And, per usual, the original (terrible) first draft beneath the cut:

Nikki squinted one eye open and looked around. She was in a dark and musty cellar. In fact, it looked exactly like the other one, except there was no dragon chained to the walls.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“In the Mirror Lands,” Jubrin said. “Weren’t you paying attention? I suppose we’re in a reflection of the basement we just left.”

“Will I be in a library when I climb the stairs?” she asked.

“I actually don’t have a clue. It could lead to another building. The Mirror Lands aren’t a literal reflection, but a true reflection of a Reality. And sometimes the Reality we just left won‘t be the one reflected in the Mirror Lands.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nope,” said Jubrin cheerfully. He crawled up her shirt and showed her a small, rectangular mirror that fit in his palm nicely. “This is how we get back if we ever need to. I’d only use it in great need though. Sometimes, if you decide you need to return to the Mirror Lands, the Mirror might not be so amicable, or the price will be more than you will be willing to pay.”

“What sort of price?”

Jubrin grinned, his teeth sharp and white. “Oh I don’t know. A memory, a life, a prick of blood. The Mirror is very whimsical.”

Nikki stared at Jubrin, mouth open. He was so…non-chalant about it all. “Are you serious?”

“Perhaps,” he said, dropping the mirror in her pant’s pocket and scuttling up her shoulder. He flicked his tail on her neck again and said, “Let’s go.”

She began to climb the stairs, which were rather dusty than its reflected counterpart was, and had no pictures at all. Nikki decided that now was as good a time as any to ask her question. “So, are you really a he? I can’t really tell in the usual way…but it seems so odd to call someone with a name an it, you know.”

“I am a Gremlin,” Jubrin said.

“But a boy gremlin, or a girl gremlin?”

“I am simply a gremlin. We aren’t humans, we don’t have all the body parts that they and their animals have, because we are gremlins. I do have a wonderful nose that can smell all sorts of things, like a coffee brewing or the tang of electricity through the wires of a particularly well designed machine. But we can’t eat it, because we don’t have a digestive tract.”

His voice sounded sad, and Nikki was quite sure that if she could have craned her neck around to look at him, the tips of his pointed ears would be drooping.

“Oh,” she said. Then, almost as an afterthought, “I’m sorry?”

“Not necessary,” Jubrin said, with the familiar dismissive gesture.

They reached the top of the stairs to find that the door was crumbled and moldy. A black spider the size of Nikki’s fist skittered across the rotted planks into a shadowy hole. Wispy cobwebs fluttered around them, like old curtains in an untended home.

“I don’t like this place,” said Nikki and shivered. There was a small wind, and it was a chill one.

“It probably doesn’t like you either.”

She stepped from the rubble to find herself at the edge of a wood. The grass was green with yellow dandelions like so many small suns smiling. A few paces away, there was a man who looked both young and old twirling one of the flowers between his calloused fingers. His feet were bare and his brown robe was sparse with many patches that had been sewn with large, uneven stitches. He had a small wooden harp slung across his back.

“Good morning,” said Jubrin, waving his small grey hand at him.

The bard glanced up, dropping the flower. “Good? You must be smaller than you look if you have not noticed the tragedy that has struck if you call this morning good.”

“We have, actually,” said Nikki. “We were just wondering if you know anything about it, at all?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this field looking at daisies. The Order of the Bards are in disarray. Our library, our carefully recorded library, vanished. The scrolls of wisdom are gone, and folly will come in return. Our memories are good, but if we are unable to return to our source, the songs will disappear. People will forget how King Malcolm rose against his tormenters and with but a handful of men he drove them back into the sea because his courage was so fierce. They will forget how Princess Eirin gave herself to the dragon to save her people and, as he swallowed her, plunged a hidden dagger into his throat. They will forget, and they will die.”

Jubrin whispered in her ear, “The Bards are alright in their own way, but they don’t know how to handle moments of catastrophe without their books and their tales. Bit of a crutch they’ve made for themselves, I’m afraid.”

“Is there anybody else who might know what’s going on?”

The Bard shook his head.

“Well, thanks,” said Jubrin, tugging on Nikki’s earlobe. “I’ll suppose we’ll try the Prince then. The Royal City is just a few miles away, isn’t it?” he asked the Bard.

The Bard laughed and then spat in the general direction. “If you want to go ask that cretinous prince of fools anything, then go right ahead.”

“Thanks,” said Jubrin. “Let’s go, Nikki. I’m sure we’ve interrupted our friend here from his flowers long enough.”

“Wait!” The bard rushed forward, his hands clasped so tightly in front of him his knuckles were white.

“One gift, one boon, I ask of you.” His eyes flickered between the gremlin’s slate grey ones and Nikki’s hazel ones.

“What?” asked Nikki, wondering if now would be a good time to mention she didn’t have any money or valuables on her person.

“One story, one poem, or…or even a limerick,” the bard said.

“Gremlins don’t possess things of that nature. We are gremlins, not story tellers.”

“You?” the bard asked, turning to Nikki.

She stared at him, at his clasped hands, at his hungry eyes. She opened her mouth to tell him of the Wizard of Oz and Jack Pumpkinhead, or perhaps of the Martian Chronicles and found that she could not. She could give him a summary, but that wasn’t the same as the story, was it? “Well,” she said, “I do know one rhyme, but I’m afraid it’s very short.”

“Anything!”

“The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown, the lion beat the unicorn all around the town, Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown, Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town.”

“And, what happens next?” asked the bard.

“She did say it was short,” Jubrin said.

“But it’s incomplete,” said the bard, frowning a little.

“You’re a bard, finish it,” said Nikki.

Jubrin swished his tail. “But in the meantime, we really need to be going. Tata.”

They found a road paved with flat grey stones not far from them and Jubrin said, “This is the main road and it will lead to the Royal City.”

“How do you know?” asked Nikki.

“It’s not a dirt road. It’s paved to make it easier for weary travelers to seek an audience with the King. Whether they actually see him though, well.”

“Oh.” Nikki chewed her lip for a moment, which she often did when she was thinking about something, and then said, “But how will we be able to see him if people of his own land don’t?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” said Jubrin. “But we’ll think of something. We could say that we’re ambassadors from the Reflected Lands and he’d see us then. Of course if he found out we were lying, he could possibly have us dipped in oil and slow roasted over a monstrous bon fire.”

Nikki shuddered. “Fun.”

“Not really.”

Nikki again wondered if sarcasm was lost on the small gremlin, then said, “But aren’t we from the Reflected Lands?”

“Sort of, but are we ambassadors?”

“I don’t know, I just want to find the Stories,” said Nikki impatiently.

“We will,” said Jubrin, “or we won’t.”

“Well, that’s very comforting,” Nikki said, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“Now, we have to figure out a way to make it in the Prince’s favour to decide to grant us an audience. He’s fond of war, bloodshed (especially if it ends in death), and anything valuable. I don’t believe that the first two options are readily available to us, and I’m not sure about the last. You don’t happen to have anything valuable, do you?”

Nikki hesitated, and put her hand over her chest. “I have one thing, but it’s not a precious stone or anything. It’s just a ring my mother gave me, before she died.” It was on a cheap chain around her neck, hidden behind her shirt.

“Do you treasure it a lot?” asked Jubrin.

“I guess.”

Nikki lied for she didn’t guess that she treasured it. She loved that silly thing, slept with it every night, showered with it, panicked if the chain happened to break. “Why?” she asked.

“Because, the Prince likes things of value to their owners. It doesn‘t have to be a physical treasure, like a precious gem or something like that, it just has to be very much well loved.” Jubrin climbed on top of her head and started to play with her hair. “But if you only guess you love it, then you don’t love it all that much, and if you don’t love it all that much he won’t be interested, and then we’ll have to hope Luck decides to notice us, but he doesn’t notice anyone unless it’s by chance.”

“Oh.” Nikki felt sick, the kind of sick one gets before a test that will more than likely determine the rest of one’s life –~~ only much worse.

Jubrin tugged on her lobe, and out of the corner of her eye she saw his thin arm outstretched, pointing. “Look! There it is.”

The it to which Jubrin referred was the hugest castle Nikki had ever seen. The walls towered above the little village at its feet, a giant among them. From each of the five turrets there was a scarlet flag emblazoned with a silver sword fluttering in the breeze. The castle sprawled across the land like a sleeping lion, ready to spring, ready to unsheathe its claws, ready to kill. What kind of prince lived in this fortress?

“It’s amazing,” she whispered.

“It’s rather drafty actually. Come on.”

With every step, the fortress loomed forbiddingly larger until they were so close that Nikki saw it cast the entire town in shadow. She mentioned this to Jubrin, who said, “Only when the sun is behind it.”

Which, she thought, was hardly comforting.

Anyway, despite the embarrassment, I think there’s a certain amount of honesty in posting the old drafts as I go along making notes of what needs to be changed in order to work. So below the cut is part 2:

“Well, give it back. Please.”

The little grey thing rolled its large white, almost bulbous eyes towards the ceiling, nibbled its finger, and paused for precisely fifteen seconds. “No can do. It’d go against my morals, immorals rather. Actually, amorals would be more correct, since we aren’t really bothered with the whole good vs. evil quandary.”

“We?” asked Nikki, distantly wishing she had a strong mug of coffee in her hands right now. Two teaspoons of sugar and plenty of cream, thank you.

“You know, us gremlins.” The gremlin swung on a small red wire to Nikki’s knee, and bowed so low that its nose tickled her skin. She noticed that the gremlin had a thin tail that curled a little at the tip.

“Us gremlins,” she repeated. Weren’t they some sort of folk lore invention? Precisely meaning that they did not exist. She wondered if she was going into hysterics again, and then thought that her wondering must be proof she wasn’t. She held out her hand, and it hopped into her palm.

“A gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a kidnapping of gremlins.” It grinned.

“But, I’ve never seen any of you before,” Nikki said.

“Well, duh.” It rolled its eyes. “That would destroy the point.”

“The point?”

The gremlin, however, didn’t deem to elaborate. “After all the stories disappeared, it’s been a mite dull,” it said. “So I thought I’d take a jaunt to the computer, as it was also feeling rather lonely.”

“What do you know about the books?” Nikki asked.

“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” the gremlin asked, rather severely Nikki thought.

“What?’

“Well, I believe our exchange of words has sufficiently evolved to become a Conversation. I really despise not knowing to whom I am talking. I know that you’re a human, of course,” it went on, waving its hand in dismissal, “but that’s such a vague and nebulous term.” It looked at her expectantly and propped its chin in its hands.

“Oh, I’m Nikki. I thought you’d know that if you’ve been here.”

It snorted. “As if I’d pay attention to such details. I’m Jubrin.”

“Pleased to meet you. Now about this Story disappearing business?”

“Oh that, well I can assure you that we gremlins had nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

“Would that be against your amorals?” Nikki asked.

Jubrin shrugged. “Not really. We just happen to have a great fondness for stories so we would really have no reason to do something so preposterous and outrageous.”

“Well, could you please give the net back so that I can check to see if there’s anything to be done about it all.”

“Why?” asked Jubrin.

“Because!”

“Well, it hasn’t happened before.”

Nikki pursed her lips at him, in a remarkable resemblance to Gretta. “How do you know?”

The gremlin shrugged. “I’m immortal.”

“Oh.” Nikki deflated.

“However,” said Jubrin, “He might know something about it.”

“Who’s he?” she asked.

“Capital H, love. And He’s in the basement.”

Nikki frowned. “But we don’t have a basement.”

Jubrin grinned again, showing its pointed teeth. “Of course you do. All libraries have a basement. Just, sometimes, they don’t know it.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Nikki, secretly thinking the gremlin was quite nutty. Possibly of the hazelnut variety, for it was a very sweet thing besides its rather unsettling teeth.

“Good, that is quite plausibly the wisest thing you’ll ever do.”

It scurried up her shoulder as she stood to her feet and said, “So where’s this basement of yours?”

“In the Science Fiction section, by the ladies’ lavatories,” said Jubrin.

The bookshelves that had once been towers of colour and text stood pale and bland, staring as she passed with empty eyes. Nikki shivered and walked faster until she reached the door that said Women’s in white text with a stick figure in a triangle underneath it, and beneath that a jumble of raised dots. Beside that door, was another door. It was a little smaller, and made of several planks of wood. It had a gold polished handle which Nikki was sure made the plain silver toned handle of the restroom’s pale with envy.

“I don’t recall that ever being here before,” said Nikki slowly.

“Of course not,” said Jubrin. “It’s not as if it has a sign that jumps up and down shouting, ‘Hey look at me look at meeee! I go down to the Very Dark and Mysterious Basement of Dooooooooom!”

The gremlin’s naturally high pitched voice strangled a little as he tried to lower it to the appropriate baritone quality of dread and, quite possibly, lurking danger.

“Is it really quite dangerous?” asked Nikki, not quite sure she wanted to turn the door handle.

“I haven’t the faintest,” Jubrin said. “Go on, try it. It should be unlocked, I don’t see a key hole, do you?”

Nikki sighed and touched the handle. It was pleasantly warm, like a cup after it had been filled with freshly brewed coffee. Or hot chocolate on a winter’s day, with a peppermint stick in it.

She turned the handle and saw a winding silver staircase that slithered down into murky darkness.

Jubrin tugged her ear lobe. “Well, go on.” And then it flicked her neck with its tail. It stung a little, just enough to be uncomfortable, but not to hurt really.

“Very funny,” she said, rubbing the spot with her fingers.

“Really? I hadn’t thought so.”

Nikki rolled her eyes, wondering if the gremlin was too small to understand the concept of sarcasm. The steps of the stairs were ornamented with paintings so beautiful she hesitated to step upon them. The first step showed a green land with tall trees and a castle all of gold with diamonds upon the rooftops.

The second step showed a gloriously beautiful lady with very long, yellow hair looking out the window of the tower. Her eyes were sad, and she had her chin cupped in her hand.

“Rapunzel, no doubt,” Jubrin whispered in her ear. “And she wasn’t as sad as this painting makes her out to be, she had such fun up there from prying eyes with her prince.”

Oh. That certainly hadn’t been in any of the books she had read on the subject. “Were you acquainted with her?”

“Quite personally.”

During this conversation, Nikki had forgotten to look at the other paintings, so when she again diverted her attention to them, she found that she no longer knew what number of step she was on.

The current one beneath her black and white converses showed a city in burning smoking piles of rubble with women crying into their aprons and men brandishing their swords and clanging spears against their shields.

After that, the picture showed a magnificent green dragon with luminescent wings and bright red eyes staring at a fair maiden strumming a harp.

The next and final step simply had a dragon sleeping comfortably on a pile of golden coins, precious stones, and the like. Scrolls and parchments covered in small writing that looked more like squiggles towered behind him. His stomach looked slightly rounder than the former painting, his bright red eyes were closed, and a waft of blue-grey smoke drifted from his nostrils.

“Oh dear,” said Jubrin, licking its finger with a sliver of tongue.

The room they were in now was vast and thick with green tinted shadows. At her feet, Nikki could see dusty coins still valiantly striving to glint seductively in the green glow of the monstrous dragon that was now before them.

“I forgot that He happens to have a sweet tooth for dimply delightful maidens,” Jubrin whispered in her ear. “But you’re not beautiful, not even exactly pretty, so I’m sure that’s in your favour.”

“Gee thanks,” Nikki said. Naturally, she found no comfort in these words, but, on second thought, she supposed it was better to have your pride wounded than contemplating about how more beautiful you were than anybody else in the stomach of a dragon.

The dragon’s eyes opened. They were orange now, orange and grey like dying embers instead of bright red. A thin forked tongue flicked between his jagged fangs as a small flare of fire sparked in the air.

“I wake,” He rumbled.

Nikki wondered if that was a momentous thing for dragons instead of one of daily routine.

“I see that,” said Jubrin cautiously.

The dragon clawed a silver coin absently. “A thief has come in the night. Do you know how long it has been, Gremlin, since such a thing has happened? Since anyone has dared to trespass against my lair? I am the Keeper, no one ought to have even thought about trespassing here.”

“Well, isn’t that why you’re supposed to be a Keeper?” asked Nikki.

“Usually a dragon’s fearsome reputation is enough to do the trick,” said Jubrin absently. “And this one certainly ate plenty of damsels to warrant a really terrifying one.”

“All the scrolls, all the stories, gone. All the tales, all the legends, all the myths,” said the dragon. A hot tear steamed down his scaly cheek.

“Well, where ought we to look?” said Jubrin. “I really don’t think anybody from this reality would have been powerful enough to take all the Stories, do you?”

The dragon shook his head.

“What do you mean, all the Stories?” Nikki demanded. “Does that mean that all the books in my bookshelves are gone? That the books in that nice little store with the coffee café are gone?”

“Every scrap of fiction,” said the gremlin, smirking a little. “Really quite amazing, even the gremlins couldn’t do that to all the machinery if we wanted to.”

“You are a little people, with little talents, and little doings,” the dragon boomed.

The gremlin nodded. “Quite right. Sometimes we forget.”

“But, what are we going to do!” said Nikki. “I want my books back. And I will get them back, whether if you help me or not. But I’d much rather have your help than not,” she added hastily.

“Actually,” said the Dragon, almost mildly, “you couldn’t do a damn thing without us.”

Nikki felt small, and wished she hadn’t been quite so vehement.

“I would try the Mirror Lands first,” said the dragon, with another plume of fire that lit several candles that Nikki hadn’t noticed at first.

Beside the flickering candles was a tall mirror. There was no ornament upon it. It looked like something one could find cheaply at the local convenience store.

“Ask. Remember to rhyme. It likes it when you rhyme.”

Jubrin hopped into the palm of Nikki’s hand as she walked towards the mirror. It showed the two of them — Nikki with her pale cheeks and the small little grey thing with pointed ears and teeth in her hand.

“Hold my tail, if you would,” said the Gremlin.

Nikki took it carefully between her thumb and forefinger. “Isn’t He coming?” she asked.

“No, He can’t, even if He wanted to. Getting a mite old, even for a dragon you know?”

“But why?”

“He’s a Keeper. He must stay. It his…his fate, if you will.” Jubrin turned, and pointed at the dragon’s scaled legs. “See?”

Shackles were clasped around his limbs. They seemed iridescent in the green glow of his scales, and the chains were fine and wrought of silver that shone strangely bright in the gloom.

“Why won’t he break them?” she asked.

“No dragon could break those chains. No Anything actually, unless I’m far off the mark.”

The dragon growled and Nikki looked away from him, and back towards the mirror.

Jubrin coughed, then reached out with both his small hands and pressed his palms against the smooth surface. “Mirror mirror in my hand, please take us to your fair fair land.”

The Mirror sniffed. “Technically I’m not in your hand and using the same word twice in one sentence is, frankly, poor writing.”

“Well I had wanted to say ‘in the dragon’s lair’ but for the life of me I couldn’t think of a good phrase that rhymed with it. And really, you mustn’t be so finicky about the rhymes.”

“Poppycock.”

The surface of the mirror began to glow with a pulsing silver light. “I’d close my eyes if I were you,” Jubrin said. “And don’t let go of my tail. I’m not sure what would happen to you if you got caught between worlds, but I’m sure it’d be quite unpleasant.”

“Ok.” Nikki closed her eyes and tightened her grip, hoping she wasn’t hurting him. She vaguely realized that she had stopped referring to the gremlin as it, and wondered if it really was a he, or an it, or maybe a she. But it was hard to tell since it didn’t have any body parts. She’d have to remember to ask whenever they got to wherever they were going.

“You can open your eyes now,” said Jubrin.

Part 1 Initial Draft Under the Cut (ie, unrevised, with all the faults listed above here)

Nikki thought that being a Librarian would be quite delightful and even dared to speculate that they were more prone to adventures than anybody else. Under that assumption, she strove to secure for herself a position in her local library (it had brick walls and a staircase that circled gently upwards).

Eventually she managed to succeed. It certainly wouldn’t have been her first choice, but she had her foot in the door and really that was quite impressive: she became a volunteer.

She stood in front of the Head Librarian –~~ a plummishly plump woman in frail spectacles –~~ and listened to her elaborate on her duties. At the end, the Head Librarian asked, “Any questions, Nikki?”

“Yes. What kind of adventures have you had?”

The Head Librarian burst out laughing and wiped her eyes with a white laced handkerchief. “My dear, whatever gave you that idea?”

Nikki gestured at the glass displays of old books that had funny letters and swords and other stuff of rather interesting heritage that the Librarians could only have gained by braving the jungles of Africa or the ruins of haunted castles. “Where’d you get all those then?”

“Well, it says where on the tags,” said the Head Librarian with a bemused smile on her face. “Didn’t you read them?”

Nikki hadn’t. The print was very small and if there was one thing Nikki most despised was fine print.

The Head Librarian took Nikki by the elbow and guided her to a display of Leonardo da Vinci’s works. “See this Mona Lisa?”

Nikki nodded.

“It’s a replica, the tag says so, see?”

Nikki nodded. They were lying of course. So modest of them. But she’d play the game if they really wanted her to. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

That had all happened some time ago. Now, Nikki was a few years older, and several years wiser. Of course they had been replicas and of course librarians didn’t have adventures. Why, the most adventurous thing the head librarian did was to have a little brandy with her holiday egg nog. Nikki was quite certain that Gretta, a severely thin clerk who loaned books out and made up library cards had no adventures at all.

In short, Nikki was sadly disillusioned as she helped Gretta put the books back in their proper order on the shelf and made sure everything was just as tidy as could be. Librarians were very tidy and fastidious, Nikki discovered.

Sometimes, when Gretta wasn’t around, she’d read a chapter or two of an interesting book about aliens on Mars or she’d secretly consume a volume about dragons.

In short, the only adventures she encountered in the library were in the books. Which was all very well in and of itself, but Nikki wasn’t a part of those novels and thus did not share in their adventures. Rather disappointing, really.

It was the sort of day where the sky was all grey and the clouds were cumulous ones that threatened to drench innocent people rushing below. Unsurprisingly, it was a Monday morning and Nikki would much rather have been reading in bed instead of climbing the stairs and walking through the library’s tall double glass doors.

As usual, Gretta had a cartload of books that Nikki was supposed to reshelf in the science fiction section. She had already read most of them, but paused to smile at the Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It had a scantily clad voluptuous maiden on the cover, in the strong arms of our hero. She opened the book to skim the beginning chapter, which was her way of saying “hello” to old friends.

Familiar words greeted her as Nikki began to read. She turned the page, and saw the words fall beneath her finger tips, letters and punctuation tumbling and spinning down a vast expanse of white.

Nikki frowned and flipped through the pages — all naked and bare, bereft of words. They were gone. The story disappeared.

She turned the book over and saw that there was no hero and damsel in distress on the cover, which was now a shade of off-white that looked positively ill.

Nothing.

All she held in her hands was a bundle of paper. Wordless. Story-less. Gone.

She dropped the Had-Been book, and opened another. Empty pages stared at her. She tossed it aside and grabbed another. Wordless pages, stripped of even numbers at their corners.

“Gretta!” Nikki screamed. “They’ve gone!”

“What are you talking about?” Gretta sounded very bored.

Nikki ran towards the desk Gretta was sitting behind and waved a book in her face. “The words are all gone! See?”

Gretta peered down her nose at the empty pages. “Impossible.”

“But it’s true, all of them are like that.”

“Nonsense.” Gretta stood up from her chair and marched to the Sci Fi section, then to the young adult fiction, and finally she was satisfied that every book the library possessed was wordless (which was only partially correct as the non fiction section remained quite intact if anyone had cared to notice). “Nikki, close and lock the doors until we figure this mess out. It would hardly do for some patrons to try to borrow our books and find them lacking. Oh my goodness. What will the head librarian say?”

Most likely nothing useful, but Nikki kept that thought to herself.

The head librarian’s office was rather comfortable. It had soft plush chairs, a coffee pot that was softly percolating in the corner, and there were paintings of fruits and ivied bridges over flowered rivers and other things of that nature.

“Oh what a surprise,” said the Head Librarian as she put down a china tea cup. “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We have a bit of a problem,” said Gretta hesitantly.

Nikki stepped forward and thrust three wordless, picture-less books in front of the Head Librarian. “All our fiction is like that! It’s absolutely horrible. And the words just disappeared.” Nikki snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

The Head Mistress took a hurried sip of tea “Most extraordinary.”

“Most dreadful you mean! They’re all gone, all those stories. What if my bookshelf is like that? What will I read?” The thought was most horrifying and Nikki wrung her hands.

“Now now, do calm yourself, dear,” said the head mistress.

“Having hysterics won’t solve anything,” Gretta added dryly.

“Why don’t you go along and do a search on the ‘net while Gretta and I discuss what we ought to do in the mean time?”

Nikki nodded and made her way towards the computer. What exactly would she say in the search engine box? Words gone missing? Story thief? Death of fiction? Fiction murdered? Well, that last one sounded more appropriate for a newspaper headline.

She clicked the internet browser and was politely told that the page could not be displayed, possibly due to the fact that she was not connected to the internet.

Lovely.

She reset the router and tried again, with the same result. “You stupid stupid thing!” she shouted, and slapped it with her hand for good measure.

“I wouldn’t do that you know,” a voice said. It was slightly muffled but it seemed to be coming from the computer tower. “You might offend it.”

She knelt down on one knee and peered into the tangle of wires. Dimly, she saw a small grey figure with pointed ears and long fingers.

“It’s not its fault its been severed from the Internet,” it said, while stroking the wires.

“Well, who’s fault is it then?” said Nikki, before realizing that a more suitable question would have been what the hell are you?.

The thing smiled, showing nastily pointed teeth. “Well, mine of course.”