A quiet day with Jennifer Jane 6/7

She went along the forest paths with her parents until they reached the turning to the goblin village, then waved and ran off. “Shouldn’t be too long,” she called.

However, when she arrived the goblins were too concerned about something and didn’t want to be bothered with her news. One of the firemen told her that they’d heard a scream and cries for help, coming from the bottom of the cliff near the old bypass workings.

The fire crew had gone out with their rescue tackle, but the victim turned out to be a human. They couldn’t make up their minds whether to go to the rescue, or just leave her there hoping that another human would come along.

“We can’t just go there and pick her up,” he said, “because humans usually can’t see us. Thank goodness you turned up, you can go and have a look and tell her help is on its way before going and getting an ambulance.”

Jennifer Jane could see the goblin’s problem and hurried off to the cliff to see what she could do. Dinner would have to wait, this was far more important. She peeped carefully over the edge of the cliff when she arrived and looked down. Sure enough a lady was lying at the bottom, with one of her legs badly twisted.

“Hold on a moment,” she called, “I’m coming down to have a look to see if there’s anything I can do, before I go and fetch some help.”

She made herself lighter and carefully climbed down, stopping occasionally to make it seem as if it was hard work. After all, she wasn’t supposed to use magic in her world and just jumping off the cliff to float down would probably cause a lot of questions to be asked later. To her surprise, the lady turned out to be Eve, the new next door neighbour.

“Thank goodness someone’s found me at last. I’m afraid I was trying to pick some blackberries at the top and leaned over a bit too far. It was very brave of you to climb down that cliff dear, you might have fallen as well and then there’d be two of us in trouble. I’m afraid you’ll have to send for help somehow, I don’t see what you can do to help me by yourself.”

Jennifer Jane was thinking furiously, Eve didn’t look at all well. There was a lot of blood on her clothes where she had been cut and scratched by blackberry thorns. She wished she remembered a bit more about her Girl Guide first aid classes, although accident appeared to be far too serious just for first aid.

She was sure that the twisted leg was broken and vaguely remembered hearing tales about delayed shock and not moving patients with broken bones.

Still something had to be done and fairly quickly as well. There was only one thing for it, she’d have to make Eve lighter, that way at least there shouldn’t be too much more damage to her leg.

She put her hand on Eve’s head and twiddled quickly. “I’m going to have to carry you up the cliff and then take you back to our house. Dad can ring for an ambulance once we’re home. Don’t worry,” she continued as Eve began protesting, “I’m used to carrying heavy things, remember the grindstone dad and I took home?”

Before Eve could say any more, she knelt down and sat her upright. Then she pulled one arm over her shoulder and tried a fireman’s lift. Three or four more twiddles and she felt light enough to carry. She shuffled her feet until they were underneath her back and then she straightened up with Eve over her shoulder.

“Please don’t move about while I’m climbing,” she said “and could you hold your hands together round my middle, so that you won’t fall off if I have to use both hands for climbing.”

She started off up the cliff, making puffing noises and grunting every now and again, to make it sound like hard work. It was a bit silly really, because another two or three twiddles and she was sure they could have floated up without any effort at all.