The Unnameables (15 page)

"Get back in here, Vernon. That's the windy man."

To Medford's surprise, the Goatman grinned. "Windy Man," he said, as if it were a compliment. If he were free to do so, the Goatman probably would be on his hooves, waving to everyone in the crowd.

Who then would be knocked over by the gale.

When the wagon stopped in front of Town Hall, Medford was the first to jump down into the road. The Constables half lowered, half assisted the Goatman until his hooves hit the dirt. Ward had to grab the Goatman by the shins at one point, his face puckered up in such an expression of fear and revulsion that Medford almost laughed.

They'd forgotten his staff. Medford retrieved it again.

As the Constables and the Goatman headed for the
Town Hall steps, the onlookers on the sidewalk backed away to make a path. A little girl wailed and hid behind her father, clinging to his legs.

Deemer Learned raised a hand as if declaiming from the Book. His jaw was purple where Medford had hit him.

"Master Runyuin's fate," he announced, "will be decided on the morrow. The Council will convene a Town Meeting, I believe. In any case, Master Runyuin and ... and his creature shall spend the night below Town Hall."

"In the jail?" Boyce exclaimed.

"Where else, pray?" Deemer replied.

"Nowhere," Boyce said. He looked at Prudy, who looked away.

She'd had to turn him in, Medford knew that. But why wouldn't she look at him? Why wasn't she making sure he knew how sorry she was?

Maybe she wasn't sorry. How could she be, when you thought about it? She was Deemer's apprentice now. She thought what Deemer thought: that Medford didn't belong here. Boyce probably thought the same.

Medford was an inconvenience to them. Maybe even a danger now.

"Raggedy Runyuin," someone on the sidewalk said. Laughter rippled across the crowd, quickly silenced.

The Constables and the Goatman disappeared into Town Hall. Deemer followed them. Prudy turned without
a word and stepped out into the road to avoid the crowd on the sidewalk. She walked away, toward her parents' house.

"Prudy!" Medford called after her. "Don't go." But he got no response, only the sight of two blond braids hanging straight as she marched away.

"Let her be, boy," Boyce said. He handed Medford the squirrel bowl. "You might as well keep this with you."

At the sight of the squirrel bowl, the Islanders in the crowd gasped and murmured and shifted their weight from foot to foot.

"Useless," Sarah Candlewright hissed.

"Unnameable," Martin Forester said, correcting her.

Medford hugged the bowl to his chest, feeling as small as when Boyce had made him start Book Learning. "It'll make an Islander of you," Boyce had said then. But he'd been wrong, hadn't he?

"Boyce," Medford said, "I'm sorry I caused trouble."

He waited for Boyce to say he was sorry Medford was going to jail. But Boyce had his head down so Medford couldn't see his eyes. He was gripping the rolling pin tight enough to leave dents in the wood.

The crowd staring, his ears burning, Medford started up the long flight of steps to the front door.

"Medford." Boyce was hoarse again. The crowd hushed.

Medford turned, five steps up. "Aye, Boyce."

"Medford." Boyce raised his head, looked Medford in
the eye. "Did I...?" He gave the attentive crowd a sidelong look and turned red.

"Did you what, Boyce?"

Boyce shook his head at the ground. He turned away and followed Prudy's path down the road, holding the rolling pin so his hand covered the eyes.

We've got a Council to tell us what to do, and Constables to make sure we do it. Now we've got bars on the Trade storeroom in case somebody wants to take his own road. My Grandma would've had a thing or two to say about that.

—Journal of Tansy Carver, 1824

I
F MEDFORD HADN'T
known where the jail was he could have followed the sound.

He had just shut Town Hall's front door behind him when a series of bleats, thumps, bangs, crashes, and grunts echoed up the white-plastered stairwell.

He ran down the stairs to the cellar, the Goatman's staff in one hand and the squirrel bowl under an arm. Ward Constable was at the bottom, about to burst into tears.

"He hates it, Ragged ... Master Runyuin," Ward said as the two of them hastened down the narrow hallway. "He struggled. Tried to bite me. Seemed like a nice enough fellow before that."

"Is he waving his arms around?" Medford stopped and listened for wind.

"Nay, Bailey has him pinned down. I said we'd tie him if he didn't calm himself."

"
Tie
him?" Medford got moving again.

"Didn't impress him much, I have to say. Canst thou control him?" Ward looked so hopeful Medford didn't have the heart to answer.

The hallway was crowded with barrels and crates and piles of baskets, Island goods destined for the next Mainland Trade. A door at the end opened onto a ramp up to Harbor Lane, which led to the Trade Wharf. Trade goods typically were stored in the jail cell, but the Constables must have cleared it out.

Harmony Weaver's baskets were scattered all over the floor.

"See?" Ward picked up a basket. "His hooves were everywhere. He tried to walk up the wall." He set the basket on a crate marked
TOWN RECORDS—NOT FOR TRADE
and gave the crate an angry kick.

The jail cell was three-quarters the size of Medford's kitchen. It was in a back corner of the cellar, and had a barred window in each of the two outside walls. The windows were open to let in the breeze off the harbor. The cell walls were whitewashed, the floor swept. Wooden benches lined the walls. The room was almost pleasant.

Or would have been, if there hadn't been a writhing,
bawling heap of Constable and Goatman in the middle of the floor. Bailey had his beefy arms around the Goatman, who was trying to butt him in the head, bite him on the wrist, and kick him in the shins.

"Bweh-eh-eh-eh!" the Goatman kept bleating.

Medford squatted in front of the squirming figure. "Goatman," he said. "Goatman. Stop. Hark to me. Goatman. Listen. Goatman."

"Bw-ee-eee," the Goatman said, arching his back and straining against Baileys arms. "I will not sta-a-ay in a hole."

"This isn't a hole. 'Tis a room, just like my kitchen."

"They will"—the Goatman writhed and kicked—"lock me i-i-in."

"I'll be here, too. We can look out the window."

"Looking ... is ... not ... be-e-eing."

'"Twon't be long. By tomorrow night we'll either be free or—"

Unexpectedly, the Goatman went limp. "I wa-a-ant this flatfoot to unha-a-and me," he said in a low voice.

"You have to calm yourself," Medford said. "You have to promise not to do anything ... windy."

The Goatman grinned. "Windy Man," he said.

"Aye. But not now."

The Goatman looked Medford in the eye. "One day," the Goatman said. "I will sta-a-ay one day and then ... I don't know wha-a-at."

"We'll take it," Bailey said. He dropped his arms.

"I need my sta-a-affT the Goatman said, stretching his arms and flexing his fingers. Medford handed it to him. The Goatman got up and dusted himself off as if the floor were dirtier than his robe.

Bailey got to his feet. "Well," he said. "That was something."

"Thankee, Raggedy," Ward said.

"We'll leave ye now, young fella," Bailey said. "We'll be right upstairs today and down there at the end of the hallway tonight. And we'll bring supper from Cook's."

"No meat for him," Medford said. "No eggs. He eats cheese and vegetables and bread and honey, so far."

Bailey nodded with the air of a man used to surprises, his square, ruddy face expressionless. "You eat flesh, though," he said to Medford.

"Aye. I eat everything."

"C'mon, Ward," Bailey said. "Ward ... hey, what ye doin' there?"

Ward was on the bench, the cover of the squirrel bowl in his hand. He peered into the bowl, poking the sleeping squirrel to see if he could make it move.

"Ward," Bailey said. "Leave that be. Let's go."

Ward looked up at Medford, eyes like an owl's. "'Tis real?"

"No," Medford said. "I carved it."

"By the Book, young fella," Ward said, "that's some carving."

"Ward," Bailey said. "
Now.
"

Ward patted Medford's arm on his way to the door. "That's some carving, young fella," he whispered. He stared in at Medford as Bailey clanged the barred door shut.

Up to this point Medford had been calm ... numb, really. But watching Bailey lock the door, he suddenly understood why the Goatman had writhed so.

"Bailey," he croaked. "Master Constable, I mean. We'll stay right here, I promise. Does the door have to be locked?"

"We never put Clayton Baker in jail that time, Bailey," Ward said.

Bailey made a show of arranging the keys on their ring. "Aye," he said, not looking up. "But you saw that crowd, Ward. 'Tis safer this way."

Ward nodded and, with a final wink at Medford, followed Bailey down the hall.

The Goatman lowered himself onto the floor in the corner. "I don't li-i-ike this."

"It talks!" screamed a voice from the window.

"Bweh-eh-eh!" the Goatman cried, cowering.

Medford stumbled backward and fell onto a hard wooden bench.

The windows were dark with faces peering in: Arvid and Fordy, Hazel Forester and her aunt, Irma Cobbler.
That's who screamed,
Medford thought.

"Make it talk again, Raggedy," said Martin Forester, wedging his face between Arvid and Fordy.

"No-o-o," Irma moaned. "I cant stand to hear it." Her face disappeared and Medford heard her shout, "Come ere, Violet! The thing talks!"

Murmuring arose outside, as if a large crowd were gathering. People took turns squatting down to peer in—except for Arvid, who clung to the bars like a Merchant to a Trade token. "Run-you-in," he said, leering, "mayhap we'll run you out now. Pa says thou almost killed Master Learned. And the horned man butted Ward till he bled."

"Bweh-eh-eh," the Goatman protested, and everybody screamed.

"And lookit that wooden thing there," Irma Cobbler said, pointing at the squirrel bowl. "Did you ever see anything so Unnameable?"

"Why wait for Town Meeting?" Martin said. "Let's send Medford away now."

"I ain't taking nobody out on the water at this hour," Violet Waterman said.

"Who needs a boat?" said a pair of feet. "Let em swim for it."

"All right, folks, all right," a new voice said. "Go home now."

"That boy blew down my grandpa's Tanningbark Tree," a pair of feet protested.

"Don't care what he did. 'Tain't right, worrying at a prisoner like this," Bailey said. "Go home and come back tomorrow, see if there's a meeting."

"There'll be a meeting," Hazel said. "Won't there, Auntie Irma?"

"Get going now, folks," Ward said. "Enough is enough."

Arvid's face disappeared, and the others. Soon all the feet were gone.

"Sorry about that, boy!" Bailey called through the window. "They're gone now. We'll keep an eye out so they don't come back."

"Thanks, Bailey," Medford called back. Ward's face appeared in the window. "Thanks, Ward."

"Nothing to it," Ward said. "You rest up now, young Raggedy." He disappeared.

"Bweh-eh-eh," the Goatman said. "That was scary."

"Aye." Medford sank down on the wooden bench. "'Twas."

"Who sa-a-ays I butted tha-a-at fla-a-atfoot until he bled?" When he was nervous, Medford noticed, the Goatman got a lot more goatish.

"Dexter Tanner said it, I guess. The man who drove the wagon. He tells ... tales."

"Lies, you mean. So he's na-a-amed for what he does? Is a ta-a-anner a lie?"

Medford snorted. "No. But maybe it should be." He decided not to tell the Goatman about tanned hides and where they came from.

"Heh. You could sit around the fi-i-ire and te-e-ell each
other tanners." The Goatman took off his sash and began to polish his horns with it. "Bweh-eh. Wha-a-at will ha-a-appen now?"

Medford tried to get his thoughts unraveled. It was hard to think past those faces at the bars, those harsh voices. "Well, I guess we'll be in here overnight and tomorrow there will be a Town Meeting. And everyone will talk about my carvings and your ... your winds. And then they'll probably send us away to Mainland, forever."

The Goatman stiffened in midpolish. "Who's the-e-ey? Those fla-a-atfoots in the window?"

"No, the Council of Names. There be five Councilors."

"
Councilors.
"

"Aye. They read the Book and tell us what's in it. And they listen to what people think about things and then decide what to do."

"Why do the-e-ey get to do tha-a-at?"

"We vote for them. And then they're Councilors until they get tired or die."

"They will ma-a-ake me leave?"

"Aye, I think so. Why do you care? 'Tis not your home." Medford's throat tightened. "'Tis mine."

"I ca-a-annot go home ye-e-et," the Goatman said. "Even if I wa-a-ant to."

"Why can't you go home?"

"I ha-a-ave not learned enough. I cannot control the wi-i-ind."

Medford thought he understood. "All that story about being on a ramble ... They sent you away because of your wind troubles, didn't they?"

The Goatman gave Medford a very goatish look. "This i-i-is my ramble. But they didn't let me choose where to go. My uncle said I should come to thi-i-is place because you are ... unwindy."

"Unwindy?"

"Locked up, controlling everything. I would do better if I learned some of tha-a-at, he said." The Goatman sighed. "It ha-a-as helped before, the Old Goats say. But the wi-i-inds here are so strong, I can't work them."

"Perhaps if you calmed down. The Book says to take deep breaths."

The Goatman's eyebrows went up in peaks again.

"No, no, 'tis easy," Medford said. "See ... breathe in, hold it, let it go. That's right. Think of something you like. Nutcakes, grass tunes."

The Goatman put his head back and breathed loud. He sounded like a collapsing pile of rocks. "
A-a-ah-hhhh"—
pause—"
hoo-oo'oo. A-a-ah-hhh ... hoo-oo-oo.
"