Princess Anabyl Spireshine was not always as dedicated to the cause of the Dragon Warriors as she became in later life. The dragon epitomises the polarity between chaos and order encapsulated in a single entity. Dragons formed mischief into majesty, this transformation was accomplished through understanding, clarity and wisdom.
The Dracopolis Academy was never that concerned about taking on students in possession of large amounts of understanding, clarity or wisdom from the start. Chaos is hard to cultivate, like a fire burned out of control it tends to eat itself eventually. Natural chaos, on the other hand, can, potentially be moulded into the stuff of a great Dragon Warrior. It was on this basis that Warden Razath first accepted Anabyl into the Academy under the patronage of Prince Avan Weatherstrong.
Anabyl would tell anyone who asked that when she stepped into the Academy she was attracted by the availability of many martial devices essential to the creation of serious amounts of chaos. The concept of training, discipline and achievement were the furthest thing from her mind. It took Anabyl about seven hours to become thoroughly bored of the Dracopolis Academy and wishing she could go home to Spireshine. Nine hours after her arrival someone let all the criminals out of the Dracopolis Jailhouse.
Never one to miss an opportunity Anabyl took advantage of the skeleton staff left to look after academy attendees, stole a sword from the armoury and found a way into the Dracopolis Sewer System. Twenty minutes into her new subterranean adventure thoughts about what she might do if actually confronted by a perilous situation began to occur to her.
The Princess did not, as many young people alone in the dark, wet tunnels of a major metropolitan sewer system, surrounded by potential hazards, feel any fear. For Anabyl fear was a thing to be inspired in others, not to be experienced by oneself. Wariness and caution were not things that Anabyl had previously had much use for but with fear off the table she decided that these would do in their place.
As it turned out watchfulness and sneaking, two vital components in any worthwhile and serious mischief-making enterprise, were also handy when trying to navigate through an unfamiliar underground environment without bumping into troublesome escaped convicts. She got into the swing of this so quickly that it came to a point where the business of skulking through the shadows not making any noise was only occupying a tiny part of her attention.
She made her way in the direction of the city walls (Anabyl had never questioned her uncanny sense of direction, it was always a given and, hence, taken for granted); as she did Anabyl thought about the sword.
The sword was a training sword, being an ideal size and weight for a smaller person. It wasn't a short sword, or an elaborate dagger, it also wasn't one of the fine balanced fencing swords that Anabyl had seen in grand cities like Bellespire. The weapon would have appeared a little odd in the hands of an adult because it wasn't built to an adult scale. For someone Anabyl's size it was just about perfect.
Anabyl had never used a sword for much before, mischief was one thing, violence was something else altogether. Anabyl was no stranger to fire, concussion, humiliation, itching or other types of general unpleasantness associated with bringing self-important people down a peg or seven.
When she had been a very young child Anabyl had never needed anything more than pig-jousting, rotten vegetables and an unlimited supply of mud. Swords were fascinating, of course, anything that could destroy other things was interesting. Anabyl came to realise that she had honed the art of inflicting pain and discomfort on people she considered boring to such a fine point that real weapons had just naturally never figured into her schemes.
Anabyl knew that if you picked up a weapon then you were either an idiot or you intended to really hurt someone, and not in a fun way, or both. So why had she picked up the sword on her way into the sewers?
A few months ago she would never have done that, no matter what the circumstance. It didn't matter that she was in a fabled land in a far off time, cut off from everything she knew with no way home. It didn't matter that she was moving through a series of dark tunnels and could hear the screams and hoots of a riot going on above her head as she stepped under the grating covers for street level. Not so long ago Anabyl wouldn't have cared about any of that, she would have naturally assumed it had nothing to do with her.
Then an owl of wisdom had told her about dragon warriors, shortly after Peregrine Pagebinder had made it plain there was one person in the universe that she couldn't get the better of. The facts of these things had combined in her head to form the potential that one day Anabyl could be...
Anabyl had always assumed that she could just dodge the business of growing up. The world didn't work like that. She had met sprites who never grew up and she liked to humiliate those foolish creatures as much as any other idiot she met in the course of daily life. She remembered distinctly the feeling of not wanting to be like some idiot adult-child. She had been to the world of humans once and seen one of their picture box shows about old women (to Anabyl anyone over 20 years of age was old) who tried to act in a childish manner.
The whole concept brought Anabyl as close to fear as she had ever been.
No. Anabyl was determined not to be that. The only way to avoid it, unfortunately, was to grow up. That was unpalatable for a number of other reasons, chief among which was the idea of being married to some boy-prince and living out your life in a castle coping with the fallout from the actions of her children. Sons, she could probably handly discipline for a bunch of snot nosed little boys, no problem. What put a little ice into Anabyl's heart was the concept of the kind of daughter she might produce.
No. Altogether not something to be countenanced. She had decided to grow up in her own way, on her own terms. She had never known what they were. Then she had heard about dragon warriors.
A woman could be a soldier, or a knight, she had read the stories. Surely the dragon warrior was the best kind of knight. That had to be a contender for one of the best ways to grow up.
The discipline did not appeal, there was the problem.
Still, even in her escape she had taken a sword. This meant there was a new seriousness in Anabyl's heart, one that could not be denied.
This rather troubling notion was the last thing to play through Anabyl's mind as she exited from a drainage pipe outside of Dracopolis's city walls. Close to the drainage opening were a few small stone huts, locked up with rust-tinged metal doors, along the path away from the sewer tunnels was an old house. The house appeared as if it was abandoned, probably for some time. The question was: had the house been left empty long enough to attract ghosts?
Anabyl had a keen interest in ghosts, it was almost a hobby of hers. Her fascination with the spirits of the dead was unique in her personality as being the only thing she could be preoccupied with that didn't ultimately lead to someone ending up covered in some kind of wet slime. She had enquired of one spirit she had met about the possibility of obtaining some ectoplasm but found that the ghostly substance was a myth.
Still, she found the dead had a simple view of the world that she appreciated. They tended not to be judgemental and they didn't often have any agenda with which she might disagree. When she was a little older Anbyl would articulate that she appreciated the clarity that death appeared to bring to people (most people). At that moment all she knew was that if there were ghosts in the house she wanted to say hello.
Anabyl climbed the steps and crossed the porch area to find the front door locked, or at least jammed shut by something. A little further investigation revealed an open window that she wriggled through without any problems.
Before the final occupants of this house had moved on they had done a pretty thorough job of emptying it of anything that they might have formed a sentimental attachment to. There wasn't a stick of furniture, a picture hook or a scrap of textiles anywhere on the ground floor.
Of course, Anabyl wasn't really interested in those things, she was more interested in the possible inhabitants of the house. If there were ghosts here they were shy ghosts. The trick with a shy ghost was to not look directly at where they might be, because they could hide more easily if they knew you were looking. You had to catch a glimpse of them out of the corner of your eye.
The ghost of one of her great uncles had told her that, with a little concentration and effort, dimming a ghost's natural glow was an easy thing to achieve. However it did take some concentration and effort, and it became hellishly uncomfortable after a while, a bit like a live person holding their breath. What a ghost needed to do if it didn't want to be seen was move out of the way and then relax their concentration when they believed they were out of view.
So the way to get a glimpse of a shy ghost was to enter rooms suddenly, turn around unexpectedly and other wise try to look in places you hadn't been looking moments previously. Somewhere in the remains of the kitchen Anabyl believed she had got a glimpse of something, but the ghost in question was extremely shy because she couldn't catch it out a second time.
On the upper floor of the house Anabyl noticed a new smell accompanying the damp odour that permeated the lower floor, a smell of burned dry hair. Anabyl knew the aroma from somewhere but she couldn't quite place the exact memory. Irritated by this small mystery Anabyl stopped trying to catch out the local ghosts and searched the upstairs for the source of the smell.
In one of the upstairs rooms Anabyl found a small locker chest and a basic cot bed. Someone was using this place as a home.
This prospect made Anabyl feel a little awkward about being here. If there was someone alive using this property Anabyl felt it was her duty to soak them in something as soon as possible. She hadn't seen a well, or a mud patch or any other source of the necessary sogginess nearby. The prospect of not springing an unpleasant and hilarious surprise on a stranger due to a lack of materials made Anabyl uncomfortable.
She didn't want to stay in the mouldy house with the reclusive ghosts anyway. She reasoned she had best be on her way directly. She went down the stairs and through the front room to the door. She opened the door to find herself looking into the softly glowing orange-yellow eyes of an enormous wolf dressed in a fine crimson jacket, a light-yellow silk tunic and breeches of the same crimson as the jacket.
Anabyl knew a bit about wolves, it being the kind of distressing subject that her parents believed she should be shielded from. There were, of course, a full range of completely normal wolves ranging from smaller dog-like varieties to enormous dire-wolves. Then there were the spectrum of talking wolves. Unlike cats, dogs, mice and sundry other animals there were no talking wolves that appeared to be normal every day wolves until they asked you if you might not mind getting them some food.
Every variety of talking wolf wore clothes of some fashion. Previous to this Anabyl had only ever encountered the slim and erudite kind of wolf that was common in the Hundred Kingdoms. There were legends of vastly powerful talking dire wolves, or Royal Wolves, a war-like, aggressive species; Anabyl had only ever encountered them in stories because they had died out long ago.
Of course, now Anabyl was long ago, so the presence of a Royal Wolf shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was. The problem with slipping through a hole in time was that sometimes you forgot that you had done so. For this reason Anabyl found herself surprised and without a response to the enraged predator whose dwelling place Anabyl had disturbed.
"What are you doing in my house?" the wolf demanded reaching out to push Anabyl backwards. Anabyl's long developed instinct for avoiding any grabbing hand kept her out of the reach of the gigantic creature.
"I was just passing through," Anabyl said. "I was a bit lost and I just wanted to ask for directions."
"Well, I'd say you'd taken a wrong turn," the wolf snarled. He flailed forward meaning to grab at Anabyl a second time. "Because when I catch you then you won't live long enough to regret coming here."
Anabyl considered ducking past the wolf at this point and running back towards the sewers. The only problem was that she wasn't terribly sure of her way and she was pretty confident that the wolf would turn out to be faster than her.
For the first time in her young life Anabyl realised that something was actually trying to seriously kill her. This annoyed her intensely, she considered it doubly rude seeing as she hadn't done so much as let a stink bomb off near this wolf and here he was acting like she'd left him for three days in a tree-snare. When she'd left one of the groundskeepers in such a precarious position all she'd got was gruel and a grounding. On that scale the wolf's unjustified anger seemed a bit of an overreaction.
More out of practicality than any intention to strike back Anabyl pulled out her sword and waved it at the wolf.
"You think a little girl would come out to such a scary part of the woods and walk around a creepy house if she didn't know how to stab a monster with a sword?" she asked. As bluffs went it relied heavily on the passion of the delivery, thankfully this wasn't a problem to Anabyl.
"I don't know," the wolf sneered. "Let's find out!"
It lunged for her again and she dodged away, swinging the sword in a manner that clearly owed more to enthusiasm than skill. Anabyl reminded herself that she had either better think of a good plan or get instantly a lot better with her sword if she wanted to see sunrise.
Anabyl backed away from the wolf trying to spot an escape route and babbling on about how jolly sorry the wolf would be if he came any closer. Spotting a doorway to her left Anabyl ducked through it and found herself at the top of a set of steps leading into a cellar. The growling noise behind her indicated that if she was in for this particular groat then she was most certainly in for the whole bronze mark. So she hurried down the steps three at a time.
It was at about this moment that Anabyl had a momentary pang of regret regarding her disdain for plans and strategising. She knew she was belting down stone steps into a dark basement. She knew she was being pursued by a seriously angry, powerful and inherently nasty royal wolf. Somehow the thoughts in her brain wouldn't allow her to do anything else.
She wasn't under any illusion that she was being manipulated or controlled. She was just acting, like she always did, the only difference being that this time her stream-of-consciousness approach to life might very well get her killed.
She found the basement to be a long corridor giving access to three rooms. She hadn't seen a ground level exit from beneath out at the front of the house so she vaulted over the bannister and headed for the room at the back. As she approached the door at the end of the passage she made great efforts not to think about what might happen if the door was locked or if it just lead into another boxy room with no exits.
Her relief at seeing a ground level window in the ceiling of the basement room was immense and all consuming. She lost no time in running towards the opening, scrambling up the wall, grabbing and pulling at the latch. The latch sprung and the window opened inwards. Surprised Anabyl fell back to the floor, stumbled but remained upright. She could only have bare seconds before the wolf was on top of her. She scrambled once more at the wall.
"Help me," said an unexpected voice behind her.
Anabyl didn't have much time to react, she turned her head to see a bird that looked very much like an owl of wisdom sitting in a cage. Next to the cage was a writing desk and a chair, the only proper furniture she'd seen in the whole house.
She didn't even think about it. She took the writing chair across the room and jammed it under the door handle just as the wolf tried to open the door. The door swung about an inch open on its hinges before jamming as the chair legs scraped against the bare stone floor. The royal wolf bellowed in rage and began rattling the door. Anabyl had only bought herself a few seconds.
She didn't waste those seconds. She worked the lock on the cage eventually prising it open with a letter opener she spotted on the writing desk. The owl thanked Anabyl and had just flapped out of the window when the door burst inward and the royal wolf charged into the room.
"My owwwwwwl!" it screamed, its already boiling fury seeming to kick up another few notches. "You will pay."
Anabyl realised that there was really nowhere else to run. She could try to get through the window but then she would just be dragged back into the room. If she was going to die then she decided that she had pretty much better look it in the eye and see if she could distract it into a staring contest.
"You!" she shouted at the wolf, "are about the meanest and most awful creature I have ever met in my entire life! How dare you keep an owl of wisdom in a stinky cage? I'm glad I let it out, I hope they come back and poop all over you!"
The tirade momentarily caused the wolf to pause, wondering why this strange little girl was not crying and screaming and pleading for her life and, further, why she felt she had the right to tell him off. After a moment he plainly concluded that it was all bravado and bluff so he snarled at her preparatory to eating her right up.
But by then it was too late.
The enormous royal wolf that had been ready to swallow Anabyl whole a second before now found itself in the body of an embarrassingly small and rat-like dog. It's snarl sounded like a large rat trying to clear its throat. The wolf brought itself up short, throwing a second confused and awestruck look in the direction of Princess Anabyl.
"Don't look at me," she shrugged. "It wasn't my doing."
"Not directly, anyway," said another voice emerging from the darkest corner of the basement room. "I can't very well have the children in my care getting eaten by royal wolves on a field excursion now, can I?"
Peregrine Pagebinder emerged from the shadows and picked up the little dog from the floor. The former royal wolf now looked irritated beyond all reason not to mention absolutely disconsolate.
"I did wonder where you were hiding," Anabyl said peevishly, determined not to show Peregrine any gratitude whatsoever. If the annoying sprite hadn't sent her on this field trip then she would never have ended up in this situation anyway, that was her reasoning.
"I have not been hiding," Peregrine said. "I have been looking at the possibilities for the continued unfolding of your educational curriculum. It's time for options, young lady."
"Options?" Anabyl asked. "What are they? No. Don't answer. Anything to do with you has to be stupid and boring."
"Not so antagonistic please, Anabyl," Peregrine said. "The path we are engaged upon is for the betterment of us all. Now, the question of how much better is entirely in your hands. You must choose your next step carefully. That is the option you will be given, how to proceed with your education, understood?"
"Unless going home and having you move out permanently is one of the choices I don't think I'm going to be interested," Anabyl said.
"I'm afraid not," Peregrine replied coolly. The calmer he was about Anabyl's volley of vitriolic insults the more obnoxious she was determined to become. "There are two options, option one is that we now return to Caer Spireshine and you embark upon a programme of extensive social education with the aim of turning you into a master stateswoman."
Anabyl felt the only response to that was to stick her tongue out and make puking noises.
"Option two," Peregrine continued, ever unruffled, "is to combine the advanced discplinary, tactical and spiritual educative methods of the Dracopolis Academy with some more focused sessions on history, natural science and other useful academics with the aim of turning you into the finest dragon warrior the lands of Faerie has ever or will ever know. I should tell you that this latter option is the more difficult of the two, however it does give you the potential to fulfil one of the grandest destinies that the world has ever known, if you can stick to it."
Anabyl tried to muster up some enthusiasm for puking at that option too. She was surprised to find that she couldn't. After today's near miss she reasoned that if someone could teach her not to fight her way into a corner that would be a very good thing indeed. The Dracopolis Academy appeared to be a place of rules and discipline, neither of which were Anabyl's favourite things. In a contest between martial discipline and political protocol though the discipline won every day.
Then there was the thing about the destiny.
"What do you mean 'the grandest destiny the world has ever known'?" she asked.
"One of the grandest destinies the world has ever known," Peregrine said. "Choose that path and you will come to find out in time."
So she did, and she did, but all of that will be told at another time, in another place, for the hour is too late now.
Showing posts with label Princess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Princess. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Sunday, 8 September 2013
The House on the Edge of the Undone
Lester did not remember what turn of events had drawn him to the point where he was running down a hill with a mouse in his pocket and an unconscious gnome slung over his shoulder. He had come a long way since entering the Patchwork Market looking for information about his brother. Had any of his journey been in a direction that could be described as 'correct'?
The mysterious man in the top hat appeared to have confidence that every crazy step that Lester took was a step closer to Chester. This was borne out by the discovery of a letter and a small bottle of potion in the House of Mirth, both apparently left behind by Lester's missing twin. Now there was this diversion with the unconscious gnome, the little girl and the mermaid with legs.
Life hadn't been boring for quite some time. Lester missed boring, a lot.
Behind the fleeing party there was the sound of cracking stone, followed by an unearthly howl that seemed to rattle the very living rock of the mountains around them. Receiving an additional boost of adrenaline, Lester pumped his legs harder trying to sprint even faster to catch up with Eos carrying Rachel in front of him.
"Careful!" James cried out from Lester's pocket. "I'm trying to keep this potion bottle in one piece for you. You need to be less hasty and more steady!"
"You want the monster to catch us?" Lester replied. "I'm trying to keep us alive."
"We haven't even seen this monster," James said. "It could be a rabbit with a sore throat and overdeveloped vocal cords."
"And the noise of cracking rock?" Lester asked.
"Just keep running, gently," James said.
So Lester kept running. He could hear the thudding sound of enormous footsteps start up the track behind him. Rachel, clinging on round Eos's neck as the mermaid sprinted down the path ahead, took a moment to look up at what was following them. From his position Lester could see her face drain of colour as her gaze took in the full horror of what was bearing down on them.
"Note to self," Lester muttered, "don't look back."
"Life was so much simpler when I had my pumpkin," James wailed. "Then I only had a giant bat to deal with, not memories, or mysterious monsters, or random quests to find lost brothers of people I don't even know."
"This way!" Eos called from the path up ahead. She suddenly broke to the left and started down a thinner trail in between two shelves of rock. Lester followed and saw what Eos was running towards, the narrow mouth of a split in the mountain side a short distance ahead.
"We can't go there!" he shouted. "We'll get trapped."
"We can't stay on the mountainside," Eos threw back. "We'll get eaten."
Without pausing to discuss the matter further Eos put Rachel down on the floor and urged her to clamber in between the two jagged walls of rock into the darkness beyond. After Rachel had slipped through Eos followed. Lester unshouldered the, still unconscious, gnome and passed him through to Eos. Finally Lester himself turned sideways to slip between the two edges of the split.
He had to concede that beyond this threshold they would be safe from any monster larger than Lester himself. As he tried to push his chest into the tiny sliver of empty space his ribs jammed, even when Lester inhaled he found he could not move any further.
"I'm stuck!" he cried out. The thudding of their pursuer's footsteps was getting louder and louder down the mountain path. Lester was having to try very hard not to turn his head to assess how bad a situation he was in. All he knew was that this was one piece of information he could definitely do with out.
"Push harder," Eos told him. Lester couldn't help but note a frosty edge to her tone, she was probably still sore about the whole keeping her enslaved in the tank thing. He was really going to have to find a way to apologise for that.
Lester kept pushing and straining but his shoulders were just a little too wide to step through the rock, he couldn't fit. The footsteps of the monster pursuing them closed the distance even further. As the last few feet of space between Lester and the pursuer disappeared, not even really thinking any more, Lester turned to look up into two bright crimson eyes with slitted pupils staring out of a dark leathery face. Long, taloned fingers reaching out to grab at him.
And then the mountain rock, and everything else, melted.
For just a fraction of a second it was as if Lester was caught up in giant cloud, in an endless sky, then everything came back to normal except that Lester had popped through the slim crag and fell in a heap on the other side of the cave entrance.
The monster that Lester and James had inadvertently freed from its imprisonment some way below the structure where they had arrived in this shadow realm waved its forearm through the gap. Really not much more of itself would fit through, however. The small party retreated back into the cave passage away from the frustrated snarling of the thwarted monster.
The light from the crack filtered down into the upper reaches of the cave but it didn't last for long. The cave did broaden but they had no light to find their way around in the dark.
"We'll just have to feel our way along one wall," Eos said.
"Um, I think I may have a better suggestion," said James from Lester's pocket.
Lester reached into his pocket and withdrew the vial of potion from the House of Mirth. It glowed with an intense white-yellow light.
"Well," he said. "That's unexpected."
"But useful," Eos said. "Come on, let's see if we can find a path through this place."
Eos lead the way down through the caves, after a while they could hear the sound of running water and the walls began to run with moisture.
"I can feel the flow of water, just by touching it," Eos explained, "come on, I think I can find us a way out of here."
So they continued to pick their way through narrow dark passages, the atmosphere was both oppressive and claustrophobic. Along the way Rachel became quite upset.
"I should never have made that wish back in the Skull Garden," she complained. "Then we wouldn't be lost wandering around in caves under a mountain."
"Hey, no," James replied. "Don't be upset. If you hadn't got us out of the garden I would never have remembered anything about who I used to be, and you wouldn't know anything about the world beyond the great Skull Rock."
Lester waited for James to say something about the family connection but it appeared as if James had nothing further to say on the matter. After setting a monster loose last time they had argued on the point Lester decided to let the matter slide this time.
The trek through the dark, wet caves was laborious and tiring but it was, at least, uneventful. A few hours later on they emerged from the caves by a small brook. The daylight was fading, the magnificent panorama of the eyrie was replaced with the murky expanse of a marshy forest made up of slim, twisted trees placed sparsely throughout a green-yellow floor saturated with water. Visible in the distance, no more than quarter of a mile away, were stone walls surrounding a tall house.
"I suppose we'd better see if anyone is at home," Lester said and the party began to make their way towards the structure.
The walk through the caves had been arduous and all of those party members who were on foot were hungry and tired. The dark shape of the lonely forest house was not particularly reassuring. The view into the distance was obscured by a light mist that grew thicker as they walked. By the time they reached the gate before the path leading up to the house the light was very poor indeed.
"I hope that whoever lives here is in an understanding mood," Eos said.
"It doesn't look, to me, as if anyone does live here, not any more," Lester said as he opened the gate, it stuck, squealing and complaining as he pushed it on its hinges, the noise supported his argument.
"Look," Rachel said, pointing over to the right side of the house. "Is that a ghost?"
They all looked at where Rachel was pointing. There was something, a slow moving blob of white light drifting across the grounds floating about a foot over the sodden turf.
"I don't know what that is," Lester said. "James? Any memories regarding odd, floating balls in swamps?"
"Ignis Fatuus?" James said. "From the Latin 'foolish lights' also known as Jack o' Lanterns or Will o' the wisps. Although usually they look more like lantern flames, and they tend to appear as if they're a lot further away."
"I met a Jack o'Lantern once," Lester said. "I was walking through a forest and I bumped into one coming in the opposite direction. I shared some soup with him. Turns out that they use their lanterns to light sparks in the eyes of baby animals, that's why they travel so far off the path, and why they appear to move so erratically. That's not a Jack o' Lantern."
"So what lit the spark in my eyes?" Rachel asked. "Was it one of those things?"
"Folk have their own fire," Lester said. "At least that's what the Jack o' Lantern said when I asked him. He seemed to think that this was a political compromise of some sort. He didn't go into it."
"But that isn't one?" Eos asked.
"Not like the one I saw," Lester said. "The light of a Jack o' Lantern is like a lantern flame because, well, it is."
"It's getting dark," James said. "We'd better check to see if anyone is home."
Lester knocked on the door of the house, and pulled at a bell cord hanging to the right of the door. Nothing appeared to happen. Lester tried the handle on the door. The door was unlocked and it swung slowly and silently inwards revealing the house beyond.
"I don't like this," Lester said. "Remember the last time we found ourselves in an apparently abandoned house? I spent a long time believing I was a duke at a masked ball. Don't want to go through that again."
"There are worse things," Eos said, making her way past him and into the house. "At least there was a buffet there."
"She has a point," James said. "Free food is always a bonus."
"Well, alright then," Lester said, following Eos into the house. "As long as we're throwing caution to the winds."
Inside the house was dark and smelled faintly of damp, not damp enough for it to appear unsafe for an overnight stay but definitely enough to put concern into the mind of an owner about the possibility of their residence eventually falling over into a swamp.
The floor was mostly bare boards covered over by the occasional rug. It was evident that no one had set foot inside the house for quite some time. Downstairs there was a large drawing room, a dining room and an expansive kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a bathroom.
Lester lost no time putting the gnome down gently on a bed in one of the bedrooms, a twin room that he imagined he would share with James over night. The beds all had bare mattresses, no blankets or pillows but they seemed sturdy enough and were better than the floor.
The gnome allowed to rest Lester returned to the kitchen where he quickly found a glass flask in which to decant his mysterious potion.
"Well, that's one thing taken care of, anyway," Lester pronounced happily.
"Why are so many dwelling places we visit apparently abandoned?" James asked. "I'm detecting a theme."
Before Lester could think of a plausible answer to the question the glowing blob from the garden came drifting through the wall, slowly moving through the kitchen apparently unaware of its surroundings. When the blob was a couple of feet past the wall and floating over the kitchen counter about seven inches from the surface a second blob joined it from a slightly different angle and began a lazy journey from one corner of the kitchen to the other.
"What do you think those things are?" Lester asked. "I've never seen or heard of anything like it in my life."
"I don't know," James said. "And I think that troubles me. Part of me seems to think that I had read about almost every known thing in the Faerie realm. It's not just that I don't remember this, it's that I've never heard of it."
"Should we be worried?" asked Eos, standing at the door.
"I'm not sure," James replied. "Where's Rachel?"
"I put her to bed," Eos said. "She was very tired. I found a small quilt slung over a chair in the drawing room. She'll be nice and warm."
"Good," James said. "I think we should all sleep, not for too long, then we should try to find our way back onto a more civilized path. The sooner we can get back to Bridgetown the better."
"Why are we going to Bridgetown?" Lester asked. "We spent enough time leaving it."
"Bridgetown is a market where you can buy anything, Lester," James said. "If we want answers to our questions then, well, maybe they won't be there in the market, but something that will help us to buy an answer most certainly will be."
"Seems logical," Lester said. "Well, then, I suppose we had better all get some sleep."
Lester, James and Eos climbed the stairs. Eos went into the bedroom where Rachel was, she said goodnight to Lester, although Lester got the impression that she mostly did it because she wanted to say goodnight to James and couldn't ignore the owner of the pocket James travelled in. Still, things had seemed to thaw out a little between them. Maybe there was a hope for friendship yet.
With that small candle of hope burning in his chest Lester lay down on the second bed in his own room and closed his eyes. He wasn't even aware that he had fallen asleep when he felt himself jerked awake again. Eos was shaking at his shoulder.
"Lester!" she said. "Wake up! Lester! Something is very wrong here."
Not entirely awake Lester tried to remember where he was and what he was doing.
"Eos," he said. "You have legs, no tail, neat trick."
"It's not a trick, it's an enchantment, I have a ring," Eos said. "Look, listen, that's not important, what's important is that I found a small chest, a jewellery box, in my room. I was just looking through it, there were some pretty things inside.
"Oh," Lester said. "That's nice. Anything saleable?"
"No, Lester," Eos was irritable, this was not unusual. "We can't sell any of it. Even if it was worth anything, it disappeared, while I was looking at it, it turned to mist, sparkly mist and just... it was like it was evaporating."
"Oh dear," Lester said, still not quite with it. "That's not good, unless it was a dream, could you have been dreaming?"
"I don't think I was, I mean, I don't remember closing my eyes," Eos said. It was clear that Lester's question had forced her to re-examine her own thoughts.
"The Undone!" cried the gnome, sitting bolt upright in his bed. "We're close to the Undone! We have to leave! I have to leave!"
Lester and Eos looked over at the suddenly mobile gnome.
"What's the Undone?" Lester asked. He had hoped for the longest time that at some point he would feel comfortable that he could handle the pace at which things progressed, he still hadn't got there even though it often appeared as if the moment that he should know everything he needed to know was just a little further away.
"No time!" the gnome shouted. "We have to run, right now!"
"What's all the noise?" mumbled a bleary eyed Rachel, coming through the door into the room.
"We have to go!" the gnome said, scrambling off the bed and grasping Rachel's hand. "We have to go before the Undone gets us."
Not waiting for his ranting to sink in he pulled Rachel after him, racing out of the room and down the house's main stairs.
"Hold on!" Lester said, swinging his own legs out of bed to give chase. "I think we need a little more to go on."
The gnome wasn't listening he was down the stairs and over to the front door of the little house. He flung the door open and plunged out into the grey mist that surrounded the house.
"Oh this is bad," he was muttering as he pulled Rachel after him down the garden path, "this is very, very bad."
Lester and Eos came running after the gnome in the garden they nearly caught him but as Lester's hand brushed the fabric of the little sprite's tunic he registered what was now surrounding him. Night had never fallen in the garden of the little house. Instead it was enveloped in a permanent misty twilight through which drifted the lazily undulating forms of the luminescent blobs, not just a couple now, more like thirty or forty.
"What's happening?" Eos asked, her voice as awed as Lester felt.
"This is it," the gnome said. "The precursor to the Undone. We have to leave before we fall into it. If we fall into the Undone we'll never come out again."
The gnome resumed his journey back to the garden gate. Lester could see trees in the distance, where the forest resumed. The house now appeared to be part of a different world, a world of mist and glowing blobs, trapped in permanent twilight.
"Come on," Lester said to Eos, "we can't afford to wait around."
The mermaid didn't argue, the four of them half-walked, half-ran from the misty area towards the more solid shape of the twisted, shadowy tree trunks.
"It looks like we've had a narrow escape," Lester said. "What do you think James?"
Lester looked down to his right pocket but it was empty.
"James?" Lester said. "Oh."
He stopped dead. Eos took a couple more steps after the gnome before stopping and turning.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I think James crawled out of my pocket to get some sleep," Lester said. "He's not here. He must still be in the house."
Lester turned back to look at the house, it didn't really look like a real house any more, it looked like a sketch done in light pencil, an impression rather than an actual thing.
"I have to get him," Lester said. "You go on, I'll get him and catch you up."
Eos opened her mouth as if to object but Lester wasn't going to give her a chance. He ran back towards the house and in through the front door, not stopping till he was back at the bedroom.
He found James in the furthest corner of a shelf in the bedside table. Lester reached in and picked the sleeping mouse up.
"Huh," James said, waking up, "whassamatter."
"The gnome woke up," Lester said, carrying James carefully as he jogged down the stairs. "We have to move, we're in trouble."
"Oh, no," James complained. "What kind of trouble?"
"Well..." Lester said but the sentence got no further. Lester stopped at the threshold of the house, foot waving above an empty bright white space where the ground had been only a minute before. "Ah," Lester said, looking up and about him.
Beyond the edge of the house was nothing but white in all directions. The house itself appeared to be melting away at the corners. Lester began to understand what it was the gnome had been worried about, but was the realisation too late?
The mysterious man in the top hat appeared to have confidence that every crazy step that Lester took was a step closer to Chester. This was borne out by the discovery of a letter and a small bottle of potion in the House of Mirth, both apparently left behind by Lester's missing twin. Now there was this diversion with the unconscious gnome, the little girl and the mermaid with legs.
Life hadn't been boring for quite some time. Lester missed boring, a lot.
Behind the fleeing party there was the sound of cracking stone, followed by an unearthly howl that seemed to rattle the very living rock of the mountains around them. Receiving an additional boost of adrenaline, Lester pumped his legs harder trying to sprint even faster to catch up with Eos carrying Rachel in front of him.
"Careful!" James cried out from Lester's pocket. "I'm trying to keep this potion bottle in one piece for you. You need to be less hasty and more steady!"
"You want the monster to catch us?" Lester replied. "I'm trying to keep us alive."
"We haven't even seen this monster," James said. "It could be a rabbit with a sore throat and overdeveloped vocal cords."
"And the noise of cracking rock?" Lester asked.
"Just keep running, gently," James said.
So Lester kept running. He could hear the thudding sound of enormous footsteps start up the track behind him. Rachel, clinging on round Eos's neck as the mermaid sprinted down the path ahead, took a moment to look up at what was following them. From his position Lester could see her face drain of colour as her gaze took in the full horror of what was bearing down on them.
"Note to self," Lester muttered, "don't look back."
"Life was so much simpler when I had my pumpkin," James wailed. "Then I only had a giant bat to deal with, not memories, or mysterious monsters, or random quests to find lost brothers of people I don't even know."
"This way!" Eos called from the path up ahead. She suddenly broke to the left and started down a thinner trail in between two shelves of rock. Lester followed and saw what Eos was running towards, the narrow mouth of a split in the mountain side a short distance ahead.
"We can't go there!" he shouted. "We'll get trapped."
"We can't stay on the mountainside," Eos threw back. "We'll get eaten."
Without pausing to discuss the matter further Eos put Rachel down on the floor and urged her to clamber in between the two jagged walls of rock into the darkness beyond. After Rachel had slipped through Eos followed. Lester unshouldered the, still unconscious, gnome and passed him through to Eos. Finally Lester himself turned sideways to slip between the two edges of the split.
He had to concede that beyond this threshold they would be safe from any monster larger than Lester himself. As he tried to push his chest into the tiny sliver of empty space his ribs jammed, even when Lester inhaled he found he could not move any further.
"I'm stuck!" he cried out. The thudding of their pursuer's footsteps was getting louder and louder down the mountain path. Lester was having to try very hard not to turn his head to assess how bad a situation he was in. All he knew was that this was one piece of information he could definitely do with out.
"Push harder," Eos told him. Lester couldn't help but note a frosty edge to her tone, she was probably still sore about the whole keeping her enslaved in the tank thing. He was really going to have to find a way to apologise for that.
Lester kept pushing and straining but his shoulders were just a little too wide to step through the rock, he couldn't fit. The footsteps of the monster pursuing them closed the distance even further. As the last few feet of space between Lester and the pursuer disappeared, not even really thinking any more, Lester turned to look up into two bright crimson eyes with slitted pupils staring out of a dark leathery face. Long, taloned fingers reaching out to grab at him.
And then the mountain rock, and everything else, melted.
For just a fraction of a second it was as if Lester was caught up in giant cloud, in an endless sky, then everything came back to normal except that Lester had popped through the slim crag and fell in a heap on the other side of the cave entrance.
The monster that Lester and James had inadvertently freed from its imprisonment some way below the structure where they had arrived in this shadow realm waved its forearm through the gap. Really not much more of itself would fit through, however. The small party retreated back into the cave passage away from the frustrated snarling of the thwarted monster.
The light from the crack filtered down into the upper reaches of the cave but it didn't last for long. The cave did broaden but they had no light to find their way around in the dark.
"We'll just have to feel our way along one wall," Eos said.
"Um, I think I may have a better suggestion," said James from Lester's pocket.
Lester reached into his pocket and withdrew the vial of potion from the House of Mirth. It glowed with an intense white-yellow light.
"Well," he said. "That's unexpected."
"But useful," Eos said. "Come on, let's see if we can find a path through this place."
Eos lead the way down through the caves, after a while they could hear the sound of running water and the walls began to run with moisture.
"I can feel the flow of water, just by touching it," Eos explained, "come on, I think I can find us a way out of here."
So they continued to pick their way through narrow dark passages, the atmosphere was both oppressive and claustrophobic. Along the way Rachel became quite upset.
"I should never have made that wish back in the Skull Garden," she complained. "Then we wouldn't be lost wandering around in caves under a mountain."
"Hey, no," James replied. "Don't be upset. If you hadn't got us out of the garden I would never have remembered anything about who I used to be, and you wouldn't know anything about the world beyond the great Skull Rock."
Lester waited for James to say something about the family connection but it appeared as if James had nothing further to say on the matter. After setting a monster loose last time they had argued on the point Lester decided to let the matter slide this time.
The trek through the dark, wet caves was laborious and tiring but it was, at least, uneventful. A few hours later on they emerged from the caves by a small brook. The daylight was fading, the magnificent panorama of the eyrie was replaced with the murky expanse of a marshy forest made up of slim, twisted trees placed sparsely throughout a green-yellow floor saturated with water. Visible in the distance, no more than quarter of a mile away, were stone walls surrounding a tall house.
"I suppose we'd better see if anyone is at home," Lester said and the party began to make their way towards the structure.
The walk through the caves had been arduous and all of those party members who were on foot were hungry and tired. The dark shape of the lonely forest house was not particularly reassuring. The view into the distance was obscured by a light mist that grew thicker as they walked. By the time they reached the gate before the path leading up to the house the light was very poor indeed.
"I hope that whoever lives here is in an understanding mood," Eos said.
"It doesn't look, to me, as if anyone does live here, not any more," Lester said as he opened the gate, it stuck, squealing and complaining as he pushed it on its hinges, the noise supported his argument.
"Look," Rachel said, pointing over to the right side of the house. "Is that a ghost?"
They all looked at where Rachel was pointing. There was something, a slow moving blob of white light drifting across the grounds floating about a foot over the sodden turf.
"I don't know what that is," Lester said. "James? Any memories regarding odd, floating balls in swamps?"
"Ignis Fatuus?" James said. "From the Latin 'foolish lights' also known as Jack o' Lanterns or Will o' the wisps. Although usually they look more like lantern flames, and they tend to appear as if they're a lot further away."
"I met a Jack o'Lantern once," Lester said. "I was walking through a forest and I bumped into one coming in the opposite direction. I shared some soup with him. Turns out that they use their lanterns to light sparks in the eyes of baby animals, that's why they travel so far off the path, and why they appear to move so erratically. That's not a Jack o' Lantern."
"So what lit the spark in my eyes?" Rachel asked. "Was it one of those things?"
"Folk have their own fire," Lester said. "At least that's what the Jack o' Lantern said when I asked him. He seemed to think that this was a political compromise of some sort. He didn't go into it."
"But that isn't one?" Eos asked.
"Not like the one I saw," Lester said. "The light of a Jack o' Lantern is like a lantern flame because, well, it is."
"It's getting dark," James said. "We'd better check to see if anyone is home."
Lester knocked on the door of the house, and pulled at a bell cord hanging to the right of the door. Nothing appeared to happen. Lester tried the handle on the door. The door was unlocked and it swung slowly and silently inwards revealing the house beyond.
"I don't like this," Lester said. "Remember the last time we found ourselves in an apparently abandoned house? I spent a long time believing I was a duke at a masked ball. Don't want to go through that again."
"There are worse things," Eos said, making her way past him and into the house. "At least there was a buffet there."
"She has a point," James said. "Free food is always a bonus."
"Well, alright then," Lester said, following Eos into the house. "As long as we're throwing caution to the winds."
Inside the house was dark and smelled faintly of damp, not damp enough for it to appear unsafe for an overnight stay but definitely enough to put concern into the mind of an owner about the possibility of their residence eventually falling over into a swamp.
The floor was mostly bare boards covered over by the occasional rug. It was evident that no one had set foot inside the house for quite some time. Downstairs there was a large drawing room, a dining room and an expansive kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a bathroom.
Lester lost no time putting the gnome down gently on a bed in one of the bedrooms, a twin room that he imagined he would share with James over night. The beds all had bare mattresses, no blankets or pillows but they seemed sturdy enough and were better than the floor.
The gnome allowed to rest Lester returned to the kitchen where he quickly found a glass flask in which to decant his mysterious potion.
"Well, that's one thing taken care of, anyway," Lester pronounced happily.
"Why are so many dwelling places we visit apparently abandoned?" James asked. "I'm detecting a theme."
Before Lester could think of a plausible answer to the question the glowing blob from the garden came drifting through the wall, slowly moving through the kitchen apparently unaware of its surroundings. When the blob was a couple of feet past the wall and floating over the kitchen counter about seven inches from the surface a second blob joined it from a slightly different angle and began a lazy journey from one corner of the kitchen to the other.
"What do you think those things are?" Lester asked. "I've never seen or heard of anything like it in my life."
"I don't know," James said. "And I think that troubles me. Part of me seems to think that I had read about almost every known thing in the Faerie realm. It's not just that I don't remember this, it's that I've never heard of it."
"Should we be worried?" asked Eos, standing at the door.
"I'm not sure," James replied. "Where's Rachel?"
"I put her to bed," Eos said. "She was very tired. I found a small quilt slung over a chair in the drawing room. She'll be nice and warm."
"Good," James said. "I think we should all sleep, not for too long, then we should try to find our way back onto a more civilized path. The sooner we can get back to Bridgetown the better."
"Why are we going to Bridgetown?" Lester asked. "We spent enough time leaving it."
"Bridgetown is a market where you can buy anything, Lester," James said. "If we want answers to our questions then, well, maybe they won't be there in the market, but something that will help us to buy an answer most certainly will be."
"Seems logical," Lester said. "Well, then, I suppose we had better all get some sleep."
Lester, James and Eos climbed the stairs. Eos went into the bedroom where Rachel was, she said goodnight to Lester, although Lester got the impression that she mostly did it because she wanted to say goodnight to James and couldn't ignore the owner of the pocket James travelled in. Still, things had seemed to thaw out a little between them. Maybe there was a hope for friendship yet.
With that small candle of hope burning in his chest Lester lay down on the second bed in his own room and closed his eyes. He wasn't even aware that he had fallen asleep when he felt himself jerked awake again. Eos was shaking at his shoulder.
"Lester!" she said. "Wake up! Lester! Something is very wrong here."
Not entirely awake Lester tried to remember where he was and what he was doing.
"Eos," he said. "You have legs, no tail, neat trick."
"It's not a trick, it's an enchantment, I have a ring," Eos said. "Look, listen, that's not important, what's important is that I found a small chest, a jewellery box, in my room. I was just looking through it, there were some pretty things inside.
"Oh," Lester said. "That's nice. Anything saleable?"
"No, Lester," Eos was irritable, this was not unusual. "We can't sell any of it. Even if it was worth anything, it disappeared, while I was looking at it, it turned to mist, sparkly mist and just... it was like it was evaporating."
"Oh dear," Lester said, still not quite with it. "That's not good, unless it was a dream, could you have been dreaming?"
"I don't think I was, I mean, I don't remember closing my eyes," Eos said. It was clear that Lester's question had forced her to re-examine her own thoughts.
"The Undone!" cried the gnome, sitting bolt upright in his bed. "We're close to the Undone! We have to leave! I have to leave!"
Lester and Eos looked over at the suddenly mobile gnome.
"What's the Undone?" Lester asked. He had hoped for the longest time that at some point he would feel comfortable that he could handle the pace at which things progressed, he still hadn't got there even though it often appeared as if the moment that he should know everything he needed to know was just a little further away.
"No time!" the gnome shouted. "We have to run, right now!"
"What's all the noise?" mumbled a bleary eyed Rachel, coming through the door into the room.
"We have to go!" the gnome said, scrambling off the bed and grasping Rachel's hand. "We have to go before the Undone gets us."
Not waiting for his ranting to sink in he pulled Rachel after him, racing out of the room and down the house's main stairs.
"Hold on!" Lester said, swinging his own legs out of bed to give chase. "I think we need a little more to go on."
The gnome wasn't listening he was down the stairs and over to the front door of the little house. He flung the door open and plunged out into the grey mist that surrounded the house.
"Oh this is bad," he was muttering as he pulled Rachel after him down the garden path, "this is very, very bad."
Lester and Eos came running after the gnome in the garden they nearly caught him but as Lester's hand brushed the fabric of the little sprite's tunic he registered what was now surrounding him. Night had never fallen in the garden of the little house. Instead it was enveloped in a permanent misty twilight through which drifted the lazily undulating forms of the luminescent blobs, not just a couple now, more like thirty or forty.
"What's happening?" Eos asked, her voice as awed as Lester felt.
"This is it," the gnome said. "The precursor to the Undone. We have to leave before we fall into it. If we fall into the Undone we'll never come out again."
The gnome resumed his journey back to the garden gate. Lester could see trees in the distance, where the forest resumed. The house now appeared to be part of a different world, a world of mist and glowing blobs, trapped in permanent twilight.
"Come on," Lester said to Eos, "we can't afford to wait around."
The mermaid didn't argue, the four of them half-walked, half-ran from the misty area towards the more solid shape of the twisted, shadowy tree trunks.
"It looks like we've had a narrow escape," Lester said. "What do you think James?"
Lester looked down to his right pocket but it was empty.
"James?" Lester said. "Oh."
He stopped dead. Eos took a couple more steps after the gnome before stopping and turning.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I think James crawled out of my pocket to get some sleep," Lester said. "He's not here. He must still be in the house."
Lester turned back to look at the house, it didn't really look like a real house any more, it looked like a sketch done in light pencil, an impression rather than an actual thing.
"I have to get him," Lester said. "You go on, I'll get him and catch you up."
Eos opened her mouth as if to object but Lester wasn't going to give her a chance. He ran back towards the house and in through the front door, not stopping till he was back at the bedroom.
He found James in the furthest corner of a shelf in the bedside table. Lester reached in and picked the sleeping mouse up.
"Huh," James said, waking up, "whassamatter."
"The gnome woke up," Lester said, carrying James carefully as he jogged down the stairs. "We have to move, we're in trouble."
"Oh, no," James complained. "What kind of trouble?"
"Well..." Lester said but the sentence got no further. Lester stopped at the threshold of the house, foot waving above an empty bright white space where the ground had been only a minute before. "Ah," Lester said, looking up and about him.
Beyond the edge of the house was nothing but white in all directions. The house itself appeared to be melting away at the corners. Lester began to understand what it was the gnome had been worried about, but was the realisation too late?
Sunday, 1 September 2013
Sir Cobb's Problem or So What Now?
"That was a lot of work for only half as much as I earned yesterday," Frederick complained.
"Look on the bright side," the tavern keeper said. "You only look half as battered for your troubles."
Frederick was dismayed to note that cage-fighting had now settled into his conscious mind as an everyday occurrence. In Frederick's mind earning money from fighting was the kind of thing a scoundrel would do, and he didn't like to think of himself as a scoundrel. Unfortunately saving maidens from dragons was work as badly paying as it was rare in the days following the Great Vanishing.
"I have to be quite glad that you are too clumsy to actually be able to hit me," said a voice behind Frederick. Frederick turned to take in the ever-present lopsided smirk on the morally ambiguous face of Harvey Raine.
"You were watching?" Frederick asked.
"When you said you were going to spend the evening in a cage with a number of large gentlemen who would like nothing better than to hit you in the face until your teeth rattled I just had to come along," Harvey said. "Phoebe was glad to see the back of me for a few hours. I have to say that although the random violence was entertaining I wasn't expecting you to come out of it quite so... unscathed."
"It's not supposed to be entertaining," Frederick said, in brave but pointless opposition to the actual process of fighting on a stage under bright lights and having each bout announced.. "Come on, we'd better get back to the Inn."
"I think you might be misunderstanding where the six crowns you're currently holding came from," Harvey taunted Frederick but Frederick was already halfway towards the main entrance.
If Frederick had hoped that Harvey might shut the hell up as they made their way out into the street he was to be disappointed. In a corner of his mind that he had never used much growing up Frederick knew that Harvey wouldn't shut his mouth until he'd elicited some sort of angry response from Frederick. This was one of Harvey's favourite games.
"Still, that last chap, he did get a couple of solid head blows in," Harvey continued as they walked down the street towards the market square. "Good job he didn't get you anywhere important, eh, Freddie?"
The words 'don't call me Freddie' were so eager to escape from Frederick's tongue that he actually had to bite down to stop them from coming out. The pain of biting into soft parts of his own anatomy wasn't as sharp as a few of the strikes he'd suffered during the evening's bouts.
The stony silence, unfortunately, had seemingly no effect on Harvey. The djinn was long lived and used to tormenting people, he was pretty much an expert at going at someone until they collapsed into a ball of fury.
"I have to say, Freddie," Harvey continued, how the irritating sprite knew to continue with the hated contraction of Frederick's name probably came down to an almost imperceptible reflex twitch in one of Frederick's facial muscles. "I was impressed by exactly how much damage you avoided taking. I just thought you were some hopeless wannabe. Turns out you're actually a second-rate practitioner. I don't know many people for whom mediocrity would be a step up but to a certain degree I think you should be proud."
Frederick had never previously met anyone like Harvey. The only hope Frederick had of not being taunted by the djinn was if there was some novel opportunity for Harvey to annoy someone else entirely. When no such opportunity presented itself Harvey's taunting of Frederick was merciless.
"Harvey," Frederick said, trying to remain calm but not doing terribly well at the job, "why do you have to insult me all the time?"
The same corner of the mind that had known what Harvey was up to all along threw its hands up in horror at that open invitation, but it was too late, it had been issued.
"Insult you?" Harvey asked, as if that had been the last thing on his little mischief fuelled mind. "Freddie I was just pontificating out loud, sharing my inner thoughts. I don't know what it is you could possibly find to get insulted about in that."
The rest of Frederick's mind gave up on trying to make any sense out of the situation at that point. Frederick turned on his heel to put Harvey behind him and strode off in the direction of the Gryphon's Wing.
Harvey followed along and continued to insult Frederick's name and his competence at knightly activities while, at the same time, conceding that it surprised Harvey that Frederick could even muster the ability to beat people to a pulp in a cage fight. Frederick seemed to have plateaued in a condition of not really paying much attention to this babble and he did notice a distinct drop off in the viciousness and originality of Harvey's barbs.
It was with some satisfaction that Frederick gave Harvey a pointed glare when they reached the threshold of the inn. Harvey grudgingly turned into cat form and allowed himself to be picked up by Frederick. Normally there was no way that Harvey would endure such an imposition but he was under an injunction from Phoebe that could not be resisted.
Phoebe was sitting in the lounge of the inn doing something witchy with a number of pebble sized cut crystals and a cloth with a diagram on it. As soon as she was in sight Harvey hopped out of Frederick's arms and went to sit next to her. Frederick put his coin purse on the table.
"That should see us right for a couple of days," he said, sitting opposite her.
"Then what?" Phoebe asked.
"Well, I guess I'll have to find some more work to do wherever we are," Frederick replied.
"No," Phoebe said, wearing the face that she always wore when Frederick had singularly failed to grasp the thrust of her point. "I mean, what are we going to do? And where are we going to do it?"
"Um," Frederick said. He had made the breakthrough of realising that he wasn't following Phoebe's train of thought but he had no idea what to ask her to get her to make sense. "I, uh, don't exactly know what you, uh..."
"Frederick," Phoebe said. "I think we have to face facts. We joined forces to reunite a little girl and her, uh, mouse, father... mouse-father. That mission has been accomplished, as far as we can tell. Now we each have our own things to be getting on with and... well, don't you think you'd be better off without us hanging around, slowing you down," she looked down at Harvey, "annoying you?"
Frederick could only muster a blink in response to this query. He hadn't really devoted much thought to the matter. He remembered being on his own, miserable, walking around from place to place, earning some scraps of money cage fighting or killing vermin, then he had fallen through a hole in reality and found himself the sidekick to the most celebrated hero in the long history of Faerie.
After that he had taken a long journey alone through a very strange place that ended with his opportunity to prove his knightly credentials by killing an evil sorcerer. Finally he experienced a brief stint in a jail cell in Hamsamperburg where he was arrested for vagrancy and then condemned to burn at the stake as a witch when he explained his situation to the locals. It was during this incarceration that he came to the conclusion that spending too much time on your own made you go a bit funny.
Thankfully, at that point, he had been rescued by Lester, James, Phoebe and the delightful Princess Anabyl. His magic sword, now imbued with the power of speech, was returned to him and from that point on he had been part of the team.
If you'd asked him what he thought the team's overall mission and direction should be, or would be in the future, he wouldn't know. All that he did know was that is was his team and he was happy to be a part of it. He was, in fact, so happy to be a part of it that he hadn't noticed its shrinkage to the point where it could no longer really be called a team any more.
In its current state 'the team' was him, Phoebe and Harvey, which made for two and a half team members, because Harvey was compelled to be present and did his best to sabotage them wherever possible. Also, Frederick had to concede, the idea that a team should have a mission, purpose and direction was a good one.
Frederick had set out to be a wandering knight for hire but, at this stage, he had so done that it wasn't even funny. The next thing that he ought to do was seek a place at the round table of the nearest royal personage who was in the hiring mood. The only problem with that was that most monarchs currently engaged in war were of the evil variety and Frederick was very much looking for a position as a white knight.
So his options were to resume wandering, or to stay with Phoebe and Harvey. The only issue being that Phoebe and Harvey wanted to go their own way. Frederick could not, off the top of his head, think of a knightly reason why he should stay with Phoebe and Harvey. He could think of plenty of personal ones, but knights did not do things for personal reasons, they did things because of their code.
What did Frederick's code have to say on the matter?
That was yet another awkward question. Frederick had never been much for scribing, or any other type of academics. His code boiled down to: 'Try to be nice and make yourself useful'. As filled with benevolent good intention as this was it did not compel him to remain in the company of a powerful newly not-dead witch and her djinn. They didn't even need his help to protect them from anything, having, as they did, a scary abundance of magical power between the two of them.
In wandering through this tangled maze of desire and motivation Frederick did manage to come up with a half-hearted attempt at a response:
"So, what are you going to do next?" he asked. This did not actually commit to the new 'go our separate ways' plan while also being an attempt to discover whether they had any plans which could be considered mutual.
Phoebe sighed.
"Well, I imagine I will have to go back to Vikor's castle... the remains of Vikor's castle, and get the amulet from about the skeleton's neck," Phoebe said. "Until that's broken Harvey and I are bonded together and, well, I don't think that's best for anyone."
"I... see..." Frederick said. "Well, that should be... I mean... I hope that all goes well for you."
"I'm sure you have some knightly things to be getting on with," Phoebe said. "So we shouldn't really delay you, should we?"
Frederick's answer to this question was interrupted by the sudden and unexpected arrival at their table of a worried looking goblin trader. The one who had been with the little girl, the one Harvey had whisked away from the House of Mirth back to Steephill Fell: Tabarnas.
"You two are still here," Tabarnas said. "That's excellent news."
"It is?" Phoebe asked. "Why?"
"Something's happening, to my books," Tabarnas said. "It's making me very worried."
"Your books?" Frederick asked.
"I didn't know you worked any magic," Phoebe said.
"Oh, I don't," Tabarnas replied. "Other than the magic of storytelling. I have a weakness for written tales, you see. So I have, along life's journey, furnished the shelves of a small library, mostly chronicles, mostly Avan Weatherstrong stories."
"So what's the problem?" Frederick asked.
"I have three new books, books I have never read, books that are not about Avan Weatherstrong," Tabarnas said.
"And?" Frederick asked, he was trying not to sound impatient but his hope that this interruption would provide reason for the party to stay together was fading fast.
"These books are a four volume work that describe the heroic ascendance, adventures and tragic demise of a female Dragon Warrior," Tabarnas said. "I only mention it because some of us feature in the prologue."
"Some of us?" Phoebe interrupted. "As in some of us here at the table?"
"Specifically yourself," Tabarnas said, nodding his head and making eye contact with Phoebe, he transferred his gaze to Frederick. "And you. The cat doesn't come into it, neither do I. I just thought you ought to know."
"So in this story, at some point in the future," Frederick said. "We are destined to encounter this dragon warrior?"
"No, that's not it," Tabarnas said. "The implication of this summary of the warrior's early life is that she met you both whilst she was very young."
Phoebe and Frederick exchanged a glance.
"You don't mean-" Phoebe began.
"See, the warrior used a magic spade, so it's said, to liberate you, Miss September," Tabarnas said. "And she provided some assistance in freeing you from a jail cell, so it says, following a journey through a magic mirror, following a regrettable instance with a bow and arrow, so the story goes, anyway."
Tabarnas reached into his overcoat and struggled to pull out a bound pile of books from an enormous interior pocket. He placed the volumes on the table and Frederick and Phoebe read the title of the topmost tome:
The Life and Death of Anabyl, Fiercest of the Dragon Warriors, Volume I
It appeared that Frederick had found some small reason why they might want to remain a team. The Life of Anabyl wasn't so much of a problem, but the death... They would have to study further, and see if such a death was preventable, and, if it was, they would have to prevent it. The how and the where of it were details that would come again, upon another day.
"Look on the bright side," the tavern keeper said. "You only look half as battered for your troubles."
Frederick was dismayed to note that cage-fighting had now settled into his conscious mind as an everyday occurrence. In Frederick's mind earning money from fighting was the kind of thing a scoundrel would do, and he didn't like to think of himself as a scoundrel. Unfortunately saving maidens from dragons was work as badly paying as it was rare in the days following the Great Vanishing.
"I have to be quite glad that you are too clumsy to actually be able to hit me," said a voice behind Frederick. Frederick turned to take in the ever-present lopsided smirk on the morally ambiguous face of Harvey Raine.
"You were watching?" Frederick asked.
"When you said you were going to spend the evening in a cage with a number of large gentlemen who would like nothing better than to hit you in the face until your teeth rattled I just had to come along," Harvey said. "Phoebe was glad to see the back of me for a few hours. I have to say that although the random violence was entertaining I wasn't expecting you to come out of it quite so... unscathed."
"It's not supposed to be entertaining," Frederick said, in brave but pointless opposition to the actual process of fighting on a stage under bright lights and having each bout announced.. "Come on, we'd better get back to the Inn."
"I think you might be misunderstanding where the six crowns you're currently holding came from," Harvey taunted Frederick but Frederick was already halfway towards the main entrance.
If Frederick had hoped that Harvey might shut the hell up as they made their way out into the street he was to be disappointed. In a corner of his mind that he had never used much growing up Frederick knew that Harvey wouldn't shut his mouth until he'd elicited some sort of angry response from Frederick. This was one of Harvey's favourite games.
"Still, that last chap, he did get a couple of solid head blows in," Harvey continued as they walked down the street towards the market square. "Good job he didn't get you anywhere important, eh, Freddie?"
The words 'don't call me Freddie' were so eager to escape from Frederick's tongue that he actually had to bite down to stop them from coming out. The pain of biting into soft parts of his own anatomy wasn't as sharp as a few of the strikes he'd suffered during the evening's bouts.
The stony silence, unfortunately, had seemingly no effect on Harvey. The djinn was long lived and used to tormenting people, he was pretty much an expert at going at someone until they collapsed into a ball of fury.
"I have to say, Freddie," Harvey continued, how the irritating sprite knew to continue with the hated contraction of Frederick's name probably came down to an almost imperceptible reflex twitch in one of Frederick's facial muscles. "I was impressed by exactly how much damage you avoided taking. I just thought you were some hopeless wannabe. Turns out you're actually a second-rate practitioner. I don't know many people for whom mediocrity would be a step up but to a certain degree I think you should be proud."
Frederick had never previously met anyone like Harvey. The only hope Frederick had of not being taunted by the djinn was if there was some novel opportunity for Harvey to annoy someone else entirely. When no such opportunity presented itself Harvey's taunting of Frederick was merciless.
"Harvey," Frederick said, trying to remain calm but not doing terribly well at the job, "why do you have to insult me all the time?"
The same corner of the mind that had known what Harvey was up to all along threw its hands up in horror at that open invitation, but it was too late, it had been issued.
"Insult you?" Harvey asked, as if that had been the last thing on his little mischief fuelled mind. "Freddie I was just pontificating out loud, sharing my inner thoughts. I don't know what it is you could possibly find to get insulted about in that."
The rest of Frederick's mind gave up on trying to make any sense out of the situation at that point. Frederick turned on his heel to put Harvey behind him and strode off in the direction of the Gryphon's Wing.
Harvey followed along and continued to insult Frederick's name and his competence at knightly activities while, at the same time, conceding that it surprised Harvey that Frederick could even muster the ability to beat people to a pulp in a cage fight. Frederick seemed to have plateaued in a condition of not really paying much attention to this babble and he did notice a distinct drop off in the viciousness and originality of Harvey's barbs.
It was with some satisfaction that Frederick gave Harvey a pointed glare when they reached the threshold of the inn. Harvey grudgingly turned into cat form and allowed himself to be picked up by Frederick. Normally there was no way that Harvey would endure such an imposition but he was under an injunction from Phoebe that could not be resisted.
Phoebe was sitting in the lounge of the inn doing something witchy with a number of pebble sized cut crystals and a cloth with a diagram on it. As soon as she was in sight Harvey hopped out of Frederick's arms and went to sit next to her. Frederick put his coin purse on the table.
"That should see us right for a couple of days," he said, sitting opposite her.
"Then what?" Phoebe asked.
"Well, I guess I'll have to find some more work to do wherever we are," Frederick replied.
"No," Phoebe said, wearing the face that she always wore when Frederick had singularly failed to grasp the thrust of her point. "I mean, what are we going to do? And where are we going to do it?"
"Um," Frederick said. He had made the breakthrough of realising that he wasn't following Phoebe's train of thought but he had no idea what to ask her to get her to make sense. "I, uh, don't exactly know what you, uh..."
"Frederick," Phoebe said. "I think we have to face facts. We joined forces to reunite a little girl and her, uh, mouse, father... mouse-father. That mission has been accomplished, as far as we can tell. Now we each have our own things to be getting on with and... well, don't you think you'd be better off without us hanging around, slowing you down," she looked down at Harvey, "annoying you?"
Frederick could only muster a blink in response to this query. He hadn't really devoted much thought to the matter. He remembered being on his own, miserable, walking around from place to place, earning some scraps of money cage fighting or killing vermin, then he had fallen through a hole in reality and found himself the sidekick to the most celebrated hero in the long history of Faerie.
After that he had taken a long journey alone through a very strange place that ended with his opportunity to prove his knightly credentials by killing an evil sorcerer. Finally he experienced a brief stint in a jail cell in Hamsamperburg where he was arrested for vagrancy and then condemned to burn at the stake as a witch when he explained his situation to the locals. It was during this incarceration that he came to the conclusion that spending too much time on your own made you go a bit funny.
Thankfully, at that point, he had been rescued by Lester, James, Phoebe and the delightful Princess Anabyl. His magic sword, now imbued with the power of speech, was returned to him and from that point on he had been part of the team.
If you'd asked him what he thought the team's overall mission and direction should be, or would be in the future, he wouldn't know. All that he did know was that is was his team and he was happy to be a part of it. He was, in fact, so happy to be a part of it that he hadn't noticed its shrinkage to the point where it could no longer really be called a team any more.
In its current state 'the team' was him, Phoebe and Harvey, which made for two and a half team members, because Harvey was compelled to be present and did his best to sabotage them wherever possible. Also, Frederick had to concede, the idea that a team should have a mission, purpose and direction was a good one.
Frederick had set out to be a wandering knight for hire but, at this stage, he had so done that it wasn't even funny. The next thing that he ought to do was seek a place at the round table of the nearest royal personage who was in the hiring mood. The only problem with that was that most monarchs currently engaged in war were of the evil variety and Frederick was very much looking for a position as a white knight.
So his options were to resume wandering, or to stay with Phoebe and Harvey. The only issue being that Phoebe and Harvey wanted to go their own way. Frederick could not, off the top of his head, think of a knightly reason why he should stay with Phoebe and Harvey. He could think of plenty of personal ones, but knights did not do things for personal reasons, they did things because of their code.
What did Frederick's code have to say on the matter?
That was yet another awkward question. Frederick had never been much for scribing, or any other type of academics. His code boiled down to: 'Try to be nice and make yourself useful'. As filled with benevolent good intention as this was it did not compel him to remain in the company of a powerful newly not-dead witch and her djinn. They didn't even need his help to protect them from anything, having, as they did, a scary abundance of magical power between the two of them.
In wandering through this tangled maze of desire and motivation Frederick did manage to come up with a half-hearted attempt at a response:
"So, what are you going to do next?" he asked. This did not actually commit to the new 'go our separate ways' plan while also being an attempt to discover whether they had any plans which could be considered mutual.
Phoebe sighed.
"Well, I imagine I will have to go back to Vikor's castle... the remains of Vikor's castle, and get the amulet from about the skeleton's neck," Phoebe said. "Until that's broken Harvey and I are bonded together and, well, I don't think that's best for anyone."
"I... see..." Frederick said. "Well, that should be... I mean... I hope that all goes well for you."
"I'm sure you have some knightly things to be getting on with," Phoebe said. "So we shouldn't really delay you, should we?"
Frederick's answer to this question was interrupted by the sudden and unexpected arrival at their table of a worried looking goblin trader. The one who had been with the little girl, the one Harvey had whisked away from the House of Mirth back to Steephill Fell: Tabarnas.
"You two are still here," Tabarnas said. "That's excellent news."
"It is?" Phoebe asked. "Why?"
"Something's happening, to my books," Tabarnas said. "It's making me very worried."
"Your books?" Frederick asked.
"I didn't know you worked any magic," Phoebe said.
"Oh, I don't," Tabarnas replied. "Other than the magic of storytelling. I have a weakness for written tales, you see. So I have, along life's journey, furnished the shelves of a small library, mostly chronicles, mostly Avan Weatherstrong stories."
"So what's the problem?" Frederick asked.
"I have three new books, books I have never read, books that are not about Avan Weatherstrong," Tabarnas said.
"And?" Frederick asked, he was trying not to sound impatient but his hope that this interruption would provide reason for the party to stay together was fading fast.
"These books are a four volume work that describe the heroic ascendance, adventures and tragic demise of a female Dragon Warrior," Tabarnas said. "I only mention it because some of us feature in the prologue."
"Some of us?" Phoebe interrupted. "As in some of us here at the table?"
"Specifically yourself," Tabarnas said, nodding his head and making eye contact with Phoebe, he transferred his gaze to Frederick. "And you. The cat doesn't come into it, neither do I. I just thought you ought to know."
"So in this story, at some point in the future," Frederick said. "We are destined to encounter this dragon warrior?"
"No, that's not it," Tabarnas said. "The implication of this summary of the warrior's early life is that she met you both whilst she was very young."
Phoebe and Frederick exchanged a glance.
"You don't mean-" Phoebe began.
"See, the warrior used a magic spade, so it's said, to liberate you, Miss September," Tabarnas said. "And she provided some assistance in freeing you from a jail cell, so it says, following a journey through a magic mirror, following a regrettable instance with a bow and arrow, so the story goes, anyway."
Tabarnas reached into his overcoat and struggled to pull out a bound pile of books from an enormous interior pocket. He placed the volumes on the table and Frederick and Phoebe read the title of the topmost tome:
The Life and Death of Anabyl, Fiercest of the Dragon Warriors, Volume I
It appeared that Frederick had found some small reason why they might want to remain a team. The Life of Anabyl wasn't so much of a problem, but the death... They would have to study further, and see if such a death was preventable, and, if it was, they would have to prevent it. The how and the where of it were details that would come again, upon another day.
Sunday, 7 July 2013
The House of Masks Revealed
"I suppose," said the owl, "that I should tell you to be careful. Not that it will do much good."
"Why won't it do much good?" Frederick asked.
"I told Lester and James to be careful," the owl said, "they are still missing, unlike the rest of them they haven't been gone long. Maybe they'll come back."
"I don't like this," Phoebe said. "Not one little bit."
"Six people disappear and you're concerned that there may be some kind of a problem?" Frederick said. "Full marks for observation."
"I was expressing my concern," Phoebe snapped. "It was a heartfelt comment, not a clever one."
"Are you going to look for them?" the owl asked. "Because there's really no one else left to, Felix has to guard the wagon, he's been told and I can't leave the castle."
"Castle?" Frederick asked, looking around and up for the usual tall, grey structure sprouting from a nearby hill. There wasn't one that he could see.
"It's a replica," the owl said. "A ghost can haunt anything domestic, scale isn't really an issue."
"You're a ghost?" Phoebe asked. "Fascinating."
"Usually I'd agree," the owl replied. "At the moment it's no more than an inconvenience. I can stay and I can watch, otherwise I am powerless to intervene."
"So where did they go?" Frederick asked looking about the nearby streets. It was near enough dead centre in the period between noon bell and the day bell, the streets of Steephill Fell were bustling.
"They went into the first small alley arcade on the left hand side of the street to the West," the owl said. "Actually they combed the area poking around everywhere. That arcade is the last place that they went. They investigated but then they never came back."
"I guess we'll have to be careful then," Frederick said.
"I'll swear I just made a comment to that effect not thirty seconds ago," the owl said but Phoebe and Frederick were already halfway down the street. "Oh, yes, and goodbye. Hope you find them. Not least because this street corner is really rather tedious."
Frederick was doing a little better now. There was a sense of menace and mystery, nobody had tried to beat him up in just over an hour and he had plenty to think about besides the way Phoebe's hair fell when she tilted her head over to the right in thought. He was most definitely too busy with the disappearances and what-have-you to think about the latter item much at all, and that was definitely a good thing.
"You don't need to stamp about the place looking so serious," Phoebe said from about half a step behind him. "It's not like you're in charge or anything."
The sudden tweak of annoyance in Frederick's gut cleared almost all other thoughts out of his head in an instant.
"I'm just worried," he said. "I don't want to get disappeared like the others."
"Do you not?" Phoebe asked. "Then how do you propose that we find them all?"
"Fine," Frederick said. "We can follow them, but we don't want to get lost like them."
"How do you know?" Phoebe asked. "They might have all gone somewhere so nice they just don't want to come back."
Frederick had to stop and think about that for a second and in that time Phoebe swanned past him and into the arcade. The small ginger tom cat, Harvey, plodded along behind. As they disappeared into the covered passageway Harvey looked back to give Frederick a narrow-eyed grin.
Now it was Frederick's turn to come bustling up the small cobbled passageway behind Phoebe, striding past fishmongers' stalls. The arcade smelled of fish that was on the point of turning ripe, most of the merchants were adjusting their prices downwards, trying to move on whatever it was they had left to get rid of.
"What about these people?" Frederick said as Phoebe studiously ignored the fish traders. Harvey was paying more attention, at least to the merchandise, but he looked as if he hated himself for it.
"They don't know anything," Phoebe announced airily.
"How do you know?" Frederick asked.
"If people disappear the last thing they will have done before they vanished is talk to your common or garden fishmonger or trader in seafood," Phoebe said with the ring of certainty evident in her voice.
"So what will they have done?" Frederick asked.
"Talked to the unusual, shady, creepy or otherwise darkly mysterious purveyor of briny goods, like him," Phoebe said pointing out a dark stall displaying jars of pickled seafood at the very end of the arcade.
"So they talked to him," Frederick said. "What about?"
"Let's find out," Phoebe said and marched over to the stall. "Where are they?" she asked without preamble.
The merchant gave Phoebe a look that indicated that he had seen it all before, even if 'it' was abrupt witches bluntly assuming that you would know what they were talking about, and pointed at the wall opposite his stall.
"You play patty cake with the bricks," he said. "Door opens. Will take you where you need to go."
"Where we need to go?" Phoebe said, looking at the wall. "So it's a different destination for everyone?"
"Don't know," the merchant said. "I just sell pickled seaweed, and other refinements."
"So, what?" Frederick asked, looking at the rather grimy looking wall of dark stone bricks that had been indicated. "We play patty cake? We don't play patty cake?"
"I think we need more information," Phoebe said. "Harvey dear?"
The ginger tom looked up from its activity, sniffing around an unpleasantly wet looking sack to one side of a stall further down the arcade. Harvey came slinking up to Phoebe before transforming back into a rakish red-haired youth.
"What's up, feebs?" Harvey asked.
"There's a portal, in that wall," she said. "What can you tell me about it?"
Harvey went over to the wall and sniffed about.
"Pure mischief," he said. "Not one of the boss's little side doors. This one's from the source. Nobody can control it, not even the boss."
"So if we go through it we won't follow the last people to go through it?" Phoebe asked.
"Can't tell," Harvey said. "sometimes these things won't even take two people who follow one another to the same place, sometimes they switch destinations in the tween, sometimes they just randomly do whatever they feel like doing. They tunnel through time and space, they could send you to the moon in the future, or to the mortal world in the past."
"You're not being very helpful," Phoebe said. "Is there any way we could get more details?"
"If you open it," Harvey said, "I could probably pick up a scent from the other side. While it's closed I can smell the door, and the scent of the people who recently went through, even over the fish, but I can't tell you whether those scents continue on the other side."
"If we open it," Frederick asked. "How do we close it again?"
"Almost all of these things close after about ten minutes, or, in the worst case, in the tween," Harvey said, he spoke a little slower as if telling something to someone slightly backwards.
"What's a tween?" Frederick asked, not caring how dumb people thought he was.
"Magical concept," Phoebe said. "A tween is any place inbetween one thing and another. Doorways in and of themselves are tweens. Crossways are tweens. There are also well established major tweens in time such as midnight, the space between one day and the next. If midnight happens where you are then it tends to reset any non-persistent magical effects in the area."
"So the door will definitely close by itself at midnight?" Frederick asked.
"Nothing will definitely ever happen when it comes to magic, dimbo," Harvey said. "Particularly not when that magical something involves pure magic, straight from the source."
"But it would be highly unusual if it didn't," Phoebe cut in. "Right, Harvey?"
"Hey, he asked a big boy question," Harvey said. "Excuse me for giving him the big boy answer."
"There's a lot of chaos in magic, isn't there?" Frederick said.
"We call it mischief," Harvey said. "Chaos has too many negative connotations."
"This isn't a magical theory lecture," Phoebe said. "We need to find out what's on the other side of that door, and if it's our friends."
With that she stepped up to the wall and slapped out a quick game of patty cake. On the last hand slap her hand penetrated the wall appearing to disappear into the solid stone of the bricks.
"Open," she said. "Harvey, get sniffing."
"Um," Frederick said to the pickle seller. "You might want to make a sign or something, in case we don't go through." The pickle seller looked at Frederick like he was some sort of odd insect that he'd discovered under a rock in his garden. "You know," Frederick said. "Caution... advisory... of caution... no. Okay."
Frederick turned away to see Harvey sniffing around the doorway, in his cat form. The djinn transformed back into his other shape.
"We're in luck, sort of," Harvey said. "The way through still has a scent of the last couple of people to go through."
"Are you sure?" Phoebe asked.
"One of the things that went through this door," Harvey said. "Was very, very tasty, small, grey, furry, likes cheese, you follow my drift? I can't get the smell out of my nostrils."
"What about the others?" Frederick asked. "The little girl? The mermaid?"
"Too long ago," Harvey said. "So, are we going on a mouse hunt."
"Do I have to put you under an injunction, Harvey?" Phoebe asked sternly. The red-headed youth flinched.
"You are about as much fun as, well, you," Harvey complained. "And that is no fun at all. I wish nobody had ever touched that magic shovel. I was having a nice holiday."
"I can only imagine," Phoebe said. "But I won't because it will only make me cross. Come on Frederick, let's get on with it."
"Sir Cobb," Frederick said as Phoebe swished through the magic door. Now he was alone Frederick could not help the urge to further qualify himself. "My name is Sir Cobb, I'm a knight," he said to the pickle merchant.
"You might want to hurry," the merchant said, unimpressed. "Door don't open long."
Frederick gave up on trying to impress upon people his chivalric qualifications and walked through the door behind the others.
"You really need to be more assertive," said the sword at his waist. "As your manager I am concerned that you don't have a strong enough brand."
"A what now?" Frederick asked.
"I'm resident in metal," the sword said. "As such I occasionally receive transmissions of mortal information streams. They, the mortals, have this kind of magic called a brand. You put a brand on something, like a shoe, and its magic makes people want to buy it, well, to own it. They haven't ironed that exact distinction out, causes some problems, anyway...."
"Are you talking to your sword?" Harvey asked.
Frederick realised that Phoebe and Harvey were looking at him. They were stood in a small, bare stone cell on the other side of the door. Phoebe looked as if she was running out of patience. Harvey looked amused, but not in a good way.
"I wondered how you found a conversational companion to be your intellectual equal," Harvey said. "Now I know."
"If everybody's quite finished messing about," Phoebe said. "Harvey, follow the scent."
"I'm just a nose to you," Harvey said. "It's really quite insulting."
With that he turned into a cat and sniffed away along the floor, following the scent he had detected. Phoebe and Frederick followed along behind. They walked down a few musty corridors and up a set of steps to a hallway with many doors leading off it. Harvey sniffed around the edges for a bit before turning back into a boy.
"They walked back and forth here a few times," he said. "I can't tell where they went last, I'm not a dog."
After a short examination of the surrounding rooms all they could find was a broken window in one room and an hourglass on a shelf. Above the hourglass, engraved in a metal plate, was the legend:
Come, spend an hour and visit with us.
"This is it then?" Phoebe said. "We turn the glass?"
"What do you think will happen?" Frederick asked.
"It's an area effect magic, low level, druidic," Harvey said. "Anyone in the room will be caught within the field when it's turned."
"So what will it do?" Frederick asked.
"It's not a door, dimbo," Harvey said. "So I have no idea, something magic."
"Maybe they didn't turn it over," Frederick said.
"Their scent trail says otherwise," Harvey replied. "They went across the hall a couple of times, upstairs for a bit and outside but there's no sign of them further than the sun dial in the back garden."
"Maybe you just can't smell it," Frederick suggested. "After all you're not a dog."
"Hey, whatever makes you comfy, Sir Clueless," Harvey said. "I personally don't really care what you do. I'm just behaving so I don't get any major mojo slapped on me by my burden."
Phoebe glared at Harvey who grinned and then turned back into a cat.
"We've got to go on," Phoebe said. "We don't have a choice, we've come too far."
Frederick shrugged.
"Alright then," he said. "Turn the glass."
Phoebe picked up the hourglass on its little shelf, reversed it and put it back down. The sand began to run through the pinch in the centre. Instantly Frederick felt like the bottom had fallen out of his stomach. His head felt dizzy and his breath caught in his throat.
"Oh wow!" said an excited voice behind him. "Even more visitors!"
Things had changed. The sound of jaunty folk music stuttered through the air forming a bed to a murmur of conversation, the odd shout or scream of delight and the occasional eruption of laughter, or applause, or both. As Frederick inhaled he caught the scent of roasted meats in competition with the sharp sweetness of sugary things, probably cakes.
Frederick had not eaten a proper meal in a long time. Being a travelling knight and an incompetent cook he had neither the money nor the skill to find good food for himself. He subsisted on energy-providing stodge with a side order of telling yourself that it was all for the greater good.
Suddenly finding himself at a party, the air itself changed from cool and still to warm and vibrant, Frederick didn't really know what to do next. A small, bearded man wearing a long nosed mask and with a brightly coloured conical cardboard hat perched upon his head came round to study Frederick. Cheerful eyes twinkled as they looked him up and down.
"A beautiful girl, a handsome knight and..." the little man looked at Harvey sat on the floor and surveying the scene half-hungry, half-suspicious, "...and an animal, all guests at the party now!"
"What party?" Phoebe asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.
"You've arrived at the House of Mirth, my dear," the little man said. "Where the party continues through the day and the night."
"What's the party for?" Phoebe asked.
"For?" the little man said. "Who said a party had to be 'for' something? At the House of Mirth laughter and levity are more than occasional, they are the very stuff of life. Come, let me show you the buffet, let me show you the musicians, the dancing, the entertainment. At midnight will be the great unmasking and then the festivities will be over for today. You can stay until then? Of course you can! Oh, but you will need masks."
"Uh," Frederick said. The smell of the food was making his belly growl, the evident jollity was enticing, at the same time Frederick could tell that something was off here.
"Excuse my silly friend," Phoebe cut across Frederick before he could rouse himself to a sensible response. "He has few wits and even fewer manners. I will certainly need to give him a firm talking to prior to entering the party. Particularly if he is to be masked. Who knows what he will get up to otherwise?"
"I am sure that he will get into the swing of things," the little man said. "Now is not the time for blame or recriminations. Fear and sadness have no place in the House of Mirth."
"I understand," Phoebe said, an edge to her voice. "However we must confess that we did not know that we would be coming to a party, so we are ill prepared for the party mood. A few moments and we will be ready to pull on our masks and join in the fun."
"Ah, but fun flows like a river throughout the House..."
Thunk.
The little man keeled over and fell to the floor unconscious. Harvey stood behind him holding a piece of wood with a jewel at one end, possibly a magic wand.
"That," he said. "Is how you deal with trouble like that."
"Trouble?" Frederick said. "I don't understand."
"Why am I not surprised?" Harvey said.
"This isn't a party, Frederick," Phoebe said. "It's a trap."
"A trap?" Frederick asked. "A trap with a buffet, dancing, entertainment and masks?"
"The worst kind," Harvey said. "I can smell the mischief in this place, and it's curdled. Mischief turned this bad is like poison."
"Party poopers!" declared a voice at the door to the room. "New arrivals! And they're party poopers!"
Frederick turned around to see the owner of this new voice, high-pitched and ringing, the kind of voice that was used to obedience. The voice came from a tall, slim woman in a sparkling party frock, on her finger she wore an enormous ruby set into a ring and the rest of her outfit appeared to follow on from that key feature. Currently she was pointing the ring in the direction of Phoebe, Harvey and Frederick. The ruby was glowing with a dangerous red light.
"Party poopers must become the life and soul, because this is my day, my sweet sixteen and nobody is going to ruin it for me," the young woman said.
The last thing that Frederick remembered before being swallowed by the bright red light was Harvey, shifting to cat form and dodging past the woman. Then Frederick stopped worrying and wondered whether there were any prawns on the buffet. He liked prawns.
Frederick and Phoebe were in trouble, but they escaped from the House of Mirth and with them they brought James, Lester, the gnome and all their other friends. How they did it is a story for another time.
"Why won't it do much good?" Frederick asked.
"I told Lester and James to be careful," the owl said, "they are still missing, unlike the rest of them they haven't been gone long. Maybe they'll come back."
"I don't like this," Phoebe said. "Not one little bit."
"Six people disappear and you're concerned that there may be some kind of a problem?" Frederick said. "Full marks for observation."
"I was expressing my concern," Phoebe snapped. "It was a heartfelt comment, not a clever one."
"Are you going to look for them?" the owl asked. "Because there's really no one else left to, Felix has to guard the wagon, he's been told and I can't leave the castle."
"Castle?" Frederick asked, looking around and up for the usual tall, grey structure sprouting from a nearby hill. There wasn't one that he could see.
"It's a replica," the owl said. "A ghost can haunt anything domestic, scale isn't really an issue."
"You're a ghost?" Phoebe asked. "Fascinating."
"Usually I'd agree," the owl replied. "At the moment it's no more than an inconvenience. I can stay and I can watch, otherwise I am powerless to intervene."
"So where did they go?" Frederick asked looking about the nearby streets. It was near enough dead centre in the period between noon bell and the day bell, the streets of Steephill Fell were bustling.
"They went into the first small alley arcade on the left hand side of the street to the West," the owl said. "Actually they combed the area poking around everywhere. That arcade is the last place that they went. They investigated but then they never came back."
"I guess we'll have to be careful then," Frederick said.
"I'll swear I just made a comment to that effect not thirty seconds ago," the owl said but Phoebe and Frederick were already halfway down the street. "Oh, yes, and goodbye. Hope you find them. Not least because this street corner is really rather tedious."
Frederick was doing a little better now. There was a sense of menace and mystery, nobody had tried to beat him up in just over an hour and he had plenty to think about besides the way Phoebe's hair fell when she tilted her head over to the right in thought. He was most definitely too busy with the disappearances and what-have-you to think about the latter item much at all, and that was definitely a good thing.
"You don't need to stamp about the place looking so serious," Phoebe said from about half a step behind him. "It's not like you're in charge or anything."
The sudden tweak of annoyance in Frederick's gut cleared almost all other thoughts out of his head in an instant.
"I'm just worried," he said. "I don't want to get disappeared like the others."
"Do you not?" Phoebe asked. "Then how do you propose that we find them all?"
"Fine," Frederick said. "We can follow them, but we don't want to get lost like them."
"How do you know?" Phoebe asked. "They might have all gone somewhere so nice they just don't want to come back."
Frederick had to stop and think about that for a second and in that time Phoebe swanned past him and into the arcade. The small ginger tom cat, Harvey, plodded along behind. As they disappeared into the covered passageway Harvey looked back to give Frederick a narrow-eyed grin.
Now it was Frederick's turn to come bustling up the small cobbled passageway behind Phoebe, striding past fishmongers' stalls. The arcade smelled of fish that was on the point of turning ripe, most of the merchants were adjusting their prices downwards, trying to move on whatever it was they had left to get rid of.
"What about these people?" Frederick said as Phoebe studiously ignored the fish traders. Harvey was paying more attention, at least to the merchandise, but he looked as if he hated himself for it.
"They don't know anything," Phoebe announced airily.
"How do you know?" Frederick asked.
"If people disappear the last thing they will have done before they vanished is talk to your common or garden fishmonger or trader in seafood," Phoebe said with the ring of certainty evident in her voice.
"So what will they have done?" Frederick asked.
"Talked to the unusual, shady, creepy or otherwise darkly mysterious purveyor of briny goods, like him," Phoebe said pointing out a dark stall displaying jars of pickled seafood at the very end of the arcade.
"So they talked to him," Frederick said. "What about?"
"Let's find out," Phoebe said and marched over to the stall. "Where are they?" she asked without preamble.
The merchant gave Phoebe a look that indicated that he had seen it all before, even if 'it' was abrupt witches bluntly assuming that you would know what they were talking about, and pointed at the wall opposite his stall.
"You play patty cake with the bricks," he said. "Door opens. Will take you where you need to go."
"Where we need to go?" Phoebe said, looking at the wall. "So it's a different destination for everyone?"
"Don't know," the merchant said. "I just sell pickled seaweed, and other refinements."
"So, what?" Frederick asked, looking at the rather grimy looking wall of dark stone bricks that had been indicated. "We play patty cake? We don't play patty cake?"
"I think we need more information," Phoebe said. "Harvey dear?"
The ginger tom looked up from its activity, sniffing around an unpleasantly wet looking sack to one side of a stall further down the arcade. Harvey came slinking up to Phoebe before transforming back into a rakish red-haired youth.
"What's up, feebs?" Harvey asked.
"There's a portal, in that wall," she said. "What can you tell me about it?"
Harvey went over to the wall and sniffed about.
"Pure mischief," he said. "Not one of the boss's little side doors. This one's from the source. Nobody can control it, not even the boss."
"So if we go through it we won't follow the last people to go through it?" Phoebe asked.
"Can't tell," Harvey said. "sometimes these things won't even take two people who follow one another to the same place, sometimes they switch destinations in the tween, sometimes they just randomly do whatever they feel like doing. They tunnel through time and space, they could send you to the moon in the future, or to the mortal world in the past."
"You're not being very helpful," Phoebe said. "Is there any way we could get more details?"
"If you open it," Harvey said, "I could probably pick up a scent from the other side. While it's closed I can smell the door, and the scent of the people who recently went through, even over the fish, but I can't tell you whether those scents continue on the other side."
"If we open it," Frederick asked. "How do we close it again?"
"Almost all of these things close after about ten minutes, or, in the worst case, in the tween," Harvey said, he spoke a little slower as if telling something to someone slightly backwards.
"What's a tween?" Frederick asked, not caring how dumb people thought he was.
"Magical concept," Phoebe said. "A tween is any place inbetween one thing and another. Doorways in and of themselves are tweens. Crossways are tweens. There are also well established major tweens in time such as midnight, the space between one day and the next. If midnight happens where you are then it tends to reset any non-persistent magical effects in the area."
"So the door will definitely close by itself at midnight?" Frederick asked.
"Nothing will definitely ever happen when it comes to magic, dimbo," Harvey said. "Particularly not when that magical something involves pure magic, straight from the source."
"But it would be highly unusual if it didn't," Phoebe cut in. "Right, Harvey?"
"Hey, he asked a big boy question," Harvey said. "Excuse me for giving him the big boy answer."
"There's a lot of chaos in magic, isn't there?" Frederick said.
"We call it mischief," Harvey said. "Chaos has too many negative connotations."
"This isn't a magical theory lecture," Phoebe said. "We need to find out what's on the other side of that door, and if it's our friends."
With that she stepped up to the wall and slapped out a quick game of patty cake. On the last hand slap her hand penetrated the wall appearing to disappear into the solid stone of the bricks.
"Open," she said. "Harvey, get sniffing."
"Um," Frederick said to the pickle seller. "You might want to make a sign or something, in case we don't go through." The pickle seller looked at Frederick like he was some sort of odd insect that he'd discovered under a rock in his garden. "You know," Frederick said. "Caution... advisory... of caution... no. Okay."
Frederick turned away to see Harvey sniffing around the doorway, in his cat form. The djinn transformed back into his other shape.
"We're in luck, sort of," Harvey said. "The way through still has a scent of the last couple of people to go through."
"Are you sure?" Phoebe asked.
"One of the things that went through this door," Harvey said. "Was very, very tasty, small, grey, furry, likes cheese, you follow my drift? I can't get the smell out of my nostrils."
"What about the others?" Frederick asked. "The little girl? The mermaid?"
"Too long ago," Harvey said. "So, are we going on a mouse hunt."
"Do I have to put you under an injunction, Harvey?" Phoebe asked sternly. The red-headed youth flinched.
"You are about as much fun as, well, you," Harvey complained. "And that is no fun at all. I wish nobody had ever touched that magic shovel. I was having a nice holiday."
"I can only imagine," Phoebe said. "But I won't because it will only make me cross. Come on Frederick, let's get on with it."
"Sir Cobb," Frederick said as Phoebe swished through the magic door. Now he was alone Frederick could not help the urge to further qualify himself. "My name is Sir Cobb, I'm a knight," he said to the pickle merchant.
"You might want to hurry," the merchant said, unimpressed. "Door don't open long."
Frederick gave up on trying to impress upon people his chivalric qualifications and walked through the door behind the others.
"You really need to be more assertive," said the sword at his waist. "As your manager I am concerned that you don't have a strong enough brand."
"A what now?" Frederick asked.
"I'm resident in metal," the sword said. "As such I occasionally receive transmissions of mortal information streams. They, the mortals, have this kind of magic called a brand. You put a brand on something, like a shoe, and its magic makes people want to buy it, well, to own it. They haven't ironed that exact distinction out, causes some problems, anyway...."
"Are you talking to your sword?" Harvey asked.
Frederick realised that Phoebe and Harvey were looking at him. They were stood in a small, bare stone cell on the other side of the door. Phoebe looked as if she was running out of patience. Harvey looked amused, but not in a good way.
"I wondered how you found a conversational companion to be your intellectual equal," Harvey said. "Now I know."
"If everybody's quite finished messing about," Phoebe said. "Harvey, follow the scent."
"I'm just a nose to you," Harvey said. "It's really quite insulting."
With that he turned into a cat and sniffed away along the floor, following the scent he had detected. Phoebe and Frederick followed along behind. They walked down a few musty corridors and up a set of steps to a hallway with many doors leading off it. Harvey sniffed around the edges for a bit before turning back into a boy.
"They walked back and forth here a few times," he said. "I can't tell where they went last, I'm not a dog."
After a short examination of the surrounding rooms all they could find was a broken window in one room and an hourglass on a shelf. Above the hourglass, engraved in a metal plate, was the legend:
Come, spend an hour and visit with us.
"This is it then?" Phoebe said. "We turn the glass?"
"What do you think will happen?" Frederick asked.
"It's an area effect magic, low level, druidic," Harvey said. "Anyone in the room will be caught within the field when it's turned."
"So what will it do?" Frederick asked.
"It's not a door, dimbo," Harvey said. "So I have no idea, something magic."
"Maybe they didn't turn it over," Frederick said.
"Their scent trail says otherwise," Harvey replied. "They went across the hall a couple of times, upstairs for a bit and outside but there's no sign of them further than the sun dial in the back garden."
"Maybe you just can't smell it," Frederick suggested. "After all you're not a dog."
"Hey, whatever makes you comfy, Sir Clueless," Harvey said. "I personally don't really care what you do. I'm just behaving so I don't get any major mojo slapped on me by my burden."
Phoebe glared at Harvey who grinned and then turned back into a cat.
"We've got to go on," Phoebe said. "We don't have a choice, we've come too far."
Frederick shrugged.
"Alright then," he said. "Turn the glass."
Phoebe picked up the hourglass on its little shelf, reversed it and put it back down. The sand began to run through the pinch in the centre. Instantly Frederick felt like the bottom had fallen out of his stomach. His head felt dizzy and his breath caught in his throat.
"Oh wow!" said an excited voice behind him. "Even more visitors!"
Things had changed. The sound of jaunty folk music stuttered through the air forming a bed to a murmur of conversation, the odd shout or scream of delight and the occasional eruption of laughter, or applause, or both. As Frederick inhaled he caught the scent of roasted meats in competition with the sharp sweetness of sugary things, probably cakes.
Frederick had not eaten a proper meal in a long time. Being a travelling knight and an incompetent cook he had neither the money nor the skill to find good food for himself. He subsisted on energy-providing stodge with a side order of telling yourself that it was all for the greater good.
Suddenly finding himself at a party, the air itself changed from cool and still to warm and vibrant, Frederick didn't really know what to do next. A small, bearded man wearing a long nosed mask and with a brightly coloured conical cardboard hat perched upon his head came round to study Frederick. Cheerful eyes twinkled as they looked him up and down.
"A beautiful girl, a handsome knight and..." the little man looked at Harvey sat on the floor and surveying the scene half-hungry, half-suspicious, "...and an animal, all guests at the party now!"
"What party?" Phoebe asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.
"You've arrived at the House of Mirth, my dear," the little man said. "Where the party continues through the day and the night."
"What's the party for?" Phoebe asked.
"For?" the little man said. "Who said a party had to be 'for' something? At the House of Mirth laughter and levity are more than occasional, they are the very stuff of life. Come, let me show you the buffet, let me show you the musicians, the dancing, the entertainment. At midnight will be the great unmasking and then the festivities will be over for today. You can stay until then? Of course you can! Oh, but you will need masks."
"Uh," Frederick said. The smell of the food was making his belly growl, the evident jollity was enticing, at the same time Frederick could tell that something was off here.
"Excuse my silly friend," Phoebe cut across Frederick before he could rouse himself to a sensible response. "He has few wits and even fewer manners. I will certainly need to give him a firm talking to prior to entering the party. Particularly if he is to be masked. Who knows what he will get up to otherwise?"
"I am sure that he will get into the swing of things," the little man said. "Now is not the time for blame or recriminations. Fear and sadness have no place in the House of Mirth."
"I understand," Phoebe said, an edge to her voice. "However we must confess that we did not know that we would be coming to a party, so we are ill prepared for the party mood. A few moments and we will be ready to pull on our masks and join in the fun."
"Ah, but fun flows like a river throughout the House..."
Thunk.
The little man keeled over and fell to the floor unconscious. Harvey stood behind him holding a piece of wood with a jewel at one end, possibly a magic wand.
"That," he said. "Is how you deal with trouble like that."
"Trouble?" Frederick said. "I don't understand."
"Why am I not surprised?" Harvey said.
"This isn't a party, Frederick," Phoebe said. "It's a trap."
"A trap?" Frederick asked. "A trap with a buffet, dancing, entertainment and masks?"
"The worst kind," Harvey said. "I can smell the mischief in this place, and it's curdled. Mischief turned this bad is like poison."
"Party poopers!" declared a voice at the door to the room. "New arrivals! And they're party poopers!"
Frederick turned around to see the owner of this new voice, high-pitched and ringing, the kind of voice that was used to obedience. The voice came from a tall, slim woman in a sparkling party frock, on her finger she wore an enormous ruby set into a ring and the rest of her outfit appeared to follow on from that key feature. Currently she was pointing the ring in the direction of Phoebe, Harvey and Frederick. The ruby was glowing with a dangerous red light.
"Party poopers must become the life and soul, because this is my day, my sweet sixteen and nobody is going to ruin it for me," the young woman said.
The last thing that Frederick remembered before being swallowed by the bright red light was Harvey, shifting to cat form and dodging past the woman. Then Frederick stopped worrying and wondered whether there were any prawns on the buffet. He liked prawns.
Frederick and Phoebe were in trouble, but they escaped from the House of Mirth and with them they brought James, Lester, the gnome and all their other friends. How they did it is a story for another time.
Sunday, 26 May 2013
Princess Spireshine Meets Peregrine Pagebinder
The Kingdom of Spireshine woke up to find that the relative calm of the previous five days was at an end. The full stop to the sentence 'Anabyl Spireshine has returned home.' was made out of the smouldering wreckage of the carriage that had brought her to Caer Spireshine. The vehicle, or what was left of it, was strewn about the branches of a tree, known by the Spireshiners as the stout oak, that had stood for over twelve centuries not far from the entrance to the castle.
Such occurrences were not unusual in Spireshine. For the last half decade or so a pattern had established itself. Chaos reigned, an increasingly stringent number of security measures and disciplinary edicts were issued, the princess would disappear for a few days, a carriage would bring her back, chaos would resume.
About a year ago there had been the blessed two month period when Anabyl's eldest sister had been married to the third Lord Sommerslip. The kingdom had been left in the capable hands of a regent, heir to the throne Benedyct. Benedyct had done an excellent job and the period was seen as a brief golden age during troubled times. The fact that the current Lord Spireshine had decided to take Anabyl with him on that occasion could not have hurt Benedyct's brief period in office in the slightest.
Princess Anabyl was a child, everyone acknowledged this fact. So, surely, one day she would have to grow up, this everyone hoped. They hoped, more precisely, that their definition of 'growing up', which included not setting fire to so many things, was precisely the type of growing up she would do. Nobody liked to discuss the existence of alternative things that could happen. The words 'she could get worse' were only ever thought, not ever said.
The broken axles and sad rags of upholstery were not the only new thing a Spireshiner might have been able to see at the stout oak at sunrise. The early-rising resident of the kingdom would have to have been standing north of the tree, they would also have to be looking off to the side of the rising sun, just at the point where the flaming orb's presence in one's field of vision was starting to produce tearing from the eyes.
It was one of those days where the sun and the moon battled for dominance in the early morning sky. Unusually the moon was extremely close to the edge of the sun that day. Some, particularly stellar alchemists, might have said 'impossibly close'. It was at that precise proximity that one could just about see it although the peripheral brightness of the sun would cause you to squint.
Thus squinting one might have seen the unusual sight of a man appearing to walk out of the fading moon to hop down through the branches of the stout oak, like a large and flapping owl among the branches, to land on the road. One would, obviously be surprised to see such a thing, so one might believe that this thin man in ragged clothes wearing a tall hat seemed to squash and bend in the hard light of the red rising sun.
At this point one might decide to get out of the line of sight of the sun and take a closer look. Approaching the tree from a less eye-watering angle one would realise one had been mistaken. Obviously about a man climbing out of the moon, that goes without saying, but also about there being a thin man in a tall hat.
Now that one drew closer one could clearly see that it was a tall man, wearing a scholar's skull cap. He had a nose like the beak of a carrion crow and a pair of glasses hanging from this bony proboscis, two flat oblongs of clear glass in plain metal frames. The eyes behind the glasses were very dark, they glittered dangerously.
If one were to look into those eyes for too long all that stuff about tall hats and wide, white grins (that you most certainly wouldn't have seen with the sun in your eyes, so how do you even know about them, stop thinking this way) would come back into your head, if only for an instant. It was almost as if the whole man, spiky elbows to stern frowning mouth, were some sort of mask, concealing a far stranger interior. One would try to forget having such a thought even upon its occurrence and the thought would hasten within one's mind to be forgotten.
Instead our imaginary observer would possibly decide to look over the man's clothing and accoutrements. He wore long, black school master's robes. Under one arm the academic bird-man clutched a serious looking book. A switch of flexible wood was clutched in his left hand. Our observer would see this man cast a cold eye over the carriage carnage in the branches of the stout oak and tut disapprovingly. If they were close enough they might make out the merest whisper of a smirk at the corner of the man's mouth.
No one was there to observe this, not even an imaginary observer, which is a shame because they are often the ones who notice the most. So the incident passed unremarked upon and unthought about. The academic bird-man was alone as he turned towards Caer Spireshine and walked along the road towards it.
The first Spireshiner to observe the advance of the man in the black robes was Old Robson, the night guard. Being centrally located among the members of the One Hundred Kingdoms (a title of nomination only, there were far more than a hundred kingdoms signed up to the One Hundred Kingdoms Pact) Spireshine had limited use of stout night time defences. Soldiers signed up to military service in Spireshine were usually provided a position within the One Hundred Kingdoms Alliance. For this reason Caer Spireshine only had a skeleton guard during the night time.
Old Robson had watched the gatehouse of the Caer from Midnight Bell until Morning Bell for over seven decades at this point. In all that time he had never marked the approach of a lone schoolmaster to the castle gates.
Upon seeing the master making his way up the paved path to the drawbridge crossing Old Robson roused himself from his comfortable chair and made his way down the stone spiral stairs to the main gate. He opened the hatch in the wicket gate to peer out suspiciously shortly after the first precise volley of five knocks.
"Morning," Old Robson mumbled.
"My very warmest wishes of the new day," said the academic in a fluting tone that should not have been as filled with authority as it was. "Peregrine Pagebinder, reporting for service as tutor to Princess Anabyl Spireshine."
"I en't been told anything about no tutor," Old Robson said. This was true although even the ancient night watchman knew that if anyone was in dire need of a firm guiding hand it was the princess. If some fool was going to turn up at the gates of the castle and demand to be placed in a position of responsiblity for the little tearaway Old Robson was inclined to believe that they were telling the truth. The lie would not merely be fruitless it technically qualified as dangerous.
"That is because I have not yet been retained," Peregrine replied, a cold smile patronising Old Robson right through the eight inch by three inch slit in the wicket gate. "I have all of my certificates of authority in my pack and I have been assured that Princess Anabyl is precisely the kind of student I excel in educating. Show me through to the relevant waiting area for today's court session and I will occupy the position by sunset I can assure you."
"Gates don't open for court until mid-morning bell," Robson said.
"Ah," Peregrine said regretfully. "It seems that I have been misinformed as to the Princess's educational requirements. Please pass on my best wishes to Lord Spireshine, I shall be on my way."
Old Robson opened the gate purely on an intuition he would identify as 'gut feeling'. Had he possessed a more rational turn of mind he would have reasoned that if this man was what he represented himself as - i.e. someone who could tame the savage beast that concealed hobnail boots beneath a variety of frilly formal gowns - then it would only be a fool who would let him walk away from the castle. If the man was not all he claimed to be then he would run from Caer Spireshine screaming before the day was out.
In other words: What did Old Robson have to lose?
"You can come in and wait," he said to Peregrine.
A broad grin fled momentarily across the dour man's face. Old Robson got the impression of far too many teeth, all of them dazzling white.
Peregrine was shown into the main reception hall of the Caer, where a couple of hearth sprites were finishing up the job of cleaning a large stain of gravy, treacle and compost off the west wall. He sat on a chair in the public enclosure and waited patiently for noon bell, at which point there would be a session of court lasting until the day bell.
As he was the first to arrive Peregrine was the first to present himself before Lord Spireshine. He stood straight and proud before the ruler of the kingdom and waited for the gossiped enquiries at his back to silence themselves before speaking.
"Lord Spireshine," he said, "My name is Peregrine Pagebinder, it is my honour to present myself before you and my pleasure to offer my services as a tutor to your youngest child."
Lord Spireshine sat forward a little in his chair.
"I did not send for a tutor for Anabyl," he said. "She is, perhaps, a little young for the business of education."
"If by 'a little young' you mean 'the eye in a continually swirling typhoon of chaos'," Peregrine replied. "Then I sympathize with your perspective. I have references, signed and sealed, from many other monarchs of the One Hundred Kingdoms all of whom have been delighted to retain my services in the past. I specialise in challenging students."
Now Lord Spireshine didn't just sit forward, he also sat up.
"I do not think, Master Pagebinder, that you have, perhaps, ever encountered a challenge like Anabyl," he said. All the Spireshiners could hear the subtext of the remark clearly as: 'This is your last chance to run, take it and never look back you lunatic.'
"Maybe so," Peregrine said. "Neither do I think that she has encountered a scaffold for growth, development and discipline such as my good self."
"I hope for your sake that you are correct," Lord Spireshine said. "You are retained for the trial period of a fortnight. Chamberlain, find Master Pagebinder suitable quarters."
"It would be my pleasure," said the chamberlain, a jowly, unpleasant man who was already enjoying the mental image of the state in which this jumped up bookworm would leave the castle after Anabyl had finished with him.
Peregrine was given a small room in the cellar of the castle. It had a plain pallet bed which was not even made and a wardrobe with space for maybe three sets of clothes and half the door missing.
"Unfortunately," the chamberlain said. "We are somewhat pressed for space at the moment. I shall send someone to make up your room after evening bell, if that's agreeable." And if you're still here you poor fool, he thought to himself.
"I'm sure I shall be," Peregrine replied.
"Then I shall leave you to settle in," the chamberlain said. It was only ten minutes later that he realised that Pagebinder had responded to something that he was certain he had only thought.
After placing his serious book on the shelf of the broken wardrobe Peregrine left his room and walked up through the castle towards the quarters of Lord Spireshine and his family. Once he ascended above the court mezzanine he found it quite easy to pick his route, he only needed to follow the distant cacophany of shouting and screaming.
As he drew closer actual words and phrases began to make themselves heard amid the general clamour:
"I've got her ankle!"
"Grab the sponge, quick!"
"Why isn't it wet?"
"Wet it now!"
"She's wriggling, I think she's trying to bite me."
"The water's not soapy! What about the plan?"
"Ow!"
"No!"
"Why did you let go?"
"She bit me!"
"There's no blood."
"But it hurt."
"Look we've got her in the corner, come and help."
"What about the sponge?"
"We can deal with the sponge when we've got her again."
"She's making a run for it!"
"Stop her!"
There followed a series of bangs and crashes, a couple more howls of pain. Peregrine was drawing close to the doorway onto this scene of carnage now. A girl dressed in a striped bathing suit that covered her from neck to wrists from wrists to ankles came pelting out into the corridor a look of determination on her face, a small, tight grin lighting up the otherwise serious expression.
She hurried towards Peregrine without actually seeming to see him. She ducked left, presuming to dodge past him. As she passed him by on his right hand side he moved, swift as a snake, gripping the striped bathing suit in the middle of the back and hauling the princess into the air. He oriented his head so that they were almost nose to nose.
"Good morning, Princess Anabyl," he said.
The princess, having a fine set of instincts, wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Who are you?" she asked, and then a moment later. "Put me down."
"I am your new tutor," Peregrine said. "And no."
"There's a man," came a voice from up the corridor. "He's got her."
"Has he?" another voice. "That won't last."
"You could just listen to them," Princess Anabyl said. "It won't last, you may as well just put me down. You don't have to get hurt."
"Are you threatening me, Princess?" Peregrine asked.
"Not really," the princess said. "I never intend to hurt anyone, it just sort of happens."
Peregrine smiled.
"Sir!" a voice called urgently, "you might want to consider putting Her Royal Highness down and backing away... slowly. No sudden motions."
"They seem concerned," Peregrine said.
"People usually are when it's bath time," the princess replied.
"Ah, bath time," Peregrine said, nodding sagely. "You don't strike me as someone who would be afraid of a little bit of water."
"I'm not," the princess pouted. "It's the principle."
"I must admit to being unfamiliar with that principle," Peregrine said.
"They want me to do something, I can't just let them do it to me," the princess explained.
"Why not?"
"It's the principle."
Peregrine did not say anything for a moment, his gaze slid sideways for a moment, the princess began to wriggle, the gaze slid back instantly.
"Here's how it's going to be," Peregrine said. "You'll have your bath, or vice versa."
"Vice versa?" the princess said. "What does that mean?"
"You can have your bath now," Peregrine said. "Or you can find out for yourself."
"Well," the princess said, "I'm not going to have my bath, I don't care what stupid words you use."
"Very well," Peregrine sighed, his voice tinged with a not-quite-sincere note of regret. "I'm putting you down now."
"Sensible man."
Peregrine let the princess go and she took off down the corridor as if her feet were on fire.
"He's lost her!" shouted the maid in the corridor.
"Doesn't surprise me," came another voice.
Peregrine moved up the corridor towards the bathroom, past the maid in the door way and into the scene of carnage that lay beyond. The room was very well lit from a high window that reflected the sunlight off a mirror across one wall. Steam hung in the air, picking out the underlying debris in pleasant swatches of rainbow colour.
Sponges, brushes, bars of soap and towels were strewn here and there about the room. All of these were responding in their own manner to the lake of water covering the floor. The bath that formed a backdrop to this forlorn and sorry scene looked pristine, untouched by the wriggling limbs of chaos.
Within this vignette of bath time hell were three maids, two standing, one seated. One of the standing ones was holding a lonely, soapy sponge, the other stood with her hands on her hips, incongruously her face bore a look of slack resignation and defeat. The seated maid sat on a low stool, morosely clutching her arm where red tooth marks were clearly visible.
"Ladies," Peregrine addressed the gathered maids. "You may wish to move aside."
All the maids, past the point of arguing, did as they were told. Peregrine stepped up to the bath and held aloft his wooden switch. In a flurry of wrist motion he described an incredibly complicated path with the tip of the switch in the air and then tapped the edge of the bathtub.
The water in the tub began to bubble, as if it was boiling, or as if there were something large beneath the water's surface that was about to emerge, dripping and angry. Neither was the case, instead the water itself surged upwards, forming into the approximate shape of a very large man that hopped out of the bathtub onto the wet floor where it proceeded to add to its bulk by sopping up the spilled water.
Not slowing for a second Peregrine tapped a bar of soap, two brushes, a sponge and a couple of towels with his switch. All of these items leaped into the air at the contact. The soap buried itself in the water man's chest and instantly dissolved turning the water a soapy grey-white. The brushes attached themselves to the man's hands, the sponge flew in after the soap, the towels wrapped themselves around his head like a turban.
"Excellent," Peregrine said. "If the girl won't have a bath then the bath must have her. Go and wash her, whether she likes it or not," he instructed the water man who ran out of the door after the princess.
Much of the disorder had been reversed, the bathroom was almost clean. The maids stared at Peregrine jaws slack with amazement. A final swish of the wood switch and a broom stood to attention in the corner and began busily sweeping up the rest of the mess.
"Marvellous," Peregrine said, a tightly disciplined space for a grin being allowed to light upon his lips. He turned to address the maids: "Good morning, Ladies," he said. "Now, if you'll excuse me I must catch up with my student. Important that we don't miss out on lesson review."
With that Peregrine strolled out of the bathroom and down the corridor. The maids, once the amazement that froze them in place had thawed a little, hurried to follow him. Bath time had been a monthly torture for the staff of Caer Spireshine to endure, if this was to be revenge for multiple soakings then no one was going to miss it for the world.
By the time they reached the courtyard the show was well under way. The water man had turned into a roiling sphere of soapy water, a planet of cleaniliness. The brushes, the sponge and the towels orbited the planet like moons. Unlike moons every so often one or another of them would dive into the ball of water and emerge moments later to resume their previous course.
The princess's head could occasionally be seen emerging, a damp and horrified expression upon her face, from within the water long enough for her to take in a lungful of air. Then the tide would suck her back in for a few moments as the brushes and sponges did their work.
A small crowd had gathered to watch the bath at work, there were a fair few faces that wore expressions of grim satisfaction. There were plenty more that were openly laughing, pointing at the helpless princess, washed whether she wanted it or not.
As quickly as the bath had begun it ended. The sphere of water shot into the air and over the castle walls, dumping itself in the moat. The sponge and brushes arranged themselves neatly on the courtyard floor, the towels swooped in, one wrapping itself around Anabyl's head, the other draping itself over her arm. The princess floated gently to the floor and stood, pink, clean and furious surrounded by a circle of satisfied onlookers.
"Next time," Peregrine said to her companionably, "I would possibly be tempted to have the bath. Vice versa's really no fun, is it?"
"Who are you?" demanded the princess.
"As I explained, Princess," Peregrine said. "I am your new tutor. My name is Peregrine Pagebinder. Now, shall we return to the dressing rooms so that your maids may make you presentable? Or do we want to do that the hard way as well?"
The atmosphere in the courtyard thickened. It appeared as if everyone was rooting for the hard way. Something even more remarkable happened.
"Well, then," the princess said. "I guess we'd better get it over with."
Pouting she presented herself to the maids who, with an air of suspicious gratitude, took the freshly washed little princess inside to get her dressed.
"I will see you after noon bell," Peregrine called after her. "This afternoon we begin your education."
Some of the crowd heard the princess as she passed by them mutter: "We'll just have to see about that, Peabody."
It looked as if things in Caer Spireshine were going to get a little calmer and a great deal more interesting.
Such occurrences were not unusual in Spireshine. For the last half decade or so a pattern had established itself. Chaos reigned, an increasingly stringent number of security measures and disciplinary edicts were issued, the princess would disappear for a few days, a carriage would bring her back, chaos would resume.
About a year ago there had been the blessed two month period when Anabyl's eldest sister had been married to the third Lord Sommerslip. The kingdom had been left in the capable hands of a regent, heir to the throne Benedyct. Benedyct had done an excellent job and the period was seen as a brief golden age during troubled times. The fact that the current Lord Spireshine had decided to take Anabyl with him on that occasion could not have hurt Benedyct's brief period in office in the slightest.
Princess Anabyl was a child, everyone acknowledged this fact. So, surely, one day she would have to grow up, this everyone hoped. They hoped, more precisely, that their definition of 'growing up', which included not setting fire to so many things, was precisely the type of growing up she would do. Nobody liked to discuss the existence of alternative things that could happen. The words 'she could get worse' were only ever thought, not ever said.
The broken axles and sad rags of upholstery were not the only new thing a Spireshiner might have been able to see at the stout oak at sunrise. The early-rising resident of the kingdom would have to have been standing north of the tree, they would also have to be looking off to the side of the rising sun, just at the point where the flaming orb's presence in one's field of vision was starting to produce tearing from the eyes.
It was one of those days where the sun and the moon battled for dominance in the early morning sky. Unusually the moon was extremely close to the edge of the sun that day. Some, particularly stellar alchemists, might have said 'impossibly close'. It was at that precise proximity that one could just about see it although the peripheral brightness of the sun would cause you to squint.
Thus squinting one might have seen the unusual sight of a man appearing to walk out of the fading moon to hop down through the branches of the stout oak, like a large and flapping owl among the branches, to land on the road. One would, obviously be surprised to see such a thing, so one might believe that this thin man in ragged clothes wearing a tall hat seemed to squash and bend in the hard light of the red rising sun.
At this point one might decide to get out of the line of sight of the sun and take a closer look. Approaching the tree from a less eye-watering angle one would realise one had been mistaken. Obviously about a man climbing out of the moon, that goes without saying, but also about there being a thin man in a tall hat.
Now that one drew closer one could clearly see that it was a tall man, wearing a scholar's skull cap. He had a nose like the beak of a carrion crow and a pair of glasses hanging from this bony proboscis, two flat oblongs of clear glass in plain metal frames. The eyes behind the glasses were very dark, they glittered dangerously.
If one were to look into those eyes for too long all that stuff about tall hats and wide, white grins (that you most certainly wouldn't have seen with the sun in your eyes, so how do you even know about them, stop thinking this way) would come back into your head, if only for an instant. It was almost as if the whole man, spiky elbows to stern frowning mouth, were some sort of mask, concealing a far stranger interior. One would try to forget having such a thought even upon its occurrence and the thought would hasten within one's mind to be forgotten.
Instead our imaginary observer would possibly decide to look over the man's clothing and accoutrements. He wore long, black school master's robes. Under one arm the academic bird-man clutched a serious looking book. A switch of flexible wood was clutched in his left hand. Our observer would see this man cast a cold eye over the carriage carnage in the branches of the stout oak and tut disapprovingly. If they were close enough they might make out the merest whisper of a smirk at the corner of the man's mouth.
No one was there to observe this, not even an imaginary observer, which is a shame because they are often the ones who notice the most. So the incident passed unremarked upon and unthought about. The academic bird-man was alone as he turned towards Caer Spireshine and walked along the road towards it.
The first Spireshiner to observe the advance of the man in the black robes was Old Robson, the night guard. Being centrally located among the members of the One Hundred Kingdoms (a title of nomination only, there were far more than a hundred kingdoms signed up to the One Hundred Kingdoms Pact) Spireshine had limited use of stout night time defences. Soldiers signed up to military service in Spireshine were usually provided a position within the One Hundred Kingdoms Alliance. For this reason Caer Spireshine only had a skeleton guard during the night time.
Old Robson had watched the gatehouse of the Caer from Midnight Bell until Morning Bell for over seven decades at this point. In all that time he had never marked the approach of a lone schoolmaster to the castle gates.
Upon seeing the master making his way up the paved path to the drawbridge crossing Old Robson roused himself from his comfortable chair and made his way down the stone spiral stairs to the main gate. He opened the hatch in the wicket gate to peer out suspiciously shortly after the first precise volley of five knocks.
"Morning," Old Robson mumbled.
"My very warmest wishes of the new day," said the academic in a fluting tone that should not have been as filled with authority as it was. "Peregrine Pagebinder, reporting for service as tutor to Princess Anabyl Spireshine."
"I en't been told anything about no tutor," Old Robson said. This was true although even the ancient night watchman knew that if anyone was in dire need of a firm guiding hand it was the princess. If some fool was going to turn up at the gates of the castle and demand to be placed in a position of responsiblity for the little tearaway Old Robson was inclined to believe that they were telling the truth. The lie would not merely be fruitless it technically qualified as dangerous.
"That is because I have not yet been retained," Peregrine replied, a cold smile patronising Old Robson right through the eight inch by three inch slit in the wicket gate. "I have all of my certificates of authority in my pack and I have been assured that Princess Anabyl is precisely the kind of student I excel in educating. Show me through to the relevant waiting area for today's court session and I will occupy the position by sunset I can assure you."
"Gates don't open for court until mid-morning bell," Robson said.
"Ah," Peregrine said regretfully. "It seems that I have been misinformed as to the Princess's educational requirements. Please pass on my best wishes to Lord Spireshine, I shall be on my way."
Old Robson opened the gate purely on an intuition he would identify as 'gut feeling'. Had he possessed a more rational turn of mind he would have reasoned that if this man was what he represented himself as - i.e. someone who could tame the savage beast that concealed hobnail boots beneath a variety of frilly formal gowns - then it would only be a fool who would let him walk away from the castle. If the man was not all he claimed to be then he would run from Caer Spireshine screaming before the day was out.
In other words: What did Old Robson have to lose?
"You can come in and wait," he said to Peregrine.
A broad grin fled momentarily across the dour man's face. Old Robson got the impression of far too many teeth, all of them dazzling white.
Peregrine was shown into the main reception hall of the Caer, where a couple of hearth sprites were finishing up the job of cleaning a large stain of gravy, treacle and compost off the west wall. He sat on a chair in the public enclosure and waited patiently for noon bell, at which point there would be a session of court lasting until the day bell.
As he was the first to arrive Peregrine was the first to present himself before Lord Spireshine. He stood straight and proud before the ruler of the kingdom and waited for the gossiped enquiries at his back to silence themselves before speaking.
"Lord Spireshine," he said, "My name is Peregrine Pagebinder, it is my honour to present myself before you and my pleasure to offer my services as a tutor to your youngest child."
Lord Spireshine sat forward a little in his chair.
"I did not send for a tutor for Anabyl," he said. "She is, perhaps, a little young for the business of education."
"If by 'a little young' you mean 'the eye in a continually swirling typhoon of chaos'," Peregrine replied. "Then I sympathize with your perspective. I have references, signed and sealed, from many other monarchs of the One Hundred Kingdoms all of whom have been delighted to retain my services in the past. I specialise in challenging students."
Now Lord Spireshine didn't just sit forward, he also sat up.
"I do not think, Master Pagebinder, that you have, perhaps, ever encountered a challenge like Anabyl," he said. All the Spireshiners could hear the subtext of the remark clearly as: 'This is your last chance to run, take it and never look back you lunatic.'
"Maybe so," Peregrine said. "Neither do I think that she has encountered a scaffold for growth, development and discipline such as my good self."
"I hope for your sake that you are correct," Lord Spireshine said. "You are retained for the trial period of a fortnight. Chamberlain, find Master Pagebinder suitable quarters."
"It would be my pleasure," said the chamberlain, a jowly, unpleasant man who was already enjoying the mental image of the state in which this jumped up bookworm would leave the castle after Anabyl had finished with him.
Peregrine was given a small room in the cellar of the castle. It had a plain pallet bed which was not even made and a wardrobe with space for maybe three sets of clothes and half the door missing.
"Unfortunately," the chamberlain said. "We are somewhat pressed for space at the moment. I shall send someone to make up your room after evening bell, if that's agreeable." And if you're still here you poor fool, he thought to himself.
"I'm sure I shall be," Peregrine replied.
"Then I shall leave you to settle in," the chamberlain said. It was only ten minutes later that he realised that Pagebinder had responded to something that he was certain he had only thought.
After placing his serious book on the shelf of the broken wardrobe Peregrine left his room and walked up through the castle towards the quarters of Lord Spireshine and his family. Once he ascended above the court mezzanine he found it quite easy to pick his route, he only needed to follow the distant cacophany of shouting and screaming.
As he drew closer actual words and phrases began to make themselves heard amid the general clamour:
"I've got her ankle!"
"Grab the sponge, quick!"
"Why isn't it wet?"
"Wet it now!"
"She's wriggling, I think she's trying to bite me."
"The water's not soapy! What about the plan?"
"Ow!"
"No!"
"Why did you let go?"
"She bit me!"
"There's no blood."
"But it hurt."
"Look we've got her in the corner, come and help."
"What about the sponge?"
"We can deal with the sponge when we've got her again."
"She's making a run for it!"
"Stop her!"
There followed a series of bangs and crashes, a couple more howls of pain. Peregrine was drawing close to the doorway onto this scene of carnage now. A girl dressed in a striped bathing suit that covered her from neck to wrists from wrists to ankles came pelting out into the corridor a look of determination on her face, a small, tight grin lighting up the otherwise serious expression.
She hurried towards Peregrine without actually seeming to see him. She ducked left, presuming to dodge past him. As she passed him by on his right hand side he moved, swift as a snake, gripping the striped bathing suit in the middle of the back and hauling the princess into the air. He oriented his head so that they were almost nose to nose.
"Good morning, Princess Anabyl," he said.
The princess, having a fine set of instincts, wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Who are you?" she asked, and then a moment later. "Put me down."
"I am your new tutor," Peregrine said. "And no."
"There's a man," came a voice from up the corridor. "He's got her."
"Has he?" another voice. "That won't last."
"You could just listen to them," Princess Anabyl said. "It won't last, you may as well just put me down. You don't have to get hurt."
"Are you threatening me, Princess?" Peregrine asked.
"Not really," the princess said. "I never intend to hurt anyone, it just sort of happens."
Peregrine smiled.
"Sir!" a voice called urgently, "you might want to consider putting Her Royal Highness down and backing away... slowly. No sudden motions."
"They seem concerned," Peregrine said.
"People usually are when it's bath time," the princess replied.
"Ah, bath time," Peregrine said, nodding sagely. "You don't strike me as someone who would be afraid of a little bit of water."
"I'm not," the princess pouted. "It's the principle."
"I must admit to being unfamiliar with that principle," Peregrine said.
"They want me to do something, I can't just let them do it to me," the princess explained.
"Why not?"
"It's the principle."
Peregrine did not say anything for a moment, his gaze slid sideways for a moment, the princess began to wriggle, the gaze slid back instantly.
"Here's how it's going to be," Peregrine said. "You'll have your bath, or vice versa."
"Vice versa?" the princess said. "What does that mean?"
"You can have your bath now," Peregrine said. "Or you can find out for yourself."
"Well," the princess said, "I'm not going to have my bath, I don't care what stupid words you use."
"Very well," Peregrine sighed, his voice tinged with a not-quite-sincere note of regret. "I'm putting you down now."
"Sensible man."
Peregrine let the princess go and she took off down the corridor as if her feet were on fire.
"He's lost her!" shouted the maid in the corridor.
"Doesn't surprise me," came another voice.
Peregrine moved up the corridor towards the bathroom, past the maid in the door way and into the scene of carnage that lay beyond. The room was very well lit from a high window that reflected the sunlight off a mirror across one wall. Steam hung in the air, picking out the underlying debris in pleasant swatches of rainbow colour.
Sponges, brushes, bars of soap and towels were strewn here and there about the room. All of these were responding in their own manner to the lake of water covering the floor. The bath that formed a backdrop to this forlorn and sorry scene looked pristine, untouched by the wriggling limbs of chaos.
Within this vignette of bath time hell were three maids, two standing, one seated. One of the standing ones was holding a lonely, soapy sponge, the other stood with her hands on her hips, incongruously her face bore a look of slack resignation and defeat. The seated maid sat on a low stool, morosely clutching her arm where red tooth marks were clearly visible.
"Ladies," Peregrine addressed the gathered maids. "You may wish to move aside."
All the maids, past the point of arguing, did as they were told. Peregrine stepped up to the bath and held aloft his wooden switch. In a flurry of wrist motion he described an incredibly complicated path with the tip of the switch in the air and then tapped the edge of the bathtub.
The water in the tub began to bubble, as if it was boiling, or as if there were something large beneath the water's surface that was about to emerge, dripping and angry. Neither was the case, instead the water itself surged upwards, forming into the approximate shape of a very large man that hopped out of the bathtub onto the wet floor where it proceeded to add to its bulk by sopping up the spilled water.
Not slowing for a second Peregrine tapped a bar of soap, two brushes, a sponge and a couple of towels with his switch. All of these items leaped into the air at the contact. The soap buried itself in the water man's chest and instantly dissolved turning the water a soapy grey-white. The brushes attached themselves to the man's hands, the sponge flew in after the soap, the towels wrapped themselves around his head like a turban.
"Excellent," Peregrine said. "If the girl won't have a bath then the bath must have her. Go and wash her, whether she likes it or not," he instructed the water man who ran out of the door after the princess.
Much of the disorder had been reversed, the bathroom was almost clean. The maids stared at Peregrine jaws slack with amazement. A final swish of the wood switch and a broom stood to attention in the corner and began busily sweeping up the rest of the mess.
"Marvellous," Peregrine said, a tightly disciplined space for a grin being allowed to light upon his lips. He turned to address the maids: "Good morning, Ladies," he said. "Now, if you'll excuse me I must catch up with my student. Important that we don't miss out on lesson review."
With that Peregrine strolled out of the bathroom and down the corridor. The maids, once the amazement that froze them in place had thawed a little, hurried to follow him. Bath time had been a monthly torture for the staff of Caer Spireshine to endure, if this was to be revenge for multiple soakings then no one was going to miss it for the world.
By the time they reached the courtyard the show was well under way. The water man had turned into a roiling sphere of soapy water, a planet of cleaniliness. The brushes, the sponge and the towels orbited the planet like moons. Unlike moons every so often one or another of them would dive into the ball of water and emerge moments later to resume their previous course.
The princess's head could occasionally be seen emerging, a damp and horrified expression upon her face, from within the water long enough for her to take in a lungful of air. Then the tide would suck her back in for a few moments as the brushes and sponges did their work.
A small crowd had gathered to watch the bath at work, there were a fair few faces that wore expressions of grim satisfaction. There were plenty more that were openly laughing, pointing at the helpless princess, washed whether she wanted it or not.
As quickly as the bath had begun it ended. The sphere of water shot into the air and over the castle walls, dumping itself in the moat. The sponge and brushes arranged themselves neatly on the courtyard floor, the towels swooped in, one wrapping itself around Anabyl's head, the other draping itself over her arm. The princess floated gently to the floor and stood, pink, clean and furious surrounded by a circle of satisfied onlookers.
"Next time," Peregrine said to her companionably, "I would possibly be tempted to have the bath. Vice versa's really no fun, is it?"
"Who are you?" demanded the princess.
"As I explained, Princess," Peregrine said. "I am your new tutor. My name is Peregrine Pagebinder. Now, shall we return to the dressing rooms so that your maids may make you presentable? Or do we want to do that the hard way as well?"
The atmosphere in the courtyard thickened. It appeared as if everyone was rooting for the hard way. Something even more remarkable happened.
"Well, then," the princess said. "I guess we'd better get it over with."
Pouting she presented herself to the maids who, with an air of suspicious gratitude, took the freshly washed little princess inside to get her dressed.
"I will see you after noon bell," Peregrine called after her. "This afternoon we begin your education."
Some of the crowd heard the princess as she passed by them mutter: "We'll just have to see about that, Peabody."
It looked as if things in Caer Spireshine were going to get a little calmer and a great deal more interesting.
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Lester and James Find Most of a Dragon
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| Scattered about on the floor around the dragon's body were the scales missing from the patches of bare stone. |
Lester was pretty certain that they had managed to fall through a skylight. Thankfully, the skylight had no actual glass in it. If it had then that could have been troublesome. Not that their landing had been particularly comfortable. They appeared to be covered in books and bits of paper.
Lester had never heard a mouse scream before. He had not expected it to sound like it did, it was far less squeaky than he had imagined it would be.
"I hate bats!" the mouse said. Lester looked over to where the tiny creature was sitting in the ruins of its pumpkin gourd. It crouched up on its hind legs to look at a picture resting against the floor. The picture was, at one and the same time, simplistic and quite horrible. It depicted a bat, wings folded, perching on top of a tree, in the background a shooting star streaked across a pitch dark sky.
There was some kind of symbolism or other arty nonsense going on, because the bat was enormous, or the tree was very small. Lester wondered if it was, in fact, a normal bat on top of a bonsai. His train of thought hit another startling realisation and was instantly derailed.
"You can talk!" he said.
The mouse swivelled its head to look at him.
"Your moustache has come loose," it said.
Lester reached up to his face to prod at the waxy false moustache he had been sporting. He had believed it appropriate during his brief and undistinguished career as a goblin trader. It had, indeed come away on the left hand side and was now hanging limply beside the right hand corner of his mouth. He grasped the offending article between his fingers and pulled it off his face. He couldn't see anywhere to put it tidy so he dropped it onto the floor.
"So, you're just going to dump it there?" the mouse asked him.
Adding to the stack of new experiences today had already thrown at him, Lester now knew what it felt like to have a rodent make him feel guilt. He picked the moustache up again and thrust it into his pocket.
"Sorry," he said. "I was... a bit confused."
"Too confused to be tidy?" the mouse asked.
"No, well, just... this is so... I mean... isn't this odd, don't you think?" Lester asked. He took a moment and got on to his feet so he could have a proper look around, and up.
They had, in fact, fallen in through a hollow skylight. They had landed to one side of a pile of books mounted on a desk. Their passage had up ended the desk and scattered the books all over the floor of the small room. Mixed up with the books were a number of loose leaf sheets of manuscript paper. Scrawly, illegible handwriting filled them all from corner to corner.
The painting of the bat was not the only work of art adorning the walls of the room. There were many strange pictures hung from the walls, there were more stacked up, some up to five deep, on the floors.
The room was not a regular shape, Lester had to count, there were nine walls. In the domed ceiling the skylight was the only window. About two and a half feet away, spitting the odd shower of blue and orange sparks, was the broomstick. The other trader had offered him the item as 'security' back in the market. Either that had been a trader's joke or Lester had the short end of that bargain.
"In the last twenty four hours," the mouse said, "my life has been turned on its head. My home, the pieces of which you may now see lying about my feet in small orange chunks, rolled down a hill. I was nearly eaten by," the mouse spared a glance at the picture, "a giant bat. I took a ride on a shooting star. I heard a silly story about a knight who was a wolf. I went inside a tent that had more stacks than apparent square footage. I met a mermaid, briefly. I felt a disturbing flutter of deja vu. To top it all I disappear from the side of my only companion in a whirl of blue and orange fire to end up here with you. I left odd behind some time around the gnome deciding it had better things to do with its time."
"Gnome?" Lester asked.
"I don't want to talk about the gnome!" the mouse tried to stamp its foot but, being a mouse, the effect was underwhelming to say the least.
"Where do you think we are?" Lester asked. There was a door in one of the walls. Lester was not keen on the idea of opening it until he was a little more certain what he might find on the other side.
"Somewhere else that isn't home," the mouse replied. "So what difference does it make?"
"Hmm," Lester said. Then, too troubled to ignore the fact any longer: "Look. I don't mean to be intrusive or show my limited life experience or anything, but... You can talk."
"So it would appear," the mouse replied.
"That's not a usual thing, for mice to talk," Lester said.
"Then I would imagine you could say that I am not a usual mouse," the mouse said. It made a little motion with its front legs that could have been a shrug. "Are you going to try the door or am I going to have to start stacking books?"
"I want to find out where we are," Lester said.
"And what better way to do that than to open the door?" the mouse asked through grated teeth. Lester was finding that he was getting used to the mouse. The longer he watched it do quite un-mouse-like things, the more accepting he was of this unbearable cuteness.
"Well, I hope there's not a tiger out there," Lester sighed. He picked his way over the fallen detritus of hardcovers to reach for the door handle.
"If there is," the mouse said. "Then we'll have to face it eventually. I would be more concerned, to be honest, if it turns out to be a broom cupboard."
Lester paused with his hand upon the handle.
"Why would you care if it's a broom cupboard?" he asked.
"Well, unless it had the decency to be a _magic_ broom cupboard," the mouse explained. "It would mean that we find ourselves trapped, until we manage to span the fifteen foot gap between the floor and the skylight."
"Oh, yes," Lester said. "I'm still not sure that's worse than a tiger."
"So, we've established that you would rather not be eaten and I would rather not starve to death. Illuminating."
"You are a very sarcastic mouse."
"Apparently."
Lester pushed down on the door handle. The door was not locked, there was no tiger on the other side and it didn't open onto a broom cupboard.
"It's a hallway," Lester said. "A bit dingy but it doesn't look either unpleasant or dangerous."
"No alcoves or other shadowy places that might provide a hiding place for lurking assassins?" the mouse asked. "No suspicious, raised floor stones? No holes in the wall from which poison tipped darts might fire, using an ingenious compressed air system?"
"Sarcastic and paranoid," Lester said. "No, none of that, well, not that I can make out in the gloom. Besides, it's the only exit, what choice do we have? We're pretty much forced to go that way. We should probably get on with it."
"You sound just like Rachel," the mouse said. "Impossible. Come on then, pick me up, you can carry me on your shoulder, left or right, I don't mind, it's your choice."
Lester went over to the mouse and put out his hand, the mouse clambered up onto it. Lester moved the hand up to his left shoulder and the mouse jumped off his hand. Lester could feel little claws through his shirt sleeve, they were sharp but not pressing down hard.
Lester stood and went to the threshold of the doorway. He took one final chance to examine the gloomy hallway for signs of any traps before stepping forward.
"Who's Rachel?" Lester asked the mouse.
"The little girl, who left me with the mermaid," the mouse said. "I have a terrible feeling we're related."
"Oh?" Lester said. He took a step out into the hallway. "Related how? By marriage?"
The two of them remained free from attack by assassins. There were no ominous clicks, poisoned darts did not spring from the holes that weren't in the walls.
"No, blood related," the mouse said.
Confidence growing Lester took some slow and careful steps along the hallway. In the distance he could see that it turned to the right.
"I'm not trying to speak out of turn," Lester said. "But I have difficulty with the concept that the two of you might be blood kin. Just saying."
"No, that's fair enough," the mouse said. "I've been having some difficulties. with my memory. I am pretty certain I wasn't always a mouse. The clues are definitely there now I look back at it, you know: being able to talk, being called James, stuff like that." James the mouse paused, and then said: "Oh, yes, I'm James by the way, pleased to meet you."
"Lester," said Lester. "Pleased to meet you James the currently-a-mouse."
"Now that I come to think about it," James said. "I'm not sure I am pleased to meet you. You don't seem very honest and you were exploiting that poor mermaid."
"Oh, that," Lester said. "That, uh, it wasn't what it looked like. Or, maybe it was, I don't know. I think I was doing someone a favour, or maybe he was doing me a favour. I know that the mermaid needed someone to help them and... well... it was all most complicated."
"Hmm," James said. "This place is strange. The walls aren't as regular as they were, look."
James was right, the walls of the hallway had become jagged and uneven. The passageway was still broadly the same shape but now it appeared less constructed and more as if it were a natural cave tunnel. The light, such as it was, was also dimming to a point where Lester was having to feel his way along with his right hand on the wall.
Lester strained to make out any detail in the darkness. He couldn't see anything but his fingers met a wall in front of him. For a second he panicked as he felt his way along a smooth shelf of rock in front of him. Then his hand went past the point at which he believed the opposite wall should exist. He turned his head to see a dim light in the distance.
"There's a bend in the passage," Lester said. He groped his way forward and the light situation began to improve. As they got closer to the light the passage opened up into a cavern.
"I really hope this is a way out," James said.
Lester considered pointing out that building a long passageway leading to a single room would not be a profitable use of time. Further you would have to consider the sanity of someone who undertook such a project. This went double for someone who decided the room needed nine sides. Then he decided against it. The mouse was nervous and had been through a lot today already. It was probably best to just keep going forward and hope for the best.
The cavern at the end of the passage was not an exit, but it was both bright and airy. At first Lester could not make out the source of the light, he just knew there was something large shimmering in the centre of the floor. James got a good look at the shimmering object first, it was not good news:
"It's a dragon!" he squealed. His exclamation was so forceful that he almost fell off Lester's shoulder.
Following James's alert Lester went from squinting mode to scan-for-danger mode in a fraction of a second. He blinked his eyes and rubbed them, willing for the giant glowing mass of shimmering light to resolve into the shape of a dragon. His ears strained to catch the ominous whisper of a dragon breathing.
Lester's vision did adjust, slowly. The pair continued to not be eaten or roasted alive. Lester started to reach another high peak of safety on the roller coaster that his emotional state had become today. When his vision had adjusted Lester could see that James was right, the source of the light was definitely dragon shaped.
This dragon, however, was a stone carving. Lester could see parts of the enormous beast showing through its coat of shining yellow metallic scales. These scales were the source of the light. Scattered about on the floor around the dragon's body were the scales missing from the patches of bare stone. They didn't appear to have their own light, like the ones that remained attached to the dragon. They did reflect light well enough to bounce reflected images here and there around the walls of the cave.
"I think it's a statue," Lester said to James. "It's not moving, anyway."
"I'm not sure it is a statue," James said as Lester stepped closer to examine the scales. "I think I remember something."
"Like what?" Lester said stooping to pick up a scale. It was round at one end and flat at the other, the surface was a perfect mirror.
"Like something about dragons and stone and them not being dead," James said. "Did I mention I'd been having some memory problems?"
"You might have mentioned it," Lester said. He wasn't paying much attention. He had moved on from the scales to look into the dragon's eye, a great, flat reflective disc. It was slightly bowed outwards so it distorted the image of Lester's face. It made his nose look big. James, on the edge of the reflection, still perched on Lester's shoulder, looked small.
Out of the shimmering play of lights surrounding Lester's image in the eye a picture began to resolve. The face of a little girl, a different little girl to the one from the Bridgetown Market. The image slowly pulled itself together out of the shimmering sparks of colour reflected in the dragon's eye.
"What are you doing inside my mirror?" asked the little girl peevishly. "I'll have you know I'm a princess so you'd jolly well better stop being inside my mirror right now."
Lester and James exchanged a puzzled glance.
"We're not in your mirror," James said. "We're beside a dragon."
"Oh," the little girl said. "A talking mouse. Interesting. Okay, well, if there's a talking mouse then I guess you can be inside my mirror after all..." The little girl paused and looked about herself. "Um," she said, puzzled and uncertain. "What's all this shining stuff?"
In front of Lester the dragon's eye began to grow, larger and larger until he could see all of the little girl. He observed her well groomed pigtail plaits and her impossibly frilly lemon dress. He had a few moments to admire the incongruous heavy walking boots that emerged from under the lacy fringe at the bottom of the skirt.
"What are you up to?" the little girl asked, alarmed. "Stop it at once!"
Before either of them knew it they were standing opposite one another surrounded by a sparkling shower of light. Then there was movement from above. Lester focused on it, realising as he did so that he had become rather dizzy, and understood that the dragon's eye was closing.
"Oh, dear," said Lester but it was too late to do anything, even if there was anything to be done. The dragon closed its eye and the sparkling shower dimmed to a background glow.
Standing in the cave, next to the gigantic stone dragon were now Lester, James and the small frilly girl in the heavy black boots.
"You," the girl said crossly. "Are in such big trouble you don't even know how big it is!"
As it happens, she was right, but we'll find out how some other time.
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