Mr Wolf and the White Princess

Chapter Six

The DumFone pings inside the shopping bag where they have stashed their hoody jackets.

‘Oh, what’s it doing?’ asks the princess.

‘Sounds like a message, have a look,’ answers the wolf as he continues driving down the motorway looking relaxed, with one hand on the wheel of the Porsche. 

The princess digs the phone out of the bag and looks at the screen awkwardly, ‘I’m not very good with these things.’

Mr Wolf takes the phone, swipes the screen open quickly and hands it back to her.

She peers at it, ‘Oh right. It says: seek, and then there’s a smiley face logo like the Ministry of Happiness, in LIFE. Except that life is spelt in capitals, ’ she says for the wolf’s benefit. ‘Why is it spelt in capitals?’ she looks across at him.

‘I don’t know, who’s it from?’

‘Um, it says GG? Oh, it’s the G-Gnome! Oh, bless my little gnome! He’s sending us clues. But what does he mean by LIFE?’

Mr Wolf purses his lips and looks back at her quickly, ‘I think he must mean the London International Fair of Emotions.’

‘Oh? What on earth is that?’

‘It’s in the City, I’ll show you, we’re heading there now.’

They drive on the main road past Euston and Paddington and then Mr Wolf steers south through Clerkenwell, past the Barbican and into the heart of the City. Tall office blocks loom up all around them and office workers in suits hurry back to their desks clutching their sandwich lunches.

Mr Wolf dumps the car in a back alley behind Moorgate and they walk on east towards Liverpool Street. It is a sunny afternoon and he is elated after their dramatic escape, he tilts his Cavalier Hat at a jaunty angle and swaggers along with one hand resting on the hilt of his Rapier Wit.

Next to him the princess is also feeling excited by the action and glad to be outside after being cooped up in the Tower for so long, her dress glows with a brighter white light than before and white petals of apple blossom stream out behind her from her hair in the breeze.

They thread through a busy pedestrian street filled with crowds of office workers, men and animals wearing a mixture of brightly coloured traders jackets and suits, all hurrying back to the LIFE market, which has just reopened after lunch.

The entrance to the market is through a classical stone arch and the pair walk through it in the jostling crowd of traders, curious to see what the market looks like and why the G-Gnome has told them to go there to search for clues to the Raven’s plan. They go through the arch and then edge their way to one side of the crowd where they stand and stare out over a vast panorama of deafening chaos.

A huge circular pit lies before them with large white marble terraces descending down into it like an open cast quarry. Each terrace has car boots sticking out of its wall where the emotion traders store their wares. These boots are now gaping open for business and the emotions are all piled up on folding trestle tables. Surrounding the pit on all sides are towering office blocks with no exterior walls just cave-like openings in their sides between rusting steel girders. Troupes of monkeys swarm up and down the side of these pouring into the pit and rampaging around, stealing bits of emotions and annoying the traders until they are driven off and climb back up and sit in the open-sided office blocks, jabbering, chewing emotions and throwing bits down into the pit.

From the tops of the office blocks vultures and hawks in vast flocks pour out. The hawks hover over the market with their beady eyes scanning for loose scraps of emotion and then diving down and seizing them.