The travel agent 18/21

A tray loaded with a huge plateful of bacon, sausage and eggs, complete with a thick slice of fried bread swimming in fat and accompanied by a huge mug of tea, was plonked down on the table as she sat down.

“If you want any more you’ve only got to ask,” said the landlord. “George’ll be here in a moment, he always looks after his horse first thing in the morning.”

Eve felt sick just looking at the plate. She had a sip of tea, which rather surprisingly didn’t taste too bad, before plucking up her courage and asking the landlord if she could just have a piece of dry bread.

“But I’ve only given you a small helping,” replied the landlord in astonishment, “we don’t often have ladies staying here, but I know they don’t eat much.”

At that moment George came in rubbing his hands. “That looks good!” he said looking at Eve’s plate.”

“Well she don’t want it! You have it and I’ll bring you another to make up to the full amount.”

The landlord stamped off into the kitchen shouting to his wife. “Another one of them little breakfasts and a couple of slices of dry bread for the lady.”

“That feels better,” said George, as he polished the second of his two platefuls with a piece left over from Eve’s dry bread. “Eat less than a sparrow you do, still Jennifer Jane’s much the same, but then she’s only a kid. If you’re up to it, we’ll ride over to Tasmin’s cave today and you can have a word. She’s the local dragon,” he reminded Eve as she looked at him blankly.

Eve followed him out of the inn. “That’s my old suit of armour,” said George, proudly pointing to a well-worn collection standing in the doorway. Eve wasn’t terribly impressed, she’d seen suits of armour in museums and as far as she could see, this was only one stage away from being scrap metal.

George led her to the blacksmith’s stable and went inside to bring out his horse. The horse looked at Eve and started to snicker and neigh.

“Of course she’s alright,” said George, “she comes from the same world as Jennifer Jane and you get on all right with her.”

“Are you telling me you can understand what that animal is making noises about,” asked Eve.

“Oh yes, it’s a bit unusual I know, but Jennifer Jane fixed it for me with the fairies on one occasion and nowadays we quite often have long chats.”

The horse made some more noises and George laughed. “He says we may have long chats, but that doesn’t mean I take his advice very often! Come on now, we’ll be off to see Tasmin. On the way we have to cross a bridge with a troll living under it. His name’s Gordon and you have to ask him a riddle to pass over the bridge. When you return you give him the answer. He copies all the riddles into a book and sells them to other trolls for a living. It stops him from having to eat people who couldn’t answer his own riddles, when they wanted to cross the river.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Eve sarcastically, “Jennifer Jane had the idea and now everything in the village is wonderful.”

“Quite right,” said George, completely missing the sarcasm,” and with Eve bouncing along on the back of the horse they trotted off along the river road.