Among The Hedgerows

This is a short story I wrote this week. Enjoy!

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Among the Hedgerows

According to the Post Office I live in a city, but I only have to step outside my door and walk for a few minutes and then it’s nothing but sheep, dales and hedgerows, and one of the great joys of my life when presented with a sunny weekend afternoon is to get out into that glorious quiet and amble around. As I’ve got older I’ve found myself drawn to flowers the way so many people find themselves drawn to birds; I haven’t learned all the names and I don’t use an app but it’s nice to just get up close to a flower, take it right in and see what it’s about. I like to get into the mind of a bug, or a hummingbird, or a bat. I’m not crazy. It’s just nice to see things from another creature’s perspective. I suppose they haven’t learned the names either.

One particularly fine Saturday afternoon, a good few years ago now, I was making my way along the hedgerows and admiring the flowers as I like to do, and I lost track of where I was. There’s no danger in it; there are signs here and there and anyway I had my phone. The sky had an otherworldly hue, and the scents and colours were at the height of their force. I was getting tired, first gradually and then all at once, and I sat down on the verge and watched the cars whizz by. My heart was beating fast. I couldn’t tell if I was having a good time or bad time, but in any case I needed a rest. I sat on the grass for a few minutes, and had a feeling it would be leaving a green stain on my jeans. I didn’t really mind. I don’t wear my best jeans on my walks in the country.

By and by I heard a curious sound behind me, like a cricket, or maybe just the wind chancing upon a naturally occurring flute as it sometimes does. I didn’t pay much attention at first but the sound didn’t go away, and I had a curious, silly feeling that the sound was directed at me. I shifted around to look and it seemed to be coming from a drooping white bell-shaped flower about eighteen inches from the ground. Still tired, I scooched over to take a closer look.

I peered inside the flower, and saw that the source of the sound was a tiny little creature calling out to me. It was about the size of a Lego man, with green skin, big green eyes and big bulbous feet. It was wearing a smart set of pale blue dungarees, and it was in trouble. It was clutching one arm with the other, and had got upended and had to brace its legs against the petals to avoid falling out, from a height which to the tiny creature must have amounted to a very great one. I marvelled a moment to see it, but there was really no time for that and its emergency needed to be dealt with. I cradled the flower in my right hand, snipped it from the stem with my left thumbnail, and slowly set the flower with the little creature inside it onto the grass in front of me.

‘Thanks,’ it said.

‘You’re welcome,’ I said. It shuffled out of the flower and then sat down on it, squashing it nearly flat.

We stared at each other. Neither of us was afraid. I suppose the circumstances of our meeting had got us off on a friendly footing. With each passing moment the creature seemed less marvellous; it’s remarkable how quickly we can adapt to even the most unexpected things when they are undeniably, vividly real.

‘Call an ambulance!’ said the creature. I got out my phone and began dialling 999. ‘No!’ said the creature. ‘Not a human ambulance! They’d cut me up into pieces for science!’

‘What then?’

‘I need a faerie ambulance!’ It told me the number and I began to dial it in. It didn’t sound like a real phone number to me. I waited for it to ring.

‘Will you talk to them?’ I said. I hate making calls.

‘Aaaaarrgghh!’ wailed the creature. I listened to the phone. It wasn’t going to connect.

‘I don’t think I can call that number from my phone,’ I said. The creature sighed.

‘OK, you’ll have to use mine. It’s in my back pocket.’

‘You have a phone?’

‘Of course I have a phone. Was I surprised that you had a phone?’

There wasn’t much for me to say to that. The creature, still clutching its broken arm, stood up so I could reach the back pockets of its dungarees, and I fished out what looked for all the world like a tiny Nokia 3310, maybe three millimetres long. I wondered how I’d be able to press the buttons. I patted my pockets and thought about what I could use; I tried with part of my watch buckle but it was still much too big. Then I realized there were plenty of thorns around and I broke off a suitable one which did the job just about. The creature told me the number again and I dialled. A squeaky voice on the line replied in a language I didn’t understand.

‘English?’ I said. I wasn’t sure whether I should be speaking louder or quieter than usual.

‘Ah,’ squeaked the voice. ‘What service do you require?’ It spoke perfectly well, but slowly, as if worried that I might not understand.

‘I need a faerie ambulance. I’m with someone who’s broken their arm.’

‘Ambulance, very good. What is your location?’

‘I think this is the B5213.’ There was silence at the other end. ‘Where should I say we are?’ I asked the creature, covering the phone with my finger.

‘34 Binkleton Boulevard.’

‘34 Binkleton Boulevard?’ I said into the phone.

‘34 Binkleton Boulevard, very good. We’ll have someone along in a few minutes. Chin up!’

I pressed the red button with the thorn and put the phone back in the creature’s pocket. ‘They say it should just be a few minutes.’ The creature sat back down, looking calmer than before, but still quite sorry for itself. In a few minutes it would be gone and I’d probably never see it again. I felt like I should be making the most of the time, bombarding it with questions, but I didn’t want to impose when it had a broken arm, and anyway I couldn’t really think of anything to ask.

‘Do you play chess?’ I asked. Its face lit up. When it smiled two little yellow fangs showed at the corners of its mouth. So I got the chess app up on my phone, put a couple of minutes each on the clock and we got to it. I’m sorry to say that it wiped the floor with me in the first game. We were still in the opening of the second when we heard a little clockwork ticking noise, somewhere between a music box and a childproof medicine bottle, which the creature seemed to immediately recognize as an ambulance siren. A tiny little vehicle like a tractor was driving towards us, green and almost invisible against the grass. Another little green creature with big eyes and bare feet got out, this one dressed as a paramedic.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Is that the patient?’ said the paramedic, but then just got to work instead of waiting for an answer. Soon enough it had bundled the creature into the tractor and was ready to drive off.

‘Thanks for the game,’ said the creature. ‘And for saving my life, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You really showed me a thing or two there.’

I felt foolish. The tractor drove away, disappearing into the grass and then off round a bend in the road.

I looked around me and all was just as it had been before. The sky, the sun, the flowers, the smells, the sheep. Then I remembered trying to call the faerie ambulance number from my phone. I went to my dialled numbers list and there it was. Without thinking twice I pressed delete. It felt momentous, scrubbing the last trace of my encounter with the creature and its world, the last thing left to reassure myself that I hadn’t dreamt it and it really did happen — although I must stress at this point that it most certainly really did — but I felt strangely at a loss. I don’t have anything to do or say on momentous occasions. I looked at the squashed flower on the verge. It just looked like a squashed flower.

‘Well that’s that, then.’