Some time later, how long is a mystery what with there not being any time and all, but for the purpose of this story we shall say… about the time it takes for a man to find his socks in the morning! Okay, not that long, but about the length of time it takes for a tram\ bus to appear while you’re waiting at a bus\tram stop! Okay, not that long, but the lifespan of a mayfly should probably cover it.
‘These ice caves seem to go on for ever,’ Drake said as he held a lantern to light the way.
‘It’s like a labyrinth, I’ve never seen anything remotely like this before in this part of the world, or in any world for that matter!’ said Gulliver in wide-eyed wonderment as he looked at the large ice stalagmites sticking up from the floor and stalactites hanging from the ceiling of the ice labyrinth. At the time Gulliver saw this remarkable sight, it reminded him of the jaws of the great white shark he had seen in the Antiquarium. This was a sight he rather wished he hadn’t seen as he’d had nightmares of being swallowed by a giant white shark ever since.
‘You’ve been here before?’ Drake said in amazement.
‘No, I mean I’ve never seen anything on the television like this before,’ Gulliver said covering his tracks badly.
‘What on earth is a… What did you call it, a television!?’ Drake said as his amazement turned to disbelief.
‘I mean in the picture books I’ve read,’ Gulliver said hurriedly.
‘But you said a television, unless my ears need waxing,’ Drake said as he edged forward into the darkness.
‘No, what I said was, perhaps we’ll soon tell if Solomon’s vision was correct,’ Gulliver said thinking on his feet.
‘In that case, once when get back to Albion I’m going to ask the queen’s physician to wash my ears out! To be fair there’s probably enough wax in between them to seal a thousand letters,’ Drake said in jest, hopefully!
‘It’s like Hampton Court Maze in here,’ said Alice before continuing on, ‘without the hedges!’
Gulliver thought this description a little strange but considering all the strange things that had happened since he had ended up in this world then in comparative terms it wasn’t that strange. Gulliver was looking forward to visiting Hampton Court Maze in this parallel world, as the original maze was a lot bigger than it appeared to be in his world. In fact, there were four compared to the one that now stood in his world, which in truth wasn’t much bigger than a postage stamp. He was bound to get lost, of course, but half the fun was getting lost in a maze, Gulliver wondered what the other half of the fun about getting lost in a maze was. He’d have to wonder about that question a little more before letting himself know the answer!
‘Is this place the end of the world?’ one of the midshipmen said, sounding lost without the deck of the ship underneath his feet.
‘Technically it’s one end,’ said Alice using her common sense to great effect.
‘Did you hear that?’ said Drake as he stopped and stood as still as an ice statue in the North Pole’s version of Madame Tussauds, although in this case perhaps Ripley’s Believe It Or Not London might be a more apt description.
‘Yes, I think I did?’ said Gulliver, turning his head so his left ear could hear exactly where the sound was coming from.
‘There it goes again!’ said Drake as he held his lantern a little higher.
‘You don’t think it might be Big Foot?’ Gulliver said nervously, which brought to mind a tale his grandfather had once told him of a tribe in the lost continent, later to be named New Holland and later still Australia. The tribe members were supposed to all have one massive foot, under which they could shelter from the sun. Now given the fact that Australia was like a dust bowl and hotter than an oven, and the North Pole was as cold as a freezer in Iceland, then bringing this story to mind did seem a might strange. However, in the context of this tale perhaps this does not seem in the slightest bit strange at all, in fact, in this parallel world it seems to fit in quite nicely, like in a puzzle entitled Parallel Worlds.
‘It’s more likely to be a family of polar bears,’ the coxswain said matter-of-factly as Gulliver came walking out of his daydream.
‘Or extinct mammoths that due to the summer have thawed out,’ the cook said in jest.
‘Yes, we can probably rule that one out,’ said Drake as he continued to peer into the gloom. ‘Well, there’s only one thing for it, we must continue on with our journey and see where it takes us,’ Drake said stating the patently obvious but doing it with great conviction. Drake was good at stating the patently obvious but doing it with great conviction. In fact, nobody was better than he at stating the patently obvious but doing it with great conviction.
Gulliver thought that surely this must be the land that time forgot, but as this whole world was the land that time forgot then that wasn’t any great earth-shattering discovery, although discovering this parallel earth most certainly was!
Suddenly Gulliver heard a voice in his head with an American accent say, ‘Picture this if you will, somewhere far, far away in another time and dimension, in a world where nothing is quite as it seems.’ ‘The Twilight Zone,’ Gulliver said out loud, as his voice echoed through the caves and caused a noise which rumbled like thunder towards them then disappeared before returning once more.
‘It’s big Hamish’s stomach that’s rumbling,’ the cook said with bravado.
‘Get down!’ shouted Drake as the ceiling started to cave in.
‘It’s an earthquake!’ said one crewman.
‘More like an icequake!’ said another.
‘It’s a landslide!’ said another.
‘It’s an avalanche!’ another sailor cried, although he wasn’t crying when he said it, as it was so cold the tears would have turned to icicles halfway down his cheeks.
It was none of these things, what it actually was, was the ice, which was moving as it tended to do in this part of the world.
For a moment all went quiet as most of the lanterns were extinguished by the falling snow and the stalagmites and stalactites which rained down upon the ship’s company from above like a hail storm, although in this case an ice storm would be a better description.
And then a voice was heard. ‘Is everybody all right?’ it was Drake who looked as white as an ice sheet as by now he was covered in snow and ice from head to toe.
Various moans from various directions were heard until the sound of bodies moving and feet scrapping upon the ground joined them.
Then a light could be seen waving back and forth; once again it was Drake with lantern in hand making sure everybody was still in the land of the living.
‘Are you okay, Gulliver? How about you, Alice,’ Drake said showing fatherly concern as he appeared out of the darkness like a spectre.
‘I’m fine apart from my head hurts a little where the ice hit me,’ Alice said rubbing the side of her head.
‘No, no, I can’t move. Some thing’s pinning me down!’ said a panic-stricken Gulliver.
‘Hold still, lad, there are four large icicles pinning you to the floor,’ Old Father Time said with a horror-stricken look upon his face.
‘Don’t move a muscle, boy, I’ll free you,’ Hamish barked in Gulliver’s direction as he bounded over towards him like a huge mountainous dog. Hamish bent down and tugged at the icicles with all his might until they loosened enough for him to pull them out. Two of these icicles were in fact stalactites, while the other two were stalagmites. For a minute Gulliver thought he was asleep and was having another nightmare of being eaten by a great white shark. Or worse, this was a waking nightmare where he and a great white shark had been trapped in the ice like a mammoth and had now thawed out. The ancients said you could predict the future through dreams and for a few seconds Gulliver thought they were right!
‘How’s everybody else?’ Drake said looking around at what at first appeared to be living snowmen but were just his men covered from head to foot in snow and ice, as he was not a moment ago. Having brushed himself down Drake was once again shipshape and Bristol fashion, however, shipshape and Arctic fashion might be a better description of how Drake looked in the circumstances.
‘I’m fine thanks for asking,’ said the cook before adding ‘I guess it’s true what they say no sense no feeling!
‘I’m fine too,’ said Able Seaman Ivor Gracegirdle cheerfully, whose hair looked as white as Father Christmas’s beard, so he shook the snow out of his hair in a violent manner as if he were a dog shaking the water out of his fur having just been for a swim in the sea. The cook shouted, ‘It’s snowing,’ before he realized it was just the able seaman shaking himself down.
‘Wow, that was close!’ said Gulliver looking at the holes in his jacket where the large ice stalagmites and stalactites with points like arrowheads had pieced the material in his coat.
After a while everybody had shaken themselves down and were ready to continue on. It seemed no bones were broken, although some of the crew’s spirits were severely shaken. Still, better that than any of the crew ending up as spirits of the ghostly variety!
‘If anybody wants to go back, just say the word,’ Drake said looking stern while trying not to shout just in case the glacier gods got angry again and caused another icequake, for Drake could see some of his men were all at sea in this strange alien environment.
For a few seconds, which no longer existed, you could hear an icicle drop.
‘Okay, then on we go,’ Drake said relighting his lantern and then pointing it in the direction of where the noise had at first emanated from.
And so the crew of the Golden Hind continued deeper into the ice labyrinth, not knowing if they would ever see the light of day again.
‘What’s The Twilight Zone?’ Alice asked Gulliver in a hushed voice when all the hullabaloo had died down.
‘It’s a zone which twilight falls into. It’s a scientific term stargazers use,’ said Gulliver making the whole thing up as he went along like storytellers were so fond of doing.
Gulliver really didn’t like keeping secrets from Alice but wasn’t sure how she would react to him telling her that he was from another time and dimension, one in which time still existed. He decided he would tell her but he had to wait until the time was right, although in this world there never would be a right time.
Gulliver, Alice, Old Father Time, Drake and his men, pressed on further and with a growing sense of trepidation at what they might find within this labyrinth of ice. And then Drake saw a light at the end of the tunnel, no, he really did see a light at the end of the tunnel, as at the end of one of the tunnels a bright light appeared as if to light the travellers’ way. As far as Drake was concerned, when lost in the dark, metaphorical lights were no good to man or snow beast.
‘Look!’ said Drake pointing at the light at the end of the tunnel. Further light shone on the proceedings when the travellers reached then end of this tunnel, to be greeted by a brighter light and an oval room which seemed almost as big as the Arctic Circle itself. The ship’s company were now all gathered together in the room staring in disbelief at hundreds of old men with white beards and in white cassocks. Although they may have been young men whose beards had frozen over due to the cold, it was hard to tell as most had hoods upon their heads. That was all apart from one wizard, who must have been the head wizard as he was wearing the conical golden ‘wizard’s cap’ which was intricately embellished with astronomical symbols. Gulliver had seen such a wizard’s hat on a documentary on television, which was associated with the druids and Bronze Age discoveries. These symbols suggested the ability to predict the movements of the heavens, including the lunar cycles. Gulliver knew the cap dated from around 12OO BC and none had been found outside Western Europe.
Well, Gulliver had now discovered such a hat outside Western Europe and it was attached to a wizard’s head. Gulliver brought the saying ‘if the cap fits’ to mind but couldn’t find anything suitably wizardly as yet to hang his hat on regarding this saying. Gulliver, with his encyclopedic knowledge, was also aware that in 1991, 14O paintings and engravings were discovered in a cave in Marseilles, France, called the Cosquer Cave. The archaeologist said this discovery meant that other treasures may remain undiscovered in caves submerged at the end of the Ice Age. ‘Well, it appears the archaeologists were right,’ Gulliver said under his breath when he saw the wizards in the ice caves. Gulliver thought archaeologists in this world would permanently have puzzled expressions on their faces trying to fit together the pieces of this parallel world’s past after the gods, in their wisdom, had shaken time up. In fact, the expression ‘you’re history’ definitely applied to the history of this world.
It appeared to Gulliver that he was now standing in the Magic Ice Circle.
‘Don’t be shy, gentlemen, we don’t bite. If your looking for cannibals, may I suggest you look no further than the far-flung reaches of the Amazonian jungle, or the South Pacific?’ The old man laughed out loud, as did the men at the round white table, which had the effect of filling the room with steam, or as one might say if one had a mind to, hot air!
‘Welcome to the magic circle,’ said another man, who lifted his hood to reveal half a jagged beard which appeared as if it had been starched and then snapped off. It appeared Gulliver was right!
‘I knew it! Wizards, they’re everywhere. You just can’t escape them. Just give it time and I’m sure Bilbo Baggins will appear. Who would have thought it, wizards in this neck of the woods?’ Gulliver said sounding as cynical as if he had suddenly metamorphosed into a middle-aged man as he went on a one-man witch hunt, although wizard hunt would have been a more apt expression in the circumstances, of which you are all aware. Gulliver was half expecting the man to be called Gandalf, or Harry Potter who had aged prematurely. The only surprise was that he wasn’t carrying a staff. Gulliver wondered if any of these hooded wizards had been on board HMS Hood, he also wondered if they might eventually find themselves in a magical forest full of Christmas trees as white as Father Christmas’s beard!
As far as Gulliver was concerned, the real wizards were Newton, Einstein, Archimedes, Da Vinci, Hawking, Nostradamus and the like. Mind you, like wizards, they were poorly dressed and had long beards and white hair, so perhaps there wasn’t much difference between them.
Gulliver thought he had better not upset these cold-hearted ice wizards, otherwise they might turn him into an ice sculpture and leave him in the sun, especially as these wizards weren’t exactly snowed under regarding having anything to put a spell upon. To be honest, the last thing you want when you’re enclosed within an ice cave is fireworks of any kind. Let’s face it, you had to have ice in your veins to tangle with an ice wizard.
Gulliver recalled from his history lessons at school that the Spanish believed Drake had used wizardry on the Spanish galleons when relieving them of their gold. Gulliver thought Drake should therefore have no trouble communicating with the wizards sitting before them.
‘The stars said you were coming,’ said the second man sitting around the ice table who was wearing a tall pointy wizard’s hat, but this one was white, unless it was the shape of his head. Gulliver had seen pointy wizard’s hats in the gardens of Hampton Court, but they were green topiary.
Gulliver thought this story was beginning to sound somewhat familiar, as if the Bible had got mixed up with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. But then again, why not? As time had gotten mixed up in the big shake-up, why wouldn’t books be mixed up like the dream Gulliver had as a child? To be honest, in this world it was only to be expected, but Gulliver hadn’t expected it and nor had Drake or Alice by the look upon their faces.
Then the second wizened wizardy type with the ice frosting stuck to his beard added to the stars that spoke routine, ‘Oh and word gets round. You know, rumours, gossip, Chinese whispers, table talk, hearsay, tittle-tattle, newspaper speculation, idea afloat, i.e. message in a bottle and the like.
Drake said under his breath, ‘Pecksniff, saltimbanque, knave trickster, magician, charlatan,’ which was old-speak for a liar. Luckily the old ice wizard was hard of hearing so he didn’t hear these derogatory terms.
‘So we hear that you are looking for The Last Bookshop in the World,’ said the third wizened old man around the table without lifting his hood.
‘Yes,’ said Gulliver excitedly. ‘Is it here?’ He then heard a voice in his head say, ‘Wizard!’ however he did not voice this as he wasn’t an excitable 1950’s schoolboy who read the comic Boys Wonder!
‘No!’ said the hood. Now that Gulliver was expecting!
‘However, we can tell you where you might find it.’
Suddenly the white table, which resembled as smooth slab of ice, started to melt in the middle, which revealed a pool of water in which a vision appeared.
‘Come closer, young man, come closer and you will see for yourself the journey you must embark upon to find this mythical shop of books,’ said the first ice wizard who’d spoken, who by the look upon the face of the fourth ice wizard around the table, had spoken out of turn.
Gulliver was invited to sit at the table with the hoods, as were Alice, Drake and Old Father Time, who looked as if he could easily have been a member of the wizarding fraternity, in looks at least. Suddenly a ship appeared over the horizon in the vision, fighting against a rough sea and passing what looked like a giant seahorse. Then the pool started to freeze over until the ice broke up and once again the water returned. The Golden Hind then appeared out of the mists of time at the foot of a large land mass, which appeared to be Africa, although in all honesty, like in a fairytale, it was hard to tell. Then Drake was looking at a compass which was reading due east. After which the ship and Drake disappeared over the horizon as a comet blazed its way across the heavens above, leaving its icy tail like an aeroplane’s smoke trail hanging in the sky.
Gulliver hoped this wasn’t one of those bad omens. Perhaps they had hit some rocks and sunk. Then the mists of time once again froze over until a little while later the pool of water returned and this time Gulliver was in a busy marketplace and by the look of the sweat upon his face, it was hot. Then, as if by magic, Gulliver and Drake were sat around another table talking in earnest to four men and then Gulliver appeared to be suffering from snow blindness for everything in front of his eyes went white. A few minutes later his sight returned and the vision was over.
‘Well ladies and gentlemen, I hope that helps,’ said the fourth of the hooded wizards, who had finally got to say his piece. It was fair to say that these wizards weren’t exactly wizard with words, more the brooding silent types with ice in their veins. Perhaps these wizards couldn’t spell any better than Gulliver!
‘Now, you have to excuse us as we were in the middle of building a giant snowman,’ said the unhooded wizened gentleman with ice in his veins, who now appeared to speak for all the ice wizards.
And then the meeting, if indeed it could even have been called a meeting, was adjourned and Gulliver, Drake and Old Father Time were left to decipher what the vision actually meant; Alice just thought it was a nice fairy story. To be honest, Drake thought they had been going round in circles and getting nowhere fast. It was a puzzle all right, actually it wasn’t, thought Gulliver with a puzzled-looking expression on his face. Jigsaws might well be a puzzle but a puzzle would have been easier to complete than the puzzle they were now faced with. Gulliver had never liked puzzles of any kind and this puzzle was hardly endearing him to the joys of the puzzle and their solutions thereof, if there even were solutions thereof to this curious puzzle!
Well, not wishing to bore the reader further, in Gulliver’s Travels in The Land that Time Forgot, Drake thanked the wizened wizard hoody types and they went on their merry way, if you take out the word ‘merry’.
One by one the wizards disappeared as Gulliver stopped to ask one of them how they ended up in such a Godforsaken place. One ice wizard said, without batting an eyelid, which was because both of his eyelids were frozen to the top of his eyebrows, ‘The Snow Queen banished us here after we refused to do her bidding. That woman has got a heart of ice. Still, I’m sure one day some prince will come along and thaw her heart and some time in the not too distant future, we’ll be brought back in from the cold.’
And with that the wizened ice wizard disappeared too. Gulliver wasn’t sure if the wizard was joking or he was suffering from temporary brain freeze!
As Drake made his way back across the ice to where the ropes were still dangling down from the top of the snow dome, he asked Gulliver if he had the faintest notion what the vision had meant.
‘So, Gulliver, have you the faintest notion what the vision meant?’
‘Well, the seahorse reminded me of something and then it came to me, a giant seahorse resembles one of the islands of Galapagos, which isn’t a million miles from Africa, possibly North Africa. The market looked a little like the ones I’ve seen in the book The Arabian Nights, perhaps it could be Marrakesh. I saw some men in the background smoking those long bubbling pipes they call hookahs.’
‘So you think we should sail in the general direction of South America and then turn right at the jagged pointy bit of land at the bottom to get to North Africa?’ Drake said as he stroked his beard, which meant he was unsure of what to do next.
Gulliver wanted to say to Drake ‘Hold your seahorse!’ if nothing more than to lighten the mood, but decided the joke could wait until they got to the Galapagos Islands, which by that time, hopefully he would have forgotten it!
‘Perhaps we might find some more clues in the Galapagos Islands,’ Gulliver said as the sea mists from his mind cleared further.
‘Mind you, at least there was a comet in the vision. A vision without a comet in it isn’t worth the ice sheet it’s written upon!’ Drake said stroking his frosty-looking whiskers.
‘One thing does puzzle me though,’ said Gulliver, once again looking puzzled.
‘Only one thing?’ Drake said laconically, as he knew this was just the tip of the iceberg regarding puzzles in this world, as the smile returned to his face. A smile that had been missing for some time, almost as if it had been circumnavigating the world and had finally returned home.
‘I thought time no longer existed, yet these old men talked of time as if it were still around. I mean, if we were seeing a future event in this vision that just doesn’t make sense, unless they’re referring to space-time. I suppose we should ask Old Father Time, he’s bound to know the answer to that question, what with all the time he’d spent in this world!’
But before Drake could ask Gulliver what space-time was suddenly from behind them they heard a growl followed by another and then another. Drake and Gulliver looked round and saw a marauding pack of polar bears heading in their direction.
‘I think we may have a problem!’ Drake said in an agitated manner that Gulliver didn’t associate with Drake’s normal calm and cheery one.
‘Don’t they say you should never try and outrun a polar bear? Shouldn’t we all just make like an ice statue and hope they go away?’ the cook said as his eyes widened in fear.
‘That’s an option, or we could attempt to out stare them,’ Drake said trying to keep as still as he could. ‘Or being as close to the ropes as we are, we could make a run for it,’ said Drake, turning first from the ropes that were ahead of him and then back at the pack of polar bears, who seemed to be getting up a full head of steam.
‘I choose the third option!’ said the cook as he turned round and started running, which in the snow and ice was like running in black treacle, like in a nightmare.
‘Come back, man! You’ll never outrun a polar bear, not with the blubber you’re carrying!’ Drake said as steam came pouring out of his mouth.
The cook wanted to tell Drake he was skating on very thin ice with the jokes, but decided better of it as he didn’t want to be left out in the cold, either literally or metaphorically.
Gulliver then bent down and started to make a snowball, after which he threw it with all his might in the direction of the polar bears. This hardly made the polar bears flinch but Drake thought this third option, which he hadn’t previously entertained, was a good one so he bent down, rolled a snowball and fired it in the direction of the polar bears. After which, the entire ship’s crew, including the cook, Alice and Old Father Time, were making snowballs and lobbing them at the polar bears, which by now had slowed to a walking pace. Ten minutes later the polar bears had been vanquished, or at least had turned tail and were heading in the opposite direction.
‘Good thinking, Gulliver. Sometimes I forget you’re so young, you seem to have an old head on young shoulders,’ Drake said patting Gulliver on the back.
‘If only you knew, if only you knew,’ Gulliver said under his breath.
After this brief moment of excitement, Drake and Gulliver went back to pontificating on the ice wizard’s vision.
‘Yes, it’s a puzzle all right. I suggest we consult Old Father Time, he has plenty of wisdom,’ said Drake using some wisdom of his own. Gulliver didn’t want to seem a complete know-it-all so instead of saying ‘all ready ahead of you on that score’ he said, ‘What a good idea I wish I had thought of that.’
Then everybody heard a creaking sound reminiscent of the creaking floorboards on a ship, which continued to get louder as the ice started to move underfoot. It appeared it wasn’t just Drake that was skating on thin ice as all the ship’s company started waddling around like inebriated penguins before falling on the ice like pins in a bowling alley.
‘AHHHH!’ exclaimed the cook as the ice opened and swallowed him like he was being swallowed by a narwhale, otherwise known as the unicorn of the oceans.
Drake managed to get to his feet and helped Alice and Gulliver to their feet too although in truth they all knew where their feet were on the end of their legs!
‘Where’s cookie?’ Drake said as he looked around him.
‘I think his goose has been cooked, Captain!’ said the boatswain, tottering on his feet as he tried to regain his balance.
‘Now who’s going to do the cooking?’ one of the able seamen said who was able to stay upright as large chunks of the ice broke up around him.
The ice was breaking up so fast it now resembled stones laid across a stream and the only way across to where the ropes were hanging was to jump from one piece of the broken ice to the next.
‘Okay,’ said Drake with much authority, ‘follow me.’
Drake jumped from one block of ice to the other with great speed until he was on the other side of the rift.
‘The only way across is if you take a run at the ice and keep going, otherwise you’ll lose your balance and end up in the water. Drake knew if you fell into the ice water you wouldn’t last long and the way the ice was shaking and breaking up, soon there would be nothing to stand upon.
Gulliver took Alice by the hand and told her to stay with him as they both skipped across the ice hand in hand in unison, like skimming stones. Halfway across Alice stumbled and looked for all the world to be falling into the water, until Gulliver pulled her across to the block of ice he was standing upon and they continued on until they reached the other side.
‘Captain, Captain! Over here, over here!’ cried the cook, whose hands appeared on the top of the ice as his rosy cheeks followed along quickly behind.
‘The cook! Rescue the cook otherwise we’ll all starve,’ shouted Drake with bravado more than anything else as now even he was scared.
The coxswain and Drake reached the cook and somehow hauled him from the jaws of death.
As the ground shook everybody made it to the ropes and started to climb as the ice disappeared from beneath their feet like ice cream in a heatwave, to be replaced by freezing cold water.
‘Jump! Jump!’ cried Gulliver to Alice as the ice beneath her feet was just about to break into a hundred separate pieces.
‘I can’t! It’s too far, I can’t reach it!’ Alice said as the panic rose in her like a tsunami.
‘Yes, you can!’ Gulliver cried, who by now was attached to one of the seamen’s waist as he reached down and offered his hands to her.
Alice looked at her feet as the ice she was on became smaller and smaller and she knew she didn’t have long as she bent her knees and with all her might jumped up and grasped both of Gulliver’s outstretched hands. For a split second Alice’s hands started to slip through Gulliver’s until she only had the grasp of his left hand as she dangled over the breaking ice. Then Gulliver grabbed Alice’s loose hand and with all his might pulled her up to his waist and she gratefully wrapped herself around him, like he had seen koala bears do in wildlife documentaries on television as they hung on to their mothers.
‘Gulliver, get Alice to climb up your body and then she can hold on to mine and then I’m afraid you’ll have to climb on your own. Can you do that, Gulliver?’ the able seaman said, straining to hold on to the freezing cold rope.
‘Did you hear that, Alice?’ Gulliver said as he looked down at a petrified Alice.
‘Yes, yes, I think so,’ Alice said as she gulped in a breath of cold air and started to climb Gulliver. A few minutes later, Alice had her arms and body wrapped around the seaman, who was slowly climbing up the rope, leaving Gulliver to climb the rope on his own.
‘Are you all right Gulliver?’ Drake shouted in Gulliver’s, direction as he clung on to the rope for grim death as if he slipped it really would be a grim death as he would freeze to death in no time at all.
‘Yes, I think so,’ Gulliver said as he looked down at the water below him and the floating ice. He hoped the ice wizards were safe within the cave in the labyrinth, which still seemed to be standing. He also hoped the polar bears had found a safe haven; perhaps it hadn’t been the snowball volley that had scared them but the fact that they had sensed the vibrations of the moving ice, animals always had a keen sense of impending danger.
For what seemed like a lifetime, the crew of the Golden Hind struggled to climb up the dangling ropes as their lives literally hung in the balance, until everybody was safely sitting on the roof of the world breathing heavily.
‘Wow, that was quite a roller coaster ride!’ Gulliver said as he tried to ignore the ice burns on the palms of his hands!
‘What’s a roller coaster ride?’ Alice said as a puzzled expression appeared on her face without the least bit of help from magic.
‘It’s an expression my father likes to use, it means going up and down quickly,’ said Gulliver, knowing if he explained what it really was he’d have to tell Alice he wasn’t from this world and now didn’t seem the right time for such an explanation and all the questions and answers that would inevitably follow such a revelation.
As a child, Gulliver had a dream of riding on the biggest roller coaster in the world, which literally went all around the world. It started it England and wound its way across the whole globe, which meant several changes of clothes. When it arrived in Africa and Australia it was stiflingly hot so Gulliver had to strip down to his boxer shorts and when it reached Russia and the North and the South Pole he had to put on several thick layers of clothing to combat the freezing conditions. The entire roller coaster ride took three months to complete and went through so many different timezones, quite frankly you didn’t know whether you were coming or going, and sleep, well, quite frankly you could forget about it! And the price for a ticket on this roller coaster ride of a lifetime, £100,000, cheap at half the price. Anybody who bought a ticket for this ride was told that if they suffered from travel sickness then this experience probably wouldn’t be their cup of tea. Saying all that, Gulliver suspected that Gulliver from Gulliver’s Travels would have loved it, as would the Mad Hatter!
Gulliver’s mother once said that Gulliver could dream for Great Britain; in 2012 he had a dream in which he won ten gold medals in the pool and he couldn’t even swim!
Some time later, still metaphorically speaking, all the crew, Alice and Gulliver were back on dry land, or should I say dry wood as they were now back on board the Golden Hind. The sailors were rubbing butter into their palms as most had rope burns for their troubles. Gulliver wrote in his travelogue that things happened so fast there was no time to think about things and as such, long-winded explanations and descriptions of events were best avoided, as were long words he couldn’t spell. Gulliver had no desire for his travelogue to read like Lord of the Rings, which to Gulliver’s mind was perfect reading matter at bedtime as it was guaranteed to send you off to sleep! Gulliver just hoped he didn’t run into Tolkien in this parallel world for if he did, he was sure to throw the book at him, and if it was his book Lord of the Rings, it being as heavy as it was, well, he’d be sunk without trace, end of story!
‘Captain, I’d like to introduce you to the latest member of our motley crew,’ the ship’s master said as a boy appeared from behind his back as if by magic. ‘This is Darwin, Charles Darwin, our new gardening assistant,’ said Isambard Brunel with a smile upon his face not far shy of the hole in the ozone layer in Gulliver’s kingdom.
‘Another stowaway? We attract them like flies,’ said Drake in jest, knowing full well the ship’s master was cutting a short story even shorter! ‘Well, boy, I can’t be too critical as I once stowed away on a ship called the Pandora and got my ears boxed for my troubles, so welcome aboard. And as fortune has it, we are heading for Islands where we may well need your skills,’ Drake said as he reached out and offered Darwin his hand, who shook it willingly, if not a little nervously.
The ship’s master then introduced Darwin to the crew and Alice, Gulliver and Old Father Time. Beagle had already been introduced earlier and was now following Darwin around like a lost puppy. The job of the ship’s master was often to bridge the gap between the officers and the seamen, whether they be able or not, and Isambard Brunel was a man perfectly suited to this task.
Gulliver was having a hard time digesting everything, not only the visions he had seen in the ice labyrinths but now young Charles Darwin had turned up on the scene just at the right time. This, to Gulliver’s mind, which at this moment was reeling somewhat, seemed like synchronicity gone mad but there seemed no other choice than to go with the flow.
Drake took a reading from the stars which had appeared in the night sky for the first time in what seemed like ages, as he set a heading due west and the journey and quest was once again resumed in earnest, even though as per usual Ernest was nowhere to be seen!
‘So what do you make of the vision in ice?’ Gulliver asked Old Father Time with both of his eyebrows raised in a quizzical manner, without going overboard like Fiona Bruce’s eyebrows appeared to do at times on the Antique’s Roadshow.
‘Well, it appears that some people are running on a different time to us!’ said Old Father Time as he mused upon the vision. ‘You see, Gulliver, time is an illusion and it slips through your fingers like sand through an hourglass. And not only is time an illusion, but let’s face it, some people are delusional and that, I am afraid, is all I’ve got for you at this point in time! I know I’m supposed to be as old and as wise as Methuselah himself, but that’s not quite the case. I mean, when you’re stuck in a large chronometer, quite frankly time drags and you end up clock watching for there is really very little time for anything else,’ Old Father Time said, making as much sense as the next timekeeper.
But to be fair to Old Father Time, this explanation wasn’t far off the beam as Gulliver knew Einstein had said, ‘time is the biggest illusion of them all’, and he knew some people were delusional, he just hoped he wasn’t one of them.
Another thing that had puzzled Gulliver was where had the gods disappeared to? So he put this question to Old Father Time and this was his reply, ‘Well, Gulliver, from my limited knowledge on such theological matters, I’d say they climbed into their orbiting cathedrals and flew off to find another planet they could make a complete mess of!’ Gulliver wasn’t sure if Old Father Time was joking or not when he said this, however, judging from the tone of his voice and the countenance upon his face, it was a mixed bag like this world, some truth, some fairytale.
Gulliver wrote this in his travelogue: ‘Although there is no time in this world, by and large the people who inhabit it seemed to have plenty of time for one another. Whereas the people in my world, who have time to spare, have very little time for anybody else but themselves. Which wasn’t as nonsensical as it sounded.’