Fire and Hemlock. Diana Wynne Jones

unless she liked them. So, as they edged their way between two vast grey hedges of uncut lavender, she said, “What I like best – apart from running and shouting and jokes and fighting – is being things.”

      “Being things?” Mr Lynn asked. “Like what?” He sounded wistful and mystified.

      “Making things like heroes up with other people, then being them,” Polly explained. The tortoise head turned to her politely. She could tell he did not understand. It was on the tip of her tongue to show him what she meant by telling him how she had arrived at the funeral by being a High Priestess with the police after her. But she dared not say that. “I’ll show you,” she said instead. “Pretend you’re not really you at all. In real life you’re really something quite different.”

      “What am I?” Mr Lynn said obligingly.

      It would have been better if he had been like Nina and said he would not be friends unless she told him. Without any prodding, Polly’s invention went dead on her. She could only think of the most ordinary things.

      “You keep an ironmonger’s shop,” she said rather desperately. To make this seem better, she added, “A very good ironmonger’s shop in a very nice town. And your name is really Thomas Piper. That’s because of your name – Tom, Tom, the piper’s son – you know.”

      Mr Lynn smiled. “Oddly enough, my father used to play the flute professionally. Yes. I sell nails and dustbins and hearth-brushes. What else?”

      “Hot-water bottles and spades and buckets,” said Polly. “Every morning you go out and hang them round your door, and stack wheelbarrows and watering cans on the pavement.”

      “Where passers-by can bark their shins on them. I see,” said Mr Lynn. “And what else? Am I happy in my work?”

      “Not quite happy,” Polly said. He was playing up so well that her imagination began to work properly. Down between the lavender bushes, the wind was cut off and she felt much calmer. “You’re a bit bored, but that doesn’t matter, because keeping the shop is only what everyone thinks you do. Really you’re secretly a hero, a very strong one who’s immortal—”

      “Immortal?” Mr Lynn said, startled.

      “Well nearly,” said Polly. “You’d live for hundreds of years if someone doesn’t kill you in one of your battles. Your name is really – um – Tan Coul and I’m your assistant.”

      “Are you my assistant in the shop as well, or just when I’m being a hero?” asked Mr Lynn.

      “No, I’m me,” said Polly. “I’m a learner hero. I come with you whenever you go out on a job.”

      “Then you’ll have to live within call,” Mr Lynn pointed out. “Where is this shop of mine? Here in Middleton? It had better be, so that I can pick you up easily when a job comes up.”

      “No, it’s in Stow-on-the-Water,” Polly said decidedly. Pretending was like that. Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going.

      “That’s awkward,” Mr Lynn said.

      “It is, isn’t it?” Polly agreed. “If you like, I’ll come and work in your shop and pretend to be your real-life assistant too. Say when I found out where you lived, I journeyed miles from Middleton to be near you.”

      “Better,” said Mr Lynn. “You also pretended to be older than you are, in order not to be sent to school. But that sort of thing can easily be done by the right kind of trainee-hero, I’m sure. What’s your name when we’re out on a job?”

      “Hero,” said Polly. “It is a real name,” she protested, as the tortoise head swung down to look at her. “It’s a lady in my book that I read every night. Someone swam the sea all the time to visit her.”

      “I know,” said Mr Lynn. “I was just surprised that you did.”

      “And it’s a sort of joke,” Polly explained. “I know a lot about heroes, because of my book.”

      “I see you do,” said Mr Lynn, smiling rather. “But there are still a lot of things we need to settle. For instance—”

      As he spoke, they pushed out from between the grey hedges into a small lawn with an empty sunken pool in it. A brown bird flew away, low across the grass as they came, making a set of sharp, shrieking cries. The wind gusted over, rolling the dry leaves in the concrete bottom of the pool, and a ray of sun followed the wind, travelling swiftly over the lawn.

      “For instance,” said Mr Lynn, and stopped.

      The sun reached the dry pool. For just a flickering part of a second, some trick of light filled the pool deep with transparent water. The sun made bright, curved wrinkles on the bottom, and the leaves, Polly could have sworn, instead of rolling on the bottom were, just for an instant, floating, green and growing. Then the sunbeam travelled on, and there was just a dry oblong of concrete again. Mr Lynn saw it too. Polly could tell from the way he stopped talking.

      “Heroes do see things like that,” she said, in case he was alarmed.

      “I suppose they do,” he agreed thoughtfully. “True. They must, since we both are. But, tell me, what happens when the call comes to do a job? I’m in the shop, selling nails. We each snatch up a saw – or I suppose an axe would be better – and we rush out. Where do we go? What do we do?”

      They walked past the pool while Polly considered. “We go to kill giants and dragons and things,” she said.

      “Where? Up the road in the supermarket?” Mr Lynn asked.

      Polly could tell he thought poorly of her answer. “Yes, if you like, if you’re so clever!” she snapped at him, just as if he were Nina. “I know we’re that kind of heroes – I know we’re not the kind that conquers mad scientists – but I don’t know it all. You do some of it, if you know so much! You were just pretending not to know about being things – weren’t you?”

      “Not altogether,” Mr Lynn said, politely holding a wet lump of evergreen bush aside for Polly. “It’s years since I did any. Beside you, I’m the learner. I’d really much prefer to be a trainee-hero too. Couldn’t I be? You could happen to be there when I kill my first giant – and perhaps it could be thanks to you that I didn’t get squashed flat by him.”

      “If you like,” Polly agreed graciously. He was so humble that she felt quite mean to have snapped.

      “Thank you,” he said, just as if she had granted a real favour. “That brings me to another question. Do I know about my secret life as a hero while I’m being an ironmonger? Or not?”

      “You didn’t at first,” Polly said, thinking it out. “You were awfully surprised and thought you were having visions or something. But you got used to it quite quickly.”

      “Though at first I blundered about, utterly bewildered,” Mr Lynn agreed. “We both had to learn as we went on. Yes, that’s how it must have been. Now, what about my life selling hardware in Stow-on-the-Water? Do I live alone?”

      “No, I live there too, when I get there,” said Polly. “But of course there’s your wife, Edna—”

      “No there isn’t,” Mr Lynn said. He said it quietly and calmly, as if someone had asked him if there was any butter and he had opened the fridge and found none. But Polly could tell he meant it absolutely.

      “Well – there has to be,” she argued. “There’s someone – I know her name’s Edna – who bosses you round, and makes your life a misery, and thinks you’re stupid, and doesn’t allow you enough money, and makes you do all the work—”

      “My landlady,” said Mr Lynn.

      “No,” said Polly.

      “Sister, then,” said Mr Lynn. “How about a sister?”

      “I don’t know about sisters!” Polly protested.