The Elfin Ship (12 page)

‘And who might you
be,
sir?’ the wizard asked in a tone of voice a bit too commanding for Jonathan’s liking.

‘Jonathan Bing of Twombly Town, at your service,’ he said, bowing stiffly and removing his cap. ‘I make cheeses.’

‘Cheeses,’ cried the wizard. ‘I know another man who makes cheeses. Huge cheeses. Cheeses that would drive men mad with wonder.’

‘Well,’ said Jonathan, ‘I don’t suppose my cheeses amount to quite that much, but they aren’t really too bad. They’re rather in demand, in fact. Very popular out on the coast during the holidays.’

‘Then it’s you who makes the raisin cheeses!’ cried the wizard. ‘Why I’ll be a laughingstock.’

Jonathan, was favorably impressed at this outburst, and although he was fairly thoroughly swelled up with pride, he blushed a bit and felt sheepish.

The wizard insisted upon shaking his hand, then called to Dooly, who had found something amid the debris of the old pub, and shook his hand too. Jonathan thought that perhaps all this handshaking was laying it on a bit thick but he only thought so out of modesty.

The wizard seemed to be incredibly interested in Dooly’s hand. ‘That’s quite a ring, my man, quite a ring.’

Jonathan saw that indeed Dooly did have a rather marvelous ring. It was made of gold and had what appeared to be an odd, spiral-shelled, sea creature raised cameo style on the surface. The sea creature was peeking out of the shell with a cryptic eye. An elf from the Oceanic Isles could have told Jonathan that it was called a chambered nautilus, perhaps the most wonderful beast in the sea.

‘Where did you get such a ring?’ asked the wizard casually, as if he didn’t care much one way or another.

‘From my old grandpa,’ Dooly replied proudly. ‘He had four such rings, each one with a different beast – all fish of course. And he gave one to me and said it had magic in it, though he didn’t say how.’

‘I believe he might have been right about that,’ said the wizard. ‘Who is your grandfather that he had such fine jewelry? A rich man, surely?’

‘Not a word of it,’ said Dooly, warming to the task, as he always did, of talking about his grandfather. ‘He’s been rich fifty times, maybe a hundred, but he gave it all away. Some here, some there. He was a Stover, of course, as I am, he being, as I’ve often said, my old grandpa which does, you see, connect us.’ Dooly paused and nodded as if he’d explained things pretty clearly and was waiting for a reply. He took another look at the ring on his hand, then a quick look at Miles’ hand. ‘That’s another such ring you’ve got there,’ he cried.

Miles shrugged. ‘It’s a strange world, isn’t it?’

Jonathan was about to admit that it was getting stranger by the moment, but Miles went right on, forgetting about rings altogether.

‘Haven’t seen any elves lately, have you?’

The question was rather abrupt, and Jonathan looked askance at the wizard, and, though suspicious without knowing why, answered, ‘Yes, an airship full about a week ago.’

‘A week was it? Well, you may see them again. They’re particular friends of mine and altogether nice chaps, though a bit on the merry side. Wizards, as you know, are an uncommonly solemn lot, if I do say so myself. And elves must always be laughing and singing and larking even when they’re out on serious missions. Good chaps though; you’ll get on well with them.’

This was all a bit mysterious for Jonathan and Dooly, but what was even more so was the little pile of fish skeletons Dooly was pulling out of a heap of smashed-up wood.

‘Goblin food!’ shouted Dooly, it being clear since the fog adventure along the Wood that goblins were voracious fish eaters.

‘Goblin food indeed,’ said Miles. ‘All left over from the lot that ransacked the town a few months back, as I was saying. They just tore the place up: smashed windows, knocked over chimneys, dumped trash into mail slots, kicked the wharf and boathouse to bits – had a time of it, actually. It wasn’t their doing though. Nothing ever is. He set them going just like he did at Stooton right afterward. Only three people left in town then, and they sailed downriver like geese when they got wind of the goblins. They knew he was behind it.

‘The woods come creeping in now. Weeds and vines and such which, under normal circumstances, are fine things. But we needn’t go into that now. Things were far worse at Stooton, I fear. But what about this sick friend you mentioned?’

‘Yes,’ said Jonathan, pulling the list of ingredients from his pocket. ‘Perhaps you know where these things might be found?’

The wizard cast one eye up and down the list and looked pleasantly surprised. ‘It’s the poultice,’ he said. ‘Yes, this will do the trick. Fancy the poultice being required down here. What is this gentleman’s malady?’

‘Goblin scratches and a bite or two.’

‘Oh my,’ said the wizard. ‘Why do we stand and talk? How long ago did he get them?’

‘Three days ago.’

‘Oh my, my, my. You should have come to me sooner. But then you weren’t coming to me at all were you? But you found me, and a good thing that is too. I have the poultice already mixed. Never go about without it. And that’s fortunate for you. There isn’t any spearmint in these parts. Far too wet, it is. You’d look high and low for spearmint and not get a sprig.’

The wizard disappeared into the pub, and Dooly and Jonathan heard him rummaging around inside for a moment or two, although they dared not look in at the door. Miles was far too secretive and mysterious for them to go spying after him. He returned almost at once carrying a glass jar sealed with a great cork, the entire jar having been dipped after corking into hot wax.

‘All we need are axolotls. A man can’t keep live axolotls with him all the time, you know. What we have to do is find an axolotl den and borrow a few. They don’t mind. Not a bit. Glad to do it, in fact, as long as they’re returned to their den afterward and given a bit of salt.’

The wizard began rummaging through the pockets inside his cloak. There were a good many of them, and he’d turned four or five inside out before he came up with what he was trying to find – a dusty leather pouch with a loose bit of rawhide tied about the mouth. Miles fiddled with the knot and worked the pouch open. He looked at Jonathan and Dooly who, in truth, were wondering what sort of marvel was likely to emerge. ‘Have you seen one of these?’ asked the wizard as a lumpy-looking mottled thing crawled into his hand.

‘It’s a toad,’ said Jonathan.

‘It’s a great, fat bug.’ Dooly’s eyes were wide with wonder.

‘Actually,’ said the wizard, ‘it’s what you’d call a Familiar. I’m not sure what he is, really. Sometimes I think he’s a toad; sometimes, as the lad here pointed out, he seems a bug. Once I’d have sworn he was a turtle with the head of a pig, but that sounds so unlikely now that I won’t even mention it. I inherited him from my old master, who used to tell the weather by him. He knows the secrets of the seven major amphibia and of the four true beasts, the platypus and dugong and such as that. If he can’t find an axolotl, then no one can.’

Miles the Magician bent over the Familiar and whispered at the blinking thing for a moment. Then, reaching into yet another pocket he fished out a slice of bread and tore off a piece for the Familiar. The thing poked a few good-sized crumbs away into a flap in its greenish skin, and blinked placidly. The wizard listened intently for a moment with his ear up close to the Familiar, then he carefully put the creature back into its pouch with another bit of bread and returned the pouch to his pocket.

‘Well, boys, we’re in luck. He says we’re to look for a clump of pansies, as I already knew, down at a place where two forks of a stream merge and ferns grow high as a house top. That has to be where the Weaver and the Wincheap meet above town. You see, there are axolotls everywhere, a fact most people don’t know, and they always like a bit of pansy for some reason or another. If you find pansies growing wild, you can count on axolotls being thereabouts, ready to lend a man a hand.’

‘Let’s fetch up a score or so then,’ Jonathan urged, ‘and get back to the raft.’

‘Do let’s,’ said the wizard.

The three of them clumped along for forty yards, crossed the highroad, and with the wizard leading, slid and leaped down the side of a bush-dotted hill and in among a thicket of willows. In the midst of the thicket a little brook no more than five or six feet across babbled cheerily along. They hopped from rock to rock down the center of the stream until it merged with another, larger brook and formed a stream that dumped into the river some quarter mile farther on. Among the willows, in vivid green thickets, sprouted clumps of curling ferns, towering, in places, over Jonathan’s head. In midstream on a bit of an island was a little garden of pansies, purple, yellow, and violet with huge drooping petals. Within the pile of sand and soil and rock from which the pansies sprouted, were a maze of tiny crevices and caverns, and from each peeked the feathered head of an axolotl, speckled and foolish.

The wizard crouched down on the rocks and plucked forth a couple. ‘Slimy things, to be sure,’ he said, handing two over to Jonathan. ‘But indispensable. Half of the workings of the bestial sciences somehow depends on these things. One of the Six Links, actually, and not the least of the Six. Out in the Isles they grow to twelve feet long, they say, and go about on little wheeled devices which the elves make for them in return for services. That might be a lie, I’m not certain.’

Jonathan let the two axolotls, who seemed well enough satisfied, lay limp in his hands. They were like long lumps of jelly – not something that anyone would look forward to handling.

‘Four should do it,’ said the wizard. They all then clambered back up the hill, Jonathan remembering not to squish the axolotls, and made away through the ruined town toward the raft.

The Professor opened an eye when the three stepped into the hold but didn’t do much else to acknowledge their entrance.

‘Tch, tch, tch,’ the wizard clicked as Dooly fetched in a plate. Miles uncorked the jar and scooped out a spoonful or so of the poultice, which was a gooey and unlikely looking mixture altogether. Then, to the amazement of the two onlookers, he set the four axolotls on the plate, and they immediately began to dance about as if they were having a wonderful time of it. They dashed this way and darted that way and made little axolotl footprints throughout, pausing now and again to lick their feet clean before prancing off again through the goop. After a minute or so of such foolery, Miles plucked the four axolotls out and handed them to Dooly, who was rather at a loss over what to do with them.

‘Apply this to the wounds five times a day,’ said the wizard, daubing a bit of the poultice onto the Professor’s arm where a particularly evil-looking scratch puffed. The red seemed to go out of it immediately, and the Professor smiled and managed a nod. They smeared the stuff about on the several other scratches and helped the Professor to a sitting position on the bunk. He squeaked out a hoarse sentence at the wizard, who cautioned him against strain and then proffered a card.

‘Explain the pronunciation of the name to him,’ he said to Jonathan. ‘And look me up on your way back toward Twombly Town if you have the opportunity. I’d like to hear about your adventures.’

‘We will,’ said Jonathan, ‘though I hope there’ll be few adventures to relate.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you were wrong about that,’ the wizard replied shaking his head a bit and corking up the poultice jar.

Jonathan stepped across to one of the storage cabinets and fished about inside for a moment, coming up finally with a carefully wrapped cheese. He handed it to the wizard, who bowed. ‘Not one of the famous raisin variety?’

‘The same. I hope it’s worthy of its reputation.’

Miles smiled and nodded. ‘Thank you. It’s been a year since I’ve had a cheese of any sort and here I am with one of the true cheese wonders.’ He called after Dooly and retrieved the axolotls, and then with a last farewell, stepped ashore and disappeared around the ruined boathouse.

Jonathan was put out with himself because he hadn’t asked the wizard to stay for supper. But they had several hours of sunlight left and might just as well press on. The Professor seemed much improved, and there was enough of the poultice on the plate to last a week. So Jonathan and Dooly cast off once more and sat together in the stern with old Ahab, watching the deserted ruins of Willowood disappear in the distance.

The day was windy and cold. Jonathan sat huddled at the tiller steering the raft around and through quick little channels between rocks in the river. It wasn’t what you’d call a rapids, certainly, so there wasn’t much excitement involved, just the barest chance that they’d come up against a rock if Jonathan didn’t look sharp. And so he had to sit in the cold and push on the tiller now and then.

Dark clouds had sailed along through the skies for days but the wind managed to keep them in continual rout. During the past night, however, they began to bunch together and by late morning the sky was fairly black. It had, no doubt, been raining heavily behind them in the high valley. Jonathan thought that the clouds should be made to explain themselves when they acted that way – when they decided to quit fleeing before the wind and get down to business. Perhaps they had sailed entirely around the earth and met themselves again and gone bumping together and crowding up until all the blue spaces between were filled. That certainly seemed likely.

The wind tossed the branches of the hemlocks along the river and made them bend, then jerk straight, then bend again like spindly, many-armed giants waving frantically to ward off buzzing mosquitoes. It blew down the center of the river, as luck would have it, and it didn’t seem to care a bit about coats and hats and mufflers – just whistled through them.