6.3: Introducing Fabian

A large snail is walking – or slithering – beside a major road, head-down and making determined progress. He or she really looks as though they ought to be muttering to themselves but there is no sound. In fact, though we do not know this yet, this is Fabian, one-time ‘racing snail’ heading to the Big Smoke to make a new life for himself, forgetting all about his past ambitions, his past failures. 

He just needs to cross the road, make his way to the next service station and hitch a lift, probably through concealment in a wheel arch. Most snails hitch lifts this way. They seldom ask. 

He stops to cross the road, looking slowly right, then left, then right again. He does not seem to notice what we can just make out: a pea, perhaps Emlyn, the Pod’s notorious enforcer, partly hidden in the daffodils and staring intently at Fabian who seems, just at this moment, to come to a sudden halt, distracted, and then sets off as a lorry hares into view. 

There is a loud parp of the horn and, at the very last minute, Fabian pulls back, just short of being crushed by a wheel, his shell wobbling in the turbulence. 

Shaking in shock, he scurries back, away from the road, under a hedge and across a field just next to a stream. 

If our Storyteller had been bothered to provide a map (such as the Hundred Acre Map of our youth), we might have seen that this stream leads back, slightly uphill, to a large disused stately home and, hidden in its grounds, the Potting Shed. But whether or not he knows where he is going, Fabian does not slow down as he beats a hasty retreat from the trunk road and what had been his rather desperate escape plans. 

The pea, too, seems to vanish into the bushes, job done.