The Elfin Ship Page 9

  ‘Pah, sir! I say,’ came a piping voice from within the wreck of a pub, and a gaunt sort of a man in a tall hat poked his head out a window. ‘Nothing, my friends, is done with no purpose. Goblins haven’t the sense to do anything themselves. They’re set into motion and caper away until someone sends them home.’

  Jonathan bowed, and Dooly stepped behind him and goggled at the man. ‘A wizard!’ Dooly exclaimed, astounded.

  ‘At your service, sirs,’ said the wizard. ‘How perceptive of you to notice. I suppose my hat rather gives me away. Something of a beacon, I don’t doubt.’ His hat was pretty much that, tall and cone-shaped with stars and crescent moons all over it. All in all it couldn’t have been more wizardish. It kept sliding over his brow and back down the rear of his head as if it belonged to Gilroy Bastable. The wizard yanked at it once or twice, then disappeared, reappearing momentarily with a bit of elastic which he attached to either side of the hat and tucked under his chin.

  ‘Makes me go blue,’ he said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Jonathan, not knowing how else to respond.

  ‘But if one must go blue, he’d better pop right at it and see it through. No use expecting the cap to stay on of its own. It’ll have its way or know the reason why unless I lash it on with a strap and choke.’

  ‘Perhaps if it weren’t quite so tall,’ offered Jonathan. ‘But then I know nothing of wizard hats. I suppose it must be as tall as that.’

  ‘Sometimes even taller. I have this extension.’ The wizard pulled a sort of tube with a carved ivory baby’s face on top out of his cloak and attached it to the peak of the cap. The whole works balanced there like a flag pole atop a tower. The wizard looked ponderously uncomfortable and began to gasp, finally giving up the effort and holding the cap upright with his hands.

  ‘Frightful nuisance, this, but a wizard needs such props if he’s to be more than a carnival magician with a deck of playing cards tied together with string. And speaking of cards, allow me to give you my own.’

  Jonathan took the proffered card and read the name aloud for Dooly’s benefit. ‘Miles the Magician,’ he read.

  ‘Meelays, if you will. It sounds rather commonplace otherwise. If you stress the first syllable and accent the final e it gives it an exotic flavor. Rather an oceanic touch, I believe.’

  ‘Meelays then,’ said Jonathan pronouncing it in the odd way the wizard had requested. In truth, Meelays sounded about twice as foolish as plain Miles which is a simple and honest and pleasant sort of name. ‘Are you the only one about? No traders anymore?’

  ‘Traders, is it? No, I don’t suppose there are. Haven’t been for nearly four months.’

  ‘Been deserted that long, eh? Four months?’

  ‘That’s about how I judge it. I’ve only been here three though.’

  ‘You’ve seen it pretty well go to bits then, I’d guess,’ said Jonathan. ‘Big storm or something?’

  ‘Or something is just about the case. I believe you were hinting fairly strongly at it a moment ago. In fact, I couldn’t help overhearing your mention of goblins. One wouldn’t normally expect to find them outside the Wood, at least not in any quantity. But such times as these aren’t what a wizard like myself would call normal. No, normal is hardly the word.’ The wizard dismantled his cap and hooked the pinnacle with the ivory head to a band inside his robe which at one time had been of a salmon pink color. Now it was simply brown and needed a cleaning.

  ‘I’ve heard a great deal these past weeks about “strange times” and such,’ said Jonathan, ‘and can only advise you to come up to Twombly Town for a bit. We don’t much go for alterations of any nature; changes in the weather and the seasons are enough for us.’

  ‘And for me, dear sir!’ the wizard cried, spreading his hands before him in a gesture that looked as if it was intended to assure Jonathan and Dooly of his innocence. ‘But none of us,’ he continued mysteriously, ‘are immune from adventure and change when such things come calling. Do you follow me?’

  Jonathan nodded, more out of politeness than anything else. Then Dooly, in a state of marvel over the wizard’s cap and sure it provided some nature of wonderful talent, asked, ‘But did you send everyone away? Make ’em dry up and sail off like bugs, Mr Wizard, sir, if I might ask, as it were?’

  ‘Oh indeed no,’ replied the wizard. ‘Didn’t you just understand me to say it was goblins? The traders wandered off, one by one, long ago. Six months maybe. And there weren’t more than twenty or so at the station anyway. Most of them, I suppose, went downriver to the sea, being sailors by nature as well as trade. I passed a raftload, in fact, downriver, and they were awfully tight-mouthed about their reasons for closing up shop. It seems there was this dwarf,’ the wizard said in low tones. And Jonathan, fearing that he was going to touch on that very subject, rolled his eyes. ‘Do you know of him then?’ asked the wizard, ‘I shouldn’t wonder. We’ll all know of him, I fear, before this game is played out.’

  ‘Who is this dwarf?’ asked Jonathan. ‘And how can he go about chasing folks up and down the river? Why doesn’t someone up and whack him once or twice with an oak branch – teach him to go parading around scaring folks so?’

  ‘Don’t think no one has tried. But he’s not your common dwarf – not a field dwarf from the coast or a mason from the White Mountains. He’s from the Enchanted Forest, and he seems to have a power over the beasts of the land. He can stop the wind from blowing,’ said the wizard darkly, ‘and cause the fog to rise at the worst possible time – and he has powers even more terrifying than those. They say that he can make the land go still – freeze men’s souls. And they’re right, I’ve seen him do it.’ The wizard gave his robes a bit of a swirl, and the tattered hem danced about for a moment even though the air was still. Dooly stepped behind Jonathan again and peered over his shoulder.

  Jonathan felt as if he were just beginning to make out the pattern in a very complicated spider web, but that to see it any more clearly he would be compelled to get nearer than he’d like. It all gave him a creeping feeling roundabout the small of his back. He decided that he and Dooly needed to be furthering their business. The poor Professor was bedridden on the raft while the two of them passed the time of day with a wizard who had nothing but bad news. ‘See here,’ said Jonathan, ‘I’m afraid that Dooly and I must be off. We’ve a sick friend to attend to.’

  ‘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 wi
zard 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?’