Chapter 4

“Same reason, I guess.”

Erik was no more a looker than Roger Rabbit. He was a bear—both tall and wide. He towered well over six feet, and weighed the same as the average rugby player, although in Erik’s case it was fat, not muscle. His shirts were big enough to serve as modest dresses for Andreas, and he sported long red hair and an enormous red beard. Both frizzy. Both prone to beard baubles at Christmas, and plaits or buns in the summer. And the hairiness didn’t stop at his head—Andreas had long refused to blow him, because of the aftermath of picking fur out of his teeth for the next week. He looked not too dissimilar to Brian Blessed, and certainly had the same lungs. In short, he was not—physically—an attractive man.