The Disappearing Dwarf (34 page)

Zippo’s eyes became as big around as melons in the torchlight and were filled with a mixture of surprise and joy and fear. Jonathan disliked having to dabble in hearsay, since Zippo so obviously hung on his every word.

‘Did he mention me?’ Zippo asked, his face full of hope.

‘Who?’

‘My father. The Strawberry Baron. Did he say anything about me?’

‘Of course he did,’ Jonathan said, warming to his subject. ‘Of course. He carried on about you. Told a long story about the prodigal son who comes back after wayward years and is welcomed by his father. Very touching, really, the idea of someone coming round in the end.’ Once again Zippo was momentarily lost in tears. Jonathan felt awful. For one wild moment he was possessed by the idea of denying it all – of revealing that he knew nothing about the Strawberry Baron but a few snatches of rumor and that it was quite possible that Zippo would be rewarded with a poke in the nose if he went home. But the truth now, he quickly saw, wouldn’t serve. It wouldn’t solve Zippo’s dilemma nor would it get him and the Professor and, he hoped, old Ahab out of their scrape. There would be time later to repair any damage, even if he himself had to hunt up the Strawberry Baron and tell
him
the story of the prodigal son.

Zippo wiped his eyes and seemed to buck up a bit, as if something had lit the fires of dauntlessness within his soul.

‘He’s taken your friends.’ Zippo announced suddenly.

‘Taken them!’ Jonathan cried. ‘What friends?’

‘Why the ones in the undersea boat,’ Zippo said. ‘The old wild man and the two elves and the boy with the whirling eyes. Goblins brought them in a half-hour ago. It must have been a savage battle. They were moored right off Boffin Beach, poking around.’

‘Looking for me,’ Jonathan said. ‘How about the wizard? Did he catch the wizard?’ Jonathan decided that since he’d invited Zippo to be a turncoat he might just as well trust him.

Zippo didn’t know anything about any wizard. The old woman had lied last night in the forest. Miles hadn’t left them any message. She knew nothing about Miles. Was afraid of him probably. Miles was at large! A bit of hope surged through Jonathan, but it evaporated again quickly as Zippo’s torch, guttering in its niche in the wall, flared up twice like a dying star and winked out. Zippo trembled visibly as if the dead torch were some sort of omen, as if it hadn’t actually burned out but had been snuffed out purposefully. Jonathan remembered the scattered campfire and the laughter in the fog that night a week past on the outskirts of linkman territory, and he half expected that the little oil lamp burning behind him would sputter out too. But it didn’t. When Zippo saw that there wasn’t any immediate danger of being plunged into darkness he settled down again. ‘They’ll be too late,’ he said, knuckling his brow.

‘Who will?’ Jonathan was having a difficult time following Zippo’s train of thought. Ideas kept derailing, it seemed to him, before they’d had a proper chance to get up a head of steam.

‘The armies,’ Zippo said. ‘Didn’t you just tell me there were armies massing?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Jonathan responded. ‘Why do you say they’ll be too late? Too late for what?’

‘Why, for the siege.’

‘What siege was that?’ Jonathan was more concerned with rescuing his friends than with saving Balumnians from a threatened siege, but he had to be patient.

‘Don’t you know?’ Zippo asked in surprise. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’

‘We’re here to rescue the Squire. That’s all. And while we’re at it, we’re taking you along. You aren’t fit for this sort of life. It doesn’t suit you.’

Zippo remained silent for a moment, thinking. ‘This is tolerably strange,’ he said finally. ‘You say you don’t know anything about the siege. About the goblins and monsters and ghosts and ghouls and such that have been gathering, or of the shadow that’s come over the south coast in the last year.’

‘Only rumor,’ Jonathan said. ‘That and what I saw on the river and in the woods last night.’

To Jonathan’s surprise, Zippo produced his marble bag again. ‘You knew what these were.’

‘That’s right. I thought everyone did.’

‘Do you know whose likeness is on this coin?’ Zippo held up a gold piece minted in linkman territory.

‘That’s King Soot,’ Jonathan said. ‘The Squire’s father. He’s king of the linkmen.’

‘What’s a linkman?’

‘Something like an elf,’ Jonathan said. ‘Gump and Bufo, who were in the undersea device, are linkmen. Don’t you have any of them here?’

‘No, nor marbles either. Where did you say you were from?’

‘I didn’t say,’ Jonathan said. He could almost see wheels spinning and lightbulbs blinking on behind Zippo’s eyes.

‘My old master, Nimmo the wizard – I studied under him for a year before I met the Dwarf – told me once that there was another world,’ Zippo said slowly. ‘But it didn’t make any sense. He was on his way toward turning into a bird then, and I thought he’d gone spiritual on me. Then when I came here two years later, I saw the Dwarf coming and going through the iron door in the cellar. Do you know about that door?’

‘Yes,’ Jonathan said. ‘And you’re right about it.’

‘The door disappears,’ Zippo continued, ‘for months at a time. I tried to follow him once but I couldn’t open it. Spells wouldn’t budge it. That’s why I thought you knew about the siege. You understand. I began to suspect that you were from someplace else.’

‘Back up a bit!’ Jonathan ordered. ‘What about the blasted siege? Are you telling me that it isn’t a siege against Landsend or Tweet Village or anything?’

‘No. I don’t much know
what
, but it has something to do with where
you
come from, wherever that is.’

Jonathan stood there studying for a moment, and any way he looked at it, from up and down or back and forth, it seemed quite likely that he and the Professor and Escargot had made a ghastly error at Hightower Castle six months previously when they had allowed Selznak the Dwarf to bargain for his life and had let him go. They had assumed that they had foiled his plots, reduced him to a minor villain, taken the wind out of his sails. But they hadn’t. Not by a long nose, as Bufo and Gump would say. They’d merely interrupted a broad and elaborate scheme that had gone right on along as soon as Selznak had gained his freedom. If it would have done any good, Jonathan would have kicked himself. But of course that wouldn’t answer. He’d have to kick Selznak instead, and the sooner the better.

Then it struck him why Selznak had been so desperate to retrieve the Lumbog globe from the Squire. Kidnapping the Squire had been mere deviltry, but taking the globe had been utter necessity. The globe would become, unless something were done quickly, an open door by which Selznak’s creatures could flood into High Valley, probably at first into the dark depths of the Goblin Wood. Sending them through the door in the cellar and, one by one, up the iron ladder wouldn’t have served – that much was obvious. Selznak had to have the globe.

Zippo stood outside the cell door watching Jonathan ponder. He seemed very nervous – more so all the time. ‘Well?’ he asked finally.

‘That’s a good question,’ Jonathan responded. ‘How in the world do I get out of here? Can you find a key? You can palm cards and watches well enough. Steal Selznak’s keys.’

Zippo held a long iron key aloft. ‘I already have.’

Jonathan’s heart gave a lunge at the sudden sight of it. ‘Get me out of here, then. Let’s go.’

‘What will we do?’ Zippo asked as he fumbled at the lock with the old key. ‘We haven’t any plan.’

‘Whenever I have a plan it goes nuts,’ Jonathan told him. ‘Let’s just move.’

The door clicked open, and Jonathan stormed through it. Abruptly he stopped and started back after the lamp that hung on the wall. Then he decided that he didn’t altogether want to be a beacon, so instead he pulled the torch out of its mooring, yanked the oily, burned debris off the end of it, and wound up with a two-foot length of heavy wood – just the thing for whacking goblins. Together they set out down the dark corridor and up the stairs, Zippo in front.

‘First, we’ve got to spring my friends,’ Jonathan said. ‘Especially the bearded man from the submarine.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ Zippo replied, creeping along. ‘They’re spread out all over the place.’

They reached the top of the stairs. Off to the right lay the doorway through which Jonathan and the skeleton troupe had filed hours before. To the left lay a great hall, open and bright as day. It seemed to Jonathan that he’d come to the end of his sneaking about. There was nothing left but to rush in shouting. It always seemed to come to that. Zippo, however, didn’t agree.

‘I’ll scout it out. Wait here.’ Zippo stepped into the hall with an air of nonchalance about him. He got about ten feet along when he realized that he was still holding the big iron key in his right hand, the crenelated end of it thrusting through his fingers. He stopped with a gasp, turned, and threw it at Jonathan; the key hit him in the chest, then clanked to the stones below. Jonathan stooped and picked it up, shoving it into his pocket.

Zippo’s nonchalant air was dashed entirely. He glanced around him furtively, crouching a bit as if by hunkering down and making himself small he’d be less visible. But there were no shouts of accusation – there was no noise at all. No one was about. Zippo waved his arm like a windmill, and Jonathan, hefting his club, crept out of the shadows. Along with Zippo, he hurried across the hall toward another corridor.

A long stone stairway wound up out of the hall to their right. As they dashed past it, three sharp barks rang out, echoing down the stairwell. Jonathan continued on into the darkness of the next corridor, but there he pulled up short and listened. Once again, he heard barking from upstairs.

‘Where’s that coming from?’ he asked, recognizing Ahab’s bark. ‘Are there cells upstairs?’

‘No.’ Zippo whispered, shaking his head. ‘All the cells are in the dungeons. There’s a laboratory upstairs and a bunch of little cold rooms that haven’t anything but ghosts in them. The Dwarf spends half the night wandering through them making conjurations and casting spells.’

Jonathan stood thinking for a moment. ‘A laboratory is it?’

‘I’m afraid that’s the case.’

‘Let’s have a look at it then,’ Jonathan said decisively. He turned and headed for the stairs.

‘Oh no,’ Zippo cried. ‘The Dwarf is sure to be there in the middle of some horrible experiment. He’s a vivisectionist. We mustn’t go into the laboratory. He’ll have no mercy on us!’

Ahab barked again. Jonathan leaped up the stairs two at a time, and Zippo was drawn up after him, both of them winding around and around before emerging onto a landing. Through a dusty window Jonathan had a brief glimpse, as he dashed past, of a distant beach and lines of green, glassy breakers. He became aware just then that his heart was racing along at a gallop and that his breath was
shooshing
in and out loud enough to alert anyone within earshot that someone had just come dashing up the stairs. Zippo must have been thinking the same thing, for he had pressed both hands over his mouth and was breathing through them in little gasping whistles.

They simmered down a bit as they stood on the landing, but before too many moments had passed Jonathan led on toward a door that stood open a ways. Growling and barking sounded through the door, and for that Jonathan was glad. The noise would help hide the sound of their breathing and their footsteps on the stone floor.

Jonathan hugged the wall and eased along toward the open door. When Ahab was momentarily quiet, Jonathan stopped. He could hear low laughter, the sound of someone chuckling to himself. It seemed to him that the laughter was directed at him and Zippo, that someone, the Dwarf obviously, was watching them sneak along and was about to drop a net over their heads or loose an army of goblins on them. But no goblins appeared. Ahab began growling again and Jonathan crept closer, peering into the laboratory through a crack between the door and the jamb. He was afraid that Ahab would sense his presence and give off his growling, but that didn’t happen. Ahab was too busy being angry over having been shoved inside a little cage against the wall.

Ahab’s cage was one of many. On either side of him were an opossum and a pig, and above him was the biggest toad Jonathan had ever seen, blinking in a toad’s befuddled way. Beneath him were raccoons and badgers and one long-nosed senseless-looking beast that Jonathan couldn’t identify – some sort of Balumnian peccary. None of them had half Ahab’s spirit.

A long wooden table sat in the center of the room. Above it hung suspended apparatus – coiled devices and tubular complications that led away toward bubbling glass jars steaming and popping along the far wall. Gloomy sunlight filtered in through what must have been a skylight in the roof. Dangling from the ceiling were half a dozen human skeletons in various states of disrepair as if their bones had been systematically removed. On beyond them, against another wall, were immense glass jars filled with a clear greenish fluid. Floating within were bits and pieces of human bodies – hands and feet and internal organs and, in one, a wide-eyed head with black curly hair floating roundabout it. The thing’s mouth was open as if it were trying to scream in horror, and it seemed to be looking right at Jonathan through the crack in the door, just as it had looked at him several nights before when it had been thrust up at him by the ghoul rowing the boat through the fog on the Tweet River.