The Elfin Ship (18 page)

‘Perhaps we should leave whoever it is alone,’ Jonathan suggested. ‘Let them have a bit of fun. Jack-o’-lanterns don’t amount to a bit. We’d best stay together here and wait for the sun.’

‘That’s right,’ said Bufo. ‘It’s a good idea to be in the open at night. No one with any sense goes prowling about in the woods.’

The Professor wasn’t convinced. ‘This all strikes me as damnably familiar. It reminds me, in fact, of a poem that an ape up in Little Beddlington used to chant. His master was a dwarf, a crafty-looking sort with a great cap and eyepatch. The ape would shout “The Madman’s Lament” as clearly as you or I, unless, of course, it was a trick of ventriloquism. There was another poem he’d chant – you know which ape I mean, Jonathan – but I can’t remember just how it went. Something about pumpkins in trees and a great deal of cheese.’

‘I think I know it,’ said Bufo. ‘Although it’s strange that it would mean anything to an ape. If it’s the one I believe it to be, it was written by Lum Blimp in “The Song of Ildor’s Domain”. Tell me if this is it:

‘That was it,’ cried the Professor. ‘That was it exactly.’ And he scratched his head in wonder.

The goblin drumming and gonging rumbled along until one by one the various rafters and linkmen forgot it was even there and began to nod off and fall asleep. Jonathan, fearful the fires would burn themselves out, piled on most of the remaining brush before finally turning in, grateful for the loan of one of Bufo’s blankets and for the company of the steady Ahab, who nestled in beside him.

It seemed that for hours he was haunted with the same fitful dream. He was captive, in the dream, within a great house, many stories tall and with long, dim, and very wide stairways throughout that he seemed to be perpetually climbing in search of a way out. He happened, finally, upon the trapdoor of an attic that promised the chance of escape. But the attic, once he pulled himself up through the trap, was cluttered with ancient furniture and dusty, rolled carpets and such a pile of antique clutter that he was forced to worm his way along through it, always squinting to peer through the twilit distance for a door into the open night.

Finally, in the midst of the attic, Ahab seemed to be barking up a storm, not a bad thing, really, since the dream was giving Jonathan the creeps. He called to Ahab to come and show him the way out, but Ahab simply continued to bark. Then Jonathan was shaken awake by the Professor only to discover that he lay wrapped in a blanket by the glowing embers of a burned-down fire and that Ahab was actually barking.

The Professor pointed toward the heavens where a cloud or two still scudded along and where the moon had traveled across the sky and fell away toward the treetops along the Elfin Highlands. At first Jonathan thought his eyes were still full of sleep and that what his mind told him he saw was a figment. But then the Professor obviously saw it too, and so, apparently, did Mr Bufo and the Squire, both of whom seemed strangely unperturbed.

There, sailing through the channels between the islands of clouds was a ship. It was awfully far away – no more really than a shadow on the winds. It was not an airship like that of the elves, but a rigged ship of the sort you’d expect to see plying the trade lanes beyond the Pirate Isles. The galleon tossed upon currents of air rather than water. Painted sails billowed out along the masts and glowed for a moment in the light of the moon. Jonathan thought he could see sailors, such as they were, scurrying about the decks. The four of them watched as the ship sailed earthward, disappearing from sight beyond the distant hills.

The night suddenly seemed strangely quiet, and Jonathan became aware that the goblin drums had ceased to pound. There was no hint of any far-off fires, only the dark woods in the distance and the broad Oriel running through the night toward the sea.

‘The drumming stopped when the ship appeared in the sky. Stopped dead, Jonathan, and the fires flickered out almost as quick. There’s some sort of elf magic afoot, if you ask me, and that’s something I’ll not complain of. Better elf magic than goblin magic’

Jonathan agreed. The Squire, smiling broadly, said, ‘It’s Mr Blump with a gift for the Squire. Blump, Blump, Blump, Blump.’

His chatter made no sense to Jonathan, but Bufo agreed. Yellow Hat woke up and asked what all the commotion was about, but Bufo told him to shut up and go back to sleep, which he did. Ahab looked for a moment as if he were going to do the same, but then leaped up and, with a yip, bounded across to the far side of the raft and began scrabbling furiously at it, sniffing along the kegs on the repaired starboard side. He seemed so earnest and worked up over the whole thing that Jonathan and the Professor stepped across to see what the dog had managed to corner. They caught a brief glimpse of a strange animal, about the size of a squirrel but unlike any squirrel either of them could remember seeing, scurrying away into the river and disappearing beneath the dark surface. It seemed, Jonathan remarked, to have had the head of a beaver balanced on the little body of a squirrel and was, as the Professor would have said, damnably odd. Ahab wasn’t half interested enough to follow it into the Oriel, so he clumped back to the fireside and fell asleep.

‘What was it?’ Jonathan asked.

‘I’ve no idea,’ the Professor replied, ‘but it’s been having a go at the ropes. See here.’

And sure enough, there were the lashings, chewed to the point where a particularly sizable wavelet might well spring the whole thing loose. ‘Well I’m awake anyway,’ said the Professor, and he rummaged around and came up with the remainder of the coil of rope. In gray light of dawn the Professor and Jonathan made the corner of the raft secure once more, both of them troubled by the appearance of the little beast that had seemed intent only on sabotaging their craft.

They shook Dooly awake just as the sun peeped up over the hills to the east and called Ahab aboard. Then with Squire Myrkle, Bufo, Yellow Hat and Stick-a-bush pushing and pulling the raft, they prompted the thing into the river and let the current carry them slowly out toward midstream. On the rise above the meadow lay the ruined canoe, and dotted about the green below little pondlets caught the light of the morning sun and sparkled. The linkmen waved a cheerful goodbye, shouting that they’d see who’d get to Seaside first, although it was certain that, barring mishap, the raft would sail in long before the linkmen could get there on foot, toting their nearly empty and frightfully impractical baskets.

Jonathan considered the wisdom of introducing them to the idea of knapsacks sometime, but then perhaps linkmen wouldn’t look like linkmen any more if they hadn’t any baskets to tote around – and by this time Jonathan rather liked the whole lot of them, baskets and all.

The Oriel two days above Seaside was an uneventful river, which was certainly all right with Jonathan. There were one or two spots where the raft found its way into water that was comparatively shallow and so raced along and bounced over submerged rocks. But the river was high, and although such rapids might have posed problems in summer months, they caused nothing more than a bit of excitement in autumn. Once or twice the roped kegs bobbed and bounced so energetically that Jonathan feared they would smash down onto a rock beneath the surface and break to bits. Such wasn’t the case though.

When they were first underway, the Professor knuckled his brow and smacked himself in the forehead a bit. He had an aren’t-we-all-morons look in his eye – and rightfully so. The raft lacked, it turned out, one important piece of equipment – a tiller – and neither Jonathan nor the Professor had thought to rig one. It turned out, however, that the raft tended to swirl around the edges of shallows and find its own way into deeper water. Once the stern swung about and scraped across a bar, but the three rafters were alerted to the danger and immediately poled their craft away. They attempted to control their course by paddling frantically on one side or the other with the small planks but that only worked when they were on a wide, calm stretch and no eddies or quick currents got hold of them. They were hopeful that on the broad delta at Seaside they’d be close enough to shore to guide her in along the bank. Otherwise, especially if they slid past at night, they may well, as Jonathan had warned earlier, find themselves adrift on the open sea. But all that was speculation, and too much speculation only leads to worry; at least that’s how Jonathan often felt.

The Oriel seemed to Jonathan to be broadening out. At times the far shore appeared to be a mile away. The foliage along shore became greener with each passing mile. Jonathan could see, during one swing in toward shore, that the berry vines were still hung with black and purple fruit which was odd, given the time of year. But the Professor speculated that the coastal berry season was later than the inland season due to the climate, especially the perpetual fog which kept things wet and cool most of the year around.

Sea birds began making an appearance late in the day – first gulls, squawking like lunatics and flapping along as if toward a distant but monstrously important destination. An occasional white pelican sailed by, sometimes several at a time, looking foolish behind their preposterous beaks, or noses as Dooly liked to say.

The whole voyage was starting to seem altogether pleasant in fact. They breakfasted on a last loaf of bread, some berries and cheese. They could have had a pickle or two if they’d had a mind to, but the previous day’s feast had allayed their pickle hunger nicely. Dooly mentioned that his mother was quite a hand at making pickle pies, but the very idea of it seemed so ghastly to both Jonathan and the Professor that they asked Dooly not to talk about it anymore.

Around midmorning, after navigating the craft became more or less routine, the Professor and Jonathan each pulled out a pipe and smashed the bowl full of tobacco which had, by that time, dried out enough to burn. It tasted vaguely of river water, however, and Jonathan admitted that the effect of the river on tobacco was comparable to its effect on hats – that is to say, it gave the tobacco a romantic, weedy flavor, and a rather comfortable flavor at that. The Professor suggested Beezle might be interested in a formula for it, so as to offer it for sale in his smokeshop. Old Water Weed Blend he could call it.

Once his pipe was smoking well, the Professor put away the nail he used as a tamper and settled back. ‘This has been a strange voyage so far. It shouldn’t have been half so strange.’

Jonathan nodded. He had, of course, thought about the same thing more than once. ‘What’s peculiar,’ said Jonathan, ‘is that somehow we seem to be a party to all this odd business. Why do weird little animals keep trying to scuttle our craft? What do they care whether or not we get to Seaside with a load of cheese?’

‘This thing goes deeper than cheese.’ The Professor was squinting along with one eye at Jonathan’s nose. ‘There’re elves flying about in impossible ships in the middle of the night and traveling parties of linkmen who, for some inexplicable reason, know who we are. Seemed not at all surprised to see us marooned there atop the hill. It was as if they’d packed that lunch with us in mind.’

Jonathan thought for a moment. ‘This whole rat’s nest can’t have stirred up over the doings of that conjurer dwarf. The elves would simply fly about over Hightower for a while and drop bricks on his head.’

The Professor nodded. ‘You’d suppose so. Unless this dwarf is more powerful than we suppose. He has some terrible control over certain beasts; that much is clear. And he seems to have the same control over the weather. Who knows where that storm came from? I’d give my eyeteeth to know whether it swept through the entire valley or just sprang up below Hightower somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised at the latter.’

Both of them sat there for a moment, pondering the whole affair. Finally Dooly, who sat on the bow with a pole watching for rocks and shallows, piped up, ‘You can bet, Mr Cheeser, that old Grandpa is somewhere about. There’s not much goes on that he don’t have a hand in. He foreshortened all this business anyway.’

‘Pardon me, Dooly,’ the Professor put in, ‘do you mean he forecast it?’

‘That’s just it, Professor. That’s just what he did. A powerful bright man is Grandpa, and nothing goes on that he don’t know about., He told me about this here king friend of his, you know. A cheeseman like yourself, Mr Bing. Has a ship that sails in the sky and fishes in the clouds with great huge nets for elf crystal. Takes it all back up to the moon.’

‘Is that right?’ The Professor favored Jonathan with a wink. ‘Airships like the one we saw upriver, are they?’

‘No,’ said Dooly. ‘Not flying machines, ships. Sails and rigging and all that sort of thing.’

‘I see,’ said the Professor. ‘There’s more inside a cloud than meets the eye, apparently.’

‘That’s what Grandpa would say. Pretty much exactly.’ Dooly went back to looking for shallows. He shouted and pointed at an odd creature near the shore, and the Professor and Jonathan at first feared that it was the little rope-chewing beast. But it turned out to be nothing more than a normal, unremarkable platypus that blinked at them in a friendly way as they drifted past. Ahab barked a greeting and seemed for a moment inclined to swim across and play with it, but they were so soon past and clipping along downstream that there was no opportunity.