The many bells of Camford Town and University tolled sonorously, as they were wont to do on special occasions. In his eiderdown deathbed, Professor Trowbridge Randolph Rowling Tagliaferro (pronounced 'Tolliver', look it up) smiled gently, as his ebbing strength wouldn't allow a grin. He knew the bells of Camford weren't tolling for him, but for the feast day of Saint Cedric the Misnamed (thereby hangs another, more pedantic tale), but he didn't care. The sound was welcome to his dying ear. It was. . . homely.

And he thoroughly expected to go straight from one home to another, as any good Englishman should.

Professor Tagliaferro looked up at his friends and colleagues, who had gathered 'round to see him off. 'Goodbye,' he whispered, 'Gramarye! I'm off to the Merry Kingdom!' And with that, he closed his eyes and shuffled off this mortal coil, as so many retired dons had in these buildings, time out of memory, ever since the place had been built in the 13th century by faculty and students absconding on their tavern debts from the big university town upriver.

His friends and colleagues sighed. His niece Tibby wiped away a tear. 'Gramarye, Uncle Trow! So typical that he should evoke the Merry Kingdom at the last!' Tibby was World President of the Merry Kingdom Alliance, the official fan club for her uncle's fantasy novel series, arguably the most exhaustive world-building exercise in literary history. Tagliaferro's farewell use of the sacred language of Faerie would thrill her thousands of mourning readers in the monthly newsletter.

'May the Feyfolke receive you with joy and potatoes,' she whispered as they filed out of the death chamber.

The first vista he saw as he opened his eyes again delighted Professor Tagliaferro. It should: everything was just as he'd envisioned it, long ago, when he first began to write of the Merry Kingdom. The sunrise? Chef's kiss. 'The sun rose imperiously over the tiny village,' he had written, 'demanding great things of its inhabitants.' And, indeed, the sun looked imperious, rising and glowing against the far horizon behind the Sharp Mountains. If anything, Tagliaferro reflected, it glowed a bit too brightly for this hour of the morning, and rose a bit too majestically, perhaps, for a true sense of scale – but, after all, the Merry Kingdom was an epic place where truly magickal things transpired. This majestic sunrise, with its ineluctable call to adventure, was only fitting. All in all, Professor Tagliaferro reflected as he set off on foot for the village, he was glad he'd put that sunrise there.

He was less pleased when he realised he'd forgotten to put in a paved road.

'Ow!' He stubbed a bare toe against a rough rock. He sat down on the grass to rub it.

He took stock of his current appearance. Bare feet, that made sense. Most of his characters went barefoot except for princesses, who always wore 'dainty slippers' made of satin to go with their 'gossamer gowns'. Rough robe with rope belt, aha, he must be a wizard. Could it be? Yes! He checked: indeed, he sported the high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat of the true mage.

'I must be Brudolf the Beige,' he concluded with satisfaction. Fitting that the afterlife of his own invention should have made him the presiding wizard of the place. He was very happy with the arrangement: after all, he'd thought of it. Still, as he trudged on towards Feyfolktowne, leaning a bit on his crooked rowan staff, he rather wished he'd spent a little more time on wardrobe. And invented footwear.

As Professor Tagliaferro – er, Brudolf the Beige strode into Feyfolketowne, the citizens were going about their early-morning chores: milking cows, feeding chickens, poking up hearth fires, preparing breakfast.

'I am glad I never thought to make up fantasy animals,' thought the mage/medievalist/writer. 'It's kind of reassuring that we will have milk and eggs in our diet.' He shuddered to think of what might have been.

Many of the townspeople were singing as they went about their tasks:

Oh, the mornings are so sweet here,

Sweet as sweet and neat as neat here,

Everybody that you meet here,

Is a friend and not a foe.

. . . which was straight out of the book. 'Oh, well, I never said I was a great poet,' he muttered. He was hungry, so he headed for The Big Cockerel (the local tavern) to break his fast.

'Welcome, newcomer, and who might you be?' asked the landlord, a jolly man with curly hair and pointed ears and a round belly. His accent was distinctive: his author remembered that the landlord had been conceived during a holiday on the Isle of Wight.

'Me? Why, I'm Brudolf the Beige, Mage of the Seven Mountains,' Tagliaferro replied solemnly, taking a seat on a rough bench – carefully, lest the unoccupied other end fly up – and I'm in the mood for a hearty breakfast and a hot cuppa, please, landlord.'

'Breakfast you may 'ave,' said the landlord, 'but Brudolf you ain't. I know Brudolf, he was 'ere last week. What mage be ye, that ye take another's name?' He set a pewter mug in front of the perplexed arrival.

Tagliaferro sipped the drink cautiously: hot tea, with lots of milk. Just the way he liked it. He smiled as he shook his head. 'A fairly disoriented one, I'm afraid. I've just arrived in the Merry Kingdom and I don't know my name yet.'

'Well, let us'n's know when you've figured it out,' said the landlord and went off to dish up a Full Merry for the as yet unnamed visitor.

Tagliaferro was just about to savour his grilled tomato when there was a shriek in his ear. He started, almost spilling his tea, and turned to view the shrieker, a short, stout woman with the pointed ears and embroidered costume of the Feyfolke, jumping up and down with unbridled glee. Next to her, a tall, thin Fey man, his ear points rising above his bald head, grinned at him sheepishly.

'It's you! It's you!' the woman crowed. 'I told him! I recognised you from the book covers! You're Professor Tagliaferro! The Author himself!'

This announcement electrified the room – in itself an accomplishment in a world untouched by Edison. Within seconds, Tagliaferro was surrounded by chattering Feyfolke, all clamouring for autographs. Which he agreed to supply, if only they'd let him finish his breakfast first. They subsided, slightly, sitting down to pelt him with questions of the 'however did you think of this and that?' variety, interspersed with 'were the Mountains of Day's Ease named for your lost love, Daisy?' He answered between bites of what turned out to be an excellent breakfast. It should have been: he'd described it well, on page 48 of The Return of the Bludgerigar.

'And now we get to live in this perfect world, forever,' sighed the woman who had first shrieked. 'It's just a dream come true.'

'Yes,' said another woman. 'I'm so glad I picked this series instead of that awful Clash of Thrones.'

'Or Christianity,' added another.

The Professor finished his last bite of tomato. This was, indeed, a most gratifying afterlife, he considered.

'It's only. . . ' said the tall, thin, bald man a bit timidly. His wife threw him a warning look, which Tagliaferro intercepted.

'Yes, my good Feyman?' he prompted. 'Do feel free to speak.'

The man cleared his throat. 'This is all very nice,' he said, 'but sometimes – in between the adventures with rings and dragons and such, mind you – it gets a bit dull. We mostly tend the farm and sing.'

'Don't forget the knitting for the Yarnbombing Festival,' put in his wife.

'And the Beanfeast to raise funds for the library,' added another.

'Well, that's it, you see,' said the man. 'Those things are fun for the womenfolk. But Yer Honour sort of forgot to throw in some things for the mens and chilluns to do in their off-hours.'

Tagliaferro blinked. He mentally reviewed his oeuvre, which occupied a considerable-length shelf in any public library in the world he'd left behind. And that was not including the secondary literature. As his mind ran through the books, he realised that the man had a point: he himself, a sedentary academic who had never had much of a childhood, had completely forgotten to include activities of a more – well, active nature. He shrugged.

'Does anyone have a pen and paper?' he asked.

An hour later, the customers of the breakfast shift at The Big Cockerel listened happily to the new story, which described in delightful detail the life and adventures of Harold Hagenough the Carter, his family, and his horse Alsohran (that sometimes talked to him). Tagliaferro had paid particular attention to Friday night entertainments at The Big Cockerel, with their darts tournaments and clog dancing, as well as Saturday games of Foozleball on the village green. When he had read it out, the applause was loud and prolonged. Afterwards, all the Feyfolke rushed out to the green to try out the new sport, and Professor Tagliaferro leaned back to enjoy his second mug of tea in peace.

'Well, that's the Feys happy,' said a voice from the dark corner. 'Now, how about us?'

Tagliaferro started, almost dropping his pewter mug. The owner of the voice turned out to be a Jarlbrinn, one of those dour, mystical mountain dwellers who featured so largely as antagonists in Book Four of the second series. Tagliaferro had been under pressure from his publisher to meet a new deadline and had given scant attention to the Jarlbrinn way of life, a fact which the man in the dark corner now lamented. He recited a laundry list of complaints, from missing backstory to insufficient motivation to a failure to provide the mountain people with a place to grow vegetables.

'We're tired of eating nothing but sheep,' concluded the Jarlbrinn.

The rest of the morning was spent writing a new novella from the Jarlbrinn point of view. By that time, the lunch crowd had arrived – and with it, several more disgruntled citizens of the Increasingly-Less-Merry Kingdom.

Tagliaferro wrote and wrote. He got writer's cramp, and wished he had endowed his world with typewriters.

As time passed, Professor Tagliaferro acquired a cave to live in, like all respectable wizards. He also got a secretary, an apprentice named Samsilly. On sunny days, he held office hours, answering grievances and complaints about plot holes. Samsilly took notes so that Tagliaferro could fix them later. They got their meals delivered from The Big Cockerel. Life was more or less satisfactory.

Occasionally, as he sat at the mouth of his cave contemplating yet another loud sunrise over the Merry Kingdom, Professor Tagliaferro reflected sourly on the responsibilities of being a world-builder.

Sometimes, he thought he should have listened to his Aunt Matilda and gone into the Church of England.

He bet they served wonderful cream teas.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

11.11.24 Front Page

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