Link Arms with Toads! (25 page)

“
No there isn’t. Sorry,” I said.

“
Shame. Why am I always so gullible?”

“
Caution is a keyword. So is prudence. Caution and prudence. Never believe everything you’re told.”

“
It looks like a pyramid, by the way,” he added.

“
The non-sequitur store?”

“
Among other things, yes.”

I swallowed a nut. “Just looks like one?”

“
Is one,” he corrected.

“
That’s useful. I’m grateful,” I said.

He nodded. “I’m going to ask you a serious question and I want you to give me your best answer. Tree hugging. Comforting or traumatic for the tree? I mean, hippies often quote hugging a tree as an ultimate example of spreading love and peaceful energy. But I wonder. For the tree it might be a nasty experience, making it think it’s being strangled by a parasite like a fig. Choke other trees, figs do.”

“
I don’t know, I just don’t know,” I said.

“
Fair enough. I respect your honesty. Tomorrow I’ll abandon my own quest and escort you on yours. My original plan was to give the owner of the wig emporium a savage beating for the trouble he causes my kind but I no longer have the heart for it.”

“
Just as well if you can’t find the place.”

“
Life’s too short anyway. In the language of my country I’m not called
yeti
but
metoh-kangmi
. Not that it matters. I also suspect that trees hate to be embraced. They aren’t bears.”

I noticed two long poles in the shadows. “What are those things there? Are they stilts? Are they yours?”

“
That’s right. My stilts. Used them to get here, to stride over boundary walls, of which there are dozens or hundreds in every direction. Walking over difficult terrain is easier with stilts, Mr Heckoid, and is good fun too. Considerable skill is required to attain speeds faster than a tiger or stoat, and stilt running is a major yeti accomplishment, but it’s not confined to our species. The human peasants of La forêt des Landes in Gascony have the ability too, so I’m informed.”

“
Can you juggle?” I pressed.

“
Never cared to learn that. Nor the swallowing of swords. Finish your nuts and get some sleep, you’ll need energy for tomorrow. There are wild dogs on the loose, the descendants of domesticated breeds whose kennels fell apart generations ago. The fire will discourage them, but if you need to get up in the middle of the night and relieve yourself, don’t wander too far into the bushes. They’re hungry.”

“
The bushes or the dogs?” I shivered.

He laughed at that, the great friendly brute, and the brief remainder of my conscious evening passed in making myself as snug as possible while the echoes of his mirth fanned the flames with diminishing impetus. Nuts in belly, dry leaves for bedding, clump of grass for a pillow, I quickly fell asleep despite the early hour. The stars shone without twinkling, probably because the twigs were crackling on the fire, and twinkling
and
crackling is an overseasoning of backdrop.

Worms moved in the world under my body while I slept. Humans drill the soil for what it conceals, worms for what it is. Who’s the fool, who the brains, in that set up? I dreamed vivid dreams all night. First I dreamed I was sliding down the side of a pyramid, sacred crocodiles snapping in the river, desert sands drifting into dunes on the horizon, while animal-faced gods played musical instruments.

Then I dreamed I fell down a fissure and landed inside the pyramid. It was pitch black and I was bruised and nervous. I wanted to shout for help, but before I could make any noise, a voice cried, “No more non-sequiturs in stock! Come back some other soup!” Suddenly I felt more disappointed than ever before. A big furry hand shook me gently. This didn’t belong to the dream. I opened moist eyes.

“
Dawn already,” said the yeti with a smile.

“
Rosy fingered. Thumbs up.”

“
Did you sleep like a log?” he asked.

“
Like a transitional passage,” I corrected. “Are you boiling peppermint leaves for breakfast tea, Mr U?”

“
Please don’t be so formal. Call me MeMeMeMeMe. You’re my guest and my responsibility. Now then. There’s no way you’ll keep up on your own legs when we set off, so I’ll carry you. My upraised arms will serve as
your
stilts. Hope you have a good head for heights. Especially as we’ll be mounting some lofty walls.”

We sipped the tea, which turned out to be an infusion of betel leaves rather than peppermint, then embarked on our journey. The yeti’s strong hands grasped my ankles and held me aloft while he slipped his hairy feet into the straps of his own stilts and hopped upright with incredible agility. We set off at alarming speed.

“
What’s the weather like up there?” he joked.

“
I can see for miles. I’m drunk with freedom and wind and smeared in the glow of the rising sun, blowing kisses at the fading stars, an emperor of a backdoor rainforest surveying his emerald realm from the vantage of stilted stilts. That’s how I am.”

“
Yes, but what’s it like?” he pressed.

I couldn’t answer, for I was too exhilarated, too invigorated, too dizzy, and only with the most extreme effort could I recall that my duty was to watch for the non-sequitur store. It wasn’t in evidence. No sign of the wig emporium either. Just gardens.

We bounded over one decaying wall into a rockery where cacti in their sappy sentience daydreamed about spiking ears or getting students drunk and disgusted in cahoots with maguey worms. Probably. The vicious dogs that MeMeMeMeMe had warned me about were plentiful here but with their rabid drools safely below.

Another wall, another garden. An endless patchwork of gardens with a wall between each one. Some walls were higher than others. One was so high it could only be reached by using a leaning elm as a ramp. We strode along the top, searching for a way down the other side. At that moment I was the most elevated thing in the circumference of my vision. Or was I? A shadow smothered my pride.

“
What the heck?” cried MeMeMeMeMe.

“
Hot air balloon,” I replied.

“
It’s very low. Ask directions from it.”

I took his advice. The basket swung next to my head, its occupant so close to my mouth that I was easily understood when I asked, “Is there a non-sequitur store hereabouts?”

Lower drifted the globe until I could see that the basket was stuffed to the brim with antique junk and curious artistic objects, tools, lamps, coils of rope, robes, machines, bottles, kettles, books and similar random items and the balloonist was almost lost among them. Doffing his hat to expose another hat, he responded:

“
Haven’t seen one, but I can sell you a non-sequitur myself if you’re so keen on acquiring them. I have a single pristine example left. I’m a sort of aerial bric-a-brac merchant.”

“
May I inspect the product on offer?”

“
No time for that. Due to my dependency on the wind, which is fickle at the best of times, my business has to be conducted rapidly, without the standard niceties of examination and haggling. You’ll have to purchase it on the strength of my recommendation alone. But it’s in perfect condition and won’t ever let you down.”

And he quoted a surprising sum at me.

I wanted to ignore the temptation and turn away, but either my hand or wallet suddenly developed a mind of its own, for I found myself passing a fistful of new banknotes over.

“
Remember prudence,” MeMeMeMeMe hissed.

“
Don’t worry,” I said, “for if the non-sequitur turns out to be deficient, I’ll simply reach out with my stick and thrash this conman to an excessive degree. That’s my insurance.”

“
I can tell I’m dealing with a shrewd customer,” smirked the balloonist approvingly. Then he rummaged among the miscellaneous objects at his feet and picked up a box, small but very heavy, made of iridium or some other awfully dense metal.

“
Catch!” he shrieked as he threw it at me.

That box nearly knocked me off my perch, but a yeti’s grip is mythical as well as legendary, so I fully absorbed the impact without plummeting to my destruction. Free of its expensive ballast, the balloon rose into the sky with fantastic velocity and I realised this was the balloonist’s normal method of escaping retribution.

I craned my neck up at a steep angle and cupped my hands around my mouth. “Who exactly are you?”

“
Tommy Tindertub,” he called back faintly, and I was satisfied when I heard that, because it gave me a definite name to curse if it turned out I’d been swindled by a charlatan.

Then I opened his box and looked inside.

*

The streets of Huknibonk-on-Stench are narrow and cobbled and often in the festive season flooded with cheap wine that pours into the low plazas from the high taverns that crowd about the citadel hill. A man who climbs up at those times ought to wear rubber boots, unless the drying of socks is a special hobby of his, and the same applies to women. Discrimination of gender counts for naught in that place when it comes to drunken glee and immodest revels. They are all ravers. The smoking of crystallised cocaine is also popular but less common.

The city smells rotten not just because of the human waste tipped from open windows out of traditional chamber pots decorated with scenes from the writings of the Bad Ochre Poets but chiefly due to its location above a stinking marsh. The hidden quicksands still gurgle and gulp and buildings sink another inch every month. Some authorities even attest that wills-o’-the-wisp seep up in thin spirals through cracks in the pavements to dance without music on the longest night, but these ‘authorities’ are inspectors of tax and trusted by nobody at all.

The worst of the Bad Ochre Poets was probably Cassius Befuddle. His complete works can only be borrowed from public libraries with a special permit, rarely issued, and nobody ever talks about him, despite the pots in every bedroom that feature illustrations from his sonnets. But this present tale isn’t concerned with his existence, so no secrets will have to be prised from sealed lips, no confidences broken. Prudence Mooncup is the main character instead, a dreamy student at a decaying university that is nearly always closed for another holiday.

Prudence had chosen aeronautics as her subject, for she greatly craved a career in the sky, but the professors who only occasionally turned up to deliver lectures already knew less about that science than did she. Full of liquid and vaporous stimulants, those gowned dunces drew simple wings, engines and propellers on the blackboard with chalk and made derogatory remarks about landing gear and ailerons. Then they would yawn, abandon the lesson with a shrug of malnourished shoulders and devote themselves to the consumption of more wine.

Our heroine remained dissatisfied with this style of teaching, but there was no place for her to lodge complaints. The chancellor of the university was a drunkard bigger than the rest, an old soak with literal gin tears who hoped to lighten the duties of the professors in his charge still further and reduce his own working hours to zero. His goal was for the university to open half a day every year and no more. His ears were deafer than lemon slices to Prudence’s protests, his contemptuous spittle like old tonic water. She could expect no aid from him.

And so she progressed painfully slowly with her studies. Most of what she learned came from observation and experiment. She watched the few birds brave enough to fly over Huknibonk-on-Stench and made accurate notes from which she was able to design and construct model ornithopters that flapped over filthy roofs like severed applause. But always her flying machines rapidly ran out of power and crashed. One midnight a drunken tax inspector was felled by her analogue of an owl and remained prostrate until the end of the financial year.

Something had to be done. An answer must be found. But how, where, when? She often roamed the streets, wading in wine, ignoring the hisses and whispers from shadowy doorways, never with a fixed destination in mind, until she found herself back at the stairway that spiralled tightly to her lonely attic. But on one occasion she strayed further than usual, ended up on the steepest slope of the citadel hill, sat on a boulder and wept over the wasted opportunities below. Snatches of inebriated song reached her, the fumes of champagne and crack.

“
All I want is a solution to the riddle of excessive power consumption in heavier-than-air flying devices based on the flapping wing technique of nocturnal birds of prey!” she wailed.

“
Is that really so much to ask for?” she added.

Then she frowned deeply. “Wait a moment! I don’t believe it was me who made that second remark. It came from above, from a male throat, and I’m down below and female!”

She gazed up. A hot air balloon was descending slowly and it finally halted very close to her head, hovering there with its burner reduced to a minimal flame. The occupant of the wicker basket wore two simultaneous hats at least and introduced himself with a courtesy restricted by the mass of bizarre junk around him. He resembled a peg inserted into an eccentric uncle’s pocket, you know the kind I mean. Prudence was less shocked and intrigued by his arrival than might be expected, for now she was a jaded woman, beyond simple reactions.

“
You’re in luck,” announced Tommy Tindertub.

“
Why’s that?” she sighed.

“
Because I have just the thing you’re after. But it’ll cost you dear, for I desire the object myself. Yet I’m a trader through and through, so I’ll give you a chance to purchase it first.”