The Elfin Ship (11 page)

It seemed that the moon no sooner sank behind the Elfin Highlands than the sun came peering up over the White Mountains and it was morning. As the Professor had predicted, they had gotten little sleep that night; but they
had
gotten their raft back and could feel a hint of honest pride in having set to flight a party of marauding goblins.

The river carried them along toward the sea, and for three days they did little else but eat, sleep, and throw out an occasional fishing line.

Professor Wurzle found that his arms and chest had been scratched fairly thoroughly during his tussle with the goblins, and the long red scrapes insisted upon becoming infected, swelling to nasty-looking welts. The Professor hobbled along gritting his teeth each time he moved, but demanded to be allowed to take his turn at watch with the others.

They were miles from Willowood Station when it became clear that something had to be done for the Professor. He had, finally, taken to bed, and food and water were brought to him. He was so thoroughly sore that he even ached, he explained, when just blinking his eyes.

‘I’m afraid, Jonathan,’ he said that afternoon when they were but a few short miles above Willowood, ‘that I’ll need more than rest to make a recovery from these scratches. The goblin must have had some filthy substance on his hands.’

‘Ah, yes,’ agreed Jonathan, who was at a bit of a loss. The only disinfectant on board was a sort of salve that smelled of eucalyptus and didn’t prove to be of much benefit. ‘Between Stooton-on-River and the sea there’s not even an outpost. What with Willowood gone and Stooton, according to old Gosset, gone too, I’m not sure where to find any medicines. I’ve been thinking, though, that whoever looted Willowood no doubt made off with valuables, but probably not with medicines. There might still be a few lying about the old apothecary. What thief would steal medicines?’

‘What thief indeed?’ asked the Professor. ‘But I don’t believe that it will matter much anyway in this case. When do we pass Willowood Wharf?’

‘In about an hour.’

‘Then put in, boy, put in. Have you any knowledge of herb lore?’

‘Only in making tea.’

‘Then I’ll have to explain a bit. Fetch up that pen and paper and write this down. I’ll need arrowroot first off and the flowers of oxalis, about a handful, and a good deal of spearmint. Can you find such?’

‘So far, so good, Professor.’

‘Then,’ the Professor continued, ‘I’ll need a half dozen of those yellow tree fungi – the ones that look like clam shells and have the pink dots all up and down one side. I shouldn’t wonder if you have a difficult time finding them. Look on the underside of old, fallen hemlocks.’

Old, fallen hemlocks,’ Jonathan wrote dutifully, ‘underside. How large are these fungi, Professor?’

‘About the diameter of a man’s head, when they’re ripe. If you find them much larger they’re useless. They go all to slime when you touch them. Slimy ones are no good at all.’

‘No slime,’ wrote Jonathan.

‘And then I’ll need a jar of cobweb – dusty cobweb if you can manage – and a half dozen little axolotls, preferably speckled ones.’

Jonathan shook his head as if amazed. ‘Will this accomplish the cure, Professor, all this vegetation and such?’

‘I hope so. I got the recipe from a wandering bunjo man who came through town years ago. Claimed he had beans that would grow into houses. A lot of foolery I told him.’

Of course,’ said Jonathan. Of course.’

‘But I couldn’t argue with his poultice. No one can deny the curative properties of fungi and axolotls.’

‘No one would dare,’ Jonathan assented.

No sooner had they settled on the recipe list than Willowood hove into view on a distant headland. The wharf, which had once been the center of most of the valley’s river trade, was smashed to bits. Broken pilings jutted through the shallow river water but supported nothing but birds. Only a small section of dock remained whole, and it had been hacked up and was leaning in such a way as to make it of doubtful use. But it was the only place to dock so Jonathan angled in toward it. Dooly perched on the bow with the painter, ready to leap ashore and tie up.

For a moment Jonathan considered the possibility of tieing up to one of the pilings twenty or thirty feet off shore and paddling the coracle ashore. The raft would be a bit safer from deviltry that way. But then it was true that whatever sort of fiends were likely to be lurking about the station could just as easily steal the coracle and paddle out to the raft, so Jonathan figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. They tied up at the dock.

The Professor lay on the bunk covered with several blankets against the chill. He had a mug of tea, some cheese, and a wrinkled apple for lunch. Beside the bunk was a good, stout oak truncheon should there be uninvited guests. Dooly and Jonathan stuck their heads in at the door and waved goodbye, then tromped off along the path toward the remains of the station.

The boathouse beyond the dock was a wreck. The roof had caved in and it looked as if someone had set in to build a cabin and then slipped up and put the roof of a lean-to on it. The windows were absolutely gone. There were only a few shards of glass laying about. Planks of ship-lap had been torn out of the walls and dashed to bits; they lay scattered outside. All in all, the boathouse wasn’t much good any longer.

The several buildings that had been Willowood Station were in much the same condition as the boathouse. Roofs had collapsed, doors were broken and dangling from ruined hinges, walls were caved in, and the wind blew along through everything as if it were meant to. Nothing remained in the houses but broken furniture and ragged curtains. Food and clothing and everything of value had disappeared. Dark weeds sprouted through collapsed stoops and stairways, and forest vines crept in and out of broken windows and chimneys as if the forest were reclaiming the town for its own. And over all hung a dreadful silence that was broken only by the cries of an occasionakbird. Dooly was certain ghosts were about but didn’t let on to Jonathan for fear that he would agree.

‘What do you suppose, Mr Cheeser, sir, about this here wreckage? Was it a hurricane that came through?’

‘I don’t believe so, Dooly,’ Jonathan replied. ‘Although I rather wish it were. But what confounds me is that everyone is gone. I don’t want to be morbid or anything of the sort, but one would suppose that there might be such a thing as a body or two left lying about, if you see what I mean?’

‘Maybe the storm blew ’em all away down the river. Just sent ‘em flying like bugs.’

‘That’s one possibility, surely,’ Jonathan said. ‘But something, as they’d say at Seaside, is fishy here. What storm knocks the corner posts out of a house simply to allow the roof to cave in? And what sort of wind pulls entire planks out of walls and takes the time to smash them against things and break them into splinters? Craziness is what it is. And the worst of craziness, too.’

‘Like them goblins all burning up and shouting,’ Dooly offered by way of illustration, ‘even after we put ’em in the drink.’

‘Exactly like that,’ Jonathan agreed.

‘Pah!’

‘Excuse me?’ Jonathan sounded surprised.

‘I didn’t say it,’ said Dooly. ‘I thought you did.’

‘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.’