The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere (novel)
The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere was a three-chapter-long Jenny Everywhere-centric, The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids prose story by Aristide Twain, serving as an epilogue to Twain's own Family Business and as a prequel to Close Encounter of the Bird Kind, written just a few days earlier by Scott Sanford.
Contents
Plot
Chapter One: The Meadow
Jenny Everywhere appears out of thin air in a meadow in Ireland, “a few miles out from the city of Thurles, in the county of Tipperary”. Met with a thirteen-year-old boy who believes her to be a faerie, she inquires after a local Leprechaun known as the Lurigadawne; she explains that she saved his life in 1876 and wants to call in a favor. But the boy says the Lurigadawne hasn't been seen lately, so Jenny thanks him and asks him to run along so she can try to look for the secret entrance, whose location he wouldn't want a local human to discover. When the boy finds the courage to asks for a boon, Jenny happily shifts directly into his backpack a portion of the gold she'd brought to sweeten the deal for the Lurigadawne, and the two part ways.
Looking around on her own, in a few hours she finds the Lurigadawne's underground home through its glamour and discovers that the Lurigadawne is not there, and neither is his sword; his home is being watched over by a Scottish Brownie who admits to not knowing where he has gone, and explains that she is only watching his house because the Lurigadawne called in “an old favour with [her] clan” before leaving. Jenny thanks the Brownie, tipping her with a gold coin, and departs. Increasingly inconvenienced by the wetness of the grass on her bare feet, but still refusing to settle for anything less than Leprechaun-shoes, she compromises and shifts a pair of thick woolen socks onto her feet before she heads to her next destination.
Chapter Two: The Mad Marquess
Jenny makes her way to what the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids called the Home City — not their current home base, but the city where the Creator built the first Clockwork Cherubs, which happens to resemble Jenny's own New Flaversham. She intends to hire the services of the Company of Free Genies, a group of free genies who professionally grant wishes for a fee, being only one of many strange elements barely under the surface of the deceptively normal city.
When she enters the Genies' shop, she finds a rather rude ghost known as the Mad Marquess already there, but as he is not engaging their professional services just yet, Jenny introduces herself, offering payment in the form of a magic wand drawn from the large collection of odd items accessible via her coat pockets. The Genie at the front desk finds this satisfactory (eating the artefact like a candy cane before her and a stunned Marquess's eyes), and wishes to know where the Lurigadawne has gone and to join him there.
The Genie grants this wish, opening a portal to a conference room full of what she soon recognises as Orange-Bearded Gnomes, comprising not just gnomes but other oranged-bearded members of the Little People, such as Leprechauns, Elves, Lutins, Gnatlings, and other small magical creatures; they are not pleased to see a “giantess” intruding on their gathering, but she finds herself unable to close the portal before it deposits her right in the middle of their meeting.
Distressed by her sudden appearance, the Gnomes petrify her clothing to hold her in place. The meeting disintegrates into Gnomes screaming at Jenny and Gnomes screaming at other Gnomes. Jenny recognizes one as King Roquat of the Nomes of Oz, which completely fails to calm him down. Roquat loudly predicts that she will call in allies from other worlds, monsters such as “metal men, and scarecrows, and chickens”. Jenny protests that she is not going to call in allies from other worlds. Just then, due his unwise wording when talking to a genie, a portal from another world appears and ejects a screaming Mad Marquess into the middle of the meeting hall.
Chapter Three: The Mage and the Monarch
In another universe, dinner at Caerleon (attened by a dozen Knights of the Round Table as well as King Arthur and Queen Gwenhwyfar) is disrupted when Jenny Everywhere appears out of thin air and lands in the middle of the Round Table itself, wearing only her goggles. She apologies for the interruption and asks for the loan of a scarf – and other clothes as may be convenient. The knights of the Round Table quickly dress her using whatever they can gather. She introduces herself and explains that she has come to see Merlin, who bursts in and welcomes Jenny, who he has seen before although she doesn’t know him. After some awkward talk in both directions Merlin proclaims that he knew this day would come and he has prepared the chicken coops.
Shifting back to the hall of the Orange-Bearded Gnomes, Jenny finds all is in chaos and the Mad Marquess is locked in combat with none other than the elusive Lurigadawne of Tipperary. Jenny calls for them to stop fighting – but in the confusion the Lurigadawne falls. The Nome King tries to take advantage of their confusion only for Jenny to warn them that she is armed with a fine egg-laying hen! The lesser gnomes scatter instantly, the Nome King only moments behind them when he learns that Bethan is not just a regular hen, but one belonging to King Arthur. Once they are gone Jenny checks on the Lurigadawne, who is annoyed but alive and being fussed over by the Mad Marquess.
Jenny shifts the Marquess home and explains her quest for shoes to the Luridadawne, who explains that he cannot give the same gift twice and so cannot actually replace her Leprechaun-made shoes. Disappointed, Jenny accepts that bizarre magical footwear may be beyond her for the moment – but wherever she ends up next, there will be a shoe store.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- This story features the incarnation of Jenny usually seen in The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, revealed to also be the one who appeared in Scott Sanford's Close Encounter of the Bird Kind. After her clothing is petrified by the Secret League of the Orange-Bearded Gnomes, she is given a new, temporary outfit by the Knights of the Round Table, consisting of “three or four colourful feudal standards wrapped around her neck” to replace her scarf, “sturdy flax trousers” on her legs, and “two layers of oversized tunics, plus chainmail, covering her chest”.
- When called out on not sounding Irish despite currently posing as a presumably-local member of the Fair Folk, she states that “this isn't one of [her] Irish bodies”.
- Jenny recognises King Roquat by tapping into another Jenny's memories.
Universe
- The story opens in Dimension 77. It is outwardly a norma, realistic modern-day Earth, but Jenny Everywhere describes it as a place where the “old tales” are true, as evidenced by the existence of Leprechauns and Brownies.
- Jenny passes through the Infinite several times.
- Jenny thinks about the Cupid Homeworld.
- Chapter Two sees Jenny travelling to “the Home City” in the Prime Universe.
Other
- Jenny explains a custom of the Fae: “if one of the Fair Folk owes you a debt when they die, you’ve gotta be at their funeral. You’re invited, automatically. So you can meet the heirs, if there are any — work things out”.
- Leprechauns are considered Fae, as are Brownies — specifically, members of the Little People. Leprechauns are famous for disappearing if a human takes their eyes off them.
- Jenny stole her gold coins from the Interdimensional Vault.
- The Company of Free Genies was formed in the 1960s by Genies who escaped from the clutches of the First Horde.
- Pythagoras-858 describes himself as a “licensed Problem-Solver”.
- The Mad Marquess gives his full name as “Milord Marin Mausdorf”. According to the Desk Genie, he's actually a Duke, not a Marquess, but prefers to claim to be a Marquess because of the alliteration.
- Jenny's pockets' contents include “coins from a thousand worlds, multiple wallets and phones, trinkets from seashells to gemstones, and a frankly unreasonable number of keychains” as well as the magic wand she gives to the Genies.
- The bard Taliesin writes ballads about the goings-on at King Arthur's court, in Caerleon. They tend to begin with the line “In Caerleon, to the Castle, came a lot of strange people.”, which is the origin of the mistaken belief that Arthur's castle is called Camelot, which has even reached “multiple visiting nobles from England and Brittany”.
- Jenny's shifting is described as producing a “strange wooshing sound” when she materialises on top of the Round Table in an emergency. However, she also displays the ability to shift silently when showing off to the boy in Chapter 1.
- There is a raised dais in the centre of the Round Table itself, meant to house the “the Grail” should the knights ever find it.
- Arthur has difficult relations with the apparently fairly-newly-settled Christian clergy because they disapprove of Merlin.
- Jenny knows of other versions of Merlin who are “time-travelley”, making them “confusing” to deal with.
- The Lurigadawne of Tipperary tries to send Jenny after a “tribe of cobbler-dwarves of great renown”, who dwell “beyond the seven rivers”; to meet them, Jenny would have “to fight a few Dragons, of course, and to journey through the land of Kalterskelter, the key to whose gate has been lost since the 16th century”.
- Merin swears “by the Norns”.
- His version of Morgan Le Fey is known as simply “Morgan of the Fae”. She and Merlin have an “academic partnership” to trade occult lore, and it was Morgan who bestowed the “mage-name” of Merlin upon him, in contrast to his birth name of “Ambrosius”. The two are not-so-secretly lovers. Jenny is aware of other versions of Morgan, many (though not all) of whom turned out to be untrustworthy.
Continuity
- The story acts as a sequel to PROSE: Family Business, following on from Jenny's decision at the end of the tale to track down “that wily old leprechaun [she] met in Dimension 77” to replace the pair of shoes she lost while swimming out to Nowhere Island. She recounts to the boy how she lost her original shoes “in the sea. In my sister’s realm”. Merlin's stubborn refusal to consider his lover Morgan's ulterior motives also reminds Jenny of her own history with Laura Drake as largely revealed there.
- In Chapter Two, Jenny looks back on her travels with Pythagoras-858, which began in COMIC: Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids and ended in PROSE: The Grand Multiverse Hotel.
- The overproduction of warehouses in the Cupid Homeworld, a running gag introduced in PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery, is referenced.
- In Chapter Three, the story is revealed as a prequel to the then merely-days-old PROSE: Close Encounter of the Bird Kind, one of Scott Sanford's Jenny Everywhere stories, which featured an ambiguous Jenny. It reveals why Jenny had to borrow a chicken from the older Merlin. Both stories also opened with Jenny materialising in front of a young boy in a meadow and being mistaken for a member of the Fair Folk.
- Among the strange sights casually accepted in the Home City are “mad scientists escorted to the patent office by their own robots”, “witches haggling over groceries”, but also “furtive men in secret society garb bashfully asking for loose change”, the latter a reference to the Strangely-Colored Secret Society mythos as exposed in PROSE: Pessimist and the Dromedaries and PROSE: The Strangely-Colored Secret Societies. The First Horde is later referenced by name.
- “World-Changer” is cited as one of Jenny's names, alongside “the Shifter”. The moniker originated in COMIC: The Jenny Everywhere Chronicles.
- One of the Gnomes is an “animate plastic lawn gnome”. Such entities memorably appeared in Our Strange and Wonderful House in Chapter 21 and its appendices.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story can be read online here.
