XANTA
AND THE
GLOMBS

Juliet Eyeions & Paul Brazier

LEWES HAD NEVER BEEN SO COLD. Horizontal snow blasted down School Hill, mocking the cars and buses that tried the ascent to the War Memorial. After each had slid back down the hill, wheels spinning vainly, they turned and seemed to slink off to try to find another way. The River Ouse, despite the recent heavy rains swelling it to a torrent, was beginning to freeze at its banks. And across the river, Harvey’s brewery had suspended brewing for only the second time in living memory, as the brew froze in the vats. And still the snow, and the temperature, and the barometer fell.

Out of this blizzard came an apparition. Through the bottleneck, past the Crown Court and the White Hart Inn, drove a little orange and green bus with a red bonnet, reindeer painted along its sides, and false skids mounted beside the wheels. It failed to stop at the traffic lights, passed the War Memorial on the wrong side, and slalomed down School Hill in defiance of the one-way system, the fairy lights that outlined its windscreen swaying and blinking merrily. Bypassing the bollards, it crossed into the little pedestrian precinct, slithered over the bridge into Cliffe High Street, then, growling and swaying, in a rattle of chains, finally ground to a halt in front of a narrow darkened shopfront. Above it hung the device of a clock. The driver, a giant in a green outfit trimmed with black leather, dismounted, stumped through the knee-deep drifts in the gutter, and hammered on the door of the shop. Came no reply. Despite more pounding, the shop remained obdurately silent. He turned away, but, instead of returning to the bus, he headed across the road to The Gardeners Arms, and, brushing snow from his head and arms, shouldered into the side entrance.

“…and those endless glorious summer days, you know, when the sun hangs forever in a cloudless sky and the well-being warms your soul, sure you even have a special phrase for them, “halcyon days”, they’re my doing. Y’see, everyone has an individual relationship with time. I key their personal timepiece into it, then I set it to go faster or slower according to how much they’re enjoying themselves – the clock slows down when you’re having fun, so it feels like the road goes on forever, but there’s a colorolorolory – yes, I’d love another pint, thank ye kindly – there’s a corollary! Yes! If the clock slows down then, it has to speed up on some other occasion – and I set it to do that when you’re having a thoroughly miserable time, so it doesn’t last so long and you can go back to having fun again, but, see, the one thing you mustn’t do…” An arctic blast dispelled the fug in the snug little bar as a huge figure in green and black barged in. The door rebounded off several patrons, but protests about spilled beer were swallowed as they saw who was responsible.

“Timekeeper, I need your services.”

“Sure, come in, lad, and shut that door before everyone freezes.”

“This cannot wait.”

“Ay, well…” From the front bar, where the sound system had been playing an innocuous folk song about decorating hats with green willow, a sudden lusty roar drowned all conversation in the pub –

Well, it’s my effing business; and it’s my effing hat!

“Perhaps we should go. These people need to have fun while they can, and with you holding that door open, they’ll get none.”

The shop door closed behind them with a jangle as the bell bounced on its spring.

“Just a moment and I’ll get some light.” In a few moments, several candles were merrily dancing with the shadows around the shop, their randomness only pointing up the loud regularity of many clocks ticking.
“Why can’t you come into the twentieth century and get electricity laid on?” The giant’s breath steamed and streamed with the words in the cold air.

“Sure, it’s the twenty-first now, and why go to all that expense when soon enough everyone will be back to candles and lamps for their lighting?”

“Timekeeper, you are too gloomy. Last year’s floods were no presage of more disasters to come, but merely an unfortunate event in this town’s history.”

“You forget. I am The Timekeeper – all time is mine to keep, both past and future. Only the now is fluid… oh, and sometimes it is such a burden… but enough of me. What can I do for you?”

“I need more rewind spells.”

“And each year you need more than last, yet you claim no more disasters loom…”

“The weather, Timekeeper – aye, and the glombs increase every year. Find me a cure for the glombs, and I will cease demanding rewind spells.”

“There is danger. Should you cast a rewind without hermesis…”

“I’ve heard it often enough, old one –

When time is turned around, beware the pound
of strangers’ feet. Stop. Heal the wound
and seal the group hermetically around.
For should a stranger breach our rewind bounds,
Then all that is itself will self confound;
This Lewes will revert to mystic mound;
Our elder craft will fly, lost with the wind –
Reality entire will be rewound!

“Just so. You know it as well as I; but ’tis never a bad thing to revisit the prophecy. It pains me to think you use my power to such a trivial end.”

“Making Christmas happy is not trivial! Each year glombs gather in the shadows of the people, then mire them in their own self-pity, and drink their misery. As the glombs strength grows, the people sink ever deeper into their own unhappiness. People aren’t used to being together so much nowadays, nor helping each other to shrug off their woes. If I left them to it, soon all would be lost in that most exquisite of miseries, plenty without joy, and the glombs would feast forever. I can’t dispatch every glomb before it does real damage -- there are too many -- but Christmas Day coincides with glomb mass. Most people, at home with their families, get increasingly miserable as the glombs close in. But, when I find them and dispatch their glombs, because they are in little hermetic groups already, I can rewind their day so they can have a Happy Christmas together after all.”

“’Tis good, or sounds so. But I sometimes wonder what would happen if we just let things go…”

“How can you even think that?”

“Well, what have we got to look forward to, except more of the same next year?”

“I’ve got my stakeholder’s pension for one, and after a millenium of this, I think I’ll have deserved it. It’s got worse since the council took over the service and this new lot got in. First, it was, ‘Do you really need eight reindeer to pull that sleigh? Couldn’t you manage with six? Or even four?’ And then, ‘in light of the Best Value report, you should retire the reindeer and sleigh altogether, and get around on a County Rider,’ and I’ve ended up with that monstrosity outside. I’ve dressed it up – but they know that underneath it’s just a bus, and there’s no magic in that!” He slammed a huge fist down on the counter, and the shadows shivered.

“Your spells are ready. Will you join me back in The Gardeners for a bevy?”

“Enjoy your drink, Timekeeper. I have work to do.”

“You know what the CBS has taken to calling you.”

“Who?”

“The bonfire society. They were singing for you in the pub.”

“Oh. Were they? What? What are they calling me?”

“Well, they thought Alexander the Bus Driver didn’t sound tough enough…

“Surely you didn’t tell them my real mission!”

“…of course I did! I’ve told them all about both of us. And, as a result, they think I’m a harmless lunatic, and I get free beer. Anyway, they think driving little old ladies around in a bus in this weather is far more heroic than the other stuff, so you need a proper hero’s name. First they shortened it to ‘’Xander,’ after a character in some telly tripe whose name is Alexander too – but they didn’t think that was Christmassy enough, so they decided to combine it with Santa and that television thing again – so now you’re ‘Xanta – The Sleigher!’”

He had stormed off into the blizzard, the name ringing in his ears. Xanta, indeed! But, as he drove, inwardly smarting, through the snow, he had realised that beneath the rough-house mockery there was caring, concern and admiration for his work, and his humiliation evaporated, leaving him touched and honoured that the CBS had spent their time on him. And as his self-absorption abated, he realised too that all was not right with The Timekeeper. Now, he eased the little bus to a stop outside the clockmaker’s shop and looked up at the clock above him. Five minutes before midnight, the snow unabated, and everyone gone home now – but he felt sure The Timekeeper was not safe in bed above the little shop.

He stepped out of the bus, and even the slamming of the door was muffled by the snow. Following his instincts, he strode off through the snow towards the ancient hump-backed bridge over the Ouse that linked Cliffe with Lewes proper. And there, on the peak of the bridge, limned by the Christmas lights, on one of the benches provided for finer weather, he saw a slumped figure.

“Timekeeper.”

“Xanta.”

“What are you doing? You will freeze to death…”

“I should be so lucky. Supernaturals have no such surcease.”

“Have I ever shown you this, Timekeeper?”

“To be sure, you haven’t. And what in the world is it?”

“This is my dispatcher. But I have been looking at that telly tripe you spoke of, and find its hero has a similar device – and she has a better name for it.” The Timekeeper rose and stood by the bridge parapet, looking over and down.

“Look, the river has frozen over. This will be a hard winter, to be sure.”

“She calls it – Mr. Pointy!” As he said this, Xanta span and lunged behind with the dispatcher. It was batted aside, sending him reeling. He continued the spin on one leg, bringing up the other, knocking his assailant sprawling in the snow. Dark crawled. Xanta leaped forward, plunging the dispatcher down, but his wrist was intercepted, trapped. He threw himself backwards, heaved, and the glomb flew over his head, crashing into the bench. Only moments had passed – The Timekeeper was still turning, horrified by the noise behind him, when Xanta threw himself forward again. The glomb cuffed him contemptuously, and he saw stars, his head spinning – but he had managed to get between the glomb and The Timekeeper. Darkness and despair gathered before him, then rushed. He threw out his arms to fend it off, and was surprised to see the dispatcher, still in his left hand, slip inside the glomb’s guard and skewer it. As usual, with the impact, it evaporated, but the weight of its rush still knocked him backwards, into The Timekeeper who, caught off balance and still turning by the low parapet, toppled into the river. He hit the ice with an unearthly thud. Christmas lights span with Xanta’s head as he also toppled, but he caught hold of the single lamppost on the bridge and looked down, horrified, as the ice cracked loudly, opened a grinning black mouth, swallowed the Timekeeper, and closed again.

They were on the upstream side of the bridge. Xanta dashed to the other parapet, and leaped down, landing unsteadily on the ice. It was thicker here, and held his weight. Despite the dark, there was enough light to see The Timekeeper drift by beneath his feet under the ice. A few yards to the south, a kind of driftwood weir consisting mostly of old supermarket trolleys and other storm-born flotsam had partially blocked the river, causing the pooling that had in turn allowed it to freeze over. He ran to this, and saw The Timekeeper fetch up against the obstruction, still beneath the ice. Gathering his strength, he took a stance on the rickety dam and punched downward with all his might. A little star in the ice marked the impact point. Again, he punched, and again, and the ice sheet smashed, and The Timekeeper bobbed to the surface among the shards as Xanta sank into the weir beside him. Grabbing him by the collar, Xanta hauled him out of the water, slid him onto the ice, then managed to drag himself and his limp burden across the frozen surface and up onto the carpark by the river.

Icicles formed as river water dripped from his hair and eyebrows, and the street lights flashed among the Christmas lights and the blue flashes of pain from his hand and the extreme cold in his soaked clothes. He bent over the old man, slapping his face, calling his name. Nothing. He turned him over, pumped his chest, but he hadn’t drowned; there was no water in his lungs. He turned him over again, gave him mouth-to-mouth, pumped his chest again. Nothing. The flashes of pain were brighter, the lights spinning. The old man was gone. What would he do? How could he protect humanity against the glombs at Christmas without The Timekeeper’s rewind spells? The rewind spells!

It’s not what they were intended for, but the greater good demands this, he thought. And this is hermetic. Just him and me – no-one else about. I can rewind this. Blinking ice from his eyelashes, half-blind with pain and the flashes, he fumbled in his pocket, brought out a spell, and mumbled the incantation as he had a million times before. But, as he felt the rewind vortex begin to grip, there was a hand on his shoulder too! The flashes in his eyes became torches and the blue flashes became a patrol car and the frozen mutterings in his ears became, “’Ello, ’ello, ’ello” in the snow. Everything went white, and as it faded, The Timekeeper’s solemn intonation echoed in his mind – Our elder craft will fly, lost with the wind – Reality entire will be rewound!

A seasonally decorated County Rider is fetched up against the pedestrian precinct bollards, after slithering barely controlled down School Hill. The little old lady passengers are a little shaken, but otherwise unhurt. They are full of admiration for the way their driver, Dave (his name is Alexander, but everyone knows bus drivers are all called Dave), has managed to keep some control of their bus on its crazy slalom down the treacherous surface of the hill. The police car is a courtesy, there to mark their adventure, and the flashing blue lights a valediction of their experience. Would they risk this again? In a heartbeat. They have no other way of getting into Lewes for their shopping, and a little bit of adventure is just the job to get the old ticker beating a bit faster.
The bus controller has come out from the bus station to help with the passengers. “You were lucky,” he says to the driver. “That could have been very nasty indeed.”

“I dunno,” says Alex (or should we, too, call him Dave). “While we were coming down, my heart was in my mouth, sure, but I was thinking of you, how a crash now would screw up the timetable, and I felt I had to make sure that didn’t happen. It felt like you and I were some kind of team.”
The little old ladies all get nice individual trips home in chain-shod ambulances, and have lots to tell their families over Christmas. The police turn off their blue flashing lights, and go back to the station to shake their heads over the narrow escape and a nice cup of tea. A pickup truck arrives, and tows the slightly dented bus back to the Ringmer depot, where a bit of panel beating and a nice new paint job will make sure it is ready to carry the little old ladies back into Lewes for the New Year Sales. And the bus controller, who is going off duty, says to Dave,
“Why don’t we go and get a nice pint in The Gardeners?”

“Good idea,” Dave replies, “but I hope they’ve done singing.”

As they shoulder their way into the snug, the last strains of “Delilah” are being strained to their most strained. And then they are noticed, and Dave is chaired around the pub on shoulders, which isn’t easy in such a small place, and he gets cobwebs and seagull and eagle feathers in his hair, and then they buy him a drink, and the bus controller shouts above the din,

“A toast to Dave… no, no, a toast to Alexander!”

Ignoring him, and with one voice, the CBS roar –
“To Xanta! The Sleigher!”

Xanta and the Glombs is copyright © 2001 Paul Brazier & Juliet Eyeions

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