The Elfin Ship (46 page)

It was an astonishing clock altogether, and the mayor decided that it should sit in the Guildhall until a gazebo could be built for it in the center of the square. The townspeople cheered at the thought of it.

Jonathan made a final brief speech, insisting that the depiction on the clock was rather a glorification of the whole adventure, since he and Dooly and the Professor and Ahab had set out after cakes and gifts and not evil dwarfs. He told the story of how Theophile Escargot had been the ‘ace in the hole’ and of how Squire Myrkle had appeared at the window to poleaxe the Beddlington Ape and save the day. He ended the speech by reciting Bufo’s poem, ‘When Squire Myrkle Came’, and the saga so enlivened the crowd that they insisted on riding the rafters up and down on their shoulders again, all of them cheering mightily.

It was the fall of night and the cold north wind, finally, that sent everyone home. The next day but one would be Christmas Day, and it was a good season to be indoors. Jonathan was feeling that way himself. As far as he was concerned, he could pretty much do without all the backslapping and the riding up and down. He invited Twickenham and his company as well as Miles the Magician to spend a few days at his home, but they all politely refused – understanding, likely, that they would put rather a strain on the accommodations. Miles said that he was on his way upriver to the City of the Five Monoliths, that Selznak and his ape were quite possibly headed
that
way, since they clearly had bypassed Twombly Town. It was in the City of the Five Monoliths that Selznak had operated his sideshow. Even though the watch had been recovered and given to Twickenham, the Dwarf would bear close observation. Or at least that’s what Miles told Jonathan.

So the elves departed and Miles departed and Dooly went off to his sister’s house. The Professor shook Jonathan’s hand and he too took off, saying that he had a few score pages of notes he wanted to scribble down yet.

In the end, Mayor Bastable went along with Jonathan to make sure, as he put it, that everything was shipshape. They hauled a cartload of Jonathan’s things, Ahab riding along asleep on top. Jonathan lit the lantern he kept on the porch, wiggled the key in the lock, and swung the door open. Inside, smack in the center of the room, was a great, fresh Christmas tree, glittering with glass baubles and tinsel and smelling like a pine forest after an autumn rain. ‘Why –’ said Jonathan. ‘How in the world?’

‘We all knew you’d be back,’ said Gilroy Bastable, smiling and winking and happy as a cherub over his surprise. ‘There was never any doubt. Not for a moment. And tomorrow, being Christmas Eve day, we’re all coming round as usual, I suppose, for cakes and cheese and port. And how in the world could you be expected to set up such a feast as that if you had to worry at the same time about decorating a tree?’

Jonathan nodded. How indeed? The mayor stuck around long enough to empty the cart. In the crates of books were a few Christmas gifts that Jonathan had carried along from Seaside. There were gifts for Mr and Mrs Bastable that the mayor insisted upon shaking and listening to and gifts for Dooly and the Professor and for Jonathan himself. And there were even a few gifts with no name at all on them so that droppers-in might not feel left out. As each gift was added to the growing pile under the tree, the tree itself seemed to grow a bit brighter and gayer. Jonathan hauled out two old oak bookcases from his attic and he and Gilroy Bastable loaded them full of the books he’d found at the mouse bookstore in Seaside. The mayor nodded in appreciation and carried armfuls over so that Jonathan could arrange them just so.

Finally, the cart empty, Jonathan started a good fire in the hearth. It would have been a fine thing, he thought, to have swept up and brought along some of the green skeleton dust, just to see if he could conjure a skeleton from the flames and give the mayor an odd thrill. But likely he’d have to burn bones instead of oak logs to pull it off, and that seemed like an altogether bad idea, so it was just as well that he didn’t save any of the dust. Best not to mess around with that sort of thing anyway, he supposed.

When the fire was popping, he dug around until he found a likely bottle of brandy and a can of Bledsoes Red Mixture, the mayor’s favorite tobacco, and he and Gilroy Bastable filled a pipe, dribbled a spot of brandy into a glass, and slid into easy chairs where they sat puffing contentedly. Everything looked good – just as Jonathan was sure it should look. The books, the tree glowing in the firelight, the pipe and the drink and the fire in the fireplace and Ahab stretched out on the rug before the hearth – all of it couldn’t be better.

‘It’s good to be home,’ Jonathan said, nodding in general agreement with himself. Mayor Bastable gave Jonathan a profound look. Then he mussed about in his hair with his fingers and said, ‘Indeed it is,’ giving the brandy bottle a profound look. Jonathan asked him what he’d think of another dash of brandy and a bit of cheese. Gilroy Bastable, putting his feet onto a stool and tamping away at the bowl of his pipe, said that as far as he could tell at the moment, all things considered, a ball of cheese and another spot of brandy would suit him down to the ground.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

World Fantasy Award winning author James Blaylock, one of the pioneers of the steampunk genre, has written eighteen novels as well as scores of short stories, essays, and articles. His steampunk novel
Homunculus
won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and his short story "The Ape-box Affair," published in
Unearth
magazine, was the first contemporary steampunk story published in the U.S. Recent publications include
Knights of the Cornerstone
,
The Ebb Tide
, and
The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs
. He has recently finished a new steampunk novel titled
The Aylesford Skull
, to be published by Titan Books.