The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3088 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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“Where now, Kimo sabi?” asked my chauffer.

“I’ve just realised what that language possibly was.” I sat looking out of the windscreen but not really seeing anything.

“And what would that be?”

“Canaanite.”

“As in Old Testament?” replied James, looking perturbed by the conversation.

“The same. It’s where the other Middle Eastern languages developed, Aramaic, Hebrew, Punic.”

“Did you say Punic or pubic?”

“Punic—it relates to the Phoenicians.”

“Oh yes, Caesar’s Pubic Wars—remember it well.”

“So do I, we had to translate the blessed thing in Latin.”

“Why, couldn’t you get the English version?” he laughed and started up the car.

“Nah, my school was too impoverished, couldn’t afford books had to make use of scrolls.”

“Wasn’t that what they called the king’s evil?”

“No that was scrofula. A form of TB, I believe.

“Is there anything you don’t know about?”

“Loads, the whereabouts of these two girls being one.”

“Oh shit, right where to now, boss lady?”

“Brockenhurst.”

“This is Brockenhurst.”

“Oh is it? Okay drive on through.”

“Any particular direction?”

“I’ll tell you when to turn off.”

“Your wish is my command.”

We drew slowly through the town—is it a town or a village? It has a station, we passed by it. “Up here,” I pointed to road and he indicated and turned on my instruction.

According to the sign we were heading towards Sway but the road was becoming narrower, but then roads in the New Forest are quite narrow presumably to discourage speeding and many of them are quite ancient drove-ways to start. The area used to be larger in the time of William I, who used the area all the way to Bournemouth and the sea in the south, as a personal hunting area. Ironically, it was also the place where his son, William II met his end at a place ever since called, the Rufus Stone. He was murdered in a hunting ‘accident’. That he was purportedly gay wouldn’t have helped his cause in those days, but then it was a thousand years ago. Sadly, even today people are dying because of their sexuality, which is quite an indictment of human kind.

As we drove gently along the single lane track we passed a sign for the Pig Hotel. According to James, who has been there, it excels in being manufactured shabby chic, presumably once having been a Victorian country house, with an expensive restaurant which tries to source all its raw ingredients from local sources including some foraging in the forest. He said he thought the food was pretty good. Alas, whether it was or not, wasn’t helping me find these girls.

The blue lit map in my head drew me further along this track until suddenly it felt as if we’d driven into a whole bubble of it. When I shouted James stopped the car, then pulled it off the road and I jumped out running towards where I felt it was most concentrated. I vaulted over the gateway into the field and discovered its cause. A big sikka stag was caught by his antlers in some baler twine being used to repair a fence.

Judging by his lack of agitated response to us being there, I’d have expected him to be bouncing round trying to escape, suggested he was exhausted from his previous efforts. I approached him talking quietly and I stroked his side. He stood and let me.

“Careful, Cathy, that’s over two hundred pounds of venison, he could do you a lot of damage.”

“I think he’s too tired to try much.”

I pulled out my trusty Swiss Army knife and started to cut his antlers free. He snorted but kept relatively still. In two more snicks, he was free and he trotted away shaking his head as he went. Jim came over and helped me tie up the damaged fence again. Had he got himself caught in a wire fence, I doubt we’d have been able to free him.

“Is that it, then? The blue light helps a confused Rudolph but not the children of its agent. Hardly a recommendation, is it?” James was becoming more cynical it would seem.

“C’mon, let’s see what else happens.”

“If you say so,” he replied and walked briskly behind my trotting figure. I firmly asked the light to stop messing about and find my two girls. It seemed that it’s not just staff that you can’t rely on these days.

We eventually found a another road discovered we were heading west towards Burley, another large village small town that occur in the forest. As we were heading towards it, slowed down by a small herd of horses or ponies which weren’t going to hurry for any reason whatsoever, I found myself drawn towards a large house with locked gates, the gates standing about eight feet tall with perpendicular railings with spiky bits on the ends, meant we weren’t going to be climbing over the gate anytime soon.

“You going to vault this one, Cathy?” asked James as I stood there regarding the edifice and its varied design. This was a genuinely old building, possibly even Tudor, which had been messed about by different generations of occupants for the last five or six hundred years.”

The house looked in good condition from the little we could see from the gate. It certainly smacked of money, the railings alone would cost an arm and a leg. There were close circuit TV cameras all around the place which made trying to get in illegally, doubly hazardous. It didn’t seem to be my day.

“You think they’re in there?” asked my chauffer.

“I don’t know, all I can say is that there is a big surge of blue light coming from there at this moment.”

“You can see it?”

“In my mind’s eye, yes.”

“What if your detecting device isn’t as good anymore? I don’t fancy getting myself impaled upon those railings to prove a point and those cameras look as if they actually work, not just dummies.” This was getting dangerous, James was at risk of producing conscious thought.

“I take it we have to consider another mode of entry.”

“You may be able to blag your way in but then they’d have you and two girls as hostages for whatever they have in mind.”

“I thought it was troublesome parent trying to get their hands on one of my girls, I’m thinking a bit beyond that at this moment.”

“What if you’re still right, that she now owns or resides here and has decided to use her money and position to recover her child one way or another.”

“Why is she kidnapping girls? She’s looking for her son.”

“Um—pass.”

“If it were me who was looking to do that and I discovered my son was now my daughter, what could I do about it? Not very much, not here anyway, you’d need to go abroad and find a surgeon willing to reverse what was done and that would be nigh on impossible. No, even if she knows, she must be wondering what they do next.”

“Well we can’t just sit here and wait, can we?”

“Can you think of a better solution?” I asked him.