Volume 1: Before the Battle
The Elf Queen, who鈥檚 eaten nothing for a week but the wadding from benzedrine inhalers, has sex with her dwarf, Cootchie Cootie, in the back seat of his bombed-up 1951 Fleetline Cadillac, while Tolkien and C. S. Lewis look on in passive-aggressive disavowal. It鈥檚 a favour for a friend. After that, for the founding volume anyway, we envisage Zap Comic dynamics on a lean-burn version of The Revenger鈥檚 Tragedy 鈥� the usual tale of poor choices, low ground clearance and self-medication. Emotional palette from A Glastonbury Romance, prose from Destination: Moon and worldbuilding from one of those ads where if you buy the right mobile phone it causes inconvenient buildings to fold themselves away in front of the user so she can get to some other stuff she wants to consume without ever walking round a corner or even, apparently, consulting the phone itself. The world 鈥� or perhaps the King 鈥� will be called Eldrano, and not as we first proposed Eldranol, which turns out to be already trademarked for a bovine mastitis application.
Volume 2: The Lost Palaces
Eldrano the Elf Lord is wheeled to bed every night on a reinforced composite and titanium gurney. Two or three attendants lift the thick laps of flesh and lovingly clean out the sores down in the creamy, lardy folds where his genitals still nestle. He has lost some of his right foot to diabetes. The Queen left him a hundred years ago, with her dwarf, for the North. But none of this will ever spoil his dream of finishing an ultra-marathon. At night in a secondary world of his secondary world the Elf Lord runs, barefoot and effortless, across the Great Erg Desert (see Map), wearing only the traditional leather kirtle, while his favourite daughter keeps watch over his sleeping body with its faint, calming smells of ketones and antifungal cream. She鈥檚 a feisty urban vampire princess but her heart is so in the right place! She can鈥檛 help but wonder how things will go with them when the Horde arrives at the Gate next Wednesday. Tomorrow, in a final attempt to reach out to his people, the Elf Lord will feature kingdomwide in the Don鈥檛 Do This To Yourself segment of Supersize vs Superskinny; while for the Princess it鈥檚 a Kickass Battle Looks Last Chance on QVC.
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Volume 3: Out of Elf Land
Over time the Elf Queen鈥檚 underjaw has thickened, while her chin has remained small and pointed, her nose turned up, so that you can see, embedded in fat, the adolescent she was fifteen hundred years ago. In her garden she keeps papery silver poppies and an iris which smells of chocolate; but since the Fall of Llyngitgothgethreal, the rest of her life has been half-warm meals in cold rooms. Though he still carries the single strand of her hair she gave him in the grim days before the battle of Clotsore Moor, the dwarf knows that their relationship is over. So when she says, in a final rather desperate move to regain the initiative, that she has decided to go away for a week, he only shrugs.
鈥淚 need to get some space,鈥� she tells him. 鈥淕reat,鈥� he says vaguely. 鈥淕et right away,鈥� she insists. 鈥淓veryone needs space,鈥� he says.
She leaves the room but calls back, 鈥淚 can鈥檛 think what鈥檚 wrong with you.鈥�
The dwarf can鈥檛 bring himself to say. As they fail to get older, elves cling on to peak moments and try to repeat them, squeezing a little less out each time until they are only going through the motions. To an outsider this makes their whole society seem grotesque, caricatured, desperate. He doesn鈥檛 want to be a party to it any more. He wants to be back underground, where the real things are happening.
Volume 4: Last Transmission from the Deep Halls
鈥� saying, once those outsiders get in your tortured halls鈥� I鈥檓 saying we didn鈥檛 have command of the vast fictions of the day鈥� The city wasn鈥檛, in the end, where those of us who lived there thought it was. We had already lost it in all senses of that word鈥� All we knew of this place was the news鈥� the halls are aware that 鈥� in the end 鈥� they can never know what, exactly, the plot was. It鈥檚 only silence after that. Back at the beginning there鈥檚 the tapping sound, like metal on stone鈥� then the call signs, several of them, very amplified and confused鈥� cries in the halls鈥� a cruel few words and then, 鈥淲e no longer know which way to face.鈥� The halls are still aware鈥� What if the city didn鈥檛 鈥渇all鈥�? What if nothing 鈥渇ell鈥�? Nothing was lost but existed just alongside everything else, fifty years later in the rubble by a farm at the flat end of nowhere鈥� who could write this鈥� everyone has a different story to sell鈥� call signatures in rooks, fresh plough, old silence: 鈥淲e don鈥檛 know what to do. Everything is the alongside of something else鈥︹�� Minor players gesture helplessly鈥� signals hard to make out in the chaos as the big institutions go down鈥� everyone desperate now.
Volume 5: The Royal Estate
The palace turned out to be a stuffy, disappointing warren that just reeked of dogs. The Queen showed us around lots of small low-ceilinged rooms with fitted carpets, not what we were looking for at all. No real Elf Land values or internal architecture left, except for that rather gorgeous river frontage. She kept saying that she and her husband had been going to make this or that improvement, but everything was interrupted when 鈥淭hey came back鈥�. At one point she said, 鈥渨e were going to sell up, go to the Deep West, but they came back. They came back, you see, and what can you do?鈥� She never said who or what they were. There was an old labrador sleeping outside the back door. They also had a really quite smelly chihuahua, always gazing up at you, and when you petted it, 鈥淥h she鈥檒l go to anyone, that one. When you鈥檙e shopping she鈥檒l go straight in your bag.鈥� Meanwhile, honestly, Eldrano just vegetated there in the front room, watching cable TV on satellite and in the end we decided no matter how close it was to the Evening Harbours it just wasn鈥檛 for us.