CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: FOREST PLANS!

Griselda makes plans, and involves a green three-wheeler...

Some people like to spend veritable ages licking their wounds, but not Griselda Entwhistle. She had always been both irascible and protective of number one and that had stood her in good stead down many long years.

No sooner had she been propelled (slowly though with a great lack of personal dignity) beyond the University gates than she started to explode inside, and as she exploded best when in her own natural shape she morphed from a sexually desirable and curvaceous young wench into the old woman she actually was, complete with warts and attached hairy clumps and the familiar smell of Old Woman, and glared at the nearest tree as if it was solely responsible for her embarrassment.

She was still admonishing that tree (an oak that had been an acorn before King Henry VIII had waved his kingly wand and established Scrumblenose University immediately before announcing the demise of his second and possibly most desirable wife, one Anne Boleyn) when she heard a rustling in the undergrowth, which was quite well established in the spot where whatever power the old Professor had used had deposited her. In fact, she counted it as a miracle that her forced journey through it didn't appear to have caused her any injury.

“Ouch!” she heard, and she winced. The monosyllabic cry of pain could only have had one origin, and that origin usually stammered. She was, though, in no mood for company, not while plans had to be made and things done, and least of all not that of tree-huggers in the possession of dubious sanity. Sometimes Griselda thought better when she was on her own.

“What are you doing here, young man?” she called, her voice wavering slightly on account of her age so that she sounded exactly like the old woman she really was for a change.

“I'm looking for a y-y-young woman,” came the hesitant reply, and Spotty (or Lucifer) emerged through the undergrowth, rubbing at a handful of abrasions on his leg with a rueful expression on his face. “I don't know how he did it, but Professor Whatsit forced her to come out here. He expelled her, and that was a r-r-rotten thing for him to do! I watched, but th-th-there wasn't anything I could do to help her!”

“Oh. I see. A young woman, you say?”

“Ooh yes! She's the most b-b-beautiful young creature I have ever seen! I'm not g-g-good enough for her, I know that, but if I was I'd ask her to m-m-marry me! I can imagine life with her! It would be the most perfect life and we'd live happily ever after like in o-o-old stories! And she wears the shortest little skirt you've ever seen, which makes a man think all sorts of improper things, b-b-beg your pardon!”

Griselda forced herself to scowl, no easy thing for an elderly woman to do when she's actually feeling mightily pleased. “That's no way to think of a tender young thing...” she began. “She's not an object, you know, but a woman in her own right! She's not on this Earth to be your plaything or anything like that! But I dared say if you play your cards right there's a chance she might become your friend one fine day! On this Earth anything is possible.”

An enraptured expression lit up his face in the shadows where he stood. It might have been a bright enough morning and the sun might have been climbing up the sky without much interference from clouds, but in that thicket with all the growing things around them it was still quite shadowy and probably always would be. “Oh, but she is such a tender young thing!” he enthused. “Her eyes are so special, like windows into her soul and her smile is just right, like an angel's smile. I'd love to be her friend! And that skirt she wears … I can't shake it out of my mind it's so beautiful!”

“It strikes me that you're stricken, which is a most unhealthy state to be in, and more in love with her clothing than you are with her!” she said, still trying not to sound pleased and just about failing. “But tell me, young man, what are you doing here when you should be behind those stone walls and learning your ABC like all good students do?”

“I'm looking for the lady … I can't even remember her name even though I'm sure I told her mine, but I love her so very much! And I always will, so long as I live on this world!”

“Well, if she's young like you say then I'm not her,” sighed Griselda mischievously. “I mean, just look at me, older than the hills and twice as knobbly! But if it's a young woman you're after then it's probably my niece who studies at this University and has recently had an altercation with the Principal because she kissed somebody!”

“She … she … she k-k-kissed somebody?” he stammered. “M-m-my angel kissed somebody?” And to her astonishment he started crying! Streams of salt-tears oozed from his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, meeting at his chin and dripping onto the ground.

“What has got into you?” she asked, amazed.

“I l-l-love her!” he gabbled between huge sobs of grief. “I love her more than anyone has ever loved anyone! Oh, I don't care whether she wears a big skirt or a little skirt, not really, I just love her more than I love myself, and you say she kissed somebody?”

“It was a girl,” said Griselda, a little unsympathetically. “She kissed a girl!”

“You mean she's … she's … she's a l-l-lemon?” almost shouted Spotty. (I must get to use his proper name, thought Griselda, I can't go on calling him Spotty, even in my head!)

“She was administering the kiss of life!” she told the youth. “A girl was as dead as a dodo and your little love interest gave her the kiss of life and brought her round! If I were you I'd be careful what fruit you liken her to. She might hear you, and that wouldn't do your cause much good, would it?”

“I'm s-s-sorry,” he stammered. “So what do you think I should do?”

“I think you should try and help her,” decided Griselda, “and because she's my niece I know the best way forwards!”

“You do?” he asked, eagerly.

“Of course I do. We're very close, you know. Aunt and niece in a very special and wonderful relationship!”

“So what do you think I should do?”

Griselda paused for a moment, then “Have you heard of the village of Swanspottle? About an hour from here?” She didn't mention that it was an hour by broomstick and might take considerably longer by more regular transport.

He shook his head. She wasn't surprised. She'd lived in the place all of her life and had only just heard of it.

“There are maps,” she decided. “I think that if you really wanted to help the poor dear girl you'd go to Swanspottle and search out the local policeman, called Constable Lockemup...”

“Constable Lockemup?”

She nodded.

“A good name for a policeman!” he grinned.

“Be that as it may be, if you wanted to help my dearest niece I'd go to Swanspottle, find Constable Lockemup and tell him that Griselda needs him.”

“Ah! That's what she called herself! So it is your niece! What good will that do?” he asked.

“Oh the good Constable will come and between us the three of us should be able to do something to help sweet little Griselda. And while you're gone I'll make a few plans and see what can be seen.”

“I'll go,” he said. “I need transport, though �" I can hardly walk if it takes as long as you say it does.”

“Take the car parked at the front of the University,” said Griselda. “The keys are in the ignition, I think. Take that and hurry! Off you go, now!”

He took one last look at her, at her warts, at the rolls of wrinkles that were her face, and rushed off.

Unseen by him and by anyone else a car appeared from nowhere in front of the main gate to the University and was quite clearly waiting for someone to climb in and drive it off because the door was open and the key was in the ignition. It was dark green, had three wheels but in all other respects seemed to be at one with the forests and fields all around.

And the old woman rippled and wibbled and wobbled, and in not so many instants became her younger ego. Had Lucifer been there to see he would have noted that her skirt was even shorter than it had been, and he most certainly wouldn't have gone off in search of the car she told him about!