
"I loved her," he said.
Homily frowned, but nodded again.
"I don't - " he said, and broke off. His long fingers opened and closed around nothing, fell limp between his knees.
"I can't let you be all alone," she said, twisting her hands together. "I can't."
"Thanks," he said after a while, but he didn't really mean it.
"You're the best Borrower I know... the best man," Homily said in a rush. "All I'm asking is a year and a day."
A year and a day. It was more than Pod's brain could even contemplate at that moment. "What?" he said.
Her slender shoulder budged against his. "Friends. You mustn't be all alone - till you're better. Then, see what comes next."
He thought about it. Homily was smart, and clever, and quick. She had a sharp tongue, but she wasn't mean. Her shoulder felt good next to his, the only thing in the whole world that felt even close to good at that moment.
"Okay," he mumbled. "Thanks." The second time, he meant it a little at least.
And they leaned against one another in a cold and dirty tunnel all night. In the morning, they got up, and borrowed some crumbs for breakfast.
Some fistfuls of years later, Pod jumped, high off the top of a bookcase, and soaring downward, he pulled the cord. His pair o' shoots opened perfectly. He laughed with the joy of his adventure; a remembered flash of golden hair, a wolfish grin, made his smile wider. He had a pack full of Quality Street, only the best for the best of wives, and for his beautiful daughter, springing up like a weed. Just then he caught a Sense of some Bean approaching - and dove directly into the Christmas tree.
Pod Clock had always been a daredevil; it was still true as he extracted himself from the tree, ran from the cat, and held on for dear life while the woman Bean tried to Hoover him. Home was never so sweet as later, when he let himself safely into the hole Homily had built for their family out of so much love and hard work.
Somewhere, he could almost hear Eggletina, laughing at him, eyes sparkling, as beautiful as she ever was, glad he hadn't forgotten how to fly.
2800 words, G, Pod/Eggletina, Pod/Homily
Summary: Pod Clock was a daredevil, and so was his cousin Eggletina. Is everyone who flies so high, headed for a fall?
Disclaimer: The Borrowers originally appeared in books by Mary Norton. This story follows loosely from the 2011 BBC movie starring Christopher Eccleston and Sharon Horgan, dreamcasting Billie Piper as Eggletina. No infringement of rights is intended and no money is being made off this story. Thanks to bloose09 and develish for their encouragement!
===
Pod Clock was young, tall, dashing, and a complete daredevil when it came to Borrowing. He had the Sense, so he didn't mind cutting it close, secure in the knowledge he would be alerted one crucial moment before a Human Bean came near.
Pod made sure his friends and family had everything they could ever dream of during Borrowing season. He raided the Beans mercilessly, his heart pounding with excitement as he dashed to safety with his borrowed booty.
Only one thing made his heart pound faster, and that was going on raids with his cousin, Eggletina.
If Pod had ever met his match, and he was privately of the opinion he had, it was Eggletina Harpsichord. Hair like sunshine, and a grin even brighter, Eggletina was a Borrower with ambition high as the sky.
They called each other cousin, but they were really best friends, or maybe a little more. Pod's uncle, Hendreary, had married a widow who'd come to join their village after she lost her husband. Eggletina was her daughter, so she was only Pod's cousin by marriage. But that didn't stop Pod from loving her - dashing, funny, pretty, nearly his equal in jumping and scurrying, clever with her hands, inventive - she was everything a young Borrower man could want in a wife. Or so Pod reckoned. They were still a bit young for that kind of thinking. Pod liked the village girls well enough - Sooz and Margit Kittle were quick, and he admitted in his most secret heart that Homily Stockstitcher was a bright-eyed beauty - but Eggletina was his in a special way. They were a matched pair. Their hands fit together when they ran, and their hearts sang up in mirth together when they laughed. They belonged to each other.
Oh, the roaring of Hendreary when Pod and Eggletina would collapse in breathless giggles, clutching their shiny or tasty tidbits, and laughing, round-eyed, over their close calls.
Hendreary stomped and fumed, his thick beard muffling his outraged accusations, while Jakky Harpsichord-Clock attempted to reason with him.
"Some Borrowers are meant for greatness, Hendreary," she'd intone. "My late Peat, may he hide secure, wanted greatness - but Eggletina - just look at her. She's a natural."
Pod agreed. Agile, quick, brave - Eggletina had everything a Borrower needed for greatness.
She would only blush and hang her head. "I'm nothing special," she'd say modestly, but she and Pod would share happy smiles, and sneak away as soon as they could to plan their next adventure.
The bravest thing about Eggletina by far was that she was obsessed with learning how to fly.
"Wouldn't you love to get up in one of them enormous Bean harecraft - go soaring high above the clouds, just like a bird? Why, I hear tell the Beans ha' been all the way to the moon!"
"Rubbish," Pod dismissed, but he smiled encouragingly.
"Even a kite," Eggletina would muse, her brown eyes gleaming, tongue licking her teeth, "or a glider, or, a pair o' shoots."
"Pair of what?" Pod asked.
"Pair o' shoots," Eggletina said. "Sheets, more like, sewn together. I seen 'em on telly. Hold up a Bean jumpin' out a harecraft. Cor, it's breathtakin'!"
Pod wrinkled his forehead, trying to imagine it.
"Sheets?" he asked.
Eggletina grabbed his hand and sketched in the air with it.
"You hang, like, on threads, here, and the shoots is in the air over your head like, so when you jump, you float to the ground like a leaf."
Pod's hand gracefully floated to the ground, dangling securely from Eggletina's cupped fingers.
"You keep 'em folded up in a pack, and pull a cord, and whoosh, out they come, and then you float to safety," Eggletina smiled. Pod grinned back at her, hand warm in hers.
"You wanna try it?" he said. He knew she did.
"Blimey, yeah!" she exclaimed, jumping up, ready to go.
That's how they got started on the pair o' shoots. They borrowed a Bean's silk hanky that was perfect - light and strong - and they shaped it with some careful seams, and figured out how to fold it so that it would open, and then they began to practice. Pod insisted his ankles were stronger and that he should try first - but really he was afraid that Eggletina would take too great a risk and end up injured. He didn't mind a sprained ankle or a bruised bum if it saved her one. He often hurt himself showing off to her - or sometimes helping her out of a tight place she'd gotten into. Jeopardy friendly - that was Eggletina Harpsichord to a tee.
Once they had it perfect, Pod left the pair o' shoots to Eggletina. She was so proud of their invention. Beans liked putting precious things in high places. It was as if they somehow guessed that most Borrowers preferred staying low to the ground. Not Eggletina. The higher the better! She'd climb up and up, then jump off and pull the cord and her face would split open with joy as she soared and circled her way down, her wide grin dazzling to Pod as he watched her safely from the ground, ran to catch her at her landing.
Pod always wondered, in later days, if their Borrowing had gotten too daring. If they'd been worse Borrowers, him and Eggletina, maybe they'd have been more cautious, less likely to sweep tasty shiny bits off of the very countertops and out of the dresser drawers of the Beans.
They should have been more careful, he sometimes thought. But they were kids, and they were daredevils, and they were in love, so they raided more and more until finally, the Beans had had enough.
"Something's got to be done," the woman Bean shrieked for the hundredth time. "It's not to be borne!"
But instead of his usual grunt, the man Bean stood and lumbered to the tellyfoam. "I'll ring the exterminator."
"Sterminator!" Eggletina gasped, turning white. "Cor!"
"What?" Pod wondered.
"We got to warn the village. It's not safe! They got to run, fast, now!" Eggletina was already scurrying for their bolt hole.
"Sterminator!" Eggletina gasped to her mum, who blanched and asked no questions, just jamming a few of her best things in a bag.
"Wot's all this then?" roared Hendreary, but one look from Jakky convinced him it was no time for talking.
Eggletina and Pod sent up a cry. Hendreary rang the village bell as Pod and Eggletina ran from hole to hole, warning their friends and neighbors to flee. A few had heard of the Sterminator, enough to convince the others the threat was serious.
"It'll only be a few days," Jakky was heard to murmur. "Maybe we can come back, sometime."
It was a soothing idea but not one many Borrowers relished. Once the Beans took action near a village, it was time to go and not come back.
Pod felt ashamed as he saw his family and friends shoving their things into bags and taking to their heels. Borrowers always had an escape plan, a bolt hole, a way out, but when he saw how much they had to leave behind, he couldn't help worrying that it was his fault somehow. If only he and Eggletina hadn't drawn so much attention to themselves.
Finally no one was left, and the village was empty.
"Halloo!" Eggletina cried.
"Halloo!" rang an echo.
"Did you hear that?" Eggletina said, worry striking her pretty face.
"No," Pod said. But he had. It was Homily Stockstitcher, over near the main hole that led to the block of Bean flats. She was a great one for Borrowing, herself, daring to be sure, but she didn't have the Sense. Couldn't tell a Bean was in the room when it was right there snoozing in its great lounge chair.
And now it was going to get her killed.
"You go on, Eggletina, I'll go get her."
Eggletina glared at him. "Glory hog! We both go, then!"
She took off running toward the sound of Homily's voice.
"Eggletina - no!" he cried. But she was already too far ahead for him to stop her, and the ankle he'd turned in one of their adventures a few days earlier slowed him down.
He caught up to her just as she reached Homily Stockstitcher, who greeted her with pursed lips.
"Oho, Miss Eggletina, what's the rush? Left any candy then for anyone else to borrow?" she taunted. She was carrying three enormous cream chocolates on her back. It was an impressive haul.
"Drop those, Homily, we got to run!" Eggletina urged, pulling on Homily's arm.
"Not bloody likely, I'll warrant!" Homily retorted, pulling back.
Pod heard a strange noise, kind of a hissing.
"What's that?" he said.
"Sterminator!" Eggletina said, pale. "Bad air, it'll make you seize up. Wrap something round your face and run now or you'll regret it."
"I ain't dropping nothing. These are for old Aunty Maples."
"She's run on, like everyone, when we sent up the cry," Pod said urgently.
"She's deaf as a stone," Homily said, her jaw set.
Pod stared at her. "We got to make sure she's gone," he insisted.
"You sure?" Homily asked, looking to Pod.
He nodded. He'd always liked determined, sensible Homily, even though she did give Eggletina dirty looks pretty often these days.
"Let's go," Homily said.
Eggletina turned back to the main hole.
"You go on," she said to Pod.
"What?" Pod said, his heart turning to ice.
"That hissing. It's bad air, it'll kill you. I can plug up the hose of the Sterminator - with the pair o shoots."
"But Eggletina - you'll - " Pod stammered. He couldn't bear to think of it. "I'll go."
"Nah," she said, smiling, but tears stood in her eyes. "Remember your ankle. You're too slow."
"I got to go get Aunty Maples," Homily said, and turned to run off to the old lady's hole at the end of the village.
"Go along, Pod - she'll need help with that old lady," Eggletina said, turning to leave. Pod grabbed her arm.
"I want to go with you," Pod said, desperately.
"Nah, it's a one person job. I can hold my breath," Eggletina said.
Pod looked into her dear brown eyes, trying to remember her forever. "You're the bravest person I know," he said, and pressed a kiss to her soft, red lips. Their first kiss. Their only.
She savored the moment, then pulled away, eyes fluttering open. "Nah, you are," she said, and before he could kiss her again, with a swirl of golden hair, she ran toward the hissing.
Pod tore himself away from the sight of her disappearing into the hole, and went to help Homily.
She was throwing herself against the locked door of the old lady's hole.
"Mad old Maples!" Homily cried. "Whoever heard of a Borrower locking a door! We don't borrow from each other!"
It took the two of them crashing the door with their shoulders (Homily never would've got the door down, narrow slip of a thing that she was, if Pod hadn't helped her) and they found deaf old Maples knitting peacefully in her rocker, the orphaned Overmantel twins sleeping together in one cradle as she rocked them with her foot. The mum had died in birth, and the dad got careless and never came back - Lupy and Doorway Overmantel, Borrowers just a few years older than Pod, he'd known his whole life.
Maples smiled at Homily as though the two young Borrowers hadn't just burst into her hole.
"Eh there Homily, got any chokky?" she asked, grinning her toothless grin.
"Aunty, there's trouble with Beans!" Homily shouted, miming Beans with wide arms and galumphing stomps.
"Running again, is it?" Maples sighed. "Hard is the life of a Borrower," she said, stuffing her knitting in a bag and getting her walking stick.
Homily pointed at the twins. "You get 'em, I'll help her."
"Both of 'em?" he said, eyes wide.
"Yes! Now hop!" she ordered, fitting her slender arm round Maples and steering her forcefully toward the door.
Pod bundled the two twins into his arms. Their bag of things he looped around his neck. They snuggled into him and didn't even cry as he loped through the emptied streets of the village, Homily frogmarching Maples ahead of him.
He caught a whiff of stinking air and held his breath till it passed, burying the babies' faces in his chest. He felt stunned, no time to think or feel, just one life or death moment right after another, babies and crazy old ladies to save, while his brave Eggletina ran toward the Beans and their deathly mists.
He was in a daze by the time he stumbled into the Borrowers' bolt camp. A cheer went up from the crowd when they realized that he and Homily had saved the little orphans.
There was smiling and cheering and congratulations, people thumping Pod on the shoulders and calling him a hero, glad of something to be glad about against so much lost, till Jakky Harpsichord-Clock strode up to him, furious.
"What about my daughter?" she demanded. "You save this one," she pointed at Homily with her chin while Pod shook his head, "and leave my Eggletina to the Beans?"
"No," he whispered.
"That's not how it was," Homily said, her eyes flashing. "Eggletina bought us time so we could go for the old lady."
Jakky's hand flashed out and left a stinging slap across Pod's face.
"You're no hero," she accused, tears streaking her face. "I'll never see my daughter again! and I don't want to see you either."
Pod's face was white and red as he lifted his hand to the slapped cheek, his brilliant blue eyes gleaming behind tears. His mouth fell open, but if he was going to say sorry, Jakky had already whirled away and never heard it.
Homily saw his face as he stood there, and she saw the moment he cracked and turned to stride away. Shoving a baby into her little brother's arms -"Oi, don't give that to me, it's all spit up! What a dreadful spiller!" - she took off after him.
"Pod!" she called, but he didn't stop. She didn't either. His steps were long and fast, but so were hers. She didn't try to reason with him. She didn't try to stop him. When he finally slowed to a halt, she felt they'd walked for miles.
He slumped to the ground. She sat down near him, back to the wall. They were in some nasty tunnel, who knew where.
"She's gone," he said, his face a mask of desolation.
Homily nodded.
"I loved her," he said.
Homily frowned, but nodded again.
"I don't - " he said, and broke off. His long fingers opened and closed around nothing, fell limp between his knees.
"I can't let you be all alone," she said, twisting her hands together. "I can't."
"Thanks," he said after a while, but he didn't really mean it.
"You're the best Borrower I know... the best man," Homily said in a rush. "All I'm asking is a year and a day."
A year and a day. It was more than Pod's brain could even contemplate at that moment. "What?" he said.
Her slender shoulder budged against his. "Friends. You mustn't be all alone - till you're better. Then, see what comes next."
He thought about it. Homily was smart, and clever, and quick. She had a sharp tongue, but she wasn't mean. Her shoulder felt good next to his, the only thing in the whole world that felt even close to good at that moment.
"Okay," he mumbled. "Thanks." The second time, he meant it a little at least.
And they leaned against one another in a cold and dirty tunnel all night. In the morning, they got up, and borrowed some crumbs for breakfast.
Some fistfuls of years later, Pod jumped, high off the top of a bookcase, and soaring downward, he pulled the cord. His pair o' shoots opened perfectly. He laughed with the joy of his adventure; a remembered flash of golden hair, a wolfish grin, made his smile wider. He had a pack full of Quality Street, only the best for the best of wives, and for his beautiful daughter, springing up like a weed. Just then he caught a Sense of some Bean approaching - and dove directly into the Christmas tree.
Pod Clock had always been a daredevil; it was still true as he extracted himself from the tree, ran from the cat, and held on for dear life while the woman Bean tried to Hoover him. Home was never so sweet as later, when he let himself safely into the hole Homily had built for their family out of so much love and hard work.
Somewhere, he could almost hear Eggletina, laughing at him, eyes sparkling, as beautiful as she ever was, glad he hadn't forgotten how to fly.