“Yes,” sighed my father. “Yes, there will always be Jane Eyre.”

  “And Turner? Will he still paint The Fighting Temeraire?”

  “Yes, and Carravaggggio will be there too, although his name will be spelt more sensibly.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  My father was silent for a moment.

  “There’s a catch.”

  “What sort of catch?”

  He sighed.

  “Landen will be back, but you and he won’t have met. Landen won’t even know you.”

  “But I’ll know him. I can introduce myself, can’t I?”

  “Thursday, you’re not part of this. You’re outside of it. You’ll still be carrying Landen’s child, but you won’t know the sideslip has ever happened. You will remember nothing about your old life. If you want to go sideways to see him, then you’ll have to have a new past and a new present. Perversely enough, to be able to see him, you cannot have any recollection of him—nor he of you.”

  “That’s some catch,” I observed.

  “It’s the second-best there is,” Dad agreed.

  I thought for a moment.

  “So I won’t be in love with him?”

  “I’m afraid not. You might have a small residual memory— feelings that you can’t explain for someone you’ve never met.”

  “Will I be confused?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me with an earnest expression. They all did. Even Lady Hamilton, who had been moving quietly towards the sherry, stopped and was staring at me. It was clear that making myself scarce was something I had to do. But having zero recollection of Landen? I didn’t really have to think very hard.

  “No, Dad. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” he intoned, using his paternal go-to-your-room-young-lady voice. “In a year’s time you can come back and everything will be as right as—”

  “No. I’m not losing any more of Landen than I have already.”

  I had an idea.

  “Besides, I do have somewhere I can go.”

  “Where?” inquired my father. “Where could you possibly go that Lavoisier couldn’t find you? Backwards, forwards, sideways, otherways—there isn’t anywhere else!”

  I smiled.

  “You’re wrong, Dad. There is somewhere. A place where no one will ever find me—not even you.”

  “Sweetpea—!” he implored. “It is imperative that you take this seriously! Where will you go?”

  “I’ll just,” I replied slowly, “lose myself in a good book.”

  Despite their pleading, I bade farewell to Mum, Dad and Lady Hamilton, crept out of the house and sped to my apartment on Joffy’s motorbike. I parked outside the front door in clear defiance of the Goliath and SpecOps agents who were still waiting for me. I ambled slowly in; it would take them twenty minutes or more to report to base and then get up the stairs and break down the door—and I really only needed to pack a few things. I still had my memories of Landen, and they would sustain me until I got him back. Because I would get him back—but I needed time to rest and recuperate and bring our child into the world with the minimum of fuss, bother and interruptions. I packed four tins of Moggilicious cat food, two packets of Mintolas, a large jar of Marmite and two dozen AA batteries into a large holdall along with a few changes of clothing, a picture of my family and the copy of Jane Eyre with the bullet lodged in the cover. I placed a sleepy and confused Pickwick and her egg into the holdall and zipped up the bag so that only her head stuck out. I then sat and waited on a chair in front of the door with a copy of Great Expectations on my lap. I wasn’t a natural bookjumper, and without my travelbook I was going to need the fear of capture to help catapult me through the boundaries of fiction.

  I started to read at the first knock on the door and continued through the volley of shouts for me to open up, past the muffled thuds and the sound of splintered wood, until finally, as the door fell in, I melted into the dingy interior of Great Expectations and Satis House.

  Miss Havisham was understandably shocked when I explained what I needed, and even more shocked at the sight of Pickwick, but she consented to my request and cleared it with the Bellman— on the proviso that I’d continue with my training. I was hurriedly inducted into the Character Exchange Program and given a secondary part in an unpublished book deep within the Well of Lost Plots—the woman I was replacing had for some time wanted to take a course in drama at the Reading Academy of Dramatic Arts, so it suited her equally well. As I wandered down to subbasement six, Exchange Program docket in hand made out to someone named Briggs, I felt more relaxed than I had for weeks. I found the correct book sandwiched between the first draft of an adventure in the Tasman Sea and a vague notion of a comedy set in Bomber Command. I picked it up, took it to one of the reading tables and quietly read myself into my new home.

  I found myself on the banks of a reservoir somewhere in the home counties. It was summer and the air smelt warm and sweet after the wintry conditions back home. I was standing on a wooden jetty in front of a large and seemingly derelict flying boat, which rocked gently in the breeze, tugging on the mooring ropes. A woman had just stepped out of a door in the high-sided hull; she was holding a suitcase.

  “Hello!” she shouted, running up and offering me a hand. “I’m Mary. You must be Thursday. My goodness! What’s that?”

  “A dodo. Her name’s Pickwick.”

  “I thought they were extinct.”

  “Not where I come from. Is this where I’m going to live?” I was pointing at the shabby flying boat dubiously.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” smiled Mary proudly. “Isn’t she just the most beautiful thing ever? Short Sunderland; built in 1943 but last flew in ’54. I’m midway converting her to a houseboat, but don’t feel shy if you want to help out. Just keep the bilges pumped out, and if you can run the number three engine once a month I’d be very grateful.”

  “Er—okay,” I stammered.

  “Good. I’ve left a rough précis of the story taped to the fridge, but don’t worry too much—since we’re not published you can do pretty much what you want. Any problems, ask Captain Nemo who lives on the Nautilus two boats down, and don’t worry, Jack might seem gruff to begin with, but he has a heart of gold, and if he asks you to drive his Austin Allegro, make sure you depress the clutch fully before changing gear. Did the Bellman supply you with all the necessary paperwork and fake IDs?”

  I patted my pocket, and she handed me a scrap of paper and a bunch of keys.

  “Good. This is my footnoterphone number in case of emergencies, these are the keys to the flying boat and my BMW. If someone named Arnold calls, tell him he had his chance and he blew it. Any questions?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She smiled.

  “Then we’re done. You’ll like it here. It’s pretty odd. I’ll see you in about a year. So long!”

  She gave a cheery wave and walked off up the dusty track. I looked across the lake at the faraway dinghies, then watched a pair of swans beating their wings furiously and pedaling the water to take off. I sat down on a rickety wooden seat and let Pickwick out of the bag. It wasn’t home but it looked pleasant enough. Landen’s reactualization was in the uncharted future, along with Aornis’s and Goliath’s comeuppance—but all in good time. I would miss Mum, Dad, Joffy, Bowden, Victor and maybe even Cordelia. But it wasn’t all bad news—at least this way I wouldn’t have to do The Thursday Next Workout Video.

  As my father said, it’s funny the way things turn out.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Well of Lost Plots

  A Viking Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2003 by Jasper Fforde

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 1-101-15862-X

  A VIKING BOOK®

  Viking Books first published by The Viking Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  VIKING and the “VIKING” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: June, 2004

  For Mari

  who makes the torches burn brighter

  Contents

  Thursday Next: The Story So Far . . .

  Author’s Note

  1. The Absence of Breakfast

  2. Inside Caversham Heights

  3. Three Witches, Multiple Choice and Sarcasm

  4. Landen Parke-Laine

  5. The Well of Lost Plots

  6. Night of the Grammasites

  7. Feeding the Minotaur

  8. Ton-Sixty on the A419

  9. Apples Benedict, a Hedgehog and Commander Bradshaw

  10. Jurisfiction Session No. 40319

  11. Introducing UltraWord™

  12. Wuthering Heights

  14. Educating the Generics

  15. Landen Parke-Somebody

  16. Captain Nemo

  17. Minotaur Trouble

  18. Snell Rest in Peece and Lucy Deane

  19. Shadow the Sheepdog

  20. Ibb and Obb Named and Heights Again

  21. Who Stole the Tarts?

  22. Crimean Nightmares

  23. Jurisfiction Session No. 40320

  24. Pledges, the Council of Genres and Searching for Deane

  25. Havisham—the Final Bow

  26. Post-Havisham Blues

  27. The Lighthouse at the Edge of My Mind

  28. Lola Departs and Heights Again

  29. Mrs. Bradshaw and Solomon (Judgments) Inc.

  30. Revelations

  31. Tables Turned

  32. The 923rd Annual BookWorld Awards

  33. Ultra Word™

  34. Loose Ends

  34a. Heavy Weather

  (Bonus chapter exclusive to the U.S. edition)

  Credits

  Thursday Next: The Story So Far . . .

  Swindon, Wessex, England, circa 1985. SpecOps is the agency responsible for policing areas considered too specialized to be tackled by the regular force, and Thursday Next is attached to the Literary Detectives at SpecOps-27. Following the successful return of Jane Eyre to the novel of the same name, vanquishing master criminal Acheron Hades and bringing peace to the Crimean peninsula, she finds herself a minor celebrity.

  On the trail of the seemingly miraculous discovery of the lost Shakespeare play Cardenio, she crosses swords with Yorrick Kaine, escapee from fiction and neofascist politician. She also finds herself blackmailed by the vast multinational known as the Goliath Corporation, who want their operative Jack Schitt out of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” in which he was imprisoned. To achieve this they call on Lavoisier, a corrupt member of the time-traveling SpecOps elite, the ChronoGuard, to kill off Thursday’s husband. Traveling back thirty-eight years, Lavoisier engineers a fatal accident for the twoyear-old Landen, but leaves Thursday’s memories of him intact—she finds herself the only person who knows he once lived.

  In an attempt to rescue her eradicated husband, she finds a way to enter fiction itself—and discovers that not only is there a policing agency within the BookWorld known as Jurisfiction, but that she has been apprenticed as a trainee agent to Miss Havisham of Great Expectations. With her skills at bookjumping growing under Miss Havisham’s stern and often unorthodox tuition, Thursday rescues Jack Schitt, only to discover she has been duped. Goliath has no intention of reactualizing her husband and instead wants her to open a door into fiction, something Goliath has decided is a “rich untapped marketplace” for their varied but spectacularly worthless products and services.

  Thursday, pregnant with Landen’s child and pursued by Goliath and Acheron’s little sister, Aornis, an evil genius with a penchant for clothes shopping and memory modification, decides to enter the BookWorld and retire temporarily to the place where all fiction is created: the Well of Lost Plots. Taking refuge in an unpublished book of dubious quality as part of the Character Exchange Program, she thinks she will have a quiet time.

  Author’s Note

  To those unfamiliar with the pronunciation of English provincial towns, this is how I pronounce them:

  Slough rhymes with wow and is never pronounced Sluff.

  Reading is pronounced as in Otis Redding.

  Goring rhymes with boring.

  Cheltenham is pronounced Chelt-num.

  Warwickshire is pronounced war-rick-shy-er.

  Hobble is a pronounced limp.

  Mouse your way to my Web site at www.jasperfforde.com

  This book has been bundled with special features including “The Making of” documentary, deleted scenes from all three books, outtakes and much more. To access all these free bonus features, log on to www.jasperfforde.com/specialfeatures.html and enter the code word as directed.

  1.

  The Absence of Breakfast

  The Well of Lost Plots. To understand the Well you have to have an idea of the layout of the Great Library. The library is where all published fiction is stored so it can be read by the readers in the Outland; there are twenty-six floors, one for each letter of the alphabet. The library is constructed in the layout of a cross with the four corridors radiating from the center point. On all the walls, end after end, shelf after shelf, are books. Hundreds, thousands, millions of books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leatherbound, everything. But the similarity of all these books to the copies we read back home is no more than the similarity a photograph has to its subject; these books are alive.

  Beneath the Great Library are twenty-six floors of dingy yet industrious subbasements known as the Well of Lost Plots. This is where books are constructed, honed and polished in readiness for a place in the library above—if they make it that far. The failure rate is high. Unpublished books outnumber published by an estimated eight to one.

  THURSDAY NEXT,

  The Jurisfiction Chronicles

  MAKING ONE’S HOME in an unpublished novel wasn’t without its compensations. All the boring day-to-day mundanities that we conduct in the real world get in the way of narrative flow and are thus generally avoided. The car didn’t need refueling, there were never any wrong numbers, there was always enough hot water, and vacuum cleaner bags came in only two sizes—upright and pull along. There were other more subtle differences, too. For instance, no one ever needed to repeat themselves in case you didn’t hear, no one shared the same name, talked at the same time or had a word annoyingly “on the tip of their tongue.” Best of all, the bad guy was always someone you knew of, and—Chaucer aside—there wasn’t much farting. But there were some downsides. The relative absence of breakfast was the first and most notable difference to my daily timetable. Inside books, dinners are often written about and therefore feature frequently, as do lunches and afternoon tea; probably because they offer more opportunities to further the story.

  Breakfast wasn’t all that was missing. There was a peculiar lack of cinemas, wallpaper, toilets, colors, books, animals, underwear, smells, haircuts, and strangely enough, minor illnesses. If someone was ill in a book, it was either terminal and dramatically unpleasant or a mild head cold—there wasn’t much in between.

  I was able to take up residence inside fiction by virtue of a scheme entitled the Character Exchange Program. Due to a spate of bored and disgruntled bookpeople escaping from their novels and becoming what we called PageRunners, the authorities set up the scheme to allow characters a change of scenery. In any year there are close to ten thousand exchanges, few of which result in any major plot or dialogue infringements—the reader rarely suspects anything at all. Since I was from the real world and not actually a character at all, the Bellman and Miss Havisham had agreed to let me live inside the BookWorld in exchange for helping out at Jurisfiction—at least as long as my pregnancy would allow.

  The choice of book for my self-enforced exile had not been arbitrary; when Miss Havisham asked me in which novel I would care to reside, I had thought long and hard. Robinson Crusoe would have been ideal considering the climate, but there was no one female to exchange with. I could have gone to Pride and Prejudice, but I wasn’t wild about high collars, bonnets, corsets—and delicate manners. No, to avoid any complications and reduce the possibility of having to move, I had decided to make my home in a book of such dubious and uneven quality that publication and my subsequent enforced ejection was unlikely in the extreme. I found just such a book deep within the Well of Lost Plots amongst failed attempts at prose and half-finished epics of such dazzling ineptness that they would never see the light of day. The book was a dreary crime thriller set in Reading entitled Caversham Heights. I had planned to stay there for only a year, but it didn’t work out that way. Plans with me are like De Floss novels—try as you might, you never know quite how they are going to turn out.

  I read my way into Caversham Heights. The air felt warm after the wintry conditions back home, and I found myself standing on a wooden jetty at the edge of a lake. In front of me there was a large and seemingly derelict flying boat of the sort that still plied the coastal routes back home. I had flown on one myself not six months before on the trail of someone claiming to have found some unpublished Burns poetry. But that was another lifetime ago, when I was SpecOps in Swindon, the world I had temporarily left behind.